Information Week Full Issue May 3 2010 77604

8/8/2019 Information Week Full Issue May 3 2010 77604

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THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY MAY 3, 2010

[Plus]SAP tips hand on cloud p.13

Salesforce + VMware p.14

An explosionof smartphonesis imminent.Heres why yourBlackBerry-or-nothingstrategy wont cut it.p.19

By Richard Dregerand Grant Moerschel

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A UBM TechWeb Publication CAN $5.95, US $4.95

informationweek.com

THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY

Microsofts Cloud: Whats In It For You? p. 29

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13

COVER STORY

Watch OutEconomic recovery will unleash

employee demand for new

smartphones, making a mobile

device management strategy essential

13 Armys Modernization PlanTactical cloud and majornetwork and data center effortsare on the way

SAP Tips Hand On CloudCloud partnerships and newon-demand offerings are coming

14 Force To Be Reckoned WithVMware and Salesforce.com areteaming to pull enterprise Javadevelopers into cloud development

16 Smartphone Savior?HPs $1.2 billion surprise

acquisition of Palm makes sense

Future Of Data Center SwitchesAristas switch, a Best Of Interopwinner, has the high capacity andlow latency youll need

ONTENTTHE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY May 3, 2010 Issue 1,265

19

informationweek.com May 3,2010 1

[QUICKTAKES]


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2 May 3,2010 informationweek.com

29Microsofts Cloud PlanAzure and its application strategies offer

businesses new choices

36 7 Steps To Better DecisionsHow to successfully implement ananalytics methodology

38 Putting The Squeeze On DataDeduplication can shrink backups

and streamline disaster recovery

41 Dr. Dobbs M-DevDynamic Language Plus .NET

IronRuby is designed to provideintegration between Ruby and

.NET code

Attend the largest gathering of people ready toconnect teams and harness collective intelligencewith social tools and 2.0 technologies. Register

now: e2conf.com/boston

June 14-17 in Boston

upcoming events: Enterprise 2.0

4LinksResearch And ConnectReports from InformationWeekAnalytics, events, and more

6 FeedbackSound OffReaders comment about recentstories and columns

8 Global CIOBy Bob EvansOracles Charles Phillips says a mix-and-match approach is killing IT,and he has the cure: Oracle

10 CIO ProfilesKeep Your Options OpenAcxioms David Guzmn is asuccessful CIO, but that doesntmean hed recommend a tech career

48 GovernmentTechnologistBy John FoleySan Jose learns that cloud computingisnt always a money saver

[CONTENTS]

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Clouds And SLAsAs your company evaluates cloud computing, make sure

that strong service-level agreements are in place.

cloudsla.informationweek.com

Data Centers Go GreenGovernment agencies face new energy-effi-

ciency requirements. Success involves a combi-

nation of virtualization, server consolidation,

and other technologies that provide fine-

grained control over data center resources.

govdatacenters.informationweek.com

Why IT Must Sort Out App MobilizationTools for application mobilization are both more effec-

tive and more confusin g than ever.

mobile-applications.informationweek.com

IP Telephony And HealthcareUnified communications systems can solve some of the

challenges faced by medical centers. In this report, well

advise you on selecting and implementing VoIP systems.

informationweek.com/analytics/healthtelephony

Business Continuity And VirtualizationHaving strong business continuity and disaster recoveryplans in place seems obviousbut a surprising number

of companies dont have them.

virtualizationbc-dr.informationweek.com

InformationWeek Analytics

Take a deep dive with these reports

[ ]

More InformationWeek[ ]

Fritz Nelson demon-

strates how Citrix

Receiver lets IT de-

ploy Windows apps

in a controlled way

to end users on

nearly any platform,

including the iPad.

informationweek.com/

video/citrixreceiver

WatchIt Now

Windows Apps On iPad:Citrix Receiver runs onsmartphones,other devices[

Virtual Event: Optimize Your Infrastructure

Hear about the latest innovations to help you address thechallenges posed by virtualization. Join us May 20.techweb.com/virtualinterop

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century government. It happens May 25-27in Washington, D.C.gov2expo.com

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A Report>> Salary Survey: IT Industry

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>> Master Your Windows 7 Rolloutwindows7.informationweek.com

>> 2010 Strategic SecurityComing May 10

>> Security Vs. Usability SmackdownComing May 17


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6 May 3, 2010 informationweek.com

Why CIOs Are ChoosingCloud E-MailThe No. 1 reason is cost savings,but remote access, reliability, andfeatures also factor in.AndrewConry-Murray

informationweek.com/1264/saas

We looked very closely at SaaS e-mail, but I dont think its ready for

prime time based on compliance, se-curity, and control. Also the monthlyfees would increase our expenses (vs.capital costs). We ran the numbers.Anonymous

SaaS for e-mail seems to be a no-brainer. Weve been using Hotmail,Yahoo, etc., for years with minimal orno issues. The advantages of SaaS e-mail outweigh the negatives. Don

I have found SaaS apps are less reli-able then on-premises apps. Vendorsare supposed to know what theyredoingtheyre the specialists. But Ihave to deal with it when theres anissue or an outage at a vendor. Hon-estly, SaaS has added to our IT loadand not lightened it.

Maybe the best example of SaaSbeing a pain is our Web content fil-tering and e-mail filtering. It was out-

sourced for several reasons, but the

lack of control and lack of response

when theres an issue is unforgivable.Im wondering if we need to bring itback in-house. I know it was lesswork then and everyone was happy.Now users cant access the Internethalf the time. Someone

We outsourced our e-mail, and if ithad been down as much when it wasin-house as it is now, people wouldhave been fired! Always Down

Some companies outsource and thenget a worse service-level agreementand fewer features than they requiredof their own IT staff, which is howthey got the cheaper price. In a fewyears, these companies will wake upand insource it for less than they out-sourced because theyll have a newlower standard than they did in thefirst place. Dont Get It!

Id like more discussion about secu-rity and legal discovery issues. Hav-ing your companys e-mail off-prem-ises presents some logistical issuesregarding the implementation ofcomplex retention policies and back-ups. Candide

Managing Your Windows 7RolloutOur survey shows that IT pros havewarmed to Microsofts latest OS.

Now, the trick is selling an upgradeto the business and easing users offXP with minimal heartache.RandyGeorge

informationweek.com/1264/win7

It is indeed interesting how quicklyIT managers have changed theirtune about Windows 7, though itraises the question: Is the new OSreally that good, or was Vista that

bad? I think theres more to it than

that, but I just wanted to say your

report on the topic is well worthreading. Migration Expert

Cloud InnovatorGive Microsoft some credit: Early signsshow a company committed to trans-forming the way it builds products andserves customers.Rob Prestoninformationweek.com/1264/preston

Microsofts cloud strategy is disparateand not coherent. It attempts toomany different services, none of themwinners.

Microsoft is proving to be inca-pable of extending into marketswhere it cant leverage its existingdesktop monopoly. Its following andchasing others rather than leadingand loses all first-mover advantage.Microsofts influence will continue todiminish. Google and Apple aremuch nimbler and savvier competi-

tors. CIO

Ive done my share of Microsoft bash-ingits a significant business player,but it has no business being men-tioned in any sentence with the wordinnovation in itin the past. How-ever, now, seeing how Google is ap-parently fast copying the Microsoftway of using money earned from onecash cow to hammer existing playersin other industries, this may be a time

to cheer on Microsoft, at least softly,to remain a viable competitive giant.Imran Anwar

The reason Microsoft is taken lightlyis because the people running it arelightweights.

The interaction most of us havewith Microsoft is trying to keep a ba-sic computer functioning with all thecosts and impediments that Microsoft

places in our way. Senior Engineer

Write to us at

[email protected]


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informationweek.com8 May 3, 2010

GLOB

A L CIO

GLOB

L CI

You know youre spending too much oninfrastructure and maintenance versusgrowth and innovation, and you know

your existing stuff more closely resembles atechnology-archaeological museum than ahigh-velocity global business infrastructure.If you could make all that go away and comeripping into the 21st century by standardizingon Oracle, would the advantages of simplicityand lower cost outweigh the disadvantages ofextensive reliance on one vendor?

Oracle president Charles Phillips makes apersuasive argument that provides the answerto all of your problems, including your overlystrained budget, your brittle systems,your inability to get out ahead of thebusywork, your aging and mis-matched apps, and most of all yourinability to meet the CEOs expec-

tation that you become a full-timedriver of growth and innovation.

Theoretically, its a compelling idea:lower costs, less integration busywork,and a real chance for you to become a busi-ness-centric executive instead of InfrastructureMan. But realistically, can you and your com-pany stomach the risk of turning over somuch power to a single vendor?

What CIOs are struggling with right now,said Phillips in a recent interview, is trying tofind a way to get the opportunity and ability

to manage the entire stack with a single man-agement tool thats predictive about how thatstacks going to behave, how the change-management around it is more prescriptiveand planned, and where they really knowhow to upgrade and patch the entire stack.

