IBM’s $5 billion plan 16 | IT and the new GM 20 | Ellison courts Java faithful 23 | Risks of virtual I/O 41 | It’s not disruptive if it’s not cheaper 46

THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY JUNE 8, 2009 Cracking The Code How great application development teams focus on business results p.35

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[Plus] Peach Coke, Anyone? Data drives drink innovation p.30

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COTHE BUSINESS VALUENTENTS OF TECHNOLOGY June 8, 2009 Issue 1,233 [QUICKTAKES]

20 An Automotive Revolution “The IT is in place” to create a better GM, CIO Ralph Szygenda says

23 Oracle’s Culture Clash Larry Ellison tries to allay fears about Java’s future, but questions remain

26 CA Picks Up The Pieces Vendor snags assets from failed cloud software maker Cassatt

Storage Bidding War NetApp counters EMC’s offer for Data Domain

28 Keep It Simple Competition forces Red Hat to offer 35 three flavors of JBoss app server COVER STORY App Dev That Delivers Data.gov Ready To Take Off Federal government Web site is set Find out what 10 organizations to make 100,000 data feeds available are doing to meet the new demands for software development New Twist For Netbooks Acer promises one based on Google’s Android operating system 30 30 Drink Up Soda dispensers offer consumers more choices—and give Coke valuable data 20

informationweek.com June 8, 2009 5 [CONTENTS]

8 Links Research And Connect InformationWeek’s Analytics Reports, events, videos, and more 14 CIO Profiles Hurry Up And Wait An ethical stance became a lesson 8 in patience for this CIO 16 Global CIO By Bob Evans IBM remakes itself in the image of where business is heading 18 Startup City Open For Business Open source cloud computing platform gets a commercial side 41 Tech Strategy Bandwidth Booster Virtual I/O offers an alternative to Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet 14 42 Speedy Delivery Synchron’s OnDemand Desktop gets high marks, but there’s room for improvement Contacts & Feedback 46 Practical Analysis 10 Editorial Contacts By Art Wittmann 12 Feedback 44 Advertiser and Editorial Indexes Vendors with costly automation 44 Sales Contacts software need to watch for Microsoft

48 Down To Business upcoming events: Enterprise 2.0 Conference By Rob Preston Competitive Edge CIOs must seize the moment and Find new ways to share information, communicate, reassess their IT organizations and stay competitive. Register at: e2conf.com

June 22-25 Westin Boston Waterfront

6 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com Links Resources to Research, Connect, Comment EXECS GET []InformationWeek Analytics Take a deep dive with these reports SECURITY Predictive Analysis: A Matter Of Survival Among the top priorities for most companies is Even the healthiest companies are taking a harder look at their fast-changing demand data to quickly spot trends. security—but are corporate informationweek.com/alert/demanddata execs following through? Surprisingly, 73% of the 326 Smartphone Security: It’s Your Call business tech pros we surveyed say their business Can you safeguard sensitive data as it travels and gets stored on phones and other mobile leaders make info security a devices? In this Rolling Review, we tested four priority. Here’s how: technologies to find out. informationweek.com/alert/smartphonesec 66% Include information security leadership in critical A Clearer Case For Cloud Storage business decisions To see what cloud storage can do for enterprises, we asked vendors to respond to a request for information we built 57% Provide a sufficient for a fictional company. See what makes the most sense. security budget informationweek.com/alert/cloudstorage 51% Get regular reports Stronger Application Performance on information security Don’t put up with sluggish apps. InformationWeek Analytics and NetworkComputing.com explain how Find out more in our report, free for a limited time: we can do better. cxoreport.informationweek.com apm.informationweek.com

Open Source: The TCO Factor []More InformationWeek Now may be the time to move to open source software, Virtual Interop: Innovation In Action and reap the benefits of its lower total cost of ownership. Experience the Interop IT conference—without leaving opensource.informationweek.com your desk: Exhibits, keynotes, workshops, panel discus- sions, and more. It all happens June 16. Register at: [Take InformationWeek With You] informationweek.com/tw/interop Facebook, iGoogle, And More Access our portfolio of social networking tools, including Windows 7 Vs. Linux: OS Face-Off Facebook applications and fan page, iGoogle widget, While Windows 7 has been brewing FriendFeed content,Twitter headlines, and RSS feeds. in Microsoft’s labs, Linux has been ma- informationweek.com/take.jhtml turing. Find out what they’re capable of and how they compare. Automation Is Key: informationweek.com/1231/winvslinux Watch Efficiency boost saves It Now time and effort Unified Communications [ This VoiceCon virtual event will help guide your deci- Listen in as Fritz sions as you confront the issues and the potential of uni- Nelson speaks fied communications. It happens June 10. Register at: with Joe Kosco voicecon.com/virtualevents (left) of Network Automation about business process Keep Up With The News s

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8 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com Print, Online, Newsletters, Events, Research

John Siefert Senior VP and Publisher,InformationWeek Business Technology ADVISORY BOARD Randall Mott Sr.Executive VP and CIO, Hewlett-Packard Network,[email protected] 949-223-3642 Dave Bent Senior VP and CIO, Bob Evans Senior VP and Global CIO Dir., [email protected] 412-661-3091 United Stationers Jeffrey Neville CIO, Eastern Rob Preston VP and Editor In Chief, [email protected] 516-562-5692 Robert Carter Executive VP and Mountain Sports John Foley Editor, [email protected] 516-562-7189 CIO, FedEx Denis O’Leary Former Executive VP, Michael Cuddy VP and CIO, Chase.com Chris Murphy Editor, [email protected] 414-906-5331 Toromont Industries Art Wittmann Editor, [email protected] 408-416-3227 C.K. Prahalad Professor of Business Laurie Douglas Senior CIO, Publix Administration,University of Michigan Tom Smith VP, Web Analytics, [email protected] 716-633-0822 Super Markets Alexander Wolfe Editor In Chief, InformationWeek.com, Mykolas Rambus Head of Technol- Dan Drawbaugh CIO, University of ogy and Special Projects,Forbes Media [email protected] 516-562-7821 Pittsburgh Medical Center M.R. Rangaswami Founder, Stacey Peterson Executive Editor, Quality, [email protected] Kent Kushar VP and CIO, 516-562-5933 E.&J.Gallo Winery Sand Hill Group Lorna Garey Executive Editor,Analytics, [email protected] 978-694-1681 Carolyn Lawson CIO, California David Smoley CIO, Flextronics Stephanie Stahl Executive Editor, [email protected] 703-266-6030 Public Utilities Commission Ralph J. Szygenda Group VP and David Berlind Editor At Large, [email protected] 978-462-5315 Jason Maynard Software Analyst CIO, General Motors

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Write to us at feedback [email protected]

Prove IT’s Business Value “We spent $9 million in the past 15 To Your CEO—Or Else months. What’s the quantifiable im- CIOs feel the pressure to prove their pact on revenue? Customer retention? worth in financial terms. —Bob Evans Up-selling? What’s the ROI, Chris?” informationweek.com/1228/evans.htm Here’s my answer. The “buzzword” of yore—business intelligence—is not Interesting and accurate article. If a an IT-only endeavor. If you were in any CIO (or any other senior leader) way familiar with “BI,” you’d know it brings forth a proposal, gets approval, involves the marketing, sales, and pub- then spends the money, he sure as licity departments. My department heck better be able to quantify the gave them their BI. Go ask the sales benefits it delivered. One piece seems and marketing departments about the to be missing. In order to get the quantifiable impact on revenue, cus- money to spend in the first place, the tomer retention, up-selling, and ROI. our customers to pay for that effort. CIO should have had to provide the A job as your CIO? Surely, you jest. Many of the software industry’s project cost/benefit up front, and it It’s apparent you don’t even under- customers are implementing excruci- should have been in terms of business stand the role of IT much less the po- ating restructuring programs, includ- value measurements similar to what sition of CIO. I’m in a quandary how ing pay cuts, benefit reductions, and you listed for the business intelligence you ever got the position of CEO. But, layoffs. Their customers’ employees project, with specific targets. That given my 39 years of experience in IT, (the users of their products) are en- cost/benefit would provide the projec- the many industries I’ve worked with, during significant sacrifices, and I ex- tions to then measure actuals against. and the economic situation stripping pect the software vendors to do the If that doesn’t happen, then the away the veil of CEO “talent,” I won’t same. Price increases are unthinkable. people approving the expenditures waste my much more valuable time to Price decreases are expected. are asleep, and you already have a speculate. —Alan Finn, Systems If the best effort these vendors can broken process. —David Chandler, Programmer, Finn Computing offer is a delay in what they describe VP of Information Systems, Key Risk as inevitable maintenance increases, You Spoke Up About Fees, then I consider their offer to be insult- Dear CEO, And They Listened ing. The talk of pegging maintenance This is “Chris” responding to your Oracle and SAP finally got the fees to vendor key performance indi- questions. message: CIOs don’t view software cators is a good start, except I’d argue I pointed out how strongly my IT maintenance fees like death and that these indicators be used to justify staffers felt about their job security taxes. —Mary Hayes Weier existing costs with cost reductions for and the security of their career paths. informationweek.com/1229/blog_fees.htm poor performance. —Paul Mayer, You responded with the statement: Director of Information Systems “First of all, Chris, it’s not your job to The enterprise software industry is one be worried about their feelings of ‘job of the few industries that can count on This underlies what we’ve always told security,’ but it sure is your job to let a large and recurring regular revenue our corporate clients when dealing them know whether they’re creating stream from captive customers with- with enterprise software vendors: All value for the company.” out the need to sell something new. software pricing models are imagi- Here’s my answer. Part of my job is Being a hardware manufacturer, my nary. Buyers shouldn’t feel constrained to keep qualified personnel content. company can only hope to get new by any proposed fees, as long as they Their job security concerns are criti- revenue through constant improve- have the option to walk. While buyers cal to keeping this outfit’s IT depart- ments in product specifications, lower- shouldn’t try to negotiate vendors into ment running smoothly. Any com- end prices, and improved service and an unprofitable position, they should s e

pany or corporation will crumble if it support (which we provide at no addi- feel free to offer alternatives that fit g a m i r

cannot retain skilled IT personnel. tional cost). In other words, we have their financial and budgetary require- e t i p u You asked about the BI project: to keep getting better without asking ments more directly. —Anonymous J

12 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com

Read other CIO Profiles at CIOprofiles informationweek.com/topexecs

Career Track prehensive services that managed How long at current company: service providers offer are extremely Seven months compelling.

