White paper Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructures- a consistent approach to meeting new IT demands

White paper Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructures

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White paper Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructures- a consistent approach to meeting new IT demands

Contents

Introduction 2 IT challenges and technology trends 2 IT provider landscape 5 Fujitsu reevaluated 8 Conclusion 9


of 9 www.ts.fujitsu.com/dynamic

Introduction The constant demand for immediate access to data and resources, reliability and efficiency has created a new ideal of modern, powerful enterprise IT. Based on market research and technology observation, this paper explores which criteria modern platforms have to meet and how leading vendors and service providers respond in order to deliver these platforms. It is intended as a guideline for executives who need to make informed purchase decisions. IT challenges and technology trends For many years, companies have been trying to build IT infrastructures that would serve as a utility for all departments and business units. This trend has remained persistent as computers evolved from dumb boxes that carry out mundane tasks into today’s powerful instruments for database operation, financial planning and scientific simulation. To some extent, these technological advancements contributed to achieving the goal of establishing business-driven computing infrastructures. However, it is still a valid observation that rather than subjecting to a particular business or workflow logic, IT and its processes tend to shape operations and procedures on their own. Therefore, it is important to understand the current major challenges in IT as well as the status of IT evolution. IT goals and challenges The ongoing digital revolution and the arrival of service-oriented, Web 2.0 architectures during the early 2000s have only confirmed companies’ needs for an efficient and flexible IT. An online survey conducted among attendees of Fujitsu’s VISIT in-house exhibition in November 20101

management are pursuing three main goals with regard to their shows that decision makers and C-level

companies’ respective IT strategies:

1 FTS VISIT 2010 Online Survey: Final Report – Overall Market Intelligence, Munich 2010.

On a functional level, they want to ensure seamless

operation of their infrastructures in order to provide their customers, employees, and partners with maximum benefits.

On a strategic level, they are attempting to create competitive advantages by deploying technical innovations that in turn could influence company-wide processes and induce changes in business models and strategies for competition.

On an organizational level, they are aiming to optimize business processes so that their organization can remain profitable and to encourage economically viable transformation.

Abstract as they may seem, these goals correspond to the answers the same attendees gave when asked which of their current IT projects have the highest priority. Here, the results indicate that their focus is on a variety of initiatives and infrastructure enhancements, most of which are centered on “cloud computing” – the new IT services delivery model that gained popularity over the past five years. According to the interviewees, the top 5 issues are as follows:

Reshaping IT strategies; Server virtualization; Implementation of “private clouds”; Evaluation of “public clouds”; Implementation of desktop virtualization concepts and

technologies (Server-based Computing, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Thin and Zero Clients).

Rank

Storage Consolidation (Unified) Implementation of Hybrid Cloud Content Management

Infrastructure as a Service

Cloud Security Services

Storage Consolidation (Unified)

Storage consolidation (Unified)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Evaluation of Cloud computing Reshaping IT Strategy Evaluation of Cloud Computing

Server virtualization Server virtualization Implementation of Private Cloud

Implementation of Private Cloud Implementation of Private Cloud

Infrastructure as a Service Evaluation of Cloud Computing Server virtualization

Thin/ Zero Client Concepts Thin/Zero Client Concepts Thin Client Concepts (VDI, SBC)

Business Intelligence Reshaping IT strategy

Business Intelligence

Win 7 Rollout Implementation of Hybrid Cloud Cloud Security Services

Infrastructure as a Service

Server/ Storage modernization Business Intelligence

Ranking of future IT-priorities (Top 10)

