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.

NoSQL Innovators – Part 3

NoSQL Innovators - part 3

NoSQL Innovators – Part 1

NoSQL Innovators - part 1

Evolution of NoSQL – part 2

Evolution of NoSQL - part 2

Evolution of NoSQL – part 1

Evolution of NoSQL - part 1

Disruptive News from Grape Escape 2013

Disruptive News from Grape Escape 2013

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.

HP Cloud Services, Cloud Pricing and SLAs

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced the HP Cloud Compute made generally available in Dec. 2012 while the HP Cloud Block Storage cloud entered beta at that time. HP claims its Cloud Compute has an industry leading availability service level agreement (SLA) of 99.95 percent. Amazon Inc.'s S3 and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Azure clouds reduced their storage pricing.

Focal Points:

• HP released word that the HP Cloud Compute moved to general availability on Dec. 5, 2012 and will offer a 99.95 percent monthly SLA (a maximum of 22 minutes of downtime per month). The company extended the 50 percent discount on pricing until January. The HP Compute cloud is designed to allow businesses of all sizes to move their production workloads to the cloud. There will be three separate availability zones (AZs) per region. It supports Linux and Windows operating systems and comes in six different instance sizes, with prices starting at $0.04/hour. HP is currently supporting Fedora, Debian, CentOS, and Ubuntu Linuxes, but not Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). On the Windows side, HP is live with Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 while Windows Server 2012 is in the works. There are sites today on the East and West coasts of the U.S. with a European facility operational in 2013. Interestingly, HP built its cloud using ProLiant servers running OpenStack and not CloudSystem servers. Meanwhile, HP's Cloud Block Storage moved to public beta on Dec. 5, 2012; customers will not be charged until January at which time pricing will be discounted by 50 percent. Users can create custom storage volumes from 1 GB to 2 TB. HP claims high availability for this service as well and claims each storage volume automatically is replicated within the same availability zone.
• Amazon is dropping its S3 storage pricing by approximately 25 percent. The first TB/month goes from $0.125 per GB/month to $0.095 per GB/month, a 24 percent reduction. The next 49 TB prices per GB/month fall to $0.080 from $0.110 while the next 450 TB drops from $0.095 to $0.070. This brings Amazon's pricing in line with Google Inc.'s storage pricing. According to an Amazon executive S3 stores well over a trillion objects and services 800,000 requests a second. Prices have been cut 23 times since the service was launched in 2006.
• In reaction to Amazon's actions Microsoft's Windows Azure storage pricing has again been reduced by up to 28 percent to remain competitive. In March 2012 Azure lowered its storage pricing by 12 percent. Geo-redundant storage has more than 400 miles of separation between replicas and is the default storage mode.

More Risk Exposures

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Hackers leaked more than one million user account records from over 100 websites, including those of banks and government agencies. Moreover, critical zero-day flaws were found in recently-patched Java code and a SCADA software vendor was charged with having default insecurity, including a hidden factory account with password. Meanwhile, millions of websites hosted by world's largest domain registrar, GoDaddy.com LLC, were knocked offline for a day.

Focal Points:

