Filing Information: May 2013, IDC #241280, Volume: 1

Datacenter Trends and Strategies: Competitive Analysis

C O M P E T I T I V E A N A L Y S I S

I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t 2 0 1 3 V e n d o r A n a l y s i s

Jennifer Koppy

I D C O P I N I O N

This document employs the IDC MarketScape methodology to assess the strengths

and weaknesses of vendors participating in the datacenter infrastructure

management (DCIM) market. Confusion exists in the market today about the scope of

what DCIM should be, and participants in this space are seeking to define their brand

by offering full-scale solutions that include complete power and cooling and IT

infrastructure visibility, control, and analytic capabilities. Based on IDC's analysis of

current product capabilities, go-to-market strategies, and general business analysis,

this IDC MarketScape finds that the DCIM market is evolving, with several providers

realizing strong growth and adoption and others struggling to survive in a competitive

market. Considering changing business needs, IDC believes the following to be

critical success factors in this evolving market:

Technology partnerships. End users want a solution that is open and interacts

well with best-of-breed solutions. Innovation is occurring in this space, and

providers that can work in tandem to bring the most compelling solutions to their

customers will emerge as market leaders.

Selling partnerships. In a relatively young market, several providers that do not

have the global sales reach and support team to grow their business have

emerged. Partnerships with more established technology vendors will provide a

competitive advantage and encourage innovation in DCIM.

Open architecture that supports full upstream and downstream support of

data. DCIM has the ability to support strategic business decisions, and the ability

for the tool to communicate with all the elements of the datacenter and the

broader enterprise management systems is critical to elevate its status as a

"must-have" solution in the datacenter.

Exceptional customer service with global service and support. More than

product functionality and even price, exceptional customer service is a key

deciding factor in many DCIM purchase decisions. The ability to support current

and future global expansion will be a critical success factor for DCIM providers.

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I N T H I S S T U D Y

This IDC study uses the vendor assessment model called IDC MarketScape. This

research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that

explain a vendor's success in the marketplace and help anticipate its ascendancy.

This study assesses a number of vendors participating in the worldwide datacenter

infrastructure management market. This evaluation is based on a comprehensive

framework and a set of parameters that assess vendors relative to one another and to

those factors expected to be most conducive to success in this market during both the

short term and the long term.

This study is composed of two key sections. The first part is a definition or a

description of what characteristics IDC analysts believe make a successful DCIM

provider. These characteristics are based on IDC's ongoing surveys and discussions

with datacenter managers and key analyst observations of industry best practices.

The second part of this study is a visual aggregation of multiple vendors into a single

bubble-chart format. This display concisely illustrates the observed vendors in the

market. The strategies axis represents a three- to five-year span and future

perspective, while the capabilities axis represents current product and go-to-market

execution.

In this IDC MarketScape, the estimated market revenue of each vendor is indicated

by the size of the circle representing the vendor.

M e t h o d o l o g y

IDC MarketScape criteria selection, weightings, and vendor scores represent well-

researched IDC judgment about the market and specific vendors. IDC analysts tailor

the range of standard characteristics by which vendors are measured through

structured discussions, surveys, and interviews with market leaders, participants, and

end users. Market weightings are based on user interviews, buyer surveys, and the

input of a review board of IDC experts in each market. IDC analysts base individual

vendor scores, and ultimately vendor positions on the IDC MarketScape, on detailed

surveys and interviews with the vendors, publicly available information, and end-user

experiences in an effort to provide an accurate and consistent assessment of each

vendor's characteristics, behavior, and capability.

S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Datacenter infrastructure management solutions have emerged as a way to enable

visibility, exercise control, and better manage datacenter resources. Today,

datacenters are evolving from a monolithic, one-size-fits-all warehouse of IT into a

highly optimized and transparent smart building, and DCIM solutions are the critical

step in this transformation. For years, enterprises and service providers have been

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plagued with problems regarding managing and growing their IT infrastructure. Most

datacenter managers have experienced delayed application rollouts, unplanned

spending, and disrupted service, in addition to issues related to lack of power, space,

or cooling resources. Considering the massive investments that IT and facilities

groups make in datacenter resources, ensuring that the company is able to make the

most efficient use of these resources is critical. However, a large gap exists today in

levels of efficiency; IT managers know how resources could and should be managed

but lack the tools and resources to coordinate this effort. To properly manage

datacenter resources requires complete visibility across several functional

organizations (IT and facilities) and coordination between the two.