Career accomplishment I’m most Best way for CIOs to cope with proud of: I was an analyst for what the economic downturn: Focus was supposed to be six weeks of tran- on the core internal operations sition analysis for a Testing Center of that drive your business’ success; Excellence. The pilot transitions off- look outside for everything else. shore seemed successful, but post-re- lease defects were far too high and Kids and technology careers: I ab- threatened the project’s viability. With solutely would recommend a tech- that failure, our team revamped our nology career for my child, as it methodology to provide for clear and provides unlimited options regard- measurable learning. My six weeks less of where you end up. Addition- became three years of wide-ranging ally, I have a child with special work, and that center continues to needs. For him, I value and count deliver high-quality software quality on technology to continue its role as assurance, spanning five countries a positive and life-altering force. and hundreds of resources and apps. RANDY GROSS On The Job Most important career influencer: CIO, Computing Technology IT budget: About $2 million My dad, who frames every decision Industry Association with integrity first. He’s the first call I Leisure activity: Golf Size of IT team: 10 make when I have a tough decision, and he’s never steered me wrong. Best book read recently: The Black Top initiatives: Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Decision I wish I could do over: Last vacation: Golf trip to Pinehurst >> Implementing integrated CRM During my last year of college, I in- across our worldwide locations. Smartphone: iPhone terviewed at a small research firm We’re enhancing our ability to mea- and accepted its offer for a steady Favorite sports team: Carolina sure campaign effectiveness and to paycheck. When I started to under- Panthers speak with a consistent voice. stand that I was involved in com- Business leader I’d like to have lunch petitive intelligence work that, at with: Nike’s Phil Knight >> Upgrading our legacy associa- the very least, violated my personal tion management system to allow Least favorite corporate plunderer: ethics, I decided to quit my job dur- for better member service and Dennis Kozlowski ing the middle of the dot-com bust. improved staff productivity. The subsequent three-month job If I weren’t a CIO, I’d be ... Tiger search gave me a painful lesson in Woods’caddy >> Consolidating manual processes patience that I’ve never forgotten. into automated workflows through a collaboration platform. Vision The next big thing for my indus- How I measure IT effectiveness: try: The growing adoption of man- I look at our customer-service re- aged services in the small and mid- sponse times and ability to de- size business market. With powerful crease downtime through process technology (virtualization, cloud and system performance. Also, I computing, etc.) more affordable look at total cost of ownership for than ever, the price points and com- system implementations.

14 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com

globalCIO BOB EVANS

Sam Palmisano’s Grand Strategy For IBM

BM’s plan to offer $5 billion to fund IT of a quarter in a down market.” projects until so-called “stimulus” money Changing a culture that pervaded the en- Ibegins to flow highlights CEO Sam Pal- tire organization for more than 100 years misano’s transformation of the company to a has allowed IBM to remake itself in the im- provider of high-margin financing, software, age of where business is heading, not where and services. While many traditional lenders it has been. are unable to lend $5 million—let alone $5 “You know the moves we’ve made there— billion—IBM’s cash position has never been we divested in the commodities businesses stronger. that don’t cover their cost of capital, regard- Are the stars lining Palmisano recently told investment profes- less of how well you execute them, and we sionals how IBM would attempt to capital- invested in other areas, both organically and up for IBM,or is ize on the imminent flood of government through acquisitions,” Palmisano said. “The money around the world by leveraging its other thing that was gonna drive all this in its financial strength new capabilities. “It’s nice that the stars line addition to the technology shifts was client built on a sweeping up—that the things we do in Smarter behavior: As soon as you’re under B A L C Planet tend to tie out with the O I budget pressure, behavior shifts. L O transformation stimulus packages of the world, G Guess what? We’re here. We see especially in China and the U.S., that occurring today as more and of its product lines that have the biggest stimulus more people want outcome, so- and culture? packages. lutions, front-office transforma- “Y’know, some people com- tional things versus just ‘I’ll as- mented to me as I was walking in, semble piece-parts better than ‘Well, since you personally worked on somebody else.’” the stimulus packages, it shouldn’t be a sur- In that context, the $5 billion financing prise that China and the U.S. line up with play maps perfectly to the new IBM, which Smarter Planet.’ But hey, it is what it is. We is using its unmatched financial strength to can do intelligent grids, we can do smart kick the door open for its technological and health care IT, we can do road systems and business prowess. As Palmisano explained: traffic-congestion charting, we can do we “Now look: We got it all. Why? Since no- can do we can do. We can do the Smart body is asking us why—‘No one expects you Shanghai for the Shanghai Expo in 2010, to, so why would you do it?’ Because you and that’s where a lot of the stimulus is need to keep things in perspective: We are geared, not just on creating jobs to fill pot- not like the other companies in the IT indus- holes and fix bridges.” try. We’re not. We’ve completely transformed And the fact that they can do they can do the IBM company. We’re not.” is a consequence of dumping low-margin businesses and bearing down on the Bob Evans is senior VP and director of moneymakers: “You look at the mix of our InformationWeek’s Global CIO unit. For businesses—a lot of it, almost two-thirds, more Global CIO perspectives, check out is annuity-like: software, services, even informationweek.com/blog/globalcio, or write maintenance in the hardware business. ... to Bob at [email protected]. For a longer So we don’t have this big dependency on version of this column, go to information transactional commodity sales at the end week.com/1233/evans.htm.

16 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com

Read the Startup City blog at startupCITY informationweek.com/startupcity

The computer science engineers These hybrid environments can be behind the Eucalyptus cloud used for “cloud bursting”—a way computing platform, conceived of accommodating traffic spikes— as a research project at the Uni- and for short-term IT resource versity of California at Santa requirements. Barbara, joined the world of commercial open source with Software Stack the recent launch of Eucalyptus Eucalyptus is comprised of open Systems. For IT departments source technologies, including the looking to implement cloud-like Apache Axis2 Web services engine, services, Eucalyptus is a plat- Mule enterprise service bus, Ram- form to consider. Eucalyptus part security, and LibVert for vir- Systems—the company—offers tualization. Eucalyptus runs on enterprise service and support. Linux and a recent release, version 1.5, was tuned for the Jaunty Jack- Wolski isn’t hung up alope (9.04) release of Ubuntu. Private Clouds on nomenclature The platform is capable of support- What do you call cloud comput- [ ing other cloud service APIs, but ing environments that function like for now the Amazon API remains public cloud services but run in EUCALYPTUS SYSTEMS the focus. your own data center? Private Headquarters: Goleta, Calif. A minor upgrade, Eucalyptus clouds? Internal clouds? Eucalyp- Product: Eucalyptus, open source 1.5.1, came out in May, and an- tus Systems CTO Rich Wolski software for building private and hy- other, 1.5.2, is planned. Both in- refers to them as on-premises brid cloud computing environments clude bug fixes and other tweaks. A clouds, but he refuses to get hung more substantive release, 1.6, is due up on the nomenclature. It’s what Principals: Woody Rollins, CEO and this summer. Longer term, the Eu- co-founder; Rich Wolski, CTO and the open source Eucalyptus soft- calyptus core may be reengineered co-founder ware does that has drawn the inter- in a 2.0 release, but Wolski says, est of a handful of corporations. Investors: Benchmark Capital, BV “We haven’t gotten there yet.” Eucalyptus makes it possible to Capital manage existing data center re- Early customers: Eli Lilly, companies Business Plan sources—servers, storage, net- in the financial, technology, and tele- In its first few months as a com- working—as unified resources that com industries pany, Eucalyptus Systems has fo- can be doled out through self-ser- cused on working with a handful of Background: Software was hatched vice provisioning by developers, as a research project in the Computer early adopters. In the months ahead, end users, and business units. Science Department at the University the company plans to publish tiered Eucalyptus has the added benefit of California at Santa Barbara, where pricing for customers that want sub- of supporting Amazon.com’s Web Wolski is a professor.The Eucalyptus scription-based services. Eucalyptus Services APIs, making it possible engineering team joined the startup. Systems will also develop and li- to move data and applications be- cense software add-ons that layer Web site: www.eucalyptus.com tween private Eucalyptus clouds enterprise-class capabilities on top and Amazon’s Elastic Compute of the open source cloud platform. Cloud and Simple Storage Service. —John Foley ([email protected])

