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Filing Information: May 2013, IDC #241280, Volume: 1
Datacenter Trends and Strategies: Competitive Analysis
C O M P E T I T I V E A N A L Y S I S
I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t 2 0 1 3 V e n d o r A n a l y s i s
Jennifer Koppy
I D C O P I N I O N
This document employs the IDC MarketScape methodology to assess the strengths
and weaknesses of vendors participating in the datacenter infrastructure
management (DCIM) market. Confusion exists in the market today about the scope of
what DCIM should be, and participants in this space are seeking to define their brand
by offering full-scale solutions that include complete power and cooling and IT
infrastructure visibility, control, and analytic capabilities. Based on IDC's analysis of
current product capabilities, go-to-market strategies, and general business analysis,
this IDC MarketScape finds that the DCIM market is evolving, with several providers
realizing strong growth and adoption and others struggling to survive in a competitive
market. Considering changing business needs, IDC believes the following to be
critical success factors in this evolving market:
Technology partnerships. End users want a solution that is open and interacts
well with best-of-breed solutions. Innovation is occurring in this space, and
providers that can work in tandem to bring the most compelling solutions to their
customers will emerge as market leaders.
Selling partnerships. In a relatively young market, several providers that do not
have the global sales reach and support team to grow their business have
emerged. Partnerships with more established technology vendors will provide a
competitive advantage and encourage innovation in DCIM.
Open architecture that supports full upstream and downstream support of
data. DCIM has the ability to support strategic business decisions, and the ability
for the tool to communicate with all the elements of the datacenter and the
broader enterprise management systems is critical to elevate its status as a
"must-have" solution in the datacenter.
Exceptional customer service with global service and support. More than
product functionality and even price, exceptional customer service is a key
deciding factor in many DCIM purchase decisions. The ability to support current
and future global expansion will be a critical success factor for DCIM providers.
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I N T H I S S T U D Y
This IDC study uses the vendor assessment model called IDC MarketScape. This
research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that
explain a vendor's success in the marketplace and help anticipate its ascendancy.
This study assesses a number of vendors participating in the worldwide datacenter
infrastructure management market. This evaluation is based on a comprehensive
framework and a set of parameters that assess vendors relative to one another and to
those factors expected to be most conducive to success in this market during both the
short term and the long term.
This study is composed of two key sections. The first part is a definition or a
description of what characteristics IDC analysts believe make a successful DCIM
provider. These characteristics are based on IDC's ongoing surveys and discussions
with datacenter managers and key analyst observations of industry best practices.
The second part of this study is a visual aggregation of multiple vendors into a single
bubble-chart format. This display concisely illustrates the observed vendors in the
market. The strategies axis represents a three- to five-year span and future
perspective, while the capabilities axis represents current product and go-to-market
execution.
In this IDC MarketScape, the estimated market revenue of each vendor is indicated
by the size of the circle representing the vendor.
M e t h o d o l o g y
IDC MarketScape criteria selection, weightings, and vendor scores represent well-
researched IDC judgment about the market and specific vendors. IDC analysts tailor
the range of standard characteristics by which vendors are measured through
structured discussions, surveys, and interviews with market leaders, participants, and
end users. Market weightings are based on user interviews, buyer surveys, and the
input of a review board of IDC experts in each market. IDC analysts base individual
vendor scores, and ultimately vendor positions on the IDC MarketScape, on detailed
surveys and interviews with the vendors, publicly available information, and end-user
experiences in an effort to provide an accurate and consistent assessment of each
vendor's characteristics, behavior, and capability.
S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Datacenter infrastructure management solutions have emerged as a way to enable
visibility, exercise control, and better manage datacenter resources. Today,
datacenters are evolving from a monolithic, one-size-fits-all warehouse of IT into a
highly optimized and transparent smart building, and DCIM solutions are the critical
step in this transformation. For years, enterprises and service providers have been
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plagued with problems regarding managing and growing their IT infrastructure. Most
datacenter managers have experienced delayed application rollouts, unplanned
spending, and disrupted service, in addition to issues related to lack of power, space,
or cooling resources. Considering the massive investments that IT and facilities
groups make in datacenter resources, ensuring that the company is able to make the
most efficient use of these resources is critical. However, a large gap exists today in
levels of efficiency; IT managers know how resources could and should be managed
but lack the tools and resources to coordinate this effort. To properly manage
datacenter resources requires complete visibility across several functional
organizations (IT and facilities) and coordination between the two.
Several years ago, it was common to invest more financial resources into the
datacenter to add additional servers, networking equipment, and storage to ensure
uptime and security. Today, with the lack of physical space, power supply, and
cooling resources, this method of reducing risk is no longer feasible. IT organizations
are at a crossroads and face expensive and difficult decisions on whether to add a
new datacenter, move certain workloads and functions off-premises with cloud
solution, or use outsourcing … or take stock of their current infrastructure and begin a
regimen of datacenter infrastructure management that involves gaining detailed
metrics on and visibility into the physical elements of the datacenter, using tools to
control and manage the resources, and ultimately the data and tools to drive strategic
decisions.
T h e N e e d f o r D C I M
Datacenters are expanding in capacity to power a new era of computing built on
mobile devices and applications, cloud services, big data and analytics, and social
technologies. Expansion into new geographies, improvements in disaster recovery,
and expansion of workloads beyond current power and processing capabilities of
current datacenters has challenged datacenter managers to find ways to manage
resources and change. Points of pain for datacenter managers include delays in
application rollouts, disrupted service to customers, unplanned spending, inability to
roll out new products or services, and unplanned downtime. A common theme in all of
these points of pain is inconsistent datacenter information and fragmented
management tools.
DCIM solutions can help manage these points of pain by providing a consistent,
single version of the truth. Beyond providing greater understanding of the physical
assets and systems and the interconnections between them, DCIM can provide
insight into the applications, virtual machines, and business services and how they
are dependent upon the infrastructure.
Datacenters that use DCIM solutions can reduce the time spent on forecasting,
impact analysis, and investigating problems. The end result of improving service
delivery allows datacenter teams to address immediate operational needs, improve
their capacity planning, and deliver better results for the business.
©2013 IDC #241280 3
D C I M ' s R o l e i n t h e D a t a c e n t e r
DCIM addresses a number of needs in datacenter management — from change
management and capacity planning to the efficient usage and allocation of resources.
Enterprises and service providers have recognized the need to address the
underlying issues in managing resources, and the first step in doing this is to gain
visibility into both the facilities resources (PDUs, UPSs, CRACs, environmental
sensors, generators, and racks) and IT resources (servers, storage, networking
equipment, and virtual machines).