All the dependencies between these lay-ersthe middleware, database, storage, soft-ware, systemstheyre all related but unpre-dictable, he said. And thats the cycletheyre trying to get out ofall that need to

constantly provision and manageits a huge

cost, and its kinda boring and takes lots ofpeople to do it, and its risky.

CIOs are ready for a new approach, Phillipssaid. The entertainment value or intellectualstimulation you get from tweaking every littlething up and down that stack is not the sameas what it once was. Theyre kind of boredwith doing that. And the expense of doingthat is apparent now, and after going throughthe last two years of downturn, it kind ofhelped us in a way because people said, Ivegotta find a way to change what Im doing.This is not working.

Does this sound like youand a new ap-proach that might be worth looking into?

You dont need 18 different ven-dors and 2,000 configurations tohave competition. Youve got tolimit it some. And I think weve

convinced people that makessense, and beyond that, we think

the whole industrys just moving inthat direction. And we can accelerate that

by standardizing that entire stack and showingpeople how its donepeople like that iPodfor the enterprise analogy.

Too crazy to even think about? Is any ven-dorHewlett-Packard, IBM, SAP, Microsoft,Oraclegood enough these days to get you tochange the metrics in your comfort zone abouthow much of any one vendor is too much?

Thats a tough question, and it might beone you cant answer right now. But onething you do know right now with great clar-ity is that the old approach isnt good enoughanymore. Is Oracles approach as crazy as itsoundsor a sign of things to come?

Bob Evans is senior VP and director ofInformationWeeks Global CIO unit. Formore Global CIO perspectives, check outinformationweek.com/blog/globalcio, or write

to Bob at [email protected].

Oracles Phillips:Standardizing On Oracle Is IT Cure

The mix-and-match

approach is killing IT

organizations,Phillips

says,and the only

salvation is

standardization

(on Oracle,of course)

globalCIOB O B E V ANS


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informationweek.com10 May 3,2010

Career TrackHow long at current company:

Ive spent 18 months at Acxiom, aglobal interactive marketing servicescompany.

Career accomplishment Im mostproud of:At a former company, get-ting to the No. 1 spot on the Infor-mationWeek 500 ... twice.

Most important career influ-encer: David Fuente, CEO atOffice Depot, because he taughtme that there shouldnt be a dis-tinction between the way youtreat people at work and the wayyou treat people at home. Hes agreat business leader and an evenbetter man.

Decision I wish I could do over:Leaving a CIO role at a Fortune 500company to chase an entrepreneur-ial dream.

Also, while every career movewas a step up, sometimes I wish Idmoved my family around less.Thats the wisdom of hindsight.

On The JobIT budget:About $350 million

Size of IT team: 1,500 employees

Top initiatives:

>> Support company Insights Fac-tory strategy

>> Further the use of infrastructurevirtualization

>> Develop integrated suite of prod-ucts and services around service-oriented architecture

>> Rearchitect our 10-year-old

cloud computing platform

DAVID R.GUZMNSenior VP and CIO, Acxiom

Colleges/degrees: Yale,BA withhonors; PhD atYale not completed

Favorite sport: GolfTech vendor CEO I respect the most:

Apples Steve Jobs,for having the con-sumers pulse

Favorite president: Abraham Lincoln,for his courage of conviction amid tu-multuous upheaval

Biggest business pet peeve: Corpo-rate antibodies that fight change andtransformation

If I werent a CIO,Id be ... a Latinpercussionist!

How I measure IT effectiveness:

>> Cost reductionexpense as apercentage of revenue by line ofbusiness

>> Customer service-level agree-ment attainment

>> Fiscal responsibilityconsis-tently beat budget

>> Securityexternal and internalvulnerabilities reduced, independ-ent audit confirmation

>> Project excellenceon time,within budget, goals achieved

VisionAdvice for future CIOs: Change ca-reers! Other than that, stick up foryour convictions and stand up forthe people who make you successful.

What the federal governmentstop technology priority shouldbe:Vivek Kundra is a great leaderwho doesnt need any advice frommeour country is lucky to havehim at the helm. My advice to ourgovernment leaders would be:Listen to him. Ive had the pleasureof meeting him at the White Houseand find him to be singularlyimpressive.

Kids and tech careers: I wouldntsteer kids toward a technology ca-reer. The pinnacle of the career isCIO, which jokingly stands for Ca-reer Is Over. Ive experienced thepressures generated by the unreal-istic expectations behind thatjokeneeding to be perfect, fast,and cheap in a world where com-plexity and lack of consensusaround requirements work against

those expectations.

CIOprofiles Read other CIO Profiles atinformationweek.com/topexecs


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May 3,2010 13informationweek.com

[QUICKTAKES]

Information technolo-giesfrom cloud com-puting to biometrics to hel-met-mounted displays, aswell as major network anddata center effortswillplay a central role in theU.S. Armys latest modern-ization plan, which was justreleased.

Among the more intrigu-ing near-term initiatives out-lined in the plan is a cloudcomputing project in Af-ghanistan. During this fiscalyear, the Army will beginbuilding what it describes asa tactical cloud computingarchitecture there. The

cloud will be used to pro-vide storage, advanced ana-lytics, and computing powerin support of the Armys in-telligence, surveillance, andreconnaissance sensor archi-tecture in the country.

Upgrades to the Armysbattle command networkstake up much of the plan.The efforts revolve aroundtwo multibillion-dollar pro-

grams that have long been inplanning: the Warfighter In-formation Network-Tactical,called Win-T, and the next-generation Joint Tactical Ra-dio System, or JTRS.

Win-T is an upgraded,high-speed network back-bone that will be fielded inthree increments with thegoal of being more interop-

erable, affordable, and up-gradable. Eventually, it will

carry voice, video, and data.The Army plans to spend$630 million on Win-T infiscal 2011. JTRS, mean-while, is the Armys next-generation field radio sys-tem. Field testing of thelatest tactical radio upgradeswill begin in fiscal 2012.

Improvements to the bat-tle command network arepart of an overarching strat-egy called the Global Net-work Enterprise Construct,which includes consolida-tion of enterprise data cen-ters, regional high-band-width satellite-to-fibergateways, and numerous

network operations centers.The networked soldier is

another focus. This year andnext, the Army is doing pro-totypes of the first-generationGround Soldier System,which includes a computer,GPS navigation, headset andmicrophone, and helmet-mounted display. The displaywill show soldiers their andfellow soldiers locations.

The plan describes anumber of applications andnetworked systems thatdont fit neatly into any par-ticular project, including theBiometric Automated ToolSet for use in identifying ad-versaries and a new systemto provide automatic trans-lation of foreign media,speech, and text to English.

J. Nicholas Hoover([email protected])

COMBAT READY

Army Lays Out ItsModernization Strategy

SAPs business is pickingup nicely, but co-CEOBill McDermott has to showhe has a plan for how cloudcomputing and software as aservice fit into SAPs future.In an interview with Infor-mationWeek, he said newpartnerships are coming this

month related to cloud com-puting, and hinted new on-demand offerings are immi-nent as well.

SAP is paying close atten-tion to major shifts in appdelivery modes, McDermottsaid. We clearly get thatcloud computing is a signifi-cant force and one that cus-tomers want, he said.

SAP will announce part-

nerships at its Sapphire showMay 17 to 19, that demon-strate our passion for thecloud, whether its at the net-work, storage, or virtualiza-tion layer, he said, adding itwill also demonstrate its ownoptions for private- and pub-lic-cloud deployment.

SAP has provided little de-tail about its cloud computing

plans beyond saying it wouldmove into SaaS with the re-

vamped Business ByDesignsuite, which the companysays will be ready midyear.

McDermotts remarks fol-

lowed strong preliminary fi-nancial results for SAPs firstquarter, highlighted by a12% increase in revenue to$2.55 billion, up from $2.28

billion a year ago. Operatingprofit increased 81% for thequarter to $731 million, upfrom $403 million.

The strong results come asrelief to a company beset byanemic sales and financial re-sults last year. The poor per-formance led to the dismissalof CEO Leo Apotheker, thedeparture of executive boardmember John Schwarz, and

the appointment of McDer-mott and Jim HagemannSnabe as co-CEOs.

Were feeling very goodabout our businessverygoodand also feeling verygood about our customersendorsing our integrated on-premises, on-demand, andon-device strategy, McDer-mott said. Doug Henschen

([email protected])and Bob Evans

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE

SAP Tips Hand On Cloud

Plans As Profits Soar

Farber/Flickr

McDermott has a plan[


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SUPPLIER MANAGEMENT

Oracle has introduced two ap-plications that work together toease supplier woes.SupplierHub consolidates supplier in-formation from disparate sys-

tems,using attributes,models,and configurable rules to en-sure consistent records. Embed-ded data-quality tools can beused to integrate data fromthird-party sources.SupplierLifecycle Management sup-ports adding a supplier,evaluation,and governance ofsuppliers based on risk.

