Dell, Dell, and More Dell

Andreas Zilch

 Dell Inc. continues its acquisition spree by acquiring mainframe rehosting company Clerity Solutions Inc. and application modernization tool provider Make Technologies Inc. In the course of the past month Dell has also acquired network security and data protection provider SonicWALL Inc. and Wyse Technology Inc., a thin client solutions vendor. 

•  Dell announced it has acquired Clerity, a leading provider of applications modernization and re-hosting solutions and services. Dell claims the addition of Clerity's capabilities will enable Dell Services to help customers reduce the cost of transitioning business-critical applications and data from legacy computing systems and onto more modern architectures, including the cloud. 

•  Dell's second acquisition just weeks ago was the purchase of Make Technologies, whose tools are aimed at modernizing mainframe and midrange applications. The Make Technologies acquisition gives Dell a tool that can examine the structure of mainframe and midrange applications, generally written in COBOL or RPG. 

•  In March Dell purchased SonicWALL, a privately held provider of data security measures for businesses. The purchase price was undisclosed but according to the New York Times, Dell paid about $1.25 billion, including the assumption of SonicWALL's debt. The new acquisition gives Dell a provider of high-grade networking security services, which include next generation network firewalls, e-mail protection, backup and recovery, and policy, management and reporting offerings. 

Experton Group believes Dell is aggressively pursuing its transformation into a full-service commercial IT products and services provider and should make the transition successfully. Dell recognized that its personal PC business would not continue to provide it with the growth required once Apple Inc. started to dominate the market with its smartphone and tablet products and services. Management realized the success it was having with its Data Center Solutions unit, which had grown to be a $1 billion business and is the largest provider of densely-optimized servers.

IT executives that view Dell as a strategic partner should meet with Dell executives to understand the strategy and roadmap to ensure that Dell's direction and timing is compatible with corporate goals and requirements. In companies where Dell is not a strategic partner but a supplier, IT executives should continue to keep Dell on the short list to help ensure the company is getting the best deals possible from its full-service competitors.

Cloud Computing and Data Integration: Trends to Watch

Dr. Carlo Velten

 According to a recent article published in eWeek, the following are data integration and cloud computing trends that could potentially affect how the cloud will be used in the near future.

•  Enterprise Application Integration & Integration Platform as a Service – there is movement on many fronts to simplify application integration not only from one vendor, but many vendors. Standardization of cloud application interfaces at a higher level than APIs will help promote cloud usage. It is generally recognized that in order for “new-comers” to introduce and gain acceptance of their applications, they need to interface with generally accepted social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

•  B2C will Drive B2B Agility – it is clear that the consumer market is driving a lot of what is being developed and used in the corporate market. In other words, the consumer is driving the cloud market.

•  Data as a Service – as more and more information from multiple sources becomes available, there are manufacturers and service providers that have recognized the need for data management, which includes filtering, curation, etc. See iFlow.com.

•  Master Data Management – building on data as a service, the management of data and integration with existing enterprise data will develop significantly in the near term.

•  Data Governance/Security – as more consumer data becomes more prevalent and service providers offer management and integration services, the protection of private information becomes even more paramount

•  Business Process Modeling & Activity Monitoring – as the capabilities of the cloud mature and enterprises take advantage of cloud-sourcing, sophisticated tasks like process modeling and business activity monitoring will move into the cloud.

•  Cloud Service Brokerage – it makes sense that while multiple cloud services become available and cloud service integration platforms develop, that there will be a need for knowledgeable service providers to offer brokerage and service integration services.

A lot of what is presented above is based on traditional business development. If we were to go one step further, it is expected that there will be a lot (more) of service merger and acquisition – new leaders will emerge that will offer a wide range of cloud services and threaten traditional service providers like Amazon, SalesForce, etc.. IT Executives should make sure that they keep abreast of market developments before making significant investments and commitments.

SAP harnesses mobile assets to keep Oracle awake at night

Caroline Gabriel

 The mobile enterprise market has been evolving for a decade and SAP made a decisive move two years ago when it acquired Sybase. That was a seminal purchase and the German giant has now outlined the broader strategy it will build on its unit‟s mobile strengths. It has acquired another firm, mobile apps player Syclo; gathered partners for a wide development framework; and will infuse mobile capabilities through its whole offering, including its David and Goliath challenge to Oracle in databases. As large companies move towards cloud services and BYOD, the market is changing and gathering pace, and the year ahead will be a critical one for big software players like SAP, Oracle and IBM.

