By: Nigel Stanley, Practice Leader - IT Security, Bloor Research Posted: 10th October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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IBM may be big, and in some people's eye beautiful, but what are they doing to prove that their offerings are as safe and secure as any other vendor?

Running a business the size and maturity of IBM is no simple task. The huge range of products, technologies and standards embraced by the organisation can be breathtaking, especially when you take into account that around 33,000 people work in packaged software development alone.

One problem that IBM, along with many other vendors with a large range of products, faces is the constant battle to enforce standards, ranging from a common look and feel through to the shared use of common components. Of course standards and guides are propagated through the various development groups but policing the adherence to these standards can be a nightmare. When one group's innovation is another group's violation of some core component politics always comes into play.

So how does this impact IBM's IT security strategy?

Product security has rapidly become the one area in which development teams have quickly learnt that politics should be put aside for the sake of building reliable and secure products.

At least we hope so anyway.

It's clear that over the past couple of years the tough men and women in IBM corporate management have been knocking heads together to drive home the security message. With a 40-odd year legacy and a large base of multi-decade employees, changing attitudes has no doubt been tough, even when most get the importance of security in the first place.

So it was off to meet the brightest and best of IBM's software development business headed up by long term IBM'er Steve Mills, and see what they had been up to in reality.

Listening to the top man speak you soon realise that, of course, IBM gets security and, of course, it is important. We all know the statistics and the horror stories emerging across the world as incompetent companies and organisations try and out-trump each other with ever more catastrophic and embarrassing data loss events. Of course few have managed to beat the British government and HMRC who rang the bell at 25 million records but I am sure some are trying.

It must be said that nothing in IBM's security strategy is particularly innovative and exciting, but I don't mean that in a pejorative way. Instead, what we see being presented is a reflection of a reality and a quiet determination that IBM will continue to keep its act together and not allow its hard won reputation to become tarnished due to sloppy and insecure products. In fact, for many banks and institutions running z/OS mainframes and the like, excitement is something they definitely don't want.

What they do want is good solid security from a conservative and trusted vendor.

IBM is actively touting z/OS as the gold standard in operating system security with facts and figures that would make some PC-based manufacturers and software developers blush with embarrassment. With an R+D budget around $6bn, a large proportion of which is IT security related, IBM are bound to be able to tighten up loose ends and innovate around this tricky subject.

This all said I wasn't comfortable with everything Mills had to say.

Arguing that Lotus Notes and Domino have a "stellar" reputation for security is probably more to do with their lower market share hence attractiveness to malware authors rather than innate security, certainly historically. Nevertheless IBM has been successful in US government sales for Notes, possibly fuelled significantly by this lack of hacker appeal. You only need look at how the browser Firefox has increasingly become a target as its market share has increased for a similar story.

Change is as change does. Security just grins and bears it
Underpinning a lot of IBM's strategic view is data collected in their well respected Global CEO Survey that runs across 40 countries and touches on 32 industry sectors. Of those interviewed 19% have over 50,000 employees and 22% have less than 1,000 employees, so it's not just the big boys being spoken to.

Apparently 80% of CEOs are seeing significant change affecting their business, of which 39% feel unprepared to deal with such change. This does seem surprising as one of the oft quoted business school mantras has always been "The only constant in life is change."

Of course those that do embrace change can make significant market gains.

Look at the shenanigans going on in the banking sector at the moment. The more conservative banks have been able to take over their wilder competitors for much less outlay than they could ever have dreamed of. Crikey, even that bulwark of free market capitalism, the competition laws, have been put on hold to enable these mergers to take place.

According to this CEO survey we are now talking about creating an army of "prosumers", groups of consumers so hopelessly hooked on your product (of whatever description) that their advocacy can drive more sales than any advertising campaign. Couple this with the delightful world of the blogsphere and you can start to build some interesting networks. The report also highlighted the significant move towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. More than a greenwash, these CSR programs are now actively hunted out by the brightest and the best on the graduate fair programs as the new generation of workers want to be associated with corporate social responsibility. This new group of users, dubbed by many as the Web 2.0 generation, expect their file sharing and social networking to happen at work as much as it does at home.

In fact I would wager that most in this generation do more Web 2.0 ‘stuff' at work than at home as quite simply they have access to huge bandwidths and storage capacities thanks to their corporate IT.

Now IT security must keep up with this change in the market place and be seen as an enabler, rather than as a barrier.

We IT security people are the poor suckers that are expected to facilitate access to the latest Web 2.0 fad whilst making sure corporate smarts don't go flouncing out of the door along with the latest downloadable music files.

To address this issue CSOs and CISOS must be able to sit comfortably at the top corporate table and make an impact on the organisation. For this to happen the IT security community needs to step up to the mark and be able to operate at a business level instead of confounding fellow executives with techy mumbo jumbo. Good IT security people need to be treasured and developed to fulfil this hugely complex role.

The biggest challenge of the Web 2.0 generation will always be the inside threat (you know—my competent/malicious vs. incompetent and non-malicious duo). As one of the IBMers pointed out we can't get people to stop smoking and this saves lives so what hope to convince people to look after IT security?

Apparently IBM X-Force (a kind of skunk works R+D function in pressed white shirts and blue suits) wanted to test how dumb some users really are. They sent out an email that when clicked brought up a pop up that said "Do you want your PC infected?"

Thousands of users said yes so their PCs were "infected", no doubt in a polite and easily remedied IBM fashion, but it sure does prove the point.

Clearly IT security needs to up its game. But what other security areas are seen by IBM as a challenge?

Securing the virtual environment
The trend to virtualisation seems to be growing each day.

More and more organisations see the benefits of consolidating their servers, many of which run at about 5% capacity. Making better use of a lower number of boxes hits the all important hot button of saving money as well as being environmentally friendly. What a perfect solution say many.

From an IT security viewpoint virtualisation can be a real headache. Of course virtualisation is nothing new and IBM mastered decent virtualisation before the PC was even thought of. The downside is the placing of multiple instances on one piece of hardware and the instant security problem that gives us. Denial of service attack? Simple, take out the server power supply and you have knocked out the instances in one go.

That said, virtualisation, done properly, is a sensible option for many. According to IBM the US military in Afghanistan much prefer the virtualisation approach as it cuts down on the number of physical servers they need to shift about in pretty horrible conditions.

Safer retail stores with IBM
IBM have identified that the retail sector is one of the most vulnerable to security problems. Of course there have been many stories of lost data from stores and retail head offices, probably due to various disclosure laws forcing retailers to ‘fess up when data goes missing. With regulations such as PCI DSS now gaining traction there seems to be a great opportunity for a vendor such as IBM to step into the breach and offer a secure retail solution.

