Joe Kozak - ANTs Software Blog

The Media is following all our steps

I am very happy to report the momentum that we have achieved with the industry media.

It is really impressive how they are following us on every announcement and public statement. 

Here is a follow up article from eWeek about our Friday June 4 press release.

eWeek Article

I know that new articles are still being written which even the reporter from eWeek finds amazing.

Thanks for your support,

Joe Kozak.

PS: I will be providing a complete list of articles that have been put together since the announcement.

 

The IBM Marketing Engine Starting Global Rollout

I am glad to report that the IBM Marketing organization is just starting to create massive communication 

vehicles to attract and educate customers on the new IBM DB2 SQL Skin feature (based on ANTs' 

ACS patent-pending technology). The following video is just a small example of the kind of initiatives

that are just starting to be deployed.

For our techie blog readers, the video is a short technical tutorial of how to utilize this new product.

Enjoy!

Joe Kozak.

Find more videos like this on ChannelDB2

The Next New Thing: Re-Envisioned

Investments into business optimization products like ACS are on the rise. The next big systems replacement spending initiative does not make the sense that it once did for many organizations.

In an interview with Forbes Magazine published last week IBM SVP and Group Executive at IBM Software, Steve Mills said:

“The thrust of this business is the instrumentation, monitoring and analysis of large-scale processes and events. Businesses are trying to optimize processes, and they want better decision making. Data has been too rear-ward looking.

Businesses are tired of buying the next new thing, and instead want their existing infrastructure to run better, cheaper and more accurately.”

Mills is giving voice to a growing number of CIO’s and IT professionals who understand that today’s business systems are capable of being configured to run in a much better manner, but often are not --due to various system constraints, compatibility issues, lack of long-term systems planning and the promise of the next expensive project offering.

 Essentially, today’s generation of systems is capable of serving the needs of tomorrow if only more attention was paid to systems optimization and better integration. Mills’ sentiments remind me of what I found to be an insightful quote about Washington spending. While speaking about military spending, Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed a new spending approach.

 “We will pursue greater quantities of systems that represent the 75 percent solution instead of smaller quantities of 99 percent exquisite systems,” he explained. 

 Great strides were made in the database systems market in the past decade – the capability and functionality is there. The demand of today’s market is not for new costly approaches and databases, it is for the products that will enable what is already out there to operate to its full potential and value proposition.

 The value of process integration takes on a new meaning in today’s market and cannot be over looked.

 Regards,

Joe Kozak 

Stack Wars

“Call it Stack Wars. While competitors play tag-team, IBM on Monday reminded the market that it's been delivering tightly bundled systems on its own for years and introduced its latest weapon in the race toward fully integrated business engines—Power7-based servers.”

            Paul McDougall of Information Week in his recent article writes about a topic I touched on a while back. In my original post on the topic I defined what a stack is,

Technology stacks, an integrated package of software, systems and support hardware, continues to be the end goal for the big players in database market. Oracle and other major industry players including IBM and Microsoft are poised to develop and aggressively promote competitive technology stacks in the database solution sector. All of these companies want to offer complete database solutions.

 

            As I also previously mentioned, IBM is not the only one getting involved with stack development. HP and Microsoft’s partnership for systems development is a chief example of the accelerating emphasis in the space. HP’s CEO Mark Hurd noted that, “It’s about optimizing machine capability with software capability.”  I have been writing on this topic for some time now. It seems as if others are, too, beginning to see the industry trend emerging and are warming to the way a consolidated and stack based industry would look.

            The Power7 platform is the latest evidence that aggressive software and hardware pairings from vendors are the “it” product of the new decade. ANTs Software and our product can help vendors facilitate the transition to the stack all while enabling consumers to transition to the types of simplified environments that they seek. 

Joe Kozak.

Information Management Sector Shows Positive Results

Earnings season is, again, driving the financial news cycle. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft have reported or will shortly report their numbers, and as each quarter passes, a clearer picture is developing in the IT services and database industry.