Overall Customers Partners

Topics

Cloud Computing

Infrastructure Projects

Strategic initiatives



Combined, these responses reveal that IT managers and their superiors are collectively striving for a new level of agility, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, albeit for different reasons. C-level executives typically demand that IT should make the difference in enabling their organizations to meet customer needs faster than the competition – if possible, at a better cost-performance ratio. What they expect is a shorter time-to-market for their innovative offerings as well as support for the retention of existing and the acquisition of new customers. Thus a framework is established, while the actual task of “reshaping IT” is delegated to company experts. These IT decision makers, i.e. heads of data centers and cognate departments, generally follow the C-level agenda; their deeper technical insight enables them to devise practical strategies, reference projects, and the like. Consequently, Fujitsu asked interviewees from this group to name their top priorities for the near future. Not too surprisingly, server virtualization – which has been a dominant trend for at least five years – still takes the lead. However, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and cloud computing follow close behind, a result that clearly differs from those of the VISIT 2009 survey in which these new delivery models met with a lot of skepticism. That means, even though both technologies have not yet achieved mainstream status, their adoption is improving fast: by November 2010, 39 percent of the respondents had either defined a “cloud strategy”, evaluated/implemented solutions or were in the process of

doing so. Another 27 percent stated there would be future plans, while only one third (34 percent) said they had “no plans” at all. Moreover, projects from related areas such as Enterprise Networking and Communication, Outsourcing and IT Services, Security and Compliance or Content and Collaboration could also lead to a broader acceptance of cloud-related products, services and solutions. While the Fujitsu survey at hand gives good temporary, future-oriented insight, it does not explicitly identify underlying medium- and long-term trends, that is, the main challenges that drive technical as well as strategic changes in data centers and IT departments. For the purpose of this paper, other sources were therefore incorporated. Of particular importance were Gartner’s Data Center Issues and Priorities Survey 2010 and related analyses: Gartner asked respondents to identify the three biggest challenges that their organization will face respect to its data center hardware infrastructure through the end of 2011. According to the survey, the No. 1 response was data growth, followed by system performance and scalability, and network congestion and connectivity architecture.2

2 Cf. April Adams, Naveen Mishra: User Survey Analysis: Key Trends Shaping the Future of Data Center Infrastructure Through 2011, Gartner, October 2010, p.4 and 5.

13

20

25

25

29

30

33

36

37

47

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Cable management issues

Physical server sprawl

Underutilization of hardware and/or effective asset inventory

Virtual server sprawl

Integrating multiple vendors´technologies

Data center management issues

Cost of power, cooling and space

Network congestion and connectivity architecture

Systeme performance and scalabiliy

Data growth

Percentage of Respondents



Gartner also asked respondents what the three most important drivers of strategic change in their organization's data center would be through the end of 2011, business continuity and availability came in first at 50%. Cost containment initiatives was ranked the second-biggest driver of strategic change in the data center, followed by the need to maintain or improve user service levels and satisfaction.3

Precis As outlined above, the purpose of this section was to identify the main goals and challenges IT departments must face today. The combined research results from Fujitsu and Gartner can only lead to the conclusion that there currently are three key demands that prevail in enterprise environments and will likely carry over to midsize and small companies in the medium term: customers expect their future IT infrastructures to offer higher agility (more scalability and increased service levels), greater reliability (availability of data and

3 Cf. April Adams, Naveen Mishra: User Survey Analysis: Key Trends Shaping the Future of Data Center Infrastructure Through 2011, Gartner, October 2010, p. 8 and 9.

services and enhanced business continuity) and increased efficiency (in keeping with cost containment policies). But unlike in the old days, these demands cannot be fulfilled by simply rolling out new hardware and software or marking up service level agreements alone. Instead, what companies need – and expect their IT partners to offer them – is an integrated approach and matching portfolio of products, solutions and services. For many vendors this means they will have to adapt to new business models or substantially upgrade their traditional ones.

