Software

For many organizations, software assets provide strong financial and productivity benefits but have ongoing expenses; such as license renewals, true-ups, support and version upgrades. And like any asset – physical, financial or digital – software has to be monitored and maintained. Yet, most companies still struggle with proper software asset management (SAM) which requires setting policies for corporate standards, software evaluation, purchasing, usage and compliance monitoring. According to the Fourth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study, in 2006, for every $2 worth of that software purchased legitimately, $1 worth was obtained illegally. This is a staggering figure that has far-reaching implications for corporations.  

In order to cost-effectively manage software, companies must first determine what assets they need and reconcile that with what is currently running:

1. Establish Software Standards – Setting corporate software standards to address compliance issues is a good place to start. By interviewing department heads, unit managers and other business leaders, IT can determine what software and applications are needed to run the business in accordance with corporate strategic objectives. While this may be time-consuming, it is essential for IT to determine what software is needed. As a result of these discussions, IT can create a list of software needed for each department and tie that to the needs of individual employees.

2. Perform an IT Asset Inventory – Once standards are set and notifications are understood by all users, IT must conduct a survey of all software and hardware that currently exists in its environment. Companies typically publish an internal list of approved software so that users know what they can use.

3. Match Software Installed to Licenses Acquired – The next step is to reconcile license documentation with the installed applications. Companies often find that there are discrepancies between what it has rights to and what is running in its environment – which can be risky if they are subject to a software audit.

4. Monitor the Frequency of Software Usage – Most companies need to employ an automated inventory solution with a software usage module to determining which applications are not being used. There is often a disconnect between the business owners and actual employees about which applications are really needed to run the business.

5. Enforce Standards and Recover Licenses – Once IT knows what it has and where it is, the company is well-positioned to start enforcing corporate software standards.

6. Check Usage and Upgrade Rights – One of the most frequently overlooked aspects of software licensing is usage rights. The End User License Agreement (EULA) governs what companies can and cannot do legally with the software.

Today, many of these necessary processes can be automated and occur automatically with the right software asset management tools. Of the steps detailed above, only establishing software standards needs to be a manual process. 

To help customers, Dell recently announced a set of cloud-based software asset management solutions that can help customers better mitigate risk or offer cost savings. As an added bonus, by getting a handle on software asset management, companies are much better equipped for a compliance audit – expected or unexpected.

We are often approached by companies who are considering a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (aka Exchange 2007) upgrade. Ultimately, most are considering the upgrade because they are swimming in data -- mail stores are overflowing, backups take too long,  e-discovery searches are incredibly difficult and expensive.  Even end-users can’t find anything.  Not to mention the growing management costs at a time when most CEOs are looking to cut the bottom line.

The good news is, Exchange 2007 can help with some of these challenges.The 64-bit support and various server roles in Exchange 2007 can help you handle a lot more data, but it may not help from a cost perspective since you’ll still have to store all that information.  The managed folders, in Exchange 2007, can help end-users control how long they are keeping messages around and search capabilities in Outlook are getting better, but they don't lead to legally defensible corporate retention policies or offer a true e-discovery solution.

An upgrade to Exchange 2007 is likely part of the answer to the great pools of data, but you need a plan that addresses how you handle the problems Exchange doesn’t cover. 

First, define your priorities.  There will undoubtedly be trade-offs.  User experience, controlling costs, and maximizing reliability are all important to every company, but their relative importance varies.  Second, make sure you understand what e-mail you have to keep.  Compliance requirements for your company, legal holds, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and corporate policies can all affect what email is necessary.  We’ve got some great information here on what to consider when doing e-mail archiving. On the flip side, make sure you understand what e-mail you can/should/must destroy.  Augmenting Exchange 2007 with an e-mail archive can enforce these requirements and take into account your priorities.  Just make sure your solution does not add multiple copies of each email back into your environment, which makes  things much harder and more expensive.

Customers are increasingly looking at how they can use “the cloud” to deal with the deluge of data, and compliment what Exchange 2007 offers.  Cloud solutions for e-mail archiving can eliminate internal hardware and associated hosting and administrative costs.  Today, some solutions can even replace multiple internal systems and internal copies of data by providing a variety of uses for the data such as disaster recovery, continuity and legal holds.

We recently hosted a webinar on the topic of Exchange 2007 migration with one of Microsoft’s Exchange MVPs so take a look at that if you’re considering a move. The Dell TechCenter team has also written a bit on the topic of Exchange Migration.

Let me know if your company has recently completed a migration and how it went.

At their annual PDC conference on Monday, Microsoft announced the CTP of their new cloud services platform, called Azure , code named “Red Dog”.

