System iNetwork

June 2009

June 17, 2009 9:40 AM

Top Concerns Released by COMMON Europe

The results of COMMON Europe's global annual Top Concerns survey are in: The survey showed that "Satisfy internal customers" and "Treat data security and confidentiality as a business risk" are the topmost concerns for worldwide Power System/System i or other IBM systems’ users. They are followed by "Improve IT security and continuity", "Receive consistent high quality service and support from vendors", "Keep the skills current for the existing staff", and "Make me grow as a more competent individual". Surprisingly, COMMON Europe notes, "Correctly measure the value of IT to business" and "Assure better datawarehousing" are 14 and 16 in a list of 16.

The survey gathered responses from 547 participants from Europe, Americas, and Australasia, including customers, IBM, and IBM Business Partners, and ISVs. Last year's survey had 379 participants.

Participants also expressed their concerns that were not listed in the survey, COMMON Europe reports. "Better marketing of the System i, System i survival" and "Modernize applications" were the most frequently cited unlisted concerns.

COMMON customer responses to current issues were:

1. IT running budgets in 2009: 39% decreased, 9% increased, 8% stable and 44% do not know
2. New projects investment 2009: 40% decreased, 12% increased, 11% stable and 36% do not know
3. Migrate in 2009 to IBM i 6.1: 9.0% already done, 4.2% ordered, 28.2% planned, 45.1% not yet, 7.6% not user and 5.9% no information
4. Migrate in 2009 to Power Systems: 23.9% already done, 1.7% ordered, 13.0% planned; 40.8% not yet; 14.1% not user and 6.5% no information
5. Migrate in 2009 to Blades with IBM i 6.1: 2.3% already done, 1.1% ordered, 4.5% planned, 56.6% not yet, 28.2% not user and 7.3% no information

Academically Speaking

COMMON Europe also held its first Top Academic Concerns Survey for IBM Academic Initiative participants. There have been 48 replies consisting of students and professors so far (special voting for Polish students is still continuing because of their temporary unavailability during the opening session). This special set of concerns was chosen by the students and staff of the Austrian and Polish Academic Initiative institutions, COMMON Europe reports.

The preliminary analysis shows that "Free academic System i certification (for students)" and "Recycle used systems for students (instead of destroying them)" are the topmost academic concerns for the participating students. They are followed by "Discounted IBM professional certifications for students", "Free or discounted attendance to conferences for students", and "Easier access to demo and training IBM Power Systems".

Posted by cmaxcer on June 17, 2009 at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2009 10:51 AM

IBM i First: Japan's IBM BPs and Vendors Rise Up

There's been some interesting action brewing over in Japan--a group of 71 IBM Business Partners and ISVs have joined forces to promote and actively provide valuable solutions for IBM i, which the group says is "the miracle in computer history". The darker backstory, though, is that because IBM is now focusing on marketing software and services, the promotion of IBM's hardware-based solutions gets mostly ignored. And what gets ignored all too often? IBM i.

To combat the problem, the partner community in Japan banded together to launch the IBM i Manifest initiative for the Japan market. In an email note, Gordon Davies, vice president of Asia-Pacific for LANSA, alerted me to the effort. The initiative has three basic goals:

• to revitalize the IBM i market in Japan and increase the customer installed base
• to assure IBM i customer organizations, resellers and ISVs selling IBM i solutions that IBM i will not only survive, but more importantly, continue to prosper
• to inform the wider IT community of the unique value proposition of IBM i

My Midrange Meddle blogger Martin Fincham, who is the general manager of LANSA's EMEA operations, wrote a post about the Japanese partner community's efforts.

The group has created a joint declaration, the "IBM i Manifest", and to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, they reportedly published a full page ad in the Nikkei newspaper, which would have cost somewhere around $100,000 in U.S. dollars.

"Those of us outside Japan should follow the iManifest initiative’s progress with interest, and see what lessons can be learned for our own markets," Fincham notes.

For the primary site--which is mostly in Japanese--check out www.iforum.ne.jp/.

Here's a snip from the site:

And here's the resulting text after Google's translate engine went to work:

Posted by cmaxcer on June 10, 2009 at 10:51 AM | Comments (39)

June 8, 2009 10:34 AM

Gartner Echoes IDC's Numbers on Server Sales Slide

While Gartner and IDC never quite come up with the exact same numbers describing the worldwide server revenue and shipments for each quarter, they're usually pretty darn close. Gartner's latest findings echo IDC's: Gartner says worldwide server revenue declined 24 percent in the first quarter of 2009 while shipments dropped 24.2 percent, compared to the first quarter of 2008. These were the most significant declines the server industry has experienced on a year-on-year basis, Gartner says.

"The significant decline that occurred in the fourth quarter of last year has extended into the beginning of this year," notes Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "While this was not unexpected, the severity of the decline was greater than predicted on a worldwide level."

He adds, "The ongoing weakness of the global economy affected all server segments. x86-based servers fell 23.9 percent in units and 27.1 percent in revenues. UNIX servers also were impacted in quarterly results with drops of 31.3 percent in units and 20.4 percent in vendor revenues."

Everybody Takes a Hit

Of the top five global vendors, IBM, HP, Dell, Sun and Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens all had double-digit revenue declines for the first quarter of 2009, Gartner says. IBM continued to lead the worldwide server market based on revenue ($3 billion in server revenue with market share of 30.7 percent, up 1.4 percent year-on-year). While IBM retained the No. 1 position, it sustained a 20.4 percent revenue decline, with all of its server brands posting year-on-year decreases, Gartner notes.

