Allow me to prophesize! You must specialize. It's time to proselytize! Join the forces of leading resellers who are no longer counting vendor authorization medallions and revenues as their key benchmark of success. Rather, leading players (see below news item that provides some examples) MUST focus on TTI (Time To Implementation) and ROI, while de-emphasizing product sales.

(Pause for slight transgression)

Trailer from the New Pacino/Williams movie, Insomnia:
(Williams Speaking) "Killing changes you. There's NO turning back."

Friends in the SMB Channel, you know what? Focusing on selling services changes you.

This "change" doesn't mean you have to say NO to product sales opportunities but that has to come second, as an afterthought. Your "Go To Market" has to be SERVICES. And not just hanging a shingle on your door that says (pick one, maybe two) "Security," "Wireless," or "Web Services."

You need to create domain expertise, publish Case Studies that outline the business challenge and how "you" went about architecting a solution and took steps through design, development and implementation. I believe outlining what products were used is almost secondary to the process that you instituted to ensure the project stayed on time and met its objectives

NEWS

What Do SMBs Seek From Professional Service Providers?
By Ted Kempf and Mika Krammer, Gartner

For our annual small and midsize business (SMB) "User Wants and Needs" survey, Gartner interviewed 122 small enterprises (annual revenue less than $100 million) and 74 midsize enterprises (annual revenue between $100 million and $499 million). The objective was to understand how important certain criteria are when SMBs select an IT professional services provider. We asked questions about 14 selection criteria regarding the purchase of five application-based services: customer relationship management (CRM), e-commerce, enterprise resource planning (ERP), procurement and supply chain management (SCM). Enterprises were asked to rate each selection criteria on a seven-point scale - one indicating not at all important, seven indicating extremely important. The data shows the mean score recorded for all SMBs across the five solution sets. The four most-important and three least-important criteria are presented (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:

SMB Professional Services Vendor Selection Criteria
Source: Gartner.

The most-important criterion was whether the vendor had an established track record and client references. Other criteria that were rated fairly high include vendors' demonstrating business process expertise, rapid time-to-market capabilities, industry-specific expertise and the ability, through a network of partnerships, to offer a complete end-to-end solution, from business-strategy consulting to onshore (staff and services originate from home country) application outsourcing. Although it is interesting to note the highest-rated selection criteria, it is equally interesting to analyze the selection criteria SMBs view as less important. Offshore (staffing and services originate from location outside of home country - e.g., a client in the United States contracts services from India) application maintenance and development capabilities were rated the lowest in importance. This was surprising to learn, given the sharp increase in use of offshore services by large enterprises during the past 12 to 18 months and the fact that offshore services can often be 20 percent to 30 percent less expensive than similar services delivered onshore. Comparing this data to data gathered on what Tier 2 (less than $250 million in revenue per year) IT professional services vendors believe enterprises of all sizes value when selecting third-party vendors, it seems that enterprises and vendors almost see "eye to eye." Sixty-two Tier 2 vendors were surveyed for Gartner's 2001 market trends study ("Tough Times in 2001 Focus the IT Professional Services Market on Business Optimization," ITES-WW-MT-0101). They listed their track record, technology expertise and cultural fit with clients (ease to work with) as three of the most-valued selection criteria. However, they did not rank their ability to offer a totally integrated solution quite as high.

Developing Vendor Messages: The data supports the idea that vendors selling into the SMB space should focus on creating a go-to-market strategy. They should highlight their ability to deliver fully integrated or repeatable IT solutions to specific vertical markets, as shown in project successes and client testimonials. This appeals to SMBs' need for simplicity and responds to the conservative technology adoption profile of most SMBs that seek validation that their peers are conducting similar activities and being successful in them.

Core to this message should be the vendor's ability to demonstrate a return on investment for the client by deploying a solution that addresses a specific business-process inefficiency. For example, deploying an SCM solution that allows suppliers to view current inventory levels of a midsize manufacturing enterprise with hundreds of relationships worldwide differs significantly from a midsize construction company that has only a few local relationships.

Many IS managers within SMBs see the need for professional services but struggle with making the business case and justification for the investment. Through 2004, only 40 percent of SMBs will articulate the business value of IT well enough to capture sufficient discretionary funds for nonutility initiatives (0.7 probability). Vendors should limit their marketing messages that focus on highly customizable solutions, their ability to host prepackaged solutions, and their offshore application maintenance and development capabilities.

SMBs cannot afford to wait or pay for highly customizable solutions. Most SMBs do not appear heavily influenced by vendors that can outsource prepackaged solutions onshore or maintain and develop applications offshore. Starting in 2003, vendors should revisit the topics of prepackaged solution hosting and offshore maintenance and development. Both issues, but particularly offshore maintenance and development, will become increasingly important to SMBs through 2003.

Bottom Line

Vendors can lower the barriers to gaining share in the elusive, yet lucrative, SMB market by understanding: 1) SMBs' need for simplicity, driven by limited resources (human and capital); and 2) SMB IS professionals' need to demonstrate business value for technology investments in products and services.

NEWS

A few shimmering stars in the Integrator Enterprise
By ChannelMedia Staff

GTSI revenues continues to climb
GTSI, the leading government information technology (IT) solutions leader, said revenues for the first quarter of 2002 - the highest first quarter revenues in GTSI's history -- increased 18.4% to $176.7 million from $149.3 million in the first quarter of 2001. This increase was due primarily to the value-added servicing of a variety of IT solutions contracts in place with Federal, State and Local governments. Net income for the first quarter of 2002 was $541,000, or $0.06 per diluted share, and represents a $1.7 million improvement from a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.15 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2001. The three months ended March 31, 2002 marks the first time that GTSI has reported profitable first quarter results since 1994; the Company has historically experienced weaker operating results in the first and second quarters of the year compared to the third and fourth quarters of the year. Management's efforts to leverage its operations in a more efficient manner also resulted in a significantly narrowed operating loss for the first quarter of 2002 of $875,000 versus $2.6 million for the first quarter of 2001. Dendy Young, Chief Executive Officer of GTSI, said, "Achieving profitable first quarter results for the first time in eight years is clearly an important milestone. While the Company's sale in March 2002 of equipment leases resulted in a significant increase in interest and other income, we also believe that the credit for this improvement is due, in part, to the positive impact of our sales and marketing realignment initiatives. This realignment, which resulted in the creation of more than a dozen Technology Teams to assist our customers in the areas of sales, engineering and integration, combined with increased IT solutions spending by Federal, State and Local governments, should strengthen GTSI's operating performance throughout the year." Mr. Young continued, "In April, we announced that GTSI is one of four awardees of the $1.3 billion, five-year PCHS-2 (Procurement of Computer Hardware and Software) contract to provide products and services to the Department of Veterans Affairs. In March, GTSI was notified that the Government formally exercised the first of three, five-year options to extend the GSA (General Services Administration) IT Schedule held by the Company through 2007.