IBM SecureStore is designed to offer retailers an integrated protection platform and help address the cost of compliance. According to IBM it helps with securing everything from assets through to networks, transactions and of course raw data. Believe me this is an issue—Wal-Mart alone believe they have something around 50,000 network devices based on the last time someone looked. The trouble is such audits can be fraught with errors and undiscovered endpoints.

All in all it will be interesting to see the uptake amongst the retail community of IBM SecureStore.

IBM - in summary
Of course IBM gets IT security. It is clear to me that IBM has managed to reinvent itself over the past few years into a good, solid and reliable vendor capable of delivering systems and innovations in a quiet, methodical way with little fanfare or razzmatazz. This contrasts hugely with many 'style over substance' vendors that occupy many of the same markets as IBM.

I for one will always opt for solid and safe, even if it may be boring, and I'll continue to follow IBM IT security with interest.

IBMSecuritySummit08

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By: Martin Atherton, Principal Analyst, Freeform Dynamics Posted: 9th October 2008 Copyright Freeform Dynamics © 2008

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Software resiliency has been a challenge for so long many organisations just accept it as part of using IT. But there is no need for that inertia - there are a number of steps organisations could take to reduce failures.

The latest research from Freeform Dynamics discovered 24 per cent of organisations suffer disruption caused by software failure every week. A further 33 per cent said once per month.

The worst kind of disruption—with financial or legal repercussions or resulting in damaged reputation—is suffered by 20 per cent of organisations at least once per quarter. Some 1,200 IT professionals took part in the research.

Organisations are aware of the issue, if not its scale. Research has shown repeatedly that organisations rank IT high on their list of business risks. Indeed, system downtime comes second among the factors most frequently considered in formal risk planning.

Given those facts, why are so many organisations gambling with software systems availability?

First, the accepted inevitability of software failure is not really good enough for modern business. The statistics certainly suggest scenarios that no business would consciously accept.

It is more likely that organisations have little idea of the effort required by their IT department to deliver the levels of service they are used to.

A second reason is that software resiliency is not given the consideration it needs as a business requirement during the application development lifecycle.

So can the business help address this area? Furthermore, is it a business issue anyway?

The answer to both questions is undoubtedly yes. The IT department is tasked with the operational management of software applications but it is the business that suffers when they fail.

Opportunities exist for the business to contribute in several places. Research suggests it is not aware of the relative importance of the tools it uses—the applications and processes—to its business goals.

In addition, green computing, among other things, is bringing IT service-based accounting closer. The specific attributes of services delivered by IT will soon become very relevant. The business needs to get a head start and work out what's really important.

The next opportunity for change is at project level. Typically, a software project takes an idea or requirement through specification, development, testing and roll-out. By and large, resiliency is an after-thought and does not figure highly when it comes to budgetary planning.

Obviously, the business has a say on functionality, timing and audience. It should also be able to give guidance on the relative importance of a software application to the business. Then, requirements for stability and protection can be factored in instead of assumed or, worse, ignored.

Introducing the topic of resiliency early in a project lifecycle would be a major change for most organisations. But from a practical point of view it should be an easy one to make. It would also go some way to reducing the frustration that exists in the IT department. Operational IT teams often feel their views are only taken into account after a software failure.

Furthermore, research shows a strong correlation between the consideration of resiliency early in a project and reduced software failures. They are more likely to find their way into budgetary scoping too.

The level of software failure is likely to remain high until knowledge and experience from the operational IT side of the business is captured and acted on more effectively.

The business is the primary beneficiary of software systems robust enough for their designated tasks. It needs to become a stronger advocate for the role that operational IT can play early in the software lifecycle.

If it does not, it will continue to experience the software resiliency it deserves.

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By: Michael Warrilow, Director, Hydrasight Posted: 9th October 2008 Copyright Hydrasight © 2008

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Symantec has been a very busy vendor of late. Some recent examples:

1. Definitive agreement to acquire MessageLabs—a trusted provider of managed email security services to many organisations. In fact, MessageLabs, which is based in the UK, claims to have 19,000 customers in 86 countries. Symantec will, of course, help extend MessageLab's reach into USA. More on that in upcoming research.
2. Acquisition of multiple niche virtualisation vendors—including Appstream and nSuite. As mentioned in a recent Hydrasight report, we believe Symantec is becoming increasingly positioned as a frontrunner in the ability to provide secure and operationally-efficient heterogeneous administration of enterprise endpoints—be they ‘thick’ or ‘thin’ client, mobile and/or virtualised.

This is in addition to acquisitions such as Vontu, Altiris and Veritas among many others. To put it simply, and humourously, this is not your grandparent's Symantec. It is also why, for quite some time, I've referred to them as Symantec Corp.

In 2006 Hydrasight was critical of Symantec Corp’s lack of focus on integration. At the time we noted the importance, and potential value to the ITO, of greater attention by software vendors to integrating IT management functions from three critical yet distinct perspectives. Namely, (1) user interface, (2) management data and (3) business service / process. Given this, we had previously been critical of Symantec Corp’s lack of focus to this requirement. The subsequent acquisition of Altiris therefore appears to have been a significant turning point. It has most recently resulted in a comprehensive integration strategy, based largely on Alitiris technology, which is now being built in to several Symantec endpoint suites. For those who are interested, it is called the (Symantec) Open Collaborative Architecture.

As a result of these developments, we recommend ITOs remain abreast of ongoing improvements in Symantec Corp’s capabilities—ensuring that it is not considered simply as ‘yet another anti-virus vendor’ but rather a potentially strategic vendor of IT infrastructure software.

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By: Philip Howard, Research Director - Data Management, Bloor Research Posted: 8th October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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There is an interesting analogy to be made between the delivery of information and motor manufacturing. In the case of that latter you start with raw materials. Those raw materials are processed, transformed, assembled and subject to quality control, with the result that a car is created for delivery to the user. In the case of information you start with raw data, which is processed, transformed, assembled and subject to data quality, with the result that trusted information assets are then delivered, in context, to the user.

However, not all motor manufacturers are the same. The user experience of driving a Mercedes is very different from the user experience of driving a Lada, which has historically been infamous for its poor quality cars and famous for the number of jokes about them (for example: "what do you call a Lada at the top of a hill? A miracle). And this difference is the result of good design, the fact that Mercedes is meticulous about monitoring all of its processes, and superior quality control, amongst other things.

