Most UK companies will plan to use, or consider using, mobile technology over the next two to three years, according to the survey of 320 businesses of different sizes and sectors by SAP.  SAP says the survey shows accurate, real-time information is now expected anywhere, at any time. Companies want this data to improve customer service, business flexibility and productivity.

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Cloud services, mobile computing and social networking will mature in 2011 and beyond before combining to form an entirely new platform, an analyst firm has suggested.

These “transformative technologies” will move from early adopter status to early mainstream adoption, said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.

“As a result, we’ll see the IT industry revolving more and more around the build-out and adoption of this next dominant platform, characterised by mobility, cloud-based application and service delivery, and value-generating overlays of social business and pervasive analytics,” Gens said.

“In addition to creating new markets and opportunities, this restructuring will overthrow nearly every assumption about who the industry’s leaders will be and how they establish and maintain leadership.”

Gens said these technologies were starting to be integrated already, with cloud and mobile linking up, and social networking hooking up with real-time analytics.

“As a result, these once-emerging technologies can no longer be invested in, or managed, as sandbox efforts around the edges of the market,” he added.

“Instead, they are rapidly becoming the market itself and must be addressed accordingly.”

Helping push this transition will be a good year for IT spending in 2011.

IDC has forecast worldwide IT spending will stand at $1.6 trillion (£1.02 trillion) next year, representing an increase of 5.7 per cent over 2010.

Despite this positive outlook, Gartner recently lowered its PC shipments forecast, although the analyst firm cited tablet popularity as a key driver behind this trend.

Source: IT Pro, Tom Brewster (03.12.10)

Businesses should be increasing their investment in data management, in order to create consistent and high-quality master data sets, according to industry analysts.

Whilst the multi-touch interface, usability, mobility and size are key contributors to the device’s popularity, the image of Apple –  sheik and cool technology – contributes to hysteria normally reserved for rock stars.

The device and flexible development model are still some distance from being matched by business application functionality. How long the iPAD remains fashionable may be partly a factor of competitive agility and capacity to develop a superior device. More likely the continued success of the iPAD will be determined by applications and bona fide uses for the device making our lives more fulfilling

Apps which enable productivity as well as a positive web experience in a moderately mobile device are key. Users will default to the iPhone on a night out, trip to the football or an afternoon of shopping so replicating the apps which make the iPhone the ideal mobile companion won’t be effective on the iPAD.

Apple will be challenged adapting to business admin space, currently the domain of their primary rivals, Microsoft and Google. Adding to that rivalry are some strained relationships with Adobe, making the potential for an alliance with key enterprise software market players limited.

Citrix, masters of managing business growth through enterprise alliances, could be the solution to making the iPAD fit for business application use, sustaining success for the latest revolution to originate from Palo Alto.

Citrix Receiver is available through the iPAD store making a virtual Windows desktop available as a business solution, pulling applications and documents through from the datacentre and creating the scope to make the iPAD an enterprise device.

What does this have to do with Software Asset Management best practice?

A train of thought amongst some industry experts and colleagues predicts merging of user and business devices extending to broadscale use of consumer devices in the workplace.  Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) initiatives in organisations with IT savvy users and less rigid views of support are rare and likely to remain so for some time. For now and hitherto, the convention of controlled, secured and locked down devices will remain mutually exclusive with users operating their own devices on the network, however the prospect is brought somewhat closer by virtualisation.

Desktop or client-side virtualisation makes the prospect of using consumer devices in the workplace a possibility. Natively installed consumer applications and a virtual image with enterprise OS and applications are a genuine prospect for a number of user groups. As we close 2010 there are early adopters using the iPAD in anger with 100 plus roll outs becoming more regular if not more common.

A Xen image delivering Windows 7 and Office 2010 to the iPAD may be exciting to some but what of the implications for licence and asset management?

Of principal concern would be the following inventory side issues

1. Eliminating Installation and usage inventory owned by the individual
2. Managing audit tool agent deployment
3. Integrating with the virtualisation technologies to inventory software accurately.

Addressing the first two points, any device which isn’t owned by the enterprise should avoid receiving an audit agent and removing the risk of pulling through data showing the user’s own environment. In parallel your licence management solution will need to pull through data from Xen, AppV and more showing authorised user groups for applications, integrating and managing data for reconciliation with entitlement.

Properly planned, managed and administered the introduction of consumer devices such as the iPAD into the enterprise using virtualisation technologies ought not to create a Software Asset Management catastrophe. The productivity of a device without a mobile keyboard for most business applications remains debatable, however, sustained momentum and reliability will potentially see the iPAD contirbuting to the merger between consumer and business devices.

Click here for more details on Citrix Receiver.

The author has resisted the temptation to acquire an iPAD – for now.

For more information please contact your Computacenter account manager or email software@computacenter.com.

