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Benchmarking the strategic initiatives of vendors in Data center Infrastructure

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The demand in the infrastructure market is currently on the rise with the advent of cloud computing and virtualization. In a Data Center there are many vendors providing support for a company's outsourcing needs. Availability, flexibility and performance were the key issues faced by clients, which have been addressed through better research and technology implementation from vendors. Through collaboration vendors mixed and matched products to suit the customers burgeoning data management requirement. A typical collaborative suite might have consisted of network routers and switches from Cisco, SAN/NAS storage devices from EMC, servers from IBM, Dell or HP and a backup tape library system from Veritas. Each vendor had their set of core competencies but worked collectively towards delivering data center solutions. A data center manager would face issues like compliance between the different vendors resulting in technology trade offs. He would be embroiled in day-to-day management problems not giving scope for system analysis for improvements or upgrades. On March 16th 2009, Cisco changed the rules of the game. Cisco launched its unified datacenter solution. Cisco would provide a uniform fabric of servers, routers and switches which, as the company described would unify, simplify and amplify a customer’s data center. The sudden shift towards a unified (consolidated) solution approach as opposed to a collaborative one was made quite apparent. Customers however should be aware of the fact that they would now be tied down to one vendor and perhaps miss out on prime offerings from other vendors. Our research will look into steps being taken by various vendor companies in trying to obtain a first mover advantage in this blue ocean market space of consolidation. The question that they will face would be – should they move towards providing a consolidated IT solution or stick with the collaborative approach. By benchmarking the vendors’ strategic initiatives in providing an integrated data center solution, we will attempt to evaluate these strategies adopted.
Please enter your details in the following format- Name: Designation: Company:
Infrastructure management services are seeing saturation in terms of offerings from competitors. What are the key strategies vendors should adopt internally to create an uncontested market space?
New product line
Improvise existing product line
Recently IBM has made a bid for Sun Microsystems for $6.5bn. Is this a good idea in a long run market, so as to get the desired ROI?
Yes
No
Cisco has recently launched a unified datacenter solution. Do you think this consolidation strategy will bring in a value addition to the client?
Yes
No
Hewlett Packard’s Performance Optimized Datacenter (HP POD) provides compact and portable data center solutions. Would more products like HP POD enter the market space or would companies opt for server farms?
HP POD
Server Farms
Which sectors in this economic environment would a unified datacenter solution be more beneficial as compared to a collaborative one?
Technology
BFSI
Retail
Healthcare
Will the unified data center solution help in defining a new operating model for vendor companies?
Yes
No
Would there be improvements in metrics such as MTTR (Mean-Time-To-Recover) and MTBF (Mean-Time-Between-Failures) in adopting a consolidated strategy?
Yes
No
Google has designed their servers to use five times less energy as compared to a typical data centers. Which of the following initiatives would be the most important while creating a green data center?
Renewable energy source powered data center
Energy efficient devices
Creation of Global Green Team like IBM’s
In your opinion, with respect to products, solutions and advertising, do you see competitors differentiating themselves (e.g. HP POD) or following trends (e.g. Green Data Center) to get market share? Please elaborate.
Please provide your valued comments/suggestions towards the research.
This poll was created on 2009-04-06 12:49:04 by malcolmpf