In information terms the problem is that most companies are producing Ladas. Yes, you would like to be a Mercedes, but given that you are actually a Lada how do you go about being a Mercedes? Or, for that matter, a Ford?

It's not easy. Actually, it is not that the various issues to be resolved are that difficult to identify—governance, data quality, master data management, ETL (extract, transform and load) operational BI… yadda, yadda—we know all about those. But putting all those considerations together and treating them in a coherent way, with the strategic goal of producing, if not a Mercedes then at least a vehicle that is fit for purpose, is hard. Which is why IBM has introduced its Information Agenda.

In this context, IBM's Information Agenda offerings help you identify and implement a strategy that is aligned with your broader business strategy and that will take you from producing a poorly coordinated series of parts that don't work well together (a Lada), to a complete vehicle focused on your target market and price point (a Ford or Mercedes).

The Information Agenda itself has four components, of which two are industry specific and two are generic. In the case of the former, IBM is offering Information Guides and Workshops that are tailored to specific industries, and Information Accelerators, which include various (200+) industry-specific assets such as data models, roadmap templates and so on. Some of these assets, for example Workforce Planning, are cross-industry assets.

The other two components of the Information Agenda are services to help you build Information on Demand Competency Centres and what IBM is calling Foundational Tools. These last consist of several tools that have previously been bundled into other environments. For example, Information Analyzer (which provides data profiling) and Business Glossary were both bundled into Information Server. Also within the Foundational Tools are Metadata Workbench, FastTrack and Data Architect. In other words these are the tools used to understand your information environment, in context to your specific Industry. This is, if you think about it, where you need to start if you want to become a producer of good (or better) quality cars.

When IBM first showed the Information Agenda to me they asked me what I thought about it. I told them it was about time. The truth is that business needs to stop producing Ladas and focus more on higher quality. Whether you build Fords or Mercedes will depend on the company, but in either case you will need help to get there: I am pleased that someone is finally doing something about it.

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By: Josie Sephton, Principal Analyst, Freeform Dynamics Posted: 8th October 2008 Copyright Freeform Dynamics © 2008

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Outsourcing comes in many guises, from full management of a voice and data network, to management of a broad range of IT or business functions such as call centres.

At its heart, the model allows a business to hand over some or all of the running of its communications to a more experienced third party, and concentrate on what its business is really about.

While outsourcing of both telecoms and IT functions has been around for a number of years, the industry is highly dynamic. The way businesses look at outsourcing is undergoing a gradual but definitive transition.

An initial driver behind outsourcing was a desire to reduce costs. This perceived cost saving came via a reduction in capital and operating expenditure, as a result of the providers' ability to offer lower cost services through economies of scale.

It is true that enterprises still want cost savings, and still want to hand over the headache of communications management to someone else. But these are no longer the primary drivers behind decisions to outsource. There are a number of additional, increasingly important, factors that are helping to shape the outsourcing landscape.

A key driver behind outsourcing decisions is globalisation, as many enterprises do business in multiple countries. This requires a more integrated approach to communications—voice, data, fixed and mobile—to enable consolidation across cost-saving technologies, and to allow an enterprise to work in a more seamless way.

Enterprises are also moving towards converged networks, and the host of benefits that this convergence brings, including the opportunity to harness VoIP and unified communications and to build on enterprise mobility strategies. Migrating to a converged network brings a number of complexities—complexities that often can be better handled by a managed service provider.

The pace of change, too, means enterprises increasingly want to minimise their risk to the changing technological landscape. Enterprises want access to the increasing array of services but don't want to over-invest or to take the initial risk. Outsourcing and third party management can help, effectively placing the burden of change on the supplier.

Another more subtle change is the shift towards centralised sourcing. As businesses move towards a more centralised approach to sourcing (and many are), it becomes much easier to rationalise suppliers, and reduce management effort while optimising costs. Outsourcing is an ideal platform to achieve these goals.

Other factors that were of less importance three or four years ago are also now making themselves felt, and will figure highly in the decision to outsource. The 'green' debate—focus on environmental issues—and a shift towards a mobile workforce are two notable trends.

In terms of green, enterprises increasingly have environmentally friendly policies in place, and achievement of these policies will, in part, rest on the ability to demonstrate a green approach to communications. This in turn leads to the need to manage communications more efficiently. Outsourcing to a provider, particularly one with green credentials, will help to realise this.

With the growth of the mobile workplace has come the complexity of managing a mobile workforce from a variety of often changing locations. This is no easy task for the enterprise—making outsourcing of this function a highly viable proposition for many.

These factors point towards an increased push towards outsourcing. The more emergent model, however, will not be one of large scale outsourcing deals (although these will still continue for some enterprises) but rather a more selective approach to outsourcing. This will include areas such as WAN, PBX, router, remote access, security, storage, email and firewall—which will be embraced not just by the large enterprise market but also by smaller businesses.

The service provider market is adjusting accordingly, to address this changing model. Global Crossing, for example, recently announced an extension of its services at its London data centre to encompass a range of hosting managed services, as well as extending the London facility to cope with increasing demand.

This ties in with what we are seeing from our research at Freeform Dynamics. In a recent study we conducted on the outsourcing of software development, we found the propensity to outsource is increasing, and in particular, more progressive organisations are more likely to be comfortable outsourcing.

However the outsourcing market shapes up, it is clearly becoming more sophisticated, and dominated by both SMEs and large enterprises which want more tailored solutions from managed service and outsourcing providers that will give them the cutting edge in increasingly competitive markets.

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By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 7th October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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On Monday 6th October 2008 both SAP and Double-Take announced their preliminary Q3 trading results. SAP's revenues were up 13–14% on the previous year but a little lower than the 16–17% expected; Double-Take's revenues were around 7% down on their guidance for the Quarter.

Hardly ‘the end of the world' then. However, traders marked down SAP's shares by 13% and Double-Take's shares were down 17% on the day's trading. Yes, market sentiment is fickle these days. The slightest whiff of bad news sparks a sell-off. Hence Oracle's shares fell 8% on SAP's news.

More interesting however is the rational for the disappointing results from SAP's and Double-Take's CEOs. Henning Kagermann, Co-CEO of SAP said "The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter… SAP was not immune from the economic and financial crisis".

Dean Goodermote, Chairman and CEO of Double-Take Software said "In the latter part of September customers delayed closings on a number of expected deals in both Europe and in the American regions… the deals in question generally were our larger opportunities, and were across multiple verticals".