18

21

21

23

28

29

32

36

37

50

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

The need to support regulation, reporting and/or compliance

Application consolidation or rationalizaion

Sustainability or green IT

Infrastructure management concerns

Existing data center at or nearing capacity and/or utilization limits

Data center modernization

Infrastructure consolidation

Maintain or improve user service levels and satisfaction

Cost containment initiatives

Business continuity and availability

Percentage of Respondents



Technology trends While the challenges that lie ahead are still complex, IT decision makers have to realize that the industry is constantly moving forward and many solutions are already close at hand. Important technological advancements that were realized over the past 10 to 15 years include the change from proprietary hardware and software environments into standardized and integrated topologies, the introduction of virtualization first at the server and later at the office and data center level, and finally the delivery of management tools that enable IT process automation. Altogether this progress has made IT operations much smoother and enabled companies to install standard infrastructures for highly specific usage scenarios, for instance online shops, booking services, and day trading. The success of virtualization and automation in particular, along with the proliferation of broadband telecommunications, has paved the way for a completely new delivery model for IT services. Rather than to have them in-house, which often includes a need to manage increasingly complex networks, it is now possible to order a growing amount of capacities and functionalities “as a service”. Some vendors offer portfolios that range from providing extra physical servers, storage arrays and software instances for peak demands to entirely virtualized, managed office environments and beyond. The technical term for this new delivery model is cloud computing, and it heralds an age of IT industrialization – up to the point where vendors will finally be able to fulfill the age-old dream of utility computing.

But even though vendors and service providers are already well on the way, IT decision makers need to understand that this transformation will happen over several years in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary way. The reasons for this are at least twofold: on the one hand, cloud related technologies and offerings need to be developed further to provide “everything from the cloud”. On the other hand, security concerns and compliance with legal standards make it difficult for IT managers to switch their trusted IT environments for the new delivery model anytime soon. This means that IT departments need to retain their capability to oversee the full technological spectrum in their data centers, from traditional client/server infrastructures to cloud computing, yet not in a discrete but an integrated way in order to achieve greater efficiency. To many executives this may sound like business as usual; however, starting today they will have to face a rising number of make-or-buy decisions – and to determine more frequently when it’s time for a strategic move to the next level.

Tran

sfor

mat

ion

Time

Consolidation & Standardization

Industry Standards

Virtualization

Hypervisor

Automation

Tools for Orchestration

Industrialization

Managed Infrastructure

IT as a utility

Cloud Computing



IT provider landscape As pointed out above, the purpose of this paper is to assist business and IT executives in making well informed and taking strategically appropriate purchase decisions. To this end, this chapter shows the “vendor and provider landscape”, compares portfolios and strategies, and assesses their relative pros and cons. Let’s begin with a detailed look at market participants. Segmentation of IT providers Currently only a handful of companies are offering comprehensive, widely integrated product and/or service portfolios in combination with a dedicated strategic concept of what computing and IT infrastructures should look like in future. These players may be roughly grouped into three categories:

horizontally focused companies: Accenture, Dell, T-Systems

alliances/mergers and acquisitions: Oracle, VCE Coalition

vertically integrated companies Fujitsu, HP, IBM

Horizontally focused companies The companies in this category are typically perceived as powerful, even dominant players in a specific market segment. However, they usually do not cross boundaries, either because other segments are not in line with their business model or because their offerings outside their core segment have not yet matured enough. At present, the most important companies in this group are Accenture, T-Systems and Dell. In the case of Accenture and T-Systems, this categorization is easy to understand. Although they will occasionally act as ‘retailers’ for select hardware and software partners, both generate their main income from consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services for applications, business processes and infrastructures. Accenture, as the bigger of the two, runs a network of global Delivery Centers across the Americas, Europe and Asia and maintains offices and operations in over 50 countries and 200 cities worldwide. The company serves a broad set of industries from chemicals through healthcare and life sciences to retail and logistics and is considered a global leader especially in systems integration, business-process outsourcing and technology services. With regard to infrastructure, Accenture offers packages for data center technology and operations, service-oriented architectures, modernization, data and information management, and a variety of Software-as-a-Service and cloud-based solutions. However, these offerings are often segmented by application and/or IT topics, which may make them complicated to track down and understand; cloud computing and Infrastructure as a Service solutions have only recently been added to Accenture’s portfolio. T-Systems, a division of Deutsche Telekom, acts as a worldwide ICT (information and communication technologies) provider for the Group’s business customers, in particular large corporations and the public sector, as well as other external customers. Headquartered in Germany, T-Systems has a strong European focus and is widely recognized for its expertise in the automotive, transportation and banking sectors. The company’s infrastructure portfolio – dubbed Dynamic Services – combines flexible IT and business process