"Our primary focus remains on serving the customer. Working in partnership with DynCorp, GTSI received the largest purchase order in the Company's history - approximately $26.2 million - to bolster the FBI's modernization program efforts under the TRILOGY contract. We are providing products and services to the FBI under GSA's Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM). This project has been accelerated following the September 11th attacks. In response to our customers' needs for more comprehensive solutions, we continue to add new partners to our Technology Teams to enable these experts to provide solutions in areas that have taken on greater recent significance. New relationships in the areas of web portals, Internet solutions, mobile and wireless, telecommunications and other high-end technologies enable us to answer our customers' needs for a wider range of enterprise solutions." Mr. Young stated, "According to FSI/Federal Sources, Inc., IT spending by the Federal Government is expected to rise in the wake of September 11th, increasing 6.1% to more than $48.5 billion in Federal Fiscal Year ("FFY") 2002 and 9.1% to $52.9 billion in FFY 2003. This includes increased budget support for defense- and homeland security-related needs. We believe that GTSI is well positioned to service this anticipated increased demand due to several factors, including:

• strong customer relationships built through nearly 20 years of providing IT products, services and solutions exclusively to Federal, State and Local Governments, as well as a senior management team with more than 100 years of industry experience;
• a reputation as a Trusted Partner, as evidenced by the broad range of contracts in place with civilian and defense agencies such as the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Department of Veteran's Affairs. GTSI is also the #1 Federal partner to vendors such as HP (NYSE: HWP), Panasonic, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW);
• a solutions approach with a focus on applying the best practices of the commercial sector to the Government IT market;
  
• expertise in UNIX & Wintel hardware, enterprise storage, networking infrastructure, software licensing and peripherals; and
  
• access to multi-vendor solutions from more than 1,300 manufacturers, publishers and service providers.
  

In related news, John Spotila was recently named President, COO of GTSI. Dendy Young continues to serve as Chairman of the Board and CEO. Prior to joining GTSI, Mr. Spotila served as Administrator of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Executive Office of the President. Appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, he helped shape White House information policy, providing leadership in the areas of electronic government, capital planning, information security and privacy.

Forsythe Technology Continues to Grow, Increases Customer Base 20%
Despite a difficult economy, Forsythe Technology Inc. kept its notable record intact in 2001 and recorded its 31st consecutive year of profitability. The privately-held provider of full-service technology infrastructure solutions said net income last year climbed 8 percent to $34 million, even after significant investment in acquisitions and hiring. Revenues increased 10 percent to $691 million; since 1996, the company has posted a striking 29 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenues. Forsythe found that even in challenging economic times, serving as a trusted, long-term partner has proven invaluable for many customers, including H&R Block, the Nasdaq stock market and U.S. Bancorp, who are profiled in its 2001 annual report. In fact, over the last year, Forsythe's customer base jumped 20 percent to 3,000 from 2,500.

"Our company succeeds because the marketplace values our model," says Rick Forsythe, Forsythe's chairman and president. "`Full-service technology infrastructure solutions provider' is a complex series of words, but its meaning is simple: Our customers can come to us for individual components to meet their technology needs. Or we can provide it all in a package that we evaluate, architect, build and manage for them. We make technology easier for customers by offering a single point of accountability."

Capitalizing on its unbroken, three-decades-long track record of profitability and its financial strength, Forsythe made several significant investments for the future in 2001. In December, the company merged its managed service provider (MSP) subsidiary, Nuclio Corp., with SevenSpace Inc. This was completed in January, creating SevenSpace/Nuclio Corp., the industry's "go-to" source for enterprise-level application and infrastructure management. Forsythe invested $3 million in the new company and retains a 40 percent ownership position. Forsythe also strengthened its position in several geographic areas and expanded its offerings through a combination of acquisitions and personnel additions. In particular, it expanded its security and IT-management capabilities, and also continued to develop expertise in such leading-edge technologies as content delivery, optical networking and storage-area networks.

"Listening to our customers is paramount, and their strong demand led Forsythe in these directions," explains Eva Losacco, senior vice president, Forsythe Technology and president of Forsythe Solutions Group, the product and consulting arm of Forsythe.

Unusual among private companies, Forsythe Technology has published an annual report for 16 years. Reflecting the company's financial openness and today's heightened concern toward straightforwardness in financial reporting, Albert Weiss, senior vice president and chief financial officer, notes that Forsythe's pre-tax earnings in 2001 fell slightly from the previous year, primarily because of investments made last year. After-tax earnings, however, climbed 8 percent.

"As a privately-owned company, we have the luxury of taking actions that lay a foundation for future growth and increased profitability, even if they are not reflected in near-term earnings," explains Weiss, who is also president of Forsythe McArthur Associates, Forsythe's leasing arm. "In 2001, for just this reason, we chose to make investments through acquisitions and increased staffing, particularly in the sales and consulting areas."

Pomeroy Computer Resources
In its most recent fiscal quarter, Pomeroy Computer Resources reported revenues of $186.3 million, 4.8% less than revenues of $195.7 million in Q1, 2001. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter ended April 5, 2002 increased 56.5% to $0.36 from $0.23 in Q1, 2001. Despite a reduction in revenues and product margins, the year over year profitability improved. "We are pleased with another profitable quarter and, particularly, that revenues are down only slightly versus last year despite continued depressed technology spending," said President Stephen E. Pomeroy. "Our focus on expense control and increasing operating efficiencies continues to positively impact our results. We continue to see profitability in our business and look forward to a rebounding economy along with the relaxation of IT budget constraints."

As a service solution provider, the Company offers three categories of service: enterprise consulting services, complete infrastructure solutions and lifecycle service offerings that are required to develop, deploy and support IT strategies. The Pomeroy Companies have clientele across a broad spectrum of industries, governments and educational organizations. The Pomeroy Companies employ approximately 1,800 individuals, more than half of whom are technical personnel, and maintain 30 regional facilities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. For the year ended January 5, 2002, the Companies reported revenues of $809 million.

By now you've probably heard the other foot fall. Yes indeed, software reselling pioneer Software Spectrum has been swallowed by Level 3 for about $37 a share in cash. Upon completion of the deal, Software Spectrum will integrate its operations with Corporate Software (the "other" software reselling powerhouse acquired by Level 3 earlier this year). Howard Diamond, chief executive of Corporate Software, will serve as chairman of the combined company. Judy Odom, current chairman and chief executive officer of Software Spectrum, will serve as CEO. Keith Coogan will be president and chief operating officer.

