|
Market Roundup March 10, 2006 |
|
Please visit our blog Sageza Says for additional analyst
insights and views.
Cisco Unifies IP Communications
This week Cisco launched its new Unified Communications
system, a suite of voice, data, and video products and applications. The system
is designed to help customers integrate communications with IT infrastructure.
The Unified Communications system is based on the Service-Oriented Network
Architecture (SONA) that Cisco announced last December. It uses the IT data
network as the service delivery platform for communications and Cisco believes
it makes it easier for people to find each other more quickly regardless of
communications medium or physical location. The solution makes use of new
versions of existing products such as CallManager, Unity, MeetingPlace, and IP
Contact center as well as new products such as Unified Personal Communicator
which uses presence information to help connect people using a GUI that
integrates multiple applications, and Unified Presence Server which collects
the presence information concerning a user’s status and available communications
devices and publishes that information to Cisco Personal Communicator as well
as to IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005.
Customer Interaction Analyzer is another new product which gathers data that
gives conversations business context and can help coach and train agents to
improve customer communications processes. For mid-market companies Cisco is
enhancing several Express versions of its products. Cisco also has a Smart
Business Roadmap which should help customers to plan how it will evolve from its
current technology to new capabilities in line with their business goals. Also
of note, Cisco indicated that it will incorporate session initiation protocol
(SIP) natively into its technology, from hard phones to the latest version of
CallManager.
Although we’ve tried to distill the highlights of the
launch, the truth is that Cisco has rolled out over forty new products or new
versions of products that significantly enhance its IP communications
offerings. To fully understand the details will take a while, but the key
points are still easy enough to work out. Cisco has adopted the phrase “this
changes everything,” and believes that this announcement is a real turning
point for IP communications. One of the things we’ve argued is that the world
of communications is behind the computing world on several fronts. In
particular, the notion of cross-platform integration is something the compute
guys have accepted as a goal for a while, and they’ve made real strides, whereas
communications guys have struck us as being convinced that building parallel
competing and incompatible networks is a fabulous idea. IP communication capability
that more easily helps calls get routed properly, makes traveling
decision-makers easier to reach, and takes advantage of customers’ variable
communications technologies intelligently is a sensible idea and actually stems
from the idea that people need to communicate and that the mode they are using
at any given moment should not be a gating factor but instead an enhancement or
facilitator of the communications process.
Since Cisco is one of the few companies that has a computing heritage on the network side and is also actively participating in the communications revolution, then it would be worrisome if the company didn’t understand the need to integrate better than some of its competitors. The solutions that Cisco can achieve with these new products and its decision to make its products play nicely with other vendors’ products are a breath of fresh air in this space. We applaud Cisco’s recognition that it is playing in a diverse ecosystem and using their powers for good. We hope that Cisco will take a leadership role in helping their partners in the communications space to realize that collaboration, standards, and integration do not in fact stifle competition but instead allow vendors to better focus on where they differentiate and allow everyone to grow from common bases. Additionally customers quite like it. A significant portion of the computing space seems to be accepting this notion at various levels and the industry is evolving. Once communications vendors embrace this approach then we’ll really begin to see convergence and unified communications. What an idea that would be.
EMC Corporation has announced two new versions of its EMC
Celerra platform. The mid-tier EMC Celerra NS350 and EMC Celerra NS704
integrated systems are designed for those who are seeking the storage
foundation of an IP-based ILM strategy. The company also announced what it
described as the industry's first management solution that brings automated
root-cause and impact analysis to NAS. The new EMC Smarts IP Availability
Manager for NAS automatically discovers NAS system elements as IP devices,
automates real-time root-cause analysis of critical IP network availability
problems at all layers, and assesses the potential impact of connectivity
failures on related infrastructure. The Celerra NS350 is designed for
consolidating applications and servers into a single IP storage system with up
to 10 TB of capacity and supports online upgrades from single to dual Data
Mover configurations. It offers NAS and iSCSI connectivity, supports both Fibre
Channel and ATA drives within a single system, and offers upgrade paths to
higher performance and capacity systems. The Celerra NS704 NAS system combines
the Celerra NS704 gateway with an EMC CLARiiON CX700 storage array with up to
48 TB of usable capacity and both NAS and iSCSI connectivity. This high-end,
integrated NAS platform targets customers that need the ability to consolidate
more servers and storage capacity while scaling performance more cost
effectively. Both offerings include EMC Celerra’s full suite of software and
simple Web-based management of configuration, administration, and monitoring.