First, let’s look at IBM’s broad year over year numbers, revenues of $27.2 billion, up 1 percent, net income of $4.8 billion, up 9 percent. IBM also raised full year 2010 EPS guidance above $11. Oracle’s most recent quarterly revenue numbers were up 4 percent to $5.9 billion, while net income grew 12 percent to $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, analysts at Goldman Sachs raised Microsoft’s earnings estimate through 2012, showing considerable long term confidence in the industry on The Street

I believe these developments continue to reinforce what ANTs has seen as the trend for the past six months: IT spending has stabilized and is now on the rebound.

Looking closer, several numbers stand out and have a correlation to the market segment that ANTs operates in. The Information Management division of IBM, including DB2, ECM, BI/Analytics showed 7 percent year over year growth with $6.1 billion in quarterly revenue, the best quarter in more than two years.

Oracle’s new software license revenues were up 2 percent to $1.7 billion, while software license updates and product support revenues were up 14 percent to $3.2 billion.

It is certain that continues positive growth in the sector is a leading indicator for ANTs Software. With the rapid growth in networked systems and the recent fast paced development in the database systems market, organizations are spending to keep up and to meet their critical needs. 

I may not know what the market and spending environment hold for some sectors of the economy, but at this point there are indicators that the enterprise technology market is well on its way back to solid and consistent growth. With giants like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft reporting positive earnings and news influencing the database market, I am optimistic about 2010.

The pillars of recovery in our sector are now cemented into place, and our team at ANTs is ready and encouraged.

Joe Kozak.

What Does the Cloud Mean to ANTs?

Last week I shared news of the Microsoft-HP cloud computing development pact. This week I would like to take a few minutes to explain what this development and the larger cloud computing movement means to ANTs and where our services fit into the mix.

It is important to understand the challenges associated with enterprise usage of cloud computing offerings. Last week Bernard Golden shared his thoughts in a thoughtful piece, The Case Against Cloud Computing, Part One. Golden says that cloud computing is not ready for prime time and enterprise use quite yet. He sites various conversations with business leaders and IT leaders that are disillusioned about the prospect of a migration to the cloud.

Why? Migration of enterprise applications and databases.

As is the case with the traditional RDBMS capability and portability are in seriously short supply in cloud computing solutions. While the concept of cloud computing seems intriguing and presents organizational advantages on paper, many enterprise customers soon become dissuaded from any cloud solutions when the realities of application and data migration are brought into full view.

I agree with Golden on this point. Cloud computing solutions like Amazon Web Service, Salesforce.com and Google App Engine are, indeed, in their infancy as commercially viable products.

However, I believe that migration is not as high of a hurdle as some have suggested. Our ACS product makes possible and affordable migrations that were also thought to be far too complex and far too costly only a few years ago. Data’s value today is often only as great as its portability and compatibility. Understanding this reality of today’s networked world, ANTs is committed to developing solutions for the pressing enterprise IT needs of today’s organization, cloud computing included. 

In summary, cloud computing is an important trend that we will keep monitoring and implement the right strategy to help customers move their enterprise applications and databases to the cloud.

 

Joe Kozak.

European Union delaying the Sun (MySQL) acquisition by Oracle

Oracle Corp’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. is not going as smoothly as hoped and the European Union’s approval of the proposed merger seems anything but certain. One of the main issues for EU regulators continues to be the competitive implications of Oracle owning both the Oracle and the MySQL database technologies.

It is becoming more apparent that EU regulators may not grant approval of the deal unless Oracle Corp. agrees to divest its interest in MySQL technology. With Sun losing nearly $100 million a month, plans were announced to layoff about 3,000 workers at Sun. Oracle sited delays and uncertainty in the merger process as its reason for the layoffs and global restructuring.

            While many understood that the proposed deal has far-reaching implications in the database market, it was not until recently that strong opposition over the MySQL issue took shape. Detractors of Oracle’s plan point out that the company may be acquiring the technology in hopes of slowly cutting off support for the product in a move to force increased Oracle database adoption. Oracle traditionally underlies mission-critical functions for large organizations while MySQL underlies many of the services from Web-based offerings such as Facebook and Twitter. Decreased development and innovation in the MySQL realm has the potential to discourage the growth potential of Web-centric database applications. 