Timeline Researchers at UCSB begin Eucalyptus Systems launches Eucalyptus development with $5.5 million in funding 2008 2009

First version of Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus version with with EC2 interface,released enterprise add-ons due

18 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

TRANSFORMATION How GM’s CIO Looks At IT In Restructuring

G eneral Motors has demanding that outsourcers filed for what it hopes will change their operating prac- be a short-lived bankruptcy, tices to fit GM’s needs. One Szygenda: We will ask more reporting $172.8 billion in example is their creation of [ of our outsourcers debt and planning to use global teams to work on GM $50 billion in U.S. govern- accounts. competitive company.” What Clearly, we will be asking ment loans to launch a The focus of GM’s IT is IT’s role? even more of them as we go leaner, more competitive budget will change as well, Szygenda: Over the last through present changes. company. he says, with more money decade, IT has been imple- Our contracts have been Two days after last week’s going to help with the re- mented to give GM the flex- written to permit adjusting filing, InformationWeek con- structuring and into soft- ibility to do whatever the to business-size changes. ducted an e-mail interview ware involved in process business desires. I believe InformationWeek: Bank- with GM CIO Ralph Szy- changes. that Fritz will expect to lev- ruptcy gives GM a fresh genda to discuss how IT will Szygenda doesn’t offer erage this environment to start. How do you leverage change as a result of the re- any hint that the company implement any restructuring IT to get more competitive? structuring, and the role he restructuring will force a quickly and be the founda- Szygenda: Clearly, the his- and his team will play in major IT strategy shift. The tion for any process changes torical weight of our balance helping the company move bankruptcy should let GM to better service customers sheet has affected what in- forward. vestments we could make GM has been spending over the years that I have more than $2 billion annu- “The historical weight of our balance been with GM. Being fully ally on IT in recent years. sheet has affected what investments competitive from a balance That budget will be down- we could make,” Szygenda says. sheet perspective will let us sized along with the com- make the correct invest- pany, Szygenda says, which make some IT investments and be more competitive. ments such as in IT to create is shedding the Pontiac, that may not have been pos- InformationWeek: Will the the right products and expe- Hummer, Saab, and Saturn sible because of the “histori- bankruptcy impact your IT rience for our customers and brands; shuttering 14 facto- cal weight of our balance budget? do it quickly in the U.S. and ries; and eliminating more sheet,” he says. But in terms Szygenda: The answer is other parts of the world. than 2,200 dealerships. of using bankruptcy and the probably yes. IT investment InformationWeek: Does GM’s GM’s $15 billion in multi- government loans to create for restructuring and pro- manufacturing IT infrastruc- year, multivendor IT out- a better car company, “the IT cess change applications will ture let it make fast-enough sourcing contracts allow it is in place to let this hap- increase while cost will de- product changes? to scale back, he says. In pen,” Szygenda says. crease for areas being closed Szygenda: I believe we have 2006, GM awarded about Here are excerpts from or reduced. a flexible manufacturing IT $7 billion in IT contracts to our interview: InformationWeek: How will infrastructure to meet what- EDS, Capgemini, Hewlett- InformationWeek: CEO Fritz your outsourcing partner- ever product or market di- Packard, IBM, and others, Henderson says in a June 1 ships change? rection. An example is the and earmarked another $7 letter to employees that the Szygenda: We continually growth of GM’s business in billion or so for additional restructuring will let GM modify priorities of our out- China over the last decade. contracts in following years. become a “leaner, more cus- source partners to meet real- —Mary Hayes Weier Szygenda has a history of tomer-focused, more cost- time business changes. ([email protected])

20 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

LIGHT AND SWEET Ellison Reassures Java Faithful

he more it acquires other compa- acquisition binge will pay off when Tnies, the more Oracle finds itself Java applications displace older, less reassuring customers that everything standardized suites sold by competi- will be OK. Deal after deal, Oracle tors. What better setting to provide a execs assuage the nervous customers of dose of reassurance to the Java faithful? acquired companies with plans to con- Ellison reassured attendees that Ora- tinue product lines or with nondisrup- cle’s future is intimately tied to Java’s tive migration paths. well-being. “Our next-generation Fu- It was that way with PeopleSoft and sion applications will be the first ERP Siebel Systems, but last week at the suite ever built on an open standard,” Ellison told a crowd of several thou- sand in the cavernous Moscone Cen- ter. “Oracle’s middleware is based 100% on Java.” And in case there was any doubt, he added, “I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of change in Java coming from Oracle.”

Smooth Sailing? Reassuring it may have been, and there appeared to be accord between Java’s soon-to-be old owner and its soon-to-be new owner as Sun chair- Don’t expect a lot of change, man Scott McNealy broke out a “Java” [Oracle CEO says signal pennant for Ellison’s racing yacht. But how Oracle, with its hard- JavaOne conference in San Francisco, driving proprietary culture, will handle Oracle CEO Larry Ellison faced a taller the Java Community Process, where order of business. Oracle’s pending ac- competing vendors such as IBM and quisition of Sun Microsystems hasn’t Red Hat participate in Java technology been completed, but Java users are al- building, remains to be seen. Sun ruled ready wondering how Oracle will han- over the Java Community Process as a dle ownership of Sun’s popular pro- benevolent dictator. gramming language. Then there are pieces like Sun’s JavaOne is the largest annual gather- GlassFish application server. Oracle ing of Java developers. Neither Sun nor doesn’t sponsor open source code that Oracle representatives are supposed to competes with its commercial prod- comment on the impact of Sun’s acqui- ucts, and GlassFish does that, even sition until the deal closes (“I can’t say though it’s the reference implementa- a thing,” said Sun cloud CTO Lew tion of a Java Enterprise Edition app Tucker), but Ellison needed to say server. What will Oracle do with the something to a key constituency. GlassFish project, which has been win- Oracle is building out a Java appli- ning adherents over Oracle’s WebLogic cation suite, called Fusion, and accom- and Oracle Application servers? panying middleware. For those prod- There may not be upheaval as a re- a i r e ucts to be competitive, there needs to sult of the acquisition, but change is F n a

D be continued high confidence in Java, surely coming, whether Java users are / d d o

T both as a standard and as an ongoing ready or not. —Charles Babcock n h o J technology. Ellison has bet big that his ([email protected])

informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

WIN 7 TO SHIP IN OCTOBER Microsoft will start selling its Spectrum Automation Man- Windows 7 operating system to ager, uses process modeling the public on Oct.22,shipping several versions,from starter to and management via Web enterprise editions. It’s also services to let data center launching Windows Upgrade administrators build auto- Option,which will let customers mated processes via a design CA’s Ferguson picks who buy Vista-powered PCs up- tool, rather than through grade to Windows 7. and chooses from Cassatt [ complicated scripts. CA also FACEBOOK’S BOOM DATA CENTER AUTOMATION has been working on a more We’re sure it’s not from your comprehensive view of data staff,but total time on Facebook CA Gathers Up A Few center information. Cassatt’s increased nearly 700% year over technology could become an year,finds Nielsen, rising to 13.9 bil- Pieces Of The Cloud engine that plugs into those lion minutes in platforms and recommends April.Nielsen A’s purchase of some as- But he was impressed by ways to optimize and auto- notes social net- Csets from cloud software Cassatt’s modeling and opti- mate a data center. working sites can vendor Cassatt should boost mization, which CA intends Given CA’s strength in quickly fall from favor,though.Facebook’s gains its ability to automate data to integrate with its own soft- monitoring, expect the 38 came at MySpace’s expense. center functions around pri- ware.“Cassatt gives us the Cassatt employees—includ- vate and public clouds. It also ability to do automatic, in- ing much of Cassatt’s engi- TIBCO’S CLOUD PLAN offers the latest example of a formed optimization deci- neering team—who are Tibco Software is the latest ven- big software vendor nabbing sions in real time,” he says. coming over to CA to focus dor plugging into the cloud, with tools for writing and man- bits of a failed cloud startup. Terms of the deal weren’t their attention elsewhere. aging programs that run on CA didn’t buy all of Cas- disclosed. SAP cut a similar Among those joining CA are Amazon.com’s cloud comput- satt, which abruptly ceased deal earlier this year, buying Rob Gingell, Cassatt’s exec- ing platform. Called Tibco Silver operations in April, because some intellectual property utive VP of product devel- and slated for late 2009 or early a lot of the monitoring and and hiring engineers from opment and CTO, and Steve 2010,the suite will help devel- opers convert programs written software agent technology cloud service provider Cog- Oberlin, chief scientist and for conventional systems to run duplicated CA’s, says Don head when it closed. co-founder. on Amazon. Ferguson, CA’s chief architect CA’s data center automa- —J. Nicholas Hoover and point person on the deal. tion product, known as ([email protected]) VERIZON BY THE DAY Did we mention there’s lots of STORAGE WARS cloud activity? Verizon is offer- ing Computing as a Service,de- signed to be more flexible than NetApp, EMC Vie For Data Domain typical hosting by letting cus- tomers rent computing systems etApp has increased its worth about $1.9 billion. ter technology vendors. In by the day.For a $250 monthly retainer-type fee,they can in- Noffer for Data Domain, All three companies offer addition, there’s a growing stantly rent more servers and countering EMC’s recent disk-based backup systems trend in storage in which storage to handle spikes like a $1.8 billion bid for the com- that augment tape backup network-attached storage sudden boost in online sales. pany and continuing a rare used for long-term data vendors are teaming with event in today’s tech indus- storage, often to comply deduplication companies to SERVER SALES SUFFER Worldwide server revenue try: a bidding war. with government regula- strengthen their storage plummeted 24% in the first NetApp last month of- tions and legal require- offerings. quarter,with the top five ven- fered to acquire Data Do- ments. Data Domain is the Recent examples of part- dors experiencing double-digit main for $1.5 billion in market leader in deduplica- nerships include NAS sup- declines,Gartner says.It’s the cash and stock. But EMC tion technology, which re- pliers like BlueArc, Isilon, worst drop ever suffered by the

