Nemertes Impact Analysis

Expert Insight On How Recent News Affects You

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UC Enters the Contact Center

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and privately held Aspect Software announced a
partnership to integrate Aspect's contact-center applications with Microsoft's
Office Communications Server 2007, providing businesses with additional
capabilities to leverage unified communications for business-process
improvement.

More than 48% of IT executives participating in the Nemertes' Building the
Successful Virtual Workplace benchmark said their organizations were either
deploying or planning to deploy IP-enabled contact centers. Integrating unified
communications lets agents quickly leverage tools such as presence, instant
messaging, and social networking to more quickly access subject-matter experts,
improve customer response, and achieve a higher close-rate on up-sale
opportunities.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Nemertes' UC cost models demonstrate integrating unified
communications into customer-centric business processes provides demonstrable
return on investment. Leverage UC to increase sales conversion rates and improve
customer retention.

Vendors: Focus your UC product and service strategy on improving specific
vertical and horizontal business practices.

Investors: Expect further momentum behind UC in the contact center. Look to
companies such as privately held Interactive Intelligence and Alcatel-Lucent
(NYSE:ALU) subsidiary Genesys as additional leaders in this market.

Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director,
Collaboration and Convergence

http://www.aspect.com/newsitems/NewsRelease3_18_08
http://www.nemertes.com/nemertes_benchmark_building_a_successful_virtual_workplace

 

Verizon Business Attempts To Clear the Log Management Log Jam

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) announced a new log-management service, which underscores a
key trend Nemertes highlighted in the Security and Information Protection
benchmark: 90% of participants are logging events, though only 64% are
collecting and processing the events.

Event log collection, analysis, and archiving are baseline components of
compliance management. Without log management, one cannot have compliance.
Verizon offering this service is an attractive option for organizations
performing these functions in-house or not at all.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Log management is a must-have, particularly for regulations such
as PCI, FISMA and SOX. SMBs that don't have IT resources for log management
should consider a service offering.

Vendors: Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC), IBM/ISS (NYSE:IBM), and Verisign
(NASDAQ:VRSN already offer log management as a service. A carrier offering is
new, and this could pose a competitive threat, particularly if organizations buy
security management as part of a bundled offering.

Investors: This service is an outcome of last year's Cybertrust acquisition.
Look for more carriers to offer service-based log management, particularly for
SMB and midsize organizations.

Ted Ritter, Research Analyst

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031908-verizon-business-security-log-management-service.html?page=2
http://www.nemertes.com/products_services/research/benchmarks/nemertes_benchmark_security_and_information_protection

 

Have Face will Travel

Privately held MySpace announced last week that it will partner with Sprint
(NYSE: S) to provide access to the new MySpace Mobile website. This news, which
will warm the hearts of millions of teen and tweeners, increases Sprint's
exposure to an emerging market. If the uptake of MySpace on Mobile matches the
uptake through the wired network, this could go a long way toward reversing
Sprint's fortunes.

Nemertes' ongoing social-computing research indicates businesses are
interested in social computing, but they're concerned about security. Although,
this announcement is not likely to allay those concerns, the availability of
mobile social computing will provide additional pressure on enterprises to
either allow employees access to such technology or develop secured alternatives
within the enterprise firewall.

Impacts:

Enterprises: MySpace is widely used by younger consumers, who exert a
disproportionate amount of influence on wireless buying habits. Businesses can
expect that employees will begin carrying access to MySpace to work on their
cell phones, if for no other reason than they want to keep tabs on their
children. Enterprises need a strategy for dealing with social computing services
and technologies.

Carriers: For those carriers who had written Sprint off as a serious
contender in the wireless mobility space, this should signal that, as Yogi Berra
once said: "It ain't over 'til it's over." Sprint doesn't appear to be quietly
going away. Competitive carriers should keep a close on eye on these
developments.

Investors: Sprint seems to be trying mightily to remake itself. If this
resonates with the young crowd it could signal a major Sprint comeback.

Mike Jude, Senior Analyst

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article.aspx?id=158456
http://newsreleases.sprint.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=1271498p=irol-newsArticle_newsroom&ID=1087543

 

HP Building In More Support For Virtualization

HP (NYSE:HPQ) has announced significant improvements in its support for
virtualization in the data center: Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) XenServer is now
available embedded (in the form of an internal USB memory stick), joining a
similar option for VMware (NASDAQ:VMW) ESX 3i. This continues the quick rise in
enterprise credibility for XenServer that Nemertes predicted at the time of
XenSource's acquisition by Citrix last year.

More importantly, HP has also announced console-level management of XenServer
virtual machines, via Proliant Virtual Console. Significantly, this is available
only for XenServer right now, marking an important step in Citrix's progress as
a virtualization player. In Nemertes' The New Data Center research,
efficient management of virtual systems emerged as a key requirement for using
them economically and effectively, a subject we will explore in more depth in
our upcoming virtualization benchmark.

