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Market Roundup April 29, 2005 IBM Links Itself to Healthcare Transformation AMD: 64-bit Here, There, and Everywhere |
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IBM Links Itself to Healthcare Transformation
IBM has purchased Healthlink, a U.S.-based
information technology consulting services company and
provider of healthcare process improvement. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The move is designed to establish IBM as a leader in the healthcare provider
industry, with a focus on optimizing patient care and driving operational
efficiency to new levels. New employees will bring specialization in clinical
and financial system implementation, patient data management, clinical process
optimization, financial and operation management, and compliance. Healthlink focuses on key issues in governance, alignment,
operations, and technology through an array of advisory and implementation
consulting services. The announcement follows on other
recent announcements of the Healthcare Information Infrastructure (HII), an IBM
joint research program with Business Consulting Services (BCS) in the
professional services group and software group. The
goal of the project is to demonstrate how IBM technology can create new models
of handling medical information to improve both the provision of healthcare as
well as the advancement of medicine as a science. The
project is U.S.-focused, as the U.S. spends more absolute dollars on healthcare
than any other country and is one of the most fragmented and complex in the
world.
The news demonstrates two things primarily. It demonstrates
IBM’s ongoing commitment to its On Demand message and its understanding that
business process and industry knowledge are necessary to expand vertical
industry solution success. And it is a realization that while they gained life
sciences capabilities through the purchase of PWC, they needed to get more
specialized expertise. The other and rather more important bit this
demonstrates is how far the high-tech industry has to go in order to achieve
their vision of credibly tying technology and business knowledge together. Most
vendors have jumped on the vertical specialization bandwagon over the last five
years, as they’ve realized correctly that industry-based solutions can only be
built with industry-specific knowledge and experience. It is also a much
greater opportunity for vendors, as even traditional horizontal applications
such as email or human resources are increasingly dependent on vertical
industry specialization. At the same time, vendor and channel specialization
have focused on the technology and largely divorced from an understanding of
business processes. This shift is necessary but will take time. Regional and
mid-market services firms focused on specific industries will find themselves
receiving increasing attention from industry hardware and software vendors as
they increasingly seek to buy or partner with the expertise they traditionally
lack.
The issues of scale are not insignificant for this end of the business. Scaling manufacturing capability and leveraging those capabilities globally is well-understood ground for technology vendors. Scaling professional services, industry knowledge, and consulting capability is an area where they are less experienced. IBM’s healthcare initiatives are specifically targeted for the U.S. market. While Healthlink has offices in Europe, it is still predominantly focused on the U.S. Some healthcare issues will travel across geographies, but other business problems will be stubbornly country-specific. In order to grow capabilities across geographies, vendors will need to make sure they leverage everything that can be grown, but also find the regional partners necessary to add the additional country-specific knowledge. The other issue with scaling involves driving industry solutions from initial one-off implementations to large organizations with the budget and need to purchase this to productized versions where industry best practices can be driven to the market in ways that protect vendor intellectual property but give the channel partners the pieces they need to enhance their piece of the solution.
AMD: 64-bit Here, There, and Everywhere
AMD recently introduced its first dual-core enterprise
server, workstation, and desktop solutions. The AMD Dual-Core Opteron 800
Series processors, which deliver slightly less than twice the performance of a
single-core CPU, are designed for four- to eight-way servers and are available
immediately. The 200 Series processors for two-way servers and workstations
will be available in May. The company also announced the new Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor, which
is scheduled to launch in June 2005. Key AMD OEMs including HP, IBM, and
Sun demonstrated dual-core platforms based on the technology, which utilizes
the same power envelope and infrastructure as a single-core AMD64 processor,
for compatibility. The AMD launch was joined by strategic operating partners
featuring operating systems including Solaris 10, Linux, and Windows 64-bit.
The AMD Opteron 200 Series starts at $851 in 1,000-unit quantities, the Opteron
800 Series starts at $1,514 in 1,000-unit quantities, and the high-end Model
875 starts at $2,649 in 1,000-unit quantities. AMD expects systems from OEM
partners based on the Dual-Core AMD Opteron 800 Series to be available in May
and the Dual-Core AMD Opteron 200 Series to be available in June.