Several years ago, it was common to invest more financial resources into the

datacenter to add additional servers, networking equipment, and storage to ensure

uptime and security. Today, with the lack of physical space, power supply, and

cooling resources, this method of reducing risk is no longer feasible. IT organizations

are at a crossroads and face expensive and difficult decisions on whether to add a

new datacenter, move certain workloads and functions off-premises with cloud

solution, or use outsourcing … or take stock of their current infrastructure and begin a

regimen of datacenter infrastructure management that involves gaining detailed

metrics on and visibility into the physical elements of the datacenter, using tools to

control and manage the resources, and ultimately the data and tools to drive strategic

decisions.

T h e N e e d f o r D C I M

Datacenters are expanding in capacity to power a new era of computing built on

mobile devices and applications, cloud services, big data and analytics, and social

technologies. Expansion into new geographies, improvements in disaster recovery,

and expansion of workloads beyond current power and processing capabilities of

current datacenters has challenged datacenter managers to find ways to manage

resources and change. Points of pain for datacenter managers include delays in

application rollouts, disrupted service to customers, unplanned spending, inability to

roll out new products or services, and unplanned downtime. A common theme in all of

these points of pain is inconsistent datacenter information and fragmented

management tools.

DCIM solutions can help manage these points of pain by providing a consistent,

single version of the truth. Beyond providing greater understanding of the physical

assets and systems and the interconnections between them, DCIM can provide

insight into the applications, virtual machines, and business services and how they

are dependent upon the infrastructure.

Datacenters that use DCIM solutions can reduce the time spent on forecasting,

impact analysis, and investigating problems. The end result of improving service

delivery allows datacenter teams to address immediate operational needs, improve

their capacity planning, and deliver better results for the business.

©2013 IDC #241280 3

D C I M ' s R o l e i n t h e D a t a c e n t e r

DCIM addresses a number of needs in datacenter management — from change

management and capacity planning to the efficient usage and allocation of resources.

Enterprises and service providers have recognized the need to address the

underlying issues in managing resources, and the first step in doing this is to gain

visibility into both the facilities resources (PDUs, UPSs, CRACs, environmental

sensors, generators, and racks) and IT resources (servers, storage, networking

equipment, and virtual machines).

After visibility, gaining control of the datacenter and facilities infrastructure is a critical

element of DCIM. Currently, a diverse and fragmented set of tools is used to monitor

and manage the datacenter, including building management systems (BMSs) that

control lighting, security, and energy resources. On the IT side, a multitude of

software solutions are available that address different aspects of datacenter

management, including cloud management, work orders, moves, adds, and changes,

enterprise asset management, and alerts, among many others. These solutions are

now being offered as a coordinated effort under the DCIM umbrella, and enterprises

are increasingly recognizing this market as a distinct set of offerings.

The DCIM market continues to evolve and vendors continue to sharpen their

offerings, but we are still in the emerging phase of this technology, and growth is

much more rapid than other more mature software markets. DCIM implementations

today are often motivated by the need to add datacenter capacity as business needs

expand. The major capital outlays involved in building a new datacenter or retrofitting

an existing datacenter have caused IT and facilities managers to explore solutions to

increase the efficiency and use of their current resources. DCIM is the solution to

address this problem by eliminating waste, such as stranded capacity or "zombie"

servers, and know where more IT infrastructure can be added or shifted based on

power and cooling.

Another segment of demand comes from datacenter managers who are seeking to

boost their operational efficiency by implementing tools that enable metering, alerting,

and control of all resources. Deploying DCIM is considered a best practice, but the

methods of doing so vary greatly by provider. Over the forecast period, the DCIM

market will consolidate and evolve to the point where the data collection portion

becomes "table stakes" or a standard, required feature. The differentiation of DCIM

tools will come through their ability to support strategic business decisions.