• The hacker group, Team GhostShell, raided more than 100 websites and leaked a cache of more than one million user account records. Although the numbers claimed have not been verified, security firm Imperva noted that some breached databases contained more than 30,000 records. Victims of the attack included banks, consulting firms, government agencies, and manufacturing firms. Prominent amongst the data stolen from the banks were personal credit histories and current standing. A large portion of the pilfered files comes from content management systems (CMS), which likely indicates that the hackers exploited the same CMS flaw at multiple websites. Also taken were usernames and passwords. Per Imperva "the passwords show the usual "123456" problem.  However, one law firm implemented an interesting password system where the root password, "law321" was pre-pended with your initials.  So if your name is Mickey Mouse, your password is "mmlaw321".   Worse, the law firm didn't require users to change the password.  Jeenyus!" The group threatened to carry out further attacks and leak more sensitive data.
• A critical Java security vulnerability that popped up at the end of August leverages two zero-day flaws. Moreover, the revelation comes with news that Oracle knew about the holes as early as April 2012. Microsoft Corp. Windows, Apple Inc. Mac OS X and Linux desktops running multiple browser platforms are all vulnerable to attacks. The exploit code first uses a vulnerability to gain access to the restricted sun.awt.SunToolkit class before a second bug is used to disable the SecurityManager, and ultimately to break out of the Java sandbox. Those that have left unpatched the vulnerabilities to the so-called Gondvv exploit that was introduced in the July 2011 Java 7.0 release are at risk since all versions of Java 7 are vulnerable. Notably older Java 6 versions appear to be immune. Oracle Corp. has yet to issue an advisory on the problem but is studying it; for now the best protection is to disable or uninstall Java in Web browsers. SafeNet Inc. has tagged a SCADA maker for default insecurity. The firm uncovered a hidden factory account, complete with hard-coded password, in switch management software made by Belden-owned GarrettCom Inc. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) ICS-CERT advisory states the vendor's Magnum MNS-6K management application allows an attacker to gain administrative privileges over the application and thereby access to the SCADA switches it manages. The DHS advisory also notes a patch was issued in May that would remove the vulnerability; however, the patch notice did not document the change. The vendor claims 75 of the top 100 power companies as customers.
• GoDaddy has stated the daylong DNS outage that downed many of its customers' websites was not caused by a hacker (as claimed by the supposed perpetrator), but that the service interruption was not the result of a DDoS attack at all. Instead the provider claims the downtime was caused by "a series of network events that corrupted router tables." The firm says that it has since corrected the elements that triggered the outage and has implemented measures to prevent a similar event from happening again. Customer websites were inaccessible for six hours. GoDaddy claims to have as many as 52 million websites registered but has not disclosed how many of the sites were affected by the outage.

RFG POV: Risk management must be a mandatory part of the process for Web and operational technology (OT) appliances and portals. User requirements come from more places than the user department that requested the functionality; it also comes from areas such as audit, legal, risk and security. IT should always be ensuring their inputs and requirements are met. Unfortunately this "flaw" has been an IT shortfall for decades and it seems new generations keep perpetuating the shortcomings of the past. As to the SCADA bugs, RFG notes that not all utilities are current with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) cyber security requirements or updates, which is a major U.S. exposure. IT executives should be looking to automate the update process so that utility risk exposures are minimized. The GoDaddy outage is one of those unfortunate human errors that will occur regardless of the quality of the processes in place. But it is a reminder that cloud computing brings with it its own risks, which must be probed and evaluated before making a final decision. Unlike internal outages where IT has control and the ability to fix the problem, users are at the discretion of outsourced sites and the terms and conditions of the contract they signed. In this case GoDaddy not only apologized to its users but offered customers 30 percent across-the-board discounts as part of their apology. Not many providers are so generous. IT executives and procurement staff should look into how vendors responded to their past failures and then ensure the contracts protect them before committing to use such services. 

The HP, Oracle, SAP Dance

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

Hewlett-Packard Co. announces reorganization and write-downs and gets good news from the courts that it has won its Intel Corp. Itanium lawsuit against Oracle Corp. Oracle must now port its software to Itanium-based servers. In other news, Oracle agreed to a $306 million settlement from SAP AG over their copyright infringement suit. However, the soap opera is not over – Oracle may still push for more.

