Was Visions Solutions right to acquire Double-Take?
On May 17th Vision Solutions announced that it was acquiring Double-Take – bringing together its own IBM Power HA/Disaster Recovery business and Double-Take’s strength in the same market with Windows and to a lesser extent Linux. But did it do the right thing?
On the face of it, this was a natural move for Vision. Its strength was in providing availability solutions based on IBM’s 64-bit Power servers. This market is a strong and inflential market, but is nowhere near the size of the Windows market. Also, since there are few players in the more specialist IBM Power market, Vision already holds a reasonable share. For growth, it was essential for Vision to do something. It had choices – it was already partnering with Double-Take to supply Windows to its IBM base, and had other partners for Linux. But by choosing to acquire Double-Take, it is definitely buying a Windows availability provider who also does Linux rather than the other way around.
My concern is that my instincts tell me the Linux market is going to be much more interested in availability than the Windows one. UNIX in general is a more secure and robust operating system than Windows, and therefore people using Linux may have greater expectations of availability, provided through file mirrors, backups, network switchovers and disaster recovery scenarios. In contrast, any user of Windows knows that the system is always going to have its availability problems – just think how many times you have to reboot when you use your own Windows laptop or desktop. The question is therefore; how strong and widespread is the demand for availability on Windows?
At some level, there is demand. For example, a lot of people would like their office data backed up so the can get it back quickly if there is a problem. But beyond this basic data level, it seems to me demand may be limited. Indeed, this seems to be backed up by the fact that in the past year or so Double-Take has suffered slowing growth and market pressures on its finances. Maybe Vision would have been wiser to acquire a Linux availability provider, like SteelEye Software for instance.
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Acquisition, Availability, Double-Take, HA, IBM, Linux, Power systems, Vision Solutions, WindowsIf you want to fly in the Cloud, check the exits first
While Cloud adoption may be very cautious for core business systems, desktop clouds have seen a high take-up. But if you want to fly in the Clouds, you really should check your nearest emergency exit before you take off.
The cost advantages of putting all your desktop files and storage into the cloud are very persuasive, not to mention the attractions of access anywhere. But as Lustratus has pointed out before, there is a concern here. There are LOTS and LOTS of cloud suppliers – not unexpected when a new and radical idea comes along. But remember the real problem with cloud from the supplier’s side; the supplier has to put in all the investment in infrastructure up front, and then receives income in small per-user usage charges. This might look a great plan on a five-year basis with a rapidly expanding user base, but when year one or year two is tied to a period of tighter credit conditions it is easy to get over-extended. Look at G.host for instance, which went bust two or three months ago because it found its cloud no longer economical. Not a nice situation for all the people who had files and data living in it, although to be fair they got reasonable warning from the company.
The sensible thing to do is check the escape routes before you go in. Perhaps your cloud vendor will be fine, growing into the market leader with oodles of cash to invest in new infrastructure to sustain the huge number of users, but just maybe it might be one of the ones that doesn’t make it. Look at your back-up procedures, and put in place an emergency plan to avoid any disruption if the worst happens. And make sure above all that you do your due diligence before selecting your cloud.
CICS and PHP – DON’T PANIC
OK, so when IBM briefed me a few weeks ago on the new announcement about PHP support for CICS, I almost fell off my chair. IBM asked me what I thought and I said I was horrified…taking something as reliable and trustworthy as CICS and throwing it into the wild, unkempt PHP world just left me filled with dread. But on hearing more, my concerns were largely put to rest, and my message to others with the same initial reaction as me is ‘Don’t Panic’.
The initial description to me was ‘adding PHP support for CICS transactions’. Now I am not so old that I do not understand the power of PHP, and its ability to quickly generate nice, modern interfaces for websites and the like. But my own experience of PHP is playing games on the Internet (“Sorry the server has crashed, the damn PHP code has gone pear-shaped again”) and messing about building pages and making a mess of them. I therefore initially viewed the idea of PHP in CICS as a great way to take reliable applications and make them unreliable/unpredictable, while probably crashing the rest of the innocent CICS apps at the same time.
However, it turns out IBM is not stupid. The biggest point that relieved my fears is that the PHP support is provided in its own address space. Now, CICS is REALLY good at protecting different address spaces from hurting each other – in fact I was part of the team that delivered the multi-region operations (MRO) capabilities to I can vouch personally that this is the case. So all of a sudden, what had me running screaming for the hills begins to sound like something quite exciting and yet also non-threatening. As I thought about it more (and talked to some people half my age who are PHP fans and really understand the sorts of things it can do) I began to realize how smart IBM has been here. This is a great way to provide a more flexible and rapid way to build jazzy front ends to CICS apps, extending their life sustantially. It also offers the modern wave of technical people an environment with which they are initmately familiar.
The upshot is, PHP support for CICS looks like a winner. There is no need to panic about disruption to operations, because of IBM’s smart thinking in isolating the PHP functionality, but on the other hand this support offers companies a way to leverage their CICS investments, keep the technology vital and alive, respond far more quickly to the need for more attractive interfaces enabling more efective multi-channel delivery and get the kids excited and contributing.