Cloudify from Gigaspaces

Cloudify from GigaSpaces - 3-21-14

Predictions: Tech Trends – part 1 – 2014

RFG Perspective: The global economic headwinds in 2014, which constrain IT budgets, will force IT executives to question certain basic assumptions and reexamine current and target technology solutions. There are new waves of next-generation technologies emerging and maturing that challenge the existing status quo and deserve IT executive attention. These technologies will improve business outcomes as well as spark innovation and drive down the cost of IT services and solutions. IT executives will have to work with business executives fund the next-generation technologies or find self-funding approaches to implementing them. IT executives will also have to provide the leadership needed for properly selecting and implementing cloud solutions or control will be assumed by business executives that usually lack all the appropriate skills for tackling outsourced IT solutions.

As mentioned in the RFG blog "IT and the Global Economy – 2014" the global economic environment may not be as strong as expected, thereby keeping IT budgets contained or shrinking. Therefore, IT executives will need to invest in next-generation technology to contain costs, minimize risks, improve resource utilization, and deliver the desired business outcomes. Below are a few key areas that RFG believes will be the major technology initiatives that will get the most attention.

Source: RFG
Analytics – In 2014, look for analytics service and solution providers to boost usability of their products to encompass the average non-technical knowledge worker by moving closer to a "Google-like" search and inquiry experience in order to broaden opportunities and increase market share.

Big Data – Big Data integration services and solutions will grab the spotlight this year as organizations continue to ratchet up the volume, variety and velocity of data while seeking increased visibility, veracity and insight from their Big Data sources.

Cloud – Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will continue to dominate as a cloud solution over Platform as a Service (PaaS), although the latter is expected to gain momentum and market share. Nonetheless, Software as a Service (SaaS) will remain the cloud revenue leader with Salesforce.com the dominant player. Amazon Web Services will retain its overall leadership of IaaS/PaaS providers with Google, IBM, and Microsoft Azure holding onto the next set of slots. Rackspace and Oracle have a struggle ahead to gain market share, even as OpenStack (an open cloud architecture) gains momentum.

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) – CSPs will face stiffer competition and pricing pressures as larger players acquire or build new capabilities and new, innovative open-source based solutions enter the new year with momentum as large, influential organizations look to build and share their own private and public cloud standards and APIs to lower infrastructure costs.

Consolidation – Data center consolidation will continue as users move applications and services to the cloud and standardized internal platforms that are intended to become cloud-like. Advancements in cloud offerings along with a diminished concern for security (more of a false hope than reality) will lead to more small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to shift processing to the cloud and operate fewer internal data center sites. Large enterprises will look to utilize clouds and colocation sites for development/test environments and handling spikes in capacity rather than open or grow in-house sites.

Containerization – Containerization (or modularization) is gaining acceptance by many leading-edge companies, like Google and Microsoft, but overall adoption is slow, as IT executives have yet to figure out how to deal with the technology. It is worth noting that the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of these solutions is excellent and has been known to be as low as 1.05 (whereas the average remains around 1.90).

Data center transformation – In order to achieve the levels of operational efficiency required, IT executives will have to increase their commitment to data center transformation. The productivity improvements will be achieved through the use of the shift from standalone vertical stack management to horizontal layer management, relationship management, and use of cloud technologies. One of the biggest effects of this shift is an actual reduction in operations headcount and reorientation of skills and talents to the new processes. IT executives should look for the transformation to be a minimum of a three year process. However, IT operations executives should not expect clear sailing as development shops will push back to prevent loss of control of their application environments.

3-D printing – 2014 will see the beginning of 3-D printing taking hold. Over time the use of 3-D printing will revolutionize the way companies produce materials and provide support services. Leading-edge companies will be the first to apply the technology this year and thereby gain a competitive advantage.