After visibility, gaining control of the datacenter and facilities infrastructure is a critical
element of DCIM. Currently, a diverse and fragmented set of tools is used to monitor
and manage the datacenter, including building management systems (BMSs) that
control lighting, security, and energy resources. On the IT side, a multitude of
software solutions are available that address different aspects of datacenter
management, including cloud management, work orders, moves, adds, and changes,
enterprise asset management, and alerts, among many others. These solutions are
now being offered as a coordinated effort under the DCIM umbrella, and enterprises
are increasingly recognizing this market as a distinct set of offerings.
The DCIM market continues to evolve and vendors continue to sharpen their
offerings, but we are still in the emerging phase of this technology, and growth is
much more rapid than other more mature software markets. DCIM implementations
today are often motivated by the need to add datacenter capacity as business needs
expand. The major capital outlays involved in building a new datacenter or retrofitting
an existing datacenter have caused IT and facilities managers to explore solutions to
increase the efficiency and use of their current resources. DCIM is the solution to
address this problem by eliminating waste, such as stranded capacity or "zombie"
servers, and know where more IT infrastructure can be added or shifted based on
power and cooling.
Another segment of demand comes from datacenter managers who are seeking to
boost their operational efficiency by implementing tools that enable metering, alerting,
and control of all resources. Deploying DCIM is considered a best practice, but the
methods of doing so vary greatly by provider. Over the forecast period, the DCIM
market will consolidate and evolve to the point where the data collection portion
becomes "table stakes" or a standard, required feature. The differentiation of DCIM
tools will come through their ability to support strategic business decisions.
The market is currently served by several types of providers, broadly categorized
below:
Software vendors, including those with enterprise solutions and specific point
solutions
Sensor vendors
Power and cooling infrastructure vendors
Hardware and component vendors
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I D C M a r k e t S c a p e V e n d o r I n c l u s i o n C r i t e r i a
For the purposes of this IDC MarketScape, we evaluated 10 providers that offer a
DCIM solution that meet the following criteria:
Provide visibility into one or more elements on the facilities side of the datacenter
Provide visibility into one or more elements on the IT side of the datacenter
Earn at least $2 million from the sale of its DCIM solution in 2012
Below are the 10 providers included in this IDC MarketScape that met the above
criteria:
CA Technologies
Cormant
Emerson Network Power
FieldView
iTRACS
Nlyte
Panduit
Raritan
Schneider Electric
Sentilla
These providers each met the above criteria, yet have different approaches to DCIM
and fundamentally answer different types of management questions. Some sell a
hardware and software package, some sell a software-only package, and others sell
separate software modules to address specific needs. To select the best DCIM
provider for their business, buyers need to know what problems they would like to
solve, and where the business will be in the next five years.
E s s e n t i a l E l e m e n t s i n t h e D C I M E c o s y s t e m
The ability to capture real-time data is a requirement for many DCIM buyers, and the
accuracy, analytic capabilities, automation, and ability to perform cost analysis
underscores the value of DCIM. Several providers are involved in this segment of the
DCIM market but do not offer the same full-suite DCIM capabilities as the providers
evaluated in this IDC MarketScape. IDC believes that providers such as Intel, RF
Code, and Romonet, among others, enable the DCIM market to elevate the value of
the total solution and are critical to the long-term success of the DCIM market. DCIM
©2013 IDC #241280 5
providers that have formed partnerships with these essential players will have a
competitive advantage over those that don't.
Intel Data Center Manager
Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) is a plug-in that enables the ability to gather real-
time power and thermal data when used with a DCIM or third-party power solution.
Intel DCM is licensed to OEMs and ISVs. Intel DCM unlocks Intel's unique
understanding of the hardware to provide additional insight and analytic capabilities,
making it easier for end users to organize and track data and manage power and
cooling in the data center. With an extensive library of connectors that read data,
including IPMI, Intel DCM supports environments of both Intel and non-Intel CPUs,
providing support for heterogenous datacenters. Intel also offers Node Manager
firmware that reports system-level energy use and can put limits on individual server
power consumption, or limit total rack-level power draw. When DCM is enabled via an
ISV, the solution is completely transparent to the end user. ISVs evaluated in this IDC
MarketScape that leverage Intel DCM include iTRACS, FieldView, Nlyte, and
Schneider Electric, as well as more than 25 additional DCIM vendors including
Rackwise and Power Analytics, and OEM solution providers.
RF Code
RF Code manufactures active-RFID-based wire-free sensors that provide live
temperature, humidity, air pressure, air flow, and fluid detection data, which can be
fed into a DCIM solution to enable real-time maps and views of that datacenter and
enable highly tuned alerting capabilities. RF Code also manufactures location-
tracking tags to enable the asset management and change management functions of
DCIM. The asset visibility function is available at the rack level, providing the ability to
pinpoint asset locations within the rack, and zonal tracking, providing more general
room and facilitywide location details. DCIM providers that have partnered with RF
Code in integration agreements include CA Technologies, FieldView, iTRACS, Nlyte,
Schneider, and Raritan. The partnerships with full-suite DCIM providers are in
addition to RF Code's own capability to correlate and report on environmental and
asset data within its own software. This software enables real-time asset tracking,
monitoring and alerting of changes in environmental conditions, and the ability to
send information to building management systems (BMS) and business applications
such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management (EAM)
applications.
Romonet
Romonet is a software vendor that provides tools to support total cost of ownership
(TCO) for datacenters. Although it approaches DCIM in a different way than other
providers in this IDC MarketScape, Romonet software enables the coordination of
data from engineering, operations, and finance to measure impact, improve overall
performance, and improve return on investment. The vendor's key message is to
enable end users to run their datacenters like a business, and this will resonate well
in the market as many enterprise and service provider C-level decision makers seek
to increase the financial granularity of their operations.
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M a r k e t S t r a t e g i e s a n d E v a l u a t i o n C r i t e r i a
Table 1 shows the measurements used to evaluate DCIM providers' future road map
and business strategies.
Table 2 summarizes the measurements used to evaluation DCIM providers' current
offerings, business, and go-to-market capabilities.
T A B L E 1
K e y S t r a t e g y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t
Strategies Criteria Criteria for Success
Subcriteria
Weighting
Offering strategy
Functionality/offering
road map
Future plans for offering functionality are well aligned with current and future
customer needs and with priority customer segments. DCIM providers
disclosed a road map for existing products or a road map for forthcoming
products, and flexibility for the future is built into this plan.
2.0
Delivery model Plans are in place for support of offering delivery model(s) that will match
customers' shifting preferences for adoption/consumption in the next five years.
DCIM providers offer or have plans to offer a SaaS delivery model as
customers require it as well as channel partnerships to increase sales. Input
and reporting from mobile devices will become a must-have feature in the
future.
2.5
Cost management
strategy
There is a strategy and road map to mitigate costs related to the development
of, sales of, and support for DCIM offerings.
