Saturday, March 5, 2011
ITSMjock: Life after Ionix
ITSMjock: Life after Ionix: "I joined EMC in March of 2008 believing that I would finish my career there. Given the fact I plan to work another 12-15 years that was opti..."
Life after Ionix
I joined EMC in March of 2008 believing that I would finish my career there. Given the fact I plan to work another 12-15 years that was optimistic to say the least. In retrospect I should have been more prepared for EMC's shift in strategy. The decision to exit the ITSM business, refocusing Ionix on Service Provider and Vblock infrastructure management, was a traumatic experience for many in the organization. Although the marketer in me understood and agreed with the strategy, it was difficult watching the manner in which the organization was allowed to atrophy. A lot of talented people left the company out of fear that they would suddenly be handed a pink slip. Sadly, this recently became a reality for many who choose to remain. The past year was especially hard on me personally because I had seen the movie before. While many of my colleagues were caught off guard, I knew how the story would play out.
Over the course of my career I have experienced several technology waves and watched industry giants die as the wave crashed over them. Digital Equipment Corporation was arguably the leading vendor of microcomputer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s. Its’ PDP and VAX products were the de facto standard for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s. As the network operations manager at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia from 1988 - 1991 I had many of these systems on campus. By the end of the decade the DEC I knew would become a memory. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Today DEC is a distant memory.
DEC’s demise was hastened by the rise of client-server computing. I became a Novell CNE while working as a Systems Architect at CIGNA, prior to joining TJUH. CIGNA was among the first companies to move applications from the mainframe to Intel-based server architecture. Intel’s 80286 CPU featured the 16-bit protected mode and multi-tasking mechanisms necessary to build reliable, cost-effective server-based local area networks for the first time. Prior 8/16-bit processors (8086/8088) were limited to an address space of 1MB with not more than 640 KB of directly addressable RAM. The combination of a higher 16 MB RAM limit, 80286 processor feature utilization, and 256 MB NetWare volume size limit (compared to the 32 MB that MS-DOS allowed at that time) allowed CIGNA to migrate away from mainframe-based time sharing operations (TSO) to distributed networks.
This was the first of several technology waves I’ve been fortunate enough to ride. I reference this experience because it is an excellent illustration of what happens during a technological paradigm shift. It isn’t pretty; there are casualties. Companies die, are absorbed in an acquisition or become giants. Technology companies that generate billions of annual revenue can simply fade away or morph into obscurity. DEC and Novell illustrate the point perfectly. Like DEC, Novell's early strategy proved very successful; prior to Microsoft’s introduction of Windows NT Server, Novell claimed 90% of the market for PC-based servers. Today Novell is a niche player attempting to attach to cloud and datacenter initiatives to recapture past glory. It is also in the midst of being acquired by Attachmate, another company that has fallen off the radar. Oddly enough, I was also an 802.2 beta engineer for Attachmate’s SNA gateway, but I digress.
The point of this post is that we should expect the Cloud market and its cast of players to look very different five years down the road. Cloud is every bit as disruptive as was client-server. The solutions in the market today will evolve. EMC’s exit from the IT Service Management business is the first of many product strategy moves it will execute. It is banking on VMware to become “the” cloud O/S of choice, but that direction requires that VMware fill a gaping systems management hole. It will attempt to do so through organic development and technology acquisition. The first hand has been played. Its acquisition of Ionix assets, Integrien and TriCipher clearly suggest that VMware intends to compete with IBM, HP, Microsoft, CA, BMC and Oracle to build cloud infrastructure management tools. I’ll watch with interest as the current market leaders will not simply wave a white flag.
Over the course of my career I have experienced several technology waves and watched industry giants die as the wave crashed over them. Digital Equipment Corporation was arguably the leading vendor of microcomputer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s. Its’ PDP and VAX products were the de facto standard for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s. As the network operations manager at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia from 1988 - 1991 I had many of these systems on campus. By the end of the decade the DEC I knew would become a memory. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Today DEC is a distant memory.
DEC’s demise was hastened by the rise of client-server computing. I became a Novell CNE while working as a Systems Architect at CIGNA, prior to joining TJUH. CIGNA was among the first companies to move applications from the mainframe to Intel-based server architecture. Intel’s 80286 CPU featured the 16-bit protected mode and multi-tasking mechanisms necessary to build reliable, cost-effective server-based local area networks for the first time. Prior 8/16-bit processors (8086/8088) were limited to an address space of 1MB with not more than 640 KB of directly addressable RAM. The combination of a higher 16 MB RAM limit, 80286 processor feature utilization, and 256 MB NetWare volume size limit (compared to the 32 MB that MS-DOS allowed at that time) allowed CIGNA to migrate away from mainframe-based time sharing operations (TSO) to distributed networks.
This was the first of several technology waves I’ve been fortunate enough to ride. I reference this experience because it is an excellent illustration of what happens during a technological paradigm shift. It isn’t pretty; there are casualties. Companies die, are absorbed in an acquisition or become giants. Technology companies that generate billions of annual revenue can simply fade away or morph into obscurity. DEC and Novell illustrate the point perfectly. Like DEC, Novell's early strategy proved very successful; prior to Microsoft’s introduction of Windows NT Server, Novell claimed 90% of the market for PC-based servers. Today Novell is a niche player attempting to attach to cloud and datacenter initiatives to recapture past glory. It is also in the midst of being acquired by Attachmate, another company that has fallen off the radar. Oddly enough, I was also an 802.2 beta engineer for Attachmate’s SNA gateway, but I digress.
The point of this post is that we should expect the Cloud market and its cast of players to look very different five years down the road. Cloud is every bit as disruptive as was client-server. The solutions in the market today will evolve. EMC’s exit from the IT Service Management business is the first of many product strategy moves it will execute. It is banking on VMware to become “the” cloud O/S of choice, but that direction requires that VMware fill a gaping systems management hole. It will attempt to do so through organic development and technology acquisition. The first hand has been played. Its acquisition of Ionix assets, Integrien and TriCipher clearly suggest that VMware intends to compete with IBM, HP, Microsoft, CA, BMC and Oracle to build cloud infrastructure management tools. I’ll watch with interest as the current market leaders will not simply wave a white flag.
Ionix is the first casualty of this market evolution. The organization has been downsized for the third time in two years. It’s doubtful that it will exist at all going into 2012. It won’t be the last organization to fade away. Can VMware ride the wave? I’m not so sure. It is dwarfed by the competitors it targets. IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have already demonstrated an ability to capitalize on market inflection. VMware is also very dependent on the channel to drive revenue growth. To that end EMC and VMware have invested in building VCE as its cloud integrator. The “C” in VCE is Cisco; which has its own agenda.
The next 24 months will be very interesting. There is still much work to be done to make IT as a service a reality. The technology exists to implement first generation solutions, but it is an expensive proposition to deliver the automation and service life cycle management that is necessary for business leaders to trust the technology. The service catalog and orchestration platform are the two key technologies. They are also the VMware’s Achilles heel. Look for EMC to formalize a business relationship with BMC in the not-to-distant future. Ultimately VMware will make an acquisition in this area. That will be the catalyst for vendor consolidation. Once VMware makes a move, BMC will be forced to react.
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