When I first heard about the offering, I immediately thought if they play their cards right, this could start a massive push of cloud services into “regular” corporate enterprises.

Disclosure: I’ve known about this for a while because Dell Data Center Solutions is providing hardware and services for the build out of Azure. In fact, the code name Red Dog has led DCS to have all sorts of K9 derived code names for products. We’ve been hounded with so many bad puns; I almost needed to flea the office the other day. (sorry)

Some initial reactions might be “yawn” – another cloud platform, isn’t everything a cloud platform now? What’s different with Microsoft?

First:

Visual Studio (and its ancestors) is an excellent IDE that is easy to use, especially for non-developers like me. I took a few programming classes in college (back when Windows 1.0 shipped), but not a whole lot of QBASIC has been used in the past few years. But I have been able to work my way through a variety of things on my own.

I’ve always been amazed at what a “real” developer can do. And that’s where Azure comes in. Someone who really knows what they are doing will be able to integrate Azure services into the applications they are writing without having to go out of their way. Everything will be right in the Visual Studio IDE. This means that the massive number of companies developing on the Visual Studio platform will instantly have access to these services in a relatively easy manner.

I’m also hopeful that a set of Azure plug-ins for eclipse will be developed, which will spur development in the open source community.

Second:

Most cloud vendors don’t have large enterprise sales teams. Early cloud customers have been self-selected: they had a problem and did the research to find the right vendor to solve that problem. Microsoft has a sales force on the ground in thousands of companies. And you can bet that they have marketing funds available to help those companies launch projects that integrate with Azure. It’s pretty hard to put a human face on the sales force of most cloud vendors. While that might be some of the appeal of the cloud, large companies still prefer to purchase things from a human.

Azure also brings up the interesting topic of cloud portability. One of the big selling points for the cloud is that you can pick up and move to another provider. But we’ve always known that wasn’t really true. Each vendor has their own APIs and just like traditional application environments, once you buy into a framework, your costs to move from that framework are huge. This concept is perfectly framed by a discussion on the Google cloud computing group. One poster said:

“Unless their [Microsoft Azure] storage API is S3 compatible, I don't see us moving 1,000,000+ object from AWS [Amazon Web Services]… am I the only one who considers parity with the AWS API a must to switch?”

This statement not only discusses portability, but cloud standards. Are the Amazon S3 APIs the de-facto cloud storage APIs?

Now – before I’m accused of drinking the Kool-Aid, here’s the skeptic in me:

· Perception is reality. If there are trust issues with the security of Microsoft products, especially if the service has a security failure early on, then there will be big problems. It can be hard enough securing company data when it’s inside the firewall.

• Microsoft 1.0 products have always had their…challenges. But they usually get it right after the first couple of service packs.
• Reliability. Google and Amazon have had relatively few outages, but when they occur, it causes quite a stir. A lot of people will be watching to see how Microsoft fairs in this area.

Is it going to be wait and see or are you going to run with the Red Dogs in this new found land? For me, it’s time to get some chow. I know, these puns are terrierfying…

Today marks the start of an important chapter in the unfolding story of cloud computing. Microsoft has entered the ranks of cloud platform service providers with the launch of Windows® Azure™ and the Azure Services Platform.  Microsoft selected cloud-optimized Dell servers to power the Azure platform.  

Forrest Norrod, Vice President and General Manager of Dell's Data Center Solutions Division, took a moment to share his thoughts about the announcement in this video:

Last week’s comments from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on the marketing buzz around cloud computing struck a chord with some, and reminded me of some of the attention drawn to Dell’s early adoption of the concept.  While many in the industry are cloud washing nearly anything related to computing that involves the Internet, there remains a solid core of substance to the idea.  And in many cases it's already here.

Case-in-point, Steve Ballmer has been giving more detail about Microsoft’s cloud computing plans. Last week the topic came up during his on-stage Q&A at the Churchill Club Annual Dinner. On Wednesday, Ballmer was in London for a developer conference and gave more details, saying Microsoft will launch an operating system for the cloud, called Windows Cloud for now, at its Professionals Developer Conference later this month.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that Microsoft is planning a cloud computing platform, rumors and speculation surrounding the “Red Dog” project have been rampant for months. What’s interesting is the idea of a cloud OS, and the impact that will have on the space. According to Microsoft, developers will be able to write applications that take advantage of cloud operating system services, similar to desktop and server operating systems. Programs would be spread out across hundreds or even thousands of servers running in a cloud-based data center. That’s potentially good news for providers of cloud optimized systems and services.