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Dell Re-Architects PartnerDirect – Going Against The Stream

Dell Partner Highlights

  • Adds Premier to (renamed) Preferred and Registered Partner Types
  • Certifies according to revenue and training achieved
  • Is experiencing a big move to indirect distribution in its Enterprise business
  • Has far less indirect distribution in its Client Business
  • Dell’s is a countervailing movement in a market becoming more direct
  • Important questions about channels and Cloud Computing remain
  • The number of sales leads and the consistency of its channel programmes will define its success

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Racemi Launches Dynacenter 4.0 – More Help With Moving Cloud Workloads

Racemi Dynacenter 4.0 Highlights

  • Allows server images to be provisioned from physical to virtual and from on premise to Cloud supplier
  • Adds Amazon EC2, Rackspace and Terremark movements
  • Protects users from Cloud outages, such Amazon’s this month
  • Can play a part in assuring users and vendors from lock-in problems

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Intel Strategy – Tick Tock, System On Chip, Atom, Security And Servers

Intel Strategy Highlights

  • Follows a pendulum-type ‘tick tock’ in launching minor and major processor products
  • Stresses the importance of the PC as a ‘must have’ product, especially in developing countries
  • Reports PC manufacturing in Japan relatively unaffected by recent disasters
  • Is working on low-power and SoC products
  • Has enhanced security offerings by acquiring McAffee
  • Has virtually no current market share in smart phones and tablets
  • Continues to support Meego operating system, despite Nokia’s decision to partner with Microsoft
  • Claims a PC costs on average 4.5 weeks wages to buy
  • Has introduced Xeon E7 processor, MCA recovery
  • Has helped form the ODCA and acts as technical advisor to the ODCA
  • Intel is working with its Eco-system partners to publish Cloud Builders Reference Architectures
  • Has launched Open FCoE and suggests running it on general servers rather than LAN controllers

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Silverdell Adopts Virtual Desktop Solution From ITMS – Uses 2X Software

Silverdell And ITMS Virtual Desktop Highlights

  • Silverdell adopts Virtual Desktop Cloud Services from ITMS
  • Solution runs to Macs, PCs and iPads
  • Helps simplify the IT of three merged companies
  • SMEs don’t understand Cloud Computing
  • Small vendors 2X Software and ITMS demonstrate alternative innovation in the UK

ITMS’s John Abrahams Discusses Silverdell

We talked to John Abrahams of IT Managed Services (ITMS) – a small UK managed services company about the project they have just completed with Silverdell – a hazardous material management company based across the UK. We thought it would be interesting for our readers to hear about how virtualisation is helping with a company made up from a number of acquisitions. It has repercussions for other SMEs trapped into inaction when looking at the integration of two or more IT systems. It also gives evidence for the successful use of 2X Software’s approach which we featured on this site recently. Read more »

Centrix Software – Application Discovery For Cloud Computing

Centrix Highlights

  • A small British consulting company moving to a be an ISV
  • Excellent experience in understanding software assets in virtualised environment
  • Arms users with information on current software deployment and usage
  • Helps provide analysis of the difference between traditional licensing and pay-as-you go costs
  • Offers a customisable portal for user access to corporate applications from disparate sources
  • Should go on to add value to service providers and Cloud services companies once integrated with billing systems

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IBM Global Services Launches Building Block Outsourcing – A Bridge To Cloud Computing

IBM Global Services Outsourcing Announcement Highlights

  • Is announcing four building blocks and a new schema for its outsourcing customers
  • Claims time-to-implementation savings of up to 60%
  • Claims cost savings of up to 50%
  • Is a bridge between traditional outsourcing and Cloud Computing
  • Plays to IBM’s strengths as a hardware and software supplier
  • Should make outsourcing more flexible
  • Has the advantages of standardisation and componentisation
  • Significantly demystifies outsourcing, making it less of a secret science Read more »

HP’s New CEO Proposes The ‘Everybody On’ Strategy For Cloud And Connected Futures

Please also see our regular posts giving ITCandor’s assessment of HP’s financial results, product announcements and CSR approach.

HP’s annual analyst meeting took place in San Francisco this year and followed a day in which HP’s senior management spoke to the investment community. It wasn’t just because of the warm up, but due to some careful planning that Léo Apotheker’s first of these big meetings flowed coherently throughout the conference. Each presenter used the same strategy and summary (‘Everyone On – seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world’) slide during their pitches and, although not all presenters included them, HP has sized multiple market opportunities for each division in financial terms for 2013. No doubt there are also targets for each division to meet in 2012 and 2011.
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IBM Smarter Computing – ‘Big Data In Optimized Systems, Managed As A Cloud’

IBM Smarter Computing Highlights

  • Launched at Pulse2011 in March 2011
  • Encompasses numerous optimized and integrated server and storage products
  • Watson example – beats Jeopardy! champions, demonstrating powerful analytics and deterministic programming
  • UPMC Health sector example – Smart Beds, consolidation and cost savings
  • STG’s Böblingen lab focuses on cross platform technologies
  • IBM believes the definition of ‘system’ is getting wider

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Everything Everywhere – T Mobile And Orange’s UK Experiment

Everything Everywhere Formed In July 2010

Back in September 2009 we published a piece about the intended merger of UK parts of Deutsche Telekom (T Mobile) and France Telecom (Orange). The deal went ahead, with the new company – Everything Everywhere – starting out in June 2010.
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Japanese Cloud Computing – Massive Growth To ¥8.5T ($103B) By 2015

