Events in 2009

Meetings:

1. Focus On Data Center and System Management
   
2. Workshop: Procurement in the IT Market
   

Focus On Data Center and System Management

The data center enters a new stage of industrialization. Data centers increasingly fall into two distinct groups. One group consists of Web data centers that concentrate on providing a small number of select Web services leveraging industrialized operational frameworks on large economies of scale. According to IDC at the moment 50% of all servers shipped go to only 1% of all data centers. The other group of 'Enterprise' data centers is closely linked to an organization or a collection of users for whom they aggregate, refine and deliver online services provided by Web data centers. As a result, for all data centers the portion of the value chain produced inhouse shrinks and the outsourced tasks are redistributed according to market conditions. New complex supply chains are created that must be mastered on the supply as well as the delivery side. Vendors must reposition themselves and, as a result, IBM and Sun, for example, prepare Cloud Computing online services for availability in 2009 that represent the brunt of their investments. While these two vendors no longer pursue hard- and software products strategically, HP and Dell concentrate on hardware and Oracle, apart from Microsoft, dominates middleware. By making prices for application services easily comparable, the trend to online services already increases the pressure on legacy platforms and revenues from RISC/Unix or storage-system controllers collapse. As a result, vendors have little leeway to improve price performance accelerating a downward spiral in these segments. Server virtualization rapidly gains in market acceptance, since it opens up new opportunities for more automation and efficiency. Vendors including HP and Cisco integrate servers, storage and switches in pre-configured building blocks which data centers can use to quickly and efficiently grow their capacity. These offerings provide new approaches to deploying x86-based servers using data center oriented equipment which replaces integration of mass volume products from various sources by the data center itself. The approach using building blocks brings back the notion of the "single point of reference" to the data center lost when 'open systems' took over. EMC responds to the challenge posed by integrated storage by launching its Cloud storage system "Atmos" following an opposing trend.

This event addresses those in charge of financial controlling and technical planning in data centers.

• Which new approaches are associated with 10 Gbit Ethernet, IP based SANs, Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage including EMC Atmos?
• What will be the impact of EMC integrating VMware in its EMC's Cloud Computing unit? Citrix and Novell collaborate with Microsoft, will VMware successfully withstand this pressure?
• Which fundamental changes will be triggered by flash memory based SSDs starting to replace spinning storage disk drives?
• Will Red Hat successfully establish its own KVM based strategy in virtualization? Which of the Linux distributions will survive? Which significance will other Linux distributions have?
• Microsoft integrates Xen in Windows and open source based solutions in its SCVMM. Will it invest in further developing its Windows operating system?
• Standard compliant Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is coming later than originally expected, but will Brocade successfully master its transition to Ethernet and IP by acquiring Foundry?
• How do vendors respond to the collapse of demand in the RISC/Unix and Itanium segment?
• Will AMD return to the strict compatibility to Intel and will it overcome its precarious financial situation?
• HP dominates the blade server segment, but which vendor will rule the rack-level and container-level integration in future? May Cisco provide a serious alternative with its California assembly?
• How will vendors position their new generation storage systems including HP's ExDS9100, IBM's XIV and EMC's Atmos?
• What are the trends in disaster protection and what will supersede the aged and expensive SRDF and PPRC mirroring schemes?
• How does the price performance ratio of IBM's System z evolve?
• What are the trends in in end-to-end systems monitoring?
• What are the trends in software terms and conditions?
• Which pricing structures in storage systems?
• Which are low server hardware prices?

Workshop: Procurement In the IT Market

The significance of IT procurement is growing with the inhouse portion of the data center value chain shrinking. Working in collaboration with development and production units IT procurement increasingly transforms into the management of a supply chain that manages hard-, software and services from various sources on the input side of the data center. As a result an increasing number of formerly discrete purchasing parts morph to become part of service packages. Hardware is decreasing as a portion of the overall procurement volume and this market segment is transforming to become a commodity marketplace. The share of software in the total procurement volume is stabilizing and the trend is for subscriptions combining license and maintenance as the dominating type of software contract. The professional services segment shifts from charging man and material to provided results. The challenge is to make fit the cost structures composed of fixed and variable costs of suppliers and clients. Clients want to maximize the variable portion of the charge schedule to offload risks concerning quantities to the suppliers. Against this backdrop advanced models of collaboration call for revenue sharing models along the value chain that distribute margins and business risks while requiring significant effort for tracking exchanged quantities and quality of service.

• How to distinct between IT controlling and procurement?
• Which best practices for planning processes along supply chain?
• How are prices set in the various segments of the server market??
• How do margins distribute along the software distribution channel?
• What are the implications of identical bottom line discounting for services, hard- and software??
• Where might I get price lists and why are they so important??
• Which capacity indicators are standard in the various market segments?
• How can price indices be defined and price performance evolution tracked?
• What are particularities of IBM's zSeries mainframe environment?
• What are the pricing principles for storage systems?
• Which trends exist in the procurement from or remarketing to the second hand market for hard- and software?
• Which are the business models driving the services market and how do clients respond?