VMware just announced two new and updated cloud offerings for the SMBs - VMware Go Pro and VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus. VMware Go Pro is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product designed to make it easy for SMBs to manage, monitor, and secure both physical and virtual machines through a single console. VMware vCenter Protects Essentials Plus is an on-premise IT management system including asset discovery, configuration, power management, antivirus and endpoint security designed for use in both physical and virtual environments.
VMware Go Pro
While VMware Go Pro was introduced in January 2011, the latest release has some new important capabilities such as - “IT Advisor,” which scans and assesses an SMB’s physical and virtual infrastructure and then provides recommendations, guidance, alerts and actions to help the small and mid-market businesses optimize their environments, streamline management processes, improve security and expand their virtualized infrastructure. Each time the IT Advisor scans the environment, it provides new alerts to quickly identify and solve problems. The latest release also includes updated asset and patch management capabilities that allow users to create and label groups of machines and then schedule patch scans and deployment for these groups.
VMware Go Pro with a starting price of $12 per managed system/per year will become available for download in Q4 2011. However, it will take some time for the product to be widely available through VMware’s global partner network of nearly 25,000 channels.
VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus
New features within VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus include – new scripting capabilities to drive increased efficiency by allowing SMBs to manage and execute scripts across machine groups or the entire network. It will also allow users to execute Remote Desktop Protocol from the vCenter Protect Essentials Plus “Machine View,” allowing IT admins’ remote access to a target machine. While not a typical scenario for a small business, nevertheless, vCenter Protect Essentials Plus console will also allow multiple administrators to simultaneously perform different tasks at the same time in IT-intensive mid-sized organizations that offer hosting and other cloud-based services including social media services.
Similar to VMware Go Pro, VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus will be offered through VMware’s global network of channel partners in Q4 2011. It is expected to be available as an annual subscription at $57 per server/per year and $36 per workstation/per year.
Techaisle Take
As per Techaisle’s research, Worldwide SMB Virtualization spend is expected to be US$952 million in 2011. However, the spending is heavily driven by medium businesses (100-999 employees), in fact, 95 percent will come from this segment. US represents nearly three-fourths of that spend. Thus far, most virtualization vendors like VMware have focused their efforts on the mid-market businesses that have in-house IT staff and large IT infrastructure. On the other hand small businesses can also benefit from virtualization if vendors actively market their offerings to service providers that can provide aggregated offerings for smaller businesses. But with its new offerings available in 28 languages, VMware is making a bold attempt at broadening its SMB customer base on a worldwide basis.
The messaging used by Mark Shavlik, Vice president and General Manager, SMB Management Solutions, VMware seems quite right as he addressed virtualization as solving a business issue and not a technology product. He said, “We continue to innovate to bring SMBs advanced solutions tailored to their needs so that they can increase efficiency and reduce costs regardless of the size or sophistication of their IT organization”.
VMware has being doing well because it has established itself as the default Virtualization vendor for large enterprises. However, with its new initiatives, it is increasing its focus on its messaging specifically for SMBs. This would allow global SMBs to enjoy the benefits of virtualization and improve their asset utilization and reduce management costs while at the same time increasing business flexibility and security.
The cacophony surrounding virtualization has led to confusing generalizations. VMware would do well to guide SMBs better in this regard. While the virtualization market has developed, systems management tool vendors have continued to enhance capabilities of their products as well. It would be useful for VMware and its channels to provide better case studies and ROIs to SMBs underscoring when it would or would not be useful to deploy virtualization.
VMware has three major advantages: its portfolio of products, ecosystem to implement and support, VMware's environments and brand recognition. It is time to start capitalizing on these advantages to target the SMB market segment. Microsoft and Citrix are not far behind.
Tavishi Agrawal
Techaisle
Techaisle Analyst Insights
Since the emergence of the Internet in early 90s, experts have been predicting the use of software applications over the Internet, whereby users did not need to install any applications software and servers on their own premises. Instead, they could simply connect to the Internet and access their applications and data from their service providers, much like the telephone, where all the telephony networks and infrastructure are installed at the telephone company’s operating centers and users only need to buy a phone to use all the telephone-related services they need.
The concept was particularly appealing for small and medium businesses (SMBs) that did not have adequate financial and technical resources or the scale of operations required to install the required IT infrastructure in-house. Indeed, up until recently, many SMBs found themselves at a disadvantage in competing with large companies, which implemented the new (and often resource-intensive) complex applications to improve their productivity, develop new products and services better and faster, and provide superior customer service.
