ITIC » Apple

Spring 2011: Hackers Had a Bonanza

Laura DiDio — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:04:58 +0000

Hackers have had a bonanza in April, May and June
(so far). Nary has a day gone by without news of yet another major attack.
Here’s a partial list of some of the most publicized hacks of the last
10 weeks:

RSA
Security: On April 1, in a move akin to raiding Fort Knox,
RSA’s Secure ID technology (one of the industry’s gold standards in security
software) was hacked. RSA executives described the hack as “very
sophisticated.” They characterized it as an advanced persistent threat
(APT)-type targeted attack. It used a routine tactic – a phishing Email that
contained an infected attachment that was triggered when opened.
Epsilon: This Irving, TX –based company handles
customer email messaging for over 150 firms, including large banks and
retailers like Best Buy, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and L.L.Bean. In April,
millions of consumers learned that Epsilon’s networks were breached when they
received Emails from their banks and credit card companies informing them that
the hack might have exposed their names and Email addresses to the hackers.
Epsilon released a statement assuring consumers that only Email addresses and
names were compromised and that no sensitive data was disclosed.
Sony:
Sony’s
PlayStation gaming network suffered a series of massive security attacks in
April/May that affected more than 100 million online accounts and shuttered the
site for days. Sony executives estimate the hacks cost the Japanese electronics
firm $170 million.
Lockheed
Martin: On May 21, the aerospace giant released a statement
saying its internal information systems network had been penetrated by what it
called a “significant and tenacious” attack. The company declined to
divulge details other than stating that “no customer, program or employee personal
data had been compromised.”
Public
Broadcasting System: the PBS website was hacked in mid-May
and the perpetrators planted an erroneous story stating that deceased rapper Tupac
Shakur was alive in New Zealand. The group that claimed credit for the hacking was
apparently unhappy about PBS’ recent “Frontline” investigative news program on
WikiLeaks.
Google:
At least 84 instances of malware have been discovered in the company’s Android
Market app store in the last three months. In March Google removed 50
applications from the store that contained malicious code embedded in
legitimate applications. Over the Memorial Day weekend Google was forced to
pull an additional 34 smart phone applications off Android Market because of
suspected malware infections. Google’s security woes don’t stop there. In early
June, Google disclosed that Chinese hackers targeted the email accounts of top
U.S. officials and hundreds of other prominent people in a fresh computer
attack certain to intensify growing concern about the security of the Internet.
The victims, including government and military personnel, Asian officials,
Chinese activists and journalists, were tricked into sharing their Gmail
passwords with “bad actors” based in China, according to a Google
blog post. The attack’s goal was to read and forward the victims’ email.
Apple
(yes, Apple!): The Mac OX X 10.x OS has been under attack for
the last month from the malicious Mac Defender/Mac Guard malware. A few days
ago, Apple engineers released a fix and 24 hours later the hackers struck again
with a new virus variant called Mindinstall.pkg which is specifically designed
to bypass Apple security.

2011 in High Tech YTD Part 2: Management Shakeups at Google, HP, Microsoft etc.

Laura DiDio — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:36:25 +0000

Revolving Door
In contrast to Apple’s stunning success, the first calendar quarter of 2011 was a revolving door for other Silicon Valley companies and executives. There were management shifts, shakeups and ousters at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Google, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Microsoft. They were variously aimed at jumpstarting product momentum (AMD, Microsoft), polishing a tarnished image and placating stockholders (HP) and providing an orderly transition of power (Google).
You need a scorecard to keep up with all the comings and goings.
AMD’s board ousted chief executive Dirk Meyer in mid-January after only 18 months on the job. It then appointed Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert, as interim CEO while the search goes on for a permanent chief executive. Siefert continues as chief financial officer and says he does not want to be considered for the permanent CEO position. This is probably a smart move. AMD’s flamboyant co-founder Jerry Sanders spent 33 years as CEO (1969 to 2002), but everyone who’s followed has had a short tenure.
The challenge for any AMD chief executive is to jumpstart momentum and somehow find a way to gain ground on perennial logic chip front runner Intel and Nvidia which dominates the mobile (Tegra 2) and graphics chip market. AMD’s Opteron dual and quad-core processors and the mobile and graphic chips which it acquired in its 2006 purchase of ATI are all solid offerings. However, AMD’s former CEO Hector Ruiz and Meyer elected to focus on optimizing their chips for traditional notebooks instead of the lightweight mobile devices and tablets that are stars in today’s markets. According to statistics published by International Data Corp., Intel’s share of the PC and server chip market is approximately 81% compared with AMD’s 19%.
AMD continues to shuffle its executive ranks. In February, two senior executives, Bob Rivet, executive vice president and chief operations and administrative officer, and Marty Seyer, senior vice president of corporate strategy, also resigned. In late March the company named former HP executive Mike Wolfe as its new chief information officer. Prior to joining AMD, Wolfe served as vice president of information technology for product development and engineering at HP. Wolfe is now responsible for managing AMD’s global technology infrastructure. Ironically, AMD’s former CIO Ahmed Mahmoud, who departed in 2010, went to HP where he is currently the Senior Vice President of the global information technology group.
HP Still Hurting from Hurd Scandal
HP has also had its share of executive shakeups in 2011. All of them stem from the continuing fallout from former CEO Mark Hurd’s exit last summer. The reverberations have tainted the company’s once pristine image and they are as toxic to HP as the radiation leaking from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Hurd left under a cloud of scandal amidst charges of sexual harassment and dodgy expense accounting related to an undefined but inappropriate relationship with a female contract employee. A scant week after Hurd’s departure which included a platinum severance package worth $44M — a group of HP shareholders filed suit. The suit alleges that HP board members are guilty of “gross mismanagement and waste of corporate assets.” They claimed the board put the shareholders’ finances at risk by failing to disclose the charges of sexual harassment against Hurd. It sounds reasonable. What’s particularly galling to shareholders and rank and file employees is that Hurd got rewarded for his bad behavior after he spent the last several years cutting tens of thousands of workers from HP’s payroll.
In January, HP replaced four of its board members and added an additional director to the board. The departing HP board members are Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Robert Ryan and Lucille Salhany. They are replaced by Shumeet Banerji, chief executive officer of Booz & Company; Patricia Russo, former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent; Gary Reiner, former CIO at GE; Dominique Senequier, CEO of AXA Private Equity and Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of eBay Inc.
The new board members provide HP with diversity and wide ranging experience. By overhauling its board, HP seeks to mollify outraged shareholders and distance itself from the Mark Hurd debacle. This is no easy task. HP launched its own investigation of Hurd’s departure. It will be conducted by CEO Leo Apotheker, the new board members and outside legal counsel. Apotheker has wasted no time assembling his team. On April 18, HP announced that Thomas Hogan, who headed the company’s enterprise business sales and marketing, will leave on May 31 to “pursue other interests.” Hogan’s replacement is Jan Zadak (a former Compaq executive). Zadak is presently the managing director for HP’s Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations. In mid-April, HP also appointed Marty Homlish as executive VP and chief marketing officer. Homlish will be responsible for overseeing and leading marketing across the company and will become a member of the company’s Executive Council, reporting directly to Leo Apotheker. Homlish and Apotheker worked together before at SAP AG, where the latter was CEO. Prior to joining HP, Homlish spent 10 years at SAP AG, where he served as the global chief marketing officer and corporate officer, as well as president and CEO of SAP Global Marketing, Inc.
There was also a seismic (though amicable) shift at search engine market leader Google. The company announced in January that Eric Schmidt would relinquish his CEO post in April in favor of company co-founder Larry Page. Page took over in early April and immediately reshuffled managers and the reporting structure.
The CEO change at Google is prompted by the desire to aggressively expand into new markets. Page is going to have to prove himself. Wall Street is nervous. In the wake of continuing skirmishes with leading vendors including Microsoft and Apple and latest and somewhat disappointing financials reported on April 14, many on Wall Street are concerned about Google’s prospects. They question the company’s aggressive spending spree. Months ago Google announced plans to hire 7,000 to 10,000 new workers; hand out 10% company-wide salary increases and aggressively pursue new business. That includes technology expansion into everything from smart phones to social networking to mobile and expensive marketing campaigns.
In its latest quarter, Google reported expenses of $2.84 billion; a 54% increase from the prior year. While revenues in the latest quarter ended March 31 rose by 29%, Google’s stock price has decline by nearly 9% since January when it announced that Schmidt was stepping down as CEO. The decrease has wiped out roughly $12.5 billion from Google’s market capitalization which now stands at $173.09 billion (still one of the best in the industry). Google remains the dominant player in the search engine arena with a commanding 65% market share. Its next closest competitor is Microsoft’s Bing which has about 14% and Bing is linked to Yahoo which has another 16% for a combined share of 30%. Google’s Android mobile operating system meanwhile remains the undisputed market leader with a solid 45% market share; twice that of its nearest rival Apple’s iOS.
“Dog Wars” Android App Bites Google’s Image
Meanwhile, Google faces growing and well deserved criticism by the Humane Society, the ASPCA and animal rights activists who are outraged over an Android application called “Dog Wars.” The video game built by Kage Games glorifies dog fighting and depicts a bloodied pit bull next to the game’s logo on Kage’s website. Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle said in a prepared statement that “Dog Wars” could be used as virtual training ground for would-be dogfighters. Even Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick who spent 18 months in prison after being convicted of illegal dogfighting, condemned the Android application. “I’ve come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street,” Vick said in a statement posted on the Humane Society’s website. “Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app.”
Google ducked the issue for two weeks before it was finally pulled from Android Marketplace. on April 28. This incident also shines the spotlight on a larger issue: as Google further expands into the gaming industry via the number one Android operating system, will profits win out over principles and ethics? To further extend the Android mobile OS and solidify its lead, Google launched the new “Games at Google” gaming unit and they are seeking a Product Manager to fill the post. Let’s hope it top management provides some much needed ethical oversight.

