But Wait, There's More

Sun Racks Up Big Deals with GM, T-Mobile, and GE

After a tough couple of quarters of pushing its subscription-priced Java Enterprise System middleware stack, Sun Microsystems has finally bagged what could turn out to be the watershed contract for that software stack. Car maker General Motors has signed up to use JES running on Solaris as the infrastructure behind its global network, which links GM's many sites to its partners and suppliers. With 321,000 employees worldwide, the addition of GM to the rolls of JES users pushes the installed base of JES seats worldwide to just under 1 million. GM had already been dabbling in parts of the JES collection, including the Java Web Infrastructure Suite for infrastructure workloads and the Java Application Platform Suite for Web application development. Sun said GM plans add the Sun Java Identity Management Suite to provide security and single sign-on capabilities for its employees. While GM could deploy JES on Windows, Linux, or HP-UX, it has chosen Solaris 10.

Sun is also very happy that cell phone operator T-Mobile has chosen Java System Identity Manager and Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition running on Solaris 10 and its Sun Fire servers to provide the portal front-end to its customer service site in Europe. This portal, called t-zones, hosts up to 20 million subscribers, and it is used by T-Mobile's cell phone subscribers to access their accounts as well as to acquire gaming, music, and news services through the portal. T-Mobile will run the t-zones portal on 43 Sun Fire V20z Opteron servers, four Sun Fire V240 UltraSparc-IIIi servers, two Sun Fire E2900 UltraSparc-IV midrange servers, and two Sun StorEdge 3510 FC disk arrays. Sun has been working with LogicaCMG to create the new portal, which T-Mobile says it is implementing because the current t-zones implementation is too expensive. Not surprisingly, GM also cited the high cost of other middleware as the reason for switching to JES running on Solaris.

Sun also said General Electric has chosen the Java System Identity Manager to provision user accounts on its applications and network for its 450,000 users across eleven business units. Although GE is buying one element of the JES software, it is not buying the whole enchilada, so these seats don't count in the JES installed base.

HP-UX-Oracle 10g Combo Tops Another TPC-H Test

Last week, we told you about how an Integrity server from Hewlett-Packard running HP-UX 11i and Oracle 10g had topped the TPC-H data warehousing benchmark running against a 3 TB data warehouse, and this week, the HP and Oracle combination has taken the top slot in the 1 TB version of the test.

The configuration of the server used in the 1 TB test was essentially the same as on the 3 TB test: a 64-way Integrity server using Intel's 1.6 GHz/9 MB Itanium 2 chips with 256 GB of main memory and over 40 TB of disk. This server ran HP-UX 11i v2 and the just-announced Oracle 10g R2, the latter which is not available on HP-UX until January 2006. On the 3 TB data warehouse test, this box was able to process 71,848 queries per hour (QPH) at a cost of just over $4 million, or $56 per QPH, while on the 1 TB test, it was able to handle 68,100 QPH at a cost of $59 per QPH.

The former leader on the 1 TB TPC-H test was a network of IBM's xSeries 346s, each with a single 3.6 GHz Xeon processor with 2 MB of cache and 4 GB of main memory and a total of 26.3 TB of data; this setup was able to process 53,451 QPH at a cost of $33 per QPH. The cluster ran Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 operating system and IBM's own DB2 8.2 database. The cluster used InfiniBand interconnections from Voltaire to lash the machines together at the hardware level and the Integrated Cluster Extension (ICE) features of DB2 to lash them together at the software level. This Linux cluster offered a little less performance than a Sun Microsystems Sun Fire 25000 server with 72 dual-core UltraSparc IV processors running at 1.2 GHz. That Sun box ran Oracle 10g as well, but on Sun's own Solaris 10 Unix. The largest pSeries AIX server that IBM has tested on the TPC-H 1 TB test is a four node network of four-processor p5 570 server running AIX 5L V5.3 and DB2 V8.2, which was able to handle 26,156 QPH at a cost of $53 per QPH; each node in this cluster had 32 GB of main memory and used the 1.9 GHz Power5 processors.

