Oracle Stumbles, Makes Cloud Deals Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein€¦ · 46 Kent Hills Lane, Wilton, CT. 06897; (203) 429-8951; ... Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein Oracle Corp. reports

July 2, 2013

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Oracle Stumbles, Makes Cloud Deals

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Oracle Corp. reports disappointing fourth quarter and fiscal year results. In an attempt to build up its cloud presence the company announced deals with Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc.

Focal Points:

Oracle released its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013 results, both of which demonstrated

continued weakness in Oracle's results and strategy. For the fourth quarter of 2013 the

company reported total revenues of $10.9 billion, which was flat from the previous year's

quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis for the quarter was $3.8 billion, up 10 percent year-

over-year. For the full 2013 fiscal year Oracle revenues came in at $37.2 billion, little

changed from the 2012 fiscal year. Net income on a GAAP basis for the fiscal year was

$10.9 billion, up nine percent from the previous year. Hardware product sales dropped 13

percent for the quarter and 21 percent for the year while hardware system revenues fell 9

percent for the quarter and 15 percent for the fiscal year. Nonetheless, Oracle stated its

Exadata, Exalogic, Exalytics, SPARC SuperCluster and our other engineered systems grew at

a rate of 45 percent in fourth quarter. New software licenses and cloud subscriptions grew

one percent for the quarter and four percent for the fiscal year. Mark Hurd, Oracle President,

reported Oracle's HCM Cloud, CRM Cloud and ERP Cloud grew 50 percent as it added more

than 500 new SaaS customers in the final quarter of the year. Annualized SaaS revenues were

claimed to now be in excess of $1 billion. The vendor's software license updates and product

support revenues proved to be the saving grace for the company with these revenues gaining

six percent for the quarter and full year.

Microsoft and Oracle announced they would join forces in the world of cloud computing.

The key highlights are that Microsoft customers can run Oracle software on Windows Server

Hyper-V and Windows Azure and Oracle will allow license mobility on Azure. Additionally,

Microsoft will add infrastructure instances with Oracle's Java, database and WebLogic

Server. Microsoft will support and offer fully licensed Java in Azure, and Oracle will offer

Oracle Linux on preconfigured instances. According to Oracle's licensing statement, the

company will price on the size and number of instances. Four or fewer virtual cores are

counted as one socket, which is considered equivalent to a processor license. For Authorized

Cloud Environment instances with more than four virtual cores, every four virtual cores used

(rounded up to the closest multiple of four) equate to a licensing requirement of one socket.

In what was seen by many as a major coup for Oracle, Salesforce.com agreed to a new

strategic partnership. There are five elements to the arrangement: Salesforce.com will

standardize on Oracle Linux; deploy Exadata engineered systems in its data centers;

deploy the Oracle Database and Java Middleware Platform as part of its cloud infrastructure;

and implement Fusion HCM and Financial cloud applications for its internal use; while

Oracle will integrate Salesforce.com's cloud applications its Fusion HCM and Financial

cloud applications. The open question from this strategic alliance is the impact to Workday

Inc., which currently leverages Force.com for its platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities.

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http://www.oracle.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

http://www.salesforce.com/

http://www.workday.com/



July 2, 2013


46 Kent Hills Lane, Wilton, CT. 06897; (203) 429-8951;


RFG POV: Oracle has yet to transform its business model to adjust for the new consumption models driven by cloud computing. When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison proudly proclaimed it was pursuing a 1990s IBM vertically-integrated model, which is based upon hardware configurations. This model is not living up to Oracle's expectations and it shows in the poor results the vendor has seen over the past few quarters. Furthermore, the extension of socket licensing to the cloud demonstrates Oracle's inability to address the consumption-based models that agile cloud providers offer to users. The Microsoft deal will no doubtably be a win-win for both vendors and users of both company's products, but RFG believes the revenue impact to Oracle will be minimal over the next few years. In addition, the Salesforce.com deal has less to it than meets the eye. Regardless of all the hype and public "animosity" between Oracle and Salesforce.com the companies have close relationships. Mark Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, worked for Oracle prior to starting up the CRM company while Larry Ellison was on Salesforce.com's Board of Directors originally. Furthermore, Salesforce.com always built its platforms using Oracle software, even while attacking the company publicly. So to commit to use more of the Oracle platforms is not a big leap for the cloud provider. A move to Oracle Linux from an existing Linux base is not a big shift; and the company already uses Oracle databases. The commitment to use Exadata engines where appropriate as well as Oracle applications internally does not help Oracle prove it is a cloud provider or better its cloud presence, although it will give the company some additional bragging rights. In the meantime Workday remains the external offering for Financial and HCM applications; but this could change over time. IT executives should expect Oracle to struggle over the next year or so as it tries to adjust to new purchasing patterns and resistance to its "all or nothing" business model. With that in mind, IT executives should aggressively negotiate with Oracle for the best pricing, SLAs and terms and conditions for both cloud and in-house software and hardware acquisitions.