The market is currently served by several types of providers, broadly categorized

below:

Software vendors, including those with enterprise solutions and specific point

solutions

Sensor vendors

Power and cooling infrastructure vendors

Hardware and component vendors

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I D C M a r k e t S c a p e V e n d o r I n c l u s i o n C r i t e r i a

For the purposes of this IDC MarketScape, we evaluated 10 providers that offer a

DCIM solution that meet the following criteria:

Provide visibility into one or more elements on the facilities side of the datacenter

Provide visibility into one or more elements on the IT side of the datacenter

Earn at least $2 million from the sale of its DCIM solution in 2012

Below are the 10 providers included in this IDC MarketScape that met the above

criteria:

CA Technologies

Cormant

Emerson Network Power

FieldView

iTRACS

Nlyte

Panduit

Raritan

Schneider Electric

Sentilla

These providers each met the above criteria, yet have different approaches to DCIM

and fundamentally answer different types of management questions. Some sell a

hardware and software package, some sell a software-only package, and others sell

separate software modules to address specific needs. To select the best DCIM

provider for their business, buyers need to know what problems they would like to

solve, and where the business will be in the next five years.

E s s e n t i a l E l e m e n t s i n t h e D C I M E c o s y s t e m

The ability to capture real-time data is a requirement for many DCIM buyers, and the

accuracy, analytic capabilities, automation, and ability to perform cost analysis

underscores the value of DCIM. Several providers are involved in this segment of the

DCIM market but do not offer the same full-suite DCIM capabilities as the providers

evaluated in this IDC MarketScape. IDC believes that providers such as Intel, RF

Code, and Romonet, among others, enable the DCIM market to elevate the value of

the total solution and are critical to the long-term success of the DCIM market. DCIM

©2013 IDC #241280 5

providers that have formed partnerships with these essential players will have a

competitive advantage over those that don't.

Intel Data Center Manager

Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) is a plug-in that enables the ability to gather real-

time power and thermal data when used with a DCIM or third-party power solution.

Intel DCM is licensed to OEMs and ISVs. Intel DCM unlocks Intel's unique

understanding of the hardware to provide additional insight and analytic capabilities,

making it easier for end users to organize and track data and manage power and

cooling in the data center. With an extensive library of connectors that read data,

including IPMI, Intel DCM supports environments of both Intel and non-Intel CPUs,

providing support for heterogenous datacenters. Intel also offers Node Manager

firmware that reports system-level energy use and can put limits on individual server

power consumption, or limit total rack-level power draw. When DCM is enabled via an

ISV, the solution is completely transparent to the end user. ISVs evaluated in this IDC

MarketScape that leverage Intel DCM include iTRACS, FieldView, Nlyte, and

Schneider Electric, as well as more than 25 additional DCIM vendors including

Rackwise and Power Analytics, and OEM solution providers.

RF Code

RF Code manufactures active-RFID-based wire-free sensors that provide live

temperature, humidity, air pressure, air flow, and fluid detection data, which can be

fed into a DCIM solution to enable real-time maps and views of that datacenter and

enable highly tuned alerting capabilities. RF Code also manufactures location-

tracking tags to enable the asset management and change management functions of

DCIM. The asset visibility function is available at the rack level, providing the ability to

pinpoint asset locations within the rack, and zonal tracking, providing more general

room and facilitywide location details. DCIM providers that have partnered with RF

Code in integration agreements include CA Technologies, FieldView, iTRACS, Nlyte,

Schneider, and Raritan. The partnerships with full-suite DCIM providers are in

addition to RF Code's own capability to correlate and report on environmental and

asset data within its own software. This software enables real-time asset tracking,

monitoring and alerting of changes in environmental conditions, and the ability to

send information to building management systems (BMS) and business applications

such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management (EAM)

applications.

Romonet

Romonet is a software vendor that provides tools to support total cost of ownership

(TCO) for datacenters. Although it approaches DCIM in a different way than other

providers in this IDC MarketScape, Romonet software enables the coordination of

data from engineering, operations, and finance to measure impact, improve overall

performance, and improve return on investment. The vendor's key message is to

enable end users to run their datacenters like a business, and this will resonate well

in the market as many enterprise and service provider C-level decision makers seek

to increase the financial granularity of their operations.

