December 11, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group, said the debate is one of perception. “One guy’s proprietary is another guy’s value-add,” Ryder said in an interview. Dell’s approach fits in line with the way the company has traditionally operated, he said. “Dell is a company that historically has lived and died by margin,” Ryder said. “Its approach is to be the most open, the most flexible. For Dell, it’s really important [to be] on the open side of the card because it always works on a thin margin.” The more suppliers Dell has, the easier it is to get a better price by playing them off each other. That feeds into Dell’s history of aggressively pricing its products and making them open. However, both Cisco and HP have offerings that are widely used by enterprises worldwide, as do their various partners, so while they may not be the definition of “open standards,” they are industry-standard products, Ryder said.

November 12, 2009: "If [Intel and AMD] can settle their differences on the playground rather than in the principal's office, everyone will be better off," said Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group. "It's an infinitely better approach than spending time in the courtroom."

November 4, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group, said regulatory attention is nothing new to Intel. “Intel’s been under scrutiny so many times in the past by so many regulatory agencies, and so far has pretty much emerged unscathed,” Ryder said. “Maybe a slap on the wrist or two by a parochial nun, but nothing too severe.” Whether that happens again remains to be seen, he said. The biggest risk to Intel is that having to change its practices of tightly controlling how much product it sells to whom could impact the bottom line. “If you can’t cherry-pick how [the product] is sold, it’s going to hurt revenues,” Ryder said. In addition, Intel and other top-tier vendors may just have to get used to closer scrutiny from regulators, although while there may be questions around the chip maker’s practices, no one really wants Intel to go away, he said. “They want [Intel] to play better at the playground, but they don’t want to steal their lunch money,” Ryder said.

August 13, 2009: Overall, the crowd [at CloudWorld in San Francisco] looked to be between 1,500 and 2,000 people. "I thought JavaOne was kind of sparse in attendance but that was a Beatles reunion concert compared to this," joked Clay Ryder, principal analyst for The Sageza Group.

July 29, 2009: “In a lousy economy, you have to do everything you can to get that customer dollar,” Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group who was at the IBM event, said in an interview. “It may sound crass, but it’s true. If you can be more in tune with the needs of the customers, it’s better than being just one of the many companies looking to sell products.”

June 3, 2009: “Por lo que yo sé esto nunca se ha hecho en un mainframe pero sí en otros tipo de servidor terminal con una arquitectura Intel”, afirma Clay Ryder, presidente de Sageza Group. “Sería fabuloso pensar en que no hay que tocar nada para desplegar aquellos dispositivos y todo desde una única posición central”. Pero Ryder mantiene que el concepto plantea múltiples cuestiones.

"To my knowledge this has never been done on a mainframe, but always on some other kind of terminal server with an Intel architecture and not System z," says Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group. "It would be terrific in there is nothing to touch and you can deploy those devices and everything takes place in one central location." But Ryder says the concept doesn't come without questions.

May 29, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with Sageza Group, said IBM has done well in driving new workloads to the mainframe, pointing to the various specialty engines that make it easier to run Linux and Java workloads. However, for businesses, the issue usually is one of capacity. “It’s like a railroad,” Ryder said. “It’s not particularly good to move a head of lettuce, but it’s really good for moving 20 cars of lettuce.”

May 26, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group, said much of the resurgence of the mainframe platform can be attributed in part of IBM’s introduction of the z9 mainframe in 2005, which featured greater virtualization capabilities and specialty engines for Linux and Java workloads, and the z10 Business Class in 2008, which was priced for smaller enterprises. “The specialty engines, for such things as Linux and Java, helped [show] the mainframe as a viable consolidation [option] for workloads that normally wouldn’t be put on mainframes,” Ryder said. He pointed to the announcement in April by a Brazilian startup called Hoplon Infotainment, which is using IBM mainframe technology for the upcoming launch of its Taikodom multiplayer online video game, as an example of the expanding reach of the mainframe platform. “Who would have ever thought of the mainframe as game console, though a massive one?” Ryder said.

May 21, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with the Sageza Group, said there will be some impact felt [over the delay of Tukwila]. "Anytime something shifts in the schedule, it's an impact to someone," Ryder said. "Intel is not developing these things in a vacuum. They're making them for someone." There also are other vendors within the Itanium Solutions Alliance, such as Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi and SGI, who also are going to be impacted, Ryder said. For end users who may be looking to jump to another platform, the good news is that they have options, from increasingly powerful x86 chips to the IBM and Sun processors, he said.