Monty Widenius, the creator of MySQL technology recently weighed in against the acquisition. Widenius said that he believes that EU regulators are “absolutely right to be concerned.” He went on to suggest that Oracle “be constructive and commit to sell MySQL to a suitable third party.”

Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison has publicly spoken out against the idea of selling MySQL to another party and has continued to voice his commitment to the MySQL line of technology. To make matters even more complicated proponents of the merger approval point out that the two technologies do not directly compete and are used in two disparate sectors of the database market, making monopoly fears unjustified.

            It remains unclear what path the database market would take if the Oracle and the MySQL database were to share the same home, but it is clear that the market is now at a pivotal point and is poised to move rapidly in a new direction. 

 Joe Kozak.

The Influence of MySQL and SQL Server

The database industry is currently focused on the potential acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle and how the role of MySQL is becoming clearer as a competitor of Microsoft SQL Server. As the European Union continues to review the potential $7.4 billion merger that was announced in April, many people have been debating what affect this will have on the database industry as a whole.

First, I think that it is very important for everyone to understand the similarities and differences between MySQL and SQL Server. These systems are two of the most popular back-end data stores that many Web developers are working with today. The systems are fundamentally similar in that they both are data and storage retrieval systems but there are also key differentiators between the two.

MySQL has the potential to help Oracle compete in markets like Web applications, small- to medium-sized businesses and emerging markets, where Oracle’s existing database doesn’t compete but Microsoft’s SQL Server does. In a recent survey by Evans Data, over 50% of developers in emerging markets use Microsoft’s SQL server, compared to 46% using MySQL. Therefore, owning MySQL would allow Oracle to better compete with Microsoft’s SQL.

We believe both SQL Server and MySQL have something to offer to an important segment of the overall database market and we believe sooner or later these two databases will play a more significant role for all types of customers. As a database agnostic company, we are monitoring the progress of these two databases.

Joe Kozak.

Very Interesting Article on Financial Times...

Here is a very interesting article on Financial Times about IT Consolidation. The article is also available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24808782-462b-11de-803f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Citigroup looks to slash tech costs

By Francesco Guerrera in New York

Published: May 21 2009 22:53 | Last updated: May 21 2009 23:09

Citigroup is ramping up efforts to slash its huge technology costs, with the bank’s management believing it can save significantly more than $1bn in 2009 by integrating hundreds of systems that have been separate for years.

The company declined to comment, but people close to the situation said Citi’s internal projections targeted savings that were a multiple of the $1bn the bank had originally identified for technology in 2009.

The move underlines a shift in strategy being championed by Vikram Pandit, chief executive, to rebuild a company that has suffered billions of dollars in losses and has been repeatedly bailed out by the US government.

Mr Pandit is striving to shrink the troubled bank’s balance sheet and create a more cohesive company out of businesses that have never been fully integrated since the 1998 merger between John Reed’s Citicorp and Sandy Weill’s Travelers.

Citi had originally estimated it could save $3bn over three years by rationalising its operations and technology functions, which employ 140,000 people, including 25,000 software developers – more than many information technology companies.

But progress in reducing overlaps and linking IT infrastructure across businesses that had run individual systems prompted Citi executives to increase its target.

People close to the company say the deal-making tactics employed by Mr Weill, who ran Citi until 2003, favoured keeping IT systems separate as it made it easier to sell businesses.

But Mr Pandit’s lieutenants argue that integrating the disjointed IT infrastructure would cut waste across the group’s sprawling portfolio of businesses.

Don Callahan, a former IBM executive who is Citi’s chief administrative officer, told investors last year: “If you think about Citi when Sandy was leading it, each of these businesses had very strong returns, and the economics to the shareholder was quite nice. But there was something that was being left on the table. [What] was clear to us was that it wasn’t integrated.”

Citi does not disclose its exact operations and technology costs but regulatory filings show that IT and communication expenses were $4.9bn in 2008. Operations costs are believed to amount to several billions more.

People close to Citi said increased savings in IT would not have a major impact on  its target of reducing overall expenses to $50bn-$52bn by the end of 2009 from $71bn last year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009