In Oracle‟s most recent earnings call, CEO Larry Ellison said German rival SAP “must be on drugs” to think it could compete in databases. SAP, which outlined its new roadmap this week, has certainly stepped up its activities in that market with its HANA platform. But its real threat to Oracle lies in its better understanding of the mobile enterprise sector, which after years of gradual evolution is now at a tipping point – driven by two key trends. These are BYOD (bring your own device), which is breaking down the old norms of mobile management and applications; and the accelerating shift towards cloud-based enterprise apps accessed from all kinds of gadgets.

All the major corporate software houses are seeking a role in those related trends, but SAP made an early and decisive move when it acquired Sybase two years ago. Although that firm brought some assets to SAP‟s database challenge, the longtime Oracle follower had really carved out its own role as an early mobile enterprise provider and SAP has been building on that foundation ever since. Sybase really broke into the mobile market early in the last decade when it acquired iAnywhere, a product that briefly toppled RIM from the top spot in corporate mobile email in 2003. In 2004 it unveiled its Unwired Enterprise strategy and its ultra-low footprint mobile database has consistently enjoyed a strong position too.

Now SAP plans to lose the Sybase brand soon as it infuses mobility through its whole operation under the „Unwired‟ label. This week it outlined the next stage of its corporate mobility push, starting with another acquisition – of Syclo, the king of mobile asset management, and a big player in other areas such as field services, inventory management and approvals/workflow.

12 Ways to Contain Storage Costs

Luis Praxmarer

 Experton Group believes enterprises have been living with poorly optimized storage systems for too long and need to take advantage of the optimization alternatives available so that the storage cost curve can be driven down. IT executives should be able to cut their storage costs in half while simultaneously doubling storage capacity. Moreover, much of the expansion could be self-funded (i.e., payback in less than 12 months). IT executives should perform a cost/benefits analysis to see if and where implementation of new storage methodologies should be applied and then build the appropriate approaches into each new storage expansion/refresh initiative.

The following 12 approaches provide ways to reduce the cost of storing data:

1. Better content management.  While enterprises are getting better, in most companies 60 percent of existing storage space is either not used or not well used. Unsurprisingly, the inappropriately used, orphaned, and over allocated space – 30 percent of all storage space – is never detected or found. 

2. Compression. There are multiple compression technologies and some of them result in data loss, which can call the integrity of the data into question. Data and records that must be legally retained should only be compressed using lossless techniques. ZIP file formats are lossless as are PNG and GIF images. 

3. Clouds and pools. In some environments it is possible to use cloud storage to reduce the amount of storage space needed in house. Some of the best examples of this are for development and test systems and backup. Storage pools also enable the sharing of storage capacity across multiple applications.

4. Deduplication. Deduplication eliminates redundant data. In areas where it can be successfully applied, it can achieve up to a 22:1 savings. There are four different deduplication methodologies:  inline, post-process, source, and target deduplication. 

5. Golden Records. With the shift to distributed computing, which uses a shared-nothing storage architecture, enterprises ended up creating multiple copies of databases. It is not uncommon for companies to have anywhere between seven and 50 copies of commonly used databases. 

6. Leasing/shorter refresh cycle. Storage technology is rapidly changing. Over the past five years there has been a 2.5 times improvement in density and a power reduction in excess of 90 percent. IT executives will find shorter storage refresh rates are more cost effective in many ways.

7. Mainframe as database server. Unlike the distributed shared-nothing storage architecture, mainframe servers utilize a shared storage architecture. This architecture allows enterprises to keep a single copy of each of their databases. This could reduce total capacity demand by up to 80 percent. 

8. Newer storage management solutions. Traditional storage platforms fail to provide advanced storage management tools, which means that as storage capacity grows the number of administrators grows proportionally. The newer platforms offer automated management capabilities improving this ratio.

9. Snapshots. Use of snapshot copies for backup, data protection, and testing can reduce the overall storage capacity required by up to 80 percent. It can be especially useful for testing with live data without the creation of multiple production sized database for test purposes. 

10. Tape. Most retrievals of data are within the first 30 to 90 days of creation. The older the data is the less likely it will be retrieved. The cost of tape is less than 1/10th the cost of disk (about $0.02/GB) and consumes less than 1/100th the power and cooling costs of disk. 

11. Thin provisioning. Thin provisioning of shared storage pools allows for gradual capacity growth of storage through on-demand allocation of blocks of data. This method reduces most storage whitespace, thereby avoiding poor utilization rates that occur in the traditional storage allocation method. 