outsourcing with a variety of managed services and telecommunications solutions; their scope, however, is somewhat limited to select applications (ERP, email), tasks (archiving and document management) and platforms (mainframe, Microsoft). More advanced offerings, such as Managed Workplace Services (MWS), are just beginning to emerge. It became questionable to put Dell in this category. While the company is still best known among customers for the way it streamlined PC production and sales throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it has branched out extensively in recent years and added servers, storage and networking hardware as well as solution and service packages to its catalog. But although the company broadened its portfolio, its original competence in efficiency still remains very strong; moreover, Dell has not changed its motto “Simplify IT” to a more “dynamic” message since 2007. As a consequence, innovative elements such as the Virtual Integrated System (VIS) Management Suite for heterogeneous environments or various cloud-based services (email continuity, centralized asset management and software distribution) so far only are delivered to a comparatively small customer base. Some of these services are still quite new and have been added through the acquisition of Perot Systems (now Dell Services) in 2009 and Boomi in November 2010. Moreover, not all of them are currently available outside the US. Altogether, Dell’s integration among products, solutions and services doesn’t appear quite as strong as that of other vendors.

Alliances/mergers and acquisitions The paradigm shift associated with cloud computing has spawned a number of alliances as well as mergers in recent years. Among these, the two most important ones – Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems and the forming of the VCE Coalition – have received extensive media coverage. With the acceptance of Oracle’s bid in April 2009, Sun ended a long period of decline; at the same time, the deal gave Oracle its long-coveted chance to enter the hardware market. Following a 20-year business relationship, the merger was hailed as an “industry-defining event”; in an early statement, CEO Larry Ellison claimed that “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and



work together so customers do not have to do it themselves.” The company’s extended portfolio looks impressive indeed: it now offers everything from thin clients and workstations through x86 and SPARC servers to networking products and a so-called “integrated cloud machine”. Simultaneously, its list of business software and middleware was augmented with Java, Solaris and MySQL. But Oracle also inherited a few assets that it needs to put back on track, such as Sun’s storage unit. Further challenges could derive from the company’s acquisition policy: over the past decade, Oracle has bought more than 60 different companies – among them other big names such as PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and BEA – which sometimes resulted in prolonged integration periods and temporary impairment of services. The Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Coalition was formed in November 2009 and unites renowned companies from very different segments of the IT market – namely VMware, Cisco and EMC. However, in this case the disparities are considered a valuable asset, since the respective product portfolios complement one another: Cisco contributes its line of Unified Computing System (UCS) blade servers plus networking equipment, EMC adds what is needed for data storage and management, and VMware injects virtualization and operating system expertise. The companies decided to cooperate with the specific aim to create a new major player in the cloud computing market, whose entry barriers would otherwise have been too high for any of the three participants. Betting on a rapid proliferation of private clouds, VCE have bundled up infrastructure packages – called Vblock – that correspond to reference architectures for small, medium and large configurations. A virtual desktop infrastructure, integrated professional services and a virtual support center complete the offering. Since Vblock are still very new to the market, no significant sales figures exist as yet. The packages themselves may appear attractive especially to small and medium enterprises. But with implementations being scarce, a few insecurities remain: first off, Cisco’s blades still have to prove if they can meet the ambitious best-of-breed standard. Secondly, the alliance promised to find a balance between its best-of-breed approach to technology and end-to-end vendor accountability. Yet so far only few people have seen VCE support and services in action, so their capabilities and performance are currently hard to assess. Customers with a need for robust solutions and reliable SLAs may therefore need more assessment for support and services from VCE.