The last 2 weeks of each Quarter is when most software sales orders close. The last two weeks of Q3 is when the economic hurricane hit, and Financial Directors all over the world emailed their managers with a "don't spend anything until we have better market visibility—we may need every penny we have to ride out the storm".

Vendors reliant on chunky large enterprise licence deals (like Oracle) are most at risk of missing their Q3 sales guidance. Whereas SaaS vendors like salesforce.com will be less affected by a fall in sales, although their high market valuations are at risk.

The key question is, what are everyone else's Q3 results really like? SAP and Double-Take are the early-bird reports. Most Q3 results are formally published around the end of month c. 28th October.

What do you think will happen? Care to share your thoughts? I will set up a blog if there is interest in the ‘wisdom of crowds' on the future of the software and services industry in light of the global economic slowdown. Are readers interested?

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By: Peter Abrahams, Practice Leader - Accessibility and Usability, Bloor Research Posted: 7th October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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I recently went to the first day of the first Scripting Enabled Conference. To quote from the website

"The aim of the conference is to break down the barriers between disabled users and the social web as much as giving ethical hackers real world issues to solve. We talked about improving the accessibility of the web for a long time—let's not wait, let's make it happen."

The first day consisted of a series of presentations by people with direct or professional knowledge of disabilities and how they effect peoples use of the web. The second day was devoted to the hackers actually coding up some prototype solutions mainly using greasemonkey, I did not attend that day as I am not sufficiently proficient to create new code (I can and do on occasion tweak existing code).

The day highlighted how frustrating the web can be for people with disabilities and also how important it is to them because it opens up great opportunities for work and play.

A simple example was the difficulties in using standard YouTube. YouTube pages are over-cluttered, the controls are small and not always intuitive, and cannot be used by anyone who is not proficient with a mouse. We were then shown a prototype of a simplified interface, developed by Christian Heilmann, who also chaired the day. To see the prototype in use view the Youtube clip created by Kathy Moonan of AbilityNet.

I am not a hundred percent convinced of the visual appeal of the prototype but the improved usability and accessibility cannot be denied. It would be really great if YouTube would take note of this prototype and incorporate its features into the standard website. Having looked on YouTube I was appalled to find there is no accessibility page and no help for people with disabilities to use the site.

To see more of what went on at the conference go to http://scriptingenabled.org/.

As a follow up to the conference a wiki has been created so that the discussion that started at the conference can continue. Included on the wiki are further examples of problems to be addressed and prototype solutions. This wiki needs a mixture of geeks, accessibility professionals and people with disabilities as it is only by bringing all three groups together that sensible solutions can be created. So please get involved.

A second conference is planned in Seattle 1-2 November, if you can make it I would recommend going.

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By: Dale Vile, Managing Director, Freeform Dynamics Posted: 6th October 2008 Copyright Freeform Dynamics © 2008

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The story goes that once you have experienced the Mac, there is no going back. Time and again, we hear this line from recent converts to Apple‟s competitive offering to the traditional PC/Windows combination.

When you talk to developers and media guys, they can give you good solid reasons for the switch, and there can be no question that the Mac operating system, OS X, and some of tools available for this essentially unix-based environment, offer benefits if you are into code cutting and heavily creative activities. Many consumers too seem to like the platform, as the Mac presents arguably a cleaner and simpler environment for the home/recreational user.

What‟s interesting, however, is when you ask everyday day business users who have converted to the Mac about why they did it. The answers that come back are then usually quite woolly, and often degenerate into "It‟s just better at everything than Windows" or "It just makes me feel more creative". When pressed, such users find it difficult or impossible to articulate precise benefits.

If you push the conversation, you get into the discussion of security, anti-virus, etc, but these are IT issues in most business environments that are pretty well understood and reasonably easily managed on Windows nowadays, and likely to hit the Mac community at some point anyway. The conversation then gets really confused when talking about "office functionality"—email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. With the world and his dog essentially standardised on Microsoft Office for business, how does the average Mac user in a mainstream commercial setting handle that? Well, they typically run a copy MS Office in a Windows virtual machine using Parallels or VMware Fusion. Most say they flip to this to do a lot of their more "boring‟ work such as messaging and collaboration via the Exchange server, and participation in the document production/review/approval cycle with colleagues, clients, suppliers and so on, then do everything else in OS X. Of course the big question then becomes what does "everything else" actually translate to—accessing corporate applications and the Web through a browser probably—i.e. things that the desktop OS has little bearing on.

I am generalising here, of course. Some manage with Apple‟s iWork Office suite and live with the reduced functionality and file formatting/exchange challenges. Others buy a copy of Microsoft Office that runs natively on the Mac, which probably offers the worst of both worlds. For some, they simply don‟t have a need to interoperate with the Windows world in very big way so they use whatever native applications they like.

Despite the confused views, behaviour and apparent contradictions, however, Mac converts are typically very forceful, at least emotionally, about defending their move, regardless of the type of user they happen to be. So there‟s clearly something interesting going on here.

Acknowledging that I might be thinking about things too logically and relying too much on values and assumptions arising from years of Windows usage, I concluded that that there was at least a possibility that I was missing something intangible that Mac users just "get‟. So, a few months ago, I bought a Mac, started to experiment with it, and ultimately instigated a pilot of Mac OS X in my company (a small industry analyst and research firm) to see how well it would support our core business activities.

Fast forwarding to the result, of the five Macs we have invested in (one MacBook and four MacBook Pros), two are currently sitting here waiting to be repurposed as Vista machines, and the others have been set up to allow Windows to be used for core business purposes (either via dual boot or virtualisation), but still allowing access to OS X for experimenting and maintaining a working knowledge of the operating system for research purposes.

So why was the pilot not successful?

The answer is actually pretty simple—we found that as a business, we were far more reliant on Microsoft Office under Windows than we had anticipated, and while most of the other productivity and business apps we use had native Mac equivalents, this was not true for all of them. The end result was that we couldn‟t get away from Windows, so ended up with a hybrid Windows/OS X environment which got in the way of productivity.

At this point, I can hear all of those converts out there screaming about how great the integration is between Windows and OS X if you use the latest virtualisation offerings, and some of the stuff that can be done is indeed very clever. In Parallels, for example, you can put the system into "coherence mode‟, which basically means that Windows applications are surfaced individually in OS X. Rather than having to flip between your Windows and Mac environments, you can essentially live in OS X and fire up Windows applications from within it. VMware Fusion achieves the same result through its "unity mode‟, and both virtualisation solutions (latest beta in the case of Fusion) allow native Mac applications to be set as defaults for actions under Windows. As an example of the latter, you can set up the environment so if you click on a link embedded in an email received in Outlook, the native OS X version of Safari or FireFox is invoked. Similarly, if you click on a document attachment, it will open in the Mac version of Office, PhotoShop or whatever other application is relevant based on the file extension.