Executive Technology Strategies

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June 25, 2013 Executive Technology Strategies ETS 13024


P.O. Box 473, Kings Park, NY 11754; (917) 597-6717

http://www.experture.com/; Contact: [email protected]

Talent Recruitment and HR Development Contrast and Comparison

Our client needs some information on human resources market (talent recruitment & human resource development) alternatives: IBM (Kenexa) SAP (Successfactors) Oracle (Taleo) ADP (Talent Management) Lumesse

We need a comparison of the competitors/products (contrast and compare) based on functions and features (and some other criteria): Functions / Features

Performance

Integration (easy to integrate, …) Social-business-integration (e.g. Kenexa & IBM Connections) Cost effectiveness

Competitive strength

Service Provider Summary

The client provided us with fiveHR service providers:

Company

ADP

IBM/ Kenexa

Lumesse Oracle/ Taleo

SAP/ Successfactors

Product(s) Talent Management

BrassRing, Onboard, Talent

Manager, Learning Suite

Talentlink; ETWeb; Learning

Gateway; Coursebuilder

Taleo Business Execution Suite

(Biz X)

Address Roseland, NJ Wayne, PA United Kingdom Dublin, CA San Mateo, CA

Phone 800 225.5237 877 971.9171 +44 1483.739450 925 452.3000 800 809.9920

URL www.adp.com www.kenexa.com www.lumesse.com

www.taleo.com www.successfactors.com

Key Selection Criterion The following are the key selection criterion responses.

Functions and Features–For this criteria, we broke down the functions into several

categories:

o General – pertaining to most of the functions;

o Recruiting – relating to the identification/solicitation and evaluating new talent;

o Onboarding – indoctrination of new employees;

o Core Information – basic personnel profile information;

o Performance Management – generic evaluation of personnel;

o Career and Succession Planning – personnel resource management with respect to

career development and longetivity of organizational functions;

o Compensation Management – management of salaries, benefits, bonuses, budget,

etc.

Experture /RFG …experts on demand


mailto:inquiry

http://www.silkroad.com/

http://www.icims.com/

http://www.hrsmart.com/

http://www.hrsmart.com/

http://www.taleo.com/

http://www.successfactors.com/

http://www.successfactors.com/





o Skills and Competency Management – personnel resource skill development and

evaluation;

o 360 Degree Feedback – review methodology that uses input from three different

levels (managed, peers and management) as well as external contacts to evaluate

personnel;

o HR Analytics – information analysis and reporting. May be included as a part of

the other categories. Is broken out to highlight analytical capabilities;

o Learning – personnel resource training;

Note, each service provider organizes their response to the talent recruitment and HR

development differently. While there is no definitive structure, it should be noted that

some of the service provider categories are based on acquisitions and not on

functionality. In other words, 360 degree might be part of performance management

because the parent company acquired a company that had software with these integrated

functions – another provider acquired two different companies with these functions

separated.

Performance – in this case performance refers to the performance of the system and

not performance management as mentioned above.

Integration – the capability to integrate with other systems (HRIS, ERP, etc.) and/or

other service provider modules (OnBoarding, etc.);

Social Business Integration – integration with commonly used social media like

Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. for the purpose of posting career opportunities or

communicating with prospective candidates;

Cost Effectiveness – is the pricing structure aligned with the use? Is the price of the

service fair in comparison to the other service providers?

Competitive Strength – this is defined as the strength of the service provider as

defined by financials, longetivity, roadmap, client base, technological currency,

module integration, support, etc. relative to the other service providers being

evaluated.

Delivery Options All of the service providers offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery. Lumesse offers

on-premise and hosted, but is moving towards SaaS over the next year (as Europe is slow

to adopt SaaS). SuccessFactors offers a hosted version as well.

All of the service providers offer a mobile component as well.


mailto:inquiry





Functions and Features Within each function there are several features.

General

Multi-Language - With the exception of Taleo, all of the service providers offer

multi-languages in some if not all modules. While the number of languages covered

varies, core language coverage, i.e., French, Spanish, English, etc. is part of all

service provider options.

Technology – all of the service provider platforms are (or will be) Web 2.0 (cloud-

based).

Workflow – this feature is incorporated in all service provider HR suites.

Customizable – while all of the service providers offer some level of customization,

some offer more than others, i.e., corporate branding, field level, workflow, etc.

Intuitive GUI – while all of the service providers claim to have an intuitive GUI, there

are differences in how each screen functions, navigations, look and feel. Since this

more of a stylistic observation and substance, we suggest that the client attends

demonstrations on the systems to address this feature.

Multiple Browsers - fortunately all of the service provider offerings work in multiple

browsers.

Alerts – all of the service providers have altering capability – where participants,

prospects, stakeholders are alerted when certain conditions, like approval pending, are

triggered.

Centralized Database – not all of the service providers used a centralized database.

For example, Kenexa and Oracle have either built their modules independently or

have acquired module capability through corporate acquisition – therefore, there may

be some federation of data sources that have underlying “transparent” integration

processes. This raises some processing (performance) and security concerns.

Recruiting

All of the service providers offer key features in this function. In some cases though

separate offerings that are linked transparently, i.e., Oracle with its Recruiting Cloud

Service – separate from the Taleo offering.

The most significant part of the recruiting capabilities is the ability to integrate with

external offerings including social media. All of the service providers offer that capability

either as a built-in or as an add-on (IBM/Kenexa/Social Post).


mailto:inquiry





Lastly, ADP does not provide recruiting insights as a part of their service.

Onboarding

The weakest product suite in this area is Lumesse. According to Lumesse personnel, this

module is not robust enough to support large enterprises.

Core Information

For most of the service providers, this function is embedded in the other functions.

SuccessFactors has a separate module called Employee Central.

ADP does not offer organizational snapshots or Report Libraries.

Performance Management

As mentioned previously, each service provider bundles their offerings differently. This is

a result of the overlap between several functions, namely performance management,

career and succession planning, skills and competency management and 360-degree

feedback.

The only significant difference between all of the service providers is that in two

instances, namely Lumesse and SuccessFactors, is there a built-in conferencing

capability. While this should not be considered a core feature, it can be used productively

as a way to collaborate on personnel performance.

Career and Succession Planning

While the capabilities of all service providers are similar, it should be noted that the what

if and risk assessment features are critical to this function.

Compensation Management

A key featurewithin this function is the ability to integrate with external compensation

market information. All of the service providers,except for ADP and Taleo, offer this.

The other key feature is the ability to balance the compensation budget. Salaries represent

one of the largest spending components.

Skills and Competency Management

The scope of the competency library differentiates the service providers. The most

extensive competency libraries are provided by Kenexa (1,700 competencies) and

SuccessFactors (uses industry standards). ADP does not offer this capability.


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360-Degree Feedback

This function is really a sub-function within Performance Management. It represents a

review performed by three relatively different levels of personnel, namely subordinates,

peers and managers. All service providers provide the same capabilities.

ADP does not offer automated processes, intuitive GUI for employee feedback choices

and Visual aids to guide process.

HR Analytics

With the exception of SuccessFactors, all of the service providers integrate analytics as a

part of the other functions. SuccessFactors has a more comprehensive approach in its

Workforce Analytics module – it has 500 predefined SMART goals.

Learning

Some key features in this function include accessibility from various mobile/hand-held

devices, e-Learning, social learning and content development.

This category was weighted at 40% and the ratings are as follows:

ADP 8.51

Kenexa 9.30

Lumesse 8.95

Taleo* 5.26

Successfactors 10.00

*Taleo has not provided additional information.

Support The key differentiating factors in this category has to do with customized learning

content development consulting services – only Kenexa and Lumesse offer that.


ADP 8.89

Kenexa 10.00

Lumesse 10.00

Taleo 8.89

Successfactors 7.78

Differentiating Factors

ADP – Ease of implementation, regular updates, meets stringent data privacy and

security standards, end-to-end, seamless integration, a complete solution.


mailto:inquiry





Kenexa – Ease of implementation, seamless integration, and an industry leader (as

evidenced by its client base);

Lumesse – ease of implementation, seamless integration, meets stringent privacy and

security standards, excellent user experience, considers its market as the Global

Enterprise. Editor’s note, ironically the account executive mentioned that their

Onboarding solution may not be sufficient to meet large enterprise requirements;

Taleo – n/a;

SAP – seamless integration, mobile platforms, end-to-end, analytics, industry leader.


ADP 8.00

Kenexa 8.50

Lumesse 8.00

Taleo 5.00

Successfactors 9.00

Pricing The pricing models for SaaS were generally based on a per-employee, per-module, per-

month basis. Only three of the service providers felt comfortable enough to provide

pricing information.

Total Cost of Ownership – over a five-year period, using 2,000employees, the cost for:

Kenexa $430,000 SuccessFactors $925,000 ADP $1,245,500


Kenexa 9.00

SuccessFactors 7.00

ADP 5.00

Weighted Average Ratings The weighted average rating for all service providers is as follows:

ADP 6.75

Kenexa 8.04

Lumesse* 6.73

Taleo* 5.21

Successfactors 8.20

*no pricing information available. Without the pricing comparison, the weighted ratings

would be as follows:

ADP 6.68

Kenexa 7.14


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Lumesse 6.73

Taleo 5.21

Successfactors 7.50

Note that in both cases, SuccessFactors and Kenexa came out on top.

Summary: ADP recently (May 2012) launched their integrated Talent Management solution, which now supersedes their HR Advantage solution for Talent Management. Kenexa has a comprehensive, seamless solution that is reasonably priced when compared to SuccessFactors. While Lumesse has a comprehensive package and they are targeting Global Enterprises, their Onboarding module will not support Global Enterprises. Lumesse’s infrastructure (data center operations) is inconsistent in that different modules are supported in different places. We expect that this will correct itself over time, but for the time being some U.S. enterprises may have issues with their data being hosted overseas. Taleo has not provided comprehensive information. This is the result of their account team policies, which discourage giving out information without knowing the prospective client. All that can be said definitively is that Taleo has product service that cover all aspects of Talent Management and that Taleo (before being acquired by Oracle) was a leader in this market. Lastly, SuccessFactors is a top contender as it supports all aspects of Talent Management, has a comprehensive feature set, and provides the client with flexible usage and pricing. While, the cost of this service is high relative to Kenexa, ADP’s solution is more expensive than SuccessFactors by 35%.


