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EMC Inks API Deals with Veritas and HDS
By Charles King
EMC and Veritas this week announced an agreement to
exchange a wide range of application programming interfaces (APIs) for
storage system and storage software technologies. The agreement extends
access to APIs the companies previously exchanged, and includes new APIs
relating to storage arrays, volume and file management, and replication
features. In addition, the companies will define cooperative support levels
so that end users of the respective storage system and storage management
products can receive joint support for the integrated product offerings. In
an unrelated announcement, EMC and Hitachi, Ltd. announced a settlement of
all pending patent infringement litigation between the two companies, as well
as five-year agreements which include patent cross-licenses and mutual
releases between EMC and Hitachi, Ltd. and its subsidiaries, Hitachi Data
Systems Corporation (HDS) and Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc. Along
with this settlement, EMC and Hitachi also agreed to a framework for
exchanging technology in the form of storage-related APIs, which is expected
to be finalized in coming weeks. Under terms of the agreements, Hitachi
agreed to make balancing payments to EMC. The remaining terms of the
cross-license agreement are confidential.
From a practical standpoint, the API deals EMC
arranged with Veritas and HDS have the potential to provide the three
companies’ customers similar benefits. While a good deal of ink and heat (if
not much light) have been expended on upcoming Common Information Model (CIM;
aka Bluefin)
standards that will reportedly ease the management of heterogeneous storage
environments, the fact is that CIM standards are likely to arrive piecemeal
and that fully functional CIM-compliant solutions are many months, if not
years, away. Additionally, it is unclear just how much backward
CIM-compatibility storage vendors will build into their solutions. If CIM
standards are simply treated as a nifty feature for driving new storage
product sales, their role in easing systemic storage management pain will be
diminished. Until these issues are clarified, storage management can be
notably improved by vendors actively pursuing and leveraging API swaps. How
significant are these two agreements? What is most interesting about the
EMC/Veritas deal is that it represents the first such agreement between EMC
and an ISV; all other EMC API swaps have been with hardware vendors such as
Compaq and HP. EMC’s long-standing role in enterprise storage and Veritas’s
position as a major storage management player suggests that the deal has the
potential to be highly beneficial for both companies and their myriad
customers.
The EMC/HDS agreement is a bit harder to parse out
and requires some reading between the lines, since the API language is buried
in the larger commentary on the companies’ legal settlement. EMC and HDS have
been fierce competitors for years, and HDS has been responsible for
significant erosion of EMC’s enterprise storage market share. On the legal
side of the announcement, HDS’s agreement to make
balancing payments to EMC (with no similar agreement by EMC) is the most
significant detail, suggesting that HDS likely decided that suing for peace
would be less damaging than pursuing ultimately unsuccessful litigation.
Given this, the companies’ API agreement could reflect a simple sweetening of
the settlement pot or an attempt by HDS to interject a bit of good will into
the proceedings. How much good will is involved will determine just how
positive this agreement will be for end users. Overall, an agreement that
follows the letter rather than the spirit of cooperation will be largely
useless to enterprise storage customers.
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IBM Announces $1 Billion On Demand Win
By Jim Balderston
IBM announced this week that it has signed a $1
billion, six-year deal with AXA Group to provide AXA with On Demand computing
capabilities using IBM technology and products. AXA is a worldwide financial
protection and wealth management company. Under the terms of the deal, AXA
will retain all management control of its IT infrastructure, while IBM will
help AXA consolidate its server, mainframe, and storage capacity. The
announcement is the largest IBM has made since introducing its On Demand initiative
last fall.
It is an old saw that the best way to be successful
in business is to find a parade and get out in front of it. Such wisdom hints
at a basic business idea: finding where your customers are going and putting
yourself in a position to help them get there. The advantages of such a
strategy are obvious: less resistance from clients that are already on the
path you propose to implement, synergies in existing and new technology
deployments, and a common vision of the end result (and success) of deploying
such technology solutions. IBM’s On Demand initiative essentially offers
enterprises the opportunity to consolidate existing servers, storage, and
applications and to provide additional support with IBM Capacity On Demand
(COD) and hosted services as needed to give a fluid, dynamic computing
capability across the entire enterprise. Leverage existing assets and tie them
together with a snazzy new ribbon, thereby offering your clients a
comfortable ride down a road they may or may not be aware they are already on,
is a much easier sell than the old rip and replace offerings.
On Demand is by no means fully defined. The key to
IBM maintaining ongoing traction in the marketplace will largely rely on the
company’s ability to continue to extend and improve on the concept. By
offering enterprises the option of maintaining complete control over its
infrastructure — like the AXA deal — along with offering an outside-the-firewall
option in which IBM provides additional computing assets as needed in real
time, IBM steps lightly around the old outsourcing bugaboo. While many IT
departments simply do not cotton to the idea that they cannot go down into
the server room and see all of their assets blinking and humming in
air-conditioned comfort, others are becoming increasingly comfortable with
the idea that someone else can manage at least parts of their infrastructure safely
and securely. By offering a flexible set of options, IBM keeps its markets as
broadly defined as possible, and allows itself to gain entry into enterprises
that may initially want to maintain complete control, but over time may find
that letting some capacity to reside offsite is more and more preferable. All
in all, keeping On Demand flexible, offering a wide range of deployment and
purchasing options to suit myriad members of its customer base, is an
approach that we believe will play out to IBM’s favor in the coming years as
these services become an increasing part of mainstream business computing.
