Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Eventually it all comes down to cash and selling power. VMware has been having trouble selling purely because it just doesn't have the kind of DNA and animals in their shops who are as capable of selling the products for recessionary times. Of course, you can sell when the times are good. You can also sell when people are in dire need to replace hardware and want to cut costs, but how can you sell if those IT managers and CxOs start asking you questions such as: o Why should I invest in this new technology? o Why should I not just consolidate my systems traditionally, bung all web servers on one big fat server and create application pools, bung all the DBs into one and create multiple instances? o Why must I train my staff when I barely have cash to train them on apps? You know how it goes, these questions have never stopped coming, and in harder times it gets harder, we all know it. All these messages are being sent out to all employees across the globe. But... You can still sell....

Market conditions are harsh and we are all low on cash, or atleast want to hold on to our wallets. VMware has been immune to in back in 2007, but this is too hard to withstand for any firm. RBC Capital this morning got religion on the slowdown in IT spending, cutting ratings on four stocks and slashing estimates and price targets on a host of others. The multiple moves boil down to this statement, which is repeated in most of the individual reports this morning: “We are taking a more conservative stance across our coverage universe to reflect a degrading environment for global IT spending.” The downgrades: * VMware (VMW): To Sector Perform from Outperform. Target to $29 from $50. * Xyratex (XRTX): To Sector Perform from Outperform. Target to $13 from $23. * Voltaire (VOLT): To Sector Perform from Outperform. Target to $5 from $8. * QLogic (QLGC): To Sector Perform from Outperform. Target to $17 from $18 Barrons

With Chan, VP Product Development, also quitting. Investors are extremely anxious what will happen to VMware's IP. after all the brains that made all those softwares is what you need in this extremely hostile market conditions. Analysts have said investors are concerned that more key employees will leave in the wake of the executive departures. "We're obviously sorry to see Paul go, but turnover is inevitable at any company. VMware is putting initiatives in place to retain key employees," Gallo said. On Sept. 9, the company announced the resignation of its chief scientist, Mendel Rosenblum. A co-founder of the company, he is also the husband of co-founder Diane Greene, who was replaced as chief executive in July. On Sept. 2 VMware disclosed that its top executive for product development, Executive Vice President for Research and Development Richard Sarwal, had left less than a year after being recruited away from Oracle Corp. Source

This is a shocking day, we thought someone would have pulled Lehman, Merrill Lynch like Bear Stearns, Freddie, Fannie. But it is shaking time! We have some tough challenges here. Get ready to stand up on your own! Expect real harsh conditions in 2009! A stunning makeover of the Wall Street landscape sent stocks falling precipitously Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials sliding 500 points in their worst point drop since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Investors reacted badly to a shakeup of the financial industry that took out two storied names: Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch Co. Stocks also posted big losses in markets across much of the globe as investors absorbed Lehman's bankruptcy filing and what was essentially a forced sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock. While those companies' situations had reached some resolution, the market remained anxious about American International Group Inc. , which is seeking emergency funding to shore...

SANTA CLARA, CA – September 15, 2008 - Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today unveiled its strategy for cloud computing and announced the new Citrix Cloud Center™ (C3) product family. The Citrix C3 solution integrates “cloud proven” virtualization and networking products that power many of today’s largest Internet and web service providers. This unique combination lets next-generation cloud providers take advantage of the most widely-adopted virtual infrastructure platform for hosted cloud services, as well as the most proven infrastructure to deliver those services reliably and securely to both cloud consumers and enterprise datacenters. The Citrix strategy will focus on equipping both new and existing cloud providers with the infrastructure needed to deliver successful clouds to their customers. “More than 215,000 enterprise customers rely on our Citrix Delivery Center products every day to deliver application...

I don't have a lot to say about Fastenal, but I'm psyched to see salesforce.com earn a spot on the S&P 500 roster. Bravo, Standard & Poor's. "You still have to go a long way to find the last Internet stock added to the index," I wrote last month, when new media splitter IAC (Nasdaq: IACID) was replaced by mutual fund giant Invesco (NYSE: IVZ). The index replaced a dot-com company with a financial-services player a month ago. It's fitting that it should reverse that order this time around. salesforce.com is a pretty amazing company, revolutionizing the enterprise software industry by providing cheaper Web-based solutions to standard customer relationship management applications. It's become the poster child for cloud computing. Instead of software that sits on individual PCs' hard drives, its growing number of server-stored programs makes computing truly portable. Tim Beyers recommended Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to Rule Breakers subscribers earlier ...