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Next Research Note




July 1, 2013 Executive Technology Strategies ETS 13-07-03

Copyright © 2004-2013 Experture and Robert Frances Group, all rights reserved P.O. Box 473, Kings Park, NY 11754; (917) 597-6717


Yahoo Kills A Dozen More Products To Sharpen Its Focus

The AltaVista search engine is one product getting the boot

Original Author: Zach Miners June 28, 2013

Editor: Hal Kreitzman

Summary

Yahoo continues to work on determining what works and what doesn’t. Over the past six

months, Yahoo has worked on Portfolio Rationalization, determining what applications

have traction and which ones don’t. The author of this article notes that Yahoo has started

eliminating some of its products and expects that soon up to twelve will no longer be

offered to users. Some of the more notable ones are:

AltaVista – being replaced by Yahoo Search;

Yahoo RSS Alerts;

Yahoo Axis;

Citizen Sports – being replaced by Yahoo Sports. Fantasy Football and its mobile

Sports app;

Yahoo Browser Plus

Yahoo WebPlayer

FoxyTunes

Neighbors Beta

Etc.

Executive Vice President, Jay Rossiter blogged, "…we're shutting down a few products

so we can continue to focus on creating beautiful products that are essential to you every

day.”

During the company's annual shareholder meeting earlier this week, CEO Marissa Mayer

said she likes to think of Yahoo as a big startup.

"We are making investments, and we're going to continue to make investments,

because that's what drives growth," she said (p2c5).

Yahoo recently paid more than US$1 billion to buy social blogging site Tumblr.

Editor Comments

Since joining Yahoo in July 2012, CEO Marissa Mayer has made a number of changes in

the corporate culture and now is demonstrating that she is focusing on trimming down

and refocusing its product portfolio.

Since she has joined, the stock has risen approximately 62%. It is obvious that her

leadership is helping the company to come back from its nebulous position. While we see

her efforts to turn around the company as “textbook”, they have been very successful.


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July 1, 2013 Executive Technology Strategies ETS 13-07-03

Copyright © 2004-2013 Experture and Robert Frances Group, all rights reserved P.O. Box 473, Kings Park, NY 11754; (917) 597-6717


She seems to be working off of basic business principles - the steady rise of the stock

demonstrates that stockholders like what she is doing.

In a recent interview, she stated that there are two key challenges that Yahoo is working

on, namely the shift from desktops to mobile, and monetization of products and services.

In her opinion, Yahoo can build their business by capitalizing on people’s daily habits,

i.e., email, weather, sport scores, etc.

She also spoke at length about the search engine portion of their business and what they

consider the keys to success, namely personalized search.

The reason to focus on this article is to demonstrate that some technology companies are

achieving success using basic business practices and setting strategic direction based on

user behaviors. Acquisitions are still part of this equation as once a direction has been

determined many astute business executives have sought smaller firms which will either

fill gaps or cause disruption in their strategic plans.

Relevant Links

Original Article

Davos 2013 - An Insight, An Idea with Marissa Mayer


mailto:inquiry

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240458/Yahoo_kills_a_dozen_more_products_to_sharpen_its_focus?source=rss_applications&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+computerworld%2Fs%2Ffeed%2Ftopic%2F209+%28Computerworld+Enterprise+Web+2.0_Collaboration+News%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLbUqKr1Zuk





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July 2, 2013


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Big Data/Cloud Expo Showcases Disruptive Technologies and Future of Enterprise Computing – Part 1 RFG POV: Make it big but keep it simple. This could be the mantra for IT executives and application owners throughout organizations of every ilk and size. In the brave new world of enterprise computing, Big Data and cloud computing are two of the more compelling trends, and biggest management challenges. Wrestling with how to leverage Big Data to drive innovation and adopting cloud solutions to improve business agility or lower costs are among the biggest decisions business leaders face today and into the foreseeable future.

Another challenge is keeping up with the volume of new solution providers entering the

space along with determining which established players offer the best mix of technology,

partnerships and support to meet these new business requirements. For instance, June's

Cloud Expo in New York (Cloud Expo West follows in November) featured more than

120 vendor exhibits accompanied by dozens of breakout sessions, presentations,

roundtables and press conferences – too much information for one person to absorb.

However, a few noteworthy themes nonetheless emerged, which we will cover in this

three-part series. Part one addresses Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Cloud Enabling Big Data Access

Access to big data sources is improving daily and the cloud is a major enabler. Cloud

service providers (CSPs) operate many of the most scalable, available, secure and

technologically advanced data centers in the world. CSPs are also among the early

adopters – and deliverers – of advanced, disruptive technologies such as enterprise SSD

or Flash storage to vastly improve response time, services and applications to improve

usability and enable choice. Several CSPs offer a variety of infrastructure options from

bare metal to fully configured operating system environments (e.g., Microsoft Corp.

Windows or Linux) that can be up and running in minutes.