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Intel Announces “Unwire” Centrino
Campaign, T-Mobile Agreement
By Charles King
Intel has begun a worldwide advertising campaign to
support the March 12 launch of the company’s Centrino mobile technologies.
Centrino includes a new Intel Pentium-M mobile processor, related chipsets,
and integrated 802.11 wireless network capabilities designed to support
wireless notebook PCs. In a separate announcement, Intel and T-Mobile USA
announced a joint marketing campaign to promote T-Mobile’s WiFi (802.11) high
speed wireless Internet service. As part of the campaign, T-Mobile announced
new monthly pricing plans, including an annual agreement that provides users
unlimited T-Mobile HotSpot service for $29.95 per month. HotSpot is currently
available at 2,100 U.S. locations including Starbucks coffee houses, national
and regional airports, and American Airlines Admirals Clubs. The service will
also be available in new locations as they are deployed, including additional
airports, Borders Books and Music stores, and United and Delta Air Lines
clubs and lounges. During a related press event at San Francisco
International Airport, Intel Chairman Andy Grove said the new Centrino chips
were “second only to the introduction of the Pentium” in terms of importance
to the company, and “will help jump start” a shift toward wireless computing.
Intel is putting a great deal of energy into the
Centrino promotion, and though the actual significance of the resulting sound
and fury may be uncertain at this point, we are intrigued by some “unwired”
implications. Could Centrino really be as important to Intel as Pentium? Will
it actually inspire a shift toward wireless computing? A bit of historical
and current market reflection might be in order here. High tech industry
graybeards will remember a time when PCs were anathema to enterprise IT
managers, with the undeserved rap that they were mere playthings that could
clutter or even cripple company networks. But a funny thing happened on the
way to paradise, with workers smuggling PCs into the workplace to ease and enhance
their jobs. Bottom line: end users were way ahead of experts in recognizing
the value of personal computing. Shift ahead 20+ years and one can see a
similar evolution taking place. Over the past three years, the growing
performance and capabilities of notebook computers have driven them further
and further into the business and consumer markets, nearly reaching parity
with desktop PC sales. At the same time, roll-your-own wireless networking
has become hugely popular both at work and home. In other words, much of the
market is both well tilled and fertilized for integrated mobile/wireless
products.
That being the case, is Centrino assured success?
Intel and its PC vendor partners certainly hope so. The high-end
graphics/video capabilities that were recently supposed to drive consumers to
upgrade PCs have largely (and deservedly) nosedived earthward, and business
desktop sales (except for notebooks) have been softer than a feather duvet
for more than a year. Centrino’s leverage of two popular computing trends
should give it supple enough legs to travel blithely between both
wireless-enabled homes and businesses. So what about the Intel/T-Mobile
connection? Given its design, we believe the T-Mobile service is likely to
find initial success primarily among business travelers and power users, but
could be buoyed as HotSpots are deployed in more consumer-friendly locations.
At the same time, the significant performance capabilities and savings in
wiring costs promised by WiFi networks inspires us to imagine a heady time
when these solutions will be widely deployed in schools, libraries, shopping
malls and myriad other public locations. By easing the rigors of the Last
Mile, Intel and T-Mobile are likely to assure that more travelers will take
the trip.
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HP Announces OpenView Support for Web
Services
By Myles Suer
Carly Fiorina announced at BEA World that HP will
provide technology to help address Web services management issues. While
asserting that Web services overcomes IT complexity, unifying systems and accelerating
a return on IT investments, Ms. Fiorina stated that HP’s OpenView technology
will eliminate issues that might otherwise inhibit the growth of Web services
by allowing customers to provision and manage Web services via a consistent
management interface for both J2EE and
.NET components. HP introduced the OpenView Web Services Management Engine,
which allows customers to intercept Web services requests and actively manage
the service apart from the platform where it resides. HP also announced OpenView
Transaction Analyzer, which uses APIs, co-developed with BEA to monitor Web
services applications.
As with virtualization technology, management
applications will play key roles in determining and delivering effective Web
Services deployments. HP, IBM, and BMC have all positioned themselves to
assist customers in managing Web Services connectivity, though not for
especially altruistic reasons. While using Web service technologies to
leverage enterprise applications for additional purposes offers some
compelling value, the possibility also exists for these new systems to
compromise existing services and business processes by overuse. HP appears to
be developing preventative solutions for this problem before it presents
itself, an intelligent move in our opinion. We also think that it is wise for
HP — no longer being in the application server business — to leave all doors
open, including one for .NET. This allows HP to play with four (and possibly
more) application server vendors (BEA, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sybase) and
should provide the company myriad opportunities to offer its management
services as effective means for dealing with the most heterogeneous
enterprise computing environments.
OK. So far sounds great. HP is positioning itself to
play manager for most Web Application Servers. The question the industry is
really begging to understand is: Is this enough? HP shocked the industry by
shutting down their own Web Application Server business (the Bluestone
acquisition) last year and positioning themselves as the Switzerland of
systems developers by announcing support for just about everyone else’s J2EE
and .NET servers. This strikes us as “low risk” (not usually something we
find exciting), but it may represent a stroke of genius. It is our belief
that Web Application Servers are on the same commoditization path that has
been trodden by Web and email servers. The result of complete commoditization
has been a continuing devaluation of these solutions, which has effectively
destroyed companies that relied too much on product revenue alone and not
enough on the services and tools sales that grew around them. Overall, we see
HP’s low risk approach as a potentially big gamble that will test both their
technological acumen and their crystal ball.
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