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The ESG Vertical Industry Opportunity Scorecard

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Good news! ESG and other analyst firms are forecasting greater IT spending in 2010. Bad news: spending will be uneven across industries with varying degrees of  increases and decreases.

Given this, technology vendors would be best served by bolstering their vertical marketing programs, skills, and partners–but which industries should be highlighted?

ESG just published its annual Vertical Industry Opportunity Scorecard (VOIS). Through a combination of ESG’s 2010 Spending Survey data and new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ESG Research eggheads calculate VOIS based upon things like labor statistics, year-over-year IT budget increases, and the number of very large organizations as a percentage of the total vertical market.

Through this analysis, ESG believes that the health care, U.S. Federal government, and financial services industries represent the best opportunities for tech vendors in 2010. Here’s a few tidbits behind this logic:

Health care: Over 300,000 new jobs created in the past 12 months. New legislation like HITECH and HITRUST will continue to drive new IT spending. ESG Research indicates that 67% of health care organizations will increase IT spending in 2010.

U.S. Federal Government: Aside from the fact that the U.S. Federal Government spends between $70 to $80 billion already, the Obama administration is pushing a new IT agenda highlighting Government 2.0, data sharing, and cloud computing. Furthermore, about 10% of Federal IT spending goes toward security technologies and services. This trend will continue, driven by FISMA 2.0, the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI, started under the Bush Administration), cyber supply chain assurance, and new initiatives aimed at Critical Infrastructure Protection. One other point worth noting: more than one-third of Federal IT professionals indicate that their organizations are planning a large-scale refresh their laptops and desktops in 2010. Good news for Dell, HP, Microsoft, and the endpoint security crowd.

Financial services: IT spending outlook and positive job growth in the last 90 days vaulted the financial services sector — a high IT spending industry historically — to the #3 spot on the ESG VOIS. Year-over-year IT budget growth was higher in financial services than any other industry. Lots of focus here on data analysis and management.

Other industries showing positive year-over-year signs include retail and business services while state/local government and transportation and logistics remain in cost cutting mode.

Based upon the ESG VOIS, tech vendors with strong vertical practices like IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, and those in the consulting crowd are sitting pretty. Strong government players like Citrix, Juniper, McAfee, and Symantec are also in good shape. Vendors that still view the world as one big horizontal market are in for a rude awakening — even if overall spending is up.

Brocade Could Go On a Shopping Spree

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

I never really believed the rumors about HP buying Brocade. No disrespect to Brocade, I just thought that HP’s interest was really in Ethernet and IP networking and not Fibre Channel.

Will another company acquire Brocade? I can’t think of any obvious takers. The financial analyst rumors that Juniper would buy Brocade were ridiculous and obviously spread by someone who doesn’t know Juniper. IBM and Dell? I don’t think either company is gung-ho to get back into the networking game. Besides, both companies already have a Brocade OEM relationship in place.

Since Brocade is likely to remain independent, my advice would be to prepare for the long-haul by filling in product gaps with innovative startups and doubling down on its direct sales and distribution channel resources.

If I were in charge of M&A at Brocade, here are a few areas that would top my Christmas shopping list.

1. WLAN. Yes, I know Foundry has a wireless offering but I can’t imagine that it is selling a lot of equipment. If Brocade’s board can stomach another big deal, Aruba Networks would give the company an immediate WLAN leadership position where it could upsell other switches and routers. If Aruba is too rich for Brocade’s taste, Meru Networks has great technology and would probably sell for a song.

2. Network security. The pickings are slim here but one interesting play might be Crossbeam Systems. Crossbeam is one of a few high-end “Network Security Super Gateways” (NSSG) and has been very successful in the service provider and ISP markets. This could help Brocade in both areas and also bring an instant relationship with Crossbeam OEMs like Check Point and ISS (now IBM). This would also complement Brocade’s data center strength.

3. Security management. Like Aruba, Brocade could reach for the stars and pick up market leader ArcSight but this would cost over $1 billion. Again, if this price is a bit too scary, Brocade could choose networking-savvy Nitro Security or feisty LogRhythm. Any of these choices could give Brocade a Cisco MARS alternative.