Changes are also afoot at Microsoft. In late January CEO Steve Ballmer announced the departure of 23 year veteran Bob Muglia who successfully ran the company’s very profitable Server and Tools business. Under Muglia’s direction, STB recorded a $1.63 billion operating profit on sales of $3.96 billion in the prior fiscal quarter. Muglia will leave sometime this summer. To date, Microsoft has been mum about his replacement and while the company isn’t saying anything publicly word inside the company is that Ballmer forced Muglia out to accelerate Microsoft’s cloud strategy.
Whether or not that’s the case, Ballmer should speed up the search for Muglia’s successor and plug the gaping holes left by other very visible departures. They include: Brad Brooks, a corporate vice president in the Windows consumer marketing group who left to work for Juniper Networks; Matt Miszewski, the general manager of Microsoft’s government business who is taking an executive post Salesforce.com and Johnny Chung Lee, the infamous Wii hacker who partnered with engineers in Microsoft’s Applied Sciences group to develop the Kinect for the Xbox 360. Lee is defecting to Google. Ouch! The Kinect motion camera has been an unqualified success for Microsoft. It sold eight million units in the first 60 day. Microsoft is also betting heavily on its Windows Phone 7, which has garnered generally positive reviews. Microsoft says it has sold over two million units to date but it isn’t clear how many of those units (which have been shipped to partners) have actually been sold. Microsoft will have to bring its “A” game to challenge Android-based smart phones, Apple’s iPhone 4 and RIM’s Blackberry.

