IBM Offers Rock Solid Reliability, Best in Class Server Performance

2013, Laura's Insights ITIC Blog / By

Big Blue Hardware is Rock Solid

IBM hardware retains its status as being best in class in terms of reliability, stability and performance and customer satisfaction. IBM’s System z mainframes recorded the least amount of downtime of any hardware platform. In the server hardware category systems with relatively small market shares, including Stratus Technologies ftServer 6300 and 4500 series and Fujitsu’s Primequest and Primergy Servers continue to score very high reliability.

Stratus Technologies of Maynard, MA offers Intel Xeon-based systems with mainframe-like fault tolerance and reliability with 99.999 % reliability. The Fujitsu Primergy and Fujitsu SPARC systems similarly deliver a high level of reliability and fault tolerance with 48% of reporting 99.999% or just over five minutes of per server/ per annum downtime due to unplanned outages.

The length and severity of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 unplanned outages and the patching actions related to each correspond to specific line item capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) costs for the business. Reliability, measured by downtime, can positively or negatively impact TCO and accelerate or delay ROI. …

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IBM Offers Rock Solid Reliability, Best in Class Server Performance Read More »

Human Error, IT Staff Shortages and Aging Hardware Undercut Reliability

2013, Laura's Insights ITIC Blog / By

To reiterate, ITIC’s fifth annual reliability survey results indicate that the inherent reliability and uptime of nearly all of the 14 major server hardware and 18 server operating system distributions continues to improve. But at the same time, user error is becoming more of a factor undercutting overall reliability.

This is based on technical advances in the underlying processor technology from companies like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices, memory and disk technology, as well as improvements to the core server hardware and server OSs that improve performance, scalability, security and the ability to support heavier workloads.

As organizations strive to accomplish more with fewer resources, IT departments must rely even more heavily on their vendors to deliver more reliable servers and server OS platforms and top notch technical support in the form of regular patches and documentation. …

Human Error, IT Staff Shortages and Aging Hardware Undercut ReliabilityRead More »

Human Error, IT Staff Shortages and Aging Hardware Undercut Reliability Read More »

IBM, Dell, Fujitsu & Stratus Get Highest Marks in ITIC Reliability Survey

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

For the fifth year in a row, IBM servers delivered the highest levels of reliability and uptime among 14 server platforms.

Those are the results of the latest independent ITIC 2013 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at over 550 organizations worldwide from August 2012 through January 2013.

Among the high-end mainframe class systems, both the IBM System z and the Stratus Technologies’ ftServer 6310 delivered the highest inherent reliability: both had no instances – 0% – of the most severe Tier 3 outages lasting four hours or more of duration. Among the mainstream “work horse” servers, IBM’s Power Systems recorded the least amount of unplanned downtime, approximately 13 minutes per server/per year. By contrast, some 6 percent of organizations using Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems) x86-based servers experienced of over four (4) hours of per server/per annum downtime. This was the highest percentage of lengthy Tier 3 server outages among the 14 platforms surveyed. …

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IBM, Dell, Fujitsu & Stratus Get Highest Marks in ITIC Reliability Survey Read More »

IBM Intros New Power Servers for SMBs, Enterprises

Laura's Insights ITIC Blog, News / By

IBM’s latest generation of Power Systems introduced this week are all about “power,” emphasizing:

  • The power to support compute intensive workloads
  • The power to deliver business analytics
  • The power to drive business efficiencies through server consolidation
  • The power to conserve resources by consolidating floor space and lowering energy consumption
  • The power to cut costs by reducing the number of licensing core requirements
  • The power to leverage new product features and capabilities that simplify the IT experience

IBM’s new Power enterprise and entry servers also align with the company’s strategy to address organizations’ need to support compute-intensive workloads and more complex application environments, which include physical, virtual, cloud and mobile environments.

The new solutions – which support IBM’s AIX, and IBM i operating systems, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise operating system environments – use the same underlying advanced processor technology that powers its Watson supercomputer, the system so famously displayed in 2011 when it trumped Jeopardy! grand champions during a nationally televised match. …

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IBM Intros New Power Servers for SMBs, Enterprises Read More »

Windows 8 Surface Tablet: Wait and See Attitude Prevails Users Want to be Wowed

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

ITIC’s Windows 8 Survey Data shows that companies and the industry at large is taking a “wait and see” attitude towards the Windows 8 Surface Tablet which Microsoft formally unveils this week.

