|
Market Roundup November 26, 2003 The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend |
|
The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend
IBM and BEA Systems have announced that they are
collaborating on ways to smooth out technical differences between their
respective Java software lines. The companies have published three technical
specifications for their products that they say will make it easier for
customers to run programs on Java application servers. The three technical
specifications are: Service Data Objects, which provides a common way to pull
data from multiple data sources such as XML-based file systems and relational
databases; Timer for Application Servers, a mechanism for scheduling processing
jobs; and Work Manager for Application Servers, for setting up processing tasks
in parallel. The changes are expected to be fully implemented within the next
major release of both BEA's WebLogic
and IBM's WebSphere, which are due next year. Additionally, IBM and BEA stated
that they will submit the specifications to the Java Community Process, an
industry-wide Java standardization effort, and will make the guidelines
available, royalty-free, to other companies
In response to requests from customers and ISVs, it is
clear that both IBM and BEA are working to solidify the Java 2 Enterprise
Edition Application Server as a middleware standard by creating more common
technical underpinnings for their Java server software solutions. There is
plenty of competition for this “lynch-pin” middleware role, with Microsoft’s .NET
as the chief rival. This is a bridging strategy that allows the two companies
to establish a coordinated leadership of the standard through collaboration in
the technology components and competition in the marketplace where the two
companies have a combined market share of 66%.
We find it interesting that Sun is not mentioned in this effort to strengthen the J2EE middleware model as a standard. Similarly, BEA and Sun announced earlier in the week a common technology effort in the tools space with IBM conspicuously absent. While Sun directs the Java standardization process and controls the Java brand, it does not have the market clout that its partner BEA and IBM have in this space. Some have suggested that as market leaders IBM and BEA are now collaborating explicitly on driving the direction of Java, this indicates a profound weakening of Sun's leadership in the Java space. We disagree. In spite of the years Java and Java components have held this middleware role, the effort to secure its critical standards position is really just heating up. We believe that all three companies understand the enemy here is not one another or even, dare we say it, Microsoft’s competing .NET. Rather, the enemy is complexity overall, as well as parochial product plays that together keep enterprise costs up and customer confidence down. Reducing both of these allows customers’ IT organizations to serve their internal constituents by focusing on resolving business problems, not excusing ongoing, inherent systems problems. We need more collaboration of the sorts IBM, BEA, and Sun are pursuing to continue to get the software out of the way of the work it is supposed to help facilitate.
HP Announces New Storage Products/Packages
for SMBs
HP has announced a new storage product family and packaged
server-storage offerings designed for SMBs. The new HP Storage Works Modular
Smart Array (MSA) family includes products which can be purchased individually
or in packages with HP Proliant servers. The MSA 30
(formerly the SWE 4414/4454), a DAS enclosure designed for workgroups and
departmental users, scales to fourteen drives and up to 2TB of storage. The MSA
500 (formerly the Smart Array Cluster), a DAS enclosure designed for storage
consolidation, scales to fourteen drives, 2TB of storage, and 512MB of cache.
The MSA 1000 (formerly the Modular SAN Array 1000), an entry level SAN array,
scales from fourteen to forty-two drives, up to 6TB of storage, and 512MB of
cache. In addition, HP is also offering the DL380 Packaged Cluster-MSA500
(formerly the DL380 Packaged Cluster) which includes two Proliant
DL380 servers, the MSA500 enclosure, two host bus adapters, and required
cables, as well as the DL380 Packaged Cluster-MSA1000 which includes two Proliant DL380 servers, the MSA1000 enclosure, two host bus
adapters, one 8-port fibre channel switch, and
required cables. Estimated list prices for the MSA30, MSA500, and MSA1000 start
at $3,200, $5,700, and $9,995 respectively. Estimated list price for the DL380
Packaged Cluster with MSA500 is $9,999 and $19,999 with MSA1000.
At its heart, HP’s MSA announcement is more about
re-branding than re-engineering or re-imagining the company’s SMB storage product
line. But while these solutions and one package have all been available
previously, it is worth asking why HP is going through the trouble and cost of
renaming them. From a purely strategic standpoint, this effort aims to slow the
SMB efforts of Dell/EMC and IBM. While HP’s acquisition of Compaq initially
gave the company a solid lead in the Intel-based server market, Dell is the
T-Rex looming large in HP’s rear view mirror. In addition, Dell’s marketing and
manufacturing alliance with EMC has delivered significant dividends for both
companies’ SMB efforts. In a press event celebrating the second anniversary of
that alliance, the companies’ spokespeople said Dell/EMC system sales for the
first half of 2003 have eclipsed sales for all of 2002, an achievement HP has
likely noticed. On IBM’s side, the success of the company’s Intel-based xSeries servers has helped spark IBM’s SMB efforts, as has
the company’s acumen in packaging hardware, software, and services together
into differentiated products.
