Monthly Research Update

Experton Group Weekly IT News

Information Infrastructure News

By: Cal Braunstein

Actuate Corp. announced its second quarter results and the latest release of Actuate Performancesoft Views 8. In other news, EMC Corp. introduced its next generation Clariion CX4 series of midrange storage systems.

Focal Points:

• Actuate said that in the second quarter of 2008 revenues were $36.4 million, compared with $34.7 million in the same period last year. Net income for the quarter on a GAAP basis was $2.9 million versus a net income of $3.4 million in the second quarter of 2007. License revenues were $12.3 million, a drop from the $14.1 million achieved in the year-ago quarter. Services and maintenance revenues grew in the quarter. Actuate Performancesoft Views 8 provides rich visualization using a Flash-based Map Designer and Web 2.0 technologies. It also includes the Actuate iServer, 21 reporting Web services, 20 Information Objects, a new reporting user interface, 8 pre-built BIRT Project and e.Spreadsheet reports, enhanced map shape controls, Microsoft Corp. Vista support and enhanced Microsoft SQL Server support. The Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project is an open source software project that provides reporting and business intelligence capabilities for rich client and Web applications.
• EMC unveiled the Clariion CX4 storage systems that have an architecture optimized for VMware and other virtual server environments. The CX4 series is comprised of four models: the CX4-120, CX4-240, CX4-480, and CX4-960. The entry level CX4-120 features up to 120 disk drives for a total capacity of 120 terabytes (TBs), 6 gigabytes (GBs) of system memory and up to 12 Fibre Channel and/or 8 iSCSI ports. The top-end CX4-960 is configurable up to 960 disk drives including solid state drives (SSDs) for a total capacity of 951 TBs, 32 GBs of system memory and up to 24 Fibre Channel and/or 16 iSCSI ports. The storage systems are now generally available worldwide from EMC and its partners today. They are also being offered by Dell Inc. under the Dell/EMC brand and Fujitsu Siemens Computers BV under the FibreCat brand.  Flash drive and virtual provisioning capabilities will be available in October 2008.
• The Clariion CX4 series has up to twice the performance, twice the capacity, twice the memory and twice the number of logical unit numbers (LUNs) of the CX3 series. The drives come with built-in disk spin-down capabilities that will automatically place inactive drives in sleep mode and activate them on demand to save energy. A second energy saving feature is an adaptive cooling design and support for new low power one terabyte SATA disk drives that maximize energy efficiency. Concurrent local and remote replication is also available and integrated into EMC's RecoverPoint technology. Other features are tier "0" flash drives, technology for high availability and non-disruptive add-ons, virtual provisioning, and a 64-bit storage operating environment with multi-core Intel Corp. processors for enhanced performance and scalability.

Experton Group believes advanced technologies will rapidly cascade down to mid-tier products, shrinking the functionality and time advantages large enterprises have over small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The technology adoption curve is accelerating, as vendors strive to quickly gain a competitive advantage by including new, and sometimes disruptive, technologies in their products. However, user adoption rates move more slowly, as the majority of companies seek to contain risks by waiting for new technologies to shake out. IT executives need to remain conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies, especially in mission critical systems. Nonetheless, executives should experiment with leading-edge technologies, particularly when the functionality enables an executive to turn a vision into a competitive advantage.