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From Unified To Social Communications And Collaboration

I’m very pleased to be publishing an artcle her from Pim Bilderbeek, a colleague who works for the METISfiles and has helped us with contributions to this site many times before.

We have come a long way since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Mr. Bell’s first call was to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, speaking these famous first words, “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you”. Today we can reach virtually anyone on the planet instantly – whenever and wherever they are – with the multitude of communications channels and devices that we have at our disposal. But with this multitude comes the danger of information overload and communications breakdown. In fact, we make a point that the competitive advantages of being an elastic enterprise could be in real danger of being offset through ineffective collaboration between workers, customers, partners and business units caused by information overload and communications breakdown.
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Kaseya Addresses Smart Devices In Corporate Networks WIth Mobile Device Management

Kaseya MDM Highlights

  • Smart phone installed base will overtake PCs in 2014
  • Smart tablet installed base will reach 500 million in 2015
  • Kaseya has added Mobile Device Management to its K2 platform
  • Introduces automated software deployment and device tracking
  • Locks, wipes and alarms lost or stolen devices
  • Designed for MSPs and corporate IT departments

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Avere – Can Automated Tiered Storage Reduce Our $120 Billion On Storage?

We’ve come across a number of highly innovative smaller companies over the last couple of years – companies like Aaxana and Racemi who have new approaches to the normal way users implement systems resulting in significantly lower costs. We travelled up to the Royal Exchange in London recently to talk to CEO Ron Bianchini and VP Marketing Rebecca Thompson of Avere – a small storage systems company with a compelling story. We thought it would be interesting for our readers to learn about them. We also want to share some of our sizing of the storage market and look at how Avere’s approach might reduce it.

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‘Storage Hypervisors’ – IBM Proposes A New Industry Term

Storage Hypervisor Debate Highlights

  • Improving resource utilisation is central to reducing data centre costs
  • SAN and NAS have improved virtualisation, but typically within a single vendor’s range
  • VMware has been highly successful in lowering server spending by heterogeneous applying virtualisation
  • Virtualisation platforms, management software and application across multiple vendors’ kit required
  • IBM’s own approach includes SVC and TPC – it can virtualise and manage most other vendors’ storage
  • We may need a software-only vendor (as VMware is in servers) for storage hypervisors to take off

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HP Unlocking Your Energy Conference – CSR Moves From Consumer To Producer

HP Energy Conference Highlights

  • The ITC industry is responsible for 3% of worldwide total carbon emissions
  • It has the ability to affect and lower the other 97%
  • ‘Smart’ buildings, hospitals, cities, etc are mainly about the digitisation of analogue process
  • Cloud and centralisation often results in environmental responsibility moving from consumer to producer
  • Not just the total – but type of – electricity production is important
  • HP demonstrates good practices internally and externally, but still has challenges as the world’s largest computer brand

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IBM’s Sean Finnan – CIOs, Country Demand And Cloud Computing

Sean Finnan Discussion Highlights

  • CIOs want a new role, rather than being full-time procurement officers
  • Some want to in-source everything
  • Some want outcome-based outsourcing
  • Business analytics requires new system approaches
  • Digital natives are joining the IT workforce
  • Poorly implemented Cloud Computing could be messy, as Client/Server Computing became
  • IBM aims to deliver enterprise-level, standards based Cloud offerings
  • Within its North East IOT strongest demand is in the UK

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HP CEO Door Revolves – Goodbye Léo, Hello Meg

HP Q2 2011 Highlights

  • Meg Witman replaces Léo Apotheker as HP CEO
  • IT market share fell to 3.4% in Q2 2011
  • Leads the IT, server, PC and peripherals markets
  • Lost share in EMEA and the Americas
  • Has opportunities of building share in Asia Pacific
  • Should look to integrate its business, not offload them
  • Needs a vertically – not horizontally – integrated strategy
  • Cloud services will help it through the new recession