12. Tiering and SSD. Some storage platforms provide automatic tiering of storage. As a rule of thumb the price differential between tiers is 2:1. This approach can be enhanced by also employing flash or solid state drives (SSDs). Storage tiering and at least three tiers of storage can reduce storage costs significantly.

Summary: Each of the above alternatives can dramatically cut the cost of storage. In fact, some companies have been able to reduce their storage costs by half while more than doubling storage capacity. Thus, IT executives should be able to self-fund in excess of one year's future capacity demands through more efficient use of storage utilization. Given the current push to reduce operational costs, IT executives should look at storage efficiencies and utilization as one place for resource optimization.  

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Business Apps – Next Disruptive Technology

Axel Oppermann

Experton Group believes mobile business apps, especially business analytics apps, will be the next disruptive technology to impact business users and IT departments. Business apps will improve effectiveness, loyalty, productivity, and profitability. Business analytics apps will disintermediate IT as the apps allow business users to obtain the answers they seek without waiting for IT departments to process their requests for change. IT executives should understand that these apps are a business "game changer" and find ways to incorporate business apps into the workflow.

Business Imperatives

• The advent of mobility has led to the creation of business apps. Basic business apps have been with us for more than a decade now, ever since users began relying on Research In Motion, Ltd. (RIM) BlackBerries to handle emails, stock quotes, and other information in 1999. But the introduction of Apple Inc. iPads and the various smartphones have resulted in the development of advanced apps that enable users to perform a myriad of business tasks. Now business users are more untethered than before, which improves productivity and job satisfaction. IT executives should take advantage of the tools software vendors are offering to app-enable their applications to the supported app devices and form factors.
• The next wave of business apps will be turnkey business analytics apps. These advanced apps allow mobile users to make more knowledgeable decisions in real-time regardless of where they are, time of day, or dependency upon the hidden army of IT application designers and programmers. This will unleash new levels of productivity, which will generate more revenues, reduce operational costs, improve efficiencies, and/or increase margins. IT executives should pilot test these new apps with select users, analyze the impacts and cost/benefits, and then work with line of business executives to implement those business analytic apps, where appropriate.
• The shift to inexpensive, ala carte, self-service business analytics apps that users can activate and execute as and when they see fit – without any IT involvement – will be the first step in the disintermediation of IT from business analytics and financial reporting life cycles. In that IT organizations are pursuing automation and optimization strategies for infrastructure and platforms, this is a timely addition to the mix. IT executives should understand how the use of business analytics apps will improve their operation and increase user satisfaction with technology. IT executives should also make sure that mobile business apps and process flows are included in the application requirements and specifications cycle and vendor platforms.  

Top 10 Money Savers for 2012

Luis Praxmarer

Experton Group believes IT executives still have a number of major initiatives available to them for cutting capital expenses and operational costs in 2012 that together can trim the overall IT budget by forty percent or more. There are still monies to be saved in technology shifts as well as in process and management changes. There are gains to be made from workforce alignments, including outsourcing, as well. IT executives should examine these initiatives and advocate those that could gain management buy-in and yield the best results.

Business Imperatives

• The battle for IT talent is getting more intense, as the number of shortages in key areas is increasing. This is putting pressure on IT executives to create and execute a workforce diversity plan that includes hiring new talent, retention and retraining strategies, succession strategies, contingent workforce allocations, and outsourcing. IT executives should align their skill requirements with utilization needs so that execution of a workforce diversity plan can reduce overall personnel expenditures.
• Process improvements can offer the biggest gains for the IT organization. IT continues to spend monies in areas that are not yielding the desired results. Gains can be made by addressing non-value-added projects, IT financial management, or non-optimized procurement processes. IT executives should undertake a study of these items and fold the quick hits into their 2012 budget planning process.
• Most IT executives are familiar with many of the technology savings but surprisingly, executives are not aggressively pursuing them. While some of the technology initiatives are long-term, there are a number of short-term quick hits that IT executives could attack and therefore achieve savings in the 2012 budget cycle. IT executives should re-examine the array of technological cost saving options to find those whose implementation would yield decent operating cost savings in fiscal 2012.

Source: Experton Group

The Bottom Line: Experton Group believes now is an opportune time for executives to re-evaluate IT's workforce allocations and diversity, process improvement plans, and data center operations initiatives and to adjust them to achieve greater savings. Some of the items will require IT executives to go beyond their usual domains and display creativity and thought leadership and seek buy-in from peer and senior executives. IT is in the midst of another tectonic shift, which makes the timing good. IT executives should seize the initiative and work with line of business, finance, procurement, and other senior executives to develop strategies that can help their enterprises achieve their short- and long-term goals and strategies.

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