then countered, offering to duces the storage of redun- and Hewlett-Packard part- r k

industry on a year-over-year ba- c i l F /

pay $30 per share in cash dant data. nering with Ocarina Net- s sis.Gartner doesn’t expect i a b a growth again until next year. for the data storage com- The battle for Data Do- works and others. r u k a S

pany. NetApp says its latest main reflects ongoing con- —Antone Gonsalves i h c i u cash and stock offer is solidation among data cen- ([email protected]) Y

26 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

SOFTWARE BLOAT With JBoss 5.0, Red Hat

Rediscovers Simplicity Fed CIO Kundra: Access [will fuel innovation he next version of the Apache Software Founda- TRed Hat JBoss Applica- tion, Red Hat decided to re- DATA.GOV tion Server will come in a architect JBoss. variety of flavors. The resulting JBoss 5.0, A Data Spigot Opened That’s a departure for the now in early release, comes first open source Java appli- in three configurations. The he federal government’s an application development cation server. The initial JBoss Enterprise Application TData.gov site launched challenge by the Sunlight goal of the JBoss team was Platform is closest to the ex- last month with a measly 47 Foundation, an open-gov- to build an open source isting app server, capable of data sets, but it’s on track to ernment advocacy group. equivalent of IBM’s Web- running Java Enterprise Edi- make 100,000 data feeds “We don’t believe we have a Sphere or BEA’s WebLogic, tion and loaded with ser- available to the public in monopoly on best ap- now part of Oracle. JBoss vices such as clustering, data programmable form by the proaches,” Kundra said. succeeded, and like Web- caching, messaging, and a middle of this month. Data.gov will require up- Sphere and WebLogic, its Web services stack. The goal goes beyond grades to serve up more app server grew in complex- A second configuration, government transparency; data, but the investment will ity. Meanwhile, lighter tech- JBoss Enterprise Web Plat- it’s to let the public use gov- eliminate duplicate data col- nologies were coming to the form, includes simplified ernment-generated data in lection and cut costs over fore on the Web. Web services following the new ways, federal CIO Vivek the longer term, Kundra “If you’re using a light- Java EE Web Profile. The Kundra said at a Washington said. New updates to the weight deployment of Spring, slimmest profile, JBoss En- briefing last week. The site site, which will be available then JBoss brings a lot of terprise Web Server, is aimed makes “raw” data available in a few months, will feature baggage along,” says Craig at Web apps with common in a variety of formats, in- new ways to find and use Muzilla, Red Hat’s VP of connectors to databases and cluding XML and text. The data, including the ability to middleware. Spring is a other Web site components. data can be searched, ex- tag data sets. framework for producing Says Muzilla, “Customers tracted, and analyzed using Also planned: an IT dash- Java applications that run are looking for alternatives a catalog of tools. board to track spending and with the Spring dm Server. to costly, bloated, and com- Kundra pointed to inno- the effectiveness of federal With competition like plex software.” vations made possible by IT projects. Spring and the more modu- —Charles Babcock government release of ge- —J. Nicholas Hoover lar Geronimo from the ([email protected]) nomic and GPS data and to ([email protected])

FOLLOW-UP playing a “Google An- Google’s Android Inches Ahead droid netbook” on its Web site for a few weeks, The race to produce netbooks based on growing interest in using it across a variety promising a netbook us- Google’s Android operating system is in- of devices, including netbooks, televisions, ing ARM processors, tensifying,with an Acer executive predict- set-top boxes, and even digital picture known for their battery ing that his company will release one in frames. MIPS Technologies, which makes efficiency. the third quarter. processor architectures and cores used in Microsoft’s Windows XP is by far the Android’s top selling point is its “incred- consumer and network electronics,recently most widely used netbook operating sys- ibly fast” wireless connection to the Inter- said it will make the Android platform avail- tem, running on Intel’s Atom, but Win- net, says Jim Wong, Acer’s president of IT able on its architecture. Dell and Hewlett- dows XP isn’t available on ARM proces- products. Acer will continue offering Win- Packard are exploring Android for netbooks. sors. Android-on-ARM isn’t a serious dows on its line of Aspire One netbooks. Chinese electronics maker Skytone— netbook option today, but it’s the one to Android is an open source operating sys- best known for making Skype headsets watch. —W. David Gardner tem designed for mobile phones,but there’s and children’s computers—has been dis- ([email protected])

Why Windows must go open source: informationweek.com/1219/windows.htm

28 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com [BEYONDTHENEWS]

PEACH COKE, ANYONE? RFID-Based Dispensers Redefining BI For Coke oca-Cola doesn’t think its a lot cheaper than the model Coke’s customers have enough been using: bottling and bringing to drink choices. So starting market new products that sometimes this summer, diners at some don’t gain traction and get canceled CCalifornia, Georgia, and Utah fast-food after a year or two. “This is a huge joints will get to try a self-serve drink jump from our current fountain dis- dispenser that pours more than 100 pensers,” says Christopher Dennis, varieties of sodas, juices, teas, and fla- Coke’s IT director of e-business trans- vored waters. formation. “It’s like going from the Coke plans to roll out the Freestyle dial phone to the BlackBerry.” drink dispenser nationwide, eventually putting tens of thousands of them in No Comparison places such as McDonald’s, Burger There’s more to Freestyle than Refresh, refuel, and King, and Willie’s Mexican Grill. And streamlining product development. It [download some data while the machine is taking the also will let Coke provide its fast-food concept of customer choice to new outlet customers with more accurate able dispensers across the nation. heights, the most interesting aspect is inventories of the beverages they serve. Coke plans to have about 60 dis- the technology it’s built on. Freestyle Outlets leasing the machines from pensers in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and will become Coke’s front-line robotic Coke will be able to view graphical Orange County, Calif., by the end of army for business intelligence, sending drink consumption reports—such as the summer. The dispensers will then massive amounts of consumption data ones that rank drinks sold during spe- be rolled out in other regions of the back to the beverage company’s Atlanta cific time periods—on an e-business United States, and perhaps globally, headquarters. portal Coke has set up. Dennis says. Freestyle will let Coke more easily Most fast-food restaurants collect Dennis describes the Freestyle ma- test new drink flavors and new bever- data using point-of-sale systems that chine as the company’s first software- age concepts, such as adding various only capture beverage cup size and the driven dispenser. It’s been in develop- vitamin combinations to flavored wa- number of cups sold each day. Those ment for four years, and it’s the first ters and juices. The dispensers each that collect more specific data on bev- close collaboration between Coke’s contain 30 cartridges of flavorings that erages customers order aren’t always R&D engineering team and IT organi- mix up 100 different drink combina- accurate, since many customers change zation. Soft drink purchases have been tions. The cartridges are tagged with their minds between the time they declining at fast-food outlets in recent radio frequency ID chips, and each dis- place their orders and walk over to the years, and Coke is looking to Freestyle penser contains an RFID reader. The drink dispenser. to increase sales by giving customers dispensers collect data on what cus- Besides collecting data on what cus- more beverage choices. tomers are drinking and how much, tomers are drinking, Freestyle also Coke is closely guarding engineering and transmit that information each lets Coke know what flavor cartridges details of the machine, going so far as night over a private Verizon wireless each dispenser holds, so the company to manufacture the system at its own network to Coke’s SAP data warehouse can advise outlets on when to order plant. Beverage machine makers usu- system in Atlanta. The company will more. Coke also will use the wireless ally approach Coke with new ideas. use the data to develop reports that network to send out new drink “We came up with this on our own,” assess how new drinks are doing in the formulas to the beverage machines Dennis says. market, identify differences in regional with instructions on how to mix them He declined to provide details on tastes, and help fast-food outlets decide up. And should the soda company Coke’s investment in the machines, the which drinks to serve. ever need to recall a flavor cartridge, cost to outlets to lease them, and the Test marketing via Freestyle will be the network also lets it instantly dis- cost of cartridges. Some fast-food chains