"This is a significant opportunity to provide a great value to our shareholders," said Odom. "We are also excited about the long-term opportunities created as a result of combining Software Spectrum and Corporate Software under the umbrella of Level 3 and its significant broadband and technology capabilities."

"The new company will have greater global reach, which is vital to our ability to continue to create outstanding services for our customers," said Keith Coogan, president and chief operating officer of Software Spectrum. "This transaction is good for our shareholders, our employees and our customers."

"Over the past few months Level 3 has moved to significantly expand its information services business," said James Q. Crowe, Level 3's chief executive officer. "We are doing so in order to take advantage of important economic and technology trends, including the continuing convergence of the broadband and software distribution industries. The agreement announced today is a key part of that effort. Software Spectrum is one of the nation's leading providers of software products and related services to Fortune 500 enterprises and other businesses. We believe that integrating their operations with those of our recently acquired Corporate Software subsidiary will deliver a number of short and long term benefits to our company and create value for our shareholders."

In March 2002, Level 3 completed the acquisition of Corporate Software, a private software distribution company based in Norwood, Mass., with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion. "After closing, we will combine the strengths of both Corporate Software and Software Spectrum," Diamond said. "The new company will have breadth and depth of capability and geographical reach that will be unique in the industry."

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NEWS

Intel sees increased profits with thru increased attention to partnerships.

Tom, I attended one of your recent presentations and you said that the "System Builder" Market and Var Channels were best performing areas for Intel last year and that you have lots of exciting new programs for this channel to accelerate your growth.

ChannelMedia: What is driving this growth? and give me a little more insight into that: How it happened, why? And what will it take for this channel to continue to grow for Intel?

Kilroy: Our channel growth has been driven by three factors: 1) growth in emerging markets in Asia (China and India), Latin America (Brazil and Mexico), and Eastern Europe, because white box builders continue to be a major source of PCs, laptops, and servers in these high growth markets; 2) Small/medium businesses, government, and education worldwide have continued to invest in PCs during the economic downturn; and 3) Intel's investment in channel programs and infrastructure over the past seven years is paying off.

In North America in the second half of 2001, Intel's channel CPU sales grew over 50% (vs. the same period in 2000). Motherboard sales in North America grew 27% year-to-year. Asia, Europe, and Latin America all saw record sales during the fourth quarter of 2001. For us to continue to grow, we need to keep our focus on emerging markets overseas as well as small and medium businesses domestically, and continue to stay ahead of the curve on products and programs for system builders and resellers.

ChannelMedia: What is Intel doing that is having a positive impact on its system builders and VAR's?

Kilroy: The most important thing is that we have the products they want. In desktop, this includes faster versions of Pentium 4 and allied motherboards and chipsets. Also, in 2002, Intel will support RDRAM, DDR, and SDRAM memory types to give channel customers a choice. By mid-year 2002, USB 2.0 will be available throughout the platform. USB 2.0 is up to 40 times faster than current USB 1.1 standard and supports high-speed peripherals such as digital video and CD-RW drives.

In the server/workstation area, we have the Xeon DP CPU and new server boards for the channel. Small and medium-sized businesses in North America continue to buy servers, so sales for these products are picking up in the channel. Intel has introduced NetBurst technology in dual processor servers with Xeon processor, and also launched a new Intel chipset for dual processor servers called E7500. Finally, for mobile, we just introduced the P4P-M into the channel.

ChannelMedia: And what areas are you working on to improve?

Kilroy: Intel is increasing its investment in its co-op advertising program for resellers, with the goal of doubling the licensee base for this program and offering new advertising options to help licensees more effectively utilize their co-op advertising funds.In 2001, Intel increased the number of field sales associates, trainingevents, and marketing programs available to channel members. Intel plans to continue its investment in the channel into 2002, including extending the scale and reach of its retail programs. Intel will conduct spring and fall Intel Channel Conferences in 2002. A total of 20,000 reseller firms participated worldwide at the last ICC, held in fall 2001. Also, a series of hands-on, highly technical solutions training modules for Intel desktop, server and mobile products will be held each quarter in 2002.

Finally, Intel's Premier Provider program will continue to expand its membership with increased focus in emerging markets. (The Intel Premier Provider program is Intel's top channel membership program for resellers and solutions providers.)

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SMB DIGEST

Corporate Software + Software Spectrum = Level3, Comark, Synnex, TechData and lots of great Gartner Research

Arrow Electronics signed a definitive agreement to sell all of the assets of Gates/Arrow Distributing to Synnex. Gates/Arrow, the business unit within Arrow's North American Computer Products Group that sells computer products such as printers, monitors, other peripherals, and software to value added resellers in North America, accounted for approximately 5% of Arrow's sales in the March quarter. The transaction does not involve Arrow's midrange businesses (SBM, SupportNet, and MOCA), Arrow Enterprise Storage Solutions, SSD, CSD, Arrow/Wyle Computer Products, or the other business units in the North American Computer Products Group.

"Over the past several years, our strategy has been to focus increasingly on our midrange computer products businesses, where our value add is greater, and to reduce the relative importance of the lower gross margin Gates/Arrow business," said Francis M. Scricco, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arrow. "This transaction provides the most attractive avenue for Arrow to exit the Gates/Arrow business while best fulfilling our obligations to our customers, suppliers, and employees," he added.

Corporate Software recently made some enhancements to its business-to-business e-commerce site, CorpSoft Central, that make doing business with the global software reseller even easier. In response to customer feedback and requests, Corporate Software focused on increasing usability and customization in its latest upgrade. "It is our mission to consistently exceed our customers' expectations and to be the company that is most supportive of customer needs," said Janice Bedsole, Corporate Software's vice president of global marketing, who leads the Company's e-business services. "We are always on the look out for ways to make it easier and more efficient for our customers to do business with us, and the ongoing enhancements to our e-commerce site are a mirror reflection of the rest of our business." CorpSoft Central is a robust online software procurement and management service that provides Corporate Software customers with a complete view of their software purchases, which makes it easy to plan for, buy and manage software licenses. From quick and accurate quoting and order placement, to detailed, Software & Information Industry Association-certified proof of purchase reporting - CorpSoft Central provides customers with Web tools that help cut costs and reduce compliance-related risks. CorpSoft Central plugs into all major procurement systems and is Ariba Ready and Commerce One RoundTrip enabled.

Consolidation Happens! Or doesn't IT?
The IT services industry will face significant consolidation within the next five years, but not necessarily from traditional mergers and acquisitions, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner. As end-user organizations and services organizations look to leverage their business process and industry expertise, they will look to pursue new types of partnerships and joint ventures. The Business Services Value Chain is one way to look at a new consortium of players on the competitive landscape. These new partnerships could result in consolidation and in new competitive lock-out strategies for specific industry solution areas. Gartner Dataquest says the Business Services Value Chain is a framework for a group of equal business partners to come to the table with specific, market-leading competencies, identifying a group of similar buyers, and delivering that vertical solution repeatedly, reliably and cost-effectively.