CLOUD CONTROL

RightScale has opened itscloud management platform to

customers and partners whowant to launch virtualizedservers on their own, rather

than exclusively onAmazon Web Ser-vices, Rackspace,orGoGrid.It wants towiden the use ofRightScales work-load preparation

templates and tools,andRightScale wont charge forthat.CEO Michael Crandell sayshe hopes to turn those usersinto paying customers whowant full support.

RUNNING INTERFERENCE

Cisco aims to improve the per-formance of its mobile net-works with new products thateliminate interference via aproprietary application-specificintegrated circuit and new sys-tem-level intelligence. It usesnew Cisco Aironet 3500 SeriesAccess Points with the vendorsCleanAir technology to addressthe interference that hauntsmany wireless networks.

RED HAT LICENSE CHANGE

In a bid to simplify cloud com-puting for its large customers,Red Hat will let subscribers toits Red Hat Enterprise Linuxwith premium support moveinstances between on-prem-ises and public clouds such asAmazons EC2 without modify-ing their license agreements.

[QUICKTAKES]

VMware and Salesforce.

com are teaming up topull enterprise Java pro-grammers into cloud devel-opment. Their new VM-force offering combinesVMwares Spring Frame-work with Salesforcescloud services platform.

The deal brings togetherleaders in different areas ofcloud computingVMwarein virtualization and Sales-force in software as a ser-viceto create an integratedcloud platform for Java pro-grammers. The rationale isthat many implementationissues can be sidesteppedwhen cloud developmentand deployment take placein the same environment.

VMforce will have all theproductivity of Spring with

all the availability of Force.com, says Jerry Chen,VMwares manager of cloudstrategy.

Until now, Force.com hasbeen used primarily by ex-isting Salesforce customers.Developers have been ableto modify applications run-ning on Force.com usingSalesforces VisualForce userinterface components and

Apex business logic.Users of the new VMforce

will be able to break freefrom those restrictions anduse the Spring Framework,a popular set of Java tools, indeveloping applications torun on Force.com.

The move is the latest inVMwares continuing bid tobecome a larger player in

the cloud after being shutout of Amazons popular

Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2s virtual machines are avariant of the open sourceXen hypervisor. EC2 doesntaccept workloads based onVMwares ESX hypervisor.

Application developmentis likely to become the nextarena of competition incloud computing as technol-ogy vendors jostle for cus-tomers. A second hugewave of development anddeployment is about to hap-pen, based on new devices,mobile Internet computing,says Salesforce CEO MarcBenioff. This is where VM-force will hit its stride.

Microsoft is leading theway with its Azure cloudservices. Microsoft has be-gun to adapt Visual Studioand its .Net technologies for

use with Azure, and it sup-plies a message bus and SQLServer-compatible databaseservices in its cloud.

VMware, with its $362million acquisition of theSpring Framework last Au-gust, gained the means tocompete with Amazon andMicrosoft on this front.VMware estimates the SpringFramework is used by 2 mil-

lion Java developers to buildapps using less complexmethods than would be re-quired with the full Java En-terprise Edition. Spring appsare sometimes referred to aslightweight Java.

Force.com is primarily adevelopment site for data-base-oriented applications,much like the Salesforce

CRM apps that run on it.Force.com supplies security

measures that programmers

would otherwise have tobuild into Spring applica-tions, says Rod Johnson,

founder of the Spring opensource project and generalmanager of VMwares Spring-

Source unit.Force.com also brings

scalability and high avail-ability to Spring applica-tions, characteristics thatused to require specializedknowledge and program-ming skills. In addition,Force.com will provide fulltext search, reporting, ana-lytics, and database serviceswithout heavy lifting by

programmers.Force.com provides a

hardware and networkingenvironment in which Javaprogrammers dont have tounderstand or worry aboutpotential points of failure.And it gives you operationalmanagement by Salesforcedata center specialists afteran app gets deployed, John-

son says.Charles Babcock([email protected])

PRODUCTIVITY MEETS AVAILABILITY

A New Force To Be Reckoned With

Sans Amazon,VMware CEO

Paul Maritz turns to Benioff[

Iamkrishnan/Flickr


10/25

informationweek.com

Want to know whatkind of data centerswitches youll be running ina few years? Look at AristaNetworks Arista 7500, the

top Best Of Interop honoreeat Interop IT Expo and Con-ference in Las Vegas. It hasthe high capacity, low la-tency, low power draw, andsmall form factor youre go-ing to needat a low$140,000 price.

With a 10-Tb backplanein a compact form factor,the 7500 radically increasescapacity. It packs 384 non-

blocking 10-Gb ports with4.5 microseconds of delayinto a 11RU chassis. It sup-ports Ethernet and FibreChannel over Ethernet, andeach blade comes with 2.4GB of frame buffer to queueframes in case of congestion.

The 7500 is modular, soyou can add capacity asneeded, and it uses the same

extensible operating systemacross all of its products for

simple management. Itshigh capacity means you canremove switching tiers thatwere needed to aggregatetraffic to a core switch, at-

tach it to a single access tier,and then move traffic rightto the core. If you have thecabling, you can remove theaccess tier altogether.

Face it, with virtualization,your data center looks less

like a server farm and morelike a high-performance com-puting cluster. And if youwant to move large amountsof data quickly and reliably, it

requires a switching infra-structure. Arista 7500 has thehorsepower for that.

Other Interop winners in-clude best startup ExtraHopNetworks, a newcomer tonetwork management. Its

flagship product, the Extra-Hop Application DeliveryAssurance system, providesauto-discovery of network-attached devices, real-time

packet processing, andarchiving of performancemetrics. At Interop, Extra-Hop rolled out an innovativeWeb service for network andapplication troubleshooting.

Cyber Switching pickedup the green award for itsnew line of ePower PowerDistribution Units. It bringsa new level of granularpower control, offering in-

dependent, color LCDtouch-screen reporting ca-pabilities on the PDU.

ePower was designedfrom the ground up usingthe latest power-saving tech-nologies to ensure that thePDU is operating just as effi-ciently as the products itwas designed to protect.

Mike Fratto

([email protected]),John Foley, and Steven Hill

INTEROPS TOP TECH

Arista Points To Future Of Data Center Switches

Hewlett-Packard hasturned the smartphoneworld on its head with itssurprise plan to purchasePalm. Until this, HP had nolegitimate play in the vitalsmartphone market, andPalms good software wasdying a slow death in badhardware.

The $1.2 billion acquisi-tion makes a lot of sense.HP gets a smartphone strat-

egy with carrier deals, andPalm gets to stay alive. Butthere are a few problems:

>> With 2,000 apps, Palmdoesnt come anywhere nearwhat Google, Microsoft, andResearch In Motion haveletalone the iPhones 150,000-plus. HPs buyout of Palmdoesnt do anything to im-prove the developer story.

>> Palm needs to con-vince buyers that WebOS is

the way to go. Its not goingto do that without new andbetter hardware, and thatwill take time to develop.

>> The competition isfierce and unrelenting,bringing out killer newsmartphones nearly everyweek. Speed is a serious andreal issue here. The compe-tition is already fielding de-vices with up to 12-mega-pixel cameras; the Palm Pre

has a 3-megapixel model.They need to get new de-vices to market ASAP tohead off the existing threats.

In the end, this deal doesat least one thing: It givesPalm time. With HPs re-sources, it will have a fight-ing chance. But Palm needsto go from a featherweightto a heavyweight fast, or itsgoing down. Eric Zeman

([email protected])

HPS ACQUISITION

Salvation Or Last Gasp For Palm?

[QUICKTAKES]

16 May 3,2010

Cloud Computing IBMs Smart Business Development & Test

on the IBM CloudCollaboration Vidyos VidyoDesktop Executive

Data Center & Storage Mellanox Technologies BridgeX 5020

Infrastructure Arista NetworksArista 7500

Network Management ExtraHop Networks Network Timeout

Performance Optimization Spirent CommunicationsAvalanche Virtual

SecurityTippingPoints Virtual Controller

Virtualization Citrix Systems XenDesktop 4 Feature Pack 1

Wireless & Mobility Ciscos Aironet 3500 Series Access Pointwith CleanAir technology

Best Of Interop


11/25

They want new gadgets.Economic recovery will unleash pent-upemployee demand for new and different smartphones,

making mobile device management strategy more critical than ever.

[COVER STORY]


By R i c ha r d D r e ge r a nd G r a nt M oe r sc he l

R

emember the good old days, whenonly star salespeople and top execs had smart-phones, and they could choose between a Black-Berry and a BlackBerry? Now, platform choice is

the name of the game for end users.If you havent seen demand for smartphones ex-

plode yet, you will. Thats the top-level finding ofour InformationWeek Analytics 2010 Mobile DeviceManagement and Security Survey. Surprisingly, em-ployee smartphone use hasnt moved much sinceour last survey on the topic, in 2008: today21% of companies have more than halftheir employees using smartphones, littlechanged from the 17% in February 2008.

