VDI gets a bad rap because of cost and complexity but its utility in a mobility driven market segment cannot be underestimated. Although Techaisle's most recent SMB VDI adoption survey is still in the field, as per our last survey conducted in January 2014, the US SMB VDI adoption continues to increase. Techaisle's quantitative VDI/DaaS research shows that the SMB objectives in adopting either on-premise or hosted VDI/DaaS solutions revolved around mobility, application availability from anywhere and on any device, disaster recovery, centralized management and administration of end-point devices at the same time reducing costs. SMBs are recognizing the need to adopt virtualization within their businesses, however, Techaisle survey also shows that 56 percent of SMBs consider the technology complex to understand and implement.
Techaisle Blog
Dell
The year 2014 belonged to Dell with its end-to-end solution portfolio, post-privatization enthusiasm and channel momentum. In 2015 Dell will have to accelerate its market penetration with converged infrastructure, cloud client computing, security and new IT services offerings.
• Key question: Can Dell align its "breadth" capabilities with the "depth" required to position, deploy and support an increasingly-complex portfolio – and can it do so at scale?
IBM
IBM began to regain its lost glory in 2014 with rapid-fire Cloud announcements – SoftLayer, Cloudant, Bluemix, Watson analytics, Verse and Cloud Marketplace. IBM is in the best position to cement its place at the CIO table with its Cloud offerings. In 2015, IBM's biggest challenges will be to make all offerings work together instead of "ticking all boxes". Its GBS (Global Business Services) group has to announce bite-sized packaged services solutions, analytical services and performance-based pricing to disrupt the market.
Techaisle Take
VMware won – handily – the battle for leadership in server virtualization. The company attained broad acceptance within companies looking to bridge the gap between growth in compute demand and contraction in CAPEX budgets, and then drove penetration within these accounts, to the point where virtualization is the default approach to servers, and VMware is the de facto standard for virtualization within the data center.
The issue for VMware now is – what next? There is still some opportunity for growth in server virtualization, but customers are starting to hedge their virtualization bets by moving to multi-hypervisor strategies, including Hyper-V, Xen, and/or KVM within their environments. While successfully competing in its core market is essential, the “next big thing” for VMware isn’t found in beating back smaller server competitors – it’s expanding into the two big adjacent markets, client virtualization and cloud infrastructure management.
The client virtualization space poses some interesting challenges and opportunities, especially in the SMB market. Mobility has become a “must have” capability in today’s IT portfolio, but there’s no single, well-established path to deploying it: the visible hardware vendors (Apple, Samsung) don’t provide enterprise-grade solutions, and there is no existing standard for the various software components required to seamlessly support corporate and BYOD devices in an enterprise network. At the virtualization layer, Citrix is the current and clear leader, but anticipated growth provides enough opportunity for multiple competitors and strategies.
With its Horizon portfolio, VMware is attempting to position itself as an enterprise-grade answer to mobility requirements. The approach is interesting – but will it resonate with the channel serving the millions of SMB customers that fueled VMware’s success in server virtualization?
End-user Computing
Last week’s VMworld was a showcase for messaging about execution. Bite-sized announcements centered around three key areas – end-user computing, hybrid cloud services and software-defined data centers. End-user computing is perhaps the most exciting for small and mid-market businesses as it directly feeds into their voracious appetite for mobility.
Techaisle study shows that the worldwide SMB Mobile Workforce will grow to 298 million by 2016 at 6.3 percent CAGR from 2013. Nearly 150 million SMB employees will be telecommuting and 120 million will be traveling on business. We are in a mobility cycle now that is characterized by intense competition for hardware, system software and applications leadership. The wave is young enough to offer margins on hardware, software and services, but as de facto standards become more entrenched this market will consolidate, and reseller focus will move to recurring service revenue as the margins erode in the hardware space.
With rapid increase in number of mobile workers, there are five main concerns that are percolating to the top of SMB's concerns: Cost of solutions that support mobile workers, security from theft and data privacy, mobile data pricing, transaction security and mobile device pricing. Recognizing some of these issues, Sanjay Poonen, VMware EVP & General Manager, End-User Computing said, “Mobility is a management and security problem”.
To cover its bases, VMware is currently betting on its Horizon Suite consisting of three products:
- Horizon View: VMware’s Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering powered by View
- Horizon Mirage: VMware’s physical desktop management tool based on its Wanova acquisition
- Horizon Workspace: VMware’s mobility management solution enabling mobile users to access corporate data, applications and virtual desktops from different endpoint devices
As Ben Goodman, Lead Evangelist, End-User Computing told Techaisle, “Workspace is a single space for getting your stuff”. It will include MDM (Mobile Device Management), MAM (Mobile Application Management) and plans are afoot to develop MIM (Mobile Information Management) and MCM (Mobile Content Management).