I’m sure all of our readers will share the heart-felt sympathy we have for the Japanese people following the recent earthquake. We have friends and family in the region and have the best of thoughts for them and the country’s speedy recovery of course. We wrote the following before the disaster of course. To contact ITCandor please email info@itcandor.com

Japanese Cloud Computing Highlights

  • Cloud Computing accounted for ¥5.5T in 2010
  • Represented 14.3% of the total ¥36.8T market
  • NTT was the strongest supplier with an 8.5% share
  • Spending will level off at around ¥2T per quarter in 2014 and 2015
  • Telecom and IT Service categories predominate
  • Cloud Development Service and Cloud Access Devices will be strongest ‘Cloud Elements’
  • Consumers will remain the strongest buyers
  • Japan is different in being dependent on large companies with skinny ITC resources
  • Cloud Computing is set to grow to ¥8.5T by 2015

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2X Software – Fixing Back-End Issues For Desktop Virtualisation And Cloud Computing

2X Software Highlights

  • A private company specialising in desktop and application virtualisation
  • Software runs on PCs and thin clients
  • Has 15k customers and 1.5k resellers worldwide
  • Has sold 60k licences and around 1 million users
  • Is a cost-effective alternative to Citrix
  • Has added iPhone, iPad and Android clients in latest release

Paul Robinson, UK Business Development Director, 2X Software

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Cisco – John Chambers Outlines Strategies And Direction At Cisco Live! And C-Scape

Cisco C-Scape Highlights

  • Restructured to address generational issues in 2005
  • Should deliver stronger end-of year results than either IBM or HP
  • Not driving UCS towards workloads and appliances
  • Has 5 ‘architectures’, but no overall mission target
  • Cloud Computing strategy good for Telecom hosting in Europe

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IBM System Z Mips Shows Increased Centralisation And A Return To Growth

IBM Mips Model Highlights

  • ITCandor estimates IBM System z shipped 640 systems, 6.2k IPs, 5.6B Mips at $880/Mips in 2010
  • Revenue grew by 14% to $4.9B and Mips grew by 35%
  • Trends in the Mips model show a move towards centralisation
  • IBM offsets the high costs of developing mainframes by making chips for gaming consoles
  • Sales of mainframe and Unix machines will grow in 2011, finding a back-end role in private and hybrid Cloud Computing implementations

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Microsoft And HP Deliver Business And Enterprise Apppliances

HP Microsoft Alliance Highlights

  • HP announces 4 ‘appliances’
  • Microsoft announces 3 HP specific ‘Fast Track’ reference architectures
  • The collaboration has cost $250m over 3 years
  • Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Transaction processing and Consolidation Workloads define appliances
  • HP needs Microsoft to produce integrated products
  • Microsoft is learning about big server customer needs by working with HP

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IBM And Red Hat Talk Up KVM, Linux And Cloud

KVM Highlights

  • IBM endorses Red Hat Linux in Cloud Computing services
  • Red Hat owns the company developing the KVM hypervisor
  • Red Hat incorporates KVM and Linux in RHEV
  • The are helping a large hotel chain move from Xen to KVM
  • The challenge for KVM is to become as widely adopted as VMWare

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ITCandor 2011 Expectations – A Big Year For Cloud, BRIC, High Definition And Water

ITCandor 2011 Expectation Highlights

  1. World ITC spending grows to $6.7 Trillion – no double dip recession
  2. Asia Pacific outgrows other regions – rather BRIC than PIGS
  3. ITC distribution moves strongly to vendors via the Internet and distributors
  4. Retail overtakes Manufacturing as the largest vertical market
  5. Consumers take 48% of ITC – growing in IT while business takes more of Communications
  6. Cloud Computing gets real – grows 17% to $1.7 Trillion
  7. Customers get locked-in by vendor vertical integration
  8. Increased digitisation and higher resolution help physical beat virtual offerings
  9. Corporate and Social Responsibility shifts focus from carbon to water
  10. Social media stumbles in the clash between freedom and responsibility

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Virtustream – Delivering Advanced Managed Services Via Cloud Computing And IaaS

Virtustream IaaS Highlights

  • A private company with strong financial backing
  • Specialises in IaaS and Cloud Computing
  • Is a managed services company, understanding the issues of compliance and data jurisdiction
  • Provides consumption-based pricing for its services
  • Allows for on- and off-premise, dedicated and multi-tenanted resources
  • Is very early in offering large scale SAP deployments via the Cloud
  • Is the first of the Cloud Managed Services suppliers
  • Will enjoy a resurgence in the UK Outsourcing market

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The Comparative Benefits Of Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds

Cloud Benefit Highlights

  • Overall – you need to balance Cloud v on pemise solutions in an overall application mix
  • Security – you need to make sure the legal data jurisdiction issues are addressed by the hosting site
  • Elasticity – you need to allow application writers to move easily through test/dev to production and allow for Web scale growth
  • Performance  – you need to run applications synchronously or asynchronously at appropriate speeds

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PalmTree’s LiveEnsure – Cloud Computing SaaS Authentication

Palm Tree Q410 Highlights

  • Releases LiveEnsure Cloud-based SaaS user authentication service
  • Lengthy due diligence trials with banks cancelled following the credit crunch in September 2008
  • Survived the downturn by moving away from devices to SaaS
  • Wants to be ‘the Google Maps’ of authentication for developers
  • Prices by transaction rather than annually
  • Targets all e-commerce providers and applications, web developers, solutions providers and all verticals including Telecoms and Financial services,
  • Offers ‘high volume, low value’ solution
  • Cross-platform solution – desktop, laptop, mobile and tablet

Read more »