However, fully 87% of the 307 respon-

dents say smartphones will become more

predominant in their environments, and just 6%say the fixed/mobile mix will stay the same. Andthe surge of smartphones wont be all Black-Berryseven mobile device vendors registered

double-digit adoption levels in our poll.IT is getting ready for the boom: Security is by

far the top reason for deploying or planning to de-ploy software for mobile device management(MDM)cited by 73% in March vs. 52% in2008. Theres good reason to worry. The mix of

peripatetic hardware IT must now lock downextends beyond smartphones to netbooks,

tablets, and multigigabyte USB devices thesize of pop-tops. Were surprised to see

flash drives take the No. 1 spot among

eight data disclosure risks. But if the


12/25


[COVER STORY] MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT

economy grows and business spendingincreases, smartphones are most likelyto surge and create new problems for IT.

As mobile devices grow smarter, this

is the biggest area of data leakage con-cern, besides cloud computing, says aprincipal security architect with a largeIT vendor. Good luck reining in eitherof them. Employees want to work andshare information wherever they hap-pen to be. Mobile utopia is the themeof lavish ad campaigns from carriersand smartphone makers. Your users seerich ecosystems replete with slick hard-ware, clever applications, and ubiqui-tous network connectivity, and think,Hey, that could be me!

Reconciling the I want my e-mail onan iPhone, and I want it now senti-ment with the practicalities of manag-ing multiple platforms and securing thedata passing through or stored on de-vices, without breaking the bank, ismade more difficult by stagnant tech-nology spending of late. But IT teamsneed to figure it out, and fast. A unifiedresponse includes security policies, ed-

ucation, and management, either viaone or more homogeneous platformmanager, or a single heterogeneous toolthat can administer multiple phoneplatforms. (InformationWeek Analyticssubscribers can get more analysis, fullsurvey data, and a guide to 14 MDMand security products at informationweek.com/analytics/mdm2010.)

In terms of mobile devices, if theresone silver lining to the recession thathit on the heels of our 2008 poll, its

that IT got some breathing room to getpolicies and security technologies inplace to handle the demand for devicesother than BlackBerrys. You have beenworking on that, right? We hope so,because as budgets loosen, the skys thelimit for mobility projects.

And dont discount having to supportwork apps on personal phones. In ourOctober 2009 End-User Device Man-agement Survey, nearly 40% of 558 re-

spondents said their companies let endusers connect their own equipment to

the enterprise data network. If an em-ployee will pay for a smartphone anduse it to check work e-mail, what man-

ager would object? Then, its up to IT tomake sure that can happen securely.

Even if employees cant use theirpersonal phones, the BlackBerry com-pany standard goes out the windowthe moment the CEO walks in thedoor with her new Android device andsays, Support it. The only hope isheterogeneous MDM software.

The MDM Landscape

Even if youve so far been able tomaintain standardization of devices, it

likely wont last. This puts IT into atough spot, though, since bowing topressure on the phone front means aninfrastructure component upgrade

and often a philosophical security pos-ture change as well. More on that later.

Even with these hurdles, over thenext 24 months we expect many en-terprises to at least lay the groundworkfor managing multiple device types, ifnot move wholesale toward new sys-tems that can manage disparate phonetypes under one umbrella.

Functional as Research In Motions orMicrosofts management software is,your ability to support Android, iPhone,or other devices is too limited withthem. Third-party systems are your bestbet for multiplatform depththoughwith some, youll still need BlackBerryEnterprise Server. Good TechnologysMobile Control and Trust Digitals Enter-prise Mobility Platform, for example,support Android, iPhone, Palm WebOS,Symbian, and Windows Mobile, but notBlackBerry. MobileIron, Sybase, Zen-prise, and others also compete here.

Just dont count on one perfect soft-ware system to build your manage-ment strategy around. It seems like alot of vendors out there offering MDMonly have pieces of the puzzle, saysone respondent, nailing the problem.There isnt a clear front-runner thatoffers all the flexibility and features alarge enterprise looks for, such as mul-tiple device supportiPhone, An-droid, and Symbol for examplewithrobust features. We are left using dif-

ferent vendors for different tasks.Keep some general rules in mind

when developing a short list for MDMsoftware.

First, if you want to impose certainsettings across an entire class of mobiledevicessmartphones, in this caseensure you can craft a policy and pushit to devices that are enrolled as partic-ipants in the MDM system. Beforephones are allowed to access company

data, the devices must be enrolled.Your policy should mandate key device

Get This And AllOur Reports

Become an InformationWeekAnalytics subscriber for $99 perperson per month, multiseatdiscounts available, and get ourfull report on mobile devicemanagement and security atinformationweek.com/analytics/mdm2010

This report includes 37 pages ofaction-oriented analysis, packedwith 27 charts.

What youll find:

> Exclusive buyers guide to 14MDM systems

> Our full road map to enablingsecure mobility

> Respondentstop mobiledevice and platform vendors


13/25



settings, capabilities, and operationalmodes, including:

>> Remote wipe/remote reset>> Hardware control: Include cam-

era on/off, Bluetooth on/off, Wi-Fi as-sociations to certain SSIDs only, andaccess to internal or external storage

>> Mandatory authentication meth-ods for gaining user interface access

>> At-rest encryption: Whole disk orfile-by-file

>> Firewalls: Protection from un-wanted inbound IP connections to thedevice via the Wi-Fi or 3G/4G radios

>> Anti-malware: Protection from ma-licious software code for operating sys-tem components or files that make theirway onto the device, such as via e-mail

Among MDM features, remote wipeis the one cited most often as interest-ing, by 72%. Perhaps thats because ofits appealing finality: If a device islost, you have a sledgehammer thatcan be brought down quickly and de-cisively. Compliance and policy set-tings drive whether and how a de-vices functions should be enabled.

Think authentication here.More than 60% cite support for mul-

tiple devices as important in MDM. Weunderstand the interest companies have

in providing choice to employees andnot locking them into one corporate

standard. But be sure that the potentialoperational cost of supporting a hetero-geneous smartphone environment, evenbeyond an MDM system, is well under-

stood. Different platforms mean newskills may be needed at the help desk,

and you may need to compromise onprotection capabilitiesa nonstarter forheavily regulated industries. And thatdoesnt even begin to address possibleapplication interoperability issues.

Choice is good, but it comes with acost. Acknowledge it.

The most familiar enterprise-classMDM product is the BlackBerry Enter-prise Server. Microsofts version forWindows Mobile i s the mouthfulknown as Microsoft System Center Mo-

bile Device Manager. These two repre-sent the bulk of the MDM market, withMicrosofts share growing but BES hold-ing a commanding lead. These are bothhomogeneous MDM systems.

The upside for IT that comes with ahuge (and growing) demand for better,smarter, cooler mobile devices is thatthere is no longer any one monolithicplayer in the enterprise MDM arena. Tomeet demand, software vendors, in-

cluding Microsoft, are catering to newhardware and disparate phone envi-

Data: InformationWeek Analytics Mobile Device Management and Security Surveyof business technology professionals, 307 respondents in March 2010 and 297 in February 2008

What percentage of employees in your company regularly usesmartphones or other mobile handhelds for work?

On The Move

1% to 25%

26% to 50%

51% to 75%

76% to 100%

2010

56%

56%

23%

27%

14%

11%

7%

6%

2008

Data: InformationWeek Analytics Mobile Device Management and Security Surveyof business technology professionals who havent deployed MDM, 113 in March 2010and 136 in February 2008

Why hasnt your company deployed MDM software?

Mobile Device Management Gripes

2010 2008

Not enough IT staff to support it

Too few mobile devices

Too expensive

Dont see the need

Other

61%

46%

34%

40%

32%

26%

26%44%

5%

10%


14/25


ronments. No one provider is likely toguarantee support for every phoneanytime soon, but that concept is nolonger as far-fetched as even a year ago.

Waiting to buy may not be a badthingand many of our respondentshave to, since MDM isnt a high-budgetpriority. Barely half of respondents de-ploying or planning to deploy MDMwill be increasing their investment inthe technology52%, down from56% in 2008. Those without deploy-ment plans most often cite lack of per-sonnel to run MDM systems, or saythey dont have the volume of devicesto warrant the investment.

Our survey includes data for a widerange for organizations: 8% have fewerthan 100 employees, and we can under-stand how economies of scale might notkick in here. However, 36% of respon-dents have between 1,000 and 9,999workers, and 29% have 10,000 ormore. For these shops, MDM is a smartmove given the level of assurance it canprovide when done right.

Smaller companies should also keep

in mind that software vendors are mov-ing toward holistic security packagesthat can protect many device types,from desktops to USB. So you may beable to leverage your current centralizedanti-malware product, for example, andextend it to also manage smartphonesfor just a small license fee.