30 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

may deploy the Freestyle dispensers are delivered in very precise amounts new portal that links into Coke’s SAP only to their largest outlets, Dennis says, through an IV. “We’ve reapplied it to CRM system. Coke will provide outlets and use BI gleaned from those installa- pouring a drink,” Dennis says. with recommendations on how many tions to make inventory and promo- Freestyle’s LCD panel, which offers cartridges to order based on a 10-day tional decisions at other outlets. 18 drink brands, runs on the Windows rolling average of consumption deter- CE operating system. Customers select mined by the data that’s transmitted International Impact a brand, such as Sprite, and are then every night, cartridge inventories pro- While Coke is limiting the initial offered several variations (cherry, vided by customers on the portal, and rollout of Freestyle to the United grape, etc.). cartridge levels on machines based on States, data from those machines will The dispensers communicate over RFID readings. have a global impact. Information the wireless network with Microsoft Coke’s fast-food customers have about how U.S. customers are re- struggled to keep their inventory stocks sponding to various beverages will be SMART DRINKS balanced “without having a lot of cash loaded into Coke’s Innovation Frame- 100 choices aren’t all Coke’s on the shelf,” says Dennis. “Now they’ll work, a system based on software Freestyle dispensers provide know when to order another cherry called CA Clarity for New Product >> RFID-tagged flavor cartridges let cartridge, depending on the average Development. Coke track inventory and distribute consumption at their outlet.” Coke research, product develop- beverage formulas over a wireless ment, and marketing personnel world- network The Payoff wide use that system to share informa- >> Data on drinks served is uploaded By providing customers with more tion on successful regional product daily to Coke’s headquarters variety, Freestyle has tremendous im- rollouts and marketing programs, so >> Consumption data helps Coke plications for Coke in terms of revenue they can apply them in other regions. and fast-food outlets decide what to growth, Dennis says. What’s more, the Globally, Coke offers about 3,000 serve and promote, and when and machine can help Coke customize its beverages, and what works in one where to launch new products products by region. place is often tried in another with >> Operational data identifies Freestyle will let Coke track customer similar demographics. dispensers with problems preferences over months and even Traditional soft-drink dispensers years. If the company determines that a typically offer eight to 12 drinks, dis- System Center Configuration Manager certain flavor is gaining traction in a pensing them from five-gallon bags of for Mobile Devices, software running specific region—say, Peach Coke in the flavored syrups. Freestyle’s 30 car- at Coke’s headquarters that manages South—it will know that’s more than a tridges contain highly concentrated the dispensers. The Verizon network short-lived trend and could opt to bottle flavorings and slide into the machine has a dedicated IP range for the that flavor through retail outlets in that like a printer’s ink cartridge. The fla- Freestyle network infrastructure, and region with reasonable assurance that vors are so powerful that only a few each dispenser contains a Verizon wire- the investment will pay off. drops go into each drink recipe, using less card. One test outlet is already getting in- a process that Dennis describes as Freestyle sends data through the Mi- teresting results from the system, find- “microdosing.” crosoft configuration manager and ing that sales of Caffeine-Free Diet That means a raspberry cartridge then to SAP’s point-of-sale manage- Coke spike during the late afternoon. might be used to flavor Coke, tea, or ment software, which cleans and Customers apparently try to avoid water. Microdosing comes from the structures the data. Data then goes to sugar and caffeine late in the day, medical industry; the term refers to Tibco Software middleware, which Dennis says, and the outlet could use how anesthesia and other medications routes consumption information to the LCD panel on its Freestyle ma- the SAP Business Warehouse and op- chines to promote low-calorie, caf- DIG DEEPER erational data to the central service or- feine-free beverages during that time ganization for identifying any dis- of day, driving sales to customers who Product Imperative Coke’s IT team puts penser problems. might otherwise drink water or forgo collaboration to work to spur product development. Previously, fast-food restaurants or- a beverage. informationweek.com/1195/report_coke.htm dered new products through Coke’s Water? Peach Coke? Grape Sprite? See all our InformationWeek Reports at call center or by fax. With the new dis- The choice will soon be yours. informationweekreports.com pensers, they’ll be able to order prod- —Mary Hayes Weier ucts directly from Coke through the ([email protected])

32 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com

[COVER STORY] A Special Report From InformationWeek and Dr.Dobb’s

rom design to delivery, software development isn’t what it used to be. What’s changed, more than anything, are the development process and the developers themselves—they’re woven into the business fabric more than ever before. The cliché of the solitary coder is dead. Driving this transformation is the need for relentless focus on the business results that software should produce, forcing developers to understand nuances of the health care or manufacturing or fi- nance worlds in which they work. It’s blurring the roles of analyst and developer. Developers, and the executives leading development teams, still must be masters of their craft. In F this economy, they’re under more pressure than ever to turn out reliable software on time and under budget, and that shapes the processes and tools app dev leaders choose. Rapid delivery, for in- stance, is one key trend. That puts a premium on automating tasks such as builds and testing, free- ing developers to focus on great code that quickly meets business goals. Coding as a team sport is another trend, spanning product managers to CIOs to developers and testers around the world. That’s driving tools for collaborative development and increased visibility into the app dev process. For this report, InformationWeek and Dr. Dobb’s teamed to chronicle how leaders in application development are meeting those demands. With articles by app dev leaders themselves and from InformationWeek writers, we spotlight companies tackling a wide range of challenges across indus- tries, from a world-leading cancer center building its own e-records system to a news organization taking delivery mobile. —Jonathan Erickson, Dr. Dobb’s editor in chief

MOBILE DEVELOPMENT Plug-In Cuts AP’s Time To Market

n a given day, more than half mediate access to hyperlocalized using the Web Runtime plug-in to of the world’s population sees news from AP and more than 1,000 build the widget: It freed us from O news from The Associated local content providers through an having to learn new development Press in print, broadcast, and icon on the device’s home screen. tools in new development environ- online. With people everywhere us- Widgets provide Internet content ments, and it let us plug existing ing mobile devices as their first without a browser. HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax code screen for news, we saw the oppor- The AP Mobile widget we built is into the Nokia project to create mo- tunity to extend our presence by a free, ad-supported application bile applications. launching apnews.com, a multime- preloaded onto the Nokia N97 We were able to move from con- dia mobile news portal. smartphone. AP selected the N97 cept to application in just five Nokia’s Web Runtime plug-in pro- because of its touch-screen func- weeks—that includes testing, vided a solution, extending the Web tionality and multimedia capabili- debugging, packaging, and deploy- browser by supporting widgets— ties, letting us deliver news stories, ing our widget. small, task-specific, standalone Web photography, and video. —Jeff Litvack, AP’s general manager applications that let us deliver im- There were two main benefits in of mobile and emerging products

informationweek.com June 8, 2009 35 [COVER STORY] APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

APPLICATION LIFE CYCLE UPS Works To Get Better, One Step At A Time

hen UPS sets out to improve its software development pro- W cesses, it doesn’t assemble a squad of “application life-cycle has under way is one to create better PRODUCTIVITY management” gurus. Lately, it has been requirements across its software-devel- Société Générale Cuts taking people out of their day jobs and opment projects. Get requirements Costs Amid Complexity letting them figure out how to fix a and the architecture design wrong at piece of the process. the start of a project, says CIO Dave That approach does two things. Barnes, and “as you go through the y team maintains two large One, it makes sure people are solving stages of application development, applications for Société real-world problems. “Yesterday they you just keep paying a price.” M Générale, a Euro zone finan- were running a test organization, or an One way UPS is getting requirements cial services company with organization of business analysts,” says right from the start is with visualization 80,000 employees. One performs Mark Hilbush, UPS’s VP of IS. Two, it software from iRise, to the point that management operations on securities, puts skin in the game. Says Hilbush, analysts must justify why they wouldn’t while the other helps administer mu- “They know they’ll have to go back to do a simulation for any project involv- tual funds. Also, we’re responsible for their teams and consume it.” ing a user interface. Three people are a J2EE and Oracle PL/SQL project for UPS treats application life-cycle critical to getting requirements right up managing mutual fund services in management as something it needs to front, Hilbush says: the business ana- Europe. With ever more on our plate, improve constantly, just like any step lyst, the IT architect, and the business I set out to cut development costs and in its core package delivery business. unit representative. increase productivity. Among the initiatives the company Another way is to make sure that The risks in maintaining finance apps have sizable business conse- quences. That’s one reason I turned OPEN SOURCE commercial printing. We also use agile to a management platform, Cast, Why Reinvent? InfoPrint techniques, for both integration with with automated application intelli- Integrates Free Code legacy platforms and creating new ap- gence to control the quality of criti- plications. By using appropriate open cal apps and increase productivity. source components integrated with in- By reading, analyzing, and seman- ith five operating systems to house code across our projects, we cut tically understanding code—our ar- support and people spread costs and work faster. chitecture includes 4 million lines of W across the United States, Eu- One warning for companies imple- code—the platform gives me visibil- rope, and Japan, it’s a challenge menting this development strategy: ity and control. Bottom line, we’ve to economically manage software de- It’s critical that we know the origins improved productivity 25% when velopment while meeting tight sched- of our code in the component ap- integrating new resources, because ules. Developing all our code in-house proach, so that we don’t leave the of simpler application architecture certainly isn’t practical. That’s why In- company open to unrecognized li- and better documentation that foPrint has turned to a multisource de- censing, and so that we can ensure mean a much easier learning curve velopment model, under which we consistency. We use Black Duck Soft- for new developers. Also, we’ve cut use open source components where ware’s automatic code-scanning tools in half the number of hot patches, appropriate and integrate them with to look at every component for li- since developers have a much bet- in-house code across our software censes, versioning, and other poten- ter understanding of the impact projects. tial problems. We view the scanning their changes have on other areas of Using open source is just one aspect process as a way to achieve standardi- the application. —Jean-René Calais, that makes this component-based de- zation in code reuse. Société Générale’s application velopment approach work at InfoPrint, —Mike Munger, InfoPrint’s development manager an IBM-Ricoh joint venture focused on manager of component development