May 4, 2009: Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group, thinks the company may find its toughest competitor to be Intel's Xeon, since it has more than enough capability. "If I'm going to deploy a basic server, I'm just going to go with a Xeon," he said. Itanium will be good for Itanium customers who are already in a buying mood, he added. "In the verticals they are going after, it will allow them to broaden the sale to offer additional units. To just sell to the broad, horizontal market, they will have to have a compelling TCO argument, and I haven't seen the numbers to say here's the compelling TCO statement to come out ahead." Ryder said the Novell support will be a boost for Itanium trying to go broader market. "Novell has a bunch of middleware and branch office software to make communications work better. That's a plus for them, because it lets them be more generic and horizontal in some usage areas," he said.

April 6, 2009: "I think some of [Scott McNealy's resistance to IBM's offer for Sun Microsystems], honestly, is 'It's my baby,'" said Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group. "It's an emotional attachment than a financial/logical one. I'm not saying that to be critical of Scott. Sometimes, as a human being, we do things that don't make sense, but we do them anyway. I think it would be a travesty in many respects if Sun becomes another SGI, and it would be a travesty if Sun becomes a collection of parts," Ryder said.

April 1, 2009: Clay Ryder, an analyst with The Sageza Group, said that some in the industry may look at the sale of SGI to 10-year-old Rackable as the fall of a technology titan. In reality, though, SGI had simply run its course. “SGI really didn’t have the strength to continue as an independent entity, and the industry said so,” as illustrated by the multiple bankruptcies and slowing sales, Ryder said. The deal with Rackable is a good one for SGI customers, who can expect to see some level of support for their SGI customers, as well as resellers, who will still have some SGI products to offer, he said. “What really matters to customers is that their products are supported, and for them, it really doesn’t matter what nameplate is in there,” Ryder said. The benefits for Rackable are less clear, he said. At $25 million, there aren’t a lot of risks for Rackable. “It’s a relatively low price for Rackable to pay to get some products, some engineers,” Ryder said. “It may give Rackable some products they can use.”

March 30, 2009: Sun's plans to put SSDs inside servers could change the status quo in server design if other vendors follow suit, says Clay Ryder, president of analyst firm The Sageza Group. Other server vendors already offer SSD modules, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, but mostly as an alternative to hard drives. Sun's announcement gives it an early-mover advantage over its competitors, but the company sometimes falters in executing on such projects, Ryder says. The innovation may give it an advantage in the short term but it remains to be seen how long it will hold that lead, he says.

March 16, 2009: “A quel che mi risulta, una cosa del genere non è mai stata fatta finora su dei mainframe, ma sempre su altre tipologie di terminal server con architettura Intel, non certo su un System Z”, dice Clay Rider, presidente di Sageza Group, azienda di analisi di mercato. “Ne vedo ottimo uso per scopi didattici o per workstation a funzionalità fisse. Sarebbe ottimo non aver nulla da toccare, poter dispiegare un’intera architettura su PC periferici in pochi secondi e controllare tutto da una postazione centrale. Non appena studenti o utenti terminano l’uso, tutto può essere istantaneamene ripulito, archiviato, o qualsiasi altra forma di atto amministrativo informatico, e ciò è davvero un plus“.

"To my knowledge this has never been done on a mainframe, but always on some other kind of terminal server with an Intel architecture and not System z," says Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group. "I could see for schools or fixed function workstations. It would be terrific in there is nothing to touch and you can deploy those devices and everything takes place in one central location. As students or users leave, files can be cleaned or archived or whatever and from an administrative point of view that is a real plus."

March 12, 2009: 一方、Sageza Groupの社長であるクレイ・ライダー（Clay Ryder）氏は、SSDドライブをサーバに組み込むというSunのやり方が他ベンダーにも広まれば、サーバのデザインが大きく変わるかもしれないと指摘する。ただし、それがサーバ分野でSunのリードにつながるかどうかはわからないと述べた。

Meanwhile, Clay Ryder, president of Sageza Group, says Sun's plans to put SSD drives inside servers may influence other vendors. He also points out that  the design of the server may change significantly, although it is not clear whether this is connected to Sun's lead in the server space.

