While the “birth” of a human being is not necessarily an area where many options exist in terms of acquisition, an application does not have to be born from the blood, sweat, and tears of your development team.  In fact, organizations that buy rather than build an application, deliver these projects on time and in budget more often than those that build.

As your application grows into an uncontrollably rebellious teenager, you could look the other way and attempt to change your processes to suit the application; however, 88% of companies choose to invest in changing this bad behavior on the application side rather than implementing changes on the business side.

Like teenagers, eventually the application will grow out of this phase. Of course, this phase is usually followed by the “independent young adult who moves out and doesn’t need smothering anymore and only calls for money” phase, and an application is really no different. Once an application has matured to this stage, don’t call every weekend to see if it has clean socks. Instead, only make business-driven changes if they are mission-critical, and apply at least half of the vendor patches/upgrades to maximize stability and satisfaction among users.

As the years pass, both applications and people reach a stage where they just can’t work anymore.  For people, retirement represents an opportunity to do all those things we always wanted to do, but never had time for.  Knowing when it’s time to pack it in differs from person to person, and the same approach applies to your applications.  Once an application loses its luster, either because it no longer meets the business need or has dropped off the vendor’s support radar, it’s time to suggest Sunday drives, early bird dinners, and lots of golf.

For more information about how you can make a difference in your application’s life, see Info-Tech’s solution set, Managing the Application Lifecycle.

Our research shows that Application Managers who have a roadmap in place are 200% more pleased with the quality of their applications; 4 times more likely to be happy with their ability to manage legacy applications; and 6 times more likely to feel aligned with business needs. These are significant differences that will get noticed. A roadmap will increase your ability to reach your goals and improve your reputation within the organization. Eventually, it will be recognized across the industry that an applications department can be run in a smoother, more efficient manner, and you can either be on the side being looked up to or the side being looked down upon.

Having greater efficiency and fewer unforeseen issues is just the beginning. The roadmap will also help in your communications with the CIO and other department heads. If you want greater input into the key decisions that impact your department, use the roadmap as a microphone and have your voice heard. People are more likely to respect and respond positively to someone who has a well thought out, structured plan, in comparison to someone just winging it. People don’t buy calendars with pictures of application managers, so stop thinking you are a firefighter and start taking charge of your department’s future.

In the old days, IT could shepherd the architectural process along, and needed only strong sponsorship from the business. But as the role of IT shrinks (as most of the speakers expect it to do), and businesses start to access cloud services without the intervention of the CIO, the enterprise architect of the future will need to sit inside a business group. To succeed in that role, the enterprise architect will have to redefine his or her mandate in business terms. How many CEOs believe, in the words of one conference speaker, that the “E” in CEO also stands for “Enterprise architect”? Probably not that many do. As Jeanne Ross, a leading voice in enterprise architecture put it, the enterprise architect will need to engage the business in defining its target capabilities. As long as the organization has the discipline to hold to that vision, the enterprise architect can deliver the right blend of business processes, cloud services, and IT architecture to enable those capabilities.

How exactly that will happen remains an important topic area for future Info-Tech research.

Info-Tech data from Q3 of 2011 indicates that over 40% of senior executives have made cost-management a strategic priority due to concerns about the economic environment. One of the key targets of their scrutiny is the applications portfolio. Managing and maintaining applications costs the typical enterprise about 40% of their overall IT budget.

So how can an applications manager go about trimming costs? Well, the good news is that there is a lot that we can do. The bad news is that most applications managers don’t actually focus on the right tactics. Most people think beating up major vendors on cost is the best approach. Info-Tech numbers indicate that applications managers might have better success starting with some other things.

We talked to IT managers about nine different applications cost control strategies. The four most effective included:

1. Eliminating maintenance on non-core applications.
2. Deploying zero-based budgeting to reduce waste.
3. Introducing greater platform standardization.
4. Triaging development based on effort, since support and maintenance account for between 10 and 20% of effort.

Other strategies can drive value when they are deployed individually, yet add little unique value when deployed in conjunction with the big four. These tactics include:

1. Reducing the number of supported applications. These applications are generally identified during the decision to eliminate maintenance on non-core apps.
2. Optimizing licensing costs paid to major vendors. Again, this reduction is largely accounted for by the identification of non-core apps.
3. Shortening development cycles. This tactic can be important for demonstrating the value of applications to the rest of the organization, yet does little for overall cost reduction.
4. Exploiting alternative delivery models such as SaaS. Effectively exploiting this strategy generally takes too long to be effective as a cost control strategy.
5. Outsourcing development. Outsourcing is valuable for expanding a resource pool and for getting access to domain expertise, but it is rarely effective for cost management.

I should note that these tactics can be deployed for managing discretionary spend, but when it comes to major budget reductions of over 20%, you only have two options: cut people, or cut applications.

The detailed report is available at: Optimize Applications Cost Management

Info-Tech evaluated a number of key vendors in the Customer Service Management space. Although the market for CSM products is well established, it is rapidly undergoing a period of change – the rise of SaaS solutions, social media integration, and a wave of recent consolidations are changing the landscape. Features that were evaluated included resolution workflow tools (such as case management and ticketing), knowledge tools, social support and mobile options. Oracle Siebel and Salesforce.com Service Cloud gained our Champion rating for their extremely strong feature sets and multi-channel integration capabilities. However, these two were rated as champions at a cost – the pricing structure of these vendors was prohibitive for smaller organizations. For small to mid-sized companies looking for a best-of-breed solution, we recommend looking at Assistly (recently acquired by Salesforce) – a lower-cost solution that also gained our Champion rating. ZenDesk and TeamSupport are also good options for SMBs.