On the second anniversary of Opteron, AMD is hoping to build
on the growing Opteron momentum and acceptance. AMD wants to lead the industry
in 64-bit computing in innovation if not in market share, by a powerful robust
dual-core client and server processor line. AMD has a strong value proposition:
performance, upgradeability, 32/64 coexistence, easy 64-bit dual-core migration,
and application options. Support by key operating systems further adds value
and helps create pull for 64-bit dual core. At the lower end, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor
will likely benefit digital media enthusiasts and power desktop users that are
pushing their current systems to design limits. OEM customers such as HP, IBM,
and Sun are in a good position to gain competitive advantages in
time-to-market, lower design and support costs, and possibly lower operations
costs. Further, OEMs supporting dual-core upgrades can perform a BIOS upgrade
and enable their existing AMD64 installed platforms to take advantage of
dual-core processing, for incremental revenues and continuing customer
penetration.
Intel has been busy with its multi-core effort. Prior to and potentially in an attempt to preempt the AMD introduction, Intel has begun shipping the dual-core, 3.2GHz Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor and 955X Express chip sets. Also, Dell will start shipping its Precision 380 workstation and Dimension XPS desktop with the new Intel chip set, and Intel expects other PC vendors to shortly follow suit. As the Intel and AMD race continues, both Intel and AMD are banking on the rapid adoption of dual core. This is important for both companies as they seek to build mindshare and marketshare in the emerging 64-bit dual core market. For their part, AMD and partners are attempting to make 64-bit dual-core migration as painless as possible, particular in the mixed mode 32-64 bit space. Further, virtualization functionality, such as that of VMware and the recently introduced technology from Microsoft, could help accelerate adoption. However, one factor that may have great impact on dual-core adoption is the software industry’s posture on software licensing for dual core which at present is all over the map. IBM, for example, recently announced that it would license software running on dual core the same way as that on single-core solutions. Multi-core licensing is an issue that the software industry will have to address in order for dual-core adoption to reach its full potential.
Microsoft Rolls Out 64-bit a Bit Late
Microsoft has announced the launch of XP Pro x64, the
long-awaited 64-bit version of the company’s desktop operating system, along
with 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003
Standard x64, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition x64, and Windows Server
2003 Datacenter x64 Edition. The company said that a number of hardware vendors
are already lined up to build systems for the new 64-bit products including HP,
Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, NEC, and Unisys. The company said that those customers
running 32-bit versions on 64-bit computers will have until July 30 to replace the
older software with the 64-bit version as part of the company’s technical
upgrade program. The company also previewed parts of the Longhorn operating
system, which company officials called the first mainstream 64-bit computing
OS. Microsoft said some 400 applications for the new platform will arrive in
the coming year.
Microsoft has initially positioned the x64 version of XP Pro
as a product for heavy use environments like workstations used by engineers,
technical workers, and the like as opposed to positioning its as a mainstream
OS. That probably makes a fair bit of sense, since the uptake of 64-bit
computing is more likely to be driven by the features found on Longhorn than by
the noticeable differences between 32- and 64-bit processing power. Will
Longhorn have enough appeal and differentiation from 32-bit XP Pro to make a difference?
Perhaps, if the refresh timetable fits and the features are
compelling enough.
Regardless of the acceptance rate, we believe Microsoft has given a key rival the opportunity to establish a wide array of 64-bit computing opportunities while delaying its own offerings as a means to continue the Wintel alliance. By ignoring the AMD Athlon offering, Microsoft has given rise to thousands of Linux 64-bit installations that could have been running Windows software. One can only speculate as to the number of Linux developers that were lured into the Open Source camp by the much earlier opportunity to develop 64-bit applications on Linux and Athlon and Power chipsets due to frustration from waiting for Microsoft to move up the computing food chain. We can’t help but wonder if this delay — in order to maintain the Wintel franchise — may prove more damaging than the benefits accrued by doing so. In essence, Microsoft appears to have put that franchise ahead of the demands of the market, a type of decision that has hurt countless companies in the past. Perhaps the Redmond behemoth will feel few effects from this decision, but we suspect that the growing embrace of Linux will prove that argument to be false.
The Globus Alliance is planning to
release the latest version of its Globus Toolkit,
used to write applications that can be used on different machines, as part of a
grid computing architecture. Globus was formed in
January of this year, with founding members HP, IBM, Intel, and Sun taking the
lead. The Enterprise Grid Alliance, another industry consortium, will release a
set of recommendations for improving grid adoption rates in the coming weeks.