"If successful, these consortiums of partners could create competitive barriers, realize high client satisfaction and reach new levels of profitability that may feed more development funds into designing more innovative solutions," said Jennifer Beck, group vice president and research fellow for Gartner Dataquest's IT Services program.

Gartner Dataquest analysts say that with 42 percent of companies planning to consolidate their shortlists for IT service providers, vendors have a compelling reason to more closely align solution R&D, partnering and marketing to secure a place on the value chain. Today, 25 percent of the service revenue flows through other service providers, not directly to end-user customers.

This value chain approach will help create more reliable, cost-effective industry solutions that can be benchmarked for specific business process objectives. Gartner Dataquest analysts say the value chain approach to building solutions has some inherent disciplines that discourage developing offerings in a traditional opportunistic fashion.

"The implications for consultancies and systems integrators are profound," Beck said. "By 2007, the demand for technical resources will be reduced and replaced by an increasing need for business process and business consulting expertise."

Comark, a leading technology solutions provider, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with DecisionOne Corporation to supplement its comprehensive portfolio of IT services.

SYNNEX, the well-known global IT design-to-distribution services company, recently signed an agreement with Samsung Electronics America Digital Information Technology Division to distribute their full line of TFT and CRT computer displays. These include the Natural Flat(TM) (NF) and DynaFlat(TM) (DF) series of monitors. According to Mike Van Gieson, SYNNEX' Vice President of Tier One Product Marketing, "We welcome the opportunity to include Samsung's line of monitors to offer to our reseller customers. Samsung is clearly a leading manufacturer, which complements our strategy of partnering with a limited number of world-class vendors that represent the best-of-breed products." According to Rey Roque, Vice President of Marketing for Samsung's Digital Information Technology Division (DITD), "We are very pleased to enter this distribution agreement with a company of SYNNEX' stature. This is a win-win situation for both companies, matching the power of Samsung's award-winning TFT and CRT monitor lines with the strength of SYNNEX' U.S. distribution operations."

Update on DBMS
The worldwide database management systems (DBMS) software industry experienced new license sales of $8.8 billion in 2001, a 1.4 percent increase from 2000 revenue of $8.7 billion, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner, Inc. As a result of its acquisition of Informix and solid growth of its DB2 line of databases, IBM managed to move past Oracle as the overall DBMS market share leader in new license software in 2001 (see Table 1). Most database vendors saw single-digit or negative growth, with the notable exception of Microsoft, which grew nearly 18 percent in 2001.

"The addition of Informix products gave IBM the critical push it needed to take the market leadership position," said Colleen Graham, industry analyst for Gartner Dataquest's Software Industry Research group. "Without Informix, the contest would have been essentially tied between IBM and Oracle, which were separated by a mere $30 million in new license revenue."

"Given the economic slowdown, the DBMS market was a revenue pressure-cooker in 2001, with the vendors competing vigorously for market share," said Betsy Burton, vice president and research area director for Gartner. "More than ever, clients were looking for the best cost/value equation."

Table 1
Worldwide DBMS Software New License Revenue Estimates for 2001
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)

The relational DBMS (RDBMS) software market accounted for 80 percent of the overall database industry, as revenue totaled $7.1 billion in 2001, a 1.6 percent increase from 2000. Oracle maintained its lead in this market, mainly as a result of its entrenched dominance of the Unix RDBMS subsegment.

The Windows RDBMS software segment grew 11 percent in 2001, with revenue of $2.55 billion. This growth rate was down from the 34 percent increase in 2000, but it was the strongest-growing segment within the overall DBMS industry. Microsoft moved into the No. 1 position in this segment with 39.9 percent of the market, followed by Oracle with 34 percent market share. Microsoft grew 25.3 percent in this segment, while Oracle's revenue declined 1.4 percent.

The worldwide Unix RDBMS software market declined 1.4 percent in 2001 as revenue totaled $3 billion. Oracle's revenue declined 5.7 percent, but it still had a dominant share (63 percent) of the market.

Opportunity Knocking for those in SPO Space, says Gartner

While some segments of the enterprise application software (EAS) markets have shown little or negative growth, the service process optimization (SPO) software market has been one of the bright spots for the software industry, according to Dataquest. Gartner Dataquest analysts said the worldwide SPO market grew more than 50 percent in 2001, to $272 million, and is forecast to grow another 50 percent in 2002 to $414 million. Demand for SPO software will continue as service organizations seek tighter financial controls and improved resource allocation. Although traditionally targeted at professional services organizations, SPO has been expanding its reach to internal IT and other service branches within organizations.

"In this competitive economy, characterized by renewed attention to efficiency and cost reduction, SPO offers the potential to streamline an organization's service management and delivery process," said Ted Kempf, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest's IT Services program. "As the adoption of SPO software increases, companies that offer point solutions, such as stand alone project management and time and expense capture tools, may find themselves at a strong disadvantage if they do not develop an integrated SPO solution."

Gartner Dataquest defines SPO software as integrated software designed to optimize the allocation and tracking of resources (people, intellectual capital and time) and administer outward functions and inward processes of service-intensive industries, organizations and departments. Because much of SPO functionality already exists, many EAS vendors are increasingly adding SPO to their product offerings and have begun to sell to their customer base. As SPO moves from competitive advantage to competitive necessity, EAS vendors not already active in the space must consider entry through product development, acquisition or, for the short term, partnerships with established SPO vendors.

"No clear market share leader has emerged, and as EAS vendors continue to penetrate the SPO space, they will validate the industry and increase competition," said Hams El-Gabri, analyst for Gartner Dataquest's Software Industry Research group. "Hosted models have recently gained popularity and are expected to continue to do so until clear signs of economic recovery are present. Traditional vendors should look for opportunity in alternative revenue models to supplement buyer choices."

SPO applications will continue to improve, offering better integration with front-and back-office customer relationship management (CRM), human resources and financial enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules. Gartner Dataquest analysts believe that SPO vendors that want to become market leaders in this space must enhance opportunity and resource management functionality, time and expense capture/project accounting, as well as improve reporting and forecasting abilities. Analytics will play a role in a rising trend toward real-time corporate decision making and are expected to become a critical driver for the growth and development of the SPO software market.

More information on the future of the SPO & PSA market will be presented at Gartner's SPO Summit which will be held July 17-19, 2002 at the Hilton Torrey Pines, in La Jolla CA. This event brings together IT professional services firms, internal IT departments and embedded services departments looking to implement solutions in the coming year, and is focused on exposing them to best of breed, as well as, fully integrated SPO products and research in an interactive format. For more information on this conference, please contact Charles Badoian at 603-471-4211 or via email at charles.badoian@gartner.com.