Implementation of a CSM platform is a critical step that should have a well-managed process behind it. Begin by establishing a cross-functional implementation team that has representation from both IT and the business. Next, establish points-of-integration between other enterprise applications and customer service channels. In most cases, contact records will be pulled from a CRM system, so linking your CSM platform and CRM suite is particularly important. Most CSM vendors offer out-of-the-box connectors to popular CRM suites, like Salesforce.com. After POIs have been established, train relevant end users. Each group of end users will have different needs – for example, agents will require training on features like resolution workflow management, while customer service managers need to know more about reporting and analytics modules. Segment training efforts according to these user groups. Finally, test the deployment by rolling out a pilot project to a small customer service team and gather feedback. This will highlight deficiencies in architecture and process before the platform is deployed to the entire customer service organization.

For more information, please see Info-Tech’s recently released solution set on selecting a CSM suite.

Social media’s role in our society is growing. It’s being adopted by a wide spread of demographics all over the world. This is where your consumers are hanging out. This is where they are expressing themselves – what they like, what they don’t like, what they want. This is where they are talking about you.

Consequently, many organizations are feeling pressure to jump into this space. Unfortunately, this amounts to a poorly managed Facebook page or neglected Twitter account for those organizations that don’t put enough thought into their planning. At best, these efforts are a waste of resources for the organization, at worst, they can actually be damaging since the information being released isn’t being monitored and regulated. Social media initiatives should be thoroughly planned and managed in order to be effective.

One area of the social media initiative that has been undervalued is the role of social analytics. Analytics should be used to shed light on the results of your project, providing modifications for current efforts and guidance for future ones. Anyone contemplating a social media initiative should also be giving thought to social analytics.

Use of social analytics is most likely to influence social media success

Social Media Management Platforms (SMMP) often include features providing analytical capabilities, and their level of sophistication varies widely. Organizations often find the need to adopt multiple applications – anywhere between 3 and 12 – when trying to create a whole solution to support their social media efforts. Fortunately, there are plenty of vendors in this space to help them achieve this; unfortunately, there are so many vendors in this space, it can be difficult to sort through them.

Some of the vendors currently offering social media support:

When considering a social analytics initiative, there are a couple different types of analysis which have become popular: Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis. Social listening uses text analysis to see what words are being associated with your brand and with competitors’ brands. It reveals:

• Where are the conversations happening?
• What is being discussed?
• Is talk growing or shrinking?
• What is being said about your competitors? Can you capitalize on any weaknesses? Defend against strengths?

On the other hand, sentiment analysis focuses on if people talk about your brand in a positive, negative, or neutral context. You can even go further and  drill down in terms of product or channel, discovering preferred features to be emphasized going forward.

• How do people feel about your brand? Your product(s)?
• Who is spreading positivity?
• Who are people listening to?

The insights derived from these analytics can be applied to multiple departments, such as sales, customer service, and marketing. Consequently, social analytics projects should be treated as a cross-departmental project. One department will likely be driving it, but objectives should be established for each department, and then the actual project should be managed from a central hub, with results disseminated outward.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when planning these projects and choosing vendors is that the immaturity of the market means consolidation is on the horizon. That means a lot of vendors are going to be acquired, stalling, or going bankrupt in the near future, so you do not want to make any long-term commitments to a single vendor. Go into social analytics with short-term goals and an aim for quick results.

For more information on social analytics strategy, see Info-Tech’s Formulate a Social Analytics Strategy.

For more information on selecting and deploying an SMMP, see Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape Plus: Social Media Management Platforms.

Everyone knows that the Europeans are facing a major economic crisis triggered by poor government financial management in the Euro zone. But many managers outside Europe don’t see this as impacting them, especially if their own business is doing well. They are wrong.

All organizations depend on suppliers that operate globally. But they have typically paid little attention to how well the larger suppliers are doing; too big to fail comes to mind. But any global service provider that depends substantially on sales in Europe may see their revenue decline, whether their head office is in Paris, New York or Shanghai. IT Service Providers in particular depend on Europe for a significant proportion of their sales. IBM is at 33% for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Oracle at 31%, EMC at 29% and Cisco at 20%.

Service providers make a lot of changes to protect their profitability when revenue declines, even if they continue to be viable. And some of these changes reduce availability and quality of service (as a result of labor reductions and manufacturing cutbacks) and can slow down product development cycles. If you depend on these service providers to perform at superior levels, and any of these changes happen, they can impair your ability to meet commitments to your organization.

Predictions? There is no magic crystal ball

It’s interesting to speculate how the Euro crisis will evolve and how much damage it will do not only to Greece, France and Germany, but the United States and China. But speculation rarely leads to action, and action is what IT managers need to take when their suppliers face significant potential revenue shrinkage. There is no unanimity among economists other than agreement that the news is bad, so which prediction would you believe?

It’s not feasible to assess the level of risk facing a specific supplier (Nortel comes to mind). Quarterly financial statements are published well after the fact and financial forecasts in uncertain times are not dependable.

Wait or act now? Do you like to gamble?

We can’t predict where the world economy is going and how it will impact global IT service providers. And we can’t assess whether any of our key suppliers is at risk. So most of us will do nothing, and hope that this economic storm bypasses us and our suppliers.  But we can and should make an assessment of where we are significantly vulnerable to supplier deterioration. And we should take steps to identify a plan B in case deterioration becomes apparent.