1.5
Portfolio strategy There are multiple partners in the market in multiple areas (facilities, IT, other
systems management vendors, etc.). This portfolio of partners supports either
the DCIM product itself or the DCIM vendor.
1.5
Range of services
strategy
Ability to provide services around the globe, work equally well with enterprises
and service providers to meet their unique needs
2.5
Offering strategy total 10.0
Go-to-market strategy
Pricing model The pricing schema is easy to understand, and an accurate quote including
implementation services and software licensing is provided to prospects. It is
important to have pricing by the number of objects monitored, size of DC (in
terms of space, power, cooling), and aspects monitored or by product (as part
of a larger portfolio of products).
2.0
Sales/distribution
strategy
The sales and distribution strategy aligns with each product offering. This
alignment makes procurement as easy for the end user as possible.
2.0
©2013 IDC #241280 7
T A B L E 1
K e y S t r a t e g y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t
Strategies Criteria Criteria for Success
Subcriteria
Weighting
Marketing strategy Marketing strategy includes a comprehensive plan for segmented, targeted
audiences for each product and overall brand development, promotion, and
demand generation. This plan corresponds with predicted revenue flows for the
future.
2.0
Customer service
strategy
There is a customer service strategy in place to reduce churn among the
customer base, create brand evangelizers, and create brand loyalty. This plan
is communicated clearly to customers.
2.0
Existing datacenter
presence
This has demonstrated a presence in the datacenter for some other product or
service, besides DCIM. This could be power and cooling equipment, KVM,
cabling, software, or other product or service. This category is meant to
measure the history, size, and positive or negative nature of this presence.
2.0
Go-to-market strategy
total
10.0
Business strategy
Growth strategy Management has targeted areas of the product, company, and customer base
that they plan on growing over the next 3–5 years.
2.5
Innovation/R&D pace and
productivity
Innovation and R&D aligns with marketing, customers' wants and needs, and
growth strategy.
2.0
Financial/funding model The company's financing/funding plans and opportunities align to creating
market value and staying true to the firm's core values, strengths and attributes.
2.0
Employee strategy The company's strategy for attracting, motivating, and retaining talent
maximizes its opportunity for creating market value.
1.0
Partnering It is the company's ability to partner with others to strengthen and augment their
DCIM solutions.
2.5
Business strategy total 10.0
Source: IDC, 2013
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T A B L E 2
K e y C a p a b i l i t y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t
Capability Criteria Criteria for Success
Subcriteria
Weighting
Offering capabilities
Functionality/offering
delivered
Current DCIM offering facilitates visibility, analytics, and control of datacenter
assets.
2.0
Delivery model
appropriateness and
execution
Channel programs with VARs (for additional services around the software
sale), SaaS delivery models ,and auto-discovery/low-touch deployment
capabilities are in place. The solution can scale from small enterprise
datacenters to large service provider implementations.
2.0
Cost competitiveness The pricing of the products and services is either in line with the market, given
its capabilities, or strategically out of line.
1.5
Portfolio benefits
delivered
Complementary offerings and services are in place to enable adoption of
DCIM.
1.5
Range of services It is the ability to sell and service DCIM customers in multiple geographies to
support larger customers with multisite presence and also expand to new
geographic markets.
1.5
Vendor consideration It is the vendor's propensity for making the end users' short list of solutions
considered in RFPs.
1.5
Offering capability total 10.0
Go-to-market capability
Pricing model options
and alignment
The pricing model is currently aligned with customers' preferences for payment
(e.g., per rack or per square foot) and is easily understood.
1.5
Sales/distribution
structure, capabilities
The sales and distribution strategy aligns with each product offering. This
alignment makes procurement as easy for the end user as possible.
2.0
Marketing The marketing organization resources are aligned with revenue-generation
efforts.
2.0
Customer service Customers feel that their needs are met and they are satisfied with the quality
and timeliness of customer service delivered.
2.5
Existing presence in the
datacenter or in facilities
organization
This demonstrates a presence in the datacenter for some other product or
service, besides DCIM. This could be power and cooling equipment, KVM,
cabling, or other product or service. This category is meant to measure the
history, size, and positive or negative nature of this presence.
2.0
Go-to-market capability
total
10.0
©2013 IDC #241280 9
T A B L E 2
K e y C a p a b i l i t y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t
Capability Criteria Criteria for Success
Subcriteria
Weighting
Business capabilities
Growth strategy
execution
Companies have, and plan, to continue executing on their growth strategy and
strives to shorten sales cycles and use templates whenever possible to speed
deployments and reduce costs associated with DCIM.
2.5
Innovation/R&D pace
and productivity
Innovation keeps pace with the competition and is done in the correct areas
organically.
2.0
Financial/funding
management
Companies generate, attract, and manage capital to create market value. 2.0
Employee management Companies attract, motivate, and retain the necessary talent to create market
value.
1.0
Partnering Companies establish many partnerships with vendors on all sides of the DCIM
ecosystem to increase their presence in the market.
2.5
Business capabilities
total
10.0
Source: IDC, 2013
F U T U R E O U T L O O K
D C I M F o r e c a s t
IDC's market analysis examines the strategic direction and growth expectations for
DCIM. In 2011, the estimated worldwide DCIM packaged software revenue was
$144.5 million, and the corresponding services revenue was $102.6 million for a total
of $247.1 million. By 2016, the DCIM market will grow to a total of $690.3 million,
representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% (see Table 3). Key
findings include the following:
The DCIM market is on the verge of two- to three-year-period of solid growth
within existing enterprise datacenters where IT and facilities teams have gone
through a period of education and analysis of the value of DCIM solutions and
will make investments as a means to get the most out of their existing resources.
Sustained growth over the entire forecast period will be closely tied to large and
megasized datacenters built and run by collocation, managed service, and cloud
service provider that use DCIM tools as part of their strategy to both optimize
their infrastructure and provide more robust customer information services.
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T A B L E 3
W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t S e r v i c e s a n d S o f t w a r e
R e v e n u e , 2 0 1 1 – 2 0 1 6 ( $ M )
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
2011–2016
CAGR (%)
Services 102.6 121.3 139.5 159.4 184.0 210.3 15.4
Software 144.5 213.9 287.0 355.6 419.8 480.0 27.1
Total 247.1 335.2 426.5 514.9 603.8 690.3 22.8
Source: IDC, 2013
I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r
I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t M a r k e t
V e n d o r A s s e s s m e n t
The IDC vendor assessment for the worldwide datacenter infrastructure management
market represents IDC's opinion on how the providers are positioned today and how
their strategy will position them for future success and growth. Positioning in the
upper right of the grid indicates those vendors that are most likely to be Major Players
over the next several years. As a rapidly growing market characterized by high levels
of competition and attention, IDC believes new participants could enter the market,
and existing participants will seek to define themselves through partnerships. Several
established players are building on their current customer base and product assets,
while other smaller vendors are seeking to attract customers with their own DCIM
solutions.
