Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

The recent bidding war between Dell and HP to acquire storage-vendor 3PAR has brought the storage sector into the limelight. In the middle of this action, the IT research and advisory firm TheInfoPro has released its latest storage study, which looks at drivers and trends across the server sector. Highlights of this study, as reported by Computer World (“More IT managers plan to spend less, survey finds”) include a flat storage market for 2010 and possibly 2011 in terms of spending by IT managers, as well as ongoing focus on virtualization and cloud computing. In addition, EMC remains a top choice for storage-area network (SAN) equipment, as does NetApp in the area of network-attached storage (NAS).

Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

In what is fast becoming an epic battle, HP and Dell are fighting it out to acquire 3PAR.

Dell began the pitch for 3PAR just a while ago, with its offer of $1 billion to acquire the company. HP has now bid for 3PAR with a counter offer of almost $2 billion. The bidding wars started with Dell’s offer of $18 per share, followed by HP’s offer of $24.

Dell then upped the ante by going to $24.30 per share; HP then offered $27 per share. Dell said “me too” and offered the same price. Just a couple of days back, HP startled the market by offering $30 per share, which is a tenfold premium above 3PAR’s market value. The market has reacted by dropping the share prices of both companies. Dell has gone down by 3.5% and HP’s by 3.7%.

3PAR is a utility computing firm that offers enterprise storage. Utility computing allows IT firms to deliver SaaS and hardware as a service via storage and server virtualization. The 3PAR utility storage has come to represent resilience, cost efficiency, and agility.

Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

Just a short time from now, VMware will be hosting its yearly VMworld conference. Stirring up a hornet’s nest, Oracle has announced that its virtualization offerings are a cut above those of VMware. The company has done this in the past as well. Consider the year 2009, for instance, when Oracle conducted a successful acquisition of Sun just a few days before VMware’s software launch in April. Oracle ended up stealing the spotlight.

The two companies have a long history of rivalry. Oracle’s price strategy has always created obstacles for VMware. VMware used to state that its vSphere 4 is capable of running huge databases at 8,900 Oracle database transactions per second. Oracle’s open-source Xen VM software takes on VMware head on.

Now, once more, Oracle has taken on VMware directly by stating firmly that it “delivers more value than VMware.” It says that its offerings encompass support for the full spectrum of virtualization from application to disk and, similarly, the full spectrum for cloud-computing services as well. This is in direct contrast to VMware offering a hypervisor-only approach to virtualization.

According to Edward Screven, chief corporate architect at Oracle, “VMware is integrated with nothing. It’s only a point solution.” He goes on to say that such a solution only makes the environment more complex to manage. This is in contrast to Oracle’s own offering, which, the company claims, is three times more effective that any other server virtualization product. Integrated management became a huge selling point for Oracle once it had acquired Sun Microsystems.

Oracle’s offerings are indeed impressive: VM, server virtualization, and desktop virtualization. Products include Oracle WebLogic Suite and Virtualization Option and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder for middleware; Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Solaris Containers and Dynamic Domains, and Oracle VM Server for SPARC for server virtualization; and desktop virtualization with Oracle Sun Ray Software 5, Sun Ray 3 Plus Client, Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.2 and Oracle VM Virtual Box 3.2.

The company’s webcast a few days ago presented the theme of completeness. It made a very believable case for Oracle’s virtualization being a holistic, one-stop shop for anyone wanting to build a virtualization stack. Its webcast was titled, in very unambiguous terms, “Discover How Oracle’s Virtualization Delivers More Value Than VMware.”

Screven placed much emphasis on integration, stating that although VMware had a good virtualization product, it was very narrow; this is in distinction to Oracle’s policy of integrating everything. Oracle believes in tying virtualization into all other parts of the software infrastructure so as to derive maximum performance and value from this stack.

Although Oracle may have a motley collection of systems, the key differentiator is its Virtual Assembly Builder, which simplifies the management of cloud infrastructure consisting of networks, storage, servers, OS, applications, and middleware.

Oracle also promises loyal clients extra security and performance, thanks to its JRockit Virtual Edition.

Oracle products yield less stress on servers and storage through its integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports on its Sun Blade 6000 x64 blades. This configuration allows blades to connect with the outside world without the “middleman” managed switches. Virtual machines in this kind of network can move easily through an array of a network of machines.

The focus with this virtualization strategy is to offer holistic service. Screven states that Oracle’s solution can go beyond virtualization solutions that focus almost entirely on server consolidation and infrastructure layer and can deliver increased reliability, increased performance, and reduced costs.

