On April 10, 2012, HP announced a comprehensive business cloud strategy called the HP Converged Cloud. Building on its existing portfolio of traditional, managed, and private cloud products and services for corporate IT organizations, HP is adding its first public cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. This business cloud computing strategy is well suited for HP because it elevates rather than disrupts existing corporate IT models for customers and HP. It responds to rising customer interest in cloud computing while remaining focused on HP’s core strengths of IT managed services and premium hardware systems based on open industry standards.

HP’s most recent financials reveal just how fundamental IT services and enterprise servers, storage and networking hardware are to its business (HP Q1 2012 Net Revenues, $30.7B total):

Source:  HP, 2012

With a quarterly run rate of $9B in net revenue and $0.9B in earnings from outsourcing, technology and consulting services fees, HP has the expertise, staffing, business processes and credibility to build and operate world class cloud data centers for its customers.  With a quarterly run rate of $5B in net revenue and $0.6B in earnings from enterprise storage, server and networking systems sales, HP is heavily dependent on business and technology cycles that drive customers to replace systems on a regular basis.  HP benefits from cloud adoption both when its customers buy systems for private or hybrid cloud environments and when they buy public cloud services delivered from HP or HP service provider customer data centers filled with HP systems.

HP’s Converged Cloud strategy aligns well with what organizations are looking to get from cloud computing and cloud providers.  According to our Q1 2012 Enterprise IT seven-country survey, the most important factor when selecting cloud services and providers is the ease of managing the solution.  Since the easiest type of management is relying on a trusted 3rd party to be responsible for management, HP will benefit from having a top management services practice that can itself exploit the HP Converged Cloud Architecture to manage public, private and hybrid cloud data centers for customers.

In announcing the HP Cloud Services Ecosystem partner program as part of the HP Converged Cloud, HP is asserting its position as a leader in the multi-player cloud ecosystem.  This signals to HP’s current and future partners that HP is committed to a collaborative approach for pursuing cloud opportunities and responding to customer needs. HP describes this program as a step on the path toward an HP Cloud Services Marketplace that will offer customers the experience of purchasing HP and partner cloud services using one account and billing statement. HP’s new partner ecosystem is already enabling HP to elevate its portfolio far beyond its traditional managed Microsoft and SAP services.  Launching this marketplace in the next year could prove to be the most important element of HP’s cloud vision in the long term. 

For more analysis, see our Extended Enterprise Software Strategies Insight, HP Converged Cloud Manages Customer Needs and Its Own Strengths in the Cloud.

Post or send your comments to mlevitt@strategyanalytics.com

Mobility and the “Real Time” Enterprise

A Techcrunch article about Jive’s new app marketplace over the past week got me thinking again about the role of mobility and social media in the enterprise. In another survey concerning “web-workers”, it is alleged that 85% of workers use their mobile phone as their primary communications device, 60% use VoIP with only 46% using fixed line communications as a primary communication tool. Both mobility and social media are important enterprise tools.

• In recent years, as businesses have started evolving toward more people-centric collaborative environments powered by wikis and other social software solutions, real time has become an integral part of the social software stack that colleagues use to communicate and work together.

Not one player has successfully extended a social revolution to the enterprise successfully.

Major ISVs and enterprise vendors have attempted to integrate social media into the enterprise, including Microsoft with SharePoint with its wiki-style pages and built-in messaging, and Salesforce.com with a Twitter-style Chatter service, but nobody has really succeeded.

The challenge for enterprise social media is two fold. First, most enterprises have corporate standards governing firewalls, security and licensed software, which is installed and maintained by IT departments and secondly the web world of beta software, open standards and an “anything-goes” kind of approach to social networks and information sharing is incongruous to corporate IT environments.

Jive are one company looking to change that, but whether Jive’s blend of open APIs, an open app marketplace and installed software can successfully bring these two worlds together remains to be seen. After all, Google is now making inroads into business with the most complete offering of these two components so far, Google Apps.