These recommendations are designed to address a number of grid computing issues
including pricing mechanisms.
To many, grid computing still remains the stuff of
laboratory white coats and scientific or research programs that need huge
amounts of processing power to crunch numbers for things like weather
simulations or complex design calculations. In most cases this perception would
be accurate. Grid computing is still cutting-edge and in demand in mostly
highly computation-intensive environments. Globus and
EGA are attempting to change not only this perception of grid computing but its
reality as well. Given the IT heavyweights involved in advancing that notion,
it is reasonable to assume that grid computing has a more viable future than
many doubters believe.
Perhaps so. But before grid becomes a reality, another technology must be well-entrenched in the marketplace to make grid computing viable. Virtualization is the foundation on which grid computing must be built. Without virtualized IT assets the flexibility and virtual mobility of these assets cannot be applied to a grid framework. Virtualization has suffered from a perception of being the stuff of laboratories and research outfits. That, however, is not the reality at this point. IBM reports that it has over 1,000 customers using virtualization and that more are taking a hard look at the technology every day. More surprising — and more notable — is the fact that the majority of IBM virtualization customers are mid-tier companies. These companies, IBM reports, are seeking benefits from virtualization for faster deployments, consolidation, and IT simplification as well as improved asset utilization. The fact that the uptake of virtualization is faster in the mid-tier market makes sense when one considers that a virtualization effort is more easily done with a smaller number of assets. But it is notable at the same time to see that unlike most technology adoption trends, this one is not radiating outward from the larger enterprises to be then pursued by enterprises down the food chain but is in fact poised to bubble upward into larger enterprises. This alone makes us believe that virtualization — and subsequent commercial grid computing deployments — are not a possibility or probability but (ahem) a virtual reality coming to a business near you on a much shorter time frame than even grid’s most ardent supporters could have imagined.
Novell and CS2C to Expand Linux in China
Novell has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with
China Standard Software Co., Ltd. (CS2C), the leading Linux firm in China, to
promote the development and adoption of Linux in the region. Under the
agreement, Novell and CS2C will cooperate to provide technology, services, and
marketing to optimize and promote Linux to the Chinese market. The companies
will jointly promote value-added Linux products and solutions designed
specifically for the China market and will collaborate to localize Linux
products and solutions; deliver product and technology training; provide
technical support and services for customers; and develop joint marketing and
brand promotion activities for Linux products, services, and solutions. In
2004, Novell joined the China Linux Standard Base and Open Source Initiative in
order to bring its advanced technologies and services to bear in helping China
promote the growth and development of its Linux market.
During the past couple of years, there have been few topics
in IT that have raised more issues and opportunities than China, outsourcing,
and Linux. While Bangalore Ltd. comes to most people’s minds when the
outsourcing is discussed in the software context, China Inc. is a major player
as well. China’s appetite for technological prowess is well documented, most
recently by its high-profile acquisition of IBM’s PC business by Lenovo and the many other technology investments and
initiatives by Chinese companies and the PRC government. Although some would
fixate about the potential loss of technological advantage or local employment,
others see a new and potentially very lucrative market opportunity; and
apparently so does Novell.
Although until recently considered by many a relic from a past time, Novell continues to show determination in rebuilding its fortune and diversifying beyond its historic NetWare-focused customer base. With this announcement, it is taking its collection of Linux assets on a journey with a new partner in one of the hottest growing IT markets in the world. In this move, Novell is becoming a company with an even more pronounced international flair, with its German-tinged Linux, American-accented networking and desktop tools, and now Chinese-focused partner. Of course simply signing a partnership deal in and of itself will not be enough to guarantee success, but it does address one of the most important issues that is often overlooked by North American Anglophonic vendors; that is, localization: not just translating the product interface and user manuals, but gaining a thorough understanding of the machinations of the marketplace. Local market expertise is a key differentiator, and with this partnership Novell appears to have done well for itself in finding a partner with the requisite technological and local market expertise. For developers and end users, the specter of an increasingly international Novell Linux could cause the stalwart Red Hat supporters in North America to consider whether their Linux of choice will in fact be the best choice if their firm has international ambitions. Nevertheless, the growing stature for Novell’s Linux is good news for Linux users of all stripes, as it will help drive the ecosystem built around the operating system, which ultimately is the most important facet of the Linux revolution.