SAP Partners with IBM and INTEL

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Sam Conforti

Alex Goldman reports for InternetNews.com on two interesting collaborations announced recently by SAP in his article SAP Taps IBM, Intel to Cut Datacenter, SMB Costs. Here’s a brief synopsis:

Ability to create an in-house cloud:

The two giants have been collaborating since 1999 on this particular project. Although the product is not yet generally available, SAP and IBM demonstrated it at the CeBIT trade show. The idea is simply to spread SAP’s utilization across the servers in an enterprise which lessens underutilization of servers while also allowing for spikes in usage. This should be attractive to companies trying to get the most out of their current infrastructure. The technology demonstrated is based on the RESERVOIR cloud computing project. The goal is to make it easier for datacenters to be able to adjust their services to meet demand at different times. 

Xeon-based systems for SMB’s:

Another SAP announced partnership is with Intel. SAP’s Business One customers (i.e. SMB’s) are to be the beneficiaries this time. SAP plans to develop applications for use on Intel's 64-bit Xeon architecture. The end result is a faster deployment for SMB’s using Intel Xeon based systems.

The Green Effect:

The current “Green” craze is not lost in the two announcements above. The parties involved are proud to state that both moves reinforce the output of lower carbon emissions in customers' datacenters.

 

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Will IT Vendors Weather the Financial Crisis?

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Sam Conforti

 

Global stock markets are falling.  The price of a barrel of oil broke the $70/barrel mark on its way to $60 and maybe $50.  The $700 billion bailout (or rescue) package of Wall Street hasn’t seemed to take hold.  The Fed has opened up its discount window to all sorts of entities.  And yet amid all the financial tumult, Gartner sees IT spending for the coming year as slowing, but not stopping.

Richard Adhikari reports for Internet.News.com from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida in his article entitled Gartner: IT Spending Will Grow, Just Slowly.  He quotes Gartner’s global head of research, Peter Sondergaard:

"In a worst-case scenario, our research indicates an IT spending increase of 2.3 percent in 2009, down from our earlier projection of 5.8 percent"

What makes Sondergaard so sure the growth, albeit slowed, will continue into 2009?  He cites three factors:

·         There is usually a 2 quarter lag in decreases in IT spending vis-à-vis the economy.

·         The shift to a multi-year approach to IT projects makes a cut implausible.

·         Top management’s realization that IT can help transform their business.

Sondergaard sees developing countries worst hit, with Europe posting negative growth, and the US and Japan as flat for 2009.

It seems that the need for IT will be a stabilizing factor in these turbulent times.  AFCOM is an association which is related to the datacenter industry.  Their study supports Gartner’s conclusion that IT spending will hold and might even increase in 2009.  Why?  Well, if the data center goes down, the whole business might go as well.  Read the whole story Datacenter Dollars Seen as Steady Spend.  The salient points in the datacenter industry to keep in mind for 2009 are these:

·         The downturn in the economy will spur a major growth in greening efforts because they have a payoff in savings.

·         The impact of datacenter budget cuts will reduce overall efficiency of operations in the entire company. When budgets are cut, new technologies don't come into play. Firms need to expand or adopt new technologies and won't be able to.

·         The downturn may spur increases in purchases when companies realize increases in their datacenter's effectiveness affects their company's survival.

·         A company's ability to survive in this economy is more than ever before dependent on the datacenter's performance.

 

 

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