Vertically integrated companies This last category is comprised of the vendors that offer integrated product, solutions and services portfolios from a single source. However, what really sets them apart from other competitors is that they also provide a concept of how future data centers and IT infrastructures should function – and a strategy to get there. This description applies to HP, IBM and Fujitsu. HP has been the largest computer manufacturer worldwide for several years. But that’s not where its capabilities end: HP is also a market leader in peripherals, i.e. printers, scanners, and the likes. Its portfolio is completed by networking hardware, disk and tape storage, and a broad selection of software products. Services were first listed as a separate business segment after the merger with Compaq in 2002; since then, HP has become the second largest IT services provider globally – a success that is partly due to the 2008 acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), now known as HP Enterprise Services. In the early 2000s, HP created the concept of adaptive computing – an early precursor of current dynamic infrastructure and cloud computing solutions. Today, HP markets its related offerings under the label Converged Infrastructure, which encompasses four core elements: Operating Environment (management software), FlexFabric (switches, network adapters, routers etc.), Virtual Resource Pools (‘classic’ IT products), and Data Center Smart Grid (a combined environmental/ facilities/ systems management solution to reduce energy consumption). With this lineup in place, the company’s value proposition is to change IT departments’ standard spending behavior – 70 percent of investments go into operation and maintenance – and free up capacities for core business innovation. HP has earned lots of respect due to its strong focus on technology and down-to-earth handling of IT issues. However, combined with a dominant market position this approach may sometimes make it hard to think outside of the HP universe. IBM’s product catalog ranges from semiconductors to groupware and from mainframes to systems based on x86 processors, storage and network management solutions. Consequently, its collection of infrastructure offerings – dubbed Dynamic Infrastructure – addresses the following seven areas: asset management, service management, virtualization, energy efficiency, information infrastructure, business resiliency, and security. IBM’s true forte, however, lies in its consulting expertise. Since the foundation of its Global Services division in 1991, the company has continually expanded in the field. As a result the division is now the world’s largest business and technology services provider with offices in 170 countries. This huge success is based on a consistent methodology of linking IT and business processes with the aim of improving service, reducing costs and eliminating or mitigating risks. Still despite such achievements, IBM has incurred gaps in its portfolio. The best example might be the sale of its PC and notebook division to Chinese computer maker Lenovo. This “lack” is comparatively easy to deal with from a customer’s/user’s point of view; however, IBM’s approach to implementing its Dynamic Infrastructure model sometimes calls for a customer’s long term commitment, from the assessment to the transformation of IT infrastructures, hierarchies and even business models. IT decision makers need to evaluate if issues they are currently facing require either a transformation or an evolution.



Fujitsu, as the last company from this category, has much in common with both IBM and HP: a near-complete offering of hardware, software and services, consulting expertise, and a consistent, proven strategic approach to IT solutions. With operations in 70 countries and more than 170,000 employees, the company ranks as the third-largest IT services provider worldwide and holds the first position in Japan. Based on a long-standing tradition of collaborative efforts with its customers as well as partners in the IT industry, Fujitsu has developed its own distinct but flexible concept and delivered state-of-the-art IT offerings. Fujitsu assembled its global service portfolio into three segments: business services, application services and Dynamic Infrastructures. Dynamic Infrastructures provide the basis to run upper layer application and business services. Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructures consist of four “layers” that address different customer demands and levels of IT maturity: Infrastructure Products and Services (traditional hardware and software, product support), Infrastructure Solutions (customizable solution packages for standard business applications), Infrastructure as a Service (virtual server and storage capacities and office desktops that can be ordered on demand), and Managed Infrastructure (transfer of IT operations to shared delivery centers). In this context, the Dynamic Infrastructures concept serves as a framework for building and delivering standardized IT capacities and functionalities that at the same time fulfill individual needs. This holistic, customer-oriented approach ensures that Fujitsu focuses on enabling companies to solve their IT issues. Pros and cons From a customer’s standpoint, the above descriptions lead to the following implications: First, horizontally focused vendors typically offer focused product and/or service portfolios – as opposed to a full spectrum of solutions. This is acceptable if your own demands are well defined, e.g. in case you want to purchase affordable hardware or need assistance with specific IT projects. However, depending on your IT department’s resources these offerings may not suffice when it comes to building complete – or completely new – infrastructures. Second, Oracle/Sun and the VCE Coalition are equipped with comprehensive catalogs of proven hardware and software products and solutions. The problem is that these cooperations/mergers are still relatively fresh so that internal operations need time to become attuned to one another, which might result in issues regarding the integration of products as well as the consistency of service levels during the IT life cycle.