36 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com AGILE DEVELOPMENT In testing and quality assurance, Idaho Makes Progress UPS is creating a consistent process Despite Legacy Apps across all application teams—the same tools, methodologies, and best prac- tices. The challenge is mostly cultural, he IT team at the Idaho De- getting people to change what they’re partment of Health and Wel- doing pretty well today, Hilbush says. T fare knew its mainframe-based trio spends time on the most valuable It ties into UPS’s broader effort to de- green-screen apps for process- requirements—the ones closest to sign app dev best practices that can ing applications for food stamps and UPS’s business, like modeling a step in work across the various development other aid weren’t ideal. The 22-year- the package-sorting process to see how methodologies—from waterfall to iter- old legacy system processed batches code could improve it, or understand- ative to agile—that UPS uses. UPS of eligibility applications overnight, ing how a rep uses software when han- doesn’t want to be “religious” about and if an input error led to a rejec- dling a customer complaint. To stay any methodology, and instead wants to tion, the corrected application had to focused on the business-specific prob- have teams considering the right ap- wait for the next batch process. It lems, UPS is working to standardize ar- proach for any given project. could take days or weeks to learn eas where it doesn’t get advantage. So if Hilbush warns, however, against let- why someone wasn’t getting benefits. a new mission-critical app must hit a ting any of these efforts to improve ap- But a multiyear, multimillion-dollar certain performance level, the server, plication life-cycle processes turn into overhaul was considered too risky. database, and configurations should “long-running, amorphous activities.” Previous attempts to re- follow the same blueprint that past Instead, he says, treat them exactly place the legacy system critical apps used. “It lets my develop- like a project to develop a piece of never got past user disagree- ers and architects focus on the business code—provide a clear scope, the right ments on requirements. problems and not on how to design people, a set time frame, and a meas- “We needed an agile ap- the next best high-availability in- urable goal. —Chris Murphy proach, and that went against frastructure,” Hilbush says. ([email protected]) the grain” of how things were done in the past, says Randy Ashton, senior project manager at the depart- CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT ment. In 2006, it settled on the Nikon Teaches SCM New Tricks Scrum method of agile development, using project tools from Danube, which lets developers start building t Nikon, we do what we call forensic source code analysis—review histori- before they have every requirement. cal code changes to track how software evolves—using software configura- There were areas everyone agreed A tion management tools. That approach lets developers learn from one an- should improve, such as cutting de- other’s coding techniques, comments, and changes. lays in food stamp eligibility. Using But we’re finding that SCM tools (we use Perforce) help in areas beyond con- Scrum principles, the division’s IT ventional version tracking. As an international company, Nikon uses distrib- team developed in two months a uted development to increase productivity and parallel develop- proof-of-concept Web app that gave ment to let us to work on multiple projects without collisions. an unofficial eligibility determination By letting developers work in these modes, and share and com- in real time. If the application in- municate about project resources, SCM tools improve trans- cluded a clerical error, it could be parency among teams. They help in code review sessions, caught before being sent for over- build and release automation, and code reuse. And we’ve night batch processing. used SCM to develop a number of custom tools for automat- Idaho’s still chipping away at the ing processes, including automating daily build-and-smoke testing, delivery legacy replacement project. But with of documentation and schedules to our development wiki, and elements of its Scrum approach, it’s delivering project management. quick-hit apps that bring program By thinking of SCM as a medium for developers to share resources in a well-struc- improvements along the way. tured fashion, it’s become a core part of our infrastructure, and we continually find —Marianne Kolbasuk McGee new ways to use it. —Wilken Rivera, Nikon’s software infrastructure administrator ([email protected])

June 8, 2009 37 [COVER STORY] APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT Cancer Center Builds E-Records From Scratch

n extraordinary thing has hap- “the world of research and the world of pened at M.D. Anderson Cancer clinical care are coming increasingly to- A Center, one of the premier treat- gether,” Vogel says. Buying packaged ment and research facilities. software for electronic records would What began as a skunk-works project have only helped with clinical care, Vo- about 10 years ago is now a custom- gel says, and it wouldn’t have been fine- Vogel’s team builds instead of buys coded electronic patient record system tuned to the nuances the center brings [ accessed by up to 10,000 people at a to cancer care. Vogel and his team be- which tracks the thousands of tissue time working on the cutting edge of lieved M.D. Anderson could spend samples stored around the facility and cancer care. about the same money developing its the research it’s tied to, with links to It’s not supposed to happen this way own software as buying it, and get ex- the related patient’s records. anymore. We buy packaged software, actly what it needed. Vogel credits the Along the way, M.D. Anderson had to or at the very least we write gigantic re- center’s executives with seeing the op- grow up as a software development or- quirements documents and ship them portunity. “It’s a risky business,” Vogel ganization. In the early years, the proj- to outsourcers. But as the need for an admits. “Executive management typi- ect that grew to become ClinicStation electronic health data system became cally doesn’t like to take risks with IT.” was informal, used by a small core for clear at M.D. Anderson, the IT team But it worked. The custom Clinic- very specific needs, and people could became convinced the software had to Station software has been used for get features added just by talking with be built to fit the center’s unique mis- about three years as the way clinicians Chuck Suitor, one of the champions of sion and how its clinicians and re- access electronic patient data, access- the project through its early years who searchers work, says CIO Lynn Vogel. ing close to 50 data sources. The center continues as director of electronic Led by elite academic and treatment has added integrated modules called records development and support. centers such as M.D. Anderson, which ResearchStation to manage data used “So you ended up with a set of very is affiliated with the University of Texas, in research projects, and TissueStation, useful, very visionary products that

REQUIREMENTS Delphi Engineers Use Single Repository Delphi’s lead engineer on the project, and this system “pro- vides the backbone for this.” For a typical vehicle, Delphi can get equirements management discipline isn’t just for about 300 different electronic managing code. At auto component maker Delphi, documents, each with 20 to 30 R the strategy that developers use to get software right pages, and the requirements is the same one used to manage all the requirements Delphi needs to work may be an automaker gives the company to build a particular spread throughout many places in the documents. Besides piece of a vehicle. having search, a central repository lets Delphi engineers Delphi has created a single repository for all requirements compare original specs against changes the customer made of a given component, helping Delphi’s 1,500 software, elec- along the way. trical, and other engineers discuss and comply with require- It’s critical work because if engineers misinterpret or ments, even when those people are spread around the overlook a requirement, or fail to incorporate new require- world, including its 22 software development sites. The ments that customers frequently add, Delphi must rework repository, based on IBM’s Doors software, also is used for the design—which can burn a month or two, says Wentz, search—for example, to trace details about where within and add anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of the software architecture and code a particular required dollars in new design costs, depending on the importance function shows up. of the requirements. In an industry hit as hard as auto- “It’s a fairly complex scheme to track requirements, motive, he says, “reducing engineering costs is critical for where they were implemented, tested,” says Cory Wentz, survival.” —Marianne Kolbasuk McGee