VMware is slightly late into the SMB mobility space as most SMB-focused channel partners are offering Citrix solutions and a plethora of niche MDM solutions for SMBs. But Sanjay Poonen’s aggressiveness was palpable. He plans to invest heavily to drive growth in VDI. VMware is bullish on the potential for its installed base of 500,000 customers, many of them SMBs, to become customers for its mobility solutions. It plans to focus on IT (not just end-users) who are open to centralized policy management and who agree with VMware’s vision that mobility is part of a larger platform. This strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. By VMware’s own admission, Horizon Suite lies in the chasm between Innovators and Early Adopters along the adoption curve. For VMware, Early Majority to Laggards is a big white space. But this highly fragmented, disjoined white space within the SMBs is getting filled with its competitors. To achieve success, VMware must:
- Target its customers that have yet to adopt mobility management solutions
- Target its customers who are willing to rip and replace
- Target SMBs that are still investigating viable mobility management solutions
MDM and MAM are by far the most prominent top-of-mind issues for SMBs across different geographies. Surveys conducted by Techaisle reveal that SMBs worry about these issues a lot, but fail to protect themselves adequately. A Techaisle survey of 9,500 SMBs across different geographies found that accidental loss of device followed by imminent danger of mobile viruses are the top concerns of SMBs while using mobile applications. This clearly demonstrates the need for remote mobile device management, authentication, and remote erasure of data.
For a vendor like VMware, the route to these SMBs is through channel partners, who are themselves increasingly turning towards their vendor suppliers as their trusted advisors. Techaisle’s channel partner study shows that on the technology side of the business, 50 percent of channel partners want training on mobility solutions including VDI, DaaS and BYOD. Partners are also looking for help in marketing: to help position these solutions to customers, 42 percent of channel partners are looking for case studies that are relevant to their own client base. In addition, channels want to acquire capabilities to be able to customize mobility solutions for their SMB client base. Affordable maintenance and support, ease of use and features and functionalities suitable for SMB needs are top sales messaging that are being used by channel partners to sell end-user computing solutions.
Clearly, VMware has to use every trick it has in its arsenal to address these issues if it is to make end-user computing market segment the “next step” in its overall growth strategy.
For more information on Techaisle mobility and/or channel research, please email us at
The desktop virtualization juggernaut continues to gather steam as more companies choose to use the technology to reduce costs, improve security, better disaster recovery, easier management and work from anywhere. Numerous Total Cost of Ownership reports have been published and the message from vendors to IT departments is clear – Desktop Virtualization is the way to securing desktops and reducing costs of management.
dinCloud has been making a lot of noise lately in the hosted virtual desktop area with its 100 percent channel-focused cloud-based business provisioning offerings for SMBs. We therefore had to sit down with Ali Din, CMO and Barry Weber, CTO to understand if the noise was pure cacophony in the media or were they really creating music, as their tag line says “Delivering a Heavenly Experience in the Cloud”. What followed was a series of questions and answers. (This Q&A was not sponsored by dinCloud)
What is the unique value proposition that dinCloud brings to the table for SMBs? All providers talk about customer service, understanding SMB requirements, lowering costs, etc. but we want to know what are the 2-3 unique selling points that resonates with SMBs as far as dinCloud is concerned?
dinCloud offers SMBs a fully integrated solution to run their business including backup & recovery, hosted virtual desktops (HVDs), data center security, networking, and servers. Our unique channel centric approach allows SMBs to continue to do business with the local MSP, VAR, and SI they have a relationship with, giving them local hand holding and supplemental services to run their business. Our SMB customers enjoy cost savings of up to 50 percent, enhanced security and compliance, enterprise class IT infrastructure and services, and an OPEX subscription model conserving capital.
How does dinCloud help SMBs assess and design solutions to meet SMB requirements?
We have developed a standard requirements gathering and onboarding process to rapidly migrate our SMBs’ IT infrastructure to their own virtual private Tier 3 data center. In addition, our proprietary cloud orchestration platform, dinManage, automates provisioning and migration tasks including creation and synching of the Active Directory infrastructure. dinManage is often white labeled by our partners.
How much time does dinCloud actually spend with an SMB prior to its becoming a client? What is the typical interaction?
dinCloud approaches the SMB customer through our channel partners. Engagement time varies to almost zero once our VAR/MSP partner has migrated the first of its customers, to several days of discovery for larger more sophisticated engagements.
How much time does dinCloud actually spend with an SMB on an ongoing basis once they become a client?
dinCloud’s channel partners front end most of the customer support activities; typically we will see approximately 1-2 tickets per week per customer.
In your view why does an SMB consider a hosted solution as compared to on-premise?