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Server Market Forecast – Cloud Computing And The Coming Recession

Server Forecast Highlights

  • The market has recovered well from the Credit Crunch
  • Revenues were $63b, shipments 5.6 million and installed base 40 million in the year to the end of Q2 2011
  • HP is currently market leader, but IBM is catching up fast
  • Unix/RISC servers have fared badly in recent quarters
  • x86 machines in rack configurations dominate spending and growth
  • IBM S/390 machines do well following product refresh
  • Cloud Computing and centralised processing are driving sales

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The Difference Between BRIC And PIIGS In ITC Markets

BRIC And PIIGS Highlights

  • BRIC spending is bigger and constantly outgrows PIIGS
  • The drop in ITC spending in Q2 2011 is similar to those in 2005 and 2008
  • Multiple economic problems point to the start of a double-dip recession
  • ITC spending is 25% of world GDP and can’t be immune
  • Suppliers should focus on large, under-penetrated countries with balanced books, fossil fuel reserves and democracy
  • Surviving the new downturn requires scenario planning and flexible pricing

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Dell Proposes Hotter Servers – Less Chillers

Dell High Temperature Equipment Highlights

  • Increases high temperature excursion to 45C for new servers, storage and switches
  • Will help cut the time chillers run in data centres and associated Op Ex costs
  • Relates to the aims of European Union Code of Conduct for Data Centres
  • Conforms to ASHRAE A3 and A4 standards
  • Is the first to implement Intel changes

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HP’s Growth Slows – Buys Autonomy, Ponders PC Spin-Off

HP Q3 Results Highlights

  • Revenues grew 1% to $31.2 billion
  • Profits grew 9% to $1.9 billion
  • Announces its intention to buy Autonomy
  • Talks about finding a new role for its PC division – perhaps spinning it off
  • Drops a number of Palm WebOS devices
  • Leads the Server, PC and Peripheral markets worldwide
  • Needs to consider a more integrated future


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IBM’s Cloud Computing Reference Model – Customer-Focused And Clear

IBM Cloud Computing Reference Model Highlights

  • Architectures are not product roadmaps!
  • Includes three communities – consumers, providers and creators
  • Identifies 14 separate user types central to the design
  • IBM has a major SaaS broker role
  • Will help IBM draw the various strands of its strategy together and report associated revenues
  • Identifies technical and business elements
  • Will help users understand the mix between building and buying
  • Suggests a move from internal to IBM-defined infrastructure
  • Will challenge HP, Oracle, Fujitsu, Intel and others to explain their own reference models clearly

Figure 1 – IBM Cloud Computing Reference Model

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HP Hybrid Delivery Solutions – Agility Solutions For Cloud Builders

HP Hybrid Delivery Highlights

  • Launched a series of IT Services to help Cloud builders
  • Its research shows agility is important to business success and technology important for achieving it
  • Its reference customers are mainly US-based, with a good number from Asia and Europe
  • Its Cloud building activities will no doubt move from service providers to general-business customers as Cloud
    Computing develops
  • It will also promote common infrastructure elements for mixing internal and external application provision
  • It will also continue offer IaaS and PaaS offerings from its own regional data centres

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IBM Targets HP Itanium/Oracle Users With Multiple Campaigns And Resources

IBM v HP Itanium Highlights

  • Aims to win server business from HP Itanium users
  • Aims to win database business from Sun/Oracle
  • Part of a developing server battle reminiscent of the 1990s
  • Illustrates a clash between old horizontal and new vertical integration ideas
  • Migration Factory offers competitive displacement
  • Stop & Think offers to reduce data and management costs
  • Breakfree offers special deals for customers migrating to IBM
  • Sweep the Floor buy back or disposal of HP Itanium servers included among Global Finances offerings
  • Results will come slowly and be difficult to assess

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AMD APUs – How Balanced Systems Will Transform The PC Market