38 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com didn’t have a terribly disciplined devel- the source for the good ideas for what opment strategy, documentation, and all the software should do,” says Suitor. The those things that for creative, smart peo- team uses simulation software from ple are a pain in the neck,” Vogel says. iRise, for example, to show doctors new One step in that maturation came features before they’re coded, and to AGILE DEVELOPMENT when Microsoft ended support for Vi- communicate requirements to out- XDx Crafts A Platform sual Basic 6, with which the software sourcers, which the center has increas- To Track Clinical Tests was written. The development team ingly relied upon in recent years. concluded it essentially had to rearchi- The system’s based on a service-ori- tect the project, and it had to admit ented architecture, and this year Dx is a molecular diagnostics that it wasn’t up to that job. The center brought the first major test of reusing company on the cutting edge hired Microsoft specialist Avanade to the code. It involved giving read-only X of genomics, focusing on dis- rearchitect the project and to help the Web access of ClinicStation to referring covery and development of team move to a professional, docu- physicians and patients. It meant re- noninvasive gene testing in the areas mented development process. using code for tasks like calling up test of transplant medicine and autoim- That was a cultural shift for people results data, but adapting the results to munity. We’re one of the first to de- used to the talk-to-Chuck-Suitor ap- be presented as generic HTML. velop products from the Human proach. Now there’s a formal feature re- Months into the project, hospital Genome Project. view process, an emphasis on efficiency policy makers decided to put a seven- The IS team routinely had to build and code reuse, and professional testing. day delay before lab results showed up business applications to track and an- Just executing a test to find if a new fea- in the patient’s view, so a doctor can alyze tests for clinical studies that ture conflicts with existing ones can now discuss a result with a patient before draw data from disparate sources. We take three days. “The real challenge was the patient sees it. “That’s where you’re needed a standard application. After not unlike going from a startup to going reusing, but also adding new variations evaluating the usual development to a commercial venture,” Vogel says. at the same time,” says Suitor. The platforms to build it on—.Net, PHP, The development team has stuck to team—and the code—were up to the and open source Java—we settled on its reliance on doctors and researchers to task. The Web version was running in OutSystems Agile Platform, our first drive development, however. “They’re four months. —Chris Murphy big move to agile development. We delivered our new Analysis Request Management System in six weeks—a company record. ARMS CODE REUSE automates tracking of clinical trial Defense Department Tries Opening Up—A Bit samples and pathology requests for diverse studies, while managing all our studies’ clinical data and sample or the Department of Defense, time has been a bottleneck in software develop- workflows. We had three code ment. Following government rules for procurement and testing, just getting sprints of a week or two each, plus a F the development environment in place for a project can stretch into months. week of fine-tuning. The DOD’s IT group, the Defense Information Systems Agency, is trying One of agile development’s biggest to change that in part with its Forge.mil approach, modeled on open source advantages is the communication it code-sharing sites such as SourceForge. Forge.mil, though, will only hold ap- demands between IT and business proved open source code or code OK’d for sharing within the department. users. With agile, the most impor- Forge.mil, based on CollabNet software, allows Net-centric collaborative de- tant features are developed first, fol- velopment, and provides a destination for cross-program sharing and reuse of lowed by refinements. We built code. That should let developers get large projects developed, fielded, and tested mock-ups, some with bare function- faster. Launched last fall, it’s now generally available for unclassified use, with 70 ality, to get feedback and add value projects under way, for combat, business, and intelligence. quickly. It engages business users in It’s about more than delivering code “faster, better, cheaper,” says Rob Viet- the development process—and en- meyer, Forge.mil’s project director. It’s also about new ideas. The ability to tap sures adoption of the applications. into collaborative tools without a long acquisition process lets developers try “risky —Jochen Scheel, XDx’s director things” in development, he says. And if people don’t like the capability, they can of software development, and turn it off without a big loss of time or money. —Marianne Kolbasuk McGee Stefan Meier, IS associate director

June 8, 2009 39

techSTRATEGY Virtual I/O Ups Bandwidth New approaches give a lift to multicore servers, but there are some risks

he conventional way to en- sensitive apps sharing a single physi- sure sufficient bandwidth to cal connection can get higher priority virtualized multicore servers than, say, users surfing Facebook. is to supply Gigabit Ethernet Tconnections for each processor core To InfiniBand And Beyond on the host. These, plus additional Meanwhile, Voltaire and Mellanox, dedicated connections for manage- among others, offer I/O virtualizers ment and virtual machine migration, based on InfiniBand—the high-speed and even more Fibre Channel or Gi- (up to 40 Gbps), lossless, low-latency gabit Ethernet connections for stor- switch fabric at the heart of most The I/O VIRTUALIZATION age, result in cable and switch-port Essentials [TECHNOLOGIES high-performance computing clus- sprawl. ters. InfiniBand systems can provide Naturally, Fibre Channel players are Pros Cons two to four times the bandwidth of pushing enhanced 10-Gbps Ethernet 10-Gbps > Supplies > Standards even 10-Gbps Ethernet for server-to- Ethernet bandwidth aren’t final for with Fibre Channel over Ethernet with FCoE plus storage FCoE or needed server I/O functions such as VM mi- (FCoE) as a less expensive alternative. >Major vendor extensions gration. These systems connect Although 10-Gbps Ethernet addresses support >Potential political servers to InfiniBand switches and issues between bandwidth and FCoE converged net- network and use InfiniBand-to-Ethernet and Fibre work adapters boost performance, the storage groups Channel bridges to connect to a data standards for both FCoE and the Eth- center’s LAN and SAN resources. InfiniBand > Consolidates > Servers see ernet enhancements it requires haven’t with Fibre network and InfiniBand Voltaire’s 10-Gbps Ethernet/Infini- been ratified. Channel storage drivers, not Band line card has two 10-Gbps Ether- bridges >High server- Ethernet/ Fibre I/O virtualization options provide to-server Channel net ports, and 22 10/20-Gbps Infini- another approach. As a temporary al- bandwidth, Band ports for its Grid Director 2004 ternative to FCoE, a lower-cost con- low latency and 2012 switches. The host uses an solidation point between servers and Switches > PCIe card > Emerging IP-over-InfiniBand driver and the In- end-of-row FCoE switches, or a long- to external lets servers technology finiBand switch provides Layer 2 term solution, virtual I/O is worth a I/O chassis use unmod- from smaller bridging and Layer 3 and 4 routing to containing ified I/O vendors look now for the more adventurous. additional device drivers the Ethernet ports for data networking. Of course, those who use new tech- PCIe slots > Can support For storage access, Voltaire offers a additional I/O, nologies without major player sup- such as video storage router with two 10/20-Gbps port take the risk their virtual I/O sys- InfiniBand ports and four 4-Gbps Fi- tem choice will look like Token Ring bre Channel ports. Hosts use iSCSI or in a few years. The virtual NICs and HBAs let the vir- iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) and Virtualization-aware devices—net- tual machines keep their MAC ad- the storage router maps iSCSI targets work interface cards (NICs) and host dresses as they migrate from host to to Fibre Channel logical unit numbers. bus adapters (HBAs)—show promise host, alleviating network security and Mellanox’s BridgeX, a bridge appli- as cost-effective and flexible ways to zoning concerns. Virtualization-aware ance, has four 40-Gbps InfiniBand s e

handle virtual I/O. These schemes al- I/O devices also support quality-of- ports facing the servers and 16 8- g a m i r

locate multiple virtual NICs and vir- service measures, so virtual NICs and Gbps Fibre Channel ports or 12 10- e t i p u tual HBAs to specific virtual machines. HBAs supporting critical or latency- Gbps Ethernet ports facing networks J

informationweek.com June 8, 2009 41 [techSTRATEGY]

or storage. The appliance uses Mel- $1,500 for a converged network lanox’s ConnectX cards, which allow DIG DEEPER adapter—that lets servers use the I/O each port to act as a 40-Gbps Infini- Virtualization Showdown We put leading VM device drivers without modifying them. Band host channel adapter or a 10- platforms to the test.See the results at PCIe extension-based systems can Gbps Ethernet port. informationweek.com/alert/servervm allocate virtual interfaces to hosts as vir- Servers can take advantage of Mel- tual devices; cards that don’t support See all our InformationWeek Reports at lanox’s FCoE storage drivers to connect I/O virtualization are assigned to a sin- informationweekreports.com to an FCoE switch such as Cisco’s gle host, allowing video, data acquisi- Nexus 5000 or Brocade’s 8000, or use tion, and other specialized cards to be BridgeX to gateway FCoE traffic to a Fibre Channel modules use QLogic sil- shared across multiple hosts. Fibre Channel switch. BridgeX emu- icon, QLogic’s SANsurfer and Fibre Virtual I/O may have its biggest im- lates N-Ports (Fibre Channel host con- Channel driver let administrators man- pact in the blade server market, where nections) to the Fibre Channel switch, age virtual HBAs with management a smaller number of I/O channels looking like a series of Fibre Channel tools for storage area networks. helps vendors increase server density. HBAs. Unlike an FCoE switch, Bridge- Alliances are starting to form, with IBM X doesn’t provide naming or other fab- Slot Machines integrating NextIO technology into its ric services. Aprius, NextIO, VirtenSys, and oth- BladeCenter HT and Dell reselling Xsigo’s I/O Director package uses In- ers are shipping or will ship this year Xsigo’s I/O Director. finiBand as the connection medium to products that extend servers’ PCI Ex- Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gbps Ethernet, press, or PCIe, slots through a switch Howard Marks is chief scientist at Net- and Fibre Channel modules. Host sys- to an external I/O chassis containing works Are Our Lives, a consulting firm. tems connect to the 24 20-Gbps Infini- additional PCIe slots. These systems Write to us at [email protected]. Band ports but can use Ethernet driv- use a low-cost, stateless PCIe extender A longer version of this story is at informa ers for the Ethernet ports. Because the card—which lists for $200, versus tionweek.com/1223/virtio.