Why IBM hasn't tested its big SMP boxes on this 1 TB TPC-H test is a bit of a mystery, but it probably has more to do with price/performance and IBM's desire to prove the performance of the DB2 ICE clustering than with the performance of its SMP boxes. A big p5 SMP box with 64 Power5 cores can undoubtedly push a lot of transactions--probably around five times as much as the p5 570 cluster IBM tested if about 25 to 30 percent of the aggregate capacity in the cluster is lost to the clustering of the boxes. But, for whatever reason, all of IBM's recent pSeries TPC-H tests have been done on clustered Unix boxes, not SMP machines of roughly the equivalent power.

Gartner Predicts Most IT Shops in the U.S. Will Hire in the Next Year

The IT market may not be roaring, but it certainly has picked up a bit compared to a few years ago thanks in large part to the stabilization of the economies in North America, Europe, and Asia. According to a new survey of 160 of the 3,000 CIOs who participate in Gartner's Executive Programs, the CIOs expect that they plan to expand their IT workforces over the next 12 months--albeit somewhat modestly. The 160 companies involved in the survey spanned all industry sectors and had an IT employee base of 48,586, which means they averaged over 300 IT employees per shop. These are obviously larger organizations.

Gartner found in its survey, which began in March, that the average salary increase for 2005 will be 3.5 percent, which is three-tenths of a percent higher than the rate of salary increase in 2004. Gartner noted that companies are boosting the variable portion of their compensation, allocating more money to IT employees if certain business and IT targets are met. By sector, 63 percent of companies in the financial services sector surveyed planned to increase their IT headcount in the next year, and among financial services firms, 22.2 percent of them said that they would boost their IT employee base by more than 10 percent. This is the most active sector for hiring, followed by public and non-profit organizations, of which 62 percent of companies plan to have headcount increases among salaried employees. In combining both full-time and contractual workers, some 66 percent of those surveyed by Gartner said they plan to add people in the coming year.

Of course, with a large number of IT shops looking to add talent, there could be some scarcity of resource out there in IT land. "Although the improved job market presents more promising opportunities to IT job seekers, it may also force IT and human resources leaders to respond to increasing IT staff turnover in their companies," warned Lily Mok, senior consultant with Gartner's Executive Program. "Total IT voluntary turnover was higher in the 2005 survey than last year. This may imply that as the IT employment market improves further, IT professionals will consider leaving their current jobs for better opportunities." Gartner said that the positions that were likely to have shortages of qualified applications include project manager, Web application developer, security analyst, database administrator, and network engineer. Companies polled say that skills for various ERP suites--PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle suites were frequently mentioned by name, which stands to reason since Oracle and SAP rule large IT organizations--were in short supply, as were Java, .NET, and XML programming skills.

Vendors Hold Their Positions in Middleware, Says IDC

The battle for control of the commercial middleware software market, which the analysts at IDC call the application deployment software market, has resulted in détente among the dominant players in 2004. This market is comprised of application, Web, and integration servers as well as message- and transaction-oriented middleware and various gateway and connector software for hooking ERP and other software together, and even though the market grew by 6.4 percent in 2004 to nearly reach $7 billion in sales worldwide, IBM, BEA Systems, and Oracle had exactly the same market shares in 2004 as they had in 2003: 37 percent, 12 percent, and 7 percent, respectively.

IDC said that Big Blue had the lead in middleware software in 2004 for its own mainframe and OS/400 platforms as well as on Microsoft's Windows platform, while BEA had market share leadership on Unix and Linux platforms in 2004. While IDC is projecting a compound annual growth rate of 4.7 percent between 2005 and 2009 for this market, the company's analysts say that it is not necessarily the case that this application deployment middleware remains a separate feature of operating system platforms and ERP suites, and that the tight integration of middleware components within the operating systems and/or ERP suites could affect what sells and what does not.