Focal Points:

• CEO Meg Whitman, in her continued attempt to turn the company around, is writing down the value of its Enterprise Services business by $8 billion and making management changes. HP paid $13.9 billion to acquire EDS back in 2008.  John Visentin, whom former HP CEO Leo Apotheker anointed to manage the Enterprise Services behemoth a year ago, is leaving the company.  Mike Nefkens, who runs Enterprise Services in the EMEA region, will head the global Enterprise Services group, which is responsible for HP's consulting, outsourcing, application hosting, business process outsourcing, and related services operations. Nefkens, who came from EDS, will report to the CEO but has been given the job on an "acting basis" so more changes lie ahead. In addition, Jean-Jacques Charhon, CFO for Enterprise Services, has been promoted to the COO position and will "focus on increasing customer satisfaction and improving service delivery efficiency, which will help drive profitable growth." HP services sales have barely exceeded one percent growth in the previous two fiscal years. HP further states the goodwill impairment will not impact its cash or the ongoing services business. The company also said its workforce reduction plan, announced earlier this year to eliminate about 27,000 people from its 349,600-strong global workforce, was proceeding ahead of schedule. However, since more employees have accepted the severance offer than expected, HP is increasing the restructuring charge from $1.0 billion to the $1.5-1.7 billion range. On the positive front, HP raised its third-quarter earnings forecast.
• HP received excellent news from the Superior Court of the State of California when it ruled the contract between HP and Oracle required Oracle to port its software products to HP's Itanium-based servers. HP won on five different counts: 1) Oracle was in breach of contract; 2) the Settlement and Release Agreement entered into by HP, Oracle and Mark Hurd on September 20, 2010, requires Oracle to continue to offer its product suite on HP's Itanium-based server platforms and does not confer on Oracle the discretion to decide whether to do so or not; 3) the terms "product suite" means all Oracle software products that were offered on HP's Itanium-based servers at the time Oracle signed the settlement agreement, including any new releases, versions or updates of those products; 4) Oracle's obligation to continue to offer its products on HP's Itanium-based server platforms lasts until such time as HP discontinues the sales of its Itanium-based servers; and 5) Oracle is required to port its products to HP's Itanium-based servers without charge to HP. Oracle is expected to comply.
• Oracle said it agreed to accept damages of $306 million settlement from German rival SAP to shortcut the appeals process in the TomorrowNow copyright infringement lawsuit. Oracle sued SAP back in 2007 when it claimed SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary illegally downloaded Oracle software and support documents in an effort to pilfer Oracle customers. SAP eventually admitted wrongdoing and shut down the maintenance subsidiary. In November 2010, Oracle had originally won a $1.3 billion damages settlement, the largest ever awarded by a copyright jury but it was thrown out by the judge, who said Oracle could have $272 million or could ask for a retrial. To prevent another round of full-blown trial costs, the warring technology giants have agreed to the $306 million settlement plus Oracle's legal fees of $120 million; however, Oracle can now ask the appeals court judges to reinstate the $1.3 billion award. SAP stated the settlement is reasonable and the case has dragged on long enough.

RFG POV: HP suffers from its legacy product culture and continues to struggle to integrate services into a cohesive sales strategy. The company does well with the low-level technical services such as outsourcing but has not been able to shift to the higher margin, strategic consulting services. While the asset write-down was for the EDS acquisition, HP had its own consulting services organization (C&I) that it merged with EDS and atrophied. It took IBM Corp. more than 10 years to effectively bring its products and services sales groups together (it is still a work in progress). RFG therefore thinks it will take HP even longer before it can remake its culture to bring Enterprise Services to the level Meg Whitman desires. The HP Itanium win over Oracle should remove a dark cloud from the Integrity server line but a lot of damage has already been done. HP now has an uphill battle to restore trust and build revenues. IT executives interested in HP's Unix line combined with Oracle software should ensure that the desired software has been or will be ported by the time the enterprise needs it installed. The Oracle SAP saga just will not go away, as it is likely CEO Larry Ellison enjoys applying legal pressure to SAP (especially since the fees will be paid by the other party). It is a distraction for SAP executives but does not impair ongoing business strategies or plans. Nor will the outcome prevent other third parties from legally offering maintenance services. IT executives should not feel bound to use Oracle for maintenance of its products but should make sure the selected party is capable of providing a quality level of service and is financially sound.