Positioning on the y-axis reflects the vendor's current capabilities and how well
aligned its offerings, got-to-market, and business strategies are with customer needs.
The capabilities category focuses on the capabilities of the company today.
Positioning on the x-axis, or strategies axis, indicates how well the vendor's publicly
announced future strategy aligns with what IDC believes customers will require in
three to five years. The strategies category focuses on high-level strategic decisions
and underlying assumptions about offerings, customer segments, business, and go-
to-market plans for the future, in this case defined as the next three to five years.
Figure 1 shows each vendor's position in the vendor assessment chart.
©2013 IDC #241280 11
F I G U R E 1
I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e
M a n a g e m e n t V e n d o r A s s e s s m e n t
Source: IDC, 2013
V e n d o r P r o f i l e s
All of the vendors included in this IDC MarketScape have met the inclusion criteria,
including visibility, control, and analysis of both facilities and IT infrastructure. The
vendors may accomplish these tasks in different ways and different approaches.
Some are suitable to smaller enterprise implementations, some are suitable to
massive service provider implementations, and some can be scaled to both. They
also come to the DCIM market from a variety of backgrounds, and one provider is not
the best choice for all implementations. The synopses in the sections that follow
provide an overview of some of the unique characteristics and differentiators of each
provider's solutions and their business and go-to-market strategies.
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CA Technologies
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, CA Technologies is an IDC
MarketScape Leader worldwide. CA Technologies scored above average and in
some cases the highest in strategy and capability criteria measurements for the DCIM
solutions market.
CA Technologies is a well-established global IT management software and solutions
company, with a strong presence in many different types of IT environments. CA
Technologies' solution is marketed and sold as CA DCIM and is based on CA
ecoMeter (monitoring) and CA Visual Infrastructure (management). CA DCIM offers
real-time visibility, control, and reporting on all major datacenter assets. Live PUE and
carbon footprint reporting are standard with CA DCIM. CA Technologies' alerting
system goes beyond threshold alarms and includes self-learning features that create
notifications based on deviations from normal activity.
One of CA Technologies' key strengths is its ability to innovate like a small company,
yet it has the marketing, service, and sales organization of a large company. With a
presence in many enterprise datacenters already, the opportunity for CA
Technologies will be to grow deeper into existing accounts by bringing CA DCIM to
the table in addition to its other toolsets. IDC believes that 2012 was a solid year for
DCIM at CA Technologies, building on its foundation and growing into both large- and
small-scale accounts. CA Technologies has revised its pricing schema based on
customers' need for a simple and straightforward model; the company now bases
customers' costs on the number of floor-mounted assets located in the datacenter,
regardless of asset type. CA Technologies is able to tie pricing to power capacity,
something that is especially relevant in very large datacenter environments.
Strengths
As a $4.6 billion software vendor, CA Technologies has the existing IT presence and
surrounding solutions to reach the right people with the right message for DCIM. The
company's well-developed sales and marketing channels, legacy of hardware-
agnostic solutions, and ability to converse with C-level decision makers will drive
continued growth in DCIM adoption by its existing customer base and new datacenter
customers.
Opportunit ies
A challenge for CA Technologies is reaching the facilities organizations and building
trust and relationships with enterprise and service provider datacenters that have
existing relationships with power and cooling vendors. IDC believes that the majority
of DCIM decisions will come from CFOs and CIOs, who are already familiar with
purchasing from a software provider. The facilities side of the business increasingly
has a seat at the table and a voice in DCIM recommendations, and in service provider
organizations, the coordination between IT and facilities is increasingly synchronized.
Final purchasing decisions for DCIM software, however, will be weighted more
heavily by IT organizations, which have experience buying enterprise software
applications. This positively impacts CA Technologies' position in the DCIM market.
©2013 IDC #241280 13
Cormant
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Cormant is an IDC MarketScape
Major Player worldwide. Cormant has an effective DCIM feature set that is sold
worldwide through mainly channel partners. The company's sole focus and product is
the Cormant-CS solution, known previously as CableSolve. Cormant-CS is based
around strong asset and connection management, with capability for datacenter
visualization, actionability, and direct control of all major datacenter infrastructure with
the exception of controlling cooling units and generators. Mobile access and control
are key features of the Cormant-CS, which is sold as a single, complete solution.
Cormant benefits from a tight connection between its service, sales, marketing, and
R&D teams, allowing the company to operate efficiently and transparently to serve
customer needs.
The vendor is in a period of strong growth, building on a loyal base of customers.
According to the Cormant, 95% of the company's original customers over the past
decade remain on the Cormant-CS solution.
Strengths
Cormant comes to the table with a solid, full-fledged DCIM solution that is priced
significantly lower than that of other DCIM providers. The lower barrier to entry will
motivate many enterprise datacenters with limited budgets to implement DCIM and
enables Cormant to benefit from the growing DCIM momentum by coming to market
with a unique offering that is within reach of a much larger audience.
Opportunit ies
Cormant is a small company competing with multinational, multibillion-dollar
companies that have well-established partnerships, geographically dispersed service
and sales organizations, and large R&D and marketing budgets. The challenge for
Cormant is to put itself on stage with these providers and make apples-to-apples
comparisons of capabilities and strengths to win customers.
Emerson Network Power
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Emerson Network Power is an IDC
MarketScape Leader worldwide. The vendor scored above average in many of the
measurement criteria for capability and strategy based on its current Trellis, Aperture,
and Avocent offerings.
Emerson Network Power is a global power and industrial solutions business with
approximately 50,000 employees and is a part of Emerson Electric. The company
owns many popular brands in the datacenter, including Liebert, Knurr, Aperture,
Avocent, and Chloride and offers products ranging from precision cooling, AC/DC
power, racks, cabinets, embedded computing and power, airflow management,
remote monitoring, access and control, and infrastructure management. Emerson
Network Power has built on its strength in the datacenter with its DCIM offerings,
including Aperture, Avocent, and the Trellis platform that was commercialized in May
2012. The Emerson DCIM offerings are widely adopted in the datacenter market, and
the company holds the largest market share of any DCIM provider. During the year,
Emerson continued a massive transformation of its DCIM offerings and go-to-market
14 #241280 ©2013 IDC
strategy, investing in growing and expanding its Trellis platform while supporting its
large installed base of Aperture and Avocent users. The company made a strategic
decision to build the new real-time Trellis platform on a single code base to reduce
complexity and risk and increase modularity, flexibility, and scalability of the solution.