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M a r k e t S t r a t e g i e s a n d E v a l u a t i o n C r i t e r i a

Table 1 shows the measurements used to evaluate DCIM providers' future road map

and business strategies.

Table 2 summarizes the measurements used to evaluation DCIM providers' current

offerings, business, and go-to-market capabilities.

T A B L E 1

K e y S t r a t e g y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t

Strategies Criteria Criteria for Success

Subcriteria

Weighting

Offering strategy

Functionality/offering

road map

Future plans for offering functionality are well aligned with current and future

customer needs and with priority customer segments. DCIM providers

disclosed a road map for existing products or a road map for forthcoming

products, and flexibility for the future is built into this plan.

2.0

Delivery model Plans are in place for support of offering delivery model(s) that will match

customers' shifting preferences for adoption/consumption in the next five years.

DCIM providers offer or have plans to offer a SaaS delivery model as

customers require it as well as channel partnerships to increase sales. Input

and reporting from mobile devices will become a must-have feature in the

future.

2.5

Cost management

strategy

There is a strategy and road map to mitigate costs related to the development

of, sales of, and support for DCIM offerings.

1.5

Portfolio strategy There are multiple partners in the market in multiple areas (facilities, IT, other

systems management vendors, etc.). This portfolio of partners supports either

the DCIM product itself or the DCIM vendor.

1.5

Range of services

strategy

Ability to provide services around the globe, work equally well with enterprises

and service providers to meet their unique needs

2.5

Offering strategy total 10.0

Go-to-market strategy

Pricing model The pricing schema is easy to understand, and an accurate quote including

implementation services and software licensing is provided to prospects. It is

important to have pricing by the number of objects monitored, size of DC (in

terms of space, power, cooling), and aspects monitored or by product (as part

of a larger portfolio of products).

2.0

Sales/distribution

strategy

The sales and distribution strategy aligns with each product offering. This

alignment makes procurement as easy for the end user as possible.

2.0

©2013 IDC #241280 7

T A B L E 1

K e y S t r a t e g y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t

Strategies Criteria Criteria for Success

Subcriteria

Weighting

Marketing strategy Marketing strategy includes a comprehensive plan for segmented, targeted

audiences for each product and overall brand development, promotion, and

demand generation. This plan corresponds with predicted revenue flows for the

future.

2.0

Customer service

strategy

There is a customer service strategy in place to reduce churn among the

customer base, create brand evangelizers, and create brand loyalty. This plan

is communicated clearly to customers.

2.0

Existing datacenter

presence

This has demonstrated a presence in the datacenter for some other product or

service, besides DCIM. This could be power and cooling equipment, KVM,

cabling, software, or other product or service. This category is meant to

measure the history, size, and positive or negative nature of this presence.

2.0

Go-to-market strategy

total

10.0

Business strategy

Growth strategy Management has targeted areas of the product, company, and customer base

that they plan on growing over the next 3–5 years.

2.5

Innovation/R&D pace and

productivity

Innovation and R&D aligns with marketing, customers' wants and needs, and

growth strategy.

2.0

Financial/funding model The company's financing/funding plans and opportunities align to creating

market value and staying true to the firm's core values, strengths and attributes.

2.0

Employee strategy The company's strategy for attracting, motivating, and retaining talent

maximizes its opportunity for creating market value.

1.0

Partnering It is the company's ability to partner with others to strengthen and augment their

DCIM solutions.

2.5

Business strategy total 10.0

Source: IDC, 2013

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T A B L E 2

K e y C a p a b i l i t y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t

Capability Criteria Criteria for Success

Subcriteria

Weighting

Offering capabilities

Functionality/offering

delivered

Current DCIM offering facilitates visibility, analytics, and control of datacenter

assets.

2.0

Delivery model

appropriateness and

execution

Channel programs with VARs (for additional services around the software

sale), SaaS delivery models ,and auto-discovery/low-touch deployment

capabilities are in place. The solution can scale from small enterprise

datacenters to large service provider implementations.

2.0

Cost competitiveness The pricing of the products and services is either in line with the market, given

its capabilities, or strategically out of line.