Programmazione.it

March 10, 2009: Secondo Clay Ryder — presidente di Sageza Group — esso potrebbe essere adatto per le scuole, dove risulterebbe utile avere un punto unico di riferimento. Lo stesso esempio è riportato sul sito di z/VOS, dove si sottolinea la disparità di attrezzature tra istituti scolastici, che sarebbe colmata da un sistema centralizzato. Ma lo stesso Ryder fa notare alcuni problemi: anzitutto un System z di IBM non lo si trova certo nel negozio sotto casa, e quindi la sua acquisizione va attentamente valutata.

According to Clay Ryder, Chairman of Sageza Group, it could be suitable for schools, where it would be useful to have a single point of reference. The same example is shown on z / VOS website, which stresses the difference in equipment between schools, which would be filled by a centralized system. But Ryder also points out some problems: first, with System z, IBM is certainly not in the high street, so the acquisition should be carefully evaluated.

March 10, 2009: Sun's plans to put SSDs inside servers could change the status quo in server design if other vendors follow suit, said Clay Ryder, president of The Sageza Group. Other server vendors already offer SSD modules, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, but mostly as an alternative to hard drives.

March 4, 2009: "To my knowledge this has never been done on a mainframe, but always on some other kind of terminal server with an Intel architecture and not System z," says Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group. "I could see for schools or fixed function workstations. It would be terrific in there is nothing to touch and you can deploy those devices and everything takes place in one central location. As students or users leave, files can be cleaned or archived or whatever and from an administrative point of view that is a real plus." But Ryder says the concept doesn't come without questions. "What is the magic seat count number where it makes more sense to do this on a mainframe. And the Z is not the kind of machine people have laying around. There is certainly a lot to think about here," he says. Another issue is the System z was designed originally to do transaction processing not the kind of workloads that are done on PCs today. "But that said, the Z is a very powerful and fast system," Ryder says. He says the design of the z9 and z10 and off-load engines in the mainframe such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) make it likely the system could take on some workloads not anticipated in the system's traditional design.

March 3, 2009: Sun's issue is " being the No. 3 guy behind two juggernauts," said Clay Ryder, the president of analyst firm Sageza Group. "Part of the challenge they have with Sparc is they still have to maintain development and R&D expense for that platform. I don't think Sparc is sunk by any stretch, but it certainly has plenty of challenges."

December 15, 2008: По мнению президента консалтинговой компании The Sageza Group Клея Райдера (Clay Ryder), это вполне реально. "Компания уже выпустила целый ряд сетевых приложений. Вполне возможно, что сейчас она разрабатывает некую единую среду для них".

According to the president of the consulting company The Sageza Group Clay Ryder, it is quite possible. "The company has already released a number of network applications. It is possible that now they develop some kind of unified environment."

December 8, 2008: Clay Ryder of The Sageza Group explains nicely why an network application infrastructure makes more sense -- a "software-as-a-service" platform, rather than an all-out desktop-oriented operating system. He points out that "...an operating system really connotes the stuff that makes the hardware and software talk to each other, and they are not in that business." He goes on to say that developing an operating system to use as an infrastructure for network applications that could be deployed virtually anywhere is more in keeping with Google's past service offerings.

December 5, 2008: "I think they could be working on an application infrastructure, because an operating system really connotes the stuff that makes the hardware and software talk to each other, and they are not in that business," said Clay Ryder, president of The Sageza Group. "But as an infrastructure for building network apps, I would think Google would be working on something like that," he continued. "They've been rolling out more and more freebie apps and I would think they would eventually want to make some money the old fashioned way. It would make a lot of sense that they would want to have a network app infrastructure that they could roll out most anywhere." [Ryder also] felt Google would not take on Microsoft on the operating system level, because its goal was to make that level irrelevant. "I would never expect Google to get into a desktop OS space," said Ryder. "That just doesn't make sense. But for a network application infrastructure that is not dependent on the hardware but just the usage of a client, that would make more sense."

December 4, 2008: Clay Ryder, president of analyst firm Sageza Group, doesn’t necessarily think so. He sees EC2 and other cloud computing products to be based on a different pricing scheme. Whereas servers are based on a sales model that includes the cost of time, materials and markup, cloud computing is more of a values-based pricing model, and the two are not the same. Ryder likened it to owning a car compared to renting or leasing. When you buy a car, you’re paying for the cost of materials to build it, the cost of labor it took to build (time), and any markup to make profit. When you rent one, you pay for a service. “There is a lot of value in the Amazon approach,” he said. “You can turn it off and turn it on, and there’s no long-term cost to you, and that is an intangible value.”