More Mobile Apps AheadLittle has changed since our previ-

ous survey with respect to the most

critical mobile device applications. E-mail access is king, followed by con-tacts and calendar, then voicemail. Be-fore adding a smartphone to yoursupported list, ensure it handles thesebasic features in tandem with your en-vironment. Period.

Less criticalfor noware generaloffice productivity applications, whichare deployed on about one in three de-vices and saw about 30% growth over

the 24 months between polls. Not asdramatic an uptick as one might ex-

pect, given the theres an app for thatmarketing blitz, but still a notable gain

considering that mobile device formfactors havent changed much. Mi-crosofts Office 2010 is an example,though, of how vendors will ramp upthe pressure to get apps on phones.The new Office suite, available forbusinesses mid-May, has features builtexpressly for smartphone use, such asa take-a-picture button to include aphoto in the OneNote app. As morevendors craft smartphone-friendly ver-sions of enterprise apps, look for em-

ployee demand to shoot up.The bottom line is that any MDM

strategy needs to plan for diverse appli-cations on smartphones, not just di-verse devices. Forty-two percent ofcompanies are already deploying mo-bile applications on smartphones,found our November 2009 Information-Week AnalyticsApplication MobilizationSurvey, with an additional 11% sayingtheyll do so within 12 months and an-

other 6% in 12 to 24 months. Only21% of these, however, indicate wide-

spread adoption throughout the com-pany, with 42% pointing to depart-

ment-specific deployments.In many cases, as in our survey on

MDM, security concerns hold back appexpansion. Another inhibitor is thecrazy quilt of smartphone developmentplatforms: In our App MobilizationSurvey, when asked their primary mo-bile/wireless application architecture,40% said a native mobile platformclient, 28% a mobile browser, 15% aJava client, 8% a hybrid browser/nativeclient combination, and 5% a mobile

middleware approach. Phew.However, we predict that as the

choices for mobile devices expandthink iPads and slates and GoogleChrome netbooksand developmentenvironments mature, well see muchmore use of apps outside of e-mail, soget ready.

Something to watch: As applicationscontinue to multiply on new and exotichardware and operating systems, prop-

erly vetting and securing everything isgoing to be a daunting task. Keep an


Data: InformationWeek Analytics Mobile Device Management and Security Surveyof business technology professionals who deployed or planned to deploy MDM,192 in March 2010 and 161 in February 2008

Why Deploy Mobile Device Management Software?

2010 2008Security

Greater efficiency of mobile spending

Inventory or audit

Cost savings

Other

73%

52%

34%

10%

9%2%

6%10%

2%2%


15/25

[COVER STORY]

eye on security products, in particularendpoint protection systems, to seehowor even ifvendors pull hybridmobile devices such as iPads into the

enterprise protection fold.Of primary importance for IT is sup-

plying remote-access capabilities. Peopleliving the mobile life want entre to the

internal network from client sites, thecoffee shop, the airportwherever theyhappen to be. This reinforces the needto first authenticate the user to the de-

vice, and then the user to the corporatenetwork. If the device is lost or stolen,we dont want an interloper perusing in-ternal data stores. Of course, to get re-mote access in the first place, wirelessservice in the form of Wi-Fi or 3G/4G isa must. IT will need a plan to trouble-shoot smartphone connectivity issues forcore applications, such as e-mail. Ourpoint: Start planningand budgetingfor the software besides MDM that youllneed to maximize productivity.

State Of Uncertainty

The risk landscape is constantlychanging, and mobile systems are par-ticularly disconcerting because we are

Data: InformationWeek Analytics 2010 Mobile Device Management and Security Surveyof 307 business technology professionals, March 2010

Smartphones and other mobile devices

Portable devices (laptops, netbooks, tablets)

Fixed-location devices (desktops, workstations)

Relative shares will remain constant

Over the next two years, which devices will grow as a percentageof all end-user devices in your company?

Device Distribution

87%

68%

8%

6%

MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT


16/25

letting our most critical business assets travel to or be ac-cessed from literally anywhere in the world.

Its tempting to lock down all mobile devices to levelscommensurate with information stored in our network

core. But is that even possible? Probably not. So as withall security- or risk-based decisions, we must find thesweet spot. Heres our road map:

>> Create and enforce a flexible security program thatfully integrates mobile data security. Include policiesspecifically for mobile devices and operating procedures.Dont just think smartphonesinclude laptops, USBdrives, and other portable units.

>> Decide on a strategic direction for platform adop-tion, and define your requirements. It makes no sense toevaluate products or purchase gear if you dont evenknow what problem youre trying to solve.

>> Evaluate what you already own. What used to be asimple antivirus server could morph into a full endpointmanagement suite, so talk to your security vendors. Ifyou need new tools, we recommend heterogeneous man-agement products over single-platform systems. Butnewer is not always better, so always do a proof of con-cept before buying. Most vendors will let you try outtheir products in your environment. Take advantage ofthis, and test all the devices on your approved list.

>> Dont ignore your colleagues business needs, but dontcave in to trendiness. Youre in charge of protecting the

companys assets, so if a heterogeneous smartphone envi-ronment is too risky right now, say so, and explain why.

>> Take the time to understand the types of data flow-ing through mobile devices. Classification is critical.

>> Educate all employees, from the CEO on down,about sensitive data handling. Explain why controls arein place and why certain tools havent been adopted bythe organization. If the CEO is the only one allowed tohave an iPhone, what does that say to staff about consis-tency and security?

>> Be vigilant. Changes come in the blink of an eye,and previously secure systems can be exposed literally

overnight.The implications of mobile device security breaches

are often being ignored for the sake of functionality andsimplicity, says one tech pro in our survey. This is aticking time bomb.

We would counter that at least when you hear that tick,tick, tick, you have fair warning to get a plan togetherbefore the explosion hits. Dont say you werent warned.

Richard Dreger and Grant Moerschel are co-founders of

WaveGard, a vendor-neutral consulting firm specializing

in information assurance strategies and security assess-ments. Write to us at [email protected].


17/25


icrosofts cloud computingstrategy is a tale of two clouds. Thereare its popular software-as-a-service of-ferings: SharePoint, Exchange, Dynam-

ics CRM, and the soon-to-be-released new Webversion of Office 2010. And theres Microsoftsemerging platform as a service, Azure.

How quickly and easily customers adopt theseofferings is an open question, but Microsoft CEOSteve Ballmer, in an interview at the companysRedmond, Wash., headquarters, says that everyCIO he talks to is at least considering the move.And just in case they arent, all of Microsofts 2,000account managers are being required to make acloud pitch to each of their customers.

One of the main cogs of Microsofts cloud strat-egy is Azure, its approach to selling computing

power over the Internet based on usage, as cus-tomers need it. Microsoft has some enterprise cus-tomers such as Kelley Blue Book and Dominostesting key Web applications on Azure, and some

smaller tech companiesincluding SugarCRMsell software services running on the platform. ButAzure continues to be a work in progress.

Azure is a long-term bet because, for it to be ablockbuster the way Microsoft envisions, softwareneeds to be written differentlyjust as Web appsare different from client-server apps, which are dif-ferent from mainframe software. Microsoft sees theswitch to cloud development as being as signifi-cant as those earlier generational shifts. Developerswill write applications, for example, so they take

advantage of key features of a cloud architecture,such as the ability to automatically scale server re-

Microsofts Cloud PlanBallmer says the companys all in.Whats in it for you? By Chris Murphy

[CLOUD COMPUTING]

Were actually trying to helppeople do what they really willneed to do for the moderntime. You dont get that out of whatAmazon is doing. Steve Ballmer

M


18/25


sources up and down as needed for de-mand, treating their computing capac-ity as a pooled resource. Companiesthat run huge data centers to run Web

appsGoogle, Facebook, Microsoft,Amazondo that today, but most en-terprise data centers dont.

There are a few people in the worldwho can write cloud applications, saysBob Muglia, president of Microsoftsserver and tools division. Our job is toenable everybody to be able to do it.

Whats In Azure

Azure is pay-per-use computing andstorage offered from a virtualized, mul-titenant IT infrastructure, meaning sys-tems generally are shared by customersfor higher efficiency. Microsofts cloudinfrastructure includes systems man-agement that handles tasks such asautoscaling and failover and APIs that

developers can use to tap into thoseand other capabilities. Azure has beenavailable since the beginning of theyear, at a cost of about 12 cents per

hour for a basic Windows server.Microsofts service offerings include

SQL Azure, a version of the companys

database that has been configured forthe cloud. Developers can run storedprocedures and other SQL Server pro-gramming in Microsofts data centerrather than their own, with the addedbenefit that Microsoft takes on the

headaches of database administration.They dont have to worry about tun-ing, load balancing, cluster manage-ment, and all that, because thats done

at the automated systems layer, saysDoug Hauger, general manager of Mi-crosofts cloud infrastructure group.