Impacts:

Enterprises: As you push to integrate virtualization into your data centers,
look for thorough readiness for it in your strategic vendors; HP's steady
integration of both hypervisors and management tools is a good comparator.

Vendors: Management vendors: Integrate awareness of virtual machines into
your systems at all levels. They aren't just really thin blades, and you have to make them addressable in all their movable, ephemeral glory.

Investors: Watch management vendors such as Avocent (NASDAQ:AVCT) and
Uplogix; the more quickly they embrace and adapt to this new layer of
infrastructure and new kind of server, the better they will fare in the next
several years.

John Burke, Principal Research Analyst

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080320a.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
http://www.nemertes.com/preview_the_new_data_center_2006_volume_2_computing

 

3Com-Rethink, Restructure, Regional Focus

3Com (NSDQ:COMS) announced it will discontinue its worldwide channel program,
and will instead take a more regional, vertical-focused approach. This change
includes restructuring its sales team to support particular geographies. The
market focus is on small to midsized enterprises.

This announcement comes at a time when many vendors are pushing for a
"solutions approach" and restructuring their channel programs to better align
partners with end users. Many are offering specialized certifications based on
vertical and solution expertise.

Impacts:

Enterprises: More partners/VARs are earning vendor specialized
certifications, in areas such as SMB or Unified Communications. This will be of
special interest for enterprises with limited or no IT resources who look to
their VARs for professional services.

Vendors/Partners: Offering specialized certifications and regional support is
a welcomed announcement for the majority of partners looking for a
differentiator in the market. Partners that have counted on 3Com to support
their worldwide presence likely will have concerns.

Investors: As more vendors move toward a solutions-based approach, expect
them to revise their partner programs similar to the changes announced by 3Com,
and recently Cisco Systems' Linksys.

Katherine Trost, Research Analyst

http://www.crn.com/networking/206905123

 

Enterprise Content Management in the Amazon Cloud. What's In Your Shopping Cart?

Last week, South Africa-based KnowledgeTree announced the new version of its
SaaS-based enterprise content management (ECM) solution, delivered via Amazon's
(NASDAQ:AMZN) Elastic Compute CloudTM (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

Nemertes sees growing interest in SaaS, with 50% of participants in Nemertes'
Service Oriented Architectures and Applications (SOAA) benchmark
integrating full-application SaaS into their SOA. However, most of the focus on
SaaS integration is with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), not ECM.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Organizations struggling with ECM due to IT resource constraints
should consider SaaS ECM, particularly for special projects or on a departmental
basis.

Vendors: Companies such as NetDocuments and SpringCM have offered SaaS ECM
since the late 1990s. SaaS ECM on the Amazon platform is new, and the brand
awareness of Amazon could be a competitive advantage for KnowledgeTree.

Investors: SaaS ECM may follow in the footsteps of SaaS CRM. As adoption
grows, look for market consolidation and new services from all corners of the
ECM ecosphere: EMC (NYSE:EMC), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Open Source
(Alfresco and Drupal), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), and Vignette (NASDAQ:VIGN) to name
a few.

Ted Ritter, Research Analyst

http://people.knowledgetree.com/daniel/2008/03/23/new-knowledgetreelive-functionality-drag-and-drop-office-tools-online-editing-and-hot-folders.html
http://www.nemertes.com/benchmarks/nemertes_benchmark_softwareoriented_architectures_and_applications

 

The Big Get Bigger

The FCC announced the winners of the A, B and C block spectrum licenses, and
no surprise: the big winners were Verizon (NYSE: VZ ) and AT&T (NYSE: ATT).
To the tune of an estimated $16 billion for both carriers, AT&T picked up
227 licenses in the B block, while Verizon acquired 25 A block licenses and the
nationwide C block.

A significant amount of spectrum now has passed into the carriers' hands.
AT&T has already indicated plans to translate this into enhanced coverage in
more than 250 major wireless markets. Yet when asked, the carriers remain vague
about the technology they will deploy or the timing of deployment. It is safe to
assume both carriers went into the auction with no specific plans for the
spectrum, but now that they have it, will move quickly to develop offerings. In
both cases, this new spectrum is a perfect platform to begin building LTE (Long
Term Evolution) pre-4G offerings.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Nemertes has found 40% of IT executives say coverage is the most
important consideration for choosing a wireless carrier. AT&T and Verizon,
by improving their coverage, become a more attractive choice for enterprises
worried about the dynamics of roaming employees.

Carriers: The impact on smaller carriers of this auction will be nominal at
worst and positive in the long run. AT&T and Verizon will be in a position
to trade spectrum for favorable terms on roaming agreements for specific
markets.

Investors: Both AT&T and Verizon must develop service offerings around
this new spectrum. If this also includes open-access opportunities for service
providers, this could be a real shot in the arm for the wireless services
market.

Mike Jude, Senior Analyst

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article.aspx?id=158466
http://news.vzw.com/news/2008/03/pr2008-03-20c.html
http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=3309