Emerson will continue to support Aperture and Avocent customers and provide them
the choice to migrate to the Trellis platform on their own schedule. Eventually,
Emerson Network Power expects the installed base will move to its new Trellis
platform that connects the company's broad datacenter offering portfolio and
expertise across IT and facilities organizations in a real-time, vendor-agnostic solution
that integrates with enterprise ITSM systems. Financially, Emerson is in a very strong
position as part of a $24 billion company with a $1+ billion services business. This
solid backing has provided the company with staying power in a year of
transformation. The worldwide services business is a critical asset and differentiator
of Emerson's because many organizations have a corporate edict to do business with
a provider that has services available around the globe. This services organization
also benefits the DCIM business by enabling pull-through of solutions.
Strengths
Emerson has expanded its routes to market and developed channels to sell to both
the high end and low end of the market. With its heavy R&D investments, ability to
scale to a broad range of customer requirements, and partnerships with key players
in the larger DCIM ecosystem, including Oracle and IBM, Emerson is well positioned
to grow into new customer implementations. Emerson's Trellis solution is the
culmination of many end users' wish lists for a DCIM solution — a single pane of
glass that enables users to monitor, control, and analyze their datacenter assets in
real time, in an environment that is moving toward cloud and hybrid cloud
implementations spread across the globe. The ability to manage this complexity is
very difficult yet critical for success, and Trellis is a robust, scalable solution that was
designed from the ground up to support decisions in increasingly complex
datacenters in a modular, scalable fashion.
Opportunit ies
Change on the scale of what Emerson is trying to accomplish does not occur on a
steady, straight line. Instead, it happens in bursts, and there are temporary setbacks;
in the midst of Emerson's transformation, some customer relationships were strained.
Although the overall retention rate remains high, the door of opportunity was open at
a critical time, and competitors made some inroads into Emerson's customer base
prior to the Trellis platform launch. For Emerson to retain and grow its market share
with the Trellis platform, it needs to continue to earn the trust of customers and help
them through the transition to the Trellis platform. Based on interviews with end-user
customers, IDC believes that Emerson is making strides to enhancing customer
relationships, and its customers believe that the Trellis platform offers best-in-class
performance. The company has the opportunity to emerge stronger than it was before
if it can effectively communicate its strategy for customer satisfaction going forward.
FieldView Solutions
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, FieldView Solutions is an IDC
MarketScape Major Player worldwide. FieldView has established its niche with
©2013 IDC #241280 15
critical-use datacenters that have strict requirements for data security and asset
control. The vendor provides DCIM solutions to the world's largest datacenters, and
its strategy is to continue to focus on this demanding segment of the market.
FieldView's platform is open and can pull from many different sources to present real-
time analytics of datacenter resources. As a browser-based system, the DCIM
solution can be accessed from anywhere and resides behind the end user's firewall.
Most of FieldView's sales are direct and within the United States; recently, the
company announced a presence in Brazil and has already established a presence in
Europe, Australia, and in the high-growth market of Asia.
FieldView experienced solid growth in 2012 and was able to capitalize on the
market's shift from evaluating and understanding DCIM to investing in DCIM.
FieldView has made additional investments in its sales force in the past year to
address the growth in large co-location and service provider datacenter buildouts.
Strengths
FieldView has a solid track record built on performance and trust with many critical
datacenters, and its partnerships with key industry partners will continue to drive this
growth. FieldView has the ability to capture and analyze very large amounts of data,
which is a strength in selling to environments that plan to track large numbers of
devices on a frequent basis and store historical information for analytic functions.
Opportunit ies
FieldView's DCIM offering, by design, does not directly issue control orders or
interface directly into a BMS. This is a positive for some datacenter managers, who
for security reasons have a high degree of concern about the control aspect of DCIM
and prefer to keep these functions completely separate. For others, the inability to
control datacenter assets based on a "single pane of glass" would be viewed as a
negative. One of the pitfalls that DCIM providers have fallen into is trying to be
everything to everyone. FieldView, in contrast, has kept a more narrow focus, and
IDC believes that this is a solid strategy going forward, considering the greater growth
expected in large datacenters. However, the business risk of selling to one market or
customer type is higher for FieldView than for a more general-purpose DCIM
provider.
Integration with enterprise system management and ITSM software would strengthen
FieldView's DCIM offering. Currently, data can be ported to other tools, but a direct
integration would round out FieldView's considerable functionality and assist in
proving return on investment in the DCIM solution.
iTRACS by CommScope
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, iTRACS is an IDC MarketScape
Major Player worldwide. iTRACS launched its converged physical infrastructure
management (CPIM) solution in 2009, during the early days of DCIM. Since that time,
this relatively small company has built an impressive list of customer wins and earned
a reputation as an innovator in the DCIM space with its interactive, navigable 3D
visualization of the datacenter and management toolset.
16 #241280 ©2013 IDC
Founded in 1987, the company began by offering solutions that addressed asset
management, with a specific focus on understanding connectivity interdependencies
in the management of asset moves, adds, and changes. Its CPIM software suite
extends this capability in physical infrastructure management, adding visualization to
provide the full context in decisions regarding disposition of assets and "what-if"
analysis to enable users to view and make decisions with less risk. CPIM provides
visibility, control, and decision support across the physical infrastructure of IT assets,
connectivity, power, and cooling.
As a DCIM software suite provider, iTRACS focuses on the flow of information into
and out of the CPIM solution, which allows end users to connect upstream and
downstream with BMS and ITSM software. The company's DCIM Open Exchange
Framework acts as an "information highway" allowing the iTRACS software suite to
share information, bidirectionally, with any outside data source, system, or workflow
application.
iTRACS was acquired by CommScope in March 2013. CommScope is a $4 billion
provider of infrastructure solutions with a focus on optimizing data transport, including
wireless, enterprise, and broadband. This partnership has the potential to significantly
expand iTRACS' exposure in the global market and leverage a wider audience
through CommScope's global sales channels. As the integration of the two
companies continues, iTRACS should be able to leverage CommScope's global
services organization as well. For datacenter managers and those involved in
datacenter investment decisions, the partnership of the two companies may create an
easier path to a transparent, managed infrastructure. Having the cabling technology
at the core of emerging converged systems and highly virtualized datacenters along
with the ability to manage everything that is connected to the cabling is becoming a
must-have for IT and facilities organizations.
Strengths
iTRACS has built its name in the DCIM market by concentrating on a deep
understanding of the interconnectivity at the heart of the datacenter and a compelling,
context-rich 3D visual representation of datacenter elements. The vendor has
demonstrated return on investment and the business value of DCIM and, as a result,
has elevated its conversations from facilities and IT organizations up to C-level
decision makers. In a very competitive market, iTRACS has built up solid mindshare
around its solution and has established partnerships with key members of the DCIM
ecosystem including VMware, Intel DCM, RF Code, and HP (via the DCIM Open
Exchange Framework) to enable granular, accurate, and real-time data collection.