The Oracle stack offers clients an opportunity to deploy and manage complete application stacks, enhanced application performance, secure thin-client devices for optimized virtual desktop infrastructure, reduction in space and cooling requirements, more flexibility, better usage of existing infrastructure, and ease of administration.

Oracle even has VM Templates, which provide clients with preconfigured VMs or virtual machines to aid them in the process of deploying virtualized enterprise applications.

Interestingly, Oracle is gearing up for battle not only against VMware, but also against other big names like Microsoft and Citrix in the arena of desktop virtualization. The company is emboldened to do this thanks to its adoption of Sun Microsystems’ mode of client virtualization.

Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

Brocade has been in the business of delivering data center solutions since 1995. Its headquarters is located in San Jose, California, and its customer base extends to more than 160 countries. The company’s customers encompass industries like financial services, education, consumer, technology, and manufacturing, as well as government agencies.

Recently, the company announced the establishment of its new data center in San Jose. This data center will have 75,000 square feet of space and is scheduled to employ state-of-the-art technology for cooling, energy efficiency, and technical and structural design.

The data center’s innovations are in keeping with the Brocade One vision. As Michael Hirahara, Brocade’s Vice President of Global Real Estate, Facilities and Services, says, the new data center follows the company’s vision of establishing a data center that goes beyond “functional space.”

The Brocade One vision is about unifying strategy and network architecture. The goals of this vision are to simplify the client’s transition to a virtual environment and to protect the existing technological structure. Therefore, the new data center employs major energy-saving devices and technologies like in-row cooling units, occupancy-sensor lighting controls, energy-efficient cooling towers, and fan redundancy, to name a few.

Brocade’s environmental impact is decreasing significantly because the company has consolidated three of its San Jose data centers into one space. Energy usage has decreased by 37%, which directly translates into eradication of 4,450 tons of annual carbon emissions and $200,000 in annual savings.

The company has also consolidated five R&D engineering labs into one R&D lab.
The consolidation resulted in a 21% increase in rack power density and a 20% decrease in rack footprint; more importantly, the consolidation led to an annual savings of $260,000.

Custom Mechanical Systems (CMS), which offers custom energy-saving cooling and HVAC
systems for mission-critical facilities, provided the data center with its in-row cooling technology. This design, in conjunction with water-side economizer technology, is slated to bring down fan usage and decrease energy consumption. The design uses only 25% of the power of certain other cooling designs.

The new data center has a PUE of 1.3. Energy efficiency has also been enhanced using design elements like hot-aisle and cold-aisle containment, fully automatic controls at the POD level including energy-monitoring capabilities, ECM motors, low-profile hinged filter doors, and high-efficiency motors. Each POD in the data center has automatic environment control and energy-usage monitoring capabilities.

Perhaps the biggest contributor to this PUE rating is the use of CMS’s solutions. The in-row cooling units and the chilled-water plant by CMS have, according to Hirahara, helped Brocade establish a data center that represents “excellence, consolidations, energy efficiency, sustainable design, and technology innovation.” In turn, Dan Hyman, founder of CMS, avers that his company has delivered a superior product to Brocade and that CMS was “thrilled” to be a part of one of the world’s most energy-efficient data centers. The company’s custom cooling technology is making a crucial difference to the new Brocade data center. The custom designs were also the result of the CMS team interacting intensively with the construction team. Several iterations later, the CMS team was able to deliver a “fully customizable and flexible” product to Brocade. 

Free space has been increased by 12% with the use of a flat-floor lab as opposed to the conventional raised floor. Vertical space gives the data center engineers room to install taller racks with more rack units. 

Technological designs have resulted in a flat Layer 2 network because the access and aggregation layers have been collapsed. This has also enhanced bandwidth availability and decreased the complexity of operations. The aggregation layer was eliminated because Brocade deployed its Netlron MLX technology, which also means that the network has direct access to the data center’s cooling requirements. In addition, the electrical densities of the racks have been increased by 21% with the use of new rack elevation designs and rack unit space.

Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

Last week, the Data Center Journal reported on Dell’s bid to acquire 3Par for about $1.15 billion (“Dell on Par Power”). Close on the heels of this bid, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has upped the ante this week by bidding $1.5 billion for the data-storage company. This new offer is over 30% greater than Dell’s offer and could signal the start of a bidding war.