Symantec recently reported results for the fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year 2002, ended March 29, 2002. Symantec posted revenue for the quarter of $310.8 million, a 24 percent increase compared to $250.6 million for the same quarter last year. Revenue for fiscal year 2002 was $1.071 billion, a 14 percent increase compared to $944.2 million for fiscal year 2001.

3Com introduced a new networking solution - the 3Com(R) NJ100 Network Jack - which provide four 10/100 unmanaged switch ports that fit into any standard wall cut-out or modular furniture opening. Residing at the point where devices connect to an organization's network, the NJ100 Network Jack is installed in an organization's cubicle or office, conference room or classroom, giving four active 10/100 ports that are connected to a LAN switch in the wiring closet by a single Ethernet cable. "Today's announcement signals the North American market's acceptance to the 3Com(R) Network Jack solution," said Dennis Connors, president, Business Connectivity Company, 3Com Corporation. "Partners and resellers can now bring simple network connectivity to U.S. and Canadian enterprise networks, giving them revenue opportunity and the ability to bring enhanced value and innovative networking solutions to their customer base." "The 3Com multi-port NJ100 Network Jack solution is an innovation that will influence the growth of Ethernet even more," said Karl Griffith, director of Reseller Markets, Graybar. "Aside from the convenience the device provides to network designers and installers, it will further enhance a worker's mobility, whether it is in an office environment, manufacturing plant or a commercial location. Providing data or IP voice services to employees will be far easier than ever before." Ingram Micro Asia Ltd., a leading wholesale provider of technology solutions, products and services, and FalconStor Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: FALC), a leading provider of network storage infrastructure software, today announced a channel partnership to bring highly available network storage solutions to the South Asia marketplace.

Ingram Micro will distribute Sun's new VStor product line, consisting of FalconStor's IPStor bundled with the Sun Fire server, and offer services, training and education to provide corporate users with high performance, high availability to ensure business continuity. Ingram Micro becomes a FalconStor Authorized Education Center and will conduct an IPStor-certified Engineer program, as well as build an IPStor-based Open SAN demonstration facility to hold product demonstrations, education courses, and seminars.

"Ingram Micro recognizes the growing importance of data availability and believes that Sun hardware and FalconStor software together with our value add can provide users with a first-rate, comprehensive storage solution," said Francis Choo, senior director, systems and peripheral group, Ingram Micro Asia Ltd. "Leveraging our expertise in distribution and channel partnership with Sun and FalconStor in Singapore, we demonstrate again our commitment to our partners to serve the storage needs of corporations in Southern Asia."

IPStor complements the bundled storage offering by providing SAN-based services over Fibre Channel, IP/iSCSI, and NAS-based service over NFS and CIFS protocols. IPStor also offers storage services -snapshot, time-mark, zero-impact backup and replication- with minimal operating cost and highest level of reliability and availability.

RESEARCH

New Chips Spawn Growth in Server Market
By Steve Greenberg, ARS Server Analyst

PC vendors are betting that Intel's new server chips will help them win the jackpot by gaining market share and boasting new opportunity and growth in the server market. As technology takes large steps forward and prices continue to fall to all time lows, the server market has turned into a true buyers market. Competition in the PC-server industry has been quite active recently, a result largely due to Intel's new MP and Xeon chip releases combined with other technologies allowing improved management and reliability. Although the new processors alone set new performance benchmarks for Intel based servers, manufacturers must employ other strategies such as improved system management features, a focus on TCO (Total Cost of Operation), partitioning, and improved hot-swappable components, which boost system reliability and hardware capabilities, to distinguish a competitive advantage in the market.

Although competition in all server segments, including the low-end, midrange, and high-end segments, has been quite heated, the mid-range and high-end market segments are the areas with the most growth opportunity and are the center of attention for PC vendors. Not only have the new chips given Intel based server manufacturers such as Dell, IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard new platforms to compete amongst themselves with, but the chips have given them leverage to use Intel based solutions to fight Unix competition from Sun and other vendors. In fact, Sun Microsystems, the overall leader for Unix servers in 2001, was pushed out of the top spot in the fourth quarter by IBM, which has revised its product lines to use Intel's new high-end Xeon chips. For a long period of time, RISC-based servers were the dominant choice for Unix applications, but Intel's new chips clearly have widened this gap.

The recent buzz in the server industry is due to the new Intel MP Xeon and Prestonia Xeon chips based on the Pentium 4 core architecture. The Intel MP Xeon chip is designed for multiprocessor servers running four or more chips, while the Prestonia Xeon chip is for use in servers running single or dual processors. Intel's new Xeon MP chip runs at clock speeds nearly doubling that of the chip it replaces, the 900MHz Pentium III Xeon chip. In fact, the MP processors are offered ranging in clock speed from 1.4GHz, 1.5GHz and 1.6GHz, while the Prestonia runs at clock speeds of 1.8GHz, 2GHz and 2.2GHz. By utilizing the Pentium 4 architecture, Intel was able to attain these significant boosts in clock speeds. Compared to the Prestonia chip, the MP packs a few more features geared specifically for servers, including an on-chip Level 3 cache of up to 1MB. For resource intensive applications, such as online transactions, Intel claims the higher clock speed and memory associated with the new Xeon MP processors will help systems offer as much as a 40 percent performance improvement, compared with a Pentium III Xeon with 2MB of Level 2 cache.

Another enhanced feature of both chips is hyper-threading technology, which allows a single chip to execute two applications or processes at the same time. Hyper-threading almost makes a single CPU system act as if it were a dual processor system. One of the benefits to using the hyper-threading technology is that servers with a single processor will be able to get some advantage out of applications that have been designed to run on two processor servers.

However, there is also a down side to the performance; there is still only one patch of high-speed cache memory and one connection to the rest of the computer. A true dual-processor server doesn't face this problem. A clear benefit of hyper-threading technology is its ability to lower TCO in some instances due to software charges that are often based on the CPU count. Although hyper threaded chips are not an equal replacement for dual processor machines, they are much less expensive. Servers equipped with a single hyper-threaded chip differ from dual-processor systems in that two applications can't take advantage of the same processor simultaneously, rather only one application can be performed at a time. Scientific and business applications requiring large resources and high-performance will see the largest benefits from single hyper-threaded chips.

