Market Roundup November 3, 2006 |
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This week Red Hat announced that it has twenty-nine new
strategic telecommunications ISV partners, as part of its Telecommunications
Partner Program. Red Hat believes the announcement is a milestone for its
success in targeting ISVs in vertical sectors where open source and Linux
adoption are occurring more rapidly. Red Hat believes that the solutions it
provides are more cost-effective and flexible than proprietary alternatives,
and can be deployed more quickly and provide greater levels of performance. Red
Hat offers a service-oriented architecture solution that includes Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware
Suite (JEMS). Partners for Red Hat include the MATERNA Group, a German company;
MobileAware, a provider of mobile data solutions; and
RADVISION Technology Business Unit (TBU), a provider of telecommunications
software developer tools. The Telecommunications partner program is designed to
drive awareness and adoption of carrier-grade server platforms and solutions.
Red Hat works with network equipment providers (NEPs),
ISVs and operators to define requirements and ensure
that Red Hat Linux can be deployed in carrier-grade settings.
The telecommunications space is one of the first industries
that embraced Linux and that has participated in the open source software
model. Long-time users of industry-specific software and black boxes, the
telecommunications industry has found itself turning to general purpose
computing and software to help reduce costs, particularly as the levels of
reliability and availability of general-purpose computing equipment have risen
to the levels required by the industry. Red Hat knows that an operating
system’s long-term success is dependent on the number of ISVs that write
software that runs on it, and it has combined a growing industry with ISVs to
position itself as the preferred distribution for the space. In addition to its
involvement with partner programs, Red Hat is also participating in OPUCE, a
European Community Framework Program’s Sixth Framework Program (FP6) project
designed to deliver the next-generation telecommunication service delivery
platform (SDP) for the EU. Red Hat is not only working with ISVs but it is also
taking an active role in making sure the telecommunications industry is
equipped to utilize and take advantage of the open source model.
Customers have generally accepted Linux as a platform for
appliances or network functionality, but acceptance as a platform for business
applications has been slower in the making. In part this has been due to a
paucity of ISVs. It has also been due to a lack of solutions: in the sense of a
solution providing a somewhat integrated software stack that was relatively
easy to deploy. Red Hat’s combination of focused programs for
telecommunications ISVs combined with active participation in the development
of future platforms for telecommunications are the steps necessary to lay out
the future of Linux in this industry. Red Hat’s investment now bodes well for
the future of open source within the telecommunications sector. This sector is
also important for vendors such as HP and IBM who are also both strong
supporters of Linux. ISVs in this industry will likely feel more secure working
with Red Hat, knowing it has multiple investments in the industry. We look
forward to seeing which other industries Red Hat will target. Where there is
focus, there will be growth and thriving ecosystems.
This week witnessed the latest round of storage management
acquisitions as EMC Corporation announced that it had signed a definitive
agreement to acquire Avamar Technologies Inc. The
deal, an all-cash transaction, will cost EMC approximately $165 million and is
expected to close within thirty days. Avamar, which
was founded in 1999, is a rapidly growing organization that currently boasts
around 100 employees with offices around the U.S. and in London. Avamar’s core offering is the Axion
software that assists organizations in their Data Protection efforts. Key to
this software is patented data de-duplication technology that helps reduce,
often significantly, the size of backup operations. Avamar
Axion software is used to reduce the size of backup
data at source before it is transferred across the network. Axion’s
data de-duplication and global single-instance technologies can often reduce
required network bandwidth and backup storage by a factor of 50 to 300 times.
In addition the company also offers Axion Replicator
software that supplies encrypted and asynchronous replication of heterogeneous
data stored in an Axion Server to another Axion Server, usually deployed in an off-site location for
disaster recovery purposes. At the formal close of the deal Avamar
will be integrated into EMC’s Storage Product Operations (SPO) group and
current Avamar CEO Ed Walsh will report directly to
Mark Sorenson of EMC’s SVP Information Management Group.
This acquisition is entirely logical as the addition of the Avamar technology to EMC’s expanding portfolio will allow
the company to further strengthen its drive to encourage organizations to make
disk rather than tape the primary backup medium for many, if not all,
business-critical usage. In addition, the data de-duplication software should
help EMC’s customers to extend data protection capabilities over WANs, an
important consideration for organizations that are widely distributed. Indeed,
this capability makes a sound offering for managed service providers to take to
the huge SMB market where many potential customers still today struggle to
effectively protect much key business information.
We believe that if EMC can put together a carefully designed
managed services offering, there exists great potential to take backup and
recovery to many organizations in the Mid- and SMB markets in the Software as a
Service format. This is an area of interest to many of the major storage
management vendors and one that we expect to become very lively over the course
of the next year; to us SaaS generally has great
potential to attract many customers across all areas of IT service. The
introduction, or perhaps more correctly re-introduction, of backup and
protection offerings is today far more credible than those of the recent past
as they can now utilize recently developed technologies such as data
de-duplication and WAN acceleration.
EMC has a major opportunity here but it will need to market
the Avamar technologies as part of its broad storage
management offerings. However, it must educate potential customers and
prospective partners on its wide range of solutions. The acquisition of Avamar makes sense but there are many vendors battling in
this space. The software solutions of EMC are growing all the time; all the
company needs to do now is position and market them as effectively as it has
traditionally done for its hardware platforms.