According to Cisco Systems, "30% of all data will live in or pass through the cloud by

2020" and 70% of all enterprises already use enterprise-class cloud technologies. An IBM

Cloud Survey indicates that by next year, 90% of all organizations they surveyed

including small, medium and large enterprises, will have either implemented or piloted a

cloud solution. In effect, this makes the aggregate of cloud providers the world's biggest

and fastest growing data repository.

The cloud enables business models like Google and Amazon that rely on consumer-

driven big data analytics as well as the next cloud-based start-up. In addition,

Consumerization of IT is forcing CIOs and their staffs to deploy and offer solutions that

provide their internal customers with greater flexibility and faster time to value. To quote

Cloud Expo speaker Dennis Quan, VP for IBM's Smart Cloud Infrastructure, "The Cloud

was born from consumer demand."


mailto:inquiry

http://cloudexpo2013west.sys-con.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/intelligent_network/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns976/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/assets/power-of-cloud-for-bus-model-innovation.pdf



http://www.google.com/

http://www.amazon.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerization

July 2, 2013




Source: IBM Corp.

Disruptive Cloud Solution Providers

Innovation is often synonymous with disruptive technologies. The following is a short

list of companies, great, medium sized and small, who are delivering innovative solutions

to meet the needs of a consumer-driven, cloud-enabled marketplace. Consumers can be

individuals, IT organizations or corporations.

Disruptive cloud solution providers (DCSP) possess one or more of the following

attributes:

1 – DCSPs leverage open standards and open source solutions

2 – Provide innovative service offerings and flexible pricing models

3 – Develop or leverage advanced technologies to boost app performance

4 – Create software to make cloud deployment and management easier

5 – Increase IT effectiveness and lower capital costs

6 – Offer customers modularity and choice

DCSPs are listed in four broad categories: Infrastructure, Applications, Services and

Storage. (See Figure 1.)


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July 2, 2013




Figure 1. Disruptive Cloud Solution Providers

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Logicworks provides public, private and hybrid cloud hosting solutions and dedicated,

managed services and technical support to enterprise customers and SaaS solution

providers. Unlike many CSPs, Logicworks focuses on specific industries including

healthcare, media, financial services and marketing/advertising. Not coincidentally, its

focus on compliance and privacy issues such as HIPAA for healthcare and PCI DSS for

financial organizations makes its services more appealing for those industries.

Logicworks Private Cloud is fully dedicated to each customer and runs on VMware's

virtualization platform while its public cloud offering incorporates CloudStack and

utilizes EMC's Isilon storage archiving solution. Logicworks also provides AWS

managed services adding a layer on top of Amazon's cloud to 'help companies strategize,

architect, implement and scale AWS cloud instances and tools for their own

applications." Logicworks also offers managed database services for Big Data

applications utilizing Hadoop clustering technology.

Rackspace is one of the largest and most successful CSPs noted for "combining

performance, reliability, security, low total cost of ownership (TCO) and Fanatical


mailto:inquiry

http://www.logicworks.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_DSS

http://www.logicworks.net/big-data

http://www.rackspace.com/

July 2, 2013




Support" (according to Rackspace executives) within their Hybrid Cloud offerings.

Rackspace founders helped create OpenStack which is fast becoming the de facto cloud

operating systems standard, supported by more than 150 vendors. OpenStack allows

administrators to manage large pools of compute, storage and networking resources and

gives their users the ability to provision their own resources. Hybrid Cloud combines

public cloud, private cloud and dedicated bare metal computing into a single solution in

effect allowing customers to build their own applications instead of forcing them into a

specific application framework. Customers range from startups to Fortune 500

companies. Rackspace builds and supports many of its own applications to help

customers more easily manage their cloud environments. Rackspace has also made recent

acquisitions, including Exceptional Cloud Services, to increase its OpenStack services

and support capabilities, and Object Rocket, a year-old provider of cloud-based

MongoDB services known as a Database as a Service (DBaaS) solution. Both

acquisitions help Rackspace compete with similar services from Amazon Web Services

(AWS), the world's largest CSP, and other IaaS solution providers.

SoftLayer made tech news headlines earlier this month when IBM announced its

intention to acquire the privately-held IaaS firm to boost its ability to compete in the

cloud space. The acquisition brings IBM more than 20,000 new cloud customers of all

sizes while accelerating its ability to compete in the cloud space for coveted enterprise

customers. According to its recent cloud survey, IBM believes the size of the worldwide

cloud opportunity will likely exceed $200 billion per year by 2020, an opportunity far too

big for them to ignore. Meanwhile, IBM can boost SoftLayer's data center growth around

the world – they now have 13 – along with deploying IBM hardware and leveraging IBM

worldwide sales and services capabilities. IBM and SoftLayer are both committed to

cloud-centric open source initiatives including OpenStack and Cloudstack as well as

partnering with many other open source solutions including 10Gen, creators of open

source NoSQL database MongoDB, to help enable mobile apps in the cloud. SoftLayer

views their operational model as open cloud consumption paid for by the minute, hour or

day. According to a SoftLayer spokesperson, "We have more Legos and more boxes for

customers to build their own architecture from bare metal to fully configurable operating

environments and 1,600 internally developed APIs to streamline the process."

Conclusion

With the market for cloud-related products and services anticipated to exceed $200

billion per year by 2020, the opportunities for CSPs and technology companies are

enormous. At the same time, the consumerization of IT is pushing technology solution

providers, CSPs and application developers to improve services, user interfaces, APIs,

security and self-service applications to the point where non-technical, line-of-business

users can easily manage and provision their own solutions while accelerating time to

value.


mailto:inquiry

http://www.openstack.org/

http://www.rackspace.com/blog/exceptional-cloud-services-acquisition/

http://ir.rackspace.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=221673&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=1832009&highlight=

http://www.softlayer.com/

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41191.wss


http://cloudstack.apache.org/

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-and-10gen-collaborate-to-bring-mobile-to-the-enterprise-210489281.html

July 2, 2013




RFG POV: Cloud solutions are evolving quickly due, in large part, to the fact that lower cost of ownership and quicker implementation times are compelling users to experiment and adopt cloud solutions sooner than later. When it comes to computing, just about everyone wants faster and cheaper, as long as easy and secure are also in the cards. IT executives need to experiment with various cloud offerings to determine which ones best satisfy current and planned initiatives before leaping into commitments that can consume scare resources.

Additional relevant research is available. Interested readers should contact Client

Services to arrange further discussion or interview with Mr. Gary MacFadden, Principal

Research Analyst.


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July 2, 2013




Cloud Expo Showcases Disruptive Technologies – part 2 RFG POV: Big Data and cloud computing are two of the more compelling trends, and biggest management challenges. Wrestling with how to leverage and adopt cloud solutions to improve business agility or lower costs are among the biggest decisions business leaders face today and into the foreseeable future. Another challenge is keeping up with the volume of new solution providers entering the space along with determining which established players offer the best mix of technology, partnerships and support to meet these new business requirements.

RFG divides the Disruptive Cloud Solution Providers (DCSPs) into four broad

categories: Infrastructure, Applications, Services and Storage. (See Figure 1.) This is the

second in the three-part series on cloud providers and covers cloud-enabling applications

and cloud services providers.


Cloud-Enabling Applications

ActiveState is the creator of Stackato, "the application platform for creating your own

private, secure and flexible enterprise Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) using any language

on any stack on any cloud." According to CTO Jeff Hobbs, "Stackato is an agile PaaS

development environment that enables enterprise developers to leverage all the benefits


mailto:inquiry

http://www.activestate.com/

http://www.activestate.com/stackato/get_stackato

July 2, 2013




of a public PaaS to deploy, manage, and monitor applications, while meeting the security

and privacy requirements of enterprises. Stackato also allows developers to easily test

applications in a production environment, self-serve, and get apps to the cloud in minutes,

not weeks." In December 2012, ActiveState penned an OEM deal with HP to provide

Stackato for HP Cloud Public services clients. In addition, Stackato is also 100% Cloud

Foundry compatible leading Hobbs to remark, "Stackato is open source compatible with

no vendor lock-in and enterprises can integrate it within their existing IT infrastructure

including databases, web servers and authentication systems, and customize it to support

all the languages their developers need."

Appcara provides a "flexible and easy-to-use cloud application" called AppStack

targeted at the service providers and enterprises who need to quickly stand-up apps, such

as AWS in the cloud and then deploy and scale those apps accelerating application

services and simplifying the management of distributed applications in the cloud.

AppStack allows users of Hadoop or Hive-based Big Data analytics applications to easily

and holistically deploy and manage these applications as a single entity rather than server

by server. An "easy-to-use portal for launching and managing these distributed

applications either on an internal cloud, public cloud, or both, while preserving

application portability, makes it possible for technical and less-technical users alike to

manage cloud-based apps." Meanwhile, Appcara enables CSPs to "rapidly" deploy

application services for their customers on public clouds such as AWS or Rackspace, or

private cloud environments such as Citrix or VMware, or open platforms such as

CloudStack.

AppEnsure delivers "Application Performance Ensurance in dynamic virtualized and

cloud computing environments, enabling the cost benefit promise of utility computing

while maintaining business-critical application performance." Founded in 2011,

AppEnsure has received a round of "Angel" investing as well as investment from the

Citrix Startup Accelerator program. As CEO Colin L.M. Macnab, a veteran of several

startups and IPOs, explains, "The problem with cloud infrastructure management is you

have different views by different individuals within the enterprise. First you have Server,

Storage and Network views. Then there's the application view. It's death by dashboard."

AppEnsure primarily targets the applications operations person but also IT operations and

system administrators. The solution deploys a light-weight (1% overhead) agent that

follows every transaction or, optionally, a front-end agent. Every packet is inspected, data

is collected, dumped into Splunk and analyzed for automation of "application topology

discovery, analytics and resolution." AppEnsure runs on-premise or as a SaaS-based

solution.

