Power Tools 1993 November - Disc 2/Power Tools Plus (Disc 2 of 2)(November 1993)(HP).iso/cpet/watch/cw930604/gartner2.txt

Text File | 1993-06-04 | 17KB | 415 lines

Gartner Group Midrange Computing Strategy Conference Notes
4/15 - 4/16 '93


Gartner Group on the IBM AS/400:


IBM "open proprietary" midrange weaknesses:

1.  IBM organization doing complete turn-around from earlier
SAA strategy.  Future support of SAA across product lines in
question.

2.  IBM's direct sales force does not have customer demanded
focus on product.

3.  IBM mainframe revenues will continue to drop by 10-15%
each year and an IBM S/390 alternative mainframe strategy is
likely to fail (i.e. IBM will not be able to shore up
revenue with the project.  Likely to see business erosion
faster than price restructure).  In addition, MVS is much
too complex for most distributed departmental environments.

4.  While the computer user community is more focused on
bottom-top open client/server architectures, SAA seen as
IBM's failure. IBM is now forced onto the open/client
architecture bandwagon but will not be an architectural
leader.

5.  IBM will likely develop a common RISC architecture for
AS/400, RS/6000, OS/2, and ES/9000.  AS/400 will likely
"run out of steam" and IBM will be forced to go to an AS/400
RISC platform by 1996.

6.  IBM's AS/400 system management strategy is extremely
AS/400 focused.  Its strategic alliance with Candle for a
system management offering is being developed exclusively
for the AS/400, but plans to port it to other non-AS/400
platforms are likely this year.

7.  AS/400 will remain behind competitive advanced
middleware facilities until 1997.  OSF/DCE will not be
ported until '94/'95 and CORBA won't be present on the
AS/400 until '95/'96.

8.  AS/400 is far from being a price/performance OLTP
leader. Uniprocessor performance increases are expected at
around 30% per year and 70% per year in SMP configurations
for the next three years putting it significantly behind the
price/performance CAGR of RISC-based OLTP servers.

9.  Effective implementation of open client/server
strategies on the AS/400 should not be expected much before
'94/'95 which will negatively impact its platform
attractiveness to ISV's shifting their development to "open
interfaces".

10. Gartner believes that AS/400 revenue growth will slow up
in the future from the $10 billion in new product shipments
it has currently to around $8 billion in new product
shipments by 1995.


AS/400 Strengths

1.  Gartner rates the AS/400 client/server strategy with
higher marks than HP's in the areas of solution level
integration and engineering and multivendor system support.
Solution level integration is defined as the vendor
willingness to assume higher-level integration, including
testing, configuration verification and performance
analysis; also offering such features as integration
solution packages, software version control and
documentation.  Multivendor systems support was defined as
design, installation and support for networks comprising a
variety of vendors, with added-value services in complex
environments.

2.  IBM has been successful in attracting popular third-
party client server products for end-user access and
application development for the AS/400.  "'Winner' products
and third-party vendors are emerging, data access techniques
are maturing and coming into focus (SQL, ODBC) and
communications protocols are improving (SNA light, TCP/IP,
IPX/SPX)."

3.  Gartner Group believes IBM is working on a number of
enhancements for the AS/400 including better LAN
performance, better database query performance and Frame
Relay support.  However, these improvements will probably
not be introduced until IBM announces its new G models which
will be in early 1994.

4.  Although Gartner believes AS/400 new product shipment
revenue will slow up (see above note), it also believes that
the installed base of AS/400s will grow to over 300,000
units by 1995 and will insure a profitable revenue stream
for many years to come.

5.  Although major changes are expected for the AS/400's
underlying architecture during the next five years, Gartner
believes users and software vendors will feel little impact.

6.  In regards to staff costs, the AS/400 was rated better
than the VAX/VMS or competing Unix platforms.


AS/400 Future Releases

2H'93:  9337 RAID-1, Frame relay adapter
V2.R3 ships with ODBC, AppleTalk, and IPX/SPX support.

1H'94:  "G" model refresh with CPU redesign, RISC I/O, V3.R1

2H'94:  NetWare and NFS adapters, V3. R1.1 ships with POSIX
1003.1, .4, .4a, DCE/400, XPG/4 enable

1995:  "H" model refresh (not a major performance increase)
V3.R2 ships.

1996:  RISC based AS/400 with 64-bit CPU released with V4.R1
supporting RISC release and migration tools.



Gartner Group on the IBM RS/6000:

RS/6000 Weaknesses

1.  IBM's current added-value directions for the RS/6000
leads to software lock-in, especially in the areas of
database (DB2/6000), Data Access (DRDA), OLTP (CICS/6000),
Messaging (MQSeries), Systems Management (NetView/6000), and
SOM (System Object Model).

2.  RS/6000 users must depend on third-party offerings for
advanced middleware since IBM is very limited in this area.
OSF/DCE and CORBA will ship with ENCINA.

