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Market Roundup November 30, 2007 HP Blades: Flexibility and Efficiency in the Data Center IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager CA Moves R&D of Threat Management Security Business Offshore |
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HP Blades: Flexibility and Efficiency in the Data Center
HP has recently announced a collection of virtualization and
power management technologies that are designed to help customers streamline IT
operations, realize cost savings, increase flexibility, and improve energy
efficiency. The HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager extends the capability of
HP BladeSystem Virtual Connect technology to all blade enclosures in a data
center. The new Enterprise Manager enables IT administrators to manage and
control these connections across 100 c-Class enclosures, or up to 1,600 blade
servers, from a single console. The new HP Server Migration Pack Universal
Edition combines virtual and physical migrations into a single tool to speed
migration time of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers. The Management Pack
provides central management with expected support of Citrix XenServer,
Microsoft virtual machines, Oracle VM, and VMware. HP PolyServe Software for
Microsoft SQL Server consolidates large SQL environments onto a single cluster
so customers can manage all instances at once, freely add and recover multiple
instances, and roll out business applications more quickly while improving
reliability. HP stated that it plans to integrate the Opsware Automation
Platform with its existing management solutions for future automation of data
center capabilities across the full software stack.
Also included in the announcement is the new HP Power
Distribution Rack, which controls three-phase power distribution across a row
of server racks. The offering allows IT managers to connect to power once
across a row of server racks and adapt power distribution as needed; prevent
overloads and resolve problems quickly with HP Thermal Logic technology; and
reduce cabling complexity with one set of input cables to the end of a row and
short power drops to each rack. According to the company, the new HP
Rackmountable Parallel 3 Phase UPS provides the highest level of power
protection from HP and dissipates less than half as much heat as competitive
offerings. It enables attached servers to save all work in progress and
initiate a shutdown in the event of power loss, and restores it with Thermal
Logic power policies.
The new technologies in this announcement are actually
rather useful for the intended audience. The Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager
offers a considerable range of control over many hundreds of servers from a
single console, which is the kind of control that IT managers tend to favor.
Likewise, the Server Migration Pack Universal Edition offers another desirable
capability, namely the ability to handle virtual and physical servers in the
same fashion with the same tool. Further bolstering its power-aware position,
HP Power Distribution Rack brings enhanced flexibility to IT personnel who are
seeking to place power where it is needed, but without over provisioning or
otherwise wasting the precious resource. According to the company, the new 3
Phase UPS can save $1,000+ annually in power and cooling costs in the
12-kilowatt rack-mount model and $6,000+ for the 60-kilowatt row-level
configuration. These numbers are impressive and are worthy of PR attention
Overall, we see these new offerings as valuable assets for data center
managers. So what’s the rub?
What’s troubling about this announcement is not the
technology, nor the vision of the company, but rather the seeming need by the
company to promote a larger-than-necessary aura around everything HP. These
announcements were part of a long press release from HP that covered a litany
of existing and new product offerings. At first glance, one might be tempted to
view this as merely undifferentiated verbiage about blades and energy
efficiency in the data center. However, there were new product details buried in
the announcement, and it is unfortunate that clarity may have been sacrificed
by the company’s perceived need to be seen as larger and omnipotent than the
competition.
HP clearly remains an engineering-focused firm, and arguably this is one of its strengths. So too is its ability to create well rounded solutions that transcend a mere collection of point products. Yet at times the company’s messaging can become so focused on bolstering its position (declaring itself King of the Hill) that it loses the ability to let its products speak for themselves. In an era where the totality of the product, solution, and services is paramount, at first glance this messaging approach would seem sound; however, it can also come across as obsessive, if not paranoid. To our way of thinking, removing the aura of grandeur often results in a grander and more honest position than the puffed up alternative. Further, the clarity of what is being offered, and its value, is enhanced. HP has extensive, credible credentials in the blade and energy efficiency arena. We only wish that the firm would at times realize it is often best to state simply and plainly what’s new and exciting and leave the extracurricular PR fluff behind. This would make it easier for their customers and business partners to immediately glean the considerable value the company can impart, while also delivering a more confident and down-to-home feeling to an important player in the IT marketplace.
IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager
IBM has recently announced BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager
(OFM), which provides I/O virtualization through an open architecture that
supports a range of Ethernet and Fibre Channel technologies from vendors
including Blade Network Technologies, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, NetXen, and
QLogic. IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric's use of open technologies and support for
third-party management solutions allows clients to leverage existing switch
technology. The core I/O virtualization technology is also unique in that it
manages up to 100 chassis from a single management console. IBM also announced
a statement of direction that POWER6 processor-based blades will support i5/OS
applications, which have traditionally been supported on the System i server platform. IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager is
priced at $1,499 and IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager–Advanced Upgrade is
priced at $1,999 with availability slated for both products in December. Until
the end of the year, IBM is running a promotion in the U.S. that offers the
product at a discount of $500 to $1000 per chassis off the list price.