Third, for the time being, only vertically integrated companies are prepared to meet the whole range of customer requirements – from basic hardware purchases to designing and managing complex internal or external/cloud-based infrastructures. But the width and depth of their portfolios and expertise bears a risk for their customers, as these vendors may feel tempted to guide them to their own “sweet spot”, i.e. a desired sale. IT decision makers need to be aware of that and prepare to ask a simple question: “Is this truly what we want/need?”

Fujitsu reevaluated The market and technology analysis provided above shows that both offering the full technology spectrum in an integrated manner and customer orientation are considered cardinal virtues in the IT business. Yet many projects end in disappointing results; products, solutions and service contracts are often criticized for being oversized, inflexible or too costly. During the past 5 to 10 years, a growing number of hardware and software vendors as well as service providers have reacted to these complaints. Based on a set of key technologies – such as multi-core processors/servers, 64-bit operating systems, new networking standards, virtualization, and IT/business process automation – they are now delivering agile, “living” infrastructures and on-demand capacities instead of insular systems or segregated information silos. The core idea behind this new architecture model is to enable enterprises to flexibly allocate physical and virtual server and storage capacities and turn them into dynamic resource pools that grow (or shrink) according to business demands – if need be, on a daily basis. Fujitsu has been a pioneer of this new approach from the start, as can be concluded from many solutions in its Dynamic Infrastructures portfolio, which build on the company’s own product lines such as PRIMERGY servers and ETERNUS storage arrays. Examples include FlexFrame for SAP, a pre-configured and pre-tested combination of servers, storage, networking devices and software needed for a lean, ready-to-run SAP implementation; and Virtual Workplace, a workplace solution in which traditional desktop PCs are replaced with Thin or Zero Clients while all functionality resides in server-side virtual machines. Its cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings provide IT functionalities and resources via secure VPN connections and let companies scale their environments in accordance with expected workloads in a secure and organized manner; billing occurs on a pay-as-you-go basis. Finally, Managed Infrastructure enables enterprises to delegate their IT operations or vital parts thereof to Fujitsu while still retaining full control over their data and infrastructure. Along with the company’s solution- and customer-oriented approach, this comprehensive offering enables IT managers to make the choices that best suit their enterprise’s overall IT infrastructure and to select the most effective ways of leveraging alternative sourcing and delivery models. Thus, Fujitsu successfully assists IT managers in preparing for their next ambitious IT projects.

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Conclusion An old commonplace tells us that “change is the only constant in IT”. Trivial as it may seem, this assertion has rarely been more fitting than today, where agility, flexibility, on-demand access to data and resources and cost efficiency have emerged as key values of a powerful enterprise IT that culminate in the cloud computing paradigm. But cloud computing is more than just a technological concept: the idea of limitless IT resources constantly available everywhere has triggered changes in user behavior, expectations and legal standards as well as the IT landscape. New services are starting daily, and new competitors appear almost as fast – the situation is roughly comparable to the days of the first Internet boom. In fact, the pressure is so high that even prominent hardware and software vendors and service providers are changing their hitherto successful business models and “going vertical”, as the examples of Oracle and the VCE Coalition attest. Against this backdrop, Fujitsu stands out as a reliable, experienced infrastructure provider with a coherent strategy and proven track record – a partner you wish for in so much upheaval.

Contact FUJITSU TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Address: Mies-van-der-Rohe-Straße 8, 80807 Munich, Germany E-mail:[email protected] Website: www.ts.fujitsu.com/dynamic

© Copyright 2011 FUJITSU Technology Solutions, the Fujitsu logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in Japan and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Technical data subject to modification and delivery subject to availability. Any liability that the data and illustrations are complete, actual or correct is excluded. Designations may be trademarks and/or copyrights of the respective manufacturer, the use of which by third parties for their own purposes may infringe the rights of such owner.

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White paper Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructures- a consistent approach to meeting new IT demands

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