The SMB customer will enjoy enterprise-class infrastructure, security, and operations possibly for the first time in their history - they will conserve cash only paying for what they need, giving them unparalleled flexibility. They will now have IT compliance as well as backup and DR protecting their business. dinManage offers the remaining IT staff full visibility and control of their virtual private data center. No more HR costs and problems with training and maintaining several IT resources. Hosting in redundant tier 3 data centers not only provides enhanced security and uptime, but environmental factors such as cooling, electricity, and backup power are eliminated. Hardware, software and multiple point solutions no longer need to be purchased, supported, maintained, and managed. The SMB customer will be able to leverage BYOD and anytime, anywhere access. Additionally the SMB customer will immediately realize 30-50% cost savings when compared to a traditional on-premises model.
dinCloud has partnered with many different vendors, with which vendor solution has dinCloud seen more success? Why?
We have had a great deal of success with the purpose built custom high density super-computers by Super-micro giving us extremely competitive pricing and performance on our servers. Additionally, our investment in 100% NetApp has allowed us to leverage their industry leading tools (SnapMirror and SnapVault), as well as very efficient replication of data between our data center and the customer’s primary backup locations.
What are the top challenges you face in implementing virtualization solutions?
From dinCloud’s perspective, there are a couple of challenges. There are so many great hypervisors to choose from today and dinCloud offers customers the choice of either VMware or KVM. We strive to stay current with hypervisor versions but coordinating the right time to upgrade hypervisor versions with customer schedules is sometimes a challenge. While an upgrade should not impact to a customer, they are still very cautious about allowing dinCloud to do this.
What should vendors be doing to help you in offering and implementing virtualization solutions for SMBs?
dinCloud requires next to zero support from its vendors outside of normal bug fixes and some assistance in marketing (Netapp and Microsoft). We work very hard to provide a whole solution for the SMB market. This whole solution includes a private cloud environment with a firewall, selectable IP ranges, integration with AD, HVDs and HVSs, an easy to use cloud portal, choices of hypervisors, monitoring and white glove treatment to help the SMB easily and rapidly achieve their infrastructure goals and optimize operations costs and process. We do not just provide a virtualization solution.
What are your top core challenges with the SMB customer?
The SMB customer is often caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to internal IT skills depth and breadth. dinCloud works to make infrastructure and operations easy for the SMB customer by pre-packaging the whole solution, by automating the implementation and by offering services to extend those that exist within the customer. The SMB customer is often faced with enterprise level requirements (PCI, HIPAA, etc.). They are challenged to deliver on these requirements. dinCloud’s challenge and goal is to continuously solve for their future problems. The SMB customer faces not only a budgetary challenge for skilled resources; they may also have small budgets that don’t match the typical costs of achieving the business IT goals. dinCloud works to continuously driving costs down, thereby helping customers protect their budget.
Any final words before we conclude?
dinCloud is gaining rapid momentum through our 100% channel sold model of complete end-to-end “Business Provisioning”. We believe that SMB customers have always relied on local MSPs and VARs and will continue to do so. dinCloud is emerging as the “Cloud Offering of Choice” for these traditional regional MSP/VARs, and more than any other market segment the SMB customer has a perfect use case for cloud-based IAAS, delivered by their local and trusted long time IT resellers.
Techaisle Take
dinCloud, a reseller has become a service provider. As we have written and presented several times that cloud computing is continuing to challenge the channel forcing them to develop and be trained in new competencies. These encompass service provisioning, billing, data center management, customer support and a whole host of related competencies. dinCloud by standard definition is not an IT vendor like VMware or NetApp but it has developed offerings by combining products from established vendors and instead of selling directly to customers is funneling its sales through its own channel partners.
Most SMBs rely on their local channel partners for maintenance & management of their IT infrastructure as well as for advice on new IT purchases. dinCloud is developing a network of channel partners and providing them appropriate training and skills to sell and manage cloud solutions for their local SMB customers. They are - Educating and training channel partners on what cloud actually means and how it impacts the SMBs; Developing solutions and use cases; Providing an effective and efficient pre-sales support to their channel partners to engage with SMBs.
DaaS (Desktop-as-a-Service) is poised for growth and dinCloud has positioned itself extremely well. Techaisle's survey shows that there is a growing SMB intent to use hosted VDI as shown in the chart below. The data compares the current implementation versus planning to implement. The survey shows that there is a 46 percent increase (from current 15 percent to planned 22 percent) in intent to use hosted VDI within mid-market businesses when compared with those that have currently implemented.
dinCloud is a good example of what Philippe Fossé, Vice President of Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) Channels, EMC wrote today, “More and more we see service integrators becoming resellers; resellers becoming service providers; and even users becoming service providers. This evolution is unprecedented, but is only the tip of the iceberg”
dinCloud has the right business philosophy, market understanding and product portfolio. They are making noise at the right time. They have had some major wins in the past few months such King Hawaaiin, maker of the number one branded dinner roll in the US which selected dinCloud to implement its hosted virtual desktop, server, and storage services to help IT improve efficiency and better manage operations across all its baking facilities and restaurants.
That noise they are creating could well become an orchestra.
