But Wait, There's More

Sun Goes to Subscription Pricing on Storage Software Now, Too

Having developed its implementation of the concepts of compute and storage utilities, Sun Microsystems knows that in the storage arena it is going to have to do more than just sell capacity at a cost of $1 per GB per month to make any money. To that end, this week at the NC05Q2 event in Washington, D.C., Sun announced four different add-on services for its storage utility that companies can also buy for their own data centers.

For some reason--I blame marketing--Sun is plastering Java on all of its software suites, regardless of the fact that they may or may not use Java. We have the Java Enterprise System middleware suite (which is a mix of Sun and Netscape products) that is available for $140 per employee per year and the Java Desktop System, which is a variant of Novell's SUSE Linux with StarOffice and other stuff on it. And now we have the Java StorEdge Suites, of which there are four. (I am ignoring the Java in the name from this point forward, because this is just silly.) The StorEdge Consolidation Suite bundles together Sun's StorEdge provisioning and management tools; the StorEdge Continuity Suite includes back-up, snap-shotting, mirroring, replication, virtualization, and data migration software. The StorEdge Content Suite is a set of lifecycle management programs that can handle the archiving of content (such as emails) in such a way that it is searchable. The StorEdge Compliance Suite is a set of software that controls the retention of emails and other documents that are necessary to meet various regulations, such as HIPAA and SOX. Sun did not provide individual pricing for the four suites, but says that customers can buy all four as a set for $350 per employee per year or $400,000 per 5 TB of storage covered per year. Sun says that the subscription-based pricing can save customers as much as 30 percent off of buying the same components under perpetual licenses.

Freeman Says Tape Library Sales Up Even with Flat Shipments in 2004

Tape market watcher Freeman Reports has done its casing of the worldwide tape library market and says that despite the fact that shipments were flat in 2004, revenues among tape library vendors were up last year.

Freeman says that 62,000 tape libraries were sold last year, accounting for $1.98 billion in sales. However, the market looks due for some price competition, since Freeman also says that shipments will grow to 68,300 in 2005, but revenues will only grow to $2.08 billion. The tape market watcher expects the tape library market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8 percent to reach $3.09 billion by 2010, when shipments will reach 102,000. This is a big expansion in the market, and Freeman is clearly of the opinion that inexpensive disk storage is not going to obviate the need for even less expensive tapes.

Freeman says that LTO libraries were strong last year, with 45,600 shipments and $985 million in sales, and offset declines in sales of libraries based on DLT/SDLT and 8mm tape technologies. Specifically, sales of DLT/SDLT tape libraries fell by 44 percent to $142 million, with shipments rising slightly to 10,000 units. Libraries based on low-end LTO drives are hammering 8mm tape libraries as well. Sales of half-inch cartridge libraries also rose last year to $735 million with 1,700 sales. These high-end tape products, which are the descendents of IBM's 3480 and 3490 mainframe tapes, accounted for only 2.8 percent of shipments but, because of their high performance and capacity and therefore their high prices, they accounted for 30 percent of sales in 2004.

SGI Launches Linux-Itanium Deskside Workstation Line That Runs Irix Apps

Seeking to expand its sales opportunities as its technical server business has hit a bumpy patch in the road, Silicon Graphics has returned to its roots in a way by launching a deskside workstation that is a chip off the Itanium-based visualization servers it has been peddling. The new Prism workstations also include emulation software that allows key applications written in the Irix Unix created by SGI to run on these Linux-based workstations.

The Prism deskside workstation supports up to two Itanium processors running at 1.3 GHz (with 4 MB of cache) or 1.6 GHz (with 9 MB of cache) and from 2 to 24 GB of main memory. The workstation can be equipped with one or two ATI Fire GL graphics cards (which come in flavors with 128 MB or 256 MB of graphics memory). With two cards, SGI says the machine can drive simulation visualizations of nearly 10 million pixels. The full Prism visualization server line ranges from 2 to 256 Itanium processors and from 2 to 16 ATI FireGL cards all ganged up. The top-end machines cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on the configuration. The Prism deskside workstation starts at $8,500 and tops out at $39,000.

The most interesting aspect of the workstation announcement may be the support for Transitive's QuickTransit hardware virtualization and emulation software, which allows binaries compiled for Irix on MIPS, binaries for PowerPC or Power, or binaries for IBM mainframes to be run in emulation mode on top of Itanium, Xeon, or Opteron platforms without any changes to the source or binaries. You heard that right. We'll be looking into this software in a future issue. In any event, the 800 MHz R16000A MIPS processors in the SGI Fuel and Tezro workstations just don't have the oomph of the Itanium boxes, but Irix shops have a lot of custom-tailored applications they can't run on Itanium-based boxes because SGI did not port Irix to Itanium. QuickTransit, if it works as advertised, is a way to meet Irix shops half way.