We were really excited when we got all this working in with both Parallels and Fusion (we piloted both). With the integrated hybrid environment running pretty flawlessly on the bench, we thought we had a workable system that that would allow us to test the claims about OS X superiority from a usability, experience and productivity perspective, and still run the Windows stuff we need in order to operate as a business.

After a few weeks of trying this for real, however, two pretty significant problems surfaced. The first was performance, with users complaining that delays in opening new windows, switching between applications, etc were a distraction. This was true even on the MacBook Pros with 4GB of memory, 2.4/5 GHz dual core processors and high end graphics cards. The second issue was the user experience delivered by hybrid environment itself. Mixing two UI conventions is simply not as smooth and productive as one or the other used alone. Sure you get used to differences in key mappings, special keys, and the way in which minimising, maximising and closing windows works as you flit between apps, and it even becomes subconscious after a while, but it is far from ideal.

The end result is that users found it much more convenient to run Windows in full screen mode for core business activities, though even then some complained (particularly those who do a lot of task switching) that performance was not as good and the experience not as smooth as their old Windows machines. When we realised that as a result of the above, most of us were spending 90% of our time in Windows because everything just hung together and worked together better that way, we called the pilot to a halt.

The whole experience can be summed up with the feedback from one of the users involved in the pilot who just happens to be a level-headed woman with no interest in gadgets, image, etc—"I would say Macs are just different, not better, but either way, I am really glad to have my old [Vista] machine back as I can get things done twice as quickly with that and with no distractions. Everything works together properly again".

So given our experiences, would I recommend against using Macs in a mainstream business environment? Well no, but I would urge anyone considering a switch to do their homework, and be honest about their dependency on Windows applications. For productivity applications in particular, the truth is there is nothing on the Mac that even comes close to Office 2007, especially if you are an Exchange shop and make full use of Outlook, or do anything beyond basic word processing (formatted documents, macros, fancy presentations, etc) and need to exchange documents with non-Mac users. This is not just about how comprehensive or mature the applications are; it is also about harmony with the rest of the Windows/Office using business world.

The other piece of advice is to do as we did and run a pilot with real users and assess the pros and cons, beyond the initial novelty phase (in which users are invariably enthusiastic), through a period of extended use. I think the trouble with listening to some converts is having committed themselves to the switch then raved about how great things are in the honeymoon period, they tend to downplay many of the compromises they learn to live with over time. When setting up pilots in larger environments, it will also be important to look at systems administration, monitoring and support, something we didn‟t spend a lot of time on in our little experiment.

As a final note, it is probably worth me saying that the techie in me still loves OS X for its fundamental superiority as OS over Windows, and while SP1 has now made Vista fit for purpose, I still regard it as an over-engineered and overly complicated platform in general. None of that matters, however, if you look at a potential switch from a user and business benefit perspective in the context of your environment. For some I am sure a move to Mac will be right, but based on our own experiences, I doubt it will make sense for most businesses at the moment if the decision is taken in an objective and informed manner.

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By: Philip Howard, Research Director - Data Management, Bloor Research Posted: 3rd October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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InterSystems has just announced InterSystems DeepSee, which represents an interesting and rather different approach to operational business intelligence.

Put simply, DeepSee provides a development environment for embedding real-time business intelligence into operational applications without the need for a data warehouse or any other form of extraneous data store. That is, you take live data from your transactional system and perform relevant analytics on it directly without needing to store it somewhere else first, though you can pull in historic data from a warehouse if you want to. To put this another way, developers can build BI directly into transactional applications as they build them rather than them being, essentially, two separate things.

That said, DeepSee is not a stand-alone capability as it is built on top of InterSystems Caché (which is a combined database and development environment) and InterSystems Ensemble (an integration platform) and is designed to run in conjunction with those environments. But if you don't happen to be an InterSystems customer or partner don't stop reading just yet, because this may be a sign of things to come.

There are four key DeepSee capabilities: connections for accessing third party applications, databases and data warehouses; DeepSee Designer for creating dashboards and for extending operational applications with BI results; DeepSee Analyzer, which is employed by business users who understand those applications to explore and display relevant data; and the DeepSee Architect, which is used to define your data model. This is implemented on top of the existing Caché data model without requiring changes to the latter, though you may wish to define additional (bit mapped) indexes. This step would also include defining relevant dimensions (for those of you who don't know, Caché has built-in multi-dimensional capability), measures, aggregations, meaningful names and so on. I should also mention that DeepSee leverages the Ensemble rules engine as a part of your business processes.

Now, it is probable that a significant number of readers have not heard of InterSystems. Indeed, because it drives most of its revenues through its partners it is even possible that you are an InterSystems user without knowing it. Anyway, some background may be useful and, briefly, the company is 30 years old, it has annual revenues in excess of $250m, has offices in 22 countries, has installations in more than 90, and has in excess of 1,300 partners. In short, InterSystems is a significant player.

Which raises an interesting question: if InterSystems is successful with DeepSee (and there is already significant interest in it from the company's partners) then will other companies with a similar go-to-market model such as Progress and IBM (Informix) take a similar approach? Of course, they don't have the multi-dimensional capabilities of Caché so it would probably take a bit more work but no doubt they could think of something.

I have to say I like the idea of this approach. Why are applications, business processes and business intelligence all separate things (albeit linked through web services) when they could be one thing? There seem obvious advantages to this latter approach and that is exactly what DeepSee offers.

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By: Lee Bailey, Managing Director, Maxafi Posted: 3rd October 2008 Copyright Maxafi © 2008

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Google Adwords, everyone's doing it - or at least they should be as it's a quick and easy way to advertise and effectively reach a wide audience. With Google being the online experience for most web users and the method most people use to gather information about a product or service, an Adwords ad can position your business as a prominent player in your field - making it a very powerful advertising tool.

To create an Adwords ad you simply choose the keywords that will trigger your ad and specify the amount you're willing to pay per click. Your ad will appear in Google under the ‘sponsored links' section, and the beauty is, apart from paying a nominal activation fee, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Sounds straightforward enough? In theory yes, but in practice, making the most effective Adwords ad needs to be carefully thought out if your investment isn't to be wasted.

So, how do you know if you're getting it right?

These are my top tips to unlocking Google Adwords. By following these basics you can make the most of your online advertising budget by getting your Adwords to work as hard for you as possible.