FCC Delivers a Swift Kick in the Mass(port)
In a decision with significant ramifications for the
traveling public, the FCC has ruled that the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) cannot block a WiFi access point in the
Continental Airlines lounge at Boston's Logan International Airport. In its ruling,
the FCC stated that the rules governing Over The Air
Reception Devices (OTARD) stated that Continental Airlines was within its
rights to provide free WiFi services in its President’s Club lounge located at
Logan Airport. The larger effect of the ruling was to reaffirm that consumers
and businesses are free to install WiFi antennas without seeking approval from
landlords just as they can install antennas for video and other fixed wireless
applications. The issue arose last summer when Massport
decided that for safety reasons, its competing $7.95/day WiFi service would be
the only one permitted at Logan Airport under the reasoning that competitive
WiFi services system posed a risk of interference with equipment used by state
police and Transportation Security Administration officers. The FCC restated
that unlicensed spectrum, such as the 2.4GHz on which WiFi operates, has
different standards interference protection than those used for public safety
purposes. Massport officials have not ruled out
further legal action.
With all the fees, legitimately applied, that the agency has
including landing fees, retail space rentals, gate fees, concession recovery
fees, tourism fees, passenger facility fees, and many more buried within its
operating agreements, why does Massport feel it is
entitled to coerce the business traveler to fork over another $8 for the
privilege of using the Internet while waiting for a flight? With its captive
market, Massport is trying to insert itself again
into the pockets of the traveler. It is amazing that Massport
has not tried to confiscate mobile phones or force users onto a specific cell
network as well. Clearly, this is a case of simple greed and arrogance.
We think the FCC is right on this one: airlines should have
the ability to offer WiFi access to their customers, for fee or for free,
without heavy-handed interference from the airport. Continental has paid the
rent for the lounge space, and is not engaged in illegal activity, so that
should, and hopefully will now be, the end of it. The value of WiFi to the
business traveler is substantial: it is an innovation that pays dividends for
users, their businesses, and the economy as a whole in regained productivity
previously lost to the opportunity cost of air travel. This reality is reflected
in the numbers of access spots throughout the country, and the interest of some
large cities to build out no-cost WiFi networks that reach all incorporated
limits. While some might believe that Massport misses
the obvious value of ubiquitous WiFi access, we reason that Massport
very much understands the value of WiFi service and its shameless attempt to
corner the market is petty, very petty indeed. Nevertheless, some enterprising
folk, including at one least Sageza analyst, have long circumvented the powers
that be through the simple use of a GPRS-enabled mobile phone. GPRS, along with
EDGE, EVO, and WiMax, are all competitive solutions
to WiFi, and unless Massport was planning to build
the RF equivalent of the Berlin wall around Logan, these solutions would have
easily encroached on Massport’s shortsighted WiFi
policy anyway, thus reducing the value of its money-grabbing monopoly in the
long term. Despite the best efforts of some to constrain or profit unfairly
from the freedom of communication, in this case we believe the FCC has ruled in
the best interest of users and the marketplace overall.
IBM has announced Lotus Expeditor, a development platform
for creating Eclipse-based and Web 2.0 applications that
enables enterprises to integrate existing and new applications and
deliver them to a variety of connected and disconnected devices. Lotus
Expeditor provides the underlying programming model for a universal, end-user
experience across the entire Lotus product portfolio including Lotus Sametime 7.5, Websphere Portal
6.0, and the upcoming release of Lotus Notes, code-named Hanover. There are
three different aspects to the Expeditor suite. The first is the composite
applications, i.e., applications created by combining existing and new software
within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Developer Toolkit, the second
aspect, uses Eclipse or Web 2.0 technology to create an instant messaging
environment using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Finally, there is a
mobile technology aspect of Explorer, developed with the mobile employee in
mind, which can add extensions to existing databases to allow any mobile device
to access financial or sales information.
Frustration for a worker arises when data isn’t
transportable from one application or platform to another; however,
transferring data takes special programming. This is where reuse of data and
intra application communications comes in. Web services and SOA allow this
intra application communication via an automated and therefore understood way –
which of course translates into less training time. Many companies lately have
been worried about storage and security to the extent that they are perhaps
forgetting other areas of improvement. And while storage and security are
important, especially in view of recent legislation, they can’t be pursued to
the exclusion of other considerations. IBM is perhaps positioning itself to
take advantage of the marketplace’s current love affair with storage and
security by jumping into another area. The goal of Expeditor is to bridge a gap
for mobile workers, especially, so as to decrease downtime
and increase productivity, which seems to be something that other software developers
have temporarily overlooked.
The mobile aspects of Expediter are, perhaps, the heroes of
the development. Mobility is a key consideration for application deployment,
and the seamless data transfer from a PC to a handheld device would be a boon
to many mobile employees. The ability of the application to present a
continuous user session even in the presence of spotty connections will most
likely lower the blood pressure of even the most A-Type individual. A seamless
reconnect-without-login feature may make for a session that is almost
hassle-free, even when enduring a commute.
Although Expediter is currently only for deployed Lotus
product portfolios, such as Domino or Notes, for example, we think that the
success of the application will perhaps convince .NET developers to consider
supporting Lotus and Eclipse platforms. Most likely targeted at enterprise
organizations that have a plethora of mobile workers, Expediter is a dark horse
that may take some IBM competitors by surprise as it seeks to add value to
existing Lotus environments, which may not always make the headlines, but are
nevertheless numerous.