Third World Growth in Programmers to Cap Growth in the First World

If you think it is tough finding a job as a programmer in North America, you may be disheartened to hear it may just end up getting even worse. According to a new research report by IDC, the North American programmer pool that has represented the vast majority of programming in the past several decades is feeling the pressure from growth in emerging economies and the growing practice of outsourcing and offshoring.

IDC is projecting that the worldwide pool of professional developers will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 percent between 2003 and 2008, reaching 14.9 million programmers by the end of 2008. The countries with the most programmers are currently, in ranking order: the United States, Russia, India, Japan, Canada, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. But growth rates in China and India are going to shift the balance, with China's programmer pool expected to grow at 25.6 percent CAGR and India's at 24.5 percent. On a geographical region basis, Asia/Pacific (which includes China and Japan and other Asian countries but not India) will have more programmers than North America by early 2006. And because of the influence of India, the Middle East/Africa region will have the highest regional growth rate, with a CAGR in the number of programmers between of 18.3 percent between 2003 and 2008.

To compete, programmers in North America are going to have to live by their wits, using automated and rapid development techniques as well as whatever deep knowledge they can muster. Bad documentation and a lack of native language training will hold back these developing nations somewhat, but the sheer numbers of bright and motivated people in China and India mean a lot of newbie programmers are going to find success.

Cruise Ships: the Choice for New Offshore Programming Havens

While some American companies continue to successfully cut costs by outsourcing high-paying programming jobs to low-cost providers in Russia, China, and India, two entrepreneurs from San Diego are working to build a new model for offshore work. David Cook and Roger Green founded SeaCode with the idea of housing up to 600 foreign programmers on a cruise ship parked three miles off the coast of Los Angeles. By classifying the programmers as "seaman" and having the work done outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law, Cook and Green figure they can avoid the nasty little requirement for foreign technology workers to have H1B visas, while still keeping the programmers within a half-hour water taxi ride of shore, where they can visit clients, if need be, and blow off some steam (and some cash) during shore leave. "We're not a slave ship," Cook told Forbes. "It's like the International Space Station," Green said. The two men are reportedly close to buying a used cruise ship, and could begin staffing the ship with programmers within months. Once on board, the programmers, who will be paid salaries of about $21,000, will work in eight- or 10-hour shifts, enabling work to get done 24 hours a day. "Try to get American software engineers to work at night," Cook says.

IBM Extends Sub-Capacity Software Pricing

In a world of virtual machines and logical partitioning, per-CPU or per-system software pricing doesn't make a lot of sense. The zSeries and iSeries divisions of IBM were innovators with what the company calls sub-capacity pricing for software--meaning you price software based on fractions of the cost for a single processor--and other IBM divisions are now offering sub-capacity software pricing, too.

Under this offering, programs acquired through IBM's Passport Advantage software channel can be acquired with sub-capacity pricing. To use this pricing, however, you also have to use IBM's Tivoli License Manager, which watches how you use the software and makes sure you stay compliant with the terms of your license agreement. IBM is offering its WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ messaging middleware, WebSphere Portal, and other WebSphere products with this sub-capacity licensing; the TXSeries transaction monitoring software as well as its DB2 Universal Database 8.2 and related software (such as DB2 Data Links Manager and Net Search Extender) can be bought using this licensing, too.

As far as platforms go, this software can run on OS/400 V5R2 and i5/OS V5R3 in logical partitions; AIX 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 in logical partitions; on Linux on zSeries inside VM guest environments or within zSeries logical partitions; on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9 on Power-based iSeries and pSeries platforms; on Solaris 8 and 9 dynamic domains (which are logical partitions that are only granular to the cell board level, not the CPU level and certainly not to the sub-CPU level); on HP-UX 11i nPar hard partitions but not on its vPar virtual partitions. IBM says it is working on sub-capacity pricing and metering mechanisms for virtual machine partitions for Windows and Linux slices on X86 servers, supporting both VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server partitions.

VCs That Bought WRQ Acquire Competitor Attachmate

Back in December 2004, a group of venture capitalists got together and bought host connectivity software maker WRQ, of Seattle, and now, they have eaten rival Attachmate, of nearby Belleview. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, because WRQ is a privately held company and is owned by three venture capitalists: Golden Gate Capital, Francisco Partners, and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners. The deal is expected to close next month, and it will create a company with approximately $200 million in sales. After the deal is done, Frank Pitt, Attachmate's founder, will retire. Jeff Hawn, currently chairman of WRQ, will become chairman, CEO, and president of the merged firm. How the two firms will merge their product lines and personnel remains a bit of a mystery, thanks to WRQ being a private company. By the way, Doug Walker, the W in WRQ, retired after he sold his company to the VCs as well. This is a tough business, and these guys have been at it for decades.