For integrator Control Group, strategy takes discipline

What IT management service is your integrator -- or one that you are considering as a partner -- using to monitor your environment? It obviously behooves you to ask.

That's because behind every well-run IT solution provider, you are bound to find great IT management tools and services that are helping its team keep tabs on hybrid environments on behalf of their customers. And the more process and discipline that an integrator is able to build in behind the scenes, the more value it can actually bring to an engagement in terms of business process consulting and strategy.

Such is the case with New York-based Control Group, a strategic consulting firm that has worked on projects for Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report, Reed Elsevier and New York City's MTA (for which it is building digital subway kiosks). As the 100-person firm became more successful, it became more difficult to provide the level of client support that it was accustomed to promising using the systems it had built up over the years. 

So, in order to spend more time on strategic process consulting and business strategy, Control Group adopted a cloud-based management service from Panorama9 to build ongoing support into its multi-environment, hybrid installations and solutions. The company officially became a managed service provider (MSP) for the service in February 2013, and was able to get the solution up and running for its ongoing account based by April. 

"We have a plethora of clients for which we use the platform to monitor switches, workstations and so forth. We use it to track all the assets and receive alerts when systems go down. It has made us far more efficient," said Alex Perez, a Control Group systems analyst.

There were several reasons Control Group chose Panorama9, including its ability to manage hybrid cloud and on-premises infrastructure, and its cross-platform support on the client side of the equation. Another big factor was the service's close integration with ZenDesk, which the consulting firm was already using to manage incidents, Perez said.

Ultimately, Panorama9 enables Control Group to stay focused on what's important. "A client recently wanted to review every piece of software one every machine," Perez said, in a published case study about his firm's use of the platform. "Before Panorama9, an engineer would have needed to walk around the office to each machine taking a manual count. But with Panorama9, we can pool all that data quickly, without stepping foot on the client's location."

Brocade outlines SDN powered strategy, touts AWS, Rackspace wins

Summary: Brocade's future growth plans increasingly take it to Cisco's turf. Software defined networking and data center orchestration may determine whether Brocade gets a larger piece of the market.

Brocade wants to be seen more as a data center player with software defined networking as well as its storage. The upshot is that Brocade is positioning itself to be an arms dealer to cloud providers, but analysts are hankering for more revenue growth.

The company's strategy was outlined during Brocade's analyst day on Wednesday. The key takeaways were that Brocade:

Will spend $1 billion buying back shares. Is cutting $100 million a year in expenses a quarter ahead of expectations. Will focus headcount reductions on executives. Layoffs have hit 16 percent of Brocade's vice presidents and 6 percent of hands-on and customer facing employees. Projected flattish annual revenue growth, but maintained its outlook. Highlighted a No. 3 position in the data center via its storage area networking, traction in software defined networking and OpenFlow router points deployed.

CEO Lloyd Carney said Brocade's Switzerland approach to partnerships can provide a larger footprint in the data center. Overall, Brocade wants to be seen as a key software defined networking player. The company appears to be off to a good start.

Previously: Brocade expands share buyback program to $1B | Brocade exceeds guidance, analyst targets for Q3 earnings | Brocade bolsters its SDN game, buys Vyatta

Perhaps more notable is that Brocade is talking up key cloud wins with Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. It's rare that AWS will talk about vendors inside its data centers. For Brocade, those two cloud providers could encourage more enterprises to look at the company as a supplier.

 

In a nutshell, Brocade's strategy revolves around its "evolutionary" core businesses such as storage area network and campus networking and eventually delivering growth via software defined networking through its Vyatta acquisition and other virtualization-powered product lines.

Next Generation Networks

The rising tides of big data, video, and cloud computing are driving tremendous demand for faster and more efficient networks. We delve into how things like software-defined networks (SDN) and new wireless technologies are enabling business transformation.

Overall, analysts see Brocade's strategy as a positive, but are wondering where the revenue growth will come from. The biggest issue is that Brocade seems to be moving into Cisco's turf more.

JMP Securities analyst Erik Suppiger said:

We are encouraged that the company is reducing expenses and optimizing its product portfolio, but concerned that the company's growth is increasingly dependent on the data center switching market, which is extremely competitive and dependent on the federal sector where budgets have been declining...We believe Cisco has dominated the data center market and Brocade has struggled to displace Cisco with large data center deployments of Brocade's fabric Ethernet technology. And while Cisco cannot control the entire data center switching market, we believe other data center switching companies, such as Arista, have gained significant mindshare.

Other analysts such as Stifel's Aaron Rakers were more positive but revenue growth was a consistent worry.

Going forward, it's clear that Brocade is betting on software defined networking, data center fabrics and using open standards to create orchestration frameworks. It will take time for Brocade to communicate and deliver on that strategy.