Reviews so far have been mixed but there’s no doubt that this is Microsoft’s attempt to beat Apple at its own game in the tablet market AND one-up the iPad maker by delivering a tablet-like device that also has the power of a full-blown computer.

Hence, the mood is more cautious with respect to the Windows 8 RT Surface Tablet. This is Microsoft’s first foray into the tablet arena which is dominated by Apple’s iPad with 68% marketshare. Just over one third – 34% — of the over 500 ITIC survey respondents said their Windows 7 desktops were fine; another 24% indicated they’re already using the Apple iPad and are satisfied with its performance; 18% said other device purchases take priority and 16% said they were waiting to see how the Windows 8 Surface Tablet is priced. Ironically, only nine percent of survey participants said the Touch screen factored into their decision not to purchase the Windows 8 Surface Tablet. Interestingly, only 12% of survey participants said they would pass on the Windows 8 Surface Tablet because they’re already using an Android-based tablet. …

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Windows 8 Surface Tablet: Wait and See Attitude Prevails Users Want to be Wowed Read More »

Windows 8: ITIC Survey Data Shows Good Performance but No Compelling Need to Migrate Yet

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Let’s be blunt: the biggest issue with Windows 8 is not the much-maligned Metro touch interface; it’s that 60% majority of corporations say they have “no compelling business need” to upgrade to the latest Microsoft desktop or the Windows 8 RT Surface Tablet which debut this week.

Those are the findings of ITIC’s latest independent ITIC Windows 8 Deployment and Usage Trends Survey which polled over 500 organizations during September.

The Web-based survey found that only 10% of respondents – or one-in-10 companies – have definitive plans to migrate to Windows 8 once it’s released on October 26. That’s in stark contrast to the 64% of the respondents to ITIC’s Windows 7 poll who stated their intentions to migrate to Windows 7 just Microsoft released that operating system in the fall of 2009.

Similarly, only 9% of those polled currently plan to purchase a Windows 8 Surface Tablet compared with 49% who say they will not buy the forthcoming Windows 8 Surface Tablet. …

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Windows 8: ITIC Survey Data Shows Good Performance but No Compelling Need to Migrate Yet Read More »

Security is Imperative for BYOD, Mobile Deployments

2012, Laura's Insights ITIC Blog / By

Nearly two-thirds of businesses – 62% — now allow their end users to “bring their own devices (BYOD)” and use them as their corporate desktops or mobile devices to access organizational data including Email, applications and sensitive data. However, 71% of businesses that allow BYOD, have no specific policies and procedures in place to support BYOD deployment and ensure security.

That’s according to the latest independent joint survey conducted by ITIC and KnowBe4.com, a Clearwater, Florida company that specializes in security awareness training. The ITIC/KnowBe4.com survey, polled 550 companies worldwide in July and August. The survey survey found that only 13% of respondents said their firms have specific policies in place to deal with BYOD deployments, while another nine percent indicated they were in the process of developing BYOD procedures.

“These survey findings should act as a wake-up call to galvanize corporations into proactively managing and securing corporate data accessed by mobile BYOD devices before they suffer an expensive and potentially crippling loss or hack,” said ITIC principal analyst Laura DiDio. She continued, “Every firm regardless of size should conduct a risk assessment review and adopt strong security and management policies to deal with increasingly mobile BYOD deployments.” …

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Security is Imperative for BYOD, Mobile Deployments Read More »

Microsoft: Bullish or Bottoming Out? Part 2

Laura's Insights ITIC Blog / By

According to some press and industry, you’d think that Microsoft was all but dead. Microsoft’s tactical and strategic technology and business missteps are well publicized and dissected ad infinitum. Less well documented are Microsoft’s strengths from both a consumer and enterprise perspective and there are plenty of those.

Microsoft Strengths

One of the most notable company wins in the past five years is the Xbox 360 and Kinect.