20011 YTD in High Tech: Bold Aggressive Actions

Laura DiDio — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:45:03 +0000

It’s hard to believe but the first quarter of 2011 is now a memory and we’re well into spring. The tone for the year in high technology was set in early January: fast, bold, aggressive action and sweeping management changes.
In the first four months of the year high tech vendors moved quickly and decisively to seize opportunities in established sectors (smart phones, virtualization, back-up and disaster recovery) and emerging markets (cloud computing, tablet devices and unified storage management). As 2011 unfolds, it’s apparent that high technology vendors are willing to shift strategies and shed executives in order to stay one step ahead of or keep pace with competitors. The competition is cutthroat and unrelenting. No vendor, no matter how dominant its market share, how pristine its balance sheet or how deep its order backlog and book to bill ratio dares relax or rest on its laurels for even a nanosecond.
Recaps of some of the year’s highlights thus far are very revealing.
January lived up to its reputation for sweeping out the old and ushering in the new. The first four weeks of the year were hell on top executives. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft all had shake-ups in their management ranks, albeit for very different reasons.
Apple delivered the first jolt early in the month. In a well orchestrated announcement (on the Martin Luther King holiday, a slow news day, and just in advance of its second quarter earnings release) the company said founder and chief executive Steve Jobs, the architect of Apple’s renaissance, would take a leave of absence for an undisclosed period of time to focus on his health. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer will serve as the interim CEO and he is most likely to inherit the top spot if Jobs doesn’t return.
News of Jobs’ departure was not entirely unexpected. He’s battled serious health problems for the past several years which necessitated a prior medical leave. Industry watchers greeted the news with gloom and dire prognostications. The fears were assuaged somewhat when Jobs made two high profile appearances. He was among a select group of Silicon Valley luminaries who dined with President Barack Obama in mid-February. More importantly though Jobs was on hand to launch the iPad 2 at Apple’s March 2nd press conference. This was an encouraging sign for Wall Street and industry watchers. They constantly wonder: can Apple continue to maintain its incredible momentum and success absent Jobs’ leadership, creative genius and vision with “just” an ops guy (Tim Cook), no matter how smart and accomplished? The answer for the first fourth months of 2011 is a resounding “Yes.”
The fears concerning Jobs are not wholly unreasonable. However, based on Apple’s continuing strong performance across all market sectors in which it participates, it would take freight train to blunt the Cupertino firm’s momentum. Apple’s iPhone powered by the iOS mobile operating system is one of the top three smart phone platforms along with devices powered by Google’s Android and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. On the tablet front, Apple is the preeminent vendor with a dominant 65%+ market share. This won’t change anytime soon. Despite some early problems with light leakage on its displays, demand for the iPad 2 is robust – outpacing even its predecessor, the original iPad. The first shipment of iPad 2s sold out within the first 24 hours of its availability on March 11 at all of the 220 Apple stores in the U.S. Over a month later, the current order backlog for online sales stands at one to two weeks.
At press time, Apple’s stock was hovering at about $347 – which is on the high end of its 52-week range of $199.25 – 364.90. Apple’s sales for its last fiscal year, ended Sept. 30 2010, were $65.2 billion a little more than half of the $126 billion in annual revenues that HP recorded in its most recent fiscal year and approximately two-thirds of IBM’s revenues of $99.9 billion in FY 2010, while. A recent survey of financial and industry analysts conducted by Thomson Reuters forecasts that Apple’s fiscal 2011 revenues could rise by over 30% to $99.94 billion and reach $117.77 billion in fiscal 2012 for a very impressive two-year compound annual growth rate of 34.4%.
Location, Location, Location
Apple’s sales are on fire because their products are cool.
This is a big reason why Apple’s reputation hasn’t suffered much from the so-called “Locationgate” flap that cropped up in the last two weeks. The core issue is that unbeknownst to users Apple’s iOS was recording and storing all the details of all the places they visited via their iPhones and iPads. Apple was mum for a couple of weeks and then finally on April 27 the company issued a statement clarifying the situation.
First, Apple acknowledged that this was a bug and would be rectified. Next Apple said that the devices were not tracking the users’ movements but rather “maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location that is then used by your iPhone to rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.” The data is then downloaded by the user’s iPhone or iPad. The bug occurs because the iPhone continues to maintain the cache of data even after the iOS Location Services are switched off. Apple will rectify the matter by deleting the cache when Location Services is switched off.
To drive home the point even further, Steve Jobs did telephone interviews with several reporters. The better late than never explanation has satisfied most users although some in the blogsphere and forums say that Apple is doing little more than engaging in spin control because it got caught. Should Apple have said something sooner? In a perfect world, yes. Apple’s products are not perfect. They do experience problems. ITIC’s latest 2010 Apple Consumer and Enterprise Survey, which polled nearly 800 users last November/December found that Apple has an excellent track record with respect to addressing and fixing technical issues and performance problems. Eight-out-of 10 or 82% of respondents said they “never”, “rarely” or only “occasionally” encounter difficulties with Apple products/devices. Only a 7% minority indicated they experience weekly or daily issues. But whether you believe Apple’s statement is a ploy or a sincere public mea culpa, Apple is fixing the problem and that’s what counts.

For future reference though, Apple and all high tech vendors would do well to respond to these issues as they occur and not wait days or weeks.

iPad2 Smashes Sales Records

Laura DiDio — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:56:34 +0000

It’s thinner. It’s faster. It’s here. It’s… Sold Out.
The “It” is the iPad2.
And with about 600,000 iPad2 units sold in the first three days of shipment – roughly twice as fast as the original – the iPad can now officially take its place in the pantheon of celebrated phenomena alongside the hula hoop, the Rubik cube, Elvis, Marilyn, Beatlemania, Bieber Fever et al.
Faster than you can say “I gotta have it” Apple’s iPad2 flew off the shelves on Friday and Saturday, dashing any notion (as well as the hopes of more than a few competitors) that the device and the public’s appetite for it has waned in the past year.
The iPad2 was out of stock at every one of the over three dozen Apple Retail stores that I phoned over the last 72 hours. The phone lines were jammed and I spent about five to 10 minutes typical in the busiest locations.
All of the beleaguered Apple Geniuses who answered the phones during my informal spot check of the over 200 Apple Retail stores nationwide told the same tale. Their respective inventories of the iPad2 tablets sold out within hours of going on sale Friday. The lucky ones – usually located in busy states like California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Texas — got a second shipment on Saturday, only to have those fly off the shelves in short order, too. About one-quarter of the Apple stores I called said they were expecting/hoping for new shipments on Monday or Tuesday, while the rest simply didn’t know and just instructed me to call back and keep checking. The Apple Geniuses were also in the dark about how many of the iPad2s they were scheduled to receive but several disclosed that they planned on opening at least an hour earlier to handle the anticipated crush of customers.
Lead times for online orders for all iPad2 models: the 16GB, the 32GB and the 64GB WiFi and WiFi+3G are all running three to four weeks in advance, according to Apple’s Website. If the demand continues at this rate, it’s very possible that the backlog could grow to six to eight weeks.
So what’s fueling the Apple iPad2 adulation? And can any of Apple’s tablet rivals make a perceptible dent in its unit shipments and market share?
Apple set the bar high for itself when the original iPad was a runaway success selling over 15 million units from April through December 2010. Apple knew it had to top itself and stay ahead of competitors like HP, Motorola, Google and Toshiba which are all hot on its heels to take a bigger bite out of the iPad2’s market share.
The iPad2 incorporates a dual core A5 chip for faster Web surfing and improved multitasking capabilities; 9x faster graphics and 10 hours of battery life. The latter is welcome news for road warriors – whether you’re traveling on business or packing the kids in the car for a long drive to visit Grandma or your favorite vacation spot. It’s also equipped with two cameras – front and back that are optimized for FaceTime video calling. The cameras work in concert. The front camera lets you exchange greetings face-to-face with friends or colleagues and you can use the back camera to pan to your surroundings while you’re engaged in the video chat. The cameras also let you film in HD.
Apple, whose early Macintoshes were always among the most costly computers on the market, has sagely adopted a more aggressive pricing strategy. The new and improved iPad2 costs the same as the initial 1.0 model. Prices start at $499 for the basic 16GB WiFi model and go up to $829 for the 64GB WiFi+3G versions. Apple has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging rivals to match it feature-for-feature at the same price points.
Problems in Paradise: iPad2 Light Leakage
Dozens of users the Apple support forum have already reported “slight to significant” white and yellow light leakage on their iPad2s on both the display area and around the bezel. The leakage is visible in dark rooms and low lighting; in natural or bright light it appears as blotches on the display screen but is generally much less noticeable. While a certain amount light leakage is common in smart phone and tablet devices (this flaw also occurred in the original iPad as well as the iPhone ), and a percentage of light leakage problems resolve themselves with use, that’s not always the case if it is a severe manufacturing defect.
Users on the Apple support forum were miffed at the extent of the leakage, which they deemed unacceptable. Their disappointment was magnified by their current limited choices: they can either return the affected tablets to the Apple stores for a refund or they can exchange it. However, since the overwhelming majority of the retail outlets are sold out, the users face the prospect of waiting for days or weeks for a replacement. And there’s no guarantee that the replacement iPad2 tablets won’t have the same defect.
So far there’s no official word from Apple on the cause or extent of the light leakage problems or what it is doing to resolve the issue. However, the Apple Geniuses that I spoke to at various retail outlets were aware of the issue and said they would refund or replace any defective units.
What is known is that Apple used Apple used a different manufacturing method to attach the iPad2 display screen to the unit than it did with the original iPad model. The first iPads that shipped in 2010 held the screen in place with clips. The iPad2 displays are connected to the unit with bonding agents. Speculation is rife that because the demand is so high that the iPad2s, which are manufactured in China, are shipping at such an accelerated rate that the bonding agent hasn’t had sufficient time to dry.
Some inventive users have already devised nostrum remedies. One reported that he put a couple of good sized books on his device overnight to speed up the “bonding” process while another left his device in the freezer for a few hours to similarly make the display stick and minimize the leakage.
With a few notable exceptions, users that bought the iPads last Friday, experienced the light leakage and opted to return them, praised Apple for excellent customer service in taking the devices back and exchanging them (when replacement units were available). One angry customer did report that the Apple Genius at his local retail outlet told him that the light leakage was “a feature of the iPad2.” Yikes!
Overall though, while these early iPad2 adopters were disappointed, most opined that they like the Apple products so much that it wouldn’t stop them from using them. Interestingly, I didn’t see or hear of any posters that said they intended to switch to another tablet device.
Apple versus Tablet Rivals: Nolo Contendere
That brings us to the inevitable question: since users have an ever increasing array of tablets from which to use, will any, some or all of them defect from Apple’s iPad in substantial numbers?
The answer for at least in the short term appears to be a resounding “No.” It’s been over a year since Apple first unveiled the iPad and jump started what had been a stagnant tablet market. Since then, some very strong competitors with their own feature rich offerings in a variety of configurations from 5 inch to 10 inch displays at varying price points from under $200 to $1,000 (US dollars) have entered the market. These include: the Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry PlayBook, the Dell Streak, the Hewlett-Packard HP TouchPad, the Lenovo IdeaPad, the LG G-Slate, the Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Sony Dash and tablets running Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system that are aimed at businesses.
Despite the veritable onslaught of competitors with deep pockets and aggressive counter-marketing campaigns, the iPad remains the tablet of choice. It far outpaces rivals with close to 20 million units sold and an estimated 65% market share. Apple is as pre-eminent in the tablet market as Usain Bolt was in the 100 and 200 meter relay race in the 2008 Olympics or as Secretariat was in winning the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Usain Bolt and Secretariat both so utterly dominated a classy group of competitors that their races were over in the first few strides. Barring an extraordinary mishap on Apple’s part or an incredibly revolutionary product from one of its many rivals, it looks as though the iPad2 has outrun the field and built an insurmountable lead.