In recent years, however, the playing field has begun to be leveled with the emergence of cloud computing, whereby the servers, applications and networking equipment are installed at an external hosting company and users can use the applications they need using any device they want (e.g. desktops, notebooks, tablets, smartphones) without incurring any large capital expenditures upfront, paying for the use of applications on an as-needed basis. One of the most famous examples of such cloud computing is the CRM application offered by Salesforce.com, the single largest pure play cloud computing vendor in the world. While large companies spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to install, maintain and periodically upgrade their CRM applications from large vendors like Oracle and SAP to serve their customers, SMBs can now acquire similar capabilities by paying a few dollars a month per user.
Several changes have taken place in recent years and now the stars seem to be finally all aligned for a rapid and sustained growth of cloud-based solutions. Enter cloud computing accelerated by mobility and the work from anywhere and anytime culture.
The New Economy and Increased Demand from SMBs
The dramatic shock to the global economy in 2008 had a multifold effect on the decision making of businesses. With sharp drop in revenues and profits and decreased availability of credit, SMBs found themselves starved of the capital they required to invest for in-house IT infrastructures to meet their increasing IT needs to improve their employee productivity, develop new products and services and provide higher levels of customer service to compete in the globalized economy. With the global economy unlikely to recover anytime soon and resume its long-term growth of earlier years, SMBs have become quite averse to make large capital investments and prefer to pay on an as-needed basis. Cloud computing meets this need of the SMBs by converting capital expenditures into operating expenditures.
Increased Employee Mobility
A second factor that has increased the demand for cloud solutions is the increasing mobility among SMB employees and their need to be able to access their applications anytime from anywhere using any device (e.g. desktops, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones). Cloud solution providers have developed new capabilities in recent years that allow SMB employees to do precisely that. Applications and data can be accessed over fixed and wireless connections and they adapt the data views automatically depending upon the access devices being used by the mobile workers.
Technological Developments
Cloud computing is also being enabled by the fact that new applications are increasingly being developed with Internet delivery in mind rather than just adapting the older client-server technologies for the Internet. A key element of this new trend is the evolution of integration platforms that allow users to integrate the web-based and on-premise applications to work together and exchange data on an as-needed basis automatically. Over time, this will allow SMBs to have multiple applications that work seamlessly like a single system without SMBs having to be concerned about transferring the data accurately and quickly for use by different applications thereby reducing their needs for internal IT skills.
Cloud computing is also becoming more economical by the increasing use of virtualization, which allows use of fewer servers to serve the needs of multiple SMB customers. Virtualization also allows for greater security, backup & recovery and higher levels of IT availability, which have become increasingly important for SMBs with their increasing reliance on IT.
Development of the Cloud Computing Ecosystem
Finally, a more complete ecosystem is evolving, consisting of cloud solution developers (e.g. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Taleo, Concur) , infrastructure providers (e.g. Dell, IBM, Cisco, HP, etc.), hosting companies (e.g. Equinix, Savvis, Rackspace) as well as local channel partners that collectively have the capability to develop and deliver cloud-based solutions to the large number of SMBs spread out all over their markets. Furthermore, collectively they have the financial & technical resources and credibility to convince SMBs to adopt the new technologies.
Tavishi Agrawal
Techaisle
IT projects are notorious for running over budget and time frames. This is especially true for implementation of new technologies, whether on-premise or in the cloud. Therefore, SMBs should carefully plan for the deployment of new cloud solutions.
Develop a project plan with measurable milestones and assign authority and accountability to specific individuals
While this may seem too obvious to even mention, many SMBs don’t pen down specific detailed project plans for cloud deployment. While the cloud vendor is responsible for hosting the hardware and software on behalf of the customers, SMBs need to understand what specific steps need to be taken – both for developing/customizing new services and for migrating on-premise solutions to the web. This includes all the steps starting with stating the objectives, specifying the requirements, prototyping, testing, training the users and final deployment, with criteria for successful deployment being clearly defined. Some cloud vendors have standard plans for standard services and help SMBs customize these plans for custom service development and deployment.
Measure the actual progress against the plan
This requires working with the vendor’s staff to ensure that actual progress meets the specified milestones and the project is not going over-budget or time schedules.