Rolling VIRTUAL DESKTOP Review INFRASTRUCTURE Sychron Speeds Delivery [ TOOLS Business value Of Virtual Desktops We’re testing several virtual desktop in- frastructure products’ease of installation, ot too long ago, even VM- formation Services 5, 6, or 7, and back- functionality, and security. ware engineers would rec- ends to the OnDemand Control Center, ommend Sychron as a pro- which is the heart of Sychron’s provi- Reviewed so far visioning platform for sioning and automation engine. By cre- > VMware VDI 2.1: Server virtualization Nlarge-scale virtual desktop deploy- ating what Sychron refers to as Habi- stalwart has strong desktop chops, too. informationweek.com/1215/vmware.htm ments. Of course, much has changed in tats, administrators can associate a the past two years, with Citrix and VM- group of virtual desktops to a particular > Citrix XenDesktop: Built-in multime- ware investing in their own connection function, role, or Active Directory user dia enhancements ease the virtual desk- brokering and provisioning capabilities. group, and tweak certain metrics and top experience for clients. Having tested both VMware VDI and benchmarks to improve performance informationweek.com/1227/citrix.htm Citrix XenDesktop for our virtual and the user experience. desktop infrastructure Rolling Review, In the Habitat we created in the lab, > Sychron OnDemand Desktop: Solid provisioning and resource management; we sought to discover what business the OnDemand Control Center ably can be pricey for smaller organizations. value OnDemand Desktop could pro- spun up virtual machines, keeping vide to our fictional and geographically ahead of the demand curve to ensure Still to come dispersed legal services firm, Bits and quick access to virtual desktops. As Ericom,Virtual Iron, Parallels, Provision Bytes LLC (see the testing scenario in users log off for the day, OnDemand Networks, Leostream, Sun the Rolling Review kickoff at informa dynamically spins down virtual desk- tionweek.com/1206/virtual.htm). tops and recovers system resources. More about this Rolling Review informationweek.com/1206/virtual.htm The OnDemand Desktop portal in- Provisioning capabilities in OnDe- stalls on any server running Internet In- mand are on par with the other players

42 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com in this Rolling Review. OnDemand gives of any size. However, the sell for administrators plenty of options for au- Our SYCHRON smaller shops will be tougher. On- tomatically timing out or logging out Take[ONDEMAND DESKTOP Demand Desktop lists for $1,000 per virtual desktop sessions when updates hypervisor core, compared with View to the master image are ready to deploy. > OnDemand Desktop gets high marks as 3’s list price of $1,815 for the 10-pack While there’s plenty to like in OnDe- a simple yet powerful virtual desktop Gold version. mand, we pride ourselves on finding the connection broker and automation engine. OnDemand is a worthwhile invest- gotchas. Mapping Active Directory ment from a provisioning and resource groups or user roles to Habitats requires > We especially liked OnDemand’s management perspective, but it’s not a ability to anticipate increased load and tweaking an XML-like system file. And if spin up virtual desktops, then spin back killer app that all VDI users must have. you’re looking to back-end your virtual down to recover server resources as The brokering and provisioning capa- desktops to Hyper-V, you’ll need to run a usage drops. bilities of View 3 and XenDesktop are separate OnDemand Command Center extremely comparable, with the excep- instance. Finally, if Citrix XenServer is > Sychron Habitats tie users to groups of tion of a few uniquely implemented your hypervisor of choice, you’re out of virtual desktops by role or Active Direc- OnDemand Habitat features. luck because Sychron has no immediate tory group using customizable metrics. plans to add support for Xen. The com- Randy George ([email protected]) is an > OnDemand Desktop lacks support for pany plans to address some of these Xen, it can’t centrally manage virtual industry analyst covering security and shortcomings in a future release. desktops hosted by Hyper-V and ESX in infrastructure topics. A longer version There’s little doubt that OnDemand a single console, and initiation files must of this story is at informationweek.com/ can add value to VDI implementations be tweaked to accomplish simple tasks. 1233/sychron.htm.

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44 June 8, 2009

practicalAnalysis ART WITTMANN

It’s Not Disruptive If It’s Not Cheaper

t’s been an astounding few weeks as we’ve cal ones, it’s more of a head scratcher. Add in a watched the once largest company in the configuration database, patch management, Iworld slide into bankruptcy. At its peak, application performance management, and or- General Motors produced more than 6.5 mil- chestration software—all required to automate lion cars and trucks per year. Last year it pro- a data center—and you can quickly chalk up a duced about 2.2 million, according to The seven-figure price tag for a data center with as New York Times. Meanwhile, GM’s domestic few as a hundred servers. workforce, which once numbered 600,000, We often talk about virtualization and the will shrink to just 40,000 when it emerges automation that should come with it as a One limiting factor from bankruptcy. While the decline in hourly disruptive technology, but by definition a workers is related to the decline in output, disruptive technology must change the cost for the widespread there’s more to it than that. of doing business. So far, software providers Beginning in the late ’70s, the auto industry are charging more than the mass market will adoption of data transformed itself from the au- bear, making the calculation center automation tomation levels that Henry for jumping headlong into Ford pioneered to its modern true data center automation a is the price of the state through heavy use of in- tough sell, particularly to dustrial robots. The result was CFOs who may not fully ap- technology.But that’s that a good chunk of welders preciate the value of a more beginning to change. and painters in particular were nimble IT organization. made obsolete by automation. Software vendors had better The same thing is about to be ready to sharpen their pen- happen in IT. For the auto in- cils, because this is the sort of dustry, the numbers were game that Microsoft plays very pretty simple: A robot typically well. There’s no doubt that it’s costs less than two years of an employee’s still playing catch-up against VMware, and compensation, and the tasks at hand are others will offer management software with highly repetitive and generally unhealthy for more features, but you can bet that Microsoft humans. While provisioning servers and stor- will set the bar for midmarket data center au- age doesn’t rank up there with welder’s chills tomation pricing and functionality. Its close or inhaling paint for a living, it’s a task that partnership with Citrix has resulted in a good can and will be automated in every data cen- management product in System Center, and ter that has more than a handful of servers. a great add-on with Citrix Essentials. Just as One thing that’s slowing that progress is the Microsoft marginalized Novell with its file pricing of virtualization management and au- sharing, Active Directory, and adequate man- tomation software. When you look at a agement tools for each, it can do the same to $150,000 industrial robot, you get the sense of automation vendors. what you’re paying for. Precise control sys- tems, lots of servos and motors, heavy-duty Art Wittmann is director of InformationWeek construction, and the rest make the price un- Analytics. Write to him at awittmann@ derstandable. When you look at a $150,000 techweb.com. You can download our data cen- piece of software with a 20% annual licensing ter automation report at informationweek fee that creates virtual machines from physi- .com/report/automation.

46 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com

down toBusiness from the editor ROB PRESTON

IT Organizations And The ‘Gateway Recession’

orrester Research CEO George Colony downturn every five years as an opportunity calls this the “gateway recession,” the to overhaul the IT infrastructure to position Fend of the line for business as usual the company for the next growth wave. and the true beginning of the digital econ- This gateway recession is also an opportu- omy, where everything from innovation to nity to change the culture from one that’s in- customer relationship building and brand ternally focused on “user” co-workers to one loyalty will be turned upside down. that’s externally focused on paying custom- This recession will be particularly disrup- ers. At its best, business technology is an in- tive for the business technology organizations strument to deliver more revenue and profits. Today’s economic that underpin the digital economy. In the The most valuable tech pros are customer- previous post-dot-com recession, IT was facing retailers, bankers, brokers, and ship- climate calls for a taken to the woodshed for a lesson in fiscal pers, not just IT trench dwellers. And as responsibility—the calculus of ROI and the such, they’re less vulnerable to being out- much deeper and art of “doing more with less.” Today’s reces- sourced or laid off in a cost-cutting binge. more disruptive sion calls for a much deeper and more dis- Another “gateway” realization is the need ruptive self-evaluation, where tech organiza- to give customers, partners, and employees self-evaluation than tions must (finally) reduce the 70% to 80% freer access to one another via social media, of their budgets that goes to system upkeep Web 2.0 collaboration tools, consumer de- business technology to free up more money for investments that vices, and other “contraband” systems. As in- leaders are used to tilt the competitive playing field. The bright- dustry regulations get stricter and the world est CEOs and boards of directors will stand gets more menacing, the impulse is to move for nothing less. (We’ll be exploring these is- in the opposite direction: Lock down every- sues in depth with CIOs and other CXOs at thing! But even the most regulated compa- the InformationWeek 500 Conference, Sept. nies realize they can’t wrap their processes 13 to 15 in Monarch Beach, Calif., under the and information assets in a hermetically theme “Navigating The Boardroom.”) sealed pouch. Colony tells of the defense David Thomson, an expert on the attrib- contractor CIO who recently said he’s far utes of high-growth companies, says the more concerned about making the company challenge for CIOs in a recession isn’t to cut attractive to young people accustomed to us- their spending from 2.1% of revenue to ing the latest tech tools than he is with losing 1.9%. It’s to change the spending mix. Lead- sensitive information to leakage. Clearly, ing growth companies understand that CIOs there must be a middle ground. must invest more of their budgets in systems Of course, it’s easy to oversimplify the that drive growth and boost the efficiency of transformation at hand. Organizations don’t other company departments, whether supply change overnight. But just as every CEO chain, sales, or product development, so that must kill certain businesses or reengineer when the economy turns, the company is them every five years, says HCL Technologies even better positioned to bury its rivals. CEO Vineet Nayar, so must CIOs turn their New architectures and business models are own organizations upside down. in play to change that spending mix, from virtualization to software as a service to off- Rob Preston is VP and editor in chief shore outsourcing. One Fortune 50 CIO re- of InformationWeek. You can write to Rob cently told me that he almost welcomes a at [email protected].

48 June 8, 2009 informationweek.com