Essentially, however, the issue comes from the fact that there’s little cognizance of business process activity that generally takes place within traditional ERP, CRM and supply chain systems. These traditional applications address critical functions in the enterprise that are closely tied activities that can be measured in the form of increase revenue or reduced costs. 

• Also, from a user point of view, “making it look like Facebook, doesn’t make it Facebook”, even if it helps a user to navigate through familiarity! Consider that Linked In has 35 million members compared to over 400 million for Facebook!

Mobility is becoming a key part of enterprise strategy, and companies face the simultaneous challenge of trying to integrate both social media and mobility (as well as enabling social media platforms on mobile platforms).

• Add to this the task of managing individual liable devices within companies, and the challenge facing IT departments seems even more daunting. IT managers then face a critical decision between tightly “ring -fenced” corporate environments or take the altogether riskier approach of opening up their environments altogether.

The smartphone market just took another surprising turn in a year where the battleground around mobile operating systems has become more intense than it has ever been, as HP acquired Palm for $1.2 Billion.

It has been well documented that Palm’s innovative WebOS has struggled to gain a sufficient foothold in the market, and sell-through has lagged because carrier promotion has been limited. Recently Palm has essentially been shipping a 6 month old device  with limited differentiation along with suffering from mounting channel inventory issues at key carriers such as Verizon and Sprint. Outside North America, sales have also been significantly lower than expected.

While both companies had a proud history in the PDA market (including the iconic Palm V and iPaq), both companies have struggled to gain a serious foothold in the smartphone market.

 

 

Whilst $1.2B seems a high price on the face of it, there is clearly and  it makes sense as there are clear synergies, and almost as importantly, a cultural fit, with various ex-Palm employees such as Todd Bradley and Satjiv Chahil present in HP’s PSG team.

• HP lacks presence and a clear direction in its smartphone business. The acquisition of Palm offers great mobile operating system IP as well as product development. It builds out the missing mobile part of the HP jigsaw.
• Palm lacks the channel distribution, efficient supply chain and reach. It lacked the funds to accelerate its product launches and refresh cycles. HP offers Palm the ability to resolve these issues and extend its reach in carrier channels, as well as opening up new channel opportunities.
• HP has spent years optimizing its supply chain capabilities, something that Palm has found a constant challenge.
• HP could potentially be acquiring Palm as a proactive move to prevent competitors getting hold of valuable IP in WebOS. It also warns competitors away from attacking Palm with patent infringements.
• The move would allow HP will offer the valuable WebOS to licensees, potentially creating a rival to Android? Palm’s perceived value is more closely linked to its software and platform development than specifically to its devices. Under one parent, platform fragmentation could be kept to a minimum. It is unclear if there is an intention to take this path at the moment.
• HP could potentially be acquiring Palm as a proactive move to prevent competitors getting hold of valuable IP in WebOS. It also warns competitors away from attacking Palm with patent infringements.
• The acquisition offers HP the ability to scale, WebOS for an emerging tablet and larger device business, where it is a leader and where Microsoft’s Windows Operating System is not the answer.
• The forthcoming Windows Phone 7 Series looks likely to offer little in the way of customisation for mobile operators. Clearly the acquisition of Palm allows HP to put something differentiated into the market.
• HP now has a mobile piece with which to integrate its enterprise software offerings and target the mobile worker, supported by its global services business.

More details of the deal will obviously emerge in the coming days, but what is certain is that HP will increase investment in WebOS, which it perceives to be the leading mobile platform which will offer a serious and credible mobile string to the bow of a formidable, global, tech giant. Interesting (and competitive) times for the mobile devices market indeed!

Andrew Brown

After much excitement and expectation, Microsoft finally unleashed its “Tron-like” Windows Phone 7 Series Operating System on the world at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (the term series apparently refers to the phones that will be announced throughout the year, not a variety of OS flavours as in the past).