· Keyword Selection

Be selective about keywords. Don't go for generic keywords that will bring heavy traffic, aim for keywords that will convert. For example, instead of 'toys', use 'wooden toys'. Ensure the keyword links to a relevant page and not just the website homepage - users are impatient and don't want to have to work too much to find what they want.

· Ad Groups

Create individual ads for each keyword, and ensure they each link to a relevant page. This will increase quality score (which in turn reduces costs) and 'click through'. Relevant landing pages will increase conversions.

· Geo targeting

If your target market is local, Adwords allows you to specify regions that can see your Ad. If, for example, you're a wedding photographer than only works within a 10-mile radius, there is little point showing your ad to people the other end of the country.

· Review the competition

Look at your competitors ads - what makes you stand out against their selling point? Do they show pricing within their ad? If so - are your prices more competitive? A more appealing ad will get more clicks, and the more successful the ad, the higher up the Google page it will show (without having to pay through the nose!).

· Effective matching options

Using an exact match on keywords ensures that you're only bidding on that individual search. This has the benefit of increasing your CTR (click through rate), which in turn reduces the cost per click - the higher the CTR, the less you are likely to pay for that keyword.

The negative aspect of using an exact match is that you are likely to only receive a low amount of clicks, and you will be targeting a very specific audience. Therefore, it's worth adding phrase and broadmatch versions of your exact match keywords, and also adding negative keywords and phrases to filter out unrelated searches.

· Budgeting

When starting out it's important to start with a low daily budget to ensure you're bidding on the right keywords at a price that is profitable for you. It will take a little time to filter out the irrelevant searches you need to add negative keywords for, so you want to do this without losing too much. Gradually increase your budget once you see a positive ROI.

· Effective Ad Text

An effective ad describes what you can offer and why a visitor should click your ad. Including the search term within the ad will increase your quality score, whilst also highlighting the term in bold - which helps grab attention to your ad. Call to actions such as browse, buy or sign up also tell the user what they can expect to find if they click through to you. Larger campaigns can make use of Dynamic keyword insertion - though this should be used with caution.

· Conversion tracking

It's all very well identifying keywords that are low cost, high traffic - but what if none of them convert? Some keywords might only generate a handful of clicks each day, but it could be those keywords generating 90% of the sales/leads. Conversion tracking allows you to see which keywords are actually generating sales, and which are only generating traffic. This data is enormously valuable both short-term and long-term and will also help you understand your visitors better.

The process of creating an Adwords ad itself is really very simple, but just putting a little extra thought into its content and positioning will help ensure you maximize your ad's potential. Get the formula right and your Adwords can turn Internet surfers into potential customers for your business.

www.maxafi.com

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By: David Norfolk, Practice Leader - Development, Bloor Research Posted: 2nd October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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The Agile Business Conference—held in Docklands' Excel this year—seemed well attended. Perhaps this was because Leith's serves up a decent conference buffet menu (it was quite good) but more likely, I think, because "integrating IT into the business" really is coming onto the agenda. This is a disruptive change and the people issues involved will be at least as important as the technolgy issues, probably more so.

Conference attendance is a useful "hype curve" indicator. People come to conferences when they think something will be very important but it hasn't got beyond innovators and early adopters yet (that is, it's at the top of the hype curve), so impartial information gathering is all-important. And you want to meet people from where you want to be, not from where you are now.

Once something becomes mainstream, conference attendance falls off, as serious players increasingly take on people with experience of the new order and simply get competing vendors to line-up their technical evangelists for assessment.

The sponsors at Agile Business included Lamri, a process improvement company - but tools vendor Accurev was also there, positioning its SCM tool as part of business process management. And the DSDM Consortium, which is all about managing development process to support Agile Business, is the organiser of the show. Obviously, Agility comes from having (the right sort of) disciplined process—it may be counter-intuitive, but it is much easier to take risks if you're in control of, and can measure risk—but it is good to see tools vendors seeing they are part of the Agile business message, not just something to do with Agile technology.

Talking of tools vendors with a grip on process and Agility, Pete Morowski (Senior Vice President Products at Borland Software) gave a fascinating keynote on "Driving Agile Transformation from the top". This emphasised that Agile practices relate to business outcomes—Agility isn't a religious thing, if some people are achieving the desired business outcomes using less Agile methods, don't worry about it. You really don't have to be "100% Agile" just for the sake of it.

Morowski's message is that informed buy-in at all levels is important; but that Agile transformation must be driven from the top (but without micro-management). Key lessons he identified for executives included:

• Requirements matter. Plan by business features delivered (business requirements), not by development tasks—and business features are easy to prioritise with the business;
• Change is an advantage—it's part of the process not an exception condition—and allowing the progressive addition of detail helps you to get it right;
• Understand the implications of IT development outside of the IT development team; Agile is a disruptive force, it'll even change your seating plans.

In summary: "Agile" doesn't mean undisciplined; commitment between team members is powerful; transparency and visibility lead to trust and empowerment; leaders need to respect process and promote a culture of continuous improvement.

There was some "off the wall" stuff too Most interesting to me was Gary Purser of facilitate4change because he talked about the people implications of managing Agile change in terms of Systems Theory, something I think may be key to understanding the dynamics of Agile organisations undergoing change.

Systems aren't static; they exist in dynamic equilibrium; everything can change but the state, the business outcome, is dynamically stable—up until when you prod it too hard and it changes to another stable state (which may not necessarily represent the outcome you expected). And there's another Systems effect for organisations managing Agile change to be aware of—you can move a system to an unstable state by applying effort to overcome inertia. Then, once the pressure is off (management takes its eye off the ball) everything slips back to its initial state. It is important to keep the pressure up—via mentoring, perhaps, and continuous improvement—to institutionalise changes, until you can bring the organisation to a new state of dynamic stability for a little while. Once you've achieved change, the job is just starting!

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 1st October 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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This is the third in a series of articles I shall be producing based on a major piece of research being undertaken by Bloor Research on the BPMS market. My thanks go to Matt Durham, VP for Market Development and Phani Pandrangi, Director of Product Management (BPM).

It is just over one year (July 2007) since Software AG and webMethods announced their merger, the objective of which according to Ivo Totev, Chief Marketing Officer of Software AG was, “to create the world’s largest independent provider of Business Infrastructure Software.” So what has happened in the last year in terms of the combined company’s BPMS strategy?