Identify major risks and build a plan

We recognize the impact of possible negative events on our ability to provide critical services to our organization. We plan contingencies for hurricanes, major power blackouts and disease epidemics. But we don’t generally plan for what to do if a major service provider fails to deliver the level of service or improvements that we have taken for granted.

The Euro crisis has a very high probability of reducing revenues for IT service providers. Some resulting cost reductions will cause deterioration of service. Dependence on service providers has increased. Approach this as you did planning for disaster recovery. Identify the suppliers on whom you depend for excellence of availability and performance of operational services, hardware and software maintenance, speedy equipment and parts delivery. And start identifying contingency plans.

Cue “Eye of the Tiger” – it’s time for a battle royale between security’s top performers. In its recent Vendor Landscape: Annual Security Roundup, Info-Tech selected just six vendors that scored across multiple product categories and pitted them against each other to find out who would emerge victorious.

If you want to get technical, there really are no losers in this battle of security’s best, as each vendor did well in their respective evaluations; however, this wouldn’t be a fight without a victor.

So who was left standing in the ring?

The champion’s corner was actually occupied by two vendors: heavyweight McAfee and middleweight Sophos. All the vendors were evaluated on an extensive MMA (Many, Many Acronyms) list related to their product offerings: UTM/NGFW, IDP, SSL VPN, Anti-Malware, Encryption, SIEM, and DLP, as well as on price, and vendor strength.

What made Sophos and McAfee champs?

Sophos, small in comparison to McAfee, is steadily growing through acquisitions and impressive products. Its solutions tend to offer comprehensive capabilities allowing for optimal protection via the lowest number of deployed tools. Sophos’ solutions are also relatively inexpensive compared to its competitors.

McAfee is one of the most well-known names in the security market. It’s the only vendor that had products across the board: network security, endpoint security and security management (making it the winner of the Innovation Award as well). It features a significant market differentiator in its ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO), a holistic management platform that allows for seamless management of the entire McAfee stack via a single console. Of course, if you want a top name, you’ll be paying a top price; but it might be worth it for a strong product from an equally strong vendor.

Juniper put up a good fight, coming out as an Innovator. This vendor is known for customizable solutions that are ideal for companies where cost is a major concern. But while they have a decent product offering, they suffer in terms of deployment capabilities.

Symantec suffered a few bumps and bruises as a Market Pillar, but still remains the largest security and anti-malware vendor. Part of its positioning was due to its costly and architecturally complex solutions that only hit part marks in terms of advanced features. Symantec’s solution tends to be a “jack of all trades, master of none.” It’s one of the most stable vendors in the market, with broad partner networks and comprehensive support programs. Symantec is an ideal choice for customers looking to start a long-term relationship with a vendor.

The original firewall company, Check Point, came out as another Market Pillar. It has stability in the market, and innovative capabilities with its software blade architecture, which allows enterprises to deploy just the functionalities it requires and manage them centrally. But where it succeeds in innovation, it suffers in price with some of the costlier solutions.

Rounding out the list is Emerging Player Trend Micro. Despite being the third largest anti-malware vendor and originator of reputation-based scanning, Trend has a narrow product portfolio and somewhat expensive products. However, you can’t deny that Trend is still an endpoint protection innovator.

For more information on the best of the best in security, refer to Info-Tech’s Annual Security Roundup.

As a CIO, you can’t stop consumerization. Your choice will fall somewhere in between adopting a limited strategy and an open strategy. A limited strategy allows you to manage and secure PUAs and PUDs with existing technology and limited up-front costs, so they don’t become a liability to your organization. An open strategy encourages the adoption of consumer technology to increase productivity, innovation and user satisfaction, but requires a larger investment for device and application management.

The strategy you choose will depend on several factors:

Once you’ve assessed the state of your organization and the strategy you should choose, you must align your policy, budget, and reimbursement with your chosen consumerization strategy.

In the limited strategy:

• Policies need not be too detailed, as you will be providing almost no access to corporate applications and data. Users will only have access to email, internet, and calendar and must agree to a full mobile wipe in order to use their devices on the corporate network.
• Up-front costs will be low because you will be using free technology like Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync to provide limited access to email, internet, and calendar to employee-owned devices.
• No reimbursement program will be necessary, as the devices and apps will be voluntarily purchased by the employee and not mandated by the organization.

In the open strategy:

• Policy will need to be more specific about which applications and devices are allowed on the network, and which employees will have higher levels of access. MDM, VDI, and VPN will allow for a partial wipe policy.
• The initial investment will be significantly higher for MDM, VDI, and VPN applications, as well as the cost of the devices and applications if there is mandatory adoption.
• Reimbursement programs will vary based on the employee’s need for the devices and applications. For example, employees who require devices for external sales might be fully reimbursed for their device cost while an executive staff member who only needs email and limited corporate apps would get a partial reimbursement.

Once you’ve decided on your strategy, run a pilot program for the application or device with employees in various departments and roles. Establish what metrics will be tracked to determine the success or failure of the technology in your organization. Should you choose to adopt the technology, use your pilot metrics to validate your business case, and submit your request for broader adoption.

Consumerization is nothing to fear, provided you take the time to deal with it effectively. If you don’t act, you run the risk of serious data breaches, which can cost your company far more than it would to actively prepare for consumer technology in the enterprise. Take action now, and save yourself the aggravation!