Another element is Azures contentdelivery network, which customers canuse to distribute and store data and me-dia files for better performance over theWeb. The network is in beta, so Mi-crosoft isnt charging for it yet. Anotherbig piece in development is AppFabric,a service layer that supports identitymanagement, messaging, service bus,and other middleware functions.

Theres nobody with an offer like

ours in the market todaynot evenclose, Ballmer says of Azure. Wereactually trying to help people do whatthey really will need to do for the mod-ern time. You dont get that out of whatAmazon is doing.

The comparison to Amazon was in-evitable. Amazon launched its ElasticCompute Cloud in 2006, more thanthree years ahead of Azure, so Mi-crosoft is playing catch-up. At thisstage, Amazon enjoys not only a market-

share lead over Microsoft and othercloud service providers, but mindshareamong the clouds early adopters.

Because Azure is platform as a ser-vice, geared toward development andhosting of Web apps, it lacks some ofthe basic infrastructure-as-a-service op-tions available on Amazons EC2. Mi-crosoft is providing, in essence, a skiresort with only advanced runs. Com-pany execs admit the mistake and say

Microsoft will add what its calling VMRole to offer more EC2-like infrastruc-

[CLOUD COMPUTING]

Clint Oram isnt picky about cloud platforms.He wants SugarCRM to berun as a service from any one that customers want.Our strategy is to

run on all cloud platforms, says Oram, founder and VP of the open

source CRM company.

That said, he does give a nod to Azure, where SugarCRM has been running

the the past few months for a few customers. Azure is by far one of the

strongest platforms,he says. Oram adds that SugarCRM could move its code to

Azure with very little engineering,despite being in PHP. Besides .Net,Azure now

supports Java,Ruby, and Python as well PHP. Thats important, as the platform-

as-a-service competition expands: VMware and Salesforce.com just teamed up

to bring Java to Salesforces Force platform (see p. 14).

Oram thinks customers will like that Azure makes it easy to move both an

application and data between an in-house data center and Microsofts.While

SugarCRM supports both MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, it runs SQL Azure in

Microsofts cloud. Oram says companies will take advantage of that compati-

bility.You can opt to run SugarCRM on premises, keeping your data private,

then decide to migrate to a SaaS strategy with very little engineering effort,he

says. Moving to the cloud gives companies benefits such as automated high

availability, he adds.

Since Azure offers standard relational database access to CRM data, companies

could, Oram says, synchronize their data in the cloud with a matching set on

premises.That would chew through some of the clouds cost savings, but Oram

believes it could become standard practice at some companies.

Charles Babcock ([email protected])

SugarCRM Tests AzureCLOUD BOUND

There are a few people in the world

who can write cloud applications. Our

job is to enable everybody to be able to.

Bob Muglia,Microsofts server and tools president


19/25


ture-as-a-service options. Microsoftwants to make it simpler to bring anexisting workload to Azure.

Even so, Microsoft will continue to

emphasize the platform-as-a-servicemodel, encouraging customers to writeapps and in some cases rewrite oldapps to take full advantage of thecloud. If youve got a hairball in yourdata center, and you move that hairballto an infrastructure as a service, andyou dont rework it, its still just a bighairball, Hauger says.

Microsoft expects businesses to buildenterprise apps that scale up and downin the Azure cloud and that take ad-vantage of its built-in high availability.Microsoft plans to engineer some ofAzures automation capabilities intoWindows Server and its System Centermanagement software; it recently an-nounced Dynamic Datacenter Toolkitfor Enterprises, to help IT departmentscreate compute clouds in their owndata centers. Being able to choose andswitch among clouds is a recurringtheme Microsoft uses, particularly

against Google App Engine.Google is kind of its own weird,

funny proprietary environment, whichI dont think has any hope of ever com-ing back and being run except out of aGoogle data center, says Ballmer. Wehave to have a story and an approachwhere people can run our cloud in theirdata center. A major preoccupation ofMuglias team is developing the soft-ware and tools to create hybrid Win-dows clouds that link corporate data

centers with Microsofts Azure services.

Azure QuestionsAzure has drawn a lot of customer

interest, and Kelley Blue Book is typicalin the questions its asking before go-ingto borrow Ballmers phraseallin with using the cloud. Kelley BlueBook, which gives car shoppers dataon vehicle prices, is keen for Azure totake over spikes in traffic and provide

disaster recovery, so it might eventuallydrop its second data center and save

about $100,000 a year. But Microsoftonly released the monitoring and diag-nostic APIs late last year, and AndyLapin, Kelleys director of enterprise ar-

chitecture, cant get a clear view of howAzure is performing from a manage-ment console. As of yet, no one hascome up with a monitoring platformfor Azure, he says.

But such tools are coming, andmoving the .Net applications on Kel-

leys Web site to Azure should be fairlystraightforward, Lapin says. Wereconfident it will work, he says. Lapinenvisions on-demand scalabilityau-tomatically firing up Azure server in-stances when utilization of Kelleysown servers exceeds 90% and ratch-eting back when utilization falls below

80%. For now, though, hes waitingfor better monitoring.

Muglia admits Microsoft has a lotof building to do. His short-term to-do list includes support for infra-structure as a service, larger databasepartitions, analysis and reporting ca-pabilities in SQL Azure, a better de-veloper portal, and bringing the new.Net 4 into Azure.

Muglia says companies will savemoney with Azure by cutting back on

infrastructure costs, but he predicts thebig gains will come in the form of busi-ness agility, including getting softwaredeveloped and implemented faster.You cant just do it at the infrastruc-ture layer, he says. Virtualized soft-ware and hardware are key in thecloud, but the real magic happens inthe way applications get built, saysMuglia. Thats where most of our in-vestment has been.

Microsofts Windows NT operatingsystem took 10 years to become main-

stream, Muglia says. With Azure, up-take will be much fasterthree to fiveyears, he predicts, but Azure is everybit as much a rough diamond as NT

was when first released in 1993.

Software As A Service

Exchange Online and SharePointOnline have been Microsofts leadingSaaS offerings through its BusinessProductivity Online Suite (BPOS),

which includes online versions of Ex-change and SharePoint. With the up-coming launch of Office 2010 forbusiness in mid-May, Microsoft showsthat its serious about making Officerelevant in the cloud, too, with a morepowerful, browser-based version thatsMicrosofts answer to Google Apps.

Office 2010s online features includereal-time co-authoring in a document,something Google features in the re-cent rewrite of its online word proces-sor and spreadsheet.

A free, ad-supported online versionof Office 2010, aimed at consumers,will become available in June. Busi-nesses will have two other options.

Those that license Office 2010 forPCs will also be able to offer browser-based versions of those apps from Win-

dows servers in their data centers. Andsometime in the coming monthsMi-crosoft hasnt said just whenit willoffer Office 2010 Web-only apps,though it isnt saying if that will be bymonthly subscription or volume li-censes. Microsoft still doesnt have thecheap, simple pricing model of Google($50 per user per year for GoogleApps), but Office 2010 will bring theonline access and collaboration options

employees increasingly want.One thing to watch is whether Of-

[CLOUD COMPUTING]

The sense of momentum is definitely

stronger than it was a year ago.

Stephen Elop,Microsofts business division president


20/25


fice 2010 gets bundled with BPOS,which includes Exchange and Share-Point. To date, Office has required aseparate license. Given Googles $50-

per-user offer for apps, e-mail, and acollaboration platform, Microsoft willbe under pressure to cut deals that rollBPOS (listed from $120 a year) andOffice 2010 (price to be determined)together.

Office 2010 is getting a big makeoverfor the cloud in terms of browser-acces-sible features and functionality. (Seenext weeks issue for more coverage ofnews features in Office 2010 and Share-Point 2010.) Whether the businessmodel surrounding Office gets alteredas much remains to be seen.

The Webified Office 2010 morphsfrom a standalone content creation toolto more of a group collaboration tool.Its an area where Googles productivitytools threaten to take the lead. Whenpeople rave about Googles online doc-uments and spreadsheets, its invariablyfor the ability to work on them simul-taneously or share them online.

The new browser-based Word will letmultiple users work in a document. Yetits different from Googles real-time co-authoring, which lets collaboratorswrite anywhere in the document. Mi-crosoft decided people would find thattoo intrusive in Word. So, when awriter grabs a paragraph, its locked un-til he or she is finished revising, thoughpeople can work elsewhere in the docu-ment. (However, in OneNote, which ismore a brainstorming tool, testers liked

open collaboration, so Microsoft in-cludes it. The same people were com-fortable with anarchy in OneNote andwanted peace in Word, says Chris Ca-possela, Microsofts senior VP of infor-mation worker products.)

Driven by BPOS, Microsofts cloudbusiness is already generating a sub-stantial revenue stream. Stephen Elop,president of Microsofts business divi-sion, says Microsoft is on track to gen-

erate half of SharePoint, Exchange, andDynamics CRM revenue from services

within four years. The sense of mo-mentum is definitely stronger than itwas a year ago, Elop says.