Both also support the feature-rich IP storage capabilities announced by EMC in
January, including iSCSI replication and virtual provisioning, as well as EMC
Rainfinity Global File Virtualization to migrate and manage files. EMC QuickStart Implementation Services are also available.
These latest offerings are interesting for a few reasons.
First, they lend credence to the notion that storage is less about physical
attributes than network accessible information. For the entry-level or SMB
market segments, this is the IT reality of today. Being competitive in the
marketplace requires being competitive with information, not storage, and these
Web-based, network-oriented storage solutions are clearly targeting this need.
Second, an IT generalist (or even an overworked executive in a startup) should
find the familiar Web-based interface and collection of automated functions
such as Automated Volume Management and Virtual Provisioning a welcome benefit.
Third, the support for NAS and iSCSI, as well as an upgrade path to become a
gateway, demonstrates the flexibility of this solution for an organization that
may have had modest storage needs but is now looking to future growth. Fourth,
the Microsoft Logo Certification for Exchange and SQL Server along with support
for Distributed File System and Active Directory integration further ease some
of the common issues that smaller organizations face in managing network
elements. Being able to manage a Celerra as one would a Windows Server is
undoubtedly appealing to those with largely Microsoft-based environments or
skill sets. Lastly, the automated root-cause and impact analysis of the NAS is
a feature that we believe will appeal to an organization of any size and
stripe.
Overall, we are pleased to see a continued focus on the mid sized marketplace by EMC. These offerings are solution-rich, with notable value-add that brings storage solution operations and management in reach of mere IT mortals. The flexibility and Web-based management approach of the latest Celerra we believe is well positioned to meet the needs of the SMB and the more modest marketplace while offering some upgrade paths and investment protection.
SBB Inc. Sets Standardization Goals
Dell, Intel, LSI Logic, and EMC, among others, have formed
the Storage Bridge Bay Working Group, Inc. with the goal of standardizing
storage methods and delivery for SMBs and other groups that need storage
solutions rivaling that of enterprises, but don’t have the resources to effect that level of seamlessness. Though not affiliated
with SNIA, SBB expects to expedite the delivery of emerging storage
technologies, such as iSCSI, SAS, archiving, and virtual tape libraries.
Initially, the SBB will focus on developing and distributing specifications for
standardizing external disk subsystem technologies. The new alliance will
define mechanical and electrical interface requirements between storage arrays
and the controller card that gives the array its identity; identities such as
JBOD, RAID, iSCSI, Fibre Channel SAN, and NAS. As a result, a storage
controller card based on the SBB specification will be able to fit, connect,
and electrically operate within a SBB-compliant storage array.
It may not be glamorous, but storage is a very real issue
for companies. Universal standards for storage solutions are, we believe, a
step in the right direction. A low-cost card that enables the cross-referencing
of a storage array seems to be a great idea; interconnecting disparate
solutions is probably something that is most likely long overdue. No word yet
on the price point for the storage controller card, but it has been touted as
“low-cost,” whatever that means. The cost has to be such that the channel can
make some margin and that OEMs (like Dell) have incentive to move it along as
well.
But let’s not ignore the marketing angle. By forming an alliance, each company is positioning itself to be able to advance its own product solutions within a larger framework. Of course, it’s always been good business sense to sell what a customer base wants, and SMBs have long needed creative, low-user-maintenance, low-cost storage solutions. By providing those solutions, SBB is seeking to fulfill a market need that has previously been overlooked. Storage venders are part of a dynamic community that understands that getting all of their bits to work together will enable customer solutions without compromising their competitive edge. Let’s hope that their efforts yield even more productive results in the future.