What is immediately apparent is the look and feel. The main takeaway is that the phone is of secondary importance, with all the focus on the interface. The design and layout of 7 Series' UI (internally called Metro) is original, utilizing what lead project designer(Albert Shum, formerly of Nike) called an "authentically digital" and "chrome-less" experience. Microsoft has been praised for moving away from the stamping its PC legacy all over the OS as in the past, with only a single hardware button indicating it’s a Windows Phone at all.

First impressions are positive-the simplicity leaves the user feeling that the OS is fast and responsive, but there are nagging doubts surrounding what Microsoft has stripped out to make this OS snappy-and clearly the OS won’t be compatible with earlier phones given the high specs that Microsoft will demand of its OEM partners.

The new system, centres on "hubs" designed for specific tasks. For example, Windows Mobile 7 Series' People Hub aggregates social networking and email contacts, from Facebook, Windows Live, and webmail accounts among others, enabling the user to interact with their friends across multiple media through a single application."

Microsoft’s launch has been slick and polished-with the fickle majority now saying that the death of Microsoft’s mobile business has been greatly exaggerated.

 

Certainly the key features are all core consumer in nature: Zune integration and XBox Live integration as well as social networking integration for popular sites such as Facebook. Enterprise is still catered for, but less detail was forthcoming outside the “Office Hub”that was announced. It has been suggested that many non-business users that bought a Windows Mobile phone in the past had no idea who manufactured the phone. However, OEMs aligned with the WP7S launch may see their brand stand out more with an OS that is less obviously has “this is a Windows Phone” stamped all over the UI.

Nevertheless, questions remain:

• Lack of clarity on hardware OEM reference designs
• No surprises in OEM partner line-up (does this really mean a chance for Dell and HP to get into this market-I’m not sure)
• Lack of detail on .net CF framework (core for development and enterprise) and what functionality has been stripped out to sharpen OS responsiveness.
• Backwards compatibility and multitasking
• Business Integration with UC and the Cloud: Azure and OCS

What is clear is that a Microsoft mobile OS will finally sit in a (hopefully) compelling set of devices to go up against Android, Symbian and the new iPhone for the Q4 holiday season. For enterprises, if precious little plumbing has been stripped from the OS, then this could be a very interesting platform for business as well.

Andrew Brown

Recently a number of statistics have been thrown into the enterprise cloud computing debate. Some suggest that 20% of companies will forsake all IT assets and utilise cloud services only. This is a very bold prediction to put it mildly. It is true that over 95% of companies globally are SMEs (over 99% in the EU27) and that cloud computing meets many of their needs at face value, but digging deeper the future of cloud computing in business is infinitely more complex…., and frankly, well, cloudy.

If enterprises do adopt cloud computing, it will likely take the form of private or hybrid clouds.

Despite many companies relaxing their demands of just over 5 minutes of unscheduled downtime per YEAR, it is clear that there is a demand for SLAs by companies for cloud providers, and positioning public cloud services for true enterprise ready adoption is not really feasible. Google’s association with public cloud services, for example, may well limit its attempt to penetrate vertical markets like government (Is Android Well Placed for Google's Enterprise Ambitions?), despite limited success to date with Google Apps.

Alliances are already forming to offer private or hybrid services that match the same level of service as in-house IT. For example, the Microsoft-HP alliance is a great example that presents mutually beneficial offerings to both vendors (HP sells Microsoft optimized servers for SQL Server etc and gets its servers into Microsoft’s Azure cloud),  while Cisco, EMC and VMware have also teamed up to offer a cloud infrastructure. Fundamentally, it's about joining forces to sell the hardware and software that will comprise private clouds. Ultimately, though, many of these IT megavendors are complimenting their latest and greatest on-premise solutions with a cloud offering.