The Collaboration Imperative

Microsofts progress matters to CIOsbecause theyre under intense pressureto make collaboration within theircompanies easier.

At GlobalCrossing, an early adopterof Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, ahalf-dozen employees might work in aWord document simultaneously to cre-

ate an RFP, or on a PowerPoint presen-tation. The kludgy alternative is e-mail-ing attachments around. E-mail is nota collaboration tool, even thougheveryone uses it like that, says SteveSchafer, director of internal collabora-tion services at GlobalCrossing.

GlobalCrossing studied groupsworking on PowerPoint files and foundthat co-authoring cut the time involvedby as much as 30%. Its also planningto use that co-authoring capability out-

side its extranet, to create documentswith partners, vendors, and customers.GlobalCrossing serves Microsoft Webapps from inside its own data center,due to the regulatory complications ofbeing a majority foreign-owned tele-com company.

Playing It Less SafeNot long ago, while the rest of the in-

dustry talked about cloud computing,

Microsoft used the phrase software plusservices to describe its SaaS strategy. Its

toneand lingohave since changed,and Microsoft leaders now say cloudcomputing will cause major disruptionto software business models, includingits own. Microsoft execs still hedge a bit,referring to cloud on your terms andpounding home the idea that you canshift Exchange, Office, and Azure appsfrom the cloud and into your data cen-ter if business requirements call for it.Of course, that caution reflects morethan Microsofts own worriesmanyCIOs feel the same way.

If Microsoft succeeds in the cloud, itwill become a different company. Itsalready sunk several billion dollarsinto data centers, because implicit inthe cloud model is a requirement thatservice providers take on capital in-vestment in hardware as customers doless of that.

But that will let Microsoft do newthings for customers. Says Ballmer, Itturns out that if you made $50 and100% of it was profit, and now youre

taking $100 of revenue and you have$40 of COGSthese arent real num-bersit turns out your gross margindoesnt look as good in the secondcase, but your shareholders actuallyhave more profit in the second case.

Translation: Cloud computing is apoint of dramatic change for Microsoft.

With Charles Babcock

and Doug Henschen

Write to Chris Murphy [email protected]

[CLOUD COMPUTING]

Data: InformationWeek Analytics SaaS Survey of 131 business technology professionalsat companies using SaaS, November 2009

Which SaaS Vendors Do You Use?

41%

Salesforce.com

28%

Google

26%

Microsoft

26%

Oracle


21/25


Decisions made based solelyon intuition, gut feelings,and years of experience,while valuable, tend to be

less effective than scientific methods.Analytics provides a methodology thatincorporates crucial variables and pro-vides simulations that show the im-pact of our choices before we imple-ment them.

Analyticsthe application of mathe-matics and statistical methods to orga-nizational decision makinghas beenthe focus of a great deal of marketinghype. But to use it successfully requiresmore than products. Heres a seven-step process for applying analytics.

1. Define the problem. Assump-tions must be challenged and termsdefined to come up with what in SixSigma parlance is referred to as theoperational definition. We also mustdefine objectives. What criteria will beused to select the appropriate deci-sion? What conditional states exist rel-ative to the problem, and how are theyaffected by the solution alternatives?What is the scope of the problem defi-nition, and how do we know when

weve succeeded?2. Identify relevant factors. Rele-

vant factors include controllable anduncontrollable variables. Examinewhether these variables are related toeach other directly, or theres a range ofpossibilities. Be on the lookout for la-tent variables, hidden factors that arentobserved directly but are inferred fromthe behavior of other variables. Finally,

factor in risk and uncertainty.3. Focus on data collection and

preparation. This step can becomecomplicated, particularly when miningvast amounts of data. Data mining al-gorithms often identify features includ-ing data affinity and patterns that arentreadily apparent with a cursory exami-nation. This is also the time to estab-lish baselinesmeasurements of thecurrent as is process, against whichyoull compare future to be, post-implementation results.

4. Model the solution. Here, mathe-

matical models of a process and its vari-ables simulate the behavior of the actualprocess. A working model may belargely composed of strings or chains ofmathematical formulas.

5. Report the results. The analystmust be able to walk through theanalysis step-by-step. It is upon this re-port that go/no-go decisions aremade. In some cases, this is a one-time

decision to modify the process or or-ganization; in other cases, it will be a

decision to initiate a new process.6. Implement the decision. This is

where models and simulations migratefrom a conceptual state to practice. Itrequires detailed planning and projectmanagement. In too many instances,implementations fail due to a lack ofqualified project management skills.

7. Follow up. Post-implementationfollow-up is the time to compare as-isbaseline measures with to-be, post-im-plementation results. Measurement pe-

riods should cover meaningful report-ing cycles, such as monthly, quarterly,or annual assessment, and youll needsufficient granularity to make neededadjustments to your models over time.

Gary Smith is a principal at Doyen, a

consulting firm that specializes in project

management and process analytics. Write

to us at [email protected].

Get the full report on adopting advanced analytics at informationweek.com/analytics/adoption

7 Steps To Better DecisionsHow to successfully implement an analytics methodology By Gary Smith

How Will You Develop Advanced Analytics Expertise?

Plan to train in-house BI experts and power users on analytic tools

Already have skilled analytics professionals in-house

Plan to hire consultants on a temporary basis

Will employ pre-built analytic apps or models that can be handled by current staff

Plan to hire analytics experts

Data: InformationWeek Analytics/Intelligent Enterprise Business Intelligence Survey of 534 businesstechnology professionals, July 2009

48%

34%

24%

22%

11%

[ANALYTICS]


22/25


Data deduplication holdspromise for IT groups tryingto get a handle on ever-grow-ing storage volumes, and we

clearly need the help: More than half ofrespondents to our InformationWeek An-alytics Data Deduplication Survey man-age more than 10 TB of data; 15% man-age 201 TB or more.

Deduplication systems look for re-peating patterns of data at the blockand bit levels. When multiple in-stances of the same pattern are discov-ered, the system stores a single copyof the pattern. Deduplication func-tionality is available in both appli-ances and in software. For certain

applications, such as disk-to-diskbackupsparticularly backups ofdata sets that change slowly over time,such as e-mail systemsdeduplica-tion can be extremely effective. Com-pression rates of 30 to 1 or evenhigher arent uncommon.

Some vendors dedupe the datastream as its sent to the appliance andbefore its written to disk, referred to asan in-line setup. Others perform post-process deduplication after data is writ-

ten to disk. The best choice dependson your needs. In-line deduplicationmay have lower initial storage capacityrequirements since a full un-dedupedcopy of the data is never written todisk. Post-process deduplication re-quires more initial space, but its moreeasily adapted to and integrated withvarious storage systems.

Another advantage of dedupe is

streamlined replication and disasterrecovery capabilities. After an initialbackup, only changed blocks arewritten to disk during subsequent jobs, consuming significantly lessstorage.

Of course, there are legitimate con-cerns about excessive reliance ondeduplication appliances as part of thebackup and disaster recovery process;the worry is that the appliance will failat the most inopportune moment.Cost is also a concern. Deduplicationstorage costs significantly more thantraditional storage on a per-gigabytebasisusually orders of magnitudemore. And encryption systems inten-

tionally remove repeating patterns andrandomize data, which makes dedu-plication ineffective when applied toencrypted data.

That said, given the right set of dataand proper project execution, you can

reach extremely high compression/deduplication ratios that offset thehigher cost of raw storage capacity. Asmaller number of spindles take upless space, use less electricity, and gen-erate less heat.

Deduplication appliances are bestsuited as targets for nightly backupsand related DR replication. Anothersweet spot is backup of highly redun-dant data, such as a large number ofsimilarly configured physical or vir-tual servers or workstations. Youwont go wrong by focusing your im-plementations efforts in these areasnow, while deduplication vendorscontinue to improve their technology,

lower costs, and increase suitabilityfor other applications.

Behzad Behtash is an independent IT

consultant. Write to us at iweekletters@

techweb.com.

Get the full report on data deduplication, including survey results, at dedupe.informationweek.com

Putting The Squeeze On DataDedupe can shrink backups and streamline disaster recovery By Behzad Behtash

[DATA DEDUPE]

Data: InformationWeek Analytics Data Deduplication Survey of 140 business technology professionalsevaluating/piloting data deduplication

15%

31%

13%

41%

Evaluating, but nospecific timeline

Plan to deploy,but no specific timeline

When Will You Deploy Data Deduplication?

Within 6 months

Within 12 months


23/25


IronRuby 1.0, a recently releasedimplementation of Ruby hosted inthe .NET Framework and sup-ported by Microsoft, is designed

to provide integration between Rubyand .NET code, providing a simpler,less painful way to share code betweenthe two.

Dynamic languages such as Ruby of-fer something that static languagesdont: simplicity. Theyre designed to getjobs done fast and easy. And since mostof the action occurs at runtime, devel-opers can focus on writing better code.