Energy efficiency/sustainability – While this is not new news in 2014, IT executives should be making it a part of other initiatives and a procurement requirement. RFG studies find that energy savings is just the tip of the iceberg (about 10 percent) that can be achieved when taking advantage of newer technologies. RFG studies show that in many cases the energy savings from removing hardware kept more than 40 months can usually pay for new better utilized equipment. Or, as an Intel study found, servers more than four years old accounted for four percent of the relative performance capacity yet consumed 60 percent of the power.

Hyperscale computing (HPC) – RFG views hyperscale computing as the next wave of computing that will replace the low end of the traditional x86 server market. The space is still in its infancy, with the primary players Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) SeaMicro solutions and Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) Moonshot server line. While penetration will be low in 2014, the value proposition for HPC solutions should be come evident.

Integrated systems – Integrated systems is a poorly defined computing technology that encompasses converged architecture, expert systems, and partially integrated systems as well as expert integrated systems. The major players in this space are Cisco, EMC, Dell, HP, IBM, and Oracle. While these systems have been on the market for more than a year now, revenues are still limited (depending upon whom one talks to, revenues may now exceed $1 billion globally) and adoption moving slowly. Truly integrated systems do result in productivity, time and cost savings and IT executives should be piloting them in 2014 to determine the role and value they can play in the corporate data centers.

Internet of things – More and more sensors are being employed and imbedded in appliances and other products, which will automate and improve life in IT and in the physical world. From an data center information management (DCIM), these sensors will enable IT operations staff to better monitor and manage system capacity and utilization. 2014 will see further advancements and inroads made in this area.

Linux/open source – The trend toward Linux and open source technologies continues with both picking up market share as IT shops find the costs are lower and they no longer need to be dependent upon vendor-provided support. Linux and other open technologies are now accepted because they provide agility, choice, and interoperability. According to a recent survey, a majority of users are now running Linux in their server environments, with more than 40 percent using Linux as either their primary server operating system or as one of their top server platforms. (Microsoft still has the advantage in the x86 platform space and will for some time to come.) OpenStack and the KVM hypervisor will continue to acquire supporting vendors and solutions as players look for solutions that do not lock them into proprietary offerings with limited ways forward. A Red Hat survey of 200 U.S. enterprise decision makers found that internal development of private cloud platforms has left organizations with numerous challenges such as application management, IT management, and resource management. To address these issues, organizations are moving or planning a move to OpenStack for private cloud initiatives, respondents claimed. Additionally, a recent OpenStack user survey indicated that 62 percent of OpenStack deployments use KVM as the hypervisor of choice.

Outsourcing – IT executives will be looking for more ways to improve outsourcing transparency and cost control in 2014. Outsourcers will have to step up to the SLA challenge (mentioned in the People and Process Trends 2014 blog) as well as provide better visibility into change management, incident management, projects, and project management. Correspondingly, with better visibility there will be a shift away from fixed priced engagements to ones with fixed and variable funding pools. Additionally, IT executives will be pushing for more contract flexibility, including payment terms. Application hosting displaced application development in 2013 as the most frequently outsourced function and 2014 will see the trend continue. The outsourcing of ecommerce operations and disaster recovery will be seen as having strong value propositions when compared to performing the work in-house. However, one cannot assume outsourcing is less expensive than handling the tasks internally.

Software defined x – Software defined networks, storage, data centers, etc. are all the latest hype. The trouble with all new technologies of this type is that the initial hype will not match reality. The new software defined market is quite immature and all the needed functionality will not be out in the early releases. Therefore, one can expect 2014 to be a year of disappointments for software defined solutions. However, over the next three to five years it will mature and start to become a usable reality.

Storage - Flash SSD et al – Storage is once again going through revolutionary changes. Flash, solid state drives (SSD), thin provisioning, tiering, and virtualization are advancing at a rapid pace as are the densities and power consumption curves. Tier one to tier four storage has been expanded to a number of different tier zero options – from storage inside the computer to PCIe cards to all flash solutions. 2014 will see more of the same with adoption of the newer technologies gaining speed. Most data centers are heavily loaded with hard disk drives (HDDs), a good number of which are short stroked. IT executives need to experiment with the myriad of storage choices and understand the different rationales for each. RFG expects the tighter integration of storage and servers to begin to take hold in a number of organizations as executives find the closer placement of the two will improve performance at a reasonable cost point.