The separation of the IT infrastructure and production from their consumption through the use of virtualisation technology is saving money while improving service delivery at five user firms who spoke at VMworld 2010 in Copenhagen.

The five, General Electric, Siemens IT Services, Sabre Holdings, Experian and Laboratory Corporation of America, were all using VMware’s vCloud Director (vCD) product on top of other systems such as vSphere, which managed the pooling of physical devices such as servers and storage media and the allocation of virtual machines and applications.

vCD provides an extra level of abstraction from the virtualised environment. This allows system administrators to set up application catalogues, policy and permission directories that effectively allow users to self-provision their own IT needs securely.

As vCD is a relatively new product, most of the use cases described were pilot project that were on the verge of going into production. But the results were already apparent.

Read the full article here

For more information contact your Computacenter account manager or email us at software@computacenter.com.

www.computacenter.com/vmware

The number of unallocated IPv4 blocks has fallen to fewer than 5%, according to the Number Resource Organisation (NRO).

Of the original 256 blocks, there are now only 12 left, after a pair were handed to APNIC, the registry for Asia-Pacific, said NRO chairman Axel Pawlik.

IPv4 is the current system used to give a unique internet protocol address to every web-connected device. While it offers four billion addresses, it’s in danger of running out.

While the rollout of replacement architecture IPv6 started over a decade ago, not enough ISPs, businesses, governments and other organisations have moved over.

“If you don’t have any plans to move to IPv6, you aren’t part of the future,” Pawlik told PC Pro. “If you don’t get up and do something now, you will feel the pain later on.”

Read the full article here.

For more information contact your Computacenter account manager or email us at software@computacenter.com.

From Q3 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware (a re-brand of Novell’s flagship product) will ship with every copy of VMware vSphere globally. Computacenter are a Novell Platinum and VMware Premier Partner and can offer our customers a full range of products and services around this optimised and fully-supported operating system for all major virtualisation platforms – helping you move closer to the cloud.

This market-moving partnership will allow you to implement a simplified and lower-cost virtualisation strategy across your IT environment, form the datacentre to the cloud.

To understand more about this partnership read the Novell Press Release or to discuss your virtualisation needs please contact your Computacenter account manager.

Computer Weekly, Warwick Ashford (14.06.10)

Software as a service (SaaS) will have a role in the future of IT, but not the dominant future that was first thought, according to research firm Gartner. Organisations should carefully assess their software needs in light of the current promises delivered on by SaaS, the firm said. Many of the bad practices that occurred in the on-premises world are now moving their way into SaaS, said David Cearley, vice-president and fellow at Gartner.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/06/14/241573/Business-must-re-evaluate-software-as-a-service-says.htm

The vendor has picked up Nimsoft, which provides monitoring and performance tools for managed service providers (MSPs), in an all cash deal for $350m.

The deal follows in the wake of the recent acquisitions of Cassat, NetQos and Oblicore and the planned purchase of 3Tera which was announced just a matter of weeks ago.

In statements made in January that accompanied the vendor’s Q3 results, CEO William McCraken said it would continue to beef up its cloud technology and he has moved quickly to back up those words with actions.

“Right now CA is generating nearly all of the cloud M&A activity on it’s own,” said one source making reference to the vendor’s recent spending activity.

Chris O’Malley, CA’s executive vice president, cloud products and solutions business line, said the Nimsoft purchase would strengthen its hand in helping emerging enterprises looking to cloud services.

He added that it would also benefit “MSPs who are providing these customers with IT management via the cloud”.

Nimsoft’s sopftware provides those resellers offering managed services with the ability to view the performance and avaialbility of their customer’s applications in both the cloud and internal IT infrastructures.

*Source Microscope

“It’s clear our readers feel that CA and its ARCserve Backup software stand out among competitors,” said Ray Smyth, editor for Network Computing. “We congratulate CA on achieving the level of excellence required to garner these top honours.”

These awards mark the second time in the past month CA and CA ARCserve Backup have been recognised by partners and the media for the quality and value of its programs and technology. Most recently, leading reseller Programmer’s Paradise honoured CA with its “Partner of the Year” award while naming CA ARCserve Backup the leading Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery product among its 2009 Riding the Crest® award winners.

CA ARCserve Backup has shined in recent rigorous lab testing.  A recent CA-commissioned study by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) validated powerful CA ARCserve Backup capabilities including data deduplication, Media Assure verification and storage resource management (SRM), highlighting ease-of-use, backup and restore performance and storage capacity savings.*

“Our customers are accountable for providing rock-solid data protection, application availability and recoverability of their critical business information,” said Adam Famularo, senior vice president and general manager of CA’s Recovery Management business unit. “This award further validates that we are delivering the quality product to meet these vital goals.”

For more information on CA ARCserve Backup, please visit www.ARCserve.com.

* Source: ESG Lab Report, CA ARCserve Backup: Enterprise-Class Data Protection and Deduplication, November 2009.