ITIC Reliabiity Survey: Oracle Users Anxious/Angry Over Service, Support Slippage

Laura DiDio — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:33:33 +0000

Oracle must move quickly and decisively to customers’ anxiety and restore confidence in the database maker’s technical service and support organization – particularly with respect to the company’s Sun Microsystems’ software and hardware assets. The latest independent ITIC/ GFI Software (formerly Sunbelt Software) 2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey, polled 468 businesses worldwide found It found that Oracle products received the lowest ratings for the quality of its service and support of any of the major vendors. Users gave Oracle products, service and support mixed ratings.

Three out of 10 organizations rated Oracle products, technical service and support as Excellent or Very Good. A nearly equal number of survey participants – 26 percent gave Oracle’s offerings a Good rating, while 25 percent graded it as just Satisfactory. Nearly two out of 10 of the organizations polled, gave Oracle’s products, services and support a negative rating; with 13 percent judging it Poor and the remaining six percent giving it an Unsatisfactory rating.
Oracle Reliability, Service and Support by the Numbers

The reliability of Oracle’s Solaris operating system and the company’s x86 and SPARC servers remains fairly strong and competitive, though their uptime and reliability do not match the leaders in those categories.
Specifically, 71 percent of customers running Oracle Solaris 10 on SPARC servers reported they experienced one or fewer minor unplanned Tier 1 outages per server, per annum; while 79 percent of users running Oracle Solaris on x86 based server hardware recorded one or fewer Tier 1 per server annual unplanned outages.
While those reliability figures are very respectable they lag well behind the 85 percent of IBM AIX 7.1; 84 percent of Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 users; 84 percent of Debian GNU Linux 4.0 and 5.0 users; 82 percent of HP UX 11i v.3 and Ubuntu Server 9 and 10 users who reported one or fewer unanticipated per server, per annum minor Tier one incidents.
Oracle Solaris 10 (on x86 servers) and Oracle Solaris 10 (on SPARC servers) logged similarly respectable statistics for the most severe Tier 3 outages, with 85 percent of x86 based Solaris users and 80 percent of Solaris SPARC based users indicating they had experienced one or fewer per server, per annum Tier 3 outages of four hours or longer duration.
However, once again the Oracle Solaris OS Tier 3 performance trailed rivals HP UX 11i v3 (86 percent), IBM (all versions of AIX – v5.3, v6.1 and v7.1 – 88 percent), Microsoft (Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 – 90 and 92 percent), Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 (86 percent); and Ubuntu Server 9 and 10 (87 percent).
Even Apple Mac OS X 10.6, a recent entrant into the corporate server OS market, managed roughly equivalent Tier 3 server outage statistics (83 percent of users reporting one or less than one per server, per annum outage) to the Oracle Solaris server operating system platforms.
The survey participants were in accord that the majority of their unplanned Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 server outages were due to integration, interoperability and technical service and support issues rather than any inherent flaws in the underlying platforms themselves, the vendors’ ability to respond quickly and efficiently when problems arise becomes a crucial component that positively or negatively impacts the length and severity of a server OS or server hardware outage.
It was clear both in customers’ responses to the Web-based multiple choice questions, as well as the anecdotal essay comments and first person customer interviews, that many enterprise customers are unhappy with Oracle service and support.
Users Say Oracle Service and Support Slips

Satisfaction with Oracle’s technical service and support in its Oracle database core competency, the former Sun Solaris operating system and x86-based and SPARC hardware lagged far behind longtime rivals like IBM, Microsoft and HP.
Only 31 percent of the respondents gave Oracle an “excellent” or “very good” rating for product performance, service and support. This is in sharp contrast to the over 75 percent of survey participants who gave rivals HP and IBM and 70 percent of Dell users who gave those vendors “excellent” and “very good” marks for their hardware product performance, service and support.
And in Oracle’s core competency databases, both IBM’s DB2 and Microsoft’s SQL Server scored significantly higher satisfaction ratings among survey respondents. Over 80 percent of those polled gave IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server “excellent” or “very good” ratings compared to the 43 percent of respondents who gave the Oracle DB an “excellent” or “very good” rating.
Some of the anecdotal user comments about Oracle support were scathing by any measure:
“Our Sun support has become even more abysmal since crazy Larry purchased them; it’s hard to believe,” remarked an IT manager at a large healthcare organization with over 100 servers.
The VP of IT at a large insurance company was equally critical. “We’re paying top dollar for Oracle Premier Service and support – which keeps going up – and we have little or nothing to show for it other than a big bill,” he said.
Such comments unfortunately were not the exception.
Oracle also registered the highest percentage of dissatisfied users: 20 percent or one-in-five respondents judge Oracle (Sun) hardware products, service and support to be “poor” or “unsatisfactory.” By contrast only a small five percent minority of HP users, four percent of Dell customers and less than two percent of IBM users rated those companies’ hardware offerings to be “poor” or “unsatisfactory.”