Xbox 360 and Kinect: Simply put, this is an unqualified success. The latest statistics released earlier this month by the NPD Group show that Microsoft has a 47% market share and sold 257,000 Xbox 360 units in the U.S. in June, besting its rivals the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii for the 18th consecutive month. But Microsoft and indeed all the hardware games vendors find their sales shrinking due to the sharp increase in the numbers of users playing games on their smart phones. In Microsoft’s 2012 third fiscal quarter ending in March, Xbox 360 sales dropped 33% to $584 million. The consumer space is notoriously fickle and games users are always looking for the next big thing. Microsoft’s ace in the hole is the Kinect motion-controller, which still has a lot of appeal. The company is banking on that as well as slew of new applications and functions like the Kinect PlayFit Dashboard which lets users track the number of calories they burn when they play Kinect games. …

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Microsoft: Bullish or Bottoming Out? Part 2 Read More »

Microsoft: Bullish or Bottoming Out? Part 1

Laura's Insights ITIC Blog / By

It’s been a busy summer for Microsoft and chief executive Steve Ballmer.

In recent weeks, the software giant; released customer previews and ship dates for the newest versions of its flagship Windows and Office products; purchased Yammer, a cloud-based enterprise social networking company; hosted its annual Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC) in Toronto, and; vocally signaled its intent to leave no stone unturned in competing head-on with rivals Apple and Google.

Sounds good, right? Unfortunately all of these positive moves are overshadowed by three things:

  • Microsoft reported the first quarterly loss in its 26 years of being traded as a public company. Slipping into the red for the first time in nearly three decades, Microsoft has reported a loss of $492 million in the June quarter. Most worrisome is the reason for the loss. Microsoft took a non-cash write-down of $6.2 billion related to non-performance of online advertising business and Internet services division, aQuantive, which Microsoft acquired in 2007. On a positive note, revenue for the fourth fiscal 2012 quarter rose four percent to $18.05 billion, compared to the $17.36 billion sales Microsoft posted in the same period a year ago.
  • A scathing profile, titled “Microsoft’s Lost Decade” in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine by contributing Editor Kurt Eichenwald. In it, Eichenwald makes a case that Microsoft has spent the last ten years unsuccessfully dithering in several key market segments including smart phones, search engine, social networking, mobility and tablets, falling far behind competitors like Apple and Google.
  • Windows 8 is being dubbed as a “disaster” three months in some quarters before its scheduled October ship date.

…

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Microsoft: Bullish or Bottoming Out? Part 1 Read More »

Michael Miller Q&A: SUSE and Attachmate Group

Q&A with Industry Leaders / By

The last 14 months have been eventful for SUSE as it began a new chapter in its history. In April, 2011, The Attachmate Group bought Novell (which had purchased SUSE in 2004 for $210 million) and SUSE for $2.2 billion. SUSE now functions as an independent business unit. Its main products are the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and the SUSE Studio, development tools. ITIC interviewed Michael Miller, SUSE’s Vice President of Global Alliances & Marketing and Kerry Kim, the company’s director of Product Marketing. The two SUSE executives discussed the initiatives since the Attachmate acquisition and detailed SUSE’s current and future product, key alliance partners and business strategies.

Laura DiDio, ITIC: Describe SUSE’s strategic focus and direction in the 14 months since Attachmate purchase.

Michael Miller: Our first job was to reconnect with partners, alliances and customers. We brought a stable continuity of people, engineering, alliance, sales and support and reintroduced ourselves as a SUSE business. I immediately traveled to meet with global alliance partners including, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft and SAP. We got a very positive response; everyone was happy to see the SUSE brand being carried forward. The second thing was determining the focus and our core areas of business. We don’t want to be all things to all people. We spent a lot of time figuring out where we could be key and core to our partners and customers. It was an intensive process and very team building. We came up with three focus areas. They are: Enterprise Linux, Cloud infrastructure and integrated systems. SUSE Linux Enterprise is aimed at addressing the most demanding, data and compute-intensive workloads to deliver services in real time for databases, large performance SAP applications and HPC (high performance computing). The second initiative centers on the cloud and cloud infrastructure. SUSE has a significant business with the Amazon public cloud; we’ve seen with 10% increase month-over- month on Amazon. We want to expand that and make sure SUSE is a pivotal player there and we’re ramping very quickly. We’re also very excited about the private cloud infrastructure. We see the OpenStack project as the Open Source part of Cloud Infrastructure. At BrainShare 2011, SUSE said it would join and contribute to the OpenStack Foundation; we’re part of the founding and drafting committee. We want to make our private cloud offering the most durable, stable, and easiest to deploy and manage and the most cost efficient to implement. At the same time, SUSE wants to ensure that there’s no vendor lock-in; they can build a stack that’s tuned to the business needs. And we want to combine [our offerings] with the SUSE tools. SUSE is operating system agnostic and hypervisor agnostic.