1.5

Portfolio benefits

delivered

Complementary offerings and services are in place to enable adoption of

DCIM.

1.5

Range of services It is the ability to sell and service DCIM customers in multiple geographies to

support larger customers with multisite presence and also expand to new

geographic markets.

1.5

Vendor consideration It is the vendor's propensity for making the end users' short list of solutions

considered in RFPs.

1.5

Offering capability total 10.0

Go-to-market capability

Pricing model options

and alignment

The pricing model is currently aligned with customers' preferences for payment

(e.g., per rack or per square foot) and is easily understood.

1.5

Sales/distribution

structure, capabilities

The sales and distribution strategy aligns with each product offering. This

alignment makes procurement as easy for the end user as possible.

2.0

Marketing The marketing organization resources are aligned with revenue-generation

efforts.

2.0

Customer service Customers feel that their needs are met and they are satisfied with the quality

and timeliness of customer service delivered.

2.5

Existing presence in the

datacenter or in facilities

organization

This demonstrates a presence in the datacenter for some other product or

service, besides DCIM. This could be power and cooling equipment, KVM,

cabling, or other product or service. This category is meant to measure the

history, size, and positive or negative nature of this presence.

2.0

Go-to-market capability

total

10.0

©2013 IDC #241280 9

T A B L E 2

K e y C a p a b i l i t y M e a s u r e s f o r S u c c e s s : D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t

Capability Criteria Criteria for Success

Subcriteria

Weighting

Business capabilities

Growth strategy

execution

Companies have, and plan, to continue executing on their growth strategy and

strives to shorten sales cycles and use templates whenever possible to speed

deployments and reduce costs associated with DCIM.

2.5

Innovation/R&D pace

and productivity

Innovation keeps pace with the competition and is done in the correct areas

organically.

2.0

Financial/funding

management

Companies generate, attract, and manage capital to create market value. 2.0

Employee management Companies attract, motivate, and retain the necessary talent to create market

value.

1.0

Partnering Companies establish many partnerships with vendors on all sides of the DCIM

ecosystem to increase their presence in the market.

2.5

Business capabilities

total

10.0

Source: IDC, 2013

F U T U R E O U T L O O K

D C I M F o r e c a s t

IDC's market analysis examines the strategic direction and growth expectations for

DCIM. In 2011, the estimated worldwide DCIM packaged software revenue was

$144.5 million, and the corresponding services revenue was $102.6 million for a total

of $247.1 million. By 2016, the DCIM market will grow to a total of $690.3 million,

representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% (see Table 3). Key

findings include the following:

The DCIM market is on the verge of two- to three-year-period of solid growth

within existing enterprise datacenters where IT and facilities teams have gone

through a period of education and analysis of the value of DCIM solutions and

will make investments as a means to get the most out of their existing resources.

Sustained growth over the entire forecast period will be closely tied to large and

megasized datacenters built and run by collocation, managed service, and cloud

service provider that use DCIM tools as part of their strategy to both optimize

their infrastructure and provide more robust customer information services.

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T A B L E 3

W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t S e r v i c e s a n d S o f t w a r e

R e v e n u e , 2 0 1 1 – 2 0 1 6 ( $ M )

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

2011–2016

CAGR (%)

Services 102.6 121.3 139.5 159.4 184.0 210.3 15.4

Software 144.5 213.9 287.0 355.6 419.8 480.0 27.1

Total 247.1 335.2 426.5 514.9 603.8 690.3 22.8

Source: IDC, 2013

I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r

I n f r a s t r u c t u r e M a n a g e m e n t M a r k e t

V e n d o r A s s e s s m e n t

The IDC vendor assessment for the worldwide datacenter infrastructure management

market represents IDC's opinion on how the providers are positioned today and how

their strategy will position them for future success and growth. Positioning in the

upper right of the grid indicates those vendors that are most likely to be Major Players

over the next several years. As a rapidly growing market characterized by high levels

of competition and attention, IDC believes new participants could enter the market,

and existing participants will seek to define themselves through partnerships. Several

established players are building on their current customer base and product assets,

while other smaller vendors are seeking to attract customers with their own DCIM

solutions.