RFG POV: 2014 will likely be a less daunting year for IT executives but keeping pace with technology advances will have to be part of any IT strategy if executives hope to achieve their goals for the year and keep their companies competitive. This will require IT to understand the rate of technology change and adapt a data center transformation plan that incorporates the new technologies at the appropriate pace. Additionally, IT executives will need to invest annually in new technologies to help contain costs, minimize risks, and improve resource utilization. IT executives should consider a turnover plan that upgrades (and transforms) a third of the data center each year. IT executives should collaborate with business and financial executives so that IT budgets and plans are integrated with the business and remain so throughout the year.

Future of NAND Flash – Integrators

Future of NAND Flash - Integrators

Dell: The Privatization Advantage

Dell's New Vision

After the buyout Michael Dell spoke to analysts about his five-point plan for the new Dell:

• Extend Dell's presence in the enterprise sector through investments in research and development as well as acquisitions. Dell's enterprise solutions market is already a $25 billion business and it grew nine percent last quarter – at a time competitors struggled. According to the CEO Dell is number one in servers in the Americas and AP, ships more terabytes of storage than any competitor, and completed 1,300 mainframe migrations to Dell servers. (Worldwide IDC says Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is still in first place for server shipments by a hair.)
• Expand sales coverage and push more solutions through the Partner Direct channel. Dell has more than 133,000 channel partners globally, with about 4,000 certified as Preferred or Premier. Partners drive a major share of Dell's business.
• Target emerging markets. While Dell does not break out revenue numbers by geography, APJ and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) saw minor gains over the past quarter year-over-year but China was flat and Russia sales dropped by 33 percent.
• Invest in the PC market as well as in tablets and virtual computing. The company will not manufacture phones but will sell mobile solutions in other mobility areas. Interestingly, he said Dell is a commercial seller more than in the consumer space now when it comes to end user computing. This is a big shift from the old Dell and puts them in the same camp as HP. The company appears to be structuring a full-service model for commercial enterprises.
• "Accelerate an enhanced customer experience." Michael Dell stipulates that Dell will serve its customers with a single-minded purpose and drive innovations that will help them be more productive, grow, and achieve their goals.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Challenges and Competition

With the uncertainty over, Dell can now fully focus on execution of plans that were in place prior to the initial stalled buyout attempt. Financially Dell has sufficient funds to address its business needs and operates with a strong positive cash flow. Brian Gladden, Dell's CFO, said Dell was able to generate $22 billion in cash flow over the past five years and conceded the new Dell debt load would be under $20 billion. This should give the company plenty of room to maneuver.

In the last five quarters Dell has spent $5 billion in acquisitions and since 2007 when Michael Dell returned as CEO, it has paid more than $13.7 billion on acquisitions. Gladden said Dell will aim to reduce its debt, invest in enhanced and innovative product and services development, and buy other companies. However, the acquisitions will be of a "more complimentary" type rather than some of the expensive, big-bang deals Dell has done in the past.

The challenge for Dell financially will be to grow the enterprise segments faster than the end user computing markets collapse. As can be noted in the chart below, the enterprise offerings are less than 40 percent of the revenues currently and while they are growing nicely, the end user market is losing speed at a more rapid rate in terms of dollars.