ITIC: You hired back a lot of the original SUSE engineers in Germany.

MM: That’s correct. When The Attachmate Group acquired Novell we carried over the entire German engineering organization led by Ralf Flaxa, who is the vice president. And we’ve also brought back a lot of former SUSE engineers. The organization totals about 750 people.

ITIC: Describe SUSE’s present initiatives.

MM: We’re into an interactive engaged phase with our partners and alliances e.g. SAP Hanna appliances which all run on SUSE Linux. It’s the fastest growing product SAP has had in the last 15 years and we’ve had great success at aligning with customers and alliance partners for Private Cloud. We have customers like BMW that want to develop a cloud offering and we’re launching them with customers worldwide over the next six months – up to 20 customers. Because we’re working with partners and have our own services organization we want to scale globally and in collaboration with OEM hardware partners and major customers. We’re also very focused on exceeding the overall Linux industry revenue and booking growth rates in fiscal 2013 and so far we are doing so.

ITIC: Is SUSE targeting any specific vertical market segments?

MM: Yes, we’re particularly focused on automotive, aerospace, defense and retail. Nearly all of the global automakers like BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Renault, Toyota, Volkswagen and others are SUSE customers. And Nearly 80 percent of US Fortune 500aerospace and defense companies and 70 percent of US Fortune 100 general merchandisers, specialty retailers, and food and drug stores deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise.

ITIC: SUSE Enterprise Linux has consistently performed well in ITIC’s Reliability Surveys, what have you done to improve performance and availability?

Kerry Kim: As a generalphilosophy, engineering excellence has been a cultural and core value for us for the past 20 years. We’ve focused on commercializing Open Source software. We continually fine tune our various engineering processes and automate test processes to insure they are fully integrated. This in turn optimizes performance, scalability and reliability. That quality has been part of the fabric of SUSE. On the technical side, we’ve continued to push the envelope to get those features that would achieve parity and surpass UNIX distributions. With each successive product release SUSE tries to introduce more robust file systems, tracing, tuning and Operating system level virtualization (akin to Sun/Oracle containers and zones). We also support the latest XEN and KVM releases. And we’ve introduced commercial support for Linux containers. – OS level virtualization; on the file system side, we’ve introduced commercial support for Butter MS to rollback changes in a scalable file system like ZFS. And on the tracing side, we’ve introduced support for LTTNG (Next Gen Linux Tracing Toolkit) to give customers the ability at the kernel level to monitor and see how various threads interact and impact OS performance. Earlier this year we released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2. That is supportedon Dell’s latest 12G Servers and IBM System X. We are concentrating on a forward looking developing model so we can deliver the innovation support for latest hardware and chipsets. We do a lot of integration testing with hardware and software partners so that we can achieve greater reliability.

ITIC: SUSE also gets high marks for robust security. What are you doing there?

KK: One reason we haven’t had as many problems is that rivals get used more – security by obscurity. Traditionally, Linux has been more of a back end, behind-the- datacenter door operating system. I t gets used in specific scenarios like thin clients and SUSE benefitted from that. Every OS must be inherently secure and you have to allow it to be and remain secure when you deploy other products like firewalls. SUSE has been working active on both fronts. We’ve submitted all of our platforms for security Carrier Grade certification for both the government and telecommunications industries. There are a number of tools and packages that are part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution such as both IPV 4 and the new IPV 6 support.

ITIC: Can you describe SUSE’s activities with key OEM partners like Microsoft?

MM: Back in November 2006, Novell and Microsoft signed a wide-ranging partnership and patent cross-licensing agreement to ensure SUSE’s continued interoperability with Microsoft Windows. Last July, SUSE and Novell renewed the agreement for four more years to 2016. In addition, in early June, we announced that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and openSUSE can now be run in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Additionally, through SUSE Studio, customers can rapidly develop cloud-ready applications and automatically launch them on Windows Azure, virtually eliminating inefficient manual processes. Through the SUSE Cloud Program, SUSE makes it easy for cloud vendors to offer differentiated services that speed customer acquisition. Many of today’s top global cloud providers offer SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to help IT organizations deliver mission-critical IT services efficiently and cost-effectively in cloud environments. In addition to Microsoft, we have a number of cloud providers that have joined the SUSE Cloud Program including, Amazon Web Services, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, SHI, SGI, Verizon and Vodacom Business. The Microsoft/SUSE alliance jointly sells SUSE Manager and SUSE Studio as part of our solution portfolio. Our strategy is to support mixed environments in the cloud as well as in the data center. And it’s working: to date Microsoft and SUSE have 800+ joint customers worldwide.