For more information, please see Choose a Consumerization Strategy.

• 80 new mainframe clients between July 2010 and October 2011.
• 86% year-over-year MIPS growth reported in 2011 Q2.
• The majority of organizations are adding capacity to their mainframes, not reducing capacity.

So what has sparked this comeback?

1. There has long been a steady core set of mainframe clients with no plans to get off the mainframe. Organizations have had 25 years to get off the mainframe, so those who wanted to and could, have done so already. Those who are left are generally committed to this platform for the long haul, whether it’s because they can’t find an alternative that provides the same performance, reliability and security of mainframes or because switching costs and the challenge of migrating applications is too daunting.
2. The introduction of specialty engines — in particular IFLs back in 2000 which added support for Linux — has greatly expanded what organizations can do with mainframes. The ability to run Linux workloads on the mainframe makes it possible to support non-traditional workloads, such as web applications, BI, and even social media.
3. The zEnterprise 196, released in July 2010, and zEnterprise 114, released in July 2011, provide key enhancements over previous System z platforms, and build on the hybrid computing model started with the introduction of specialty engines. For example:

• Both platforms (z196 and z114) add support for Windows Server, as well as IBM Power Systems and System x, via the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX).
• z196 provides up to 60% more capacity than the previous System z platform (z10), as well as new energy efficiency features (water cooling and high voltage DC Power options).
• Z114 is a smaller system (MIPS range of 26 – 3,100), but comes with a correspondingly lower price point (starts at $75K), making it a more-viable option for mid-sized enterprises and thereby expanding the target market for mainframes.

The mainframe still has its challenges. For example, finding skilled mainframe staff continues to be a challenge. However, a steady increase in the number of institutions offering mainframe training in recent years (e.g. over 150 universities and colleges offer mainframe courses) means there is a pool of talent out there, although organizations have to be proactive about finding that talent and allowing new hires time to build experience through a mentorship program.

Similarly, the mainframe is perceived to be more expensive than alternative platforms. However, when you look at TCO, there is a tipping point where the mainframe becomes far cheaper than alternative platforms. For example, the energy costs of a server farm increase with each additional server. By contrast, the mainframe is highly scalable (e.g. the z196 can provide the capacity of thousands of industry standard commodity servers), but all within the same physical footprint, so energy costs stay relatively flat.

Overall, organizations that are on the mainframe today are reinvesting in the platform and have an opportunity with the recent enhancements to get more value out of their mainframe than ever before. While we don’t expect many companies without an existing mainframe to adopt that solution, it’s an option that should be strongly considered.

To learn more about System z, and how to overcome resourcing and cost challenges, please see Info-Tech’s solution set Maximize the Value of IBM Mainframes in My Business.

Well, that was interesting! CES 2012 is in the history books, and it was quite an event. If you’ve never been to CES, it’s one of those things you should do at least once in your life if you’re a technophile. There is a but – it is completely exhausting. Some CES 2012 facts and figures to consider:

• 153,000 attendees, including 34,000 international
• 3,100 exhibitors across 1.861 million square feet
• More than 20,000 new products introduced

If you’re thinking “wow, that’s a lot of ground to cover,” you’re right. We spent 4-6 hours a day walking around the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas Hilton, and The Venetian, and probably saw less than half of the exhibits. So if you go, be prepared to deal with the consequences – very sore feet.

We talked about some of the keynotes and ultrabooks (one of the stars of the show), and mentioned tablets, but what else was worth seeing? Well, we heard Robert Kyncl from YouTube talking up the changing video consumption landscape, reinforcing Google’s commitment to spend $100 million developing quality content on 100 new channels. If ultrabooks were one of the stars of the show, TVs were the other. We saw a slew of smart TVs from all the usual suspects (Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Sharp), as well as the fruits of a Google/Marvell partnership in the form of an over-the-top box running Android – apps and all. This is actually quite interesting, as an Android-running TV could have some productivity applicability. The other side of TVs was simply the rapid evolution of the technology. We saw an absolutely stunning 55″ OLED TV from LG that won “best of show” and will start shipping in Q3 of this year (Samsung demoed one too, but no ship date yet). It is impossible to describe how beautiful the picture was on this TV – you have to see it to understand. Also on display were 4K (~4000×2000 resolution) and 8K (~8000×4000 resolution). Again, impossible to describe the picture, but imagine a picture so clear and sharp that it appears to have layers – almost 3 dimensional.

Info-Tech’s CIO, Gord Harrison, attended the show for the first time this year, and when we talked about the value he said he was glad he came, but didn’t get a lot of value for himself. Going forward, he’ll refer to our coverage to stay abreast of the new technologies introduced at CES. I think that’s good advice for most CIOs – attend at least once for the experience, but you probably don’t have to go every year.

We started the day at the Innovation Power Panel keynote moderated by the CEA’s Gary Shapiro featuring Alan Mulally from Ford, Ursula Burns froom Xerox, and John Stratton from Verizon. It was an interesting discusssion focused on innovation and touching on public policy, government finances, and education. Clearly, these corporate leaders are acutely aware of the need to continue innovating to keep their companies, and their country competitive.

We spent the rest of the day booth hopping on the show floor. Again, plenty of interesting things to see, most of which are not terribly relevant for this blog. We got some hands-on time with the Samsung Galaxy Note – a 5 inch smartphone-tablet crossover. It’s quite nice, and I could see using it. There are a handful of quad-core Android tablets being unveiled to follow the Asus Transformer Prime, like the new Acer Iconia.