The strategy outlined in 2007 for BPMS was based around the webMethods BPMS product suite, with webMethods BPMS becoming the brand name. Durham explained that Software AG saw BPMS as software that needed a combination of capabilities. He talked about what he termed the “3 Big Chunks”; namely process management that spanned from process modelling to runtime execution, application development that was codeless and rapid as well as exploiting Web 2.0 standards, and lastly real-time business process monitoring that provides process analytics. Customers include:, TD Banknorth, Cox Communications and Fonterra.

webMethods BPMS consists of the following components:

• Designer: an Eclipse-based development platform that supports process modelling, debugging, simulation, process development, form building and composite application development.
• Fair Isaac Blaze: Business rules development and runtime engine. This has been seamlessly integrated into the product set.
• Library Server: this is a semantic metadata library that is used to capture and store metadata about assets that are developed, thus supporting reuse and dependency analysis of business objects.
• Integration Server: the runtime process engine and system integration environment.
• My webMethods Server: the composite application runtime environment that is AJAX-enabled supporting JSR and WSRP standards.
• Optimize: the business activity monitoring (BAM) capability . It is also available separately and being applied to other areas (a customised version for SAP is already available).

Figure 1: webMethods BPMS Architecture (Source: Software AG)

When I asked Software AG to explain what their differentials to their competitors were, Pandrangi stated that they saw them as:

• “Measure First Option”: this is geared at helping organisations get started by allowing them to analyze the current process (as opposed to modelling) prior to doing significant amounts of orchestration and then use Optimize to identify where the issues are. From a user perspective this is a great way to get started, and Software AG have the toolset to support this concept.
• “There is only one centric—process centric”: the claim is that webMethods BPM provides a single platform to support any type of business process. This claim is well supported with the support for workflow, simple and complex routing, plus the suites support for document management as well as integration and SOA.
• Support for multiple stakeholders: here the claim is for the suite to be able to be used by all personnel in an organization involved in a business process from Business Executive and Process Worker through Business Analyst to IT Developer. The support for this claim can be seen in the support of a single process model for all users based on the BPMN standard and the big plus the semantic metadata repository.
• “Share Control, Don’t Lose Control”: this is all about getting the right balance between giving control of the business processes to the business users who use them, whilst maintaining IT’s need to control the implementation on the physical environment. Once again the support of a single process model is used to support this claim alongside the use of the meta-model repository to control and share assets, as well as its importance in the implementation of governance.
• “Leverage, Integrate, and Innovate”: this claim is about the position of Software AG as a company supplying integration and SOA software. Software AG has 4000 customers.

Bloor sees that the claims made by Software AG can be supported. Of course, some of these are subject to the usual rider of being in the eye of the beholder. The key to Software AG’s BPM strategy is the ability to work with other parts of the product suite to provide not only support for BPM but also SOA and Governance.

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By: David Tang, Global VP, VoSKY Technologies Posted: 1st October 2008 Copyright VoSKY Technologies © 2008

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Whoever invented the expression "talk is cheap" obviously didn't have to pay his company's mobile phone bill. Mobile handsets have become the primary phone for many business users, even when they're in the office.

The sheer convenience of a single, roaming device makes the mobile phone the preferred choice for many, especially when that device includes essential business features such as address books, calendars, to-do lists, and email and web clients.

But few business mobile users think closely about the cost implications of all that convenience and accessibility. According to the telecoms consultancy Analysys, around 80% of corporate telephony spending now goes on calls made to or by mobiles.

In-country mobile-to-office and office-to-mobile calls are a pain point for business, and international mobile roaming and interconnection charges are worse still. Even though a May 2007 EU agreement capped the price of a mobile call while abroad at €0.49 per minute, and incoming calls at €0.24 per minute, mobile costs remain high.

So while few companies want to scale back the use of mobiles, the majority are actively seeking ways to slash the running costs of their mobile fleets. Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) via Skype offers a way to do just that.

Device definitions

Before going further, let me define what I mean by FMC. There are a number of different definitions of the term, using competing approaches and different technologies. Here, I am defining FMC as a solution to the simple business problem of how to curb mobile phone costs, using readily available solutions that can be cost-effectively and seamlessly integrated into a company's communication infrastructure. The key components for this flexible and easy to deploy FMC solution include Skype-enabled mobile handsets equipped with mobile broadband (EDGE, 3G, WiFi, etc...), and PBX-to-Skype application gateways that link the office PBX to Skype - the World's largest VoIP network.

Using PBX-to-Skype application gateways within the office already enables business users to take advantage of VoIP benefits - low international call costs, enhanced inter-office comms - without having to replace their existing investments in PBX equipment. What's more, it does this for a low one-time upgrade cost.

And now, with increased uptake of Windows smart phones and devices, the benefits of connecting over VoIP can extend to mobile users too, to make a profound impact on the biggest proportion of business comms charges.

Bridging the mobile gap

So how does this work? How does a business link its mobiles and its office telephony via VoIP to gain the benefits?

First, the business deploys a PBX-to-Skype application gateway at its offices. This adds up to 8 Skype lines to the company's existing PBX that can be picked up and transferred between extensions like an ordinary call. The gateway also centralises Skype provisioning and management, giving IT managers full control over use and eliminating the need to install Skype on each PC.

The mobile device can be any smart phone that can run the Skype Mobile client (such as the latest Blackberries, the Nokia N95, or phones that run Windows Mobile etc).

With the Skype client installed on the mobile, the user's Skype account can be managed centrally by the business IT team, and call preferences set up via the gateway to give alternate routing to the mobile user's Skype account. The Skype call is placed to the mobile via 3G, and even when 3G services are not available, the mobile call can be done via SkypeOut from as little as 2 cents a minute - in any case cutting over 80% of the cost from the mobile call, whether the call is domestic or international.

Proof in practice

Let's take a look at some specific examples of how this FMC solution works to deliver cost savings, and productivity gains in real-life scenarios.

Example #1: using a Blackberry on a US GSM Network with Skype Mobile Client. The user can make Skype calls from the Blackberry to his gateway-equipped UK office in the morning, and calls to his gateway-equipped office in Asia in the evening. The user will not incur any international charges for the Skype calls to the UK or Asia locations since these calls are treated as normal domestic calls that are part of the user's monthly voice/data plan (typically £40 per month for AT&T Voice/Blackberry plan). Yet for a UK Vodafone mobile customer using an ordinary mobile phone, these calls would be 30p - 90p per minute.

Example #2: saving on international roaming charges using a Windows Mobile smartphone, with Skype Mobile Client over 3G. The user can make and receive Skype calls to and from gateway-equipped US and UK offices while traveling in Asia. With the Skype-enabled FMC solution, the call is again part of the user's 3G data plan. With a conventional mobile call, typical UK international roaming charges range from 33p up to 149p per minute.