Source: Dell's 2Q FY14 Performance Review

Dell also has a strong set of enterprise products and services. The server business does well and the company has positioned itself well in the hyperscale data center solution space where it has a dominant share of custom server sales. Unfortunately, margins are not as robust in that space as other parts of the server market. Moreover, the custom server market is one that fulfills the needs of cloud service providers and Dell will have to contend with "white box" providers and lower prices and shrinking margins going forward. Networking is doing well too but storage remains a soft spot. After dropping out as an EMC Corp. channel partner and betting on its own acquired storage companies, Dell lost ground and still struggles in the non-DAS space to gain the momentum needed. The mid-range EqualLogic and higher-end Compellent solutions, while good, have stiff competition and need to up their game if Dell is to become a full-service provider.

Software is growing but the base is too small at the moment. Nonetheless, this will prove to be an important sector for Dell going forward. With major acquisitions (such as Boomi, KACE, Quest Software and SonicWALL) and the top leadership of John Swainson, who has an excellent record of growing software companies, Dell software is poised to be an integral part of the new enterprise strategy. Meanwhile, its Services Group appears to be making modest gains, although its Infrastructure, Cloud, and Security services are resonating with customers. Overall, though, this needs to change if Dell is to move upstream and build relationship sales. In that the company traditionally has been transaction oriented, moving to a relationship model will be one of its major transformational initiatives. This process could easily take up to a decade before it is fully locked in and units work well together.

Michael Dell also stated "we stand on the cusp of the next technological revolution. The forces of big data, cloud, mobile, and security are changing the way people live, businesses operate, and the world works – just as the PC did almost 30 years ago." The new strategy addresses that shift but the End User Computing unit still derives most of its revenues from desktops, thin clients, software and peripherals. About 40 percent comes from mobility offerings but Dell has been losing ground here. The company will need to shore that up in order to maintain its growth and margin objectives.

While Dell transforms itself, its competitors will not be sitting still. HP is in the midst of its own makeover, has good products and market share but still suffers from morale and other challenges caused by the upheavals over the last few years. IBM Corp. maintains its version of the full-service business model but will likely take on Dell in selected markets where it can still get decent margins. Cisco Systems Inc. has been taking market share from all the server vendors and will be an aggressive challenger over the next few years as well. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), EMC, and NetApp Inc. along with a number of smaller players will also test Dell in the non-DAS (direct attached server) market segments. It remains to be seen if Dell can fend them off and grow its revenues and market share.

Summary

Michael Dell and the management team have major challenges ahead as they attempt to change the business model, re-orient people's mindsets, develop innovative, efficient and affordable solutions, and fend off competitors while they slowly back away from the consumer market. Dell wants to be the infrastructure provider for cloud providers and enterprises of all types – "the BASF inside" in every company. It still intends to do this by becoming the top vendor of choice for end-to-end IT solutions and services. As the company still has much work to do in creating a stronger customer relationship sales process, Dell will have to walk some fine lines while it figures out how to create the best practices for its new model. Privatization enables Dell to deal with these issues more easily without public scrutiny and sniping over margins, profits, revenues and strategies.

RFG POV: Dell will not be fading away in the foreseeable future. It may not be so evident in the consumer space but in the commercial markets privatization will allow it to push harder to remain or be one of the top three providers in each of the segments it plays in. The biggest unknown is its ability to convert to a relationship management model and provide a level of service that keeps clients wanting to spend more of their IT dollars with Dell and not the competition. IT executives should be confident that Dell will remain a reliable, long-term supplier of IT hardware, software and services. Therefore, where appropriate, IT executives should consider Dell for its short list of providers for infrastructure products and services, and increasingly for software solutions related to management of big data, cloud and mobility environments.

Cisco, Dell and Economic Impacts

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Cisco Systems Inc. reported respectable financial results for its fourth quarter and full year 2013 but plans on layoffs nonetheless. Meanwhile, Dell Inc. announced flat second quarter 2104 results, with gains in its enterprise solutions and services that were offset by declines in end user computing revenues. In other news, recession has ended in the EU but U.S. and global growth weak.