More to come tomorrow in our day 3 wrap.

While on-premise deployments remain the gold standard for email archiving, cloud deployments are increasing in popularity. The stigma of the cloud as a data security liability is fading, as new technologies for cloud encryption of data become available, preventing the cloud provider form decrypting corporate data.  As the perception of risk decreases, and archiving portfolios grow to include more types of content, more organizations will adopt cloud solutions. However, although popularity is increasing, the cloud is not right for every organization.  Savvy vendors are providing a hybrid architecture, which incorporates the advantages of both cloud and on-premise solutions, offering the best of both worlds: the unlimited scalability of the cloud, with the data security and data loss prevention of an on-premise solution.

When it comes to email archiving, overbuying remains a key issue. Email archiving isn’t cheap. Without a strong driver stemming from a storage performance or compliance needs, email archiving is unlikely to provide enough of a return to justify its cost.  The first step in platform selection is to understand what your needs are. In terms of features, a debate in email archiving revolves around stubbing. While Microsoft discourages stubbing, it does have some real and tangible benefits.  Stubbing strips attachments from emails in the Exchange server and replaces them with a link to the archive, freeing up valuable disk space. This comes at the cost of the end user’s mailbox experience: searching for emails becomes more difficult and less snappy. Before selecting a platform consider whether stubbing is a risk your organization is willing to take.

The last time Info-Tech evaluated this market, Microsoft was a new entrant with an optional Exchange 2010 Archiving feature, for those with Exchange eCALs. While Info-Tech did not compare Microsoft’s archiving product to the rest of the market, since it did not pass our screening criteria for multi-platform support, our research found Microsoft has made little inroads into the email archiving space. The space remains dominated by platform-independent vendors.

Once you have your operational and compliance requirements set out, it’s time to choose a vendor. In the solution set Vendor Landscape Plus: Email Archiving, Info-Tech evaluates eleven top competitors in the email archiving market space.  So who are our market champions?

CommVault was the overall VL Champion. The Simpana product offers a comprehensive information management suite with holistic archiving beyond just email and instant messaging. A new cloud option has lowered the entry barrier for SMBs to deploy CommVault’s email archiving.

Jatheon wins the Value award for its solid mix of features and usability, at the most competitive cost. Their appliance products remain a popular deployment choice among IT buyers.

Proofpoint wins the innovation award for their utilization of DoubleBlind Encryption™ which has revolutionized cloud data security for email archiving.  This game changing technology will be the trend to watch, as more organizations opt for cloud storage.

Barracuda is a champion once more: it continues to offer a highly secure and functional email archiving appliance at a solid price point.

Steve Ballmer’s opening keynote didn’t really show us much new from Microsoft. They demoed Windows Phone, Windows 8 on ultrabooks and tablets, and Kinect, all of which we’ve seen before. The most interesting announcement was the availability of Kinect on Windows starting on February 1st. The keynote style was – well, interesting. Ryan Seacrest of American Idol fame interviewed Ballmer, asking prepared softball questions  with demoes peppered throughout.

Paul Otellini’s day 1 closing keynote was more interesting. Intel is making big strides forward in processor architecture, fueling the bevy of ultrabooks being announced this week. The most important part of the keynote in my mind was Intel’s clearly agressive – albeit very late –  entrance into the mobile processor market. They will finally have OEMs shipping Atom 32nm (code named Medfield) processors in smartphones and tablets later this year. Lenovo announced a Medfield-powered smartphone for the Chinese market in Q2 of this year, and the big multi-year, multi-device partnership announcement with Motorola Mobility should net smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year. Dell introduced its first foray into the ultrabook market with the XPS 13  - the enterprise-ready XPS 13 with the Trusted Platform Module and other enterprise features. Finally, Intel showed off some of the Mobile Device Management and security features coming out of the McAfee purchase.

An interesting day 1 – more to come over the next couple of days.

It’s a new year, and for 150,000 techies, geeks, and gadget hounds, it’s time to make the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). As an analyst firm focused on providing research and advisory services to enterprise IT departments, Info-Tech has not traditionally had much of a presence at CES. I attended in 2010 at the beginning of the tablet craze because we saw what was starting to happen with the consumerization of IT. We kept a close eye on it last year as tablets truly dominated the show, but didn’t have a presence at the show. This year we believe the consumerization of IT is in full swing, and we will be sending a contingent to cover the show and report back to our clients on what kinds of technology they should expect to see users bringing in to the corporate environment.

I will be accompanied by Research Analyst, Mike Battista, as well as our videographer/producer, Brian Garside, our CIO, Gord Harrison, and our Infrastructure Manager, Dave Kernohan. Also making the trip from our Indaba division are Ian Alexander and Ben DuVal. Gord and Dave will be looking at the technologies that they can expect to see coming in to Info-Tech’s IT environment. Mike and I will be focusing on sniffing out the consumer tech that our clients should be aware of. We’ll be looking at the bevy of Ultrabooks being unveiled, Smart TVs, smartphones, and of course tablets – with a focus on those running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Windows 8. We’ll be covering Steve Ballmer’s final CES keynote, as well as keynotes from Intel’s Paul Otellini, the Power Panel featuring Xerox, Ford, and Verizon, and Paul Kyncl from YouTube/Google. We’ll also be visiting a whole lot of vendor booths, including Samsung and LG. It’s going to be a busy few days, so stay tuned for plenty of interesting coverage from Las Vegas.