SOA Software powers the "API Economy with products that enable customers to plan,

build, run and share APIs through comprehensive cloud and on-premise solutions for API

lifecycle, security, management and developer engagement." According to CTO Alistair

Farquharson, "SOA is a superset of services. API is a channel to the business. SOA

became technical but it should be business focused. APIs have business focus, they are

not technical. APIs help to drive revenue or help in supporting new channels. There are


mailto:inquiry

https://www.hpcloud.com/

http://www.cloudfoundry.com/



http://www.appcara.com/

http://appensure.com/

http://www.citrix.com/startupaccelerator

http://www.soa.com/

July 2, 2013




APIs for enabling micro-payments or for mobile apps that support business people in

focusing on business opportunities and SOA Software provides the most complete, end-

to-end API management solution available." SOA is very active in the travel industry

with footprints in the finance industry, healthcare and other industries. SOA's OAuth

Server is a standards-based, enterprise-grade authentication and authorization product

that integrates the most common identity and access management systems, including

LDAP, Active Directory, CA SiteMinder, Oracle Access Manager, IBM TAM and RSA

ClearTrust in order to simplify cloud identity challenges faced by most end-user

organizations.

Cloud Services

Dell Cloud Computing Services works with enterprise customers who seek support

for planning and building their own cloud environment whether that is a private, public or

hybrid approach. "Dell Cloud Services speed time to value at each stage of the process:

from an initial workshop or overview of cloud technology, to a full assessment of an

organization's infrastructure and business needs, to design and implementation." Project

Crowbar is Dell's open source software framework that allows customers to install cloud

software across clusters, such as Hadoop, and scale out systems along with offering

network monitoring and discovery, and gathering of performance data. Dell is a supporter

of and contributor to OpenStack and remains one of Intel's biggest partners. However,

Dell Ventures has invested in several disruptive technology companies including Flash

Storage innovator Skyera whose profile is included below. Dell is also partnering with

VMware to deliver the VCloud Datacenter Service for its enterprise customers.

SHI is a $4 billion, privately held global provider of IT products and services ranging

from software and hardware procurement to deployment planning, configuration, data

center optimization, IT asset management and cloud computing. The current owner since

1989 has grown entirely organically "through neither merger nor acquisition, the direct

result of backing a highly-skilled and tenured sales force with software volume licensing

experts, hardware procurement specialists and certified IT services professionals." SHI

technology partners include Cisco, EMC, HP, Intel, SUSE and VMware. Cloud services

run the gamut from managed services, IaaS, consulting, back-up as a service, planning

and implementation services, cloud security offerings and solutions as well as partnering

with co-location providers, SaaS and MSP providers. SHI is one of the consummate sales

and reseller organizations entering the cloud space and has plans to offer additional

cloud-based software service later this year.

SUSE Cloud program is SUSE's channel program for CSPs. SUSE has tailored its

licensing model to attract CSPs to its Linux Enterprise Product portfolio to fit the cloud

business model. This includes pay-per-use-pricing, simplified workload deployment and

management utilizing SUSE Studio, a strong partner ecosystem in the Linux world, and

SUSE's "world-class" support. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running on Windows

Azure is a proven platform for Windows environments, and SUSE supports Amazon

AWS which provides a highly reliable, scalable and low cost infrastructure platform.


mailto:inquiry

http://www.soa.com/products/oauth-server



http://www.dell.com/Learn/us/en/555/dell-cloud-computing-services-consulting?ST=dell%20cloud%20services&dgc=ST&cid=261465&lid=4771525&acd=12309164820490250

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/cloud-computing/crowbar-software-framework?c=us&l=en&s=biz&cs=555&delphi:gr=true



http://www.dellventures.com/

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/vmw-dell-cloud-vcloud-datacenter-service-datasheet.pdf

http://www.shicloud.com/Page/index.aspx

https://www.suse.com/partners/isv/cloud-program/

http://susestudio.com/

July 2, 2013




With the SUSE Studio, customers can "build their own optimized SUSE Linux Enterprise

operating system images and application workloads, and deploy them into the cloud with

just a few mouse clicks. SUSE Manager lets clients manage workloads in the cloud just

like they would in their own data center."

Conclusion







value.

RFG POV: Cloud solutions and services are evolving quickly and the field of offerings can be expected to undergo tremendous changes over the course of the next few years. While there are multiple risks associated with utilizing cloud services, the lower cost of ownership, the consumption-based business model, and quicker implementation times are compelling users to experiment and adopt cloud solutions sooner than later. Business and IT executives need to experiment with various cloud offerings to determine which ones best satisfy current and planned initiatives before leaping into commitments that can consume scare resources. Furthermore, IT executives planning on utilizing cloud services should ensure service level agreements (SLAs) and contract terms and conditions as well as vendor financials comply with corporate requirements.



Research Analyst.


mailto:inquiry

July 2, 2013




Cloud Expo Showcases Disruptive Technologies – part 3 RFG POV: Flash storage is reshaping the data storage landscape. Leveraging this technology to improve business agility and performance or lower costs is among the biggest game changers business leaders face today. Another challenge is keeping up with the volume of new solution providers entering the space along with determining which established players offer the best mix of technology, partnerships and support to meet corporate business requirements.

RFG divides the Disruptive Cloud Solution Providers (DCSPs) into four broad

categories: Infrastructure, Applications, Services and Storage. (See Figure 1.) This is the

third in the three-part series on cloud providers and addresses solid state drives (SSDs)

and flash storage.