Example #3: using a Skype 3 Phone to make and receive Skype calls to and from gateway-equipped US and UK offices while traveling internationally. In this case, the Skype calls are free as part of the phone package, again comparing well with typical UK international roaming charges range from 33p up to 149p per minute.

Moving to Mobile 2.0

So implementing the Skype FMC solution is easy, and management of the solution is under full control of your IT team. This ensures accountability and user compliance when using the system, as the team can set up speed-dials and alternate routing to maximise use of the solution, and cost savings too.

It also has the key advantage of being easy to set up, as it requires no changes to a company's existing PBX equipment, office phones or computers. All it needs is the right type of smart phone.

FMC presents an easy win to the cost-conscious business, by enabling them to slash mobile costs, and to keep those costs low. But it also gives businesses a pathway to truly converged, flexible communications, using IP as the conduit - what some people would describe as Mobile 2.0. The good news is that FMC is available today, and businesses can painlessly and cost-effectively deploy it to reap the benefits.

And perhaps giving business people the freedom to roam, and talk for free while roaming, will be the killer Mobile 2.0 application?

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By: Clay Ryder, President, Sageza Group, Inc. Posted: 30th September 2008 Copyright Sageza Group, Inc. © 2008

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Citrix Systems has announced Citrix XenServer 5, the latest version of its server virtualization product line that is powered by the Xen hypervisor, and a key component of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, a comprehensive datacenter-to-desktop system that targets organizations wishing to transform their traditional static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers.” This latest offering adds 100+ virtualization management features including what the company states utilizes the industry’s most advanced High Availability, auto-restart, failover, and disaster recovery technologies that can be upgraded to full fault tolerance for the most mission-critical applications. This is achieved in part by XenServer’s distributed management architecture, support for replication and remote mirroring architectures, and built-in replication for virtual machine metadata information to provide easy and reliable virtual machine and application recovery for site failure scenarios. According to Citrix, XenServer 5 is the first server virtualization platform to be validated for both AMD and Intel 32-bit and 64-bit systems through Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validated Program, which validates vendor’s virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions.

XenServer 5 features an open architecture that helps organizations leverage their existing storage and datacenter management investments. The open storage APIs allow organizations to access directly from within the XenServer management console advanced functions such as snapshotting, cloning, replication, de-duplication and provisioning in storage systems from vendors including EqualLogic and NetApp. The XenServer 5 management console supports most storage environments including NAS, DAS, and SAN implemented through fiber channel and iSCSI as well as support for 8GB HBAs from QLogic and Emulex.

XenServer 5 includes new configuration wizards, intuitive interfaces, and easy point-and-click conversion of physical servers into virtual machines. New enhancements include a Web 2.0-style tagging and searching capability which allows IT professionals to track and locate virtual machines through powerful searching and sorting capabilities based on application type, QoS requirements, department, cost center, location, etc. There are also enhanced performance monitoring, reporting, and alerting dashboards that assist IT professionals through realtime and historical views of virtual machines and physical host performance.

Pricing and Availability
Citrix XenServer 5 is available immediately through Citrix’s worldwide network of Solutions Advisors and channel partners. XenServer 5 pricing begins with a SRP of $900/server, and there are no additional CPU or socket fees. Pricing includes XenCenter management technologies and a one-year Citrix Subscription Advantage membership. XenServer Express, a production-ready, single-server version of XenServer with unlimited virtual machine and memory support capabilities, is also available for free download at www.citrix.com.

Net/Net
This announcement is interesting as it represents more than just the latest version of a virtualization offering; it illustrates the potential for transforming application delivery environment that we posited last year when Citrix acquired XenSource. With XenServer 5, Citrix has signaled its desire to achieve a more strategic position in its customers’ datacenters by delivering a solution that potentially will allow organizations to fundamentally transform how they view their datacenters. Despite the considerable marketplace infatuation with virtualization, for the most part it remains viewed in a rather narrow fashion focused on simply reducing the number of servers supporting an organization’s workloads. Although the stereotype has progressed beyond that of generic white-box x86 servers running Linux, the reality is that most organizations are barely making their first steps towards a strategic virtualization path, one that would transform legacy data centers from static bastions of siloed applications and information into a dynamic, flexible, and much simpler application delivery infrastructure.

The acquisition of XenSource by Citrix was much more than a land grab for ownership of the virtualization hypervisor. The combination of Citrix’s existing technology and the virtualization potential of XenSource broadens virtualization beyond the relatively simple task of server consolidation to include a much more holistic view of network application delivery and its associated impact on storage, networking, and client consumption devices. In effect, Citrix is offering a new view of the future datacenter. This new view is one in which most all physical aspects of servers, applications, and network functions are largely transcended by a virtual service bureau through which needed IT resources are delivered to users largely without concern as to their physical or even virtual location within the infrastructure. The operational distinction between a physical server and a virtual one has increasingly become cosmetic and there are few reasons why IT professionals who are tasked with application and information delivery should even be concerned.

By building upon its existing live migration resource pooling and workload provisioning capabilities Citrix is seeking to transform assumptions about how datacenters are configured, deployed, and managed. This completely virtual view is one that will potentially yield benefits with respect to space requirements, cooling, energy efficiency, and the requisite IT personnel. The ability of the XenServer Management Console to directly interact with the common storage environments permits organizations to continue using existing data center tools and skill sets just as they have with physical servers. Hence, sophisticated storage technologies should be as easy to access from either physical or virtual servers, without mandating two skill sets to support it. Further, XenServer 5’s workload provisioning makes it possible for administrators to boot servers and deliver multiple workloads from a single image to target servers, even servers that lack any local storage or hypervisor. This could be of considerable interest to power constrained data centers or those who are investing in highly consolidated blade-centric server solutions. These storage centric capabilities illustrate how Citrix is looking to provide much more than simple server virtualization in addition to its application delivery technologies.

While this latest release of XenServer will not change its customer’s datacenters overnight, it does offer a data center strategy that seeks to remove most dependencies on physical IT attributes and shifts the focus onto applications and information. This increased abstraction of physical elements from applications is well positioned to assist organizations in their quest to deliver dynamic applications to increasing numbers of local and remote users while simultaneously improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness of IT investments. Although there is still much work to be done, the scope of virtualization and application delivery finesse being offered by Citrix places the company in a leading, if not unique, position in the marketplace that bodes well for the company, and more importantly, its customers.

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