Earlier this week RIM reported disappointing revenue and earnings – on lowered fiscal Q3 guidance. We might expect this from RIM – in fact they did better than I expected. RIM is on the burning platform that Nokia’s freshly appointed CEO, Stephen Elop, made Nokia jump from less than a year ago. I could go on and on about RIM – how they missed every cue at every turn – but there is a bigger issue at hand.

Oracle reported disappointing fiscal Q2 results today, and that was much ‘less expected’. Why the quotes? Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. In its coverage, Forbes.com said “The company blamed the weak quarter on delays at some customers in getting deals approved, and a product transition in the hardware business.” Why were there delays in getting deals approved? I’m not a software guy, but it’s pretty widely known that Oracle is really, REALLY expensive. Could it be that CIOs are getting thrifty? Could CIOs be looking for more ‘bang for the buck’?

While I personally revile a ‘sky is falling’ and ‘slash and burn’ philosophy, I firmly believe CIOs are getting wise, and thrifty. I talk to clients all the time that are not seeking to slash costs, but to get the most value for their spend. As they should! We could get into a very long, deep discussion about what it means to be fiscally responsible as a CIO, but the bottom line is every responsible CIO wants to be as fiscally responsible as is permissible. You’d much rather cut some Oracle licensing costs than fire productive staff, wouldn’t you?

At the end of the day, we will undoubtedly see a shift from unrequited vendor dedication to value-based vendor selection. If you love Oracle, but they don’t love you back, and they charge you exorbitant licensing, maintenance, and support fees every year, you’re eventually going to leave them. And it’s most certainly not just Oracle – it’s decidedly any vendor that doesn’t love you back. You dedicate your life to them, you give them stacks of money, and they shun you – that’s not right, is it?

Who is the vendor not loving you back? Is it Oracle? Cisco? RIM? Microsoft? HP? VMWare? Citrix? We all have at least one – make sure they know who you are.

Trends in applications can have serious (and sometimes disastrous) impact on businesses if they adopt too early, or they wait too long to join the wave of change. App-related trends affect the very people, processes, and technologies that drive agility, productivity, and opportunity for all businesses.

Generally speaking, the earlier a trend is adopted, the riskier it is to the business due to the unproven, untested, and volatile state of many emerging trends. However, that risk can be one of great gain if the trend succeeds in becoming an established and common practice.

Businesses that choose to wait too long run the ever-increasing risk of being swamped by the cresting wave and falling well behind the competition;  sometimes so far behind that the road back can be virtually insurmountable. This in turn can cause great pain and hardship for businesses as they try to re-tool or re-invent themselves in an attempt to gain back their former glory.

Active trends that fall under the Applications Social banner include:

• Crowdsourcing
• Social Media
• Collaboration
• Predictive Analytics

Active trends that fall under the Applications Development banner include:

• The Cloud
• Mobility
• Business Developer
• Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

These topics, trends, and areas of concern are top-of-mind right now in many discussions regarding future directions in applications and application development. But does the reality match the hype? If they do have value who, what, when and where are these developments appropriate?

The best advice anyone can provide for organizations, is that wisely choosing the right wave to ride, can propel your business to the forefront—ahead of your competitors. But, choosing the wrong wave, or not riding at all, can leave your business languishing in the wake of the competition.

Use the power of human connectivity, along with new and enhanced applications to connect with customers, co-workers, and business partners. Remain competitive with applications that are accessible, maintainable, intelligent, and connected to the business resources. Get the attention of business leaders with cost savings, productivity gains, business agility, and new opportunities.

For more information about Apps trends, visit the Info-Tech solution set, Understand Hot Trends in Applications.

In an era of infrastructure budget constraints, Infrastructure Managers are finding it difficult to find the additional budget to secure the network against personal and unmanaged devices. However, it’s going to cost your organization more in lost time and increased risk over the long term if action isn’t taken to manage PUDs now.

Info-Tech recently published a solution set to help Infrastructure Managers understand and manage the consumerization of IT. The set enables managers to:

• Define the scope and drivers of PUD influx
• Understand the tools available to manage the impact of PUDs on the organization
• Design a strategy to deal with PUDs in a long term and cost-effective fashion

PUDs require a new way for end users to interact with the organization’s infrastructure, and can enable them to be more productive. Use Info-Tech’s research to develop a strategy to deal with these PUDs sooner than later.

The big-name security players such as Check Point, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro all bought into the market. Few vendors are actually creating their own endpoint encryption solutions, except CREDANT and Canadian company, WinMagic. These vendors may find themselves with acquisition targets on their backs.

So which vendors ended up coming out on top?

Check Point and Sophos led the way with their endpoint encryption solutions, Full Disk Encryption and SafeGuard Enterprise respectively. Both vendors scored well for their advanced features and price – Check Point’s solution was the most affordable of the bunch with Sophos not far behind.

Up next was CREDANT as an Innovator. It scored well for its advanced features set, particularly due to its focus on policy-based encryption that allows for more flexibility, though can demand a higher management cost than traditional FDE solutions.  However, it’s one of the pricier options.

The Market Pillar division saw some of security’s most recognizable names: McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec.

McAfee’s endpoint encryption solution was strong, especially with McAfee’s market differentiator, the ePolicy Orchestrator that allows seamless management of the entire McAfee stack via a single console. However, where the vendor scored less was in terms of pricing – McAfee’s solutions are among the most expensive.

