Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson EMR and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity, and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today announced that it will combine the capabilities of its Trellis(TM) platform with IBM IT service management (ITSM) software to significantly optimize the management of data center resources. This integrated data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution will deliver increased energy and operational efficiency and improved IT service delivery.

DCIM is an essential component for businesses that have high quality of service demands for information technologies and need to scale quickly. An estimated $450 million market today, DCIM is expected to grow to $1.7 billion by 2016, according to industry analyst firm Gartner.*

Emerson customer Brocade is one of many IT-intensive businesses struggling to solve growth-related infrastructure challenges. The company recognizes the value of combining DCIM and ITSM capabilities in providing information and metrics to support the strategic resource allocation and investment required to meet future needs. “‘Do more with less’ has become standard operating policy in IT and data center environments. At the same time, the mix of physical and virtual assets is growing exponentially,” said Valery Sokolov, senior manager, Engineering Lab Services, Brocade. “Because of these trends, there is a real business case for tools and applications that will provide the visibility and metrics required to manage IT resources and facilities provisioning efficiently and productively. This is where DCIM and ITSM applications become critical to provide the data required to achieve that goal, as well as to plan and model growth.”

Integrating IBM software with Emerson’s Trellis platform will provide real-time visibility from IT applications, through infrastructure components, and all the way to the power grid, enabling holistic management of the data center ecosystem. This information can be used to improve energy efficiency and space and capacity utilization, enable rapid problem management and resource provisioning, and improve operational efficiency, all of which reduce the risk of downtime and enhance the delivery of IT services.

Industry analyst firm IDC, which has been studying the DCIM market since its inception, believes this integration can deliver customer benefits. “The combination of Emerson’s real-time infrastructure optimization capabilities in the Trellis platform and IBM’s suite of enterprise system management capabilities has the potential to help IT and facilities teams deploy a comprehensive data center infrastructure management solution to increase energy and operational efficiency,” said Jennifer Koppy, research manager, IDC.

The combined capabilities of Emerson’s Trellis platform and IBM software will also enable data center managers to understand the true costs of running an application with metrics like watts per workload, calculate its resource demands in real-time, and dynamically provision physical and logical resources to support the application efficiently and cost-effectively.

“Managing the physical constraints of available space and power in the data center is becoming a greater challenge for organizations. This, combined with the increasing demand on the enterprise for reliable and agile IT services, makes finding a cost-effective solution critical for our customers,” said Jamie Thomas, vice president, Tivoli strategy and development, IBM. “The combination of Emerson Network Power’s market-leading DCIM solution – the Trellis platform – along with our solutions for IT service management and systems management, is an ideal way to meet these customer needs with innovative capabilities.”

Steve Hassell, president of Emerson Network Power’s Avocent business, added: “Aligning our DCIM capabilities with IBM’s software capabilities enables data center managers and IT and facilities leaders to see, decide, and act across all resources. This collaboration with IBM is a strong validation of our DCIM strategy and the ability of the Trellis platform to improve how data centers are currently managed and operated. Our collaboration will span engineering, development, and go-to-market strategies, and we are making significant investments to realize the full potential of our work together.”

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/emerson-and-ibm-combine-software-capabilities-to-optimize-data-center-efficiency-and-service-management-2013-02-07

International Business Machines Corp.’s IBM +0.42% vaunted software portfolio includes applications to help companies crunch huge amounts of data and manage their online storefronts. It also includes programs like Lotus Notes.

“I go to a party, and I almost immediately get insulted,” says Eugen Tarnow, a director of the consultancy Avalon Business Systems, which sells the aging email software to businesses. “They say, ‘Lotus Notes, that’s still around?’ It’s no fun.”

Remember Lotus? When IBM paid $3.5 billion for the email pioneer in 1995, the deal was seen as a game-changer that plunged the hardware company more deeply into the higher-margin software market.

Then-IBM Chairman Louis Gerstner, left, with Lotus CEO Jim Manziwhen they officially announced IBM’s purchase of Lotus in June 1995.

Now, it’s a symbol of the challenges facing new Chief Executive Virginia “Ginni” Rometty as she tries to spur growth in a software division that accounted for nearly a quarter of IBM’s revenue and more than 43% of its pretax profit in 2011.

IBM has spent billions of dollars on dozens of software acquisitions in recent years, which have helped the company deliver a flow of steady earnings. Still, much of its software revenue flows from technologies like Lotus that it acquired or developed at least a decade ago. The company needs to modernize its portfolio for a new technology era by selling more software aimed at fast growing areas like social media, cloud computing and mobile.

Investors will be watching IBM’s software results closely when the company reports earnings Tuesday.

IBM software revenue grew 1.4% in the first nine months of the year compared with a year earlier.

The company’s chief rivals reported better results. In the fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft Corp.’s MSFT 0.00% software sales grew 5%, and Oracle’ ORCL +1.42% Corp.’s software sales grew 9% in the fiscal year that ended in May.

IBM’S third-quarter software revenue shrank 1% to $5.8 billion. The company says it didn’t close a handful of deals it expected to finalize in September. Analysts are expecting the company to report about $29 billion in overall revenue for the fourth quarter, down about 1% from a year earlier.

For IBM, Lotus is too lucrative to ignore but very hard to grow. While the company doesn’t break out how much revenue the Lotus franchise generates, tech-research firm IDC estimates the software accounted for about $1.2 billion of revenue in 2011, the most recently available number.