ITIC: Can you detail SUSE’s initiatives with other partners like SAP and IBM?

MM: SUSE is the number one Linux platform for SAP customers; over 3,500 SAP customers run on SUSE Linux Enterprise and we provide joint 24×7 technical support leveraging SAP Solution Manager. We’re strategic for SAP in the datacenter and in the cloud supporting SAP HANA / SAP BWA, SAP Business ByDesign and SAP StreamWork Enterprise. With respect to VMware, the vSphere customers are entitled to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server maintenance at no additional cost and they have an option to purchase technical support direct from VMware. Additionally, VMware is standardized on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for all VMware appliances and the vCenter Appliance based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is available now. SUSE and VMware are pursuing joint technical optimizations and go-to-market programs. SUSE also has very strong partnerships with OEM hardware vendors including Dell, HP and IBM. SUSE’s relationship with IBM is equally strong. This spring, we teamed with IBM to deliver SUSE Linux Enterprise on IBM’s PowerLinux servers.

ITIC: What can SUSE customers and the industry expect in the 2012 -2013 timeframe?

MM: We’ve got a very big push involving Cloud Infrastructure and we’ll launch the first SUSE CON conference September 18th – 21st in Orlando – focused entirely on Linux technology and customer partners. By delivering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the cloud, we’re helping customers to increase flexibility and resource utilization while reducing the management burden and risk. Through our overall vendor alliances, we provide our joint customers the ability to take advantage of the most certified applications of any Linux vendor and a robust solution, such as SUSE Studio, for developing and deploying mission-critical Linux workloads on a pay-per-use basis to Windows Azure. One of the main ideas behind the new service is to create a hybrid cloud to enable applications to run across the cloud and servers that customers have more direct access. Earlier this month we announced support for Windows Azure Virtual Machines. This allows customers to move virtual hard disks (VHDs), with the configured systems based on Windows Server or Linux, between the cloud and local servers. So we’ve made it easy for businesses to extend SUSE Linux Enterprise Server-based applications to Windows Azure using the one-click-deployment capabilities of SUSE Studio. We’ve also included automatic maintenance capabilities that will keeps SUSE Linux Enterprise Server up-to-date on the most current security patches, bug fixes and new features, so customers can get peak performance efficiently and cost- effectively.

KK: We have additional products that complement the server OS – various tools and frameworks that enable our customers to standardize, simplify deployment and to manage their Linux infrastructure. We’re finding that in this growing virtual and cloud-based world that these tools are valuable for partners and enterprises. For example, we’ve allowed Dell to use our SUSE OS platform in their OEM Solutions business. These are products that they build and deliver but Dell and our customers can leverage our tools like SUSE Studio that lets them customize the OS and customize the OS for different form factors like turnkey physical or virtual solutions. Dell sells integrated hardware and software and they are specifically targeting enterprises in specific verticals like healthcare – for instance GE [General Electric Co.] for ultrasound and MRI systems. Dell is taking their supply chain expertise and marrying it to our products and tools and you’ll see more of that type of innovation. Through the SUSE Cloud Program, we’re making it easy and efficient for cloud vendors to offer differentiated services that speed customer acquisition. Many of today’s top global cloud providers offer SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to help IT organizations deliver mission-critical IT services efficiently and cost-effectively in cloud environments. In addition to Microsoft, cloud providers that have joined the SUSE Cloud Program include 1&1, Amazon Web Services, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Tencent, SHI, SGI, Verizon and Vodacom Business.

By delivering SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the cloud, SUSE helps companies increase flexibility and resource utilization while reducing risk. Through our alliance with Microsoft, we provide our joint customers with the ability to take advantage of the most certified applications of any Linux vendor and a robust solution, such as SUSE Studio, for developing and deploying mission-critical Linux workloads on a pay-per-use basis to Windows Azure. One of the main ideas behind the new service is to create a hybrid cloud to enable applications to run across the cloud and servers that customers have more direct access.

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