4. WAN optimization/Application Delivery. Brocade has a pretty good portfolio of Application Delivery Controllers but it could become a market upstart by grabbing A10 Networks. A10′s economic value proposition could be extremely attractive for companies with large and growing web applications and A10′s founder has roots at Foundry. This could also leverage Brocade’s data center prowess. On the WAN optimization side, SilverPeak has some strength in data center-to-data center networking and is likely available.

5. Network management. Lots of niche players here, too many to name. My advice would be to work closely with CA.

Brocade could stand firm as it has the Fibre Channel market pretty much locked up but Cisco, Dell, and even HP have internal agendas that probably favor FCoE over time. Nevertheless, FC isn’t going away any time soon. This gives Brocade a data center beachhead to build from. In this regard, Crossbeam and A10 Networks would definitely be a short-term fit while the others mentioned above would provide instant diversification.

In my humble opinion a creative M&A or aggressive partnering strategy would be extremely useful for Brocade in 2010 and beyond.

Jumpin’ Juniper!

Friday, October 30th, 2009

It was a busy week for the folks at Juniper Networks (JNPR). First, the company announced its quarterly earnings, beating Wall Street estimates for revenue and EPS. Next Juniper announced a new relationship with Dell (DELL) in which Dell will brand Juniper Networking Equipment as its own.

These events stand out on their own but to top it off, Juniper held a high-brow event with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) yesterday to highlight a flurry of announcements featuring:

* A new chip set. Juniper announced its Trio chip set claiming that it represents a quantum leap in 3-D scaling (i.e. the ability to scale network bandwidth, the number of users per device, and the number of applications per device). Juniper says that Trio can offer a 50x performance improvement.

* Operating system extensions. Building upon its JUNOS operating system, Juniper introduced Juniper Space, a development environment and application portfolio on top of JUNOS, and Juniper Pulse, an endpoint play that brings network services together under a common agent.

* A vision for the future. While details were few, Juniper talked about its Data Center to Cloud (DC2C) strategy, its “Project Stratus” initiative to virtualize data center-based L2 networks and security services, and “Project Falcon,” an initiative focused on wireless carrier services.

There is a lot to think about with these announcements but my overall reaction is simply — Wow! Juniper Networks, that geeky company that couldn’t talk to anyone without referring to multiple layers of the OSI stack has really grown up. This was a classy event held at the NYSE (coincidentally 80 years to the day of the stock market crash of 1929) with an audience full of financial folks, industry analysts, and customers.

As for the real “meat” of these announcements, the Trio chip stands alone. In one fell swoop, Juniper just leap frogged the competition on price/performance and “green” requirements while producing a multi-function chip set that will ultimately lower its manufacturing and support costs.

The jury is still out of SPACE and PULSE. Both have great potential but success in these endeavors will be a function of applications and partnerships. Juniper has some momentum in both areas but must build its own applications, dedicate internal resources to establishing a developer community, and recruit partners for this to really matter in the long term. My guess is that Juniper will accomplish these objectives easily in the service provider space, but the enterprise market will be a much bigger challenge.

Juniper’s vision stuff is extremely interesting. Yes, there are a lot of “blue sky” concepts here but large organizations like NYSE and DISA are buying in. Juniper tends to deliver — rather than change — its strategy over time.

Many journalists and analysts have written that Juniper was long on vision and short on details which is true. Juniper actually knew this going into this announcement. This makes it important for Juniper to follow up on each of these announcement over the next few months with products, sales programs, customer success stories, and roadmaps. Again, this is a lay up in the service provider space so Juniper’s real challenge is aggressively executing in the enterprise where Cisco (CSCO)  rules.

One other note. These announcements should open doors for Juniper but it must be prepared for discussions beyond technology alone. Juniper should have detailed migration methodologies for customers and prospects that map out which pieces of the network to replace first, ROI benefits associated with these moves, and long-term migration strategies that meet customer business, IT, and network requriements moving forward. Enterprise-savvy partner IBM (IBM) can help here.

Ironically, Juniper also unveiled its new logo and welcomed the “new network” in its advertising but never mentioned it in its presentation. I find the new logo and tag line fitting. The network is radically changing which calls for new techology and innovation. Juniper is delivering here. The logo also symbolizes a new Juniper. Yes, there’s still a bit too much network-speak at times, but Kevin Johnson’s team represents a new Juniper that can not only deliver innovative technology but it can finally tell you about it even if you don’t have a PhD.

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