Positioning on the y-axis reflects the vendor's current capabilities and how well

aligned its offerings, got-to-market, and business strategies are with customer needs.

The capabilities category focuses on the capabilities of the company today.

Positioning on the x-axis, or strategies axis, indicates how well the vendor's publicly

announced future strategy aligns with what IDC believes customers will require in

three to five years. The strategies category focuses on high-level strategic decisions

and underlying assumptions about offerings, customer segments, business, and go-

to-market plans for the future, in this case defined as the next three to five years.

Figure 1 shows each vendor's position in the vendor assessment chart.

©2013 IDC #241280 11

F I G U R E 1

I D C M a r k e t S c a p e : W o r l d w i d e D a t a c e n t e r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e

M a n a g e m e n t V e n d o r A s s e s s m e n t

Source: IDC, 2013

V e n d o r P r o f i l e s

All of the vendors included in this IDC MarketScape have met the inclusion criteria,

including visibility, control, and analysis of both facilities and IT infrastructure. The

vendors may accomplish these tasks in different ways and different approaches.

Some are suitable to smaller enterprise implementations, some are suitable to

massive service provider implementations, and some can be scaled to both. They

also come to the DCIM market from a variety of backgrounds, and one provider is not

the best choice for all implementations. The synopses in the sections that follow

provide an overview of some of the unique characteristics and differentiators of each

provider's solutions and their business and go-to-market strategies.

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CA Technologies

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, CA Technologies is an IDC

MarketScape Leader worldwide. CA Technologies scored above average and in

some cases the highest in strategy and capability criteria measurements for the DCIM

solutions market.

CA Technologies is a well-established global IT management software and solutions

company, with a strong presence in many different types of IT environments. CA

Technologies' solution is marketed and sold as CA DCIM and is based on CA

ecoMeter (monitoring) and CA Visual Infrastructure (management). CA DCIM offers

real-time visibility, control, and reporting on all major datacenter assets. Live PUE and

carbon footprint reporting are standard with CA DCIM. CA Technologies' alerting

system goes beyond threshold alarms and includes self-learning features that create

notifications based on deviations from normal activity.

One of CA Technologies' key strengths is its ability to innovate like a small company,

yet it has the marketing, service, and sales organization of a large company. With a

presence in many enterprise datacenters already, the opportunity for CA

Technologies will be to grow deeper into existing accounts by bringing CA DCIM to

the table in addition to its other toolsets. IDC believes that 2012 was a solid year for

DCIM at CA Technologies, building on its foundation and growing into both large- and

small-scale accounts. CA Technologies has revised its pricing schema based on

customers' need for a simple and straightforward model; the company now bases

customers' costs on the number of floor-mounted assets located in the datacenter,

regardless of asset type. CA Technologies is able to tie pricing to power capacity,

something that is especially relevant in very large datacenter environments.

Strengths

As a $4.6 billion software vendor, CA Technologies has the existing IT presence and

surrounding solutions to reach the right people with the right message for DCIM. The

company's well-developed sales and marketing channels, legacy of hardware-

agnostic solutions, and ability to converse with C-level decision makers will drive

continued growth in DCIM adoption by its existing customer base and new datacenter

customers.

Opportunit ies

A challenge for CA Technologies is reaching the facilities organizations and building

trust and relationships with enterprise and service provider datacenters that have

existing relationships with power and cooling vendors. IDC believes that the majority

of DCIM decisions will come from CFOs and CIOs, who are already familiar with

purchasing from a software provider. The facilities side of the business increasingly

has a seat at the table and a voice in DCIM recommendations, and in service provider

organizations, the coordination between IT and facilities is increasingly synchronized.

Final purchasing decisions for DCIM software, however, will be weighted more

heavily by IT organizations, which have experience buying enterprise software

applications. This positively impacts CA Technologies' position in the DCIM market.

©2013 IDC #241280 13

Cormant

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Cormant is an IDC MarketScape

Major Player worldwide. Cormant has an effective DCIM feature set that is sold

worldwide through mainly channel partners. The company's sole focus and product is

the Cormant-CS solution, known previously as CableSolve. Cormant-CS is based

around strong asset and connection management, with capability for datacenter

visualization, actionability, and direct control of all major datacenter infrastructure with

the exception of controlling cooling units and generators. Mobile access and control

are key features of the Cormant-CS, which is sold as a single, complete solution.

