Firms Cry Out for 'Optimization'

NEW YORK -- Don't buy that new SAN or server farm: You may have all the storage and computing capacity you need. It's just a matter of finding it and bringing it where it's needed.

The rallying cry "optimization" was taken up over and over again by software firms new and old during presentations at a conference sponsored by RBC Capital Markets here today.

"Most IT departments today are like factories were forty or fifty years ago. There's no match of supply with demand," says Roger Boyce, CEO of Evident Software Inc., whose programs track IT resource usage and consumption. In many places, IT resources are substantially underused, he notes.

Though SANs have now penetrated most large enterprises (at least 60 percent of big companies have them, according to RBC) and servers are abounding, today's presenters say companies aren't getting the good of all that capacity. Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing, a grid software firm, says it's not uncommon to see servers at 10 to 15 percent utilization.

The reason is clear: Until recently, many companies simply added servers and storage as needed to accommodate the needs of many individual departments and applications, resulting in islands of SANs, servers, and other gear. With IT budgets still constrained, CIOs are now trying to "consolidate and rationalize" what they've got, using new software tools.These tools are aimed at so-called fabric computing, wherein underlying physical storage devices and computers are made into abstract entities via software, then grouped together into a virtual mass of available resources. The IT department uses this virtual pool to assign storage and computing space to applications and users as it's needed -- the old "utility computing" approach.

Firms presenting here today have different takes on the problem of optimization. Below is a sampling:

One thing: Zhou says the term "grid computing," along with "on demand," "utility," and "adaptive" computing, as well as RBC's "fabric computing" -- all these terms basically mean the same thing. To wit: "The delivery of IT resources as services."

Whatever you call it, Tom Curlin, RBC managing director and lead equity analyst of the firm's Fabric Computing Research group, says it's one of the hottest growth areas in storage and IT right now. "The storage network was the biggest opportunity in the late nineties.... Now, servers, storage, systems, and management software must be integrated and managed to meet service levels," he said in a lunchtime speech.

He characterizes the companies above, along with a handful of others, including Avocent Corp., Collation Inc., Opnet Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: OPNT), and Softek Storage Solutions Inc., to name just a few, as the new breed of "IT lifecycle management" providers. (BTW, that's a subset of fabric computing!) Notably, though, he says each company involved in the niche is addressing just a small portion of the overall problem: Evident is tackling monitoring, for instance, while PlateSpin is strong in provisioning.Expect more buzzwords, hype, and hyperbole, along with numerous product announcements as 2005 rolls on. There may even be a spate of mergers and acquisitions, as larger firms like EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) look to tout optimization with fabric computing.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch