The proliferation of cloud automation offerings has created considerable market confusion. A closer look at the significant sample of vendors already covered by The 451 Group starts to reveal some striking patterns. Automation technology can be classified into a dozen or so types – by technology, approach or the kind of problem being addressed. This report offers a preliminary taxonomy of these types, and the associated vendors. It examines the automation ecosystem, from configuration tools to physical and virtualization automation frameworks. It also covers sector M&A activity and adjacent markets.

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This report examines the opportunity for performance and availability management vendors offered by cloud computing. This includes management of both public and private cloud environments. We cover the different approaches that performance and availability management vendors are taking and which players are gaining the most traction so far, along with where the demands are greatest among the end-user community. In particular, we focus on the role that new startups and other privately held software vendors can play.

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The report covers financial exchanges, datacenter providers and connectivity vendors, as well as a cross-section of value-added technology and financial services companies - all in the context of colocation. It identifies the major datacenter facilities at the heart of financial markets, consolidates and explains the limited amount of latency information available, and provides maps that aid in understanding where a critical mass of financial activity is building in different geographies.

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In this report, we take a close look at the application virtualization market, examining its origins and evolution, as well as the current state of play. Both incumbent and next-generation vendors are highlighted, and customer case studies are provided. The report also covers market sizing, M&A activity and relevant adjacent markets.

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This report examines how next-generation user data management can benefit employees by liberating their workspaces. It includes profiles of both vendors and customers, and discusses market sizing and M&A activity. It also takes a look at adjacent technologies such as desktop and application virtualization, terminal services and thin clients.

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This report examines a fundamental change in how computer systems can be made more resilient and less prone to failure, more simply than in the past and at lower cost. The ‘break point’ has been the advent of server virtualization, which adds a new element to the mix of hardware redundancy, clustering, replication and shared storage utilities that have traditionally been used to implement high availability, business continuity, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

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‘Desktop Virtualization: Server, Client and Cloud’ discusses, in detail, the three emerging strategies for running end-user workspaces inside virtual machines. By decoupling software workloads from hardware resources, these strategies promise significant cost savings and improvements in management, compliance and mobility of enterprise workstations; but realizing those promises is not always straightforward. This report examines two dozen vendor offerings around server-hosted, client-hosted and cloud-hosted virtualization, comparing their technologies and feature sets. It looks at deployment strategies in the form of 10 case studies. It reviews the size of the market based on 451 internal estimates and projections, includes overviews of six adjacent markets, and explores possibilities for M&A. This report should help enterprise end users narrow down their options; vendors assess the competitive landscape; and potential partners and investors identify emerging opportunities around this exciting new market.

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This third report in our low-latency series examines the tools used to understand where latency arises. It highlights vendors that provide tools to analyze latency; financial services vendors, for which latency can be a differentiator; and traders, for which low latency can deliver more profit than low prices. To win the low-latency arms race, a firm must first understand its latency and how it accrues. Only then can decisions be made about which application should be optimized and whether messaging infrastructure needs to be accelerated. There is no point in reducing the latency of one component from 100 to 10 microseconds (10^-6 seconds), if another component takes 10 milliseconds (10^-3 seconds). This report examines such latency issues. It includes a number of case studies, and it maps out the vendors that provide tools that capture, store and analyze latency.

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How SaaS Is Driving New Opportunities in Application and Data Integration Forget SOA. Increasing adoption of software as a service will drive new demand for integration software that bridges the data gap between on-demand and on-premises applications. This report examines the appeal of SaaS vs. the appeal of SOA, projects the growth of this software segment, and looks at the key vendors that provide SaaS integration and that will benefit from the expected increase in SaaS adoption.

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How Cloud Computing Is Changing the Rules The end-user appetite for cloud computing extends well beyond the Amazon delta, offering new ways for IT services to be procured and delivered for organizations of all sizes. This reports examines adoption for internal and external cloud services, the experiences of early adopters and what’s on the horizon.

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Virtualization changes IT infrastructure, and in doing so, changes the existing security posture of the organization. This report examines the uses of virtualization for security, how to make virtual infrastructure more secure, and the products now on the market at the intersection of virtualization and security.

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This report explores the background of the credit crunch and the drivers in the industry that will affect IT deployments going forward. For vendors we highlight the issues affecting the financial sector that technology can positively impact, and for financial services firms we identify technologies that can help their organizations be more successful in the current financial climate.

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Virtualization solves many problems, but brings others in its wake. Already early adopters are struggling with virtual machine sprawl. This report looks at the most promising technology around to address it - production virtualization automation.

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This report follows financial messages as they emerge from trading venues as market data, are delivered to banks and absorbed into their internal messaging systems and then return to trading venues as trade requests. It explores latency issues, highlights de facto and emerging standard messaging protocols and identifies trends in the technology being deployed to support messaging.

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This report is intended to shine some light on service-oriented architecture (SOA), an overhyped and confusing technology concept, and to learn more about how end-user organizations are embracing SOA, as well as how they’re defining and implementing it. We also look ahead to emerging technologies like virtualization and cloud computing that could enable SOA to work better and ultimately increase SOA adoption.

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Virtualization automation technology brings significant time, cost and personnel savings to test and development environments. This report explains virtual lab automation technology and assesses existing vendors and their potential for M&A activity.

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This report aims to guide vendors, investors and end users around some of the pitfalls desktop virtualization presents. It defines desktop virtualization, segments the markets, examines when the approach is and isn’t appropriate, delves into some of the technology and organizational challenges, and profiles both the startup and incumbent players – as ever, with an eye on the M&A environment.

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This report examines cloud computing, beginning with this clear-cut definition of the technology. It then looks at the cloud computing trend – by analyzing the technology, as well as the economic models and delivery mechanisms involved – with the goal of separating the reality from the hype.

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This report examines the existing low-latency market, scrutinizing technology advances within the context of the requirements of low-latency architectures for financial trading. It looks at low latency from both business and technology perspectives, and provides insight not only for those involved in building and using high-performance trading systems in the financial markets, but also the vendors of the various components of those systems.

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This report contains an overview of how end users can bring about this change with guerilla application development, the technology and governance issues raised by this mode of application development, and an examination of data from a relevant survey of technology end users.

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In this report, The 451 Group analyzes 10 sometimes competing ways to manage virtual machines. The 451 Group surveys the public companies active in the virtualization space and identifies gaps in their portfolios, and then investigates 50 startups, suggesting which ones might fill the acquirers' portfolio gaps. 451 analysts also take the opportunity to make predictions about the direction of the industry over the next 12-18 months.

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This report includes an updated assessment of deployment maturity, drivers, challenges and technology trends at 19 major investment banks and insurers in terms of the 451 ECS evolution roadmap. The report examines how grids are being used to support – or are being combined with – utility models, virtualization, open source and SOA to create next-generation enterprise computing strategies. It builds on The 451 Group’s previous work with early adopters in financial services, providing an aggregated view, examined from, but not limited to, a grid-centric perspective. It provides marketplace intelligence and analysis to assist end users, vendors and investors as they navigate this complex topic.

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This report analyzes the status of grid activity at healthcare companies and assesses when and how they could move beyond initial high-performance computing applications. It highlights the leading examples of grid usage across this sector, and looks at the scope of activities in areas such as virtualization and service-oriented architecture (SOA) that are under way.

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This report aims to examine the state of the art in desktop and application virtualization technology. It provides a taxonomy of approaches to desktop and application virtualization – split into six subcategories and embodied as a periodic table of application virtualization methods. It conducts a gap analysis of the market with a view to future M&A activity, looking at holes in the portfolios of likely acquirers and where privately held companies might fill those holes.

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This report provides a 'state of the market' look at enterprise grid computing, and the evolution of grid computing and deployment dynamics across different vertical industries (including finance, manufacturing, retail and pharmaceuticals). The 451 Group has interviewed more than 200 commercial users of grids, and this report analyzes what these users are doing and where they are going with the technology.

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Server virtualization is transforming datacenter management by breaking the one-on-one relationship between applications and servers. It sits above the bare metal and beneath the operating system and 451 analysts believe that whoever dominates server virtualization will control this critical interface. The technology is becoming a major M&A driver as traditional hardware, operating systems and management vendors scramble to accommodate it. This 451 Special Report has three goals: To describe the state of the art in server virtualization technology and to forecast its future; to analyze gaps in the portfolios of large vendors that 451 analysts believe are likely to make acquisitions around server virtualization; and to provide a taxonomy of smaller bootstrapped and venture-backed private companies that might make attractive targets.

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This report discusses how grid technology is actually being used by companies in the high tech sector for a range of tasks and applications, including R&D, product development, collaboration, data sharing, operations, enterprise applications and creation of reference sites. It examines how vendors' claims that grid computing is 'enterprise ready' are reflected in their own use of grids. To what extent are they practicing what they preach – which approaches have worked, and which haven't?

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This report profiles a range of organizations representing global economic interests, from the 'oil majors' to national energy and IT utility providers. It analyzes the status of grid activity at leading oil and gas companies, and assesses when and how they could move beyond high-performance computing applications. It also examines grid activity among electricity and gas utilities, and their future plans. In addition, this report compares the deployment experience in the pharmaceutical industry with that of the oil and gas companies, since the two sectors seem to have many commonalities.