The market fortunes of 3Par shot up with the latest bid from HP, with 3Par’s stock rising by almost 45% following news of HP’s bid. According to an HP press release (“HP Proposes to Acquire 3PAR for $24 per Share in Cash”), HP’s bid is a cash offer of $24 per outstanding 3Par stock share, and the offer has no financing contingencies. Having been approved by the company’s board of directors, the acquisition, if approved by 3Par, could be completed by the end of 2010, according to HP. HP believes that the acquisition of the storage company will accelerate the former’s converged infrastructure strategy.

HP’s bid, however, did not come out of the blue. CNNMoney.com (“Bidding war between HP and Dell”) reports that the computer company had already been in talks with 3Par, and that it had made a previous offer for an undisclosed sum. Executive Vice President of HP Dave Donatelli stated that his company “had been in conversations with 3PAR about doing a deal prior to Dell's agreement to buy the company last week, but would not comment on the original bid's value.” In HP’s press release, a letter sent to the 3Par president on behalf of HP contained the conspicuous statement “We propose to increase our offer to acquire all of 3PAR,” indicating that a previous offer had indeed been made to acquire the storage company.

Computer World (“Update: HP tops Dell with $1.6B bid for 3Par”) cites Forrester Research’s Andrew Reichman as indicating that HP’s pursuit of 3Par is not unexpected: “HP's portfolio is disjointed and kind of incomplete...[HP needs] more in terms of storage, and they don't feel they can reach the enterprise with what they have now.” Whether Dell will respond in kind by offering an even higher bid remains to be seen, but both companies certainly see tremendous potential benefits from an acquisition. Given that HP has offered a 33% higher bid, Dell may be reluctant to top that amount; on the other hand, of course, if Dell is sufficiently motivated, it may respond with a better offer.

According to Computer World, Dell may not be in the best position at this point to make a more expensive offer for 3Par. Dell made its original offer to buy 3Par “shortly after it made moves to buy server provisioning vendor Scalent and storage optimization provider Ocarina Networks.” These other acquisitions have weakened the computer company’s ability to acquire 3Par in the face of stiff competition from the likes of HP. Forrester’s Reichman suggests that Dell’s pursuit of Scalent and Ocarina Networks should have waited, with the company instead going after 3Par. Reichman, however, also notes that Dell and HP have few alternative choices with regard to storage acquisitions, meaning that an acquisition of 3Par is a virtual prerequisite to an increased presence in enterprise markets. As a result, if Dell is desperate enough in its quest to enter new markets, HP’s latest offer may instigate a bidding war, with the two companies vying for 3Par.

The quest on the part of HP and Dell to acquire 3Par illustrates both companies’ desire to move beyond personal computers into broader markets serving corporate customers. As HP indicated, this acquisition could help forward that company’s strategy of offering converged infrastructure—a “one-stop-shop” solution for enterprise IT. For either company, 3Par could also help further develop a strategy for gaining a greater presence in the cloud-computing market as well.

For its part, 3Par is in the enviable position of watching two IT giants trying to outbid each other. Whether the merger is favorable for 3Par’s employees and management, regardless of whether the company is acquired by Dell or HP, remains to be seen, of course. Nevertheless, the situation is clearly a winner in the near term for 3Par’s stockholders. Once tied in with the fortunes of HP, Dell, or (possibly) some other company, however, the future of 3Par may closely follow the success of the larger company’s strategy with regard to enterprise and cloud-computing markets.

Author contact: jclark@datacenterjournal.com

Monday, 06 September 2010 07:51

Lakeside Software has been in the business of management solutions for over 13 years. From its headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Lakeside provides solutions for Green IT, virtualization, and power-management needs.

Just a few days ago, the company unveiled its alliance with VMware. This alliance will allow Lakeside’s clients to implement desktop virtualization with VMware View.

VMware Professional Services Partners all over the globe can now use Lakeside’s SysTrack software to propel their desktop-virtualization plans.

SysTrack software is a tool for simplifying workstation and server management. It helps in monitoring and streamlining application performance and system operation. Its main selling points are its ability to provide real-time monitoring and diagnostic abilities. These capabilities are due to its Blackbox Data Recorder, which provides critical information pertaining to memory leaks, applications operating on machines, unauthorized web visits, and so on. It also aids in asset tracking and inventory management. With this feature, the client can get comprehensive hardware and software inventory listings and can also keep track of changes. The software is also equipped to relay alerts, via audio or emails, regarding any change in the system.