Focal Points:
• Cisco, a bellwether for IT and the global economy overall, delivered decent fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013 financial results. For the quarter Cisco had revenues of $12.4 billion, an increase of 6.2 percent over the previous year's quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis was $2.3 billion for the quarter, an 18 percent jump year-over-year. For the full fiscal year Cisco reported revenues of $48.6 billion, up 5.5 percent from the prior year while net income for the year on a GAAP basis was $10.0 billion, a 24 percent leap from the 2012 fiscal year. The company plans on laying off 4,000 employees – or about five percent of its workforce – beginning this quarter due to economic uncertainty. According to CEO John Chambers the economy is "more mixed and unpredictable than I have ever seen it." While he sees growth in the public sector for a change, slow growth in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations, EU, and U.S. are creating headwinds, he claims. On the positive front, Chambers asserts Cisco is number one in clouds and major movements in mobility and the "Internet of everything" will enable Cisco to maintain its growth momentum.

• Dell's second quarter revenues were $14.5 billion, virtually unchanged from the previous year's quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis was $433 million, a drop of 51 percent year-over-year. The Enterprise Solutions Group (ESG) achieved an eight percent year-over-year growth while the Services unit grew slightly and the predominant End User Computing unit shrank by five percent. The storage component of ESG declined by 7 percent and is now only 13 percent of the group's revenues. The server, networking, and peripherals component of ESG increased its revenues by 10 percent, with servers doing well and networking up 19 percent year-over-year. Dell claims its differentiated strategy includes a superior relationship model but that has not translated to increased services revenues. Dell's desktop and thin client revenues were flat year-over-year while mobility revenues slumped 10 percent and software and peripherals slid five percent in the same period. From a geographic perspective, the only newsworthy revenue gains or losses occurred in the BRIC countries. Brazil and India were up seven and six percent, respectively, while China was flat and Russia revenue collapsed by 33 percent from the previous year's quarter.

• Second quarter saw an improved outlook in Europe. It was reported that Eurozone GDP rose 0.3 percent, the first positive-territory reading for the Union since late 2011. Portugal surprised everyone with a 1.1 percent GDP jump while France and Germany grew 0.5 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy grew 1.7 percent in the second quarter. According to the revisions, U.S. GDP growth nearly stalled at 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, and rose 1.1 percent in the first quarter of this year (versus the estimated 1.8 percent). Additionally, venture capital has slipped 7 percent this year.

RFG POV: Cisco's financial results and actions can be viewed as a beacon of what businesses and IT executives can expect to encounter over the near term. The economic indicators are hinting at a change of leadership and potential problems ahead in some unexpected areas. The BRIC nations are running into headwinds that may not abate soon but may even get much worse, according to some economists. The U.S. GDP growth is flattening again for the third straight second half of the year and the EU, while improving, has a long way to go before it becomes healthy. This does not bode well for IT budgets heading into 2014 or for hiring. IT executives will need to continue transforming their operations and find ways to incorporate new, disruptive technologies to cut costs and improve productivity. As the Borg of Star Trek liked to say "resistance is futile." While transformation is a multi-year initiative, IT executives that do not move rapidly to cost-efficient "IT as a Service" environments may find they have put their organizations and themselves at risk.

Cloud Expo Showcases Disruptive Technologies – part 2

Big Data - Cloud Expo part 2

Big Data/Cloud Expo Showcases Disruptive Technologies & Future of Enterprise Computing

Big Data - Cloud Expo part 1

Tectonic Shifts

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Bellwether Cisco Systems Inc.'s quarterly results beat expectations while CEO John Chambers opined global business was looking cautiously optimistic. In other system news, IBM Corp. made a series of hardware announcements, including new entry level Power Systems servers that offer better total cost of acquisition (TCA) and total cost of ownership (TCO) than comparable competitive Intel Corp. x86-based servers. Meanwhile, the new 2013 Dice Holdings Inc. Tech Salary Survey finds technology professionals enjoyed the biggest pay raise in a decade last year.

