Microsoft and Dell are the latest vendors to unveil technologies to help enterprises use computing resources more flexibly and efficiently. IBM has grabbed most of the limelight in this emerging market with its On Demand initiative, although Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun offer variations on the theme.
Now, Microsoft wants to muscle in with its Dynamic Systems Initiative while Dell has struck a deal with VMWare, a virtualisation specialist recently acquired by storage giant EMC, to allow Dell customers to run more applications on a single server.
DSI sounds arcane but it is one of Microsoft's big bets for the future. It aims to make it easier for large customers to build and operate IT systems by incorporating "manageability" features into Microsoft's products.
DSI was announced with some fanfare a year ago, but little has been heard since then. To stress its importance, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive, planned to give more details on the DSI vision at a Microsoft event in Las Vegas earlier this month.
However, Microsoft's anti-trust problems obliged Mr Ballmer to fly to Brussels instead. The job of explaining DSI fell to Bob Muglia, senior vice-president of Microsoft's Windows Server division, who emphasised how DSI would help make applications more manageable.
"This is an issue where the industry has over-promised and under-delivered, while our enterprise customers continue to feel the pain of managing their systems," he said.
With DSI, Microsoft aims to automate many of the routine tasks associated with updating systems and deploying applications.
DSI is still a work in progress and products designed to this new philosophy will mostly not appear until next year.
One of the most keenly awaited is Virtual Server 2005, currently in beta testing, which will allow Windows Server users to run applications designed for older operating systems such as Unix, IBM's OS/2 or Microsoft's own Windows NT - Microsoft plans to withdraw support for NT later this year.
Server virtualisation is hardly new - IBM mainframes offered it 20 years ago - but VMWare was the first to develop virtualisation software for Intel-based servers and it has found a ready market as more businesses wake up to the problems caused by server proliferation.
"We are seeing a lot more clients interested in doing VMWare implementations," says Alastair McAulay, senior consultant at PA Consulting Group.
Analysts say VMWare's recent deal with Dell will bring virtualisation to a much wider market, as prices for a Dell system with VMWare software start at $30,000.
Sharing the Soap
AT&T has made a bold move into web services with AT&T WebService Connect, which aims to take the hard work out of using web services for business-to-business applications. AT&T WebService Connect is essentially an integration hub that enables businesses to share services and information with partners and customers.
It can be accessed by applications that support simple object access protocol (Soap) - a core web services standard - or older standards like file transfer Protocol (FTP) and electronic data interchange-internet integration (EDIINT).
While many businesses use web services for internal integration projects, they have not been widely adopted for B2B applications. One reason is the hassle of handling the myriad communications protocols, data formats and security standards used by the various parties. AT&T WebService Connect aims to take care of these translation problems in return for a monthly fee.
This AT&T offering is fruit of a reseller deal the carrier has struck with Grand Central Communications, a San Francisco-based web services integration firm, which has been offering a similar service since 2001.
Paradise postponed
Two thirds of chief information officers in North America expect the business climate to improve in 2004, according to a new CIO poll that Forrester Research intends to repeat each quarter.
But vendors who expect this growing optimism to translate into increased IT spending are likely to be disappointed. More than half of the CIOs polled expect spending to stay at budgeted levels while 19 per cent expect to spend less than currently budgeted.
Storage growth
Worldwide storage software revenues grew almost 18 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2003 to reach $1.78bn, according to IDC. For 2003 as a whole, revenues rose 8 per cent. IDC says the accelerating growth shows that data centres are investing heavily in software to manage increasingly complex networked storage environments.
After buying Legato, EMC's lead in this market appears unassailable, as its share is almost 32 per cent, well ahead of Veritas with 22 per cent. Computer Associates moved up to third position, edging out IBM and HP.