Opportunit ies
iTRACS and other vendors that sell enterprise-class DCIM solutions face a challenge
in proving the value and ROI to end users who experience "sticker shock" when first
investigating DCIM. Confusion exists in the market among end users, who are
choosing from a myriad of options to manage their infrastructure, including Excel
spreadsheets, point solutions that address one aspect of DCIM, and full-fledged
DCIM suites that provide complete visibility, analysis, and reporting on datacenter
assets. The opportunity and challenge for iTRACS is to 1) continue improving how
they communicate the strategic value of DCIM to CFOs and 2) engage with
©2013 IDC #241280 17
customers early in the discovery phase to help them understand how iTRACS is
priced and bundled versus other solutions, with the CPIM and Open Exchange
Network functionality both included in the base price. IDC believes that some
enterprises may not pursue the iTRACS solution to the RFP stage because of
perceived high cost, perhaps limiting its broader adoption. Initiatives to change
market perception would help iTRACS grow its installed base. In addition, by
continuing to work with customers after the sale and deepening the reliance on
iTRACS for analytics and business agility initiatives, the vendor can prove the ROI
and longer-term viability of its solution.
Nlyte
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Nlyte is an IDC MarketScape Major
Player worldwide. Nlyte's DCIM suite has earned respect amid a crowded market.
The 10-year-old software company reports strong adoption of its solutions and is
rapidly expanding its sales force and investing in channel sales. The current version
of its DCIM suite is Nlyte 7, which includes seamless integration with other enterprise
system management solutions. IDC believes that Nlyte's focus on change
management and asset management and supporting decisions based on cost of
service delivered will define the company and position it well for the needs of CIOs in
the next several years.
Nlyte includes out-of-the-box integrations with many of the industry's most common
management platforms, including BMC's change management, discovery and CMDB,
VMware, HP, RF Code, and Server Tech along with Intel's DCM real-time monitoring
layer. These integrations are available as an option within the Nlyte suite and bring
strategically important functionality and benefits to the larger datacenter management
tasks at hand. As a smaller, focused software company, Nlyte is able to leverage the
close relationship between sales, R&D, and its customers' needs. The company is
focused on larger enterprise datacenters and other environments in which increasing
operational efficiency is a high priority.
Strengths
Nlyte has done an excellent job in educating the market about DCIM and helping end
users understand the value of an extensible DCIM solution. Nlyte's messaging about
operating the datacenter as a business resonates with decision makers and elevates
the discussion on DCIM to C-level executives. Beyond a tactical facilities or
datacenter tool, Nlyte is positioning its solution as a business life-cycle management
and decision support solution and recognizes the need to interface with ITSM tools
and includes this as a core part of its offering today. This is a critical differentiator in
the market, and IDC expects it will open more doors to adoption than a facilities-
focused or IT-focused message. Nlyte's DCIM solution was developed by people with
strong datacenter management backgrounds who brought with them best practices
and industry experience in IT management.
Opportunit ies
Nlyte often makes the "short list" of solutions considered for deployment. In certain
cases, some large, risk-averse organizations are hesitant to invest in a company that
does not have the strong financial backing and stability others are perceived to have.
18 #241280 ©2013 IDC
In this way, Nlyte has the potential to be overlooked in a nascent market that has
seen less-focused solutions disappear. Some of these IT organizations, wary of
purchasing into a smaller company in a new market, either stay with an incumbent
vendor or choose another very large DCIM provider, even though they were
admittedly impressed with the capabilities that Nlyte's solution offers. In its 10th year
and celebrating a number of big customer wins, IDC believes Nlyte is on the right
track, but it will need to prove it has the staying power in this competitive market.
Panduit
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Panduit is an IDC MarketScape
Major Player worldwide. Panduit is a privately held company with annual revenue of
approximately $1 billion. The company got its start in 1955 with a solution to simplify
wiring and cabling. As a progression of its strengths in network solutions to organize
infrastructure and solve business problems, Panduit developed its physical
infrastructure management (PIM) solution and in 2011 acquired Unite Technologies
and subsequently the datacenter and energy management technology to complement
PIM. The combination of the two comprises the Panduit DCIM solution.
The company's foundation on the facilities side enables it to build trust with
datacenter facilities managers, and IDC believes most of Panduit's growth will come
from midsize and large enterprise datacenters. A large portion of Panduit business
comes from cabling and cabinet/rack infrastructure, which it sells for specific
converged infrastructure architectures including Cisco, IBM, Rockwell, and others.
Panduit has shown particular strength in providing solutions for smaller datacenters
and recently announced its SmartZone rack energy kit, which provides real-time
power and environmental monitoring and alerting at the rack level.
Strengths
The Panduit auto-discovery functionality is well respected in the industry. The
effective use of auto-discovery has been an Achilles' heel for many DCIM providers,
but Panduit has been able to populate users' DCIM tools with a high degree of
reliability and accuracy through its auto-discovery feature. For end users to make
decisions based on DCIM analysis, they need to have a strong degree of trust and
belief in the accuracy of the data within the solution. In addition to its auto-discovery
feature to populate the tool, Panduit has a solid services team that operates globally
through company-run and partner service providers. Panduit has the ability to deploy
its DCIM solution quickly, and this contributes to its strong customer satisfaction
record. Panduit also provides global datacenter advisory services, enabling another
avenue to market its PIM solutions.
Opportunit ies
One of Panduit's key strengths is its ability to tightly integrate its own hardware and
software to provide a solution that is very easy to deploy and run. Although for some
end users this approach simplifies and speeds adoption of DCIM, but it is also
perceived as proprietary, which carries a negative connotation in the DCIM space.
IDC believes that Panduit could address the needs of large enterprise and service
©2013 IDC #241280 19
provider customers through more aggressive marketing of its virtual machine
capabilities, if the company chooses to participate in this portion of the market.
Of central importance is Panduit's ability to quickly integrate the DCIQ tool (gained
through the Unite Technologies acquisition) with its PIM tool to deliver power and
cooling monitoring and control seamlessly with the datacenter hardware management
features.
Raritan
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Raritan is an IDC MarketScape
Major Player worldwide. Raritan has been involved in enterprise datacenters since
1985, with its legacy in KVM, power, and serial monitoring and management
solutions. The company's DCIM offering, dcTrack, is an essential element within its
lineup of integrated solutions to monitor and manage the key interrelated elements of
a datacenter's infrastructure — assets, capacity, and energy. dcTrack delivers
additional value through the use of other Raritan offerings, including its intelligent
PDUs for device-level monitoring, smart environmental sensors, and PowerIQ energy
management software. The company also sells its own asset management sensors
called Intelligent Asset Tracking to enable real-time inventory of assets. In addition to
its own integrated solutions, Raritan has developed partnerships with a number of
other providers including BMC, Cisco, RFCode, VMware, and Vigilent. Raritan has
built a solid reputation with dcTrack, and the solution is well regarded in the market
for its feature set and capabilities in providing a holistic view of the datacenter.