In terms of shipments, HP led the pack despite a 22.3 percent decline, and all of the top vendors posted double-digit declines, as well.

The least impacted server segment was x86 blade severs, Gartner says, which fell 20.6 percent in units and 19.5 percent in vendor revenue for the first quarter. All blade server shipments declined 19.1 percent, and revenue decreased 13.8 percent.

Overall, Gartner expects similar lackluster server sales and shipments in the second quarter of 2009, and the research firm doesn't expect any significant turnarounds until 2010.

Posted by cmaxcer on June 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

June 1, 2009 10:05 AM

Servers Take a 25 Percent Dive, Blades Increase Share

According to the latest numbers from the math-lovin' whizzes at IDC, worldwide server market revenue has taken a 25 percent dive in the first quarter of 2009. As companies buy fewer servers or hold off altogether, the market size dipped to $9.9 billion, which is the lowest quarterly server revenue recorded since IDC began tracking the server market on a quarterly basis 12 years ago. Ouch.

Server unit shipments faired about the same: movement of hardware units dropped 26.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009, as measured against the first quarter of 2008. The year-over-year decline from the fourth quarter of 2008 was 12 percent, so the dive steepened.

Volume (a.k.a. low-end, primarily x86) systems experienced the sharpest decline, with year-over-year revenue slipping 30.5 percent, IDC reports, and while midrange enterprise demand weakened, too, with a year-over-year decline of 13.6 percent, it wasn't as bad as the high-end enterprise segment, which saw revenue dip 19.5 percent. This is only the second time since 2002 that all three server segments have experienced a year-over-year revenue decline in the same quarter.

"Market conditions worsened in all geographic regions during the first quarter as customers of all types pulled back on both new strategic IT projects and ongoing infrastructure refresh initiatives," notes Matt Eastwood, group vice president of Enterprise Platforms at IDC. "Most enterprise organizations are deferring new IT procurements and instead focusing on extending server lifecycles and improving existing asset utilization. IDC believes that while these strategies are effective in the near term, server demand will begin to improve in the second half of the year as customers begin to rebuild their IT capabilities in advance of a meaningful economic recovery in 2010."

IBM in Statistical Tie with HP

HP and IBM jointly held the number 1 position in the worldwide server market in the first quarter, each with 29.3 percent share (IBM gain 1.7 points of share while HP lost 0.7 points). IDC says this bit of growth was driven by a solid performance with IBM's System z and System p server businesses (no doubt, with a bit of unreported IBM i-focused sales tossed into the "converged System p" Power Systems bucket).

Sun and Dell also tied for the number 3 market position: Dell's server revenue declined 31.2 percent year over year to snag 11 percent of the market, while Sun's server revenue declined 25.5 percent year over year, ending with 10.3 percent of the revenue market. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens trails with 6.7 percent market share.

Non-x86 Servers Gaining, Most Notably Unix-Based

IDC says the market for non-x86 servers, which it defines as servers based on RISC, EPIC, and CISC processors, declined 19.4 percent year over year to $4.8 billion in 1Q09. This is the fifth consecutive quarter that non-x86 servers have out performed x86 servers in the market.

"x86-based volume servers, historically an area of growth for the industry, posted another quarter of significant weakness during the first quarter of 2009," notes Dan Harrington, research analyst in IDC's enterprise server group. "However, while it may be easier for IT departments to suspend purchases of commodity boxes as opposed to more mission critical RISC- or CISC-based servers, IDC expects x86 systems to rebound faster than the overall market in the coming quarters."

IDC doesn't break out IBM i, unfortunately, but interestingly, Unix revenues for the quarter were $3.3 billion, which represents 33.1 percent of server spending. IBM, Sun, and HP pretty closely divide the Unix market into near thirds.

"IDC believes that lengthening server lifecycles in the datacenter, especially for scalable midrange and high-end servers, affected Unix server sales, in terms of declining revenue and unit shipments in the first quarter," says Jean S. Bozman, research vice president, Enterprise Platforms group. "However, their strong contribution as a percent of first quarter worldwide server spend reflects the presence of midrange and high-end systems carrying higher average sales prices (ASVs), and the bifurcation of the market into low-cost and high-end systems, based on specific workloads, such as large corporate databases, transaction processing and business intelligence (BI)."

IBM's System z servers brought in $889 million for the quarter, accounting for 9.0 percent of all server revenue in 1Q09, which is the highest first quarter revenue share for IBM's System z in five years.

Microsoft Windows server revenue was $3.7 billion in 1Q09 (a 28.9 percent year-over-year decline, which still comprises 37.3 percent of all server revenue in the quarter). Linux server revenue comprised 13.8 percent of server revenue in 1Q09, declining 24.8 percent year-over-year to $1.4 billion, its lowest revenue level in five years, IDC reports.

Blades Suffering Less

The blade server market segment decelerated sharply in 1Q09, declining 14.4 percent in revenue, accounting for $1.1 billion in the first quarter.

"Even though the blade market experienced negative growth, the segment still increased its share of revenue of the overall server market," says Jed Scaramella, senior research analyst in IDC's Datacenter and Enterprise Server group. "Customers are seeking IT solutions that reduce expenses and improve efficiencies. The integrated nature of the blade platforms is adept to deliver a dynamic IT infrastructure."

Posted by cmaxcer on June 1, 2009 at 10:05 AM | Comments (3)