Topics: Data Centers, Cloud, Networking, Storage

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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Evernote CEO outlines strategy to eventually net one billion users

SAN FRANCISCO---Evernote and its ever-expanding portfolio of productivity apps has grown impressively for a startup over the last five years.

But based on CEO Phil Libin's keynote address at company's third annual developer conference on Thursday morning, Evernote isn't even close to reaching some of its goals yet -- not even close.

According to Libin, Evernote's user base totals 75 million and counting now with at least one million in 16 different countries.

That's fine and dandy, based on Libin's sentiments, but he admitted that the real target is to reach Facebook-like levels and eventually net at least one billion users.

"There's still always room for improvement, even after five years," Libin remarked in reference to updates to the desktop versions of Evernote on Mac and Windows.

Part of Evernote's strategy in gaining ground worldwide is simply stepping over the digital fence and placing physical roots around the globe.

The Redwood City, Calif-based business itself stands at 330 employees scattered across eight offices worldwide. There are also more than 30,000 developers using the Evernote API.

"This new world of connected devices completely changes the focus of how products are going to be created," Libin asserted. "It no longer makes sense creating an app for a device like for your phone."

"We have great people in many of the top centers of innovation worldwide," Libin said, who explained that the strategy is that "we want a little bit of Evernote made everywhere."

The Evernote Trunk, which used to be the showcase for third-party apps, is being retooled as the Evernote App Center.

"The name 'Evernote Trunk,' was way too clever," Libin joked. "Soul-crushingly clever."

Re-launching today, Libin admitted there are actually fewer items and tools for developers, hinting at a "less is more" mantra with a focus on improving specific resources rather than just offering "more."

Much like Nest's newly-announced developer program, Evernote has been on track with ensuring that it is as ubiquitous as possible, working to make itself available everywhere between home and work. This ranges from rounding out the portfolio with varying types of productivity apps (i.e. sketching app Skitch) to unveiling a digital marketplace stocked with high-end physical lifestyle goods.

"That's right, we're a fashion brand now," Libin joked. "No one saw that coming."

Android, in particular, is a big focus for Evernote being that Libin cited Google's mobile operating system as Evernote's launchpad for its interest in wearable technology.

"This new world of connected devices completely changes the focus of how products are going to be created," Libin asserted. "It no longer makes sense creating an app for a device like for your phone."

"The name 'Evernote Trunk,' was way too clever," Libin joked. "Soul-crushingly clever."

Describing it as "probably the biggest revolution that the technology world has seen in decades," Libin explained that the growing interest in wearables reflects that the design focus is shifting from a device-centric model to user-centric.

Libin said simply that for Evernote, that means "we have to make the app for you," not individual phones, tablets, refrigerators, or cars.

Evernote leadership seems to have also realized that its apps can't just try to knock out and replace certain tools -- namely paper.

"Paperless is not the goal. Great experience is the goal," Libin emphasized. "We want to eliminate the stupid uses of paper."

Also introduced on Thursday morning and following the path of its partnership with Moleskine, Evernote has teamed up with 3M for digitally archiving Post-It Notes and making them searchable on Evernote's cloud service.

Libin asked, "What better way to reach exactly the right people -- mainstream people?"

Image via The Evernote Blog

Twitter looks to boost mobile advertising strategy with MoPub purchase

Summary: The idea behind the MoPub purchase is to improve optimizing ads to each user in real-time on the micro-blogging stream.

Turning the focus briefly away from the TV set, the M&A department over at Twitter is turning its attention to mobile.

The latest target is MoPub, a mobile-focused advertising exchange self touted to be the "world's largest mobile ad server."

The micro-blogging giant confirmed the merger on Monday, highlighting interest in further development around optimizing ads to each user in real-time.

Kevin Weil, vice president of revenue product for Twitter, explained in a blog post that MoPub's talent and resources will be "to build real-time bidding into the Twitter ads platform so our advertisers can more easily automate and scale their buys."

The MoPub team has built a leading mobile ad exchange, and their focus on providing transparency to advertisers and publishers aligns with our values. We’ll continue to invest in and improve their core business. In particular, we think there is a key opportunity to extend many types of native advertising across the mobile ecosystem through the MoPub exchange.

MoPub CEO Jim Payne added in a separate blog post this afternoon that Twitter has been "mobile-first" in its strategy since day one, making the "two companies a natural match."

However, Payne also stressed that the publishing platform won't change -- at least for now.

"Twitter will invest in our core business and we will continue to build the tools and technology you need to better run your mobile advertising business," Payne continued.

Financial terms of the deal were not included in these statements, but TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter paid approximately $350 million for MoPub.

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.