Trend Micro offers competitive pricing with strong advanced features. But with its recent acquisition of Mobile Armour (Trend entered the encryption game late in 2010), integration issues could crop up. While Mobile Armour has been around for awhile, Trend does not have the experience in support for the product which would cause problems for customers needing help.

Symantec rounds out the Market Pillar category. Its PGP Line of products is broader than just endpoint encryption, encompassing email systems and fileservers in a broad encryption ecosystem. But Symantec will cost you – its solutions were the most expensive out of all the vendors evaluated.

Emerging Players were WinMagic and Trustwave. Independent, encryption-focused vendor WinMagic may be small but it’s growing with a key partnership with Lenovo with their SecureDoc solution. Trustwave offers full disk encryption as part of their managed services – the only vendor to offer managed services – which also includes a portfolio of security services for enterprises looking for a cost effective security option.

Trustwave also won the Innovator award for its unique Persistent File Encryption (PFE) feature that protects data in transit and at rest using Smart Tags. These tags protect only the data, not the devices it’s on, so data is protected no matter how it’s shared.

For more information on these Endpoint Encryption vendors, refer to Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape: Endpoint Encryption.

Middleware has come a long way from its roots in connecting new technologies to mainframes. Solutions have grown to include pre-built adapters for major systems across all platforms, devices, and data sources. The Vendor Landscape will help you:

• Catch up on what’s new in the past year
• Evaluate vendors and solutions
• Determine the best fit with your organization

Leading middleware solutions are mature and well supported, so the decision may not be based on selecting the “best” product or the “best” vendor.

Looking for the least costly solution?  The cost of using middleware is higher than the cost of buying the software, and both are far lower than the potential benefits. So, selection decisions need to consider more than cost.

The decision needs to incorporate an assessment of your particular needs, including the particular systems that need to be integrated.  Staffing, skills, and existing technologies need to be carefully considered, because middleware adds value by helping your developers get better.

Our Application Integration Middleware Vendor Landscape can help you narrow the options as you look inward for the best fit.

If you are focused on process, including document capture, workflow management, and document output, check out Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape: Enterprise Content Management for Process Workers. If you are focused on knowledge management, including collaboration, information organization, and governance, check out our Vendor Landscape: Content Management for Knowledge Workers. These Vendor Landscapes will help you:

• Understand what’s new in the Content Management market.
• Evaluate Content Management vendors and products based on your organization’s unique needs.
• Determine which products are most appropriate for your particular scenario.

A common thread across both of these Vendor Landscapes is the growing value being placed on mobility and social media functionality. Mobile information access and capture are priorities, as are options like wikis, web content management, and tagging.

Also, across both of these Vendor Landscapes, open-source vendors (Nuxeo and Alfresco) showed compelling value in markets dominated by major players like IBM, OpenText, and EMC.

Let our Vendor Landscapes help you understand the market and make the right choice for your business needs. Enjoy!

Info-Tech’s research shows that the following six points are the major contributors to the success of innovation in IT departments:

• Business buy-in. You have to get the business excited and involved in IT innovation.
• Time and resources for innovation. Don’t expect your employees to innovate on their own time; it can still happen, but not nearly as much.
• IT awareness of business strategy. Make sure the IT department understands what problems they are trying to solve.
• Diversity of experience. Innovation thrives on a variety of experiences, both at the individual and the team level.
• Idea exchange: innovation is a collaborative activity; foster collaboration.
• Recognition of IT innovators: rewards are important to motivating behavior, and innovation is no exception; recognition is the most effective rewards for IT innovators.

Conspicuously absent is a host of other tactics that innovation experts recommend. For example, the conventional wisdom states that you cannot punish innovators for failed innovations; you have to provide a safe environment for innovation, where lack of success does not impact the innovator’s career. In fact, the survey shows that this tactic has no impact on IT innovation success (Info-Tech defined success using six business-impact success metrics). You have to provide the time and tools for innovation and you have to reward success, but you don’t have to make it a risk-free activity to get participation.

For more details, please see the Info-Tech solution set on how to Build a Culture of IT Innovation.

1. What problems are you trying to solve where you think metrics might help?
2. Which metrics will help you solve that problem?
3. How long do I need to keep tracking this data?

What problems are you trying to solve where you think metrics might help?

With metrics, less is more, and the first step to whittling down the number of metrics you are tracking is to start with what problem you are trying to solve.

“Until you stabilize the environment, unless you know that your customers can access a stable, reliable, available and predictable environment, nothing else matters.  You’re constantly going to be throwing money and effort at firefighting if you don’t start by stabilizing the environment.”

- Arvind Aggarwal PMP, Dexter Solutions Inc.

In answering this question, many organizations make the mistake of focusing on cost and value without first ensuring that the ground floor – Service Delivery – is stable, or better yet, optimized. So if you are having difficulty meeting SLA requirements, or having difficulty with capacity management, start there before looking at cost.

Tracking SLA non-conformance is a good way to at least identify the symptoms of the problem, and then you can start thinking about metrics that will help you uncover and correct the root cause.

“Two separate locations were reporting downtime for our SaaS product. We looked at the trend over the week, and discovered both locations experienced outages at the exact same times each day. That prompted investigation into the client’s network status, which uncovered a huge jump in activity at those two locations at those same times. The root cause was a recently installed biometric time clock system from another SaaS provider that bogged down the network at the beginning and end of each shift. This analysis helped the client discover the true root cause, and saved us countless hours we might have spent troubleshooting our product.”

- CEO, SaaS Provider

Which metrics will help you solve that problem?