AMD APU Highlights

  • Has combined CPU, GPU and North Bridge components in APUs
  • Cuts power consumption from 84W to between 35W and 45W
  • Enables ‘all day’ battery life
  • Has launched a wide range stretching from embedded, through ultra-thin to mainstream laptops and desktops
  • Focuses on Graphics, while Intel focuses on Computing in its APU
  • Encourages ISVs to use DirectCompute and OpenGL/CL
  • 150 new notebook and desktop design wins to date
  • Dramatically changes the separate focus of PC chip design on CPUs for Entertainment and GPUs for gaming

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Dell Launches vStart Private Cloud Bundles Through The Channel

Dell vStart Channel Highlights

  • Offers vStart 100 and 200 through Certified Partners
  • Launches in the US today, EMEA countries in September or October, Asia/Japan later
  • Judges the demand for private Clouds is mature enough for smaller bundled solutions
  • Will build vStart upwards and downwards – the latter with Microsoft’s Hyper-V
  • Could do some very interesting appliances through its Kace division later

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AvePoint – Adding Infrastructure Management to Microsoft SharePoint

AvePoint Highlights Q211

  • Microsoft Sharepoint collaboration software is being widely adopted, but lacks infrastructure management
  • AvePoint software adds data protection, centralised administration and helps to manage permissions.
  • Can save costs be externalising data from SQL into lower tier storage
  • Has a customer-centric GEAR management approach
  • Offers ‘follow the sun’ support
  • Is moving from 100% direct to a 50/50 direct/indirect distribution model
  • Has to work at Microsoft speed for Cloud services deployment – slow
  • Has the potential to turn its Sharepoint specialisation into more general purpose tools
  • Microsoft’s MSIT is itself a reference customer

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Smart Phone Market Share And Forecast – A Bridge To The Internet Of Things

If you enjoy readinng this – see our update

Worldwide Smart Phone Market Update

  • Smart Phones enjoy dramatic and continuous growth for their suppliers
  • They are challenging PCs strongly as a client form factor
  • They provide a bridge to a future dominated by the ‘Internet of Things’
  • Replacement rates are faster than PCs, reducing the size of the installed base

In 2010

  • 215 million Smart Phones worth $73 billion were shipped
  • The installed base reached 392 million – over half the size of the PC base
  • Apple dominates in terms of revenues and shipments
  • Nokia shipped most
  • The installed base of Symbian Smart Phones has only just been overtaken by iOS

In 2016

  • 377 million will be shipped
  • The market will be worth $153 billion
  • The installed base will grow to 822 million, overtaking PCs
  • The installed base of Android devices will overtake iOS – but only in 2015
  • Both Windows Phone and WebOS will become major platofrms

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IBM’s STG Marketing Head Marc Dupaquier On IT Consumerism, Generation Y And Cloud Computing

ITCandor is very lucky to have been invited along with a couple of other analysts and IBMers to a dinner meeting with Marc Dupaquier, the worldwide head of IBM STG marketing. In fact I’ve attended many key IBM meetings over the last few weeks, including a deep dive on its systems management software approach and dinner with Rod Adkins, which we wrote about recently. I make no apologies for writing about IBM again here, since I know how important getting the views of key industry executives are to our readers. Read more »

LV 1871 Uses IBM Virtualisation For Consolidation, Cost Savings And Productivity Improvement

LV 1871 And IBM Virtualisation Highlights Q211

  • LV 1871 is a medium sized mutual insurer which has consolidated, improved services and reduced costs through advanced virtualisation
  • IBM has simplified the way it talks about virtualisation, outlining a series of small to large options with associated benefits
  • Claims advantages in the number and cost of virtual machines running on its x86 and RISC servers
  • Has learnt from decades of experience in virtualisation from mainframe, through Unix to x86 and Cloud
  • Believes IBM will be a fierce competitor with the likes of Dell and HP as users invest in virtualisation and Cloud


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