Focal Points:

• Cisco reported its fiscal second quarter revenues rose five percent to $12.1 billion versus the previous year's quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis increased 6.2 percent to $2.7 billion. The company's data center business grew 65 percent compared with the previous year, while its wireless business and service provider video offerings gained 27 and 20 percent, respectively. However, Cisco's core router and switching business did not fare as well, with the router business shrinking six percent and the switching revenues only climbing three percent. EMEA revenues shrank six percent year-over-year while the Americas and Asia Pacific climbed two and three percent, respectively. CEO Chambers warned the overall picture was mixed with parts of Europe remaining very challenging. However, he stated there are early signs of stabilization in government spending and also in probably a little bit over two thirds of Europe. While there is cautious optimism, there is little tangible evidence that Cisco has turned the corner.
• IBM's Systems and Technology Group launched a number of systems and solutions across its product lines, including new PureSystems solutions, on February 5. As part of the announcement was more affordable, more powerful Power Systems servers designed to aggressively take on Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), and Oracle Corp. The upgraded servers are based upon the POWER7+ microprocessors and have a starting price as low as $5,947 for the Power Express 710. IBM stated the 710 and 730 are competitively priced against HP's Integrity servers and Oracle's Sparc servers while the PowerLinux 7R1 and 7R2 servers are very aggressively priced to garner market share from x86 servers.
• Dice, a job search site for engineering and technology professionals, recently released its 2013 Tech Salary Survey. Amongst its key findings was that technology salaries saw the biggest year-over-year salary jump in over a decade, with the average salary increasing 5.3 percent. Additionally, 64 percent of 15,049 surveyed in late 2012 are confident they can find favorable new positions, if desired. Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, stated companies will now have to either pay to recruit or pay to retain and today, companies are doing both for IT professionals. The top reasons for changing jobs were greater compensation (67 percent), better working conditions (47 percent) and more responsibility (36 percent). David Foote, chief analyst at Foote Partners LLC, finds IT jobs have been on a "strong and sustained growth run" since February 2012. By Foote Partners' calculations, January IT employment showed its largest monthly increase in five years. Foote believes the momentum is so powerful that it is likely to continue barring a severe and deep falloff in the general economy or a catastrophic event. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, Foote estimates a gain of 22,100 jobs in January across four IT-related job sectors, whereas the average monthly employment gains from October to December 2012 were 9,700.

RFG POV: While the global economic outlook appears a little brighter than last year, indications are it may not last. Executives will have to carefully manage spending; however, with the need to increase salaries to retain talent this year, extra caution must be undertaken in other spending areas. IT executives should consider leasing IT equipment, software and services for all new acquisitions. This will help to preserve capital while allowing IT to move forward aggressively on innovation, enhancement and transformation projects. RFG studies find 36 to 40 month hardware and software leases are optimum and can be less expensive than purchasing or financing, even over a five year period. Moreover, IBM's new entry level Power Systems servers are another game-changer. An RFG study found that the three-year TCA for similarly configured x86 systems handling the same workload as the POWER7+ systems can be up to 75 percent more expensive while the TCO of the x86 servers can be up to 65 percent more expensive. Furthermore, the cost advantage of the Power Systems could even be greater if one included the cost of development systems, application software and downtime impacts. IT executives should reevaluate its standards for platform selection based upon cost, performance, service levels and workload and not automatically assume that x86 servers are the IT processing answer to all business needs.

Wither Dell?

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

CEO Michael Dell is coordinating a buyout of Dell Inc. for $24.4 billion in the hopes that the company can more effectively go through its transformation if it does not have to deal with reporting results quarterly to fickle investors. Michael Dell's MSD Capital (his investment firm), has teamed with Silver Lake Partners to take the company private. Microsoft Corp. will be assisting in the buyout in the form of a $2 billion loan. If the buyout is successful – which it should be at some price – what does it portend for IT executives and commercial accounts?