Another factor playing a pivotal part in 2011 market dynamics is how Oracle will manage, support and integrate the Sun Microsystems’ offerings into its own product portfolio. This includes the aforementioned Sun Solaris OS, x86-based and SPARC server hardware and the open source MySQL database. Despite repeated public assurances from Oracle executives that it will continue to support and develop MySQL and even provide integration with other Oracle offerings, users are still wary. The Solaris and SPARC installed base of customers are equally restive and frankly skeptical based as much on what they haven’t seen in last 12 months since Oracle completed the Sun acquisition.

Conclusions

Oracle must act quickly and decisively to shore up and improve service and support for all its major products. Otherwise, customers – particularly the already ravaged and diminished Sun Microsystems Solaris, MySQL, and SPARC and x 86 server installed base will continue to decline and defect. They will be encouraged by rival vendors, particularly IBM, HP and Microsoft, who will continue to aggressively capitalize on user confusion and dissatisfaction to entice corporations to their respective platforms.

IBM and Microsoft are very well positioned at present and over the next 12 months. IBM’s AIX server operating system, DB2 database platform and System x and Power Systems communities are solid, stable and very loyal. The fact that 72% of survey respondents to ITIC’s January 2010 Database survey said they hadn’t switched DB platforms in the last three years and the fact that it’s harder for very large enterprises in market segments like banking, financial and insurance (traditional IBM strongholds) to switch because of the legacy investment, bodes well for the company. Many of these enterprises have mature DB environments that are likely to remain stable for many years to come.

In Microsoft’s case the ongoing, tangible improvements to both the Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 platforms make them extremely robust, reliable enterprise ready solutions. Microsoft’s close partnership with server hardware vendors Dell and HP provides Windows Server with a solid foundation that bolsters the overall reliability of the OS. Microsoft also has a very strong developer community, combined with a vibrant reseller channel, puts Microsoft in a good position to expand its presence into SME and enterprise organizations.

By contrast the Oracle customer base and associated developer communities – particularly Open Source developers – remain extremely skeptical and wary.

Oracle also faces other challenges that could hamper its efforts to ameliorate its all-important technical service and support issues. The company’s myriad acquisitions over the last five years could continue to be an unwelcome distraction and hamper efforts to rapidly respond to customers and developers. That said, on the plus side, Oracle’s financials continue strong. The company continues to see strong demand for new software license renewals and maintenance plans. Oracle posted has quarterly earnings growth of 28.30 percent and quarterly revenue growth of 46.50 percent in its latest financials. It’s profit margins are a healthy 21.18 percent and return on assets stand at 21.88 percent.

The key to Oracle and any vendor’s continued success is to put customers first. According to the findings in our survey, Oracle would be wise to fix its service and support problems fully and quickly.

IBM, Stratus, HP, Fujitsu Top ITIC/GFI Software Hardware Reliability Survey

Laura DiDio — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:02:38 +0000

For the third year in a row, IBM AIX Unix operating system (OS) running on the company’s Power System servers scored the highest reliability ratings among 19 different server OS platforms – including other Unix variants, Microsoft’s Windows Server, Linux distributions and Apple’s Mac OS X.
Over three-quarters or 78 percent of survey respondents indicated they experienced less than one of the most common, minor Tier 1 incidents per server, per annum on IBM’s AIX v. 5.3 and AIX v 7.1 distributions
Those are the results of the ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and OS Reliability Survey. ITIC partnered with GFI Software (formerly Sunbelt Software) to conduct this independent Web-based survey. It polled C-level executives and IT managers at 468 corporations from 23 countries worldwide from November through January.
The survey data indicated that the reliability and uptime of all the major server OS and server hardware distributions has improved significantly over the past several years.
Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 served up the biggest surprise in the survey, scoring impressive reliability gains and making it one of the top three most reliable, mainstream server OSes. Windows Server 2008 R2’s reliability renaissance is especially impressive since Microsoft’s Windows Server OS noticeably lagged behind the majority of the UNIX, Linux and Open Source distributions in the ITIC/Sunbelt 2008 and 2009 Server Reliability surveys. This was particularly evident when it came to chronicling the most severe Tier 3 outages which typically last for four or more hours, involve data loss and require multiple members of the IT department to perform remediation.
An overwhelming 92% majority of Windows Server 2008 R2 users experienced less than one or one Tier 3 outage per server, per annum followed closely by the 90% of respondents using IBM’s AIX 7.1 who said they experienced one or less than one severe Tier 3 incident, per server per annum. Some 86% of Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 84% of HP UX 11i v3 users also testified to the reliability of those platforms, reporting that they experienced either one or less than one unplanned Tier 3 outage per server, annually.
The survey found that all server OSes continue to make year-over-year reliability gains. The essay comments and first person customer interviews revealed that the majority of the moderate and severe Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages were attributable to integration and interoperability issues such as incompatible drivers, trouble applying patches, (particularly in highly customized environments), misconfigurations and the lack of a specific component or software fix for a particular platform.
Some IT managers also acknowledged that complexity and the IT department’s unfamiliarity with new products, software versions and new technologies like virtualization and private clouds prolonged downtime. This is particularly true in instances where corporations lacked the time or the funds to certify and re-train the appropriate members of the IT staff on new technologies.
The Sun Solaris 10 now owned by Oracle had respectable reliability statistics, though the Solaris on SPARC systems lagged behind most other OS distributions. Nearly 73 percent of respondents reported that Sun Solaris 10 recorded less than one Tier 1 per server, per annum outage, while only 63 percent of Sun Solaris 10 SPARC users achieved those same reliability results. The numbers were similar for the more moderately serious Tier 2 outages with 70 percent of users running Sun Solaris 10 on SPARC systems reporting less than one incident per server, per year. Sun Solaris 10 on x86 systems fared slightly better with 71 percent recording less than one Tier 2 incident per server on an annual basis. With respect to the most severe Tier 3 outages, 70 percent of Sun Solaris 10 on SPARC survey participants say they experienced less than one incident on each server during the year, compared with 74 percent of Sun Solaris 10 running on x86 platforms who reported less than one severe Tier 3 incident per server, per annum.
Overall, with respect to the most severe and prolonged unplanned Tier 3 outages, Sun Solaris 10 also lagged behind all of the major OS distributions with 70 percent of customers reporting less than one outage. That is the approximately the same percentage of organizations that are still using the eight year-old Windows Server 2003 server operating system. Some 69 percent of Windows Server 2003 users reported less than one per server, per annum Tier 3 outage.
IBM Tops in Server Hardware Reliability
IBM hardware was also best in class in terms of reliability, stability and performance. IBM’s System z mainframes recorded the least amount of downtime; 76% indicated System z machines experienced just one-to-five minutes of unplanned outages per server, per year, the equivalent of 99.999% or better availability.
Stratus Technologies’ ftServer 6300 and 4500 series and Fujitsu’s Primequest and Primergy Servers also made impressive showings. Some 75% percent of Stratus ftServer 6300 and 4500 users say they experienced one-to-five minutes of per server, per annum downtime, for five nines of availability. Some 74% of HP’s Integrity and Fujitsu Primequest and Primergy server said they experienced less five minutes or less of unplanned annual server downtime.
Among the other survey highlights:
• A 57% majority of respondents said their server hardware is between one and three years old. One-in-five corporations – 20% – said their servers were three-to-four years old.
• One-quarter – 25% — of businesses refresh their main line of business server hardware “as needed” and 10% said they upgrade a portion of their servers annually.
• Only a very small 2% minority of organizations aggressively upgrade their servers every two years. The majority of companies are on a three, four or five year server refresh cycle with 15% of participants stating they upgrade servers every two years; 15% upgrade every three years and 17% are on a protracted five or six year server upgrade cycle. Another 15% said they have “no specific” server upgrade timetable.
• A higher percentage of users prefer to apply patches manually rather than automatically. Nearly three out-of-10 organizations – 30 percent say they opt to apply patches manually, all or most of the time. Another 35 percent of survey participants say they “sometimes” apply patches manually. Only 16 percent of respondents never apply patches manually.
• Some 26 percent of respondents who always use group policy to apply patches and 16 percent who sometimes utilize group policy methods compared to 52 percent of survey respondents who eschew group policy.
• The manual patch method does take longer than applying patches automatically or using group policies. Overall 61 percent of those polled said they spend more than one hour applying patches to their server platforms for each specific upgrade . Of that figure, just under half – 29 percent – revealed that it takes them in excess of four hours to apply patches for each incident.