Meanwhile, that franchise is being eroded. The Federal Aviation Administration, which began using Lotus Notes as its main email program in 2001, announced in June a $91 million contract to switch its 60,000 FAA employees and contractors to a new Microsoft email and communications system that it says would allow it to work more efficiently.

Over the past few years, similar moves have been made by customers including J.P. Morgan Chase and the city and county of San Francisco, which dropped Lotus in favor of cheaper programs from Microsoft and Google Inc. GOOG -0.96%

In the first nine months of 2012, Lotus’s sales fell 6.4%, according to IBM filings. During the three previous years, Lotus was the weakest performer in IBM’s software portfolio, which includes a range of software for forming the technology backbone of a business, such as database programs and software that runs computer servers and networks.

IBM’s second slowest growing software business is based on Rational Software Corp., a software-tools company it bought in 2003 for $2.1 billion.

In the past, IBM has had some success in reviving these businesses by acquiring newer technologies and incorporating them into the older brands. Performance in its Websphere and DB2 database brands has been aided recently by the acquisition of companies such as Netezza, which speeds up data crunching; Coremetrics, which lets companies mine social media for customer feedback; and Unica Corp., which helps manage digital-marketing campaigns.

IBM is trying to do the same thing with Lotus by folding it in with social-media tools that address more current needs. Those tools, grouped under its Connections software, let companies create corporate versions of Facebook Inc., FB -1.59% with user profiles, blogs and streams of news updates that co-workers can follow and learn from.

The challenge for IBM is that revenue from the business is puny compared with the revenue from Lotus. In the first half of 2012, IBM made $55 million selling social-business software, giving the company more than 11% of the market, according to IDC.

The market is also competitive, with rivals including startups Jive Software JIVE -3.27% and Lithium Technologies Inc., as well as Yammer, which Microsoft bought last June for $1.2 billion in cash.

Over the next few years, though, IBM hopes that such software will become a billion-dollar business. IDC believes the market value will rise to $4.5 billion in 2016 from 2011’s $767 million.

For now, the technology giant continues to milk its Lotus client base to win customers for its social-media software. For instance, the annual IBM Lotus conference to be held later this month was renamed Connect2013.

IBM also continues to update and sell the aging program. IBM General Manager Alistair Rennie says the company is absolutely committed to Lotus Notes and related programs and is preparing to release new versions of them in this year’s first quarter.

The challenge, though, is finding new customers beyond those who previously bought Lotus.

“It is important to not think about Lotus as the master brand,” Mr. Rennie says. “It is time to think about focusing on the new buyer.”

Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578256132472940750.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

A recent survey conducted by IBM with clients across multiple industries in the Rajasthan region of India, indicates that more than 90% of businesses are looking to increase their IT investments by up to 30% over the next five years. Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) based technologies emerged as the areas they planned on investing in. More than 80% of the respondents felt that these technologies would optimize costs and increase the productivity of their businesses.

Technological advances and market dynamics continue to put immense pressure on how businesses engage with customers, drive innovation and deliver exceptional services. Almost all respondents agreed that today technology is the backbone of any organization and plays a very vital role in improving business efficiency, reducing the overall costs and providing a competitive edge in today’s dynamic marketplace.

“Midsize businesses specially are the thinkers and doers that are driving economic growth in Rajastan. They are truly the engines of development for any growing economy. These companies are embracing technology in completely new ways to capture business opportunities, drive growth and innovation while at the same time protecting their organizations against possible security threats,” said Vivek Malhotra, Vice President and Territory Executive – North & East, IBM India/ South Asia.

Currently, 65% of the companies surveyed are heavily investing in consolidation, virtualization and ERP to streamline their operations. Organizations are under intense pressure to respond to customers who have higher expectations about how products and services delivered and demand a multi-channel consumer experience incorporating web and mobile techologies. Rising complexity and escalating competition have also made technology a core part of business strategy for most of the organizations surveyed.

“The recent study conducted by IBM clearly depicts the current IT scenario in the state. Businesses are keen on adopting technology for growth and consider IT as an integral part of their strategy. There is a lot of willingness in the mid size companies to adopt cloud, SAAS and storage technologies while small companies aim to consolidate their existing IT infrastructure for better performance,” said Rajeev Mathur, Managing Partner, Icon Integrated Services.

Rajasthan is an important region for IBM. Jaipur, being the capital city, has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years due to the development of the local textile, education and tourism industry. IBM has been working with clients in the region to provide advanced software solutions, technologies and services, to aid their business growth.

IBM is working with local technology providers known as Managed Service Providers (MSP) to enable their infrastructure on IBM technology that will help clients with a scalable and secure hosting environment. This will enable them to serve specific industry needs for their clients and deliver cloud based solutions more effectively. Managed service providers deliver a defined set of technology solutions or services to clients with a pay-as-you-go model.

Clients in the region, across industries like banking, textiles manufacturing, government and education are benefitting from IBM technology and solutions, helping them optimize their IT infrastructure while bracing them for future challenges and opportunities.

For example, IBM is working with Shree Cements Ltd – a global producer of cement based in Rajasthan – to support the company’s drive for higher efficiencies, strong operational performance and business innovation.

“As we are growing our capacity year on year, it is essential to ensure that our technology supports the growth and addresses our issues. IBM understood our business needs and supported us with Power 7 technology that helps us utilize our existing infrastructure with better price performance and also provides scalability and flexibility for the future,” said S.K Soni, CIO, Shree Cements Ltd.

Source:http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/sections/news/1052-companies-in-jaipur-look-to-technology-to-improve-business-performance-ibm-survey