Vendors have taken great steps to adopt the new chips by either refreshing their current servers with the chips or by rolling out entirely new servers based on the chips. For instance, Dell was one of the first to offer the Prestonia Xeon chip in its PowerEdge 4600 server. Hewlett-Packard and IBM followed shortly and have since rolled out products based on the new chips. Intel anticipates that many companies will likely want to consolidate the duties of several servers onto one or two four-way machines, which could ultimately support large scale e-mail systems, databases, scientific applications, etc. However, these chips follow the recent introduction of the Itanium, which has not stirred as much demand as was originally anticipated. From a buyer's perspective, companies also often don't simply run out and buy the latest, most cutting edge server technology in the first few months of its introduction due to the associated high cost and effort involved in procuring and maintaining a server. It is often the case that manufacturers anticipate this, and are patient as buyers wait for new chips to be tested in the field and assured of no glitches or bugs.

Since servers are becoming more standardized, companies must turn to other features to distinguish a competitive advantage. IBM, Dell, Compaq, and HP have implemented other strategies such as new service offerings, improved hardware capabilities, and system management features to separate themselves from the competition. IBM has focused heavily on its project Eliza initiative, which is a major research initiative focused on developing systems that reduce the need of human intervention and can self manage. As a result of the project Eliza features being incorporated into servers, systems will become more efficient, more reliable by increasing up-time, and will potentially reduce the number of IT staff required to administer a company's network. Server partitioning, which was originally available on higher-end mainframe servers, is now becoming available on almost all server segments. Partitioning enables servers to become more efficient by dividing processing resources and balancing workloads. Another focus being widely implemented by server vendors is the concept of TCO, which manufacturers have been stressing in order to increase server sales. Not only are servers becoming cheaper for total cost of ownership over the long run, the upfront costs are also becoming cheaper than ever. Services and pricing remain key strategy in this market as well.

There is no doubt, that with time, servers based on Intel's new Xeon processors will be enough for companies to justify the switch from older technology. Not only do these systems offer higher performance than systems based on older Pentium 3 Xeon architecture, but the management and reliability components manufacturers have added to them are making them more attractive to buyers. The battle between server manufacturers will expand from performance and price as a market driver, to system management offerings, reliability and scalability benchmarks, improved hardware components, and the strategy of stressing TCO. Not only do servers based on Intel's new processors outperform older P3 Xeon based systems, but the total cost of ownership is lower. Since the new Xeon processors are based on the P4 core, which has already been in the market place for over a year, adoption for servers based on the new chips should be the opposite of the Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor, which has been a disappointment.

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RESEARCH

Wireless LANs - Who's Got the Connections

Wireless LANs are on a roll. Prices are falling, there is some interoperability among vendors and new extensions to standards promise to solve several nagging issues. Enterprises should pay attention. As soon as users first experience a wireless LAN (WLAN) they typically acclaim it as the way technology should work - seamlessly and without boundaries, accepting its limits as a network for a local area. Users are generally very pleased. And if first exposure comes at home, given the ability to watch the children, television or whatever, while simultaneously surfing at broadband speeds, the buyer becomes an immediate advocate. WLANs permit Ethernet to work without the tie to a plug in the wall. Although it will take some years for WLAN technology to match wired Ethernet, it is sufficiently close to bring real benefits, which are being experienced by more and more enterprises.

Standards

Wireless data networking has been available for many years. But the systems were proprietary and few enterprises adopted them. That all changed with the ratification of an Ethernet-like standard by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the establishment of a system for certifying that products conformed to the standard and would interoperate. Now the IEEE's 802.11b standard and the wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) certification form the baseline standard across the world. However, 802.11b is best thought of as 75 percent standard. It is missing multivendor roaming between access points and robust, standard security protocols. These issues, along with others, should be approved by YE02 (0.7 probability). In this Wireless and Mobile Spotlight, we outline the large set of 802.11 standards and provide detail about 802.11g - one of the important standards still under development.

Security

Security is the most pressing of the issues for WLANs. Security consists of two major components, encryption and authentication. The 802.11b standard's optional security encryption feature, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), features only a 40-bit encryption key and was famously hacked. However, we show that over-the-air encryption is less of an issue than some suggest. The standard's vulnerabilities can be overcome by implementing a single vendor's 128-bit proprietary encryption scheme or by using virtual private network (VPN) technology. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that a WLAN's range, unlike that for wide-area wireless networks, is limited. Hackers would have to be in the same facility or nearby, and they would need a degree of technical sophistication to overcome even 40-bit WEP. By mid-2003, 802.11i, an amendment to the 802.11 standard, should provide a standard set of encryption technologies to make this area even more robust. Authentication is more complex and there are many solutions. Implementations are often specific to individual enterprises. A wired/wireless standard - 802.1x - will attempt to standardize this area. However, overall, security should not be a deterrent to purchase, as long as best practices are employed.

Technology Road Maps

As is often the case, hardware vendors are developing products at the same time as the standards are being refined. They are racing to get products into the market and most are planning to follow first shipments with upgrades. Some of the upgrade paths are better chosen than others, but enterprises can expect workable upgrades to be available via firmware by 1H03, making today's investments viable for the future. One of the best ways of anticipating technology trends is to track the plans of semiconductor manufacturers and we expect chips supporting more than one protocol to appear by YE02. However, semiconductor manufacturers must tackle potential issues of interference between Bluetooth products and 802.11 products.

Anticipating Standards

For enterprises, the big question mark over future WLAN technologies is whether to proceed with what is available or to wait for some grand enhancement. In the WLAN world, the first grand enhancement is the prospect of moving from an 802.11b network to one running 802.11a. With 11b, the data rate is at up to 11Mbps in the 2.4GHz band. With 11a, the data rate is a theoretical 54Mbps (or, a realistic 33Mbps) in the 5GHz band. Beside supporting higher data rates, 11a will have more channels permitting greater frequency reuse and, thus, more users. It also avoids wireless transmitters operating at 2.4GHz, such as Bluetooth, but it does have growing pains, as described in this Wireless and Mobile Spotlight. Most organizations will deploy 802.11a as the logical follow-on to 11b (see "802.11a Wireless LANs: The Future Now or Later?" T-14-4365). A second, potentially grand enhancement is the prospect of 802.11g as a further standard. Although still in development, 802.11g is simply 802.11a implemented at 2.4GHz. An organization moving to 802.11a would simply stay with that standard and not bother with the lower frequency band of 802.11g. Only 802.11b WLANS deployed after 2003 will include 802.11g. Any concern over future WLAN standards, such as 802.11a or 802.11g, are irrelevant because they are incremental deployments and there would be little reason to remove any 802.11b implementation. Thus, 802.11b used with Wi-Fi certification is sufficiently robust to warrant deployment today. The costs are lower than expected, with estimates, in the fourth quarter of 2001, of enterprise-class access points going for an average of less than $400 and cards going for an average of slightly more than $100. And, even at an 11-Mbps link rate, the benefits are mobility, flexibility and a potential avoidance of costly new wiring.