The length and severity of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 unplanned outages and the patching actions related to each correspond to specific line item capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) costs for the business. Reliability, measured by downtime, can positively or negatively impact TCO and accelerate or delay the time it takes to realize ROI.
Improvements or declines in reliability also mitigate or increase technical and business risks to the organization’s end users and its external customers. The ability to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) hinges on server reliability, uptime and manageability. These are key indicators that enable organizations to determine which server operating system platform or combination thereof is most suitable.
Overall, these survey responses provide crucial, comparative reliability metrics to enable customers to make informed choices on which server hardware and server operating system or combination thereof, best suits their specific business and budgets needs.
Conclusions and Recommendations
In summary the ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey findings indicates that all of the server operating system platforms have achieved a high degree of reliability. However, the IBM AIX 7.1 operating system, followed closely by Windows Server 2008 R2, HP UX 11i v3 and Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux 11 are the top four most reliable server OS distributions.

The Patent Game: Everybody’s Playing, You Snooze, You Lose

Laura DiDio — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:56:01 +0000

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.” Nikola Tesla

Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla have a lot in common with Apple, Google, HTC, and Motorola & Research in Motion.
They were/are all warriors in the ongoing war to see who can amass the largest number of the most lucrative technology patents. Edison and Tesla waged their battle from the late 1860s through the 1920s and the stakes were just as high then as they are now.
Nary has a week gone by without mention of the latest contretemps among the high tech industry titans. There’s been no cessation of hostilities during the holiday season. If anything, top tier companies have become even more aggressive about solidifying and extending their dominance in and out of their core competencies as 2010 comes to a close.
This week is no exception. Now comes word (still rumored albeit, absent any confirmations or denials) that a Who’s Who of high tech Titans, including: Apple, Google, HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) have been engaged in a bidding war over the past six months to acquire a staggering 4,000 patents owned by Canadian telecommunications firm Nortel. You may recall that Nortel filed for bankruptcy in June 2009. Though it was unsuccessful in emerging from Chapter 11, Nortel still has great value. It holds patents in some of the technology industry’s most pivotal sectors including mobile phones, PCs, wireless infrastructure — the latest 4G wireless technology — Voice technology (VoIP) and Web-based advertising, to name a few.
So it’s not hard to see why Apple, Google, HTC, Motorola and RIM covet those patents.
Back to the Future: Edison vs. Tesla and the Fight for Patents
Ironically, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Edison and Tesla famously waged increasingly acrimonious battles for patent rights to precursors of the aforementioned technologies. Likewise, Alexander Graham Bell competed against Elisha Gray during this same time period to patent the telephone system.
History records that Edison emerged victorious because of his business acumen. Edison knew that the key to succeeding in technology was to monetize his inventions. The surest and swiftest way to do that was to patent his own inventions and swoop down and buy up his rivals’ patents by the dozens, sit back, collect the royalties and establish his reputation as a genius.
The Croatian-born Tesla, who worked for, competed against and whom many believe was the true genius and superior inventor, was ultimately was overshadowed by Edison.
Edison was assigned 1,093lifetime U.S. patents beginning in 1869 with US Patent No. 90,646 for the electrographic voice recorder and ending with his final patent in 1926 for a design for a phonograph cabinet. Edison’s outpaced his former employee and later acrimonious rival Tesla patent output by a 10-to-1 margin. Tesla holds 112 patents registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 1886 through 1928, with his final patent being for an “Apparatus for Aerial Transportation” or a flying machine. Tesla holds over 800 lifetime patents.
The rivalry between the two heated up in the late 1800s when they each developed competing power systems. Edison promoted direct current (DC) while Tesla championed alternating current (AC). George Westinghouse bought Tesla’s system while Edison DC system became the foundation for General Electric one of the world’s largest multinational companies.
Additionally, almost all of Edison’s patents were commercial successes. Tesla monetized his inventions and patents early on after leaving Edison’s employ and working for Westinghouse. However, once he went out on his own, he became the Linus Torvalds of his day: he wanted to make the technology behind many of his ideas “free.”
At the dawn of the 20th Century, Tesla’s most cherished dream was to create a network that would transmit audio and video wireless energy signals around the world by linking telephone and telegraph networks. Tesla’s vision was to transmit information, weather and stock reports and even pictures. Sound familiar?
In 1900, Tesla obtained $150,000 in funding from financier J.P. Morgan. That was a hefty research and development (R&D) fund that would be worth tens of millions in today’s currency. Tesla constructed his “wireless broadcasting system” tower in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. Unfortunately, it was never completed or fully functional. J.P. Morgan pulled his funding when he realized that Tesla wanted to provide “free” energy.
Tesla lived to be 86 years old, dying alone and impoverished in the New Yorker Hotel in 1943. His proponents claim that he could have eclipsed Edison’s 1,093 patents and become the preeminent inventor and recognized genius of his era, had he been able to afford the fees necessary to file the patent applications. According to Paul Brown an IT technician at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the fees for filing patents for individuals can range from an initial investment of a few hundred dollars to several thousand for repeated filings and information before the patent is assigned. “It’s expensive for an ordinary person,” Brown says.
Patently Flush – with Cash
Fast forward to 2010 – 2011.
For companies like Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola and RIM a few thousand dollars in fees is spare change. And it’s more expensive for these companies to pass up patents.
Most of the top tier high technology firms have no fear of going broke.
Apple currently has $25.62 billion in cash and no debt, while Google has $33.38 billion in the bank and just $2.12 billion in debt. Those are among the biggest war chests in Silicon Valley. Wall Street likes to see companies make strategic investments; it increases their valuation and market capitalization.
There are several main objectives spurring these industry giants to spend millions and possibly in excess of billion in pursuit of Nortel’s patents. They are:
• To keep competitors from getting them
• To grow by acquisition, strengthening leadership position and weakening rivals
• To ensure a recurring revenue stream via royalties and licensing rights
• To insulate the company from potential lawsuits involving use of IP in products
• To use the existing IP, improve upon it and spur the release of innovative new products
• To keep several technological steps ahead of competitors
• To potentially resell the patents after purchasing them
In their desire for dominance – both within their respective core competencies and to expand into new markets — all of the top tier high tech vendors are bumping into one another. Google is not just a search engine company, Apple is not just a consumer hardware manufacturer and Microsoft makes a lot more than Windows and Office.
To high technology firms, patents represent a very real and powerful form of currency. It’s like playing Monopoly, acquiring Boardwalk, Park Place and all the utilities and then putting up houses and hotels and charging anyone who lands on your property a fee – in this case licensing and royalty rights. They are the difference in collecting monies or potentially costing a company millions or billions in legal fees and settlement costs in the event one is sued for patent infringement.
Patents Breed Lawsuits & Trolls
Patents are fertile breeding grounds for controversy and lawsuits. For every patent filed by and assigned to inventors like Edison or Graham Bell or large multinational corporations like Apple, IBM, Intel, HP, Microsoft, Motorola et al, there are rivals like Tesla, Gray and other corporations who claim (sometimes truly) that they got beat to the patent office by minutes or had their ideas stolen outright.
One would be hard pressed to identify a single instance of a major patented invention that has gone unchallenged.
It doesn’t matter whether the product is as facile as a bending straw or a smile button, or as complex as the design for a new wireless communications system or software application with tens of millions of lines of code.
Lawsuits dog patents like feathers stick to hot tar.

In the last decade alone, most of the high technology vendors have sued, been sued and agreed to pay each other billions to settle patent infringement lawsuits after protracted and enervating legal battles. One could write tomes about even a single instance where one or more corporations is challenging a competitor on a specific patent.
Just as patents are big business, so are the lawsuits that accompany them. There’s a very thriving and growing industry around patent “trolls.” These are companies that purchase patents from other firms – many of which have filed bankruptcy or are going out of business – for the express purpose of suing companies that use these patents. The patent troll business is increasingly sophisticated. The trolls do their homework, discover the net worth and revenues of the patent users and then contact them, threatening to sue for patent infringement if the alleged infringer doesn’t ante up with settlement fees. The trolls are usually clever enough to ensure that the settlement fee doesn’t exceed the company’s ability to pay. And usually the settlement fee is less expensive and far less time consuming than a lengthy legal battle.
The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) based in Arlington, Va. publishes a bi-annual Economic Survey. This research calculates the length of time and average costs associated with defending against patent infringement suits based on the monetary value of the IP at risk. In the top 20 cities, the cost ranges from over $1.5 million to well over $10 million and the case may drag on for years. AIPLA’s most recent “Report of the Economic Survey 2009 found that the median cost of litigation for cases with estimated damages of under $1 million was $650,000. For cases with projected damages of $1 million to $25 million companies could expect to spend an average of $2.5 million in legal fees. And for patent infringement cases involving damages in excess of $25 million, the average cost of litigation is $5.5 million.
In the last decade alone, Microsoft has spent billions in settling copyright and patent infringement cases with companies like Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle) and Novell. So it was a Happy Thanksgiving for Microsoft on November 26, when via CPTN Holdings LLC, (a consortium of technology companies that it organized) Microsoft purchased 882 patents from long term rival Novel $450 million cash, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing submitted by Novell. This is a veritable bargain for Microsoft. In addition to saving money, Microsoft won’t be burdened with the distraction of having its executives spending valuable time giving depositions.
Microsoft is hardly alone. In March of this year Apple sued rival phone maker HTC of Taiwan and filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, charging that the company infringed on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface (GUI); as well as the hardware and software design. Apple is seeking a permanent injunction against HTC prohibiting them from importing and selling infringing devices into the U.S. market.
The smart phone, mobile and wireless markets are among the hottest technology arenas. It’s no surprise then that competitors are flocking to these lucrative technologies and that the competition and the number of patent infringement and intellectual property suits is increasing. One would be hard pressed to name a major vendor that is not being sued or suing one or more of its rivals.
Purchasing patents is a smart defensive and offensive strategy. Once you buy a patent you lower your risk and exposure to lawsuits and your firm gains an ongoing source of very lucrative revenue. And in today’s highly competitive fast paced world, holding IP rights to specific patents boosts companies’ chances of getting more innovative products to market more quickly at a fraction of the R&D costs associated with developing a product organically – from scratch.
High technology firms from established players to upstart startups will play the patent game to win. A quick look at the numbers tells the tale: companies are buying up patents at record numbers.
Company Patents Assigned
Apple 3,601
Google 553
HP 40,392
IBM 63,227
Intel 61,607

Microsoft 69,575

Motorola 55,366
Oracle 10,892
RIM 279
Source: US Patent and Trademark Office
The vendors don’t release how much they make and how much they save by purchasing patents but you can bet it’s a very substantial amount and growing by leaps and bounds.
Patents are pure platinum. They represent a sound investment, money in the bank, a recurring revenue stream, a powerful leverage and insurance policies all rolled into one. You can bet that Ballmer, Jobs and Schmidt know that and won’t make the same mistakes as Tesla.

ITIC 2010-2011 Infrastructure Trends Survey Shows Sharp Increase in Mobility & Use of Ipads, Smart Phones in the Workplace; Cloud Deployments Slow

Laura DiDio — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:08:29 +0000

The sharp increase in remote and mobile workers is spurring the fast adoption of iPads in the workplace. At the same time, public cloud computing deployments among mainstream users remain slow and steady. These are some of the other survey highlights of the latest ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey on Desktop and Infrastructure deployment trends.

No Rush to the Cloud — Yet

Users on the Move: Number of Mobile workers increases
The survey results also confirm what has been widely reported: that greater numbers and percentages of users are spending more time telecommuting, traveling and generally working outside the corporate offices.
Over half – 58 percent of businesses say that up to 25 percent of their employees work remotely; another 18 percent of respondents said that between 26 to 50 percent of their workers are remote; 11 percent said that 51 to 75 percent work outside the office and seven percent of respondents said that 76 to 100 percent of their employees work remotely. It is significant that only 7 percent of the over 400 businesses polled say that none of their workers are remote or mobile.
Apparently, IT departments are getting used to support mobile workers: just over half 52 percent of survey respondents indicated they find it just as easy to support remote employees as their local workers; however 43 percent say they find it more difficult, while the remaining seven percent are unsure.

To date only a 17 percent minority – less than two out of 10 businesses who responded to the Sunbelt/ITIC poll say their organizations have migrated any IT functions to the cloud. By contrast, 62 percent of those surveyed say their firm have not migrated any IT functions to a cloud environment; another 19 percent of companies are studying the issue but have not yet decided and the remaining two percent are “Unsure” of their firm’s cloud deployment plans.
“No compelling business reason,” was the most oft-cited reason for holding off on a cloud deployment and that was chosen by 66 percent of the respondents. Another 49 percent of survey participants indicated their organizations’ concerns about security and the need for specific guarantees to safeguard their for sensitive data is deterring cloud deployments.
Only a small five percent minority felt that a cloud deployment would be disruptive to their current network environment.
Anti-Virus software is current
The survey respondents were certain that their anti-virus software is doing the job. In a clear indication that organizations recognize the need to keep their AV packages updated, nearly eight-out-of-10 businesses – 79 percent affirmed that their AV software is current, while 17 percent indicate that the majority of their AV packages are up-to-date. Overall, less than five percent of those polled say their AV software is outdated.
Similarly, an overwhelming 77 percent of respondents reported that they’re satisfied with the ability of their firms current security packages to alert them to the presence of viruses, worms, Trojans and other malware threats. Only 16 percent of respondents expressed concern regarding the ability of their AV software to alert them to potential security breaches, while the remaining seven percent were unsure.
Desktop Management
When it comes to desktop management, 41 percent of companies use three or four different software packages to oversee crucial functions such as Remote PC monitoring; Patch and update management/deployment; malware protection; asset inventory; critical alerting; remote assistance/remote control; IT asset management reporting. Another 16 percent deploy a singular management package while 20 percent say their firms use two management packages and 12 percent were “unsure.” The remaining 12 percent indicated they do not use any management software to manage their desktops.
The chief challenges and deterrents to installing and deploying desktop management packages are: integration and interoperability which was cited by 57 percent of survey respondents and the large upfront investment costs which 47 percent say make upper management unlikely to approve the project. Nearly one-third of survey respondents cited the difficulty of quantifying TCO and ROI and the need for too much training and orientation as the biggest challenge to deploying desktop management solutions, while 28 percent say they have difficulty comparing the functionality of the various products.
Among the other Survey Highlights:
• Over half the survey respondents – 56 percent – use a dedicated management tool to deploy their software updates, but a surprising 42 percent still manually install their software updates.
• Nearly seven out of 10 businesses – 68 percent – say they’re satisfied with their organization’s current ability to ensure that the corporate PCs have the latest security updates & patches compared with 26 percent who replied negatively to that question.
• Just over half – 55 percent – of those polled indicated they were satisfied with their firm’s ability to inventory the hardware assets (total number, make, model and specifications) in your environment; while 34 percent said “No” and 11 percent were “Unsure.” The ability to inventory hardware assets is one of the crucial components necessary to enable companies to ascertain TCO and ROI.

ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware & Server OS Reliability Survey Results

Laura DiDio — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:39:15 +0000

For the second year in a row, IBM AIX UNIX running on the Power or “P” series servers, scored the highest reliability ratings among 15 different server operating system platforms – including Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX and Windows.

Those are the results of the ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at 400 corporations from 20 countries worldwide. The results indicate that the IBM AIX operating system whether running on Big Blue’s Power servers (System p5s) is the clear winner, offering rock solid reliability. The IBM servers running AIX consistently score at least 99.99% or just 15 minutes of unplanned per server, per annum downtime.

Overall, the results showed improvements in reliability, patch management procedures and an across-the-board reduction in per server, per annum Tier 1, Tier 2 and the most severe Tier 3 outages. Among the other survey highlights:

IBM leads all vendors for both server hardware and server OS reliability as well as the fewest number of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 unplanned server outages per year. IBM AIX running on the System p5s had less than one unplanned outage incident per server in a 12 month period. More impressively, the IBM servers experience no Tier 3 outages. Tier 3 outages are the most severe and usually involve more than four hours or a half-day worth of downtime and can also result in lost data.
HP UX also performed well though HP servers notch approximately 25 minutes more downtime than IBM servers, depending on model and configuration – or just under 40 minutes per server, per annum downtime.
IT managers spend approximately 11minutes to apply patches to IBM servers running the AIX operating system, which is again, the least amount of time spent patching any server or operating system. The open source Ubuntu distribution is a close second with IT managers spending 12 minutes to apply patches, while IT managers in the Apple Mac OS X 10.x. Novell SuSE and customized Linux distribution environments each spend 15 to 19 minutes applying patches.
IBM also took top honors in another important category: IBM Power servers and AIX experience the lowest amount of the more severe Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages combined of any server hardware or server operating system. The combined total of Tier 2 and Tier 3 outages accounted for just 19% of all per server, per annum failures.
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 showed the biggest improvements of any of the vendors. The Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems running on Intel-based platforms saw a 35% reduction in the amount of unplanned per server, per annum downtime from 3.77 hours in 2008 to 2.42 hours in 2009. The number of annual Windows Server Tier 3 outages also decreased by 31% year over year and the time spent applying patches similarly decline by 35% from last year to 32 minutes in 2009.
This year’s survey for the first time, also incorporated reliability results for the Apple Mac and OS X 10.x OS platform. The survey respondents indicated that Apple products are extremely competitive in an enterprise setting. IT managers spend approximately 15 minutes per server to apply patches and Apple Macs recorded just under 40 minutes of per server, per annum downtime.

Apple Gets More Entrenched in the Enterprise

Laura DiDio — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:23:41 +0000

Apple Macintosh Enterprise Usage Continues to Grow

Apple Mac and OS X 10.x continue to make inroads in the enterprise.

ITIC’s 2009 Global IT and Technology Trends Survey shows that corporate enterprises continue to embrace the Apple Mac and OS X 10.x server operating system in numbers not seen since the late 1980s. ITIC polled IT managers and C-level executives at 700 corporations worldwide. Among the survey highlights:

Over two-thirds of the 700 survey respondents – 68% — indicated they are likely to allow their end users to deploy Macs as their corporate enterprise desktops in the next 12 months.
Almost one-quarter or 23% have a significant number of Macintoshes (> 50) present in their organizations. Apple Macs have long been a favorite of company executives, but the survey responses clearly indicate that Mac usage has filtered down to rank and file knowledge workers across the enterprise.
Half of all the survey respondents – 50% — said they plan to increase integration with existing Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to allow users to access corporate Email and other applications. This augurs well for the iPhone to establish itself as a viable alternative to Research In Motion’s (RIM) as a mobile device that allows users to access Email and other collaboration applications.

In summary, the ITIC/Sunbelt survey responses show that businesses will find themselves challenged to do more with fewer resources. The respondents also exhibited their practicality and resourcefulness in extending the lifespan of still-useful technologies like Windows XP. However those who have the need and the budget, will get an able assist from emerging technologies like virtualization – and for those that correctly configure and deploy them – Vista and the Mac and OS X 10.x