Raritan has a worldwide sales and services presence. In 2011, Raritan restructured
its DCIM organization and established it as a separate business unit to become more
nimble and customer focused. Based on customer feedback, this has worked well
and has contributed to a partnership attitude with a close integration between sales,
service, and Raritan's R&D team.
Strengths
Raritan has defined itself in the DCIM market by providing an open, robust solution for
midsize enterprise datacenters. This segment of the market has unique needs that
Raritan understands, including the ability to integrate solutions when needed, based
on an architecture that enables choice and flexibility. Raritan commits a large portion
of its revenue to R&D and has a solid financial backing to enable the staying power
needed in the DCIM market.
Raritan has established a number of partnerships within the DCIM ecosystem to
enable its users to gain the full benefits of its DCIM solution, including integration
enterprise system management solutions and building management systems. IDC
believes that DCIM solutions will be increasingly purchased by decision makers on
the IT side and less by the facilities organizations, and Raritan's strength in working
with IT providers will help with market awareness and adoption of dcTrack.
Opportunit ies
Raritan's dcTrack provides visibility and management into the IT elements of a
datacenter, and PowerIQ (purchased separately) provides visibility and management
20 #241280 ©2013 IDC
of the power elements of a datacenter. End users with limited budgets may decide to
deploy only one of Raritan's tools instead of both, and as a result may not realize the
full benefits of its DCIM solution. By not choosing the full DCIM solution, end-user
customers will not be able to view, analyze, and control their entire infrastructure on a
single pane of glass, which IDC believes could be a deciding factor in a competitive
market, especially in midsize enterprises, going forward. Integrating these tools and
selling as a single solution may be preferable, especially in midsize enterprise
datacenter sales where users tend to prefer bundled solutions.
Schneider Electric
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Schneider Electric is an IDC
MarketScape Leader worldwide. Schneider Electric is a global provider of energy
management and solutions, with a presence in many datacenters around the world.
From its legacy of providing power starting in the mid-1800s, the company today
addresses power management, IT room management, building management, security
management, and process and machines management with focused solutions. Total
revenue in 2012 was 24 billion euros, and Schneider Electric employs more than
140,000 people in 100 countries.
Schneider Electric purchased American Power and Cooling (APC) in 2007 to expand
its datacenter management solutions business, and in 2011 the company released its
DCIM solution, StruxureWare for datacenters, to address customers' needs for
management infrastructure. At the end of 2011, Schneider purchased Viridity, which
developed EnergyCenter and EnergyCheck power management tools. This
acquisition further expanded Schneider's IT portfolio.
StruxureWare for datacenters is a collection of five modules, each focused on a
particular aspect of datacenter management and control. Schneider Electric's
objective is to obtain new customers by meeting their specific needs with one module
and then growing the footprint to manage the entire infrastructure. Based on customer
conversations, IDC believes that this approach may work particularly well with large
organizations that prefer to tackle one management problem at a time.
Schneider Electric reported that customer adoption of StruxureWare was very strong
in 2012 and indicates a shift in the market from learning and comparison to actual
investment in solutions. Customers that came from the APC acquisition tended to be
more midmarket focused, but the acquisition by Schneider has enabled growth with
new customers into large enterprise and service provider implementations.
Strengths
StruxureWare for datacenters is a robust set of tools that enable customers to
manage change, plan for future needs, and increase overall efficiency in an intuitive
GUI. Beyond these core capabilities, StruxureWare also addresses customers' needs
with energy procurement, utility cost management, and carbon emissions tracking.
A DCIM provider with a global footprint, long history in the industry, and strong
financial backing is often preferred by DCIM purchase decision makers. Schneider
Electric has these qualities and is already present in many of the world's enterprises
with its power solutions and global support services team. In a nascent market, trust
©2013 IDC #241280 21
is a key differentiator, and Schneider Electric has built that trust on the facilities side
of the business.
Opportunit ies
The challenge for Schneider Electric is to transition its conversations and trust built on
the facilities side of the business to the IT side of the business. This is not an easy
transition but is a necessary one to grow into large IT organizations and service
provider accounts. Partnerships with global IT providers and best-of-breed point
solutions in the DCIM space will speed this transition. Schneider Electric has
announced several key partnerships, but further connecting with IT decision makers
through additional partnerships and ROI messaging will strengthen its position in the
market, especially with large enterprises.
Sentilla
According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Sentilla is an IDC MarketScape
Contender worldwide. Sentilla is a software company founded in 2003 and based in
California. Its flagship offering, Data Center Performance Management Platform
(DCPM), provides visibility and analytics across an organization's physical, virtual,
and cloud infrastructure. In this way, Sentilla focuses on helping IT professionals
make decisions about where to place workloads in an increasingly hybrid IT
environment.
DCPM can integrate with ITSM and BMS tools and is VMware ready. The current
release, V5, supports model-driven "what if" planning scenarios to analyze
deployment strategies. DCPM enables visibility into resource usage, power
consumption, and demand trends. The Web and mobile-device based analysis,
announced in 2012, provides dashboards for performance, location, and power
consumption of hardware assets.
Strengths
Especially for smaller enterprise datacenters with fewer support staff, the ability to
deploy a DCIM solution quickly is critical to success. The auto-discovery features and
intuitive GUI make Sentilla's DCPM an attractive solution for smaller to midsize
organizations that do not have the time and human resources to support a complex
rollout. With no other products besides its DCIM software, Sentilla is considered very
open and nonproprietary, and this message resonates especially well with IT decision
makers.
Opportunit ies
The DCIM market has been challenging for smaller software vendors such as
Sentilla, which do not have the existing customer base to draw on from a related
facilities or IT business and build upon customer accounts like their larger competitors
do. Many larger organizations with a low tolerance for risk are hesitant to bring a new
solution such as DCIM and a new provider with a shorter history in the datacenter
space into their ecosystem. This has been a barrier to growth in the DCIM market but
is a reality faced by all of the smaller software vendors. Proving to the market that it
has a DCIM solution worth investing in will take time and trust. Marketing its customer
22 #241280 ©2013 IDC
wins will build trust, and Sentilla's ability to wait out the market until more widespread
adoption occurs in 2013–2014 will determine its longer-term success.