Devices

Because of power requirements, WLANs are most appropriate for use with notebooks. Most commercial personal digital assistants (PDAs) just do not have the power to work without recharging during the day (although rugged PDAs from Intermec Technologies and Symbol Technologies are larger and have more battery capacity). Notebook manufacturers are offering embedded WLAN technology for as little as $100. Notebook users will find more and more opportunities to connect as WLANS proliferate inside the enterprise and new service providers develop the opportunities to link WLANs with wired WANs in public "hot spot" places like airports and hotels. Because many organizations are choosing to keep notebooks longer - up to three years or more - adding WLAN capability is as much a bargain as extra memory. If the hot spot vendors and the equipment suppliers ever get together, there should be a means to subsidize the cost down toward zero. However, to date there is no prospect of this.

Tactics

A new notebook with embedded WLAN should be brought in with Windows XP, which provides particularly good support for WLANs. Networks are detected and attached without any real user intervention. The diagnostics should help support staff resolve issues with connectivity quickly. WLANs would be one justification for upgrading to Windows XP.

Bottom Line:

Ignorance of WLANs or outright prohibition is not a viable strategy for enterprises. IT organizations should recognize that WLANs are being deployed within their enterprises without their knowledge. IT managers should use tools offered by vendors such as IBM to determine where and when WLANs have been deployed outside the IT plan. However, as with any technology deployed with guerilla tactics, the IS organization's best move is to be proactive: Learn the technology and be conversant with it; provide guidelines for its use and, most of all, set policies and standards early in the game. Attempting to exclude any useful, popular and low-cost technology generally fails (as occurred with PDAs). It's best to be prepared.

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FROM THE COMMUNITY

Viva Las Vegas - A Rockin' Talkin time at Networld Interop
By Steve Cross

I recently moved to Las Vegas, which gives me a unique perspective on trade shows. As a local, I get to visit shows anytime by driving about 20 minutes to the Strip. And because of my journalist (?!) status I get in free. Cool. Last week I visited Networld Interop. Interesting show. Targeted at decision-makers in the enterprise, from daily management level to executive level. There was a funny mix of products, from low to high-end, including routers, switches, load balancers, servers, hardware firewalls, communication devices, etc. The show also had an odd contrast between the serious products and the attention gathering methods used by the vendors. There were lots of stages, theater seating areas, performers, acts, card acts, and magicians.

Aprisma, an Enterasys subsidiary, had a show set that simulated the "Man Show" from the Comedy Network, complete with under-dressed bimbos and bottled beer for the guests. It seemed like a throwback to the old rent-a-bimbo days of Comdex. Not a very popular booth, either. My position is if you want to sell serious stuff, show me you are serious. The BMW dealer doesn't sell the Ultimate Driving Machine by having clowns in makeup wandering around painting smiley faces on prospects. This stuff costs a lot more than a beemer, too. Get serious, Aprisma.

The show traffic was slow. I talked with Cisco, Sprint, Mitel, and a bunch of others about it, and everyone commented about the closed-off areas of the show (no exhibitors) and the diminished traffic. At the same time, universal comments included the quality of the attendees and the leads gathered by the vendors. Everyone I talked with was blown away by the seriousness and qualifications of the prospects. Maybe this crazy economy is keeping the tire-kickers at home? I don't know, but when everybody you talk with makes the same unsolicited comments about quality of attendees, you start to lend it some credence. Speaking of Mitel, they were showing a very neat desk phone that has removable modules for syncing up PDAs from both the M'soft and Palm camps. Downloads your voicemail, your email, etc. One caveat; the phone needs the smarts of a Mitel switch to make it work. At $300-$400 per desktop, this is a huge win for Mitel customers, especially in a "hoteling" environment.

My old friend Tom Wolf was at the show with Coyote Point's load balancers, which won a best-of-show, the "Well-Connected award" from Network Computing Magazine. Good guy with a top product. His company could spend some money on marketing and let the world know about the stuff, however. "Start-Up City" was an area in the Central Hall near Cisco, with about 30 new companies in it. The hottest thing I saw was a little company called Wincom showing a "switching server". These former IBM and Cisco hot guns have the next generation sever technology. One little box to do everything, and do it darn fast. All solid-state, replacing a whole rack with one 4-inch high box. The big server boys better either buy these guys or figure out how to do it. This may be a truly disrupting innovation in servers. Out of Research Triangle Park, these guys are winners.

Sprint had a big booth, but I still can't figure out why. They support the US Olympic team, which is great, but why have some Olympic skiers bouncing away on trampolines to loud music when you can't articulate your company's position? I just don't get it. The athletes sure could jump, though. The folks at Polycom had a great booth, but it was dead empty when I got there. In this era of diminished travel, wouldn't most IT managers be tasked with getting videoconferencing up and running? Cost containment and all. Polycom should be rolling in prospects. I was sort of surprised. Symbol was there with their totally amazing line of vertical application handhelds, which is just incredible stuff. But they freaked out when they saw my "media" badge. Don't know what that was about. Maybe they never saw anybody that so closely resembled Mr. Clean before.

Did Redhat change the hat on their logo? Seems much more retro and cool now. Doesn't matter, Linux is still a geek operating system, by geeks, for geeks. 802.11 stuff, also known by the silly alias of Wi-Fi, had its own area in the North Hall. These guys need to agree on some standard. When will we have 802.11 stuff that works with each other? Answer, according to my buddy Barry Dobyns, who knows something about everything, is never. That's right, this 802.11a, b, or g stuff will never work with the other 802.11 standards. Doesn't matter, because they already kicked Bluetooth's ass. Isn't Bluetooth is an even worse name than Wi-Fi, if that's possible?

Never saw so many laptop stations for accessing the web or your email. Linksys furnished all the 802.11 cards for tables of usable laptops, a very nice setup. Everybody was using them. Does that mean that people will stop carrying their laptops and just expect the shows to provide connections everywhere? Then nobody would buy the 802.11 cards they are demonstrating. Wouldn't that be an unintended consequence?
Next time I'll write about the issues of communicating your company's position across multiple audiences. Get back to some serious business stuff. Until then, Viva Las Vegas.

Steve Cross works with mid-sized high tech companies to evolve their businesses. He's been performing this valuable service successfully since dirt was invented. Contact: steve@crosschannel.com 702-492-7472

FROM THE COMMUNITY

A Guide to CD-Based Backup
By Eric Ullman, Technical Marketing, Dantz Development Corp.