Practically speaking, HP’s MSA re-branding effort aims to boost sales and market share for its business computing solutions, which have lagged the company’s consumer-centric product lines. By simplifying its lower-end storage products, tying them together thematically, and offering them in packages with Xeon-based Proliant DL380 servers, HP is trying to make life and IT purchasing decisions a bit easier for its SMB customers and life a bit sweeter for the HP channel partners. At the same time, re-branding allows HP to avoid the cost and effort of developing new storage solutions, a critical issue to a company skating at the thin icy edge between red and black. The real question is whether or not these machinations will matter to SMB customers. Data storage is an ever-increasing part of doing business for SMBs, and with storage-intensive initiatives like Sarbanes-Oxley coming up in 2004 we expect that storage consolidation solutions and SMB-friendly SAN products will resonate among business customers and their channel suppliers. HP’s traditional role as a SMB vendor puts its new MSA products in a good position to profit from these trends. However, while re-branding may help stem customer migration it is not the path to market leadership. Exactly what HP does with the next generation of MSA will offer a clearer sense of how the company really expects to compete with IBM and Dell/EMC.
The House of Representatives voted 392-5 this week to
approve the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
(CAN-SPAM) Act, following on the heels of the Senate, which voted 97-0 in
October on its own version of the bill. The two bills will be merged and sent
to the President for signing, which he has announced he will do. The
legislation will require that commercial email senders offer an opt-out option
and their postal address, as well as labeling their emails as advertisements.
Spammers would be required to honor opt-out requests within ten days. Under the
legislation, commercial email senders would be prohibited from harvesting email
addresses from Web sites and from automated dictionary spamming techniques.
Spammers using other people’s email addresses or computers could face fines or
imprisonment. The bill will allow the FTC, Attorneys General, and ISPs to seek
civil damages. Under the legislation, the FTC would have the power to create a
“Do Not Spam” registry, similar to the recently enacted “Do No Call” registry
designed to stop unwanted telemarketing telephone calls. The federal
legislation would override state laws, such as California’s which was scheduled
to go into effect at the beginning of next year. The bill drew both praise and
criticism, with consumer advocates saying the bill does not go far enough.
Washington knows an easy issue when it sees one, one that
elected officials can support with relatively little downside. No one likes
spam, or spammers for that matter, and the lopsided votes in favor of these
bills suggests several things to us. First, this is an issue very few people
want to be on the wrong side of. Secondly, the near unanimous votes indicate
that these bills may have very little effect, as they appear to be more for
show than of any real substance. After all, we are moving into an election
cycle and the elected officials need to have something to show the folks back
home to indicate that they really, really are looking after their constituents’
best interest. We suspect that if someone authored “People Opposed to Offing
Puppies” (POOP) legislation it would be unanimously co-sponsored in both houses
and unanimously approved forthwith, given the desperate atmosphere that fills
both houses of Congress before the end of an election year legislative session.
Putting all sneering aside, the anti-spam fervor is the latest indication that enterprises of all sizes are going to face increasing legislative pressures from Washington. Existing legislation such as HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley has huge impacts on enterprises of all sizes and shapes, and essentially are Edicts from On High that can actively re-prioritize IT spending decisions on very short notice. As executives are forced to sign increasingly stringent reports concerning the operations of their companies, they are going to insist that they have a solid working knowledge of what is occurring in the company as represented by the myriad stores of data spread throughout the organization. Making this information transparent is no easy task; it requires a high level of integration of the enterprise’s existing IT footprint as a foundation. Much of this information resides in a vast array of mixed vendor environments. We suspect in the coming years more of such legislation will be authored and signed into law, making today’s integration projects essential to minimizing the disruptions of future data transparency requirements. IT vendors that can make a persuasive case today that their products offer a long-term heterogeneous integration foundation are, in our opinion, well positioned to meet both present and future needs of enterprises responding to legislative edicts, which in time, will become a growing source of IT deployment prioritizing. Those vendors unable to respond to heterogeneous integration demands may face a very hard sell indeed.
The Sageza Group offices will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28. We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and friends a safe, happy, and joyous holiday.