Cormant benefits from a tight connection between its service, sales, marketing, and

R&D teams, allowing the company to operate efficiently and transparently to serve

customer needs.

The vendor is in a period of strong growth, building on a loyal base of customers.

According to the Cormant, 95% of the company's original customers over the past

decade remain on the Cormant-CS solution.

Strengths

Cormant comes to the table with a solid, full-fledged DCIM solution that is priced

significantly lower than that of other DCIM providers. The lower barrier to entry will

motivate many enterprise datacenters with limited budgets to implement DCIM and

enables Cormant to benefit from the growing DCIM momentum by coming to market

with a unique offering that is within reach of a much larger audience.

Opportunit ies

Cormant is a small company competing with multinational, multibillion-dollar

companies that have well-established partnerships, geographically dispersed service

and sales organizations, and large R&D and marketing budgets. The challenge for

Cormant is to put itself on stage with these providers and make apples-to-apples

comparisons of capabilities and strengths to win customers.

Emerson Network Power

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Emerson Network Power is an IDC

MarketScape Leader worldwide. The vendor scored above average in many of the

measurement criteria for capability and strategy based on its current Trellis, Aperture,

and Avocent offerings.

Emerson Network Power is a global power and industrial solutions business with

approximately 50,000 employees and is a part of Emerson Electric. The company

owns many popular brands in the datacenter, including Liebert, Knurr, Aperture,

Avocent, and Chloride and offers products ranging from precision cooling, AC/DC

power, racks, cabinets, embedded computing and power, airflow management,

remote monitoring, access and control, and infrastructure management. Emerson

Network Power has built on its strength in the datacenter with its DCIM offerings,

including Aperture, Avocent, and the Trellis platform that was commercialized in May

2012. The Emerson DCIM offerings are widely adopted in the datacenter market, and

the company holds the largest market share of any DCIM provider. During the year,

Emerson continued a massive transformation of its DCIM offerings and go-to-market

14 #241280 ©2013 IDC

strategy, investing in growing and expanding its Trellis platform while supporting its

large installed base of Aperture and Avocent users. The company made a strategic

decision to build the new real-time Trellis platform on a single code base to reduce

complexity and risk and increase modularity, flexibility, and scalability of the solution.

Emerson will continue to support Aperture and Avocent customers and provide them

the choice to migrate to the Trellis platform on their own schedule. Eventually,

Emerson Network Power expects the installed base will move to its new Trellis

platform that connects the company's broad datacenter offering portfolio and

expertise across IT and facilities organizations in a real-time, vendor-agnostic solution

that integrates with enterprise ITSM systems. Financially, Emerson is in a very strong

position as part of a $24 billion company with a $1+ billion services business. This

solid backing has provided the company with staying power in a year of

transformation. The worldwide services business is a critical asset and differentiator

of Emerson's because many organizations have a corporate edict to do business with

a provider that has services available around the globe. This services organization

also benefits the DCIM business by enabling pull-through of solutions.

Strengths

Emerson has expanded its routes to market and developed channels to sell to both

the high end and low end of the market. With its heavy R&D investments, ability to

scale to a broad range of customer requirements, and partnerships with key players

in the larger DCIM ecosystem, including Oracle and IBM, Emerson is well positioned

to grow into new customer implementations. Emerson's Trellis solution is the

culmination of many end users' wish lists for a DCIM solution — a single pane of

glass that enables users to monitor, control, and analyze their datacenter assets in

real time, in an environment that is moving toward cloud and hybrid cloud

implementations spread across the globe. The ability to manage this complexity is

very difficult yet critical for success, and Trellis is a robust, scalable solution that was

designed from the ground up to support decisions in increasingly complex

datacenters in a modular, scalable fashion.

Opportunit ies

Change on the scale of what Emerson is trying to accomplish does not occur on a

steady, straight line. Instead, it happens in bursts, and there are temporary setbacks;

in the midst of Emerson's transformation, some customer relationships were strained.