Microsoft added support for dy-namic languages four years ago in the.NET Framework by implementing the

Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)component on top of the .NET Com-mon Language Runtime, which pro-vides special services for dynamic lan-guages. IronRuby was one of the firstlanguages identified as a candidate for.NET dynamic language support.

With .NET, everything is built on topof the CLR, so sharing code among lan-guages is easy. IronRuby 1.0 has been re-leased with full source code under theMicrosoft Public License. (Download

IronRuby at ironruby.codeplex.com.)IronRubys performance is excellent.

Its two to four times faster than themain Ruby language implementation,according recent benchmarks, makingit a top choice for a Ruby interpreteron Windows.

In one recent project, I needed to de-tach a folder from Subversion supervi-sion, and my only option was to export

the files to a different folder. I had todo this quickly, so I turned to Ruby.While I hadnt intended to use Iron-Ruby, I figured out that SubversionSVN files were read-only, and I neededto pull over all of them using recursionto make them available for deletion. AWeb search revealed that WindowsManagement Instrumentation pro-vided an easy solution: I used Iron-Ruby and .NETs System.Managementassembly to execute the WMI com-

mands from my Ruby code. It took meall of 10 minutes to develop the tool.

IronRuby is a bridge between Rubyand .NET, making the entire .NETFramework available to Ruby develop-ers, including frameworks such as WPF,Silverlight, and ASP.NET. For .NET de-velopers, the whole Ruby world is ac-cessible, including Ruby on Rails, test-ing frameworks such as Cucumber, andRubys powerful built-in capabilities.

The DLR makes the task of calling

code straightforward, making Iron-Ruby great for adding extensibility fea-tures to existing .NET apps. To executeIronRuby code, all you write is:

ScriptEngine engine = IronRuby.Ruby

.CreateEngine();

engine.Execute(puts Hello from

IronRuby);

You can also set variables to be usedwithin scripts and get return values fromexecuted code. The simplicity of thisprocess will ensure that this kind of ex-tensibility is common in the near future.

Internal Tools And POCs

C# codes execution process is simi-lar to IronRubys, but it skips the DLRand goes directly through the CLR toget executed on the target machine.This similarity, along with the ability toeasily use .NET assemblies in IronRubycode, makes IronRuby ideal for .NETdevelopers to use to write internal toolsand proofs-of-concepts; they can useRuby, but stay within the .NET frame-work boundaries. The code can bewritten faster, while letting developers

experience another language.When it comes to testing, IronRuby

brings with it innovative Ruby testingframeworks that can change the way.NET developers test code by makingthe process simpler, faster, and moreinteresting than before.

For example, the RSpec testingframework provides a domain-specificlanguage for unit tests. The following

Read more about Windows development at drdobbs.com/windows

Dynamic LanguagePlus.NETIronRuby brings the two together By Shay Friedman

1. Faster code writing

2. Powerful syntax

3. Powerful metaprogramming

4. Active community, including forums,

mailing lists,and IRC

5. Loads of free open source libraries

(in most cases)

5KeyFeatures[OF DYNAMICLANGUAGES


24/25


RSpec code tests a .NET method:

describe System::Collections::Stack,

Countdo

it returns 0 for empty stackdostack = System::Collections::Stack.new

stack.Count.should == 0

end

end

Silverlight

Silverlight provides a rich GUI forWeb applications, much like AdobeFlash. Until Version 2, developing Sil-verlight apps could be done solely by.NET static languages like C#. SinceSilverlight 2 includes the DLR, it allowswriting Silverlight apps in dynamiclanguages like IronRuby.

The Silverlight and DLR bundle bringsgreat things to both Ruby and .NET pro-

grammers. Ruby developers get a rich In-ternet application framework they canuse in their language, and .NET develop-ers can use the dynamic capabilities of

Ruby, such as the ability to create a REPL(Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop) window.

Microsofts Gestalt project took Sil-verlight in a different direction, lettingdevelopers interact with the browser inSilverlight-supported languages, ratherthan in JavaScript. Gestalt allowsadding tags that contain Iron-Ruby code (IronPython and XAML aresupported as well), replacing JavaScriptwith Ruby for client-side scripting.

To use it, include a JavaScript filenamed dlr.js, then write Ruby code in-side tags. Forexample, the following HTML page con-tains a textbox and a button: Once theuser writes his or her name and clicks

Congrat!, a Ruby script shows an alertwith a welcome message and adds themessage to a element on the page:

document.say_hello.click {

msg = Hello #{document.full_name

.value}

window.alert msg

document.txt.innerHTML = msg

}

Ruby On Rails

Ruby on Rails is an MVC-drivenframework widely used to developWeb applications for big sites like Twit-ter, Yellow Pages, Hulu, and others.IronRuby lets .NET developers usetheir C#/VB.NET codebase and stilltake advantage of the Ruby on Railsframework. Furthermore, since the.NET framework is integrated with Mi-crosofts Internet Information Services,IronRuby becomes the top choice forrunning Ruby on Rails apps on IIS.

In sum, making Ruby part of the .NETFramework via IronRuby, offers enor-mous benefits to .NET developers, justas bridging .NET and IronRuby benefitsRuby developers. As soon as both devel-oper camps understand the potential inthis, well see IronRuby projects erupt-ing everywhere. Its as simple as that.

Shay Friedman is a Microsoft Visual C#

amd IronRuby MVP, and author ofIron-

Ruby Unleashed. You can write to us [email protected].

[M-DEV] DYNAMIC LANGUAGES


25/25

San Jose lies in the heart of Silicon Valley,but youd never know it from the IT toolsavailable to city employees. The standard

desktop in the citys government offices is anoutdated PC running the Microsoft Office2003 suite and Outlook 2003 e-mail client.

Steve Ferguson, San Joses CIO and chiefinformation security officer, knows that heneeds to upgrade those systems, but years ofIT budget cutsa reflection of city budgetdeficits going back to the dot-com busthave made that impossible. San Joses (at thetime) 100-person IT department lost 14 posi-tions last year and another dozen this year.Going into fiscal 2010-2011, Ferguson hasbeen asked to identify another 35% in IT-re-lated costs that could be lopped off.

Given the austerity measures, San Jose offi-cials took note when Los Angeles revealed

plans to save $5 million by switching fromNovells GroupWise software to Google Apps.Might San Jose save millions, too?

Ferguson crunched the numbers and de-termined that San Joses existing bare-bonese-mail system is already cheaper than whatGoogles providing to Los Angeles. San Joseson-premises Exchange/Outlook environmentcosts $1.88 per user per month, while L.A.is forking over $3 to $4 per user per monthfor Googles e-mail. Even at the low end ofwhat L.A. is paying, San Joses annual costs

would jump $160,000 in Googles cloud,Ferguson calculates.

Ferguson admits San Jose has had to maketrade-offs with its bargain-basement e-mail plat-form. Its 7-year-old apps lack the newest fea-tures and productivity improvements, so work-ers are handicapped by the tools they use dailyto get things done. PC replacement cycles arestretched to the limit. When new PCs comein, IT staffers remove the new software thatcomes with them and replace that with Office

and Outlook 2003 to ensure compatibility

The model we currently have feels waytoo risky to me running a mission-criticalservice like e-mail in the 10th largest city inthe country, Ferguson says.

So, despite the budget pressure, Ferguson isevaluating cloud-based e-mail and other appsas a potential way of bringing city desktopsinto the present and keeping them up to datewith new capabilities delivered over the Web.Its three months into a trial of Google Apps.

Ferguson does have one key concern aboutmoving to the cloud, and its not security orreliability. (I believe theyre addressing the se-curity issues, he says, and I think the cloudis going to be as reliable as what we have to-day.) Rather, Ferguson wants to be sure anysubpoenas or other legal requests involvingcity data in the cloud are handled by the cityslawyers, not by the cloud service provider.

The citys attorneys are reading the fine printon Googles service contract for that.

No decision has been made by San Jose onwhether to move to the cloud or which cloudservice it might use, but the city seems in des-perate need of an enterprise-wide upgrade,and Web apps would be the quickest route. Inaddition to e-mail and new productivity apps,Ferguson says collaboration tools and mobilecomputing are high on the wish list.

Make note, however, that cloud comput-ing wouldnt necessarily be cheaper than San

Joses current desktop environment, though itwould almost certainly be better. The expec-tation that the cloud is always cheaper is acommon misconception, one that CIOsshould address up front if they want to avoiddisillusionment later.

John Foley is editor of InformationWeek Gov-ernment. Join him and top federal CIOs atthe Government IT Leadership Forum, June15: informationweek.com/government/forum.

Write to John at jpfoley@techweb com

Can Cloud Computing Save San Jose?

SaaS apps wouldnt

necessarily be cheaper

than the citys

outdated desktop

environment,but they

would almost certainly

be better

J O HN F O LE Y

governmentTechnologist

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