This announcement is interesting in part because is yet
another piece in the virtualization puzzle, but also in the way it differs from
competitive approaches such as HP’s Virtual Connect with respect to the
integration of blade chassis into the larger datacenter context. Through its
support for most of the standard and common interconnect technologies in the
datacenter, OFM offers organizations a straightforward method by which to
interconnect their new investments in blade chassis into the existing
datacenter architecture. Although many, including IBM, HP, and others, have
stated that the future of the datacenter is blades (and we would be hard-pressed
to disagree), the reality of the present is that there are huge, functioning,
IT investments not bladed by nature. As part of the eventual transition to
blade and chassis future, it is imperative that organizations not inadvertently
create new silos of IT with blades that are unable to interconnect with
existing server, storage, and other network resources. In addition,
organizations could create blade failover pools and hence support failover
scenarios whereby blade and virtual LANs are reconfigured on the fly to meet
the HA requirements for mission critical applications. Addressing this need and
other IT needs is part of market drivers that has caused vendors to create
solutions such as OFM and Virtual Connect in the first place.
With this in mind, part of what we find compelling about OFM
over other solutions is that organizations can continue to use the switching
fabrics that they have already deployed without necessitating the purchase of
new, redundant, and proprietary interconnects to order to integrate fully their
blade chassis with the existing infrastructure. This is one way in which IBM’s
solution differentiates itself from Virtual Connect and other interconnect strategies. While one can logically argue that in
a greenfield deployment the investment in a specific
switch is a moot point, the reality is that there are few, if any, greenfield
IT deployments these days. The focus on blades and consolidation is about
virtualization of as many IT components as possible, at the chassis, blade,
slot, and I/O interface level. From these pools of resources, one can
orchestrate the virtual infrastructure necessary to support a workload
portfolio and with appropriate management software dynamically alter the
physical mapping as needed.
Overall, we are pleased with the decoupled nature of OFM, whereby the software and management functions are discrete from any support switching mechanism. Not only does this free the customer from specific product lock-in, it provides a greater leverage of existing switching investments in the organization. As such, this delivers additional value to the organization on top of its blade and legacy infrastructures in a truly incremental and non-redundant fashion.
CA Moves R&D of Threat Management Security Business Offshore
CA Inc. and HCL Technologies have announced an agreement to
establish a strategic partnership in which HCL will assume all research and
product development connected with CA's threat management security business,
while CA will retain all sales and marketing functions. The goal of the
strategic partnership is to grow CA's threat management business by combining
the strengths of both organizations. HCL and CA will achieve goal alignment and
financial targets through revenue sharing. The annual revenue of CA’s threat
management security business is in excess of U.S. $100 million. The partnership
covers all threat management products, which include antivirus, anti-spyware,
integrated threat manager, host-based intrusion prevention system, secure
content manager, Internet security suite, anti-spam, and firewall. HCL will be
responsible for research, engineering, architecture, technical support,
technical writing, and quality assurance. CA’s threat management products will
continue to be sold exclusively under the CA brand and through several routes
to market with a growing emphasis on channel partners. The partnership is
expected to become operational by year-end, following the signing of a
definitive agreement.
While there is a global economy, there is still a parochial
approach to security research and product development. Notwithstanding the
likelihood of costs being lower in Noida, India than they are in Islandia, Long
Island, New York, national governments have always viewed offshore development,
influence, ownership, or control as a red flag. This jaundiced view is not
necessarily due to the quality of the product development, nor to the ultimate
features and benefits; it relates more to the
perception that adversaries will be able to exploit the offshore nature of the
development to their advantage. This action is very likely to torpedo much of
CA’s efforts in defense departments outside of India. If, however, the company
has decided to expand its defense marketing into Asia, then the move might have
less of an overall negative impact.
To some people $100 million would seem like quite a significant sum; however, in the context of an organization with revenue north of $1 billion per quarter, the amount is rather infinitesimal. Overall, we view this as an early intelligence indicator that CA is not serious about security and is likely to divert its efforts elsewhere. It would appear that CA has made the internal decision to take some of its eggs out of the security basket and concentrate in other market segments where its internal development efforts are likely to bear more fruit. Given Symantec’s recent lackluster financial performance and the apparent ascendancy of EMC in the security market, CA likely hopes that its sales force and key SI partners will attack segments where CA brings value and faces less competition than it does in security.