The reality remains that many businesses are still wary of cloud computing. Despite some enterprises becoming more comfortable with the Cloud (such as Panasonic’s shift of 300,000 users to Lotus Live) 

Beyond the lack of control and latency are issues of cyber attacks, which can leave companies very vulnerable. The recent attack on Google shows that there are windows into datacenters and in the cloud, a company is only as secure as its weakest link.

While there is a clear desire to slash CapEx, IT spending is set to grow by 4%-5% in 2010, and surveys from companies such as Symantec suggest that cloud computing is far down the list of priorities for spending in 2010 below security, backup and recovery and continuous data protection, essentially core compliance and governance issues.

Enterprise cloud computing is growing fast, but it will be a slower journey than many are predicting.

Andrew Brown

The hype and excitement surrounding the Android platform has intensified with the recent release of Google's own handset running the OS, Nexus One. Offering high levels of user-customisation, social networking integration and a 'desktop-like' mobile browsing experience, the device is very attractive to consumers...but is the operating system anywhere close to ready for the Enterprise? Leaving aside the iPhone effect (consumer desire to use their own smartphones within a company) and the need for corporate devices to have some kind of roadmap (RIM BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices offer this to business via carriers), there are still a baseline set of criteria that a platform should meet: An 'Enterprise-ready' operating system should offer the features required by a mobile user as well as conform to the security policy defined by the IT department: Features

• Wireless access to corporate email (usually Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange), contacts and calendar information, ideally updated via 'push' with no user-interaction required. All information exchanges between the device and the server should be secure. Access should preferably be available via both cellular and WiFi connections.
• Support for Virtual Private Networking (VPN) infrastructure enabling access to internal corporate applications and network resources
• Corporate IP PBX support providing free calls over WiFi when in the office between internal extensions, and landline-to-landline call charges for landline numbers.

Corporate Email: At the time of writing, only Android 2.1 features native Exchange support, although only the Nexus One features this version of the OS. HTC-branded Android devices such as the Hero and the Tattoo both already feature HTC's own Exchange client which supports full mailbox synchronisation including subfolders as well as contact-lookup and out of office support. Other third party applications such as Moxier Mail, Nitrodesk's Touchdown and Dataviz's RoadSync are all Exchange ActiveSync licensees, that support baseline Exchange policies VPN support - Android 1.6 (Donut) brought with it support for Virtual Private Networks, including PPTP, L2TP and IPSec protocols as well as certificate authentication. IP PBX/VoIP Support: SIPdroid is a free-to-use VoIP client for the Android platform that can be used to interface with any IP PBX that supports the SIP standard. Security Naturally there are perils to and open source operating systems (besides fragmentation), such as the ability to freely manipulate and exploit vulnerabilities in the platform. How does Android stack-up here?

• Application-sandboxing: In Android all applications must state what hardware resources and file locations they require access to, and only those areas will be permitted by the operating system. It is not possible to alter these once installed without at least requiring approval by the user. This approval is requested during the initial installation and can be viewed at any point within the Applications setting menu.
• Remote Device Wipe - Although part of the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, it is not currently supported on the HTC Exchange client. This is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0. A third party Exchange ActgiveSync solution would be required to enable this functionality. Any device marked for wipe from the Exchange server will not be able to synchronise any new information, but any information held on that device will not be erased.
• password Usage - It is not possible to enforce use of a password on the Android platform using the Exchange ActiveSync policy without a third party application. Again, this is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0 However it is worth noting that Android does support the use of hand gestures as a form of unlocking a device, rather than an alphanumeric password:
• Corporate Usage Policy - It is not possible to remotely enable or disable hardware or software elements on the Android platform at this point, neither does the OS support on-device encryption. However, companies such as Sybase support the Android platform http://www.sybase.co.uk/detail?id=1064587

All in all, Android is nowhere near mature enough yet for a typical business to support Android as a credible platform. Third party providers may be offering the “plumbing”, but there are still a lack of basic enterprise functionality (policy support, password, remote wipe) to make it a credible choice…yet! Andrew Brown

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA