But Wait, There's More

IDC Says Tectonic Shifts Coming for Outsourcing

The outsourcing market was undergoing some pretty fundamental shifts in 2004, according to the market researchers at IDC. In a nutshell, deals are getting smaller, outsourcing is not just covering IT operations but also business process outsourcing (BPO), and there are more players in the market.

IDC based its assessments on the top 100 deals in 2004, which may seem a bit dated as we come to the close of 2005, but that's why its called research--it takes time to compile and sift through the information. IDC said the top 100 deals accounted fro $69.1 billion in sales in 2004, down 1.2 percent from the $68.3 billion for the top 100 deals in 2003. The minimum ante to be in the top 100 was $184 million, which was 5.1 percent higher than the entry 100th deal on the 2003 list. The BPO component of the top 100 deals grew from $10.4 billion in 2003 to $17.3 billion in 2004, which means that without BPO--which is all the rage at IBM these days and the main reason Big Blue bought the IT consulting PricewaterhouseCoopers--the IT business actually declined by 11 percent in 2004 to $51.8 billion.

IBM has seen a more pronounced shift to BPO contracts in 2005, and to smaller contracts, so it will be very interesting to see what happens when 2005 is long since over and IDC reckons what happened to the top 100 deals in 2005. It seems likely that BPO will continue to grow and more traditional IT outsourcing deals will continue to decline. What any of this says about the midrange market and the kinds of outsourcing trends customers in this market will see is unclear, but the midrange tends to lag in most trends and probably is not even accustomed to the idea of outsourcing yet, much less BPO--which amounts to having companies like IBM run your business. To which I say: Physician, Heal Thyself!

Vision Solutions Partners with ERP Vendor Intentia for Database Archiving

High availability software maker Vision Solutions has announced a partnership with midrange ERP software supplier Intentia International that will see Intentia integrate Vision Solutions' OS Data Manager product with the Intentia Application Suite. Vision Solutions got the OS Data Manager tool by virtue of its acquisition of OS Solutions, a British supplier of HA software for the iSeries, in March of this year.

OS Data Manger is a tool that is part of the OS Suite of tools created by OS Solutions and delivered for the iSeries in 2004, and it is used to automate the purging and archiving of data from production databases in a such a manner that also allows companies to comply with stringent government regulations regarding the manipulation of data inside IT systems. OS Data Manager uses a simple query-like interface and requires no programming skills to use, which is one of the reasons Vision Solutions was interested in the tool. As part of this partnership, Vision Solutions has customized OS Data Manager to work with templates for the RPG-based Intentia Application Suite. The companies currently have 100 common customers, so the integration is beneficial to both parties. Intentia is also pitching the tool as a means to speed migrations to the Intentia Java Application Suite, which is a full Java implementation of the Intentia code. The idea is to purge and archive data before a migration from the RPG to Java versions of the Intentia applications, thus minimizing the amount of data that needs to be moved.

DataMirror Shows Slight Improvement on Revenues, Big Improvement on Profits

iSeries high availability software provider DataMirror reported it had eked out both revenue and profit growth in its fiscal third quarter ended October 31, with sales up 6.7 percent to $10.9 million and net income almost tripled to $740,000. Because DataMirror has bought up a bunch of its own shares, earnings per share increased to 9 cents a share in the quarter, compared to 2 cents a share this time last year.

"Business execution improved during our third quarter," said Nigel Stokes, Data Mirror's chief executive officer. "The ongoing transition of our sales team to a solutions-based selling approach resulted in success with several more solution sales to our existing client base." Looking ahead, DataMirror expects sales to rise about 5 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, to between $11.3 million and $11.8 million, with net income per share in the range of 10 cents to 14 cents.

Bytware Debuts McAfee-Based Antivirus for Linux PCs

While a lot of attention has been placed on the vulnerability of Windows security and the prevalence of Windows viruses, worms, and other malware floating about the Internet, there are also very real threats to other operating systems, such as Linux. To this end, systems management and security software vendor Bytware has unveiled a new antivirus product aimed at Linux-based PCs.

The software, called StandGuard Anti-Virus for Linux, is based on McAfee's antivirus scanning and removal engine, and it just entered beta testing. The software works only on X86-based Linux PCs, and protects users from all of the threats McAfee's Avert engine detects and removes, which currently numbers more than 150,000, according to Bytware. The product gives users the choice of using a GUI or a command line, and it also offers the capability to run commands in users shell scripts. Users can create scan tasks and choose which files types they want scanned, and rest assured that the DAT files are being updated daily, directly from McAfee, over the Internet. To download a trial version of the software, go to www.bytware.com/downloads/request_trial_linux.html.

BI on Linux Gets the Attention of IBM eServer Resellers

Information Builders, one of the major vendors in business intelligence software, has announced a new business partner program targeted at IBM system resellers that can help it promote BI software on Linux. Although Information Builders' WebFocus software is best known among mainframe users, the new eServer strategy the company is putting in place will put greater emphasis on the iSeries as well as the BladeCenter, and pSeries platforms. The resellers that have partnered with Information Builders include CMA, Cornerstone Systems, Jeskell, Mainline Information Systems, MSI, NoviPro, Sirius Computer Solutions, Vicom Infinity, and Yorel

Based on the program's initial success in reaching out to the zSeries mainframe market, officials at Information Builders say representation in the other eServer markets is quickly growing. The various resellers will feature a combination of hardware, software and services for each of the hardware platforms.

"Server consolidation savings, reduced management costs and attractive hardware and software pricing give Linux a total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage in many scenarios," says Gerald Cohen, chief executive officer at Information Builders. Cohen says this TCO benefit is creating additional interest in Linux as an enterprise-level operating system. Getting this message in front of a large portion of the IBM eServer installed base is quite a feather in the hat of Information Builders. And, quite obviously, it is a message IBM would like more of its customers to take to heart.

The company's WebFocus product incorporates workload and traffic management and capacity planning. It also supports service oriented architectures. It is being used by organizations that leverage data from sources such as legacy applications and data warehouses. Information Builders claims more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100.

META Looks Ahead to Future Operations Strategies

If you consider yourself a trendy person and your interest lies within the realm of IT operations, you will likely enjoy the forecasting of operations strategies put forth by META Group Research. The brain trust at META, which now collects paychecks with the Gartner name across the top, says factors such as regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and cost justification initiatives will affect more than 85 percent of IT operations organizations in 2006 and 2007. It's all good, the analysts say, because it will not only "yield a more complete view of IT's operational/support processes, but also enable better role/responsibility alignment and a means of associating governance with those processes."

Configuration management, the process of defining which items and areas to track, is another area seen as having significant benefits. More than 20 percent of IT operations groups will get started down this road in 2006, and by 2009 those projects are expected to produce benefits in area such as inventory tracking/utilization, asset distribution/reuse, risk assessment, and security management.

And don't get too comfortable with your ticket/workflow/authorization change management systems, because it is time to integrate service management into the IT picture. As service desk management combines with configuration management, we will see standardized request/demand management, better-integrated change toolsets, and enterprise master change schedules coming into the mix.

Additional trend-spotting topics include service-level management, operational outsourcing, and model-based management analysis; IT asset management tools are also included in the best-guess look into the future by META Group, too.