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This report examines the nature and extent of grid-enablement among enterprise software applications, including those supplied on a commercial basis by ISVs and those developed internally by early adopters and their partners. The report explores how new kinds of middleware are being used to enable existing applications to run on a grid infrastructure. It also examines how effective the vendors are in meeting both technical and operational requirements, and what the unmet needs of early adopters are.

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This report offers an opportunity to revisit the investment banks analyzed in the earlier report, and to broaden the scope of the research to include retail banks, insurers and stock exchanges. More than 20 users are profiled in depth, along with overviews and tables showing grid deployments at other large financial institutions. The report also analyzes 10 grid vendors and financial ISVs serving this market. Users are compared, and key recommendations and conclusions are provided for both users and vendors.

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This report provides an overview of manufacturers' use of grids, as well as their main obstacles to wider deployments. It profiles 14 early adopters across the automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing segments and analyzes their deployments, experiences and future plans. It also analyzes the approaches and strategies of 10 of the main grid vendors and ISVs targeting the manufacturing sector.

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This report examines the offerings and strategies of key IT vendors – including their pricing, metering and management mechanisms. It also looks at the various approaches they are taking to help enterprises overcome the challenges and barriers they face in successfully implementing managed utility services within their organizations. In addition, the report assesses, from the early adopters' point of view, what their needs are and whether they are indeed getting a 'utility' service. It highlights the experiences of organizations that are deploying managed services using grids, their willingness to use outsourced services, and the obstacles and challenges they face with utility computing offerings, as well as their expected future usage.

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This report analyzes the adoption and deployment of grid computing in the digital media industry for creation and distribution. It highlights the approaches of nine enterprise organizations in the media sector in deploying grid computing technology, their willingness to use outsourced rendering services, key obstacles and challenges they face, and the expected future usage of grids in this sector. The report also looks at nine technology vendors, outlining the various approaches they are taking to help companies in this sector overcome the challenges and barriers they face in successfully implementing grid computing technology within their enterprise organizations.

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This report examines the challenges and the possible solutions in managing data on grids – from the perspectives of both the end user and the technology vendor. It analyzes the approaches of seven enterprise organizations – companies that have often needed to rely on their own in-house capabilities to successfully manage data on grids. It also looks at 28 technology vendors and provides a table outlining the various approaches they have taken to providing data management capabilities to their customers.

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This report analyzes the adoption of grid technology in the pharmaceutical sector. It examines the current and future strategies of 11 pharmaceutical and biotech firms, including four of the global top 10. The report also analyzes the approach and strategies of 10 vendors, from the industry giants to the drug discovery software firms.

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This report analyzes the impact of software licensing in terms of slowing down grid deployments, and it examines the strategies of ISVs in response to this challenge. There is a major disconnect between the experiences of users and the claims of vendors, and the report analyzes the likely developments in software licensing. It includes nine user case studies, plus detailed comparisons of user experiences and views on the licensing issue. The report also analyzes the strategies and positioning of more than 20 vendors, from grid computing companies to license management, EDA, BI and ETL firms, as well as other major software vendors.

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This report analyzes current grid deployments in the financial services sector, the future requirements of grid users in the space and the anticipated levels of adoption. The report focuses mainly on the investment banking sector, which is leading the charge to grid computing in financial services. Banks, especially investment banks, are notoriously reluctant to discuss IT projects. Nevertheless, the report includes 11 case studies and an overview of additional grid computing activities among retail banks and insurers. The report also analyzes the strategies and positioning of six major suppliers and five ISVs, as well as providing an overview of ISV activity in the financial services sector.

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This report analyzes the current status and future opportunities – both internal and external – for grid computing in the telecommunications sector. Although telcos are typically reluctant to disclose their plans, this report includes in-depth profiles of seven of them. Five are based in Europe, where telcos are leading the adoption of grid computing through projects that range from billing systems to becoming grid resource brokers. Five computer systems vendors are also profiled in order to assess their activities and strategies in meeting the needs of this potentially highly lucrative market sector.

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This report analyzes a key challenge to the acceleration of grid technology adoption: how to prove long-term value and measure the economic benefits. The 451 Group has interviewed eight tier one grid users in depth about their approach. Each provides details of the hard and soft benefits of the deployments and overall financial considerations, together with the scope and challenges of the implementation. The 451 Group also interviewed seven leading vendors to identify what strategies and instruments are being deployed by vendors seeking to persuade users of the benefits of grid technology. We compare these different approaches and analyze whether they are meeting the needs of users – determining what's working and what's not.

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