Big Blue Acquires DWL as Perna Retires from Database Unit

IBM announced last week that it had acquired DWL, a relatively unknown and privately held provider of data hub and integration software specifically for integrating customer data into a single view even though the data resides in many different databases underneath many different applications. The DWL announcement came as IBM also said that Janet Perna, general manager of the Information Management division within its Software Group would retire on August 15 after 31 years at the company.

The DWL acquisition is interesting because it further fleshes out IBM's data management products--which include its DB2 databases and myriad add-ons for them, and because it will probably be the last acquisition that Perna does on behalf of Big Blue. Perna was spearheaded the acquisition of competitor Informix Software's database business and then, several years later, the acquisition of Ascential Software, the other half of Informix that had expertise in data transformation and integration. Perna also pushed IBM to acquire other companies, including Alphablox, Systems Research Development, Venetica, and was also one of the key factors in IBM's expansion into the market for databases for Windows and Unix platforms that ultimately allowed Big Blue to take on Oracle for the dominant position in that market.

Ambuj Goyal, who is general manager of workplace, portal and collaboration software at the company's Lotus unit, will take over the reins for Perna when she leaves. Goyal used to be an IBM researcher, and he had a hand in the coding of the DB2 Universal database edition of IBM's database for Windows, Unix, and now Linux platforms. Goyal's replacement at Lotus will be Mike Rhodin, who was previously vice president of development for the new Workplace portal and collaboration products. He has also been in charge of the development of Notes/Domino and other Lotus-related products; between 1999 and 2003, Rhodin was also in charge of IBM's various pervasive computing software efforts.

Trusted Computing Group Serves Up Secure Server Specification

The Trusted Computing Group standards body, which is made up of major platform and component suppliers IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Intel, and AMD, have announced the first specification for what will be called a trusted server.

This specification, which is available to all server makers free of charge, aims to make all server platforms more secure, and the consortium of sponsor vendors as well as dozens of contributors (including the likes of Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, NEC, and Hitachi) are working toward making PC, server, and other platforms more secure by specifying and then certifying what features are necessary for such a system to be deemed to be trustworthy.

The trusted server specification is following fast on the heels of the trusted client spec, which has been adopted by PC suppliers and which accounts for 15 million PC shipments to date. The group is also working on specs for networks, storage, mobile systems, and other peripherals and has the goal of creating specifications that will outline what components and features are necessary to build a trustworthy IT infrastructure. The server specification spans X86/X64, Itanium, Sparc, and MIPS platforms, with Power platforms being notably but surely temporarily absent. The heart of the proposed Trusted Server platform is something called the Trusted Platform Module (TPM, and I like that acronym more than I like transactions per minute), which is a microchip you plug into a server that securely stores digital certificates and passwords. By having the TPM unit, makers and users of software that is used to configure, change, and access servers can rest assured of who has the right to access what assets in the server farm. The first servers that adhere to the Trusted Server spec are expected to be delivered before the end of the year.

SSA Global Strikes Again, Announces Two Acquisitions, Including Epiphany CRM

Following a 13-month dormant period, the SSA Global acquisition machine has returned to its buying ways. Over a span of five days, the Chicago ERP software house announced the acquisitions of two Silicon Valley firms, including Epiphany, a well-respected developer of CRM software, and Boniva Software, a developer of human capital management applications. The Epiphany acquisition, the larger and more significant of the two acquisitions, should go far in bolstering SSA's strategy for CRM software, an area that SSA has been largely reliant on OEM agreements and partnerships. SSA says it has signed a definitive agreement with Epiphany, which is traded on the NASDAQ National Market, for $4.20 per share, or $329 million, a slight premium over the company's share price before the acquisition, and significantly more than the $79.3 million in revenues the company brought in during fiscal 2004. Details of the acquisition of Boniva Software, which is based in Santa Clara, California, were not announced. Both Epiphany and Boniva use Java to write their software, which SSA pointed out is the same language that it uses for its recently unveiled SSA Technology Architecture, a middleware layer that SSA wants its customers to use to integrate applications.