Backup options have never been more plentiful. From the robust capacity offered by tape formats such as Super DLT and LTO, to the transfer rates and random file functionality of emerging D2D solutions. But for many small businesses the best backup solution can often be CD-R and CD-RW technology. CD-RW drives, now standard for most PCs and low-end servers, provide a built-in backup device that fills a niche between low-end removable magnetic media formats such as Zip and LS120, and more expensive higher capacity DAT, 8mm, AIT and DLT tape formats. As with most storage technologies, backing up to CD-R or CD-RW drives presents users with tradeoffs, balancing the unmatched low cost of drives and media with the capacity and write performance issues that somewhat effectively limit the technology to entry-level backup applications. Still, the value proposition of CD-RW makes it a compelling alternative for many businesses that have fairly straightforward backup requirements.

When considering CD-based backup options, the first decision a user or network manager needs to make is the media format: CD-R or CD-RW. Rewritable disks cost more, but they provide the flexibility to overwrite the disks, allowing the media to be re-used in backup rotation cycle the same way tape cartridges are typically utilized. CD-R media, of course, cannot be re-written, but provide the lowest cost media at well below $1 a disk. Both CD-R and CD-RW media provide excellent longevity, with expected life spans in the five- to 12-year range.

A Progressive Approach to Backup
The most successful method to mitigate the performance and capacity issues presented by CD-R and CD-RW backup is choosing the proper backup strategy. The traditional backup methods of full, differential or incremental backup either do nothing to handle the capacity limitation of CD backup, or they create a host of problems when trying to restore files.

A better alternative when using CD technology for backup is progressive backup. Progressive backup differs from incremental backup by backing up only new and changed files, but without relying solely on the archive attributes of a file. Instead, progressive backup software performs an actual comparison between the files that are on the source volume and the files that are already present on the backup set of media. This comparison is based on a database called a catalog file. Each backup set has its own unique catalog file. When the software runs a backup operation, the software searches the catalog file and compares its contents with the volume to be backed up. This approach enables the progressive backup software to determine which files have been altered or newly created without actually reading over the media it has backed up to. Additionally, when searching for files to restore, the backup media do not have to be physically present. By referencing the catalog, the software knows when the file was backed up, which pieces of media those files are on and exactly where they are located on each backup disk.

Progressive backup, as implemented in Dantz Retrospect Backup software, is built around the concept of the backup set. The backup set is one or more pieces of media that are kept in a group that contains all data necessary to do a complete restore of any volumes that were backed up to that set. For example, the first time a backup operation is performed, Backup Set A is created. The software looks to the catalog to do a comparison, finds it empty and then performs a complete backup of the selected volume. The next day, the software again scans the drive and compares the files to the Set A catalog, and then appends the new files to the existing Set A CD. This technique saves on media costs, as a new piece of media is not always required for a backup operation. Instead, the progressive software keeps writing to the first CD until it is completely filled. These progressive backup techniques go a long way toward minimizing the performance and capacity issues that are inherent with CD-R and CD-RW technology.

Each time a backup operation is performed, in addition to writing new and updated files to the CD, the progressive backup software also creates a snapshot of the backup volume, providing an exact point-in-time image of the contents of the hard disk volume. Utilizing the snapshot for file restores allows for very fast, 100 percent precise file restoration. Combining the snapshot and catalog capabilities, Retrospect knows exactly which files are needed to restore the disk volume to the exact state it was in at the time of the backup (when the snapshot was taken) and exactly where on the disk or disks the required files are stored. The random file access of the CD format and the fast data reading performance of the current generation of drives (up to 6 MB/sec) makes this a very fast, highly accurate backup solution.

Once the media format (CD-R or CD-RW) and backup software have been selected, choose a quality mechanism from the top tier of CD-RW drive vendors rather than opting for the lowest cost device. Industry standards for rewritable CD technology have evolved quite slowly. As a result, support for packet writing of data to CD media among hardware vendors varies. The biggest issue with inconsistent support for packet writing is when the backup operations spans multiple pieces of CD-R or CD-RW media. Some drives can¹t manage the media swap effectively and will flush the cache, causing a loss of up to 2 MB of data and rendering the file that was being written unrecoverable. Conversely, other drives do not properly flush the cache when needed, requiring the software to force a flush cache operation that could slow down the drive. The impact of this issue can reduce a 20x CD recorder to write at just 2x speeds.

A final standards-related issue is the current inability to restore from packet-written CD-R and CD-RW backup disks using read-only CD-ROM drives. Because there was no standard for finalizing a packet-written CD, progressive backup software does not finish disks it has created. Conventional CD writing software wastes about 10 MB per session for catalog and directory information about the CD itself so that the host OS can read the session data and present the user with a proper directory of what¹s on the disk. By utilizing the backup set and catalog approach, Dantz Retrospect conserves that space for writing backup data. The tradeoff is that progressive backup CDs created on CD-R and CD-RW can only be restored from writable drives. If operating system vendors provide more complete driver support for packet-written media formats, this situation will likely change in the near future.

Once the media format (CD-R or CD-RW) and backup software have been selected, choose a quality mechanism from the top tier of CD-RW drive vendors to ensure proper support for packet-writing operations. Packet writing is used because it supports a variable data rate, eliminating the starvation buffer underrun issues. Industry standards for rewritable CD technology have evolved quite slowly. As a result, support for packet writing of data to CD media among hardware vendors varies. The biggest issue with inconsistent support for packet writing is when the backup operations span multiple pieces of CD-R or CD-RW media. Some drives don¹t manage the media swap effectively and flush the cache, causing a loss of data and rendering the file that was being written unrecoverable. Conversely, other drives may not properly flush the cache when needed, requiring the software to force a flush cache operation that slows down the drive. The impact of this issue can reduce a 20x CD recorder to write at just 2x speeds.

A final standards-related issue is the current inability to restore from partially written CD-R and CD-RW backup disks when using read-only CD-ROM drives. Because there was no standard for finalizing a packet-written CD, progressive backup software does not finish disks it has created. Conventional CD writing software wastes about 10 MB per session for catalog and directory information about the CD itself so that the host OS can read the session data and present the user with a proper directory of what¹s on the disk. By utilizing the backup set and catalog approach, Dantz Retrospect conserves that space for writing backup data. The tradeoff is that progressive backup CD¹s created on CD-R and CD-RW drives can only be restored from writable drives. While these concerns have largely been mitigated with the increasing use of writable CD drives as standard devices on most computers, it is still an issue that users need to be aware of when using CD as a backup medium. If operating system vendors provide more complete driver support for packet-written media formats, this situation will likely change in the near future. CD-based backup can provide a very low cost alternative for businesses with limited budgets and low capacity requirements. The same benefits that progressive backup techniques bring to CD backup smaller data sets, improved performance and precision data recovery also apply when progressive backup software is used for backup to AIT, DLT LTO and other tape formats. However, the impact of these advantages can be most acute by providing an easy and elegant solution to backing up on CD-RW technology.