A good place to start is Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) metrics for technology instability issues. Reliability measures the likelihood or frequency of system failures. Availability measures overall uptime. Serviceability measures how quickly a problem is resolved. Collecting RAS metrics enables you to take a holistic view of how well the infrastructure is meeting the needs of the end users.

For example, if users are complaining about network issues, measuring only availability does not tell the whole picture. If the network experiences 30 one-minute interruptions, then availability may be good but reliability is poor, and at the end of the day what matters is the impact to the end users, whether it’s an availability, reliability or serviceability issue.

In keeping with taking a holistic view of a problem (in this case, apparent network instability), you need to capture an end-to-end view, and that means collecting RAS metrics for your servers, storage, and network to help you narrow down the source of the problem.

Going beyond RAS metrics, consider the specific problems you are trying to solve and the data you need to help solve the problem. For example, if you are consistently underestimating storage requirements, look at metrics that will help you identify root causes (e.g. is there excessive duplication, is there a document retention issue, are certain departments or staff using an abnormally high % of the available storage, etc.).  And remember, less is more.

“Gathering metrics is not enough in itself. You have to determine what types of metrics you need because you could generate a metric for absolutely everything, but what does it tell you?”

- Augustine Amusu, HCA International Limited

How long do I need to keep tracking this data?

It’s necessary to track metrics over a period of time so you can assess trends and identify isolated anomalies vs. systemic issues. However, a common mistake is that once an IT group starts collecting a certain metric, they continue to collect it indefinitely.

There are certain core metrics that you should continue to collect, such as RAS metrics, but there are hundreds of others that should have a limited lifespan. Collecting unnecessary metrics will put you right back where you started: wading through too many individual metrics, or metrics that don’t help drive decisions.

Your safety net to ensure you aren’t continuing to track a metric unnecessarily is to ensure that every metric has an owner, and establish a review schedule for revisiting the purpose of the metric and whether it is still relevant. If it isn’t, stop collecting it, and archive the data, so you can focus on the metrics that do matter.

Summary

By taking the above steps, you can start to take control of your metrics, and turn them from an unwieldy beast to a loyal puppy dog.

To learn more, please see Info-Tech’s solution set Take Control of Infrastructure Metrics.

So when should your organization adopt a standalone CSKM solution versus when should you stick with the basic KM functionality provided by your CRM suite? Info-Tech Research Group recommends looking at your product and service complexity to make that call. If your company has a high degree of product complexity (i.e. large product lines, technically sophisticated products) and service complexity (high volume of customer interactions over multiple channels), a CSKM platform may be right for you. Be sure to take a structured, disciplined approach to platform selection. Listen to the needs of end users and create an RFP with a feature shortlist aimed at creating business value. It’s also useful to keep the broader CRM environment in mind – establishing points of integration between a CSKM platform and other CRM applications is a critical exercise.

The CSKM market is undergoing significant renewal. During the course of our evaluation, two vendors were acquired by Oracle, signaling a renewed commitment by big players to CSKM. Info-Tech evaluated several vendors in the CSKM space. KANA and Moxie were two of the top-tier vendors across a broad range of categories – which included traditional KM features such as knowledgebases and resolution tools, as well as newer categories such as support for social media and mobile access. Other strong players in the market include eGain, Consona, Endeca (recently acquired by Oracle) and InQuira.

When it comes time to deploy the platform, ensure that a strategy is in place for driving end user adoption. Be sure to segment training programs by user group – agents, managers and customers. A knowledgebase is only as useful as its underlying content, so designate an employee (or create a new role) to act as a customer service knowledge manager. This individual should be responsible for the upkeep and accuracy of the knowledgebase taxonomy and articles. Finally, run a pilot project with a small user group (typically segmented by product line rather than channel) and gather feedback on the platform prior to widespread deployment.

Where east-west traffic flows are causing more and more intra-data center network traffic, 10Gbps just doesn’t cut it anymore it in a large environment. Overall, trends around the standardization of network virtualization, and additional industry standards are making proprietary approaches obsolete, but the data center networking landscape is still poised for a lot of change.

New entrants like Force10 (recently acquired by Dell), and Arista Networks are shaking things up and forcing traditional networking vendors to continue to push the envelope, integrate additional features into their core switches, and really focus their efforts on fighting against additional forces. One thing we found particularly surprising was the affordability for new entrants, or lack thereof, like Force10 and Arista. I was going into this Vendor Landscape under the impression that newer vendors would not necessarily be cost leaders, but would be highly competitive. That is certainly not the case. Force10 and Arista had the highest initial capital outlay for the data center network based on our pricing scenario.

On the other hand, you pair Force10 up with Dell and, despite the cost, you have a force to be reckoned within the data center networking market. Arista, on the other hand, is a pure play vendor in an increasingly consolidated market with a smaller reach, and weaker channel, relative to its competitors.

Also surprising was that HP took home the Value Award, presenting the most comprehensive solution for the best price available even compared to Juniper and Brocade. HP was also one of the Champions, along with Cisco and Extreme Networks for providing highly comprehensive solutions with good pricing to go with it, along with strong channel partners and programs to ensure that customers are supported.

However, the story clearly doesn’t end there. There are certain use cases where Avaya, Extreme and Juniper, not cost leaders, will and should win out, like where private clouds are being built. It just goes to show that regardless of what the Vendor Landscape says, there are use cases where the cost is justified depending on your organization’s needs.

For more on the latest Data Center Networking Vendor Landscape, and how everything shook out, please click here.