To understand where Dell needs to go, one needs to first see where it is. Dell started as a low-cost PC company in the consumer market. It gradually switched to a bifurcated model – PC for consumers and PC and servers for the commercial space, primarily the public, small and medium business (SMB), and large enterprise markets. Over the past six years the company acquired 22 companies – 10 in 2012 alone – and expanded into other hardware components, software and services, including cloud services. But the company has lost its momentum. It lost PC market share and sales in 2012 faster than most of its competitors, which is disastrous for a company that derives more than half of its revenues from end-user computing solutions.

Smartphones and tablets have curtailed the growth of the traditional PC market and Dell's commercial business has not made up for the loss in end-user revenues. In fact, in both businesses Dell is considered a low-cost commodity hardware provider and not a market or thought leader. The company has not fully integrated all of its acquisitions and is struggling to reach its strategic goal of becoming a one-stop shop. The buyout gives the company time to re-think and execute a long-term strategy, reorganize and change its culture. As CEO Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) can attest, a turnaround is a multi-year effort and doing so in public when quarterly results can be volatile is not fun. Thus, the desire by Michael Dell to go private.

While there are a number of challenges that Dell must address, there are two that will make or break the success of the new corporate strategy. The vendor must either exit the end-user computing market or once again become a market leader. It is lacking products in the key current and future end-user markets and it cannot regain its position with just PC solutions to hawk. Secondly, Dell has not been able to transition from a culture of transaction selling to one of relationship sales. If the vendor is to become one of the top one-stop providers in the commercial space, it will have to invest in customer relationship management. This is a massive cultural change that goes to the core of the company. HP has struggled with the clash of this cultural divide since it acquired Compaq in 2002. IBM Corp. took more than 10 years to change its culture. The underlying question will be whether or not CEO Dell, by trade a transactional salesman, can lead the culture shift to succeed with its new corporate vision.

In addition to the above challenges, there are a number of other key issues to be resolved. IT executive relationships with Dell depend on how these shake out.

Assets.  Dell will need to decide which assets it has today are worth keeping and which are to be shed. In strong customer relationship management organizations, people are a primary asset. Will Dell address this? Additionally, once it has its strategic vision in place, what additional acquisitions are needed to complete the puzzle? Will the new Dell have the funds to acquire the companies it needs or will the buyout end up choking the firm's ability to compete effectively? Dell recently moved into the equipment leasing space. Will it have the wherewithal to remain?

Business Model. What will Dell's new business model be? It will have to compete with HP, IBM and Oracle Corp. – all of whom are innovators, bring more than commodity products and services to the table, and want to own the complete business relationship with their customers. Each has a different business model. Where will the new Dell position itself?

Business Partners and Channels. Dell will have to re-evaluate how it works with business partners and uses various sales and distribution channels. Dell does have a cloud presence but can it leverage it the way Apple Inc. or Google Inc. do? Can it be a full service provider and still utilize business partners and channels effectively? Without strong business partners and channels Dell will not be able to compete effectively.

Microsoft. Microsoft did not become an owner but a lender to Dell. This will cost the company more than just money. Will it restrict the vendor from providing certain products or solutions?

Processes. Dell needs to revamp its development, operations, and sales processes to be fully integrated and customer relationship based. The customer must come first; not the products or services. This will be a long-term change, which may be agonizing at times.

Technology. Today Dell assembles some products and has the intellectual property (IP) for those products and services that the company acquired. Can it leverage the IP and become recognized as an innovator or will the IP assets wither and the talent depart? Over the past year Dell has been bringing on board the resources to take advantage of the assets. Will the new Dell continue down the same path? If Dell stays in the end-user computing space, will it be able to figure out how to do mobility and social (key components to staying competitive)? If not, will it bite the bullet and exit the business?

The company was at one time the leader in the PC arena. Then it became one of the top players. Now it wants to be a leader in the full-service enterprise space where it is not a top player and is losing momentum.