3.  In UNIX performance and scalability, IBM's RS/6000 is at
a disadvantage in early 1993 to rivals like HP, Sun and NCR.
The RS/6000 does not support SMP and is not expected to
until 1Q94 using the RIOS 2 chip set.  Uniprocessor
performance is expected to improve only 40% each year vs.
the 60%+ annual performance enhancements of PA-RISC.

4.  SMP will not be available on the RS/6000 until 1Q04 and
until that time IBM will be pushing the clustering HA (High-
Availability)CMP/6000.  HACMP/6000 must have Oracle V.7 to
provide two RS/6000s to share a common set of disks, and
enables one of the systems to recover all file systems if
the other system fails.  A truly scalable RS/6000 SMP system
is not expected until at least 12 to 18 months after the
first release in 1Q94.

5.  RS/6000 users will be forced to be in a "roll your own"
mode needing to partner with third-party software suppliers
as well as IBM for middleware including systems management,
TP monitors, DBMS, and application development.


RS/6000 Strength

1.  The RS/6000 must, and probably will, maintain
competitive uniprocessor performance levels while absorbing
a long list of third-party software facilities and a short
list of IBM-specific software facilities.

RS/6000 Future Releases

2H'93:  AIX "V4.1" with SMP support, DCE Dsitributed File
System, DB2/6000, and Native Netware.  "601 PowerPC"
announced.

1H'94:  "604" Power PC announced (MP capable), SMP for RIOS-
2 based systems ships 1Q'94.

2H'94:  "620 PowerPC" hig-end 64 bit system (RIOS-2
replacement) ships.  AIX "V5.1" with 64-bit support, SMC
support, and Mach 3 kernal ships.

1995:  "6000/SMC" ships 1995.


Gartner Group on DEC:

DEC's Platform and Business Weaknesses

1.  DEC's current strategic process is still engineering-
driven, though now top-down, marketing-driven (or customer-
driven) strategies will emerge in 1994, they will not show
results before 1995.

2.  Currently there is a lot of confusion within the DEC
sales force and DEC customers as to where customers should
go for different products; DEC's direct sales force or
indirect channels.  DEC's strategy is for indirect channels
to sell commodity products (i.e. storage, memory, PCs,
workstations, small systems, and software) and for DEC
Account Managers to sell complex systems and systems
integration.  Given DEC's past alienation of the OEM, VAR,
and distributor community, it is expected that DEC will not
achieve its goal of 40% of its hardware revenue coming from
indirect channels until 1995.

3.  DEC is not expected to deliver on its promise that it
will port its NAS middleware to competitive platforms.  In
fact, there is now an emphasis on DEC's different Business
Units to come up with their own software strategies and
users may find it difficult to deduct any software
strategies from DEC's products in the near-future.


Alpha Weaknesses

1.  Gartner Group has not heard of a single Alpha system
being run in any production environment today.  Although VMS
on Alpha quality reports are encouraging, it is still very
much Version 1.0 software in regard to its number of bugs.

2.  "Fast Iron Wins" way of thinking is experiencing a
rebirth of respectability within DEC and until marketing
leadership takes hold in 1994 there is a danger that DEC
will not take a holistic response to user requirements for
Alpha platforms.

3.  DEC's "multivendor client, single vendor server"
strategy is hardly open in Gartner Group's opinion.  In
order for customers to take advantage of DEC's high
functionality they are forced into getting locked into DEC
as the server vendor.

4.  Although DEC's client/server computing offerings are
rich, the most functional offerings such as Reliable
Transaction Router and ACMS are very proprietary and are not
ported to non-DEC platforms.


DEC Strengths

1.  A standard field report is that porting from VAX/VMS to
Alpha/VMS is very easy.  For example, a complex application
called Medusa which involves 3D and graphics, 750,000 lines
of C and about 500,000 lines of COBOL is ported in a mere 3
man weeks.

2.  "Alpha is the path of least resistance for the current
VAX installed base" with very impressive performance
improvements to up to 15 times the performance for old
VAX/VMS applications which have been ported to the Alpha
platform.

3.  "Even with their most recent announcements, neither HP
nor IBM has matched Alpha (technical performance) on
equivalently-priced boxes.  The result is that DEC should be
able to re-enter the technical computing market in strength,
with ultimate penetration rates, nonetheless, heavily
constrained by the momentum of the competitors' installed
bases."



Gartner Group on Sun:

Sun Weaknesses

1.  Gartner Group believes that Sun has got a long "haul"
before Sun will be able to "play" in the Enterprise
environment lacking in functionality and scalability.

2.  Sun's "Planets" organization will confuse users when
individual "planet" (divisions) marketing objectives and
messages conflict which Gartner feels is inevitable.

3.  Sun forces programmers to write to Sun's "Federated
Services API allowing Solaris connectivity for non-Sun
platforms.  However, Federated Services is an API in a
"Solaris centric universe".  "You write to Sun, Sun doesn't
write to you".

4.  Scott McNealy is trying to eat his statement that (Sun
would implement) "Motif over my dead body".  For its own
good, Sun is now implementing Motif under the COSE agreement
since its own user-interface implementation was largely
over-shadowed by Motif.

