SAP Banks On In-Memory Computing

The strong results from technology bellwethers Oracle and IBM set the tone for high expectations. Despite double-digit revenue growth and profit growth, SAP (NYSE:SAP) missed analyst estimates. However, it says it is undeterred from achieving its goal of $20 billion annual revenue by 2015. Let’s take a closer look.

>>>

Commerce A New Strategic Direction For IBM

IBM (NYSE:IBM) this week reported strong results that beat estimates driven by its server business. As a result, it raised its full-year outlook. IBM is also benefiting from its focus on analytics, cloud computing and the Smarter Planet initiative. It announced another new initiative, Smarter Commerce, to address rising customer demand in the increasingly digital commercial world.

>>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: As you said, VMware is a company that is growing through acquisitions, and this is a very fast clip of acquisitions. You are inheriting all sorts of diverse systems. Do you see any patterns among the companies that you bring in? And are there any standard processes or methodologies for integration?

Mark Egan: We have an approach where, with few exceptions, we will integrate the acquired company into our business and our business model. In a software company, the difficult thing is all around licensing. There are three broad approaches to licensing. The first I will call the historical perpetual license; you buy it and so forth.  The second is usage; for a period of time, for a year a month or whatever. It is term based. The third is also usage, but you pay for what you use, and there are a bunch of variables. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What kinds of organizational changes are taking place as a consequence of all these different things happening? You said your infrastructure IT organization employs the equivalent of 8.5 people. Is that the total IT organization, or has the IT organization as such decreased in size? How have you reorganized or the organization reshuffled itself based on your adoption of cloud computing? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Well, there was one [analytics company] that I liked a lot but they seem to have gone out of business; it was a company called Lucidera. Did you see that?

Mark Egan: I am not familiar with them. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: [Usage-based licensing] is also democratizing the availability of technology to a much a broader range of both companies and consumers, right? People can access technology much more affordably and easily today than even just five years ago.

Mark Egan: Absolutely! And I think the challenge for us as IT professionals is, How do we take that consumer experience that everybody is accustomed to and offer it in an enterprise? Because if you look at some of these old era interfaces, these applications, you know, people are not just going to use them. We had an example here at VMware where we had the choice to upgrade our existing CRM system or go off and look for an alternative. Even though the existing application had more functionality, its user interface was horrible. What we opted to do was move to something new with a much better user interface because I wanted to get the adoption [among employees]. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: Let’s move to the device and mobility part of the operation.

Mark Egan: Sure. On the device side, I would like to say I could set standards. But I think what we, as IT professionals, have to accept is that the consumer world is going to drive this. So, of course we have the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices as the main categories, if you will. About 25% of our employees are on View, which is our virtual desktop, and we have the rest on laptops. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mark Egan, CIO Of VMware (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: And the private cloud, which is your own data center, is it not a third-party data center, right?

Mark Egan: We actually have two data centers. We have a third-party data center, and we also have our own data center up in Washington. So, we have a combination of those two. I support R&D, the engineering, and the corporate side. The corporate data center is run by a third third party that is a partner of ours, and then our own data center in Washington is something we manage ourselves. >>>