RFG POV: Dell has a long, tough transformation ahead. By going private it will no longer have to worry about the stock market price but will still have to answer to investors. RFG does not expect the company to pull out of any markets in the near term – although the printing and peripherals business is exposed – but a number of the executives and employees whose visions are out of sync with new direction will depart. In the full-service enterprise space Dell will have to be more than a low-cost provider. It must become a hardware, software, and services innovator, determine its positioning vis-à-vis competitors, make additional acquisitions to fill in the gaps, and spend time and resources building relationships that may not yield near-term revenues. Whether or not the stakeholders will allow the company to spend enough money and time to make the conversion is an open question. The fallback position may be to go back to being a low-cost or custom commodity provider to the commercial market.  Moreover, Dell will have to invest in a new end-user computing model, watch its market share shrivel, or quit the space. One thing is for sure – it cannot be all things to all players and must pick its choices carefully. Dell must articulate its strategy to business partners, customers, and employees over the next three to six months or loyalty may falter. In any event, IT executives should expect Dell to provide support and a smooth transition for businesses that are divested, restructured, or sold. IT executives desirous of using Dell as a strategic provider should continue to work closely with Dell, keep abreast of its strategy and roadmaps and factor the knowledge into the corporate decision-making process. Additionally, IT executives should not be surprised or concerned to find the company fails to make the short-list of candidates. There are plenty of options these days.

Big Buys Shifting Markets

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Focal Points:

• Microsoft pushed further into the enterprise arena by announcing its intent to purchase Yammer, a cloud services company that provides enterprise social networking, for $1.2 billion. Yammer is a San Francisco-based company with more than five million registered corporate users. Microsoft intends to fold Yammer into its Office Division but the unit will continue to report to the current CEO David Sacks. CEOs Ballmer and Sacks acknowledged Microsoft plans on integrating Yammer's technology with Office, Office 365, Dynamics (CRM) and Skype. Nonetheless, Microsoft will continue to offer Yammer as a standalone cloud service, too. Additionally, Microsoft has acquired Perceptive Pixel, a provider of large multi-touch displays for an undisclosed sum. The company sells 27-, 55-, and 82-inch LCDs and recently announced the first-ever simultaneous pen and touch technology for its devices. Microsoft has not made any statements about its plans for the unit. The New York-based company was founded in 2006 by Jeff Han, a renowned pioneer in multi-touch technology.
• Dell won the bidding war for Quest Software, a provider of access management, data archiving, database, performance and systems tools, with its bid of $2.4 billion. The purchase price was a 44 percent premium to its March 8th closing price – the date when the acquisition talks first began with Insight Venture Partners. Quest is based in Aliso Viejo, CA and, according to Dell, has 3,850 employees of which 1,279 are software engineers in its R&D organization and 1,440 are direct sales representatives. The company also brings along 4,000 channel partners, which were responsible for 40 to 45 percent of sales. Quest had revenues of $858.2 million in 2011, a year-over-year growth rate of 11.9 per cent but net income fell in half to $43.9 million. Gross margins are at 86 percent and the company has more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Once the deal closes, the Quest software should compose approximately 72 percent of Dell's software revenues.
• Ingram Micro spent $840 million for specialist wireless device and services distribution company, BrightPoint. Founded in 1989, BrightPoint had fiscal year 2011 sales of $5.2 billion, up 44 percent year-over-year. The distributor employs 4,000 people in facilities across 24 countries and claims to have 25,000 B2B customers worldwide. Company executives stated the acquisition enabled the firm to achieve its objective of expanding into the mobility market. Meanwhile, Micron acquired the bankrupt and debt-ridden Japanese DRAM manufacturer Elpida for approximately $2.5 billion. The acquisition doubles Micron's DRAM market share to 24 percent, second only to Samsung Group. With this purchase the DRAM supplier market is now limited to three main providers: SK Hynix Inc., Micron, and Samsung.