5.  In addition to lack of scalability, PC-usability factors
on Sun platforms got a low rating (HP's was much better)
because there are no higher-level system-to-system
integration with PCs and the requirement in most cases that
Solaris is the host operating system.

6.  "Sun has been largely swept aside in the high-end
technical markets by SGI, IBM, and HP".  Its graphics
technology has gone by the way side and Sun has been forced
to link up with Evans & Sutherland as a tactical and
defensive measure in a cooperative marketing agreement.
"SGI and HP have a lock on much of this market with much
broader and fully integrated products combined with long
experience and expertise".

7.  Sun's SuperSPARC design point is around integer rather
than floating point performance, focusing on commercial
markets -- consigning Sun to midrange technical workstations
applications rather than larger commercial markets.

8.  Gartner Group provided a long list of challenges to
Sun's client server strategy including "large-storage
management, data integrity, systems management, high
availability, data warehousing and extraction, open
applications development and APIs, PC LAN/work group
development, and high-performance OLTP."


Sun Strengths

1. " Sun will continue to keep the pressure on the
competition and its installed base loyal with industry
leading price/performance during the next two to three
years.... The SPARCcenter 2000's industry pace-setting
memory/storage costs of $66 per Mbyte/$2 per Mbyte will clip
HP and IBM's wings and force both vendors to reduce system
costs in their high-end servers."

2.  Sun has done an excellent job in modularity and
upgradability without the requirement of box swaps.

3.  "Sun's participation in COSE will be a net positive for
Sun, boosting its image from arrogance to accommodation
while retaining most of its key technologies."


SPARC Technology Roadmap

2H'93:  MicroSPARC (50-70 MHz)
1H'94:  SuperSPARC enhancment (65-90 MHz 4-8 way)
2H'94:  MicroSPARC (100-125 MHz)
1H'95:  SuperSPARC enhancment (65-90 MHz to 16 way)
2H'95:  MicroSPARC enhancment (100-125 MHz)

Gartner Group on HP:

1.  Gartner Group rated HP the most secure company in an
industry where the number of midrange system, server and
workstation vendors will decrease by 25% during the next
five years.  Gartner gave us less than .1 probability of a
vendor crisis within the next 3 years and a .1
probability of vendor crisis within a 5-year timeframe. IBM
had a .1% probability of crisis within 3 years and .2 within
a 5 year period.  Sun had a .2 probability crisis within
both a 3 and 5 year period.

2.  In regard to midrange leadership, Gartner saw HP as
having the most complete vision and only second to IBM on
its ability to execute.  A "complete vision" constitutes
robust OLTP capabilities, CASE tools, robust networking and
interoperability, third-party strategies, office solution
strategy, workstation integration, database server
capabilities, and appropriate vertical application focus.

3.  HP MPE/XL and HP/UX are both shipping DCE while DEC has
yet to port DCE to its OSF/1 environment, while Sun has
pledged to sell and support DCE which it will promote as a
weak second choice to its own ONC+ environment.

4.  "PA-RISC will continue to be the leading performance
RISC architecture during the next 18 months."  Gartner lists
HP's RISC position strengths as "best current commercial
performance, balanced integer and floating point
performance, scalability along several dimensions, good
headroom in design and semiconductor, well integrated system
design and broad product breadth with further advances in
technology likely (e.g., advanced superscalar wide
instruction words)."

5.  Gartner Group sees the following RISC position
challenges for HP with a very low .2 probability of failure:
"..lacks broad industry usage, foundry relationships and a
standard bearer image (a la Sun), PRO alliance partnership
intentionally limited, eventual evolution to massively
parallel/64-bit applications, and needs midrange scalable
SMP systems".  However, Gartner further explained that the
issue regarding 64-bit architecture is mostly hype vs.
reality at this point since PA-RISC supports 64-bit data
paths, can combine 32 bit instructions, etc.

6.  Gartner Group cautions that "the HP 3000, although
remaining attractive to HP's installed base, will gradually
lose differentiation and fail to capture significant new
business from the open systems market in the later part of
the planning period (1992/1997)".  Gartner also feels that
HP's strategy to get MIS to feel comfortable with MPE/ix as
a coexistence off load alternative mainframe will sustain HP
3000 sales above $1 billion but with declining sales from
its current $1.5 billion revenue levels.  In addition,
Gartner believes if DEC users migrate to Alpha VMS sooner
than expected, HP's ability to make HP 3000 inroads in the
data center will likely be further hampered.

7.  Gartner Group firmly believes that "HP will exploit its
open systems position by broadening Fortune 500 acceptance
as a strategic vendor from about 50% today to 60% of MIS
departments by 1995."  Gartner cites as HP strengths "early
open systems commitment and experience, early RISC
technology development and refinement, consistent PA-RISC
performance improvements, third party software acceptance
and leverage, operating system stability, and corporate
organizational stability and financial performance."

Gartner cites the following as HP's challenges:  "Build
strong MIS relationships and credibility in IBM and DEC
strongholds, build professional services into recognized and
trusted open systems integration authority, and leverage
departmental development agendas into a coherent and
synchronized marketing effort."