Take corrective action when actual progress deviates from the plan
Taking corrective action becomes much easier if the original plan provides the required authority to relevant individuals to implement the plan and these individuals can be held accountable for their results.
Test the new service to ensure it performs according to expectations
Even the most experienced cloud provider or developer cannot ensure that the new service is 100% error-free. It is important to test the service not only to ensure that it works error-free but also provides full intended functionality so that the business can realize the full benefits of the service and justify its investment.
Provide training to the end-users to use the new services
It is often very difficult to get end-users to dedicate the required time for training as many end-users perceive it as a distraction from their regular duties. However, lack of training can result in under-utilization of all the functionalities of the new service.
There are some key lessons to learn from those SMBs that have gone through not one but several deployment cycles. Selection of right vendor is not only important but imperative to have a smooth and uneventful deployment.
Tavishi Agrawal
Techaisle
Techaisle’s recent SMB Cloud computing adoption survey of 1455 US SMBs shows that hybrid cloud is gaining momentum in small businesses and is becoming entrenched in the mid-market businesses. According to the survey, hybrid cloud is currently being used by 18 percent of cloud-using SMBs and will be the approach of choice for 28 percent in 2015, an increase of 56 percent. Similarly, Hybrid Cloud accounts for 32 percent of cloud using mid-market businesses today, and is expected to capture a similar proportion of new spending in 2015.
The survey data also reveals that use of “hybrid-only” cloud is expected to increase by 87 percent, the proportion of SMBs using a combination of private and hybrid is expected to grow by over 100 percent and use of all three of public/private/hybrid cloud is expected to increase by an even higher percent.
Even SMBs that are pursuing Public or Private Clouds are ripe for Hybrid cloud in the future. In small businesses, survey shows that 50 percent of those planning new cloud initiatives in 2015 are looking to implement private cloud – in effect, using internal infrastructure to deliver on-demand services. However, these small businesses will most likely hit the limit of their internal resources and bridge to external cloud when they do so.
Techaisle survey data further shows that trust in public cloud is leaping within mid-market businesses with 44 percent anticipating use of public cloud in 2015 - up from 27 percent currently – typically for workloads including customer service, hosted VoIP, collaboration, marketing automation and business intelligence. These mid-market businesses are also looking to improve integration and manageability by connecting Public cloud workloads with internal systems creating an inevitable move to Hybrid cloud.
Small businesses (1-99 employees)
42 percent of small businesses are currently using only private cloud, less than 20 percent are using only public cloud and a small percent of small businesses are using only a hybrid approach connecting public and private clouds. This means that their cloud usage journey to date has consisted of using internal resources to deliver on-demand services.
Survey data also reveals that many small businesses are using more than one cloud approach. 15 percent are using both public and private cloud for discrete purposes and not configured as part of a single delivery infrastructure. Relatively small proportions of small businesses are using private and hybrid or public and hybrid. Segmentation of survey data reveals that small businesses using all three of public, private and hybrid clouds have an average of 43 employees and four locations making them noticeably larger than other small businesses.
Mid-market businesses (100-999 employees)
Techaisle SMB cloud survey also shows that less than 40 percent of cloud-using mid-market businesses rely on a single delivery approach for cloud. 25 percent use only private cloud and one-third use two different delivery approaches, with the most common being a combination of private and hybrid cloud or private/public cloud. 30 percent of cloud-using mid-market firms surveyed report that they have currently deployed all three of public, private and hybrid cloud. Unlike small businesses, these mid-market businesses are smaller is size than those using a single delivery method but they tend to have a higher number of locations.
Final Techaisle Take
Survey data suggests that selection of a Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Cloud strategy is not a “religious issue” and that SMBs are selecting the best approach for their requirements and they change approaches in response to changing business needs. The decision to use one two or three cloud delivery models is also a result of IT finding that the best way to use cloud across a wider range of business requirements is to deploy a wider range of clouds. Although Hybrid Cloud is gaining momentum within SMBs, cloud suppliers should carefully consider the use cases for whichever of public, private and/or hybrid they are promoting, and to stress the ways in which the approach is optimal for the business requirement. SMBs are committing to workloads first before Public or Private or Hybrid.
Detailed data and analysis is available in report: 360 on SMB & Mid-Market Cloud Computing Adoption Trends