ParaScale Cloud Storage Software Instead of implementing a strategy where every node knows everything about every action, the ParaScale architecture leverages central metadata control servers that are out of the data path. This centralization provides many benefits and enables new levels of scalability as storage nodes can focus on serving read and write requests without needing confirmation from peers. Mixing and matching of heterogeneous commodity hardware gives users the ability to expand when necessary based on current economies of scale while providing perpetual data availability. ParaScale is full featured cloud storage software with key differences from existing clustered NAS solutions that have been designed typically for supercomputing applications. Key differentiating highlights include: * Asymmetric architecture with central metadata control servers that are out of the data path * Highly available control nodes with real-time metadata sharing and automatic fa...

Turner outlined a new Microsoft strategy of spreading an $8 billion R&D budget -- the largest in the industry, he claimed -- across areas that include entertainment software, Vista-enabled desktop computing, and both the "commercial" and consumer aspects of cloud computing, a phenomenon he sees as closely intertwined with virtualization. The COO told attendees that this strategy is in line with a new "vision statement" developed by Microsoft's current management team which complements a mission statement created three decades ago. In the earlier mission statement, he noted, Microsoft foresaw building software that would run on every desktop and server in the world. Conversely, under the new "vision statement," Microsoft wants to build software that will leverage the Internet to operate on a "world of devices," according to Turner. While acknowledging that the same can't yet be said for MSN LiveSearch and other elements of consumer-foc...

If anything, the trend will shower more revenue on the industry as this new method of accessing computing power enlarges the overall market. And if ICT analyst IDC is right, no breeze is about to get up and blow the cloud away - this will be the prevailing form of ICT service delivery for a couple of decades. "This is about the IT industry's new model for the next 20 years," says IDC's Vernon Turner, the firm's Boston-based head of enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecoms research. Many of the industry's hardware, software and services heavyweights are readying cloud computing offerings and, last month, one of them, Google, announced a deal with the University of Auckland to provide access to applications via the internet to 50,000 students, staff and alumni. Google is the youngest of the companies Turner names as cloud computing front-runners, but is generally said to be making the running. Whether that's actually so isn't yet known. IDC is...

With all the talk about VMware going after Redhat, sometime back VMware for BEA and what not, got me wondering about the products and acquisitions VMware has done in the past. If you listen to the valleywag, it seemed like Diane was getting rather restless and was talking to lots of folks, Intel, Cisco, Redhat (apparently from the latest rumors). Obviously a lot is also speculation. I still stand by my advice smetime back that VMware should have gone for BEA, anyways. The point of this whole analysis/open discussion is to understand what may be the real problem with VMware's growth in the near future. ESxi got free so the focus comes on the tools that they have. What if they don't sell as promised? Is there a plan to do something with the tools? What has been told to the shareholders/investors? My investor friends in the valley are telling me that this is soon going to be a huge problem within the board. Excerpt from the LinkedIn discussion: VMware has made several acquisition...

LightReading covering this: The move would make some tactical sense. It would boost Cisco's standing in storage networking and would also keep Foundry out of Brocade's hands. Brocade is hoping its $3 billion purchase of Foundry will make it an Ethernet/storage powerhouse to rival Cisco, or at least Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR - message board). (See Brocade Takes Aim at Cisco (& Juniper).) Moreover, Brocade would come at a discounted price. Shares are still down about 12 percent since the company announced the 40 percent premium it would pay for Foundry, and its stock is down 25 percent from a 52-week high of $9.61 set on Halloween. Then again, maybe it's just a sign that Cisco acquisition rumors are back in season. Talk of a deal with EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC - message board) was making the rounds just weeks ago. That talk might be fueled by a relative slump in orders that, come October, will have dogged Cisco for a full year. The company is still growing, but in si...

Because they are not there yet despite the fact that they may be in most of those data centers. Just look at the Wikipedia definition of cloud: Cloud computing means Internet ('Cloud') based development and use of computer technology ('Computing'). It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”[1], allowing users to access technology-enabled services "in the cloud"[2] without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them[3]. It is a general concept that incorporates software as a service, Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, where the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data is stored on the servers. And then go ahead and do a search for EMC, Cisco or VMware. They aren't...

Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising. The authors identify 10 companies + 2 “unconventional plays” with exposure to Cloud Computing growth. Source