E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E
This IDC MarketScape evaluates the current capabilities and future strategies of 10
providers in the worldwide DCIM market, which is a rapidly growing and evolving
space. The scoring and weighting in this IDC MarketScape is designed to factor in a
changing base of decision makers and balance future requirements with current
offerings and expected capabilities in three to five years. Although it is impossible to
declare market leaders in three to five years, this IDC MarketScape strives to provide
the analysis to support and identify the providers that should be considered in
purchase decisions and will likely be Major Players defining DCIM going forward.
DCIM purchase decisions for both enterprise and service provider datacenters will be
shaped by the need to accurately plan for future capacity, increase efficiency of
datacenter resources, and manage growth and change. In the longer term, the DCIM
solutions that are able to coordinate with the larger enterprise IT organization and
support strategic decisions, as opposed to solving tactical problems only, will prove
the value of DCIM and emerge as Market Leaders.
Many providers have emerged with many methods of providing insights and data
reporting on the infrastructure. Consolidation and partnerships will continue and will
serve to further refine and focus the market. Especially for service providers and large
enterprises, the differentiation of DCIM tools will come through their ability to support
strategic business decisions.
G u i d a n c e f o r D C I M B u y e r s
With often a significant financial and time commitment to implement DCIM, it is
imperative that buyers know their goals for DCIM and their internal resources at the
outset. IDC finds, from conversations with end users, that the information they sought
with a DCIM implementation is often just the "tip of the iceberg" in how the information
can be used to answer larger questions. For a DCIM implementation to be considered
successful, IDC recommends that C-level decision makers be involved to include
broader organizational support. Instead of limiting a DCIM implementation to simply
environmental monitoring or asset tracking, end users should include broader IT
management questions and choose solutions that enable the two-way transmission of
data to support decisions and receive maximum value from the investment. In this
way, the DCIM purchase decision becomes strategic, as opposed to tactical.
The first question many buyers ask is "how much does it cost?," and with many
solutions starting at $250,000, many have quickly dismissed the possibility of
implementing a robust DCIM solution. Instead, these buyers have shifted their focus
to more tactical point solutions, such as environmental monitoring, power monitoring
and usage, and asset management and change management. These point solutions
often cost less and have the benefit of a near-term ROI but don't provide the full value
of DCIM.
©2013 IDC #241280 23
IDC believes that a better approach to DCIM would be to include internal constituents
from the IT and facilities groups, as well as strategic planning and the CFO. The
planning and deployment will take longer, and the initial cost will be higher, but the
benefits will include a much broader set of life-cycle management, change
management, and auditing functionality in addition to capacity planning.
Like any useful tool, the information you get out of it is only as good as the
information you put into it. If your company can only commit a half-time employee to
managing the solution, you will need one with a highly intuitive GUI that needs very
little hands-on time, versus a solution that requires the coordination of multiple groups
in real time to accurately assess and manage resources. Expectations regarding the
output of the tool and its usefulness across the organization should be set
appropriately.
G u i d a n c e f o r D C I M P r o v i d e r s
The DCIM market has experienced considerable churn, with the exit of a number of
participants even in the nascent stages of this market. In conversations with end
users on why they invest in certain providers and not in others, and after analyzing
other business factors that contribute to success, IDC believes that DCIM providers
should focus on the following:
Technology and selling partnerships. End users today want to deploy best-of-
breed solutions and want a DCIM solution that can interact with a broad range of
other technologies to deliver the best possible solution. IDC has found that DCIM
providers that have formed technology partnerships with Intel for Data Center
Manager (DCM) for real-time metrics, RF Code for its environmental and location
sensors, and Romonet for TCO analysis, for example, appeal to a wider range of
potential buyers. From a selling partnership perspective, many DCIM providers
have leveraged relationships with larger IT organizations for the ability to enter
into conversations with the IT organizations within larger multinational end users.
Connecting their company's DCIM with an IT organization's datacenter solutions
is a conduit to more potential customers.
Global service and support capability. The ability to provide service and
support in multiple regions is a key differentiator for many DCIM buyers. With
datacenter expansion taking off in new regions of the world, and as companies
become more global, the need to provide support in multiple geographies
increases. In addition to the global support, localization of the DCIM solution is
critical, including the ability to customize reports based on local power metrics.
Sales force laser focused on DCIM. Many providers have a large base of
existing datacenter customers upon which they can sell their DCIM solutions.
However, the sale of management software is very different from a hardware or
infrastructure sale in both the conversation and constituents. Simply having a
relationship with a company does not ensure that the company will purchase
your DCIM solution just because you offer it. Having a dedicated sales force that
can converse in a CFO's/CIO's language and understand their issues is critical in
transforming the relationship to include infrastructure management software
sales.
24 #241280 ©2013 IDC
Clear, transparent pricing model. IT organizations have expressed a need to
make cost comparisons between different vendors' solutions and the need for a
"no surprises" contract. DCIM vendors that have standardized on a per-rack
pricing model are becoming the norm, and those that base their pricing by assets
or numbers of seats need to have a very clear pricing model and set their
prospects' expectations on price appropriately to ensure customer trust and
satisfaction. With the level of competition and discounting in the market, DCIM
buyers will demand a clear pricing model or go elsewhere.
Full upstream and downstream support of data. The DCIM solutions
evaluated in this IDC MarketScape have built-in reporting and analytics.
However, to be perceived as "open," and to increase the strategic value of DCIM,
full upstream and downstream transfer of data is a requirement for success. The
integration with BMS and ITSM solutions will become more common, and the
ability to support the transfer of data will be a key differentiator in the market.
L E A R N M O R E
R e l a t e d R e s e a r c h
Worldwide Datacenter Census and Construction 2013–2017 Forecast:
Datacenters and the New Physics of IT (IDC #241031, May 2013)
Key Forces Shaping Datacenters in the 3rd Platform Era (IDC #240270, March
2013)
Worldwide Datacenter Infrastructure Management 2012–2016 Forecast (IDC
#238205, December 2012)
Worldwide Datacenter 2012–2016 Forecast (IDC #237866, November 2012)
S y n o p s i s
This IDC study uses the IDC MarketScape methodology to provide an assessment of
10 vendors participating in the datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) market.
The IDC MarketScape is a vendor assessment tool designed to compare vendors'
current capability and strategy relative to one another and to the factors that IDC
believes will be most conducive to success in the DCIM market. This evaluation is
based on a comprehensive framework and set of parameters that assess vendors
relative to one another, and to those factors that will contribute to success in the
DCIM market in the short and long term.
"Datacenter managers have many choices in how to approach infrastructure
management, and implementing a DCIM solution is a critical step in supporting
business agility. Decisions on which provider to choose should transcend tactical
capabilities such as asset management and environmental and power monitoring,
and include strategic capabilities such as advanced analytics to ensure the long-term
success of the implementation." — Jennifer Koppy, research manager, IDC's
Datacenter Trends and Strategies research team
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