Summary Bullets:
- Enterprises are reluctant to invest in high-priced converged hardware systems which support mobile middleware.
- Application platform vendors will prioritize mobile operator and service provider partnerships in the coming months.
CIOs and DevOps teams (emphasis still on “Ops”) continue to struggle with how to leverage mobile, social and cloud-delivered technologies without having to make the massive infrastructure shifts and investments overnight that these emerging technologies require.
Enterprise software providers, including IBM and Oracle, are proposing that the new cloud-based data center model is best served by an integrated system, aka mega cloud boxes, which simplify the complex configuration required around compute, networking, storage and virtualization (e.g., IBM PureSystems and Oracle Exadata/Exalogic). These systems include versions with middleware and database-as-a-service, emphasizing transactional Web app support which will be increasingly important for next-generation mobile projects. However, customers are reluctant to shift their silos of infrastructure and platforms into these converged appliances, and upgrade their homegrown or outsourced mobile app development efforts, partly due to cost and partly because of having to rethink operations.
Realizing this reluctance, technology vendors are placing a lot of emphasis in the coming months on building out their channel partnerships with tailor-made converged hardware solutions that target service providers. Customers have established trust in their mobile operators, such as AT&T, Verizon and other Tier 1, 2 and 3 carriers, which have access to best-of-breed mobile technologies including middleware, development tools and MDM/MAM. Businesses have established contracts in place with these carrier partners in which managed mobility services become a logical up-sell. Integrated systems will help those carriers more easily deliver on those services. Software companies are committed to seeing their channel programs succeed. IBM just announced a new flexible payment structure for PureSystems through IBM Global Financing to align MSPs’ payments with new revenue generation.
Such partnerships will be important for prompting adoption of new infrastructures that benefit from the private cloud (or infrastructure-as-a-service) model. Vendors see such blossoming carrier relationships as a way of seeding the market with their IaaS systems, businesses gain access to best-of-breed technology without a big buy-in, and service providers get to do what they do best – provide services around what is estimated to become a multi-billion dollar mobile industry.
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