High Performance Data Storage

Coraid offers a scale-out SAN solution providing enterprises of all sizes with flexible,

scale-out, high performance storage as well as a family of NAS servers that combines an

"innovative and feature-rich file system with scale-out, massively parallel Ethernet SAN


mailto:inquiry

http://www.coraid.com/

July 2, 2013




technology ideally suited for public and private cloud environments." In addition, Coraid

EtherCloud is "the industry’s first software-defined storage platform for architects of the

modern data center. EtherCloud enhances business agility by radically simplifying

delivery of scale-out infrastructure. Combined with Coraid EtherDrive scale-out (NAS)

storage, EtherCloud allows enterprise and cloud customers to deploy and manage

petabytes of block and file storage with relative ease." Coraid storage solutions combine

traditional hard disk drive (HDD) technology, to help keep storage costs, and solid state

drive (SSD) technologies for high performance applications along with a variety of

management features such as vCenter integration, programmable storage management

and control via REST API, policy-based application deployment to dynamically allocate

and manage storage according to application requirements, and self-service provisioning

for application owners in a multi-tenanted environment.

Intel has made it clear that it wants to be a dominate player in the SSD and Flash storage

space. Announcements this year declare the immediate availability of new drives to meet

a variety of capacity, performance and application requirements. Introduced this month,

the Intel SSD DC S3500 Series "breaks through barriers - like the need for high

throughput/low latency storage with a low total cost of ownership - to deliver the storage

solution that meets the needs of the cloud, and its demand for storage, which has

exploded in recent years," said Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general

manager for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Intel's data center family of

SSDs helps make cloud computing faster and more reliable, enabling more transactions

and richer experiences." The S3500 is optimized for read-heavy applications, whereas the

S3700 Series, introduced earlier this year, is built for more write-intensive workloads

such as OLTP or analytics. Both solutions are priced competitively for performance-

centric applications where low latency is key – as opposed to ultra-low latency, high-

performance applications where in-memory processing is required. The SSDs are offered

in capacity ranges from 80 to 800 GBs and are available through Intel partners and

resellers including a five-year warranty which suggests Intel has done its homework in

hardening the SSD controllers and management software to extend the useful life of their

drives.

Skyera is a "disruptive provider of enterprise solid state storage systems designed to

enable a large class of applications with extraordinarily high performance, exceptionally

lower power consumption and cost effectiveness relative to existing enterprise storage

systems. Founded by the executives who previously developed the world's most-

advanced flash memory controller, Skyera is backed by key technology and financial

partnerships (Dell Ventures) designed to position it at the forefront of the hyper-growth

in the solid state storage sector." Like many of its competitors, Skyera, uses enterprise-

class, solid-state storage using commercial MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory.

While MLC is not as durable at SLC (single-level cell) or as fast, it is much more cost

effective. Skyera's custom designed controller employs advanced flash management

algorithms to reduce program/erase cycles and has implemented a "unique" approach to

RAID, in conjunction with controller-based compression that "results in 10x fewer writes

per Flash module" extending the useful life of the SSD drives.


mailto:inquiry

http://www.coraid.com/products/management_automation



http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-dc-s3700-series.html

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/intelligent-systems/networking/ssd-product-transition-matrix.html?wapkw=dc+3500

http://www.skyera.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

July 2, 2013




Smart Storage Systems fabricates its own SSDs and Flash selling directly to vendors

such as IBM and SGI, CSPs and government agencies with high capacity, low latency

application needs – and occasionally to large enterprise customers. Earlier this year,

Smart announced the availability of 2 TB SSDs, and they have a 4 TB SSD in the works.

Interfaces include both SATA and SAS in a variety of form factors from 1.8 to 2.5 inches

and various capacities. Smart offers two CloudSpeed SSD products, the 500 and the 1000

models, "designed specifically to address the growing need for SSDs that are optimized

for mixed workload applications in enterprise server and cloud computing environments.

Leveraging SMART's proprietary Guardian Technology™ Platform, tier-one OEM-

enterprise firmware, proven power fail technology and 19nm MLC NAND flash, the

CloudSpeed SSD product family offers all the features expected from an enterprise-class

drive at the right value." Smart touts the longevity and endurance of its drives which

provide additional TCO benefits beyond just speed, resilience and capacity.

Conclusion







value.

RFG POV: Flash solutions are evolving quickly and the variety of solutions is growing daily. These changes are disrupting the current data center environment and require new IT skills and revisions to target architectures. IT executives need to experiment with various flash and SSD offerings to determine which alternatives and suppliers best satisfy current and planned initiatives and business requirements before leaping into commitments and designs that can consume scare resources.



Research Analyst.


mailto:inquiry

http://www.smartstoragesys.com/

http://www.smartstoragesys.com/products/cloudspeed1000_ssd.asp

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Oracle Stumbles, Makes Cloud Deals Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein€¦ · 46 Kent Hills Lane, Wilton, CT. 06897; (203) 429-8951; ... Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein Oracle Corp. reports