Although the overall retention rate remains high, the door of opportunity was open at

a critical time, and competitors made some inroads into Emerson's customer base

prior to the Trellis platform launch. For Emerson to retain and grow its market share

with the Trellis platform, it needs to continue to earn the trust of customers and help

them through the transition to the Trellis platform. Based on interviews with end-user

customers, IDC believes that Emerson is making strides to enhancing customer

relationships, and its customers believe that the Trellis platform offers best-in-class

performance. The company has the opportunity to emerge stronger than it was before

if it can effectively communicate its strategy for customer satisfaction going forward.

FieldView Solutions

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, FieldView Solutions is an IDC

MarketScape Major Player worldwide. FieldView has established its niche with

©2013 IDC #241280 15

critical-use datacenters that have strict requirements for data security and asset

control. The vendor provides DCIM solutions to the world's largest datacenters, and

its strategy is to continue to focus on this demanding segment of the market.

FieldView's platform is open and can pull from many different sources to present real-

time analytics of datacenter resources. As a browser-based system, the DCIM

solution can be accessed from anywhere and resides behind the end user's firewall.

Most of FieldView's sales are direct and within the United States; recently, the

company announced a presence in Brazil and has already established a presence in

Europe, Australia, and in the high-growth market of Asia.

FieldView experienced solid growth in 2012 and was able to capitalize on the

market's shift from evaluating and understanding DCIM to investing in DCIM.

FieldView has made additional investments in its sales force in the past year to

address the growth in large co-location and service provider datacenter buildouts.

Strengths

FieldView has a solid track record built on performance and trust with many critical

datacenters, and its partnerships with key industry partners will continue to drive this

growth. FieldView has the ability to capture and analyze very large amounts of data,

which is a strength in selling to environments that plan to track large numbers of

devices on a frequent basis and store historical information for analytic functions.

Opportunit ies

FieldView's DCIM offering, by design, does not directly issue control orders or

interface directly into a BMS. This is a positive for some datacenter managers, who

for security reasons have a high degree of concern about the control aspect of DCIM

and prefer to keep these functions completely separate. For others, the inability to

control datacenter assets based on a "single pane of glass" would be viewed as a

negative. One of the pitfalls that DCIM providers have fallen into is trying to be

everything to everyone. FieldView, in contrast, has kept a more narrow focus, and

IDC believes that this is a solid strategy going forward, considering the greater growth

expected in large datacenters. However, the business risk of selling to one market or

customer type is higher for FieldView than for a more general-purpose DCIM

provider.

Integration with enterprise system management and ITSM software would strengthen

FieldView's DCIM offering. Currently, data can be ported to other tools, but a direct

integration would round out FieldView's considerable functionality and assist in

proving return on investment in the DCIM solution.

iTRACS by CommScope

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, iTRACS is an IDC MarketScape

Major Player worldwide. iTRACS launched its converged physical infrastructure

management (CPIM) solution in 2009, during the early days of DCIM. Since that time,

this relatively small company has built an impressive list of customer wins and earned

a reputation as an innovator in the DCIM space with its interactive, navigable 3D

visualization of the datacenter and management toolset.

16 #241280 ©2013 IDC

Founded in 1987, the company began by offering solutions that addressed asset

management, with a specific focus on understanding connectivity interdependencies

in the management of asset moves, adds, and changes. Its CPIM software suite

extends this capability in physical infrastructure management, adding visualization to

provide the full context in decisions regarding disposition of assets and "what-if"

analysis to enable users to view and make decisions with less risk. CPIM provides

visibility, control, and decision support across the physical infrastructure of IT assets,

connectivity, power, and cooling.

As a DCIM software suite provider, iTRACS focuses on the flow of information into

and out of the CPIM solution, which allows end users to connect upstream and

downstream with BMS and ITSM software. The company's DCIM Open Exchange

Framework acts as an "information highway" allowing the iTRACS software suite to

share information, bidirectionally, with any outside data source, system, or workflow

application.

iTRACS was acquired by CommScope in March 2013. CommScope is a $4 billion

provider of infrastructure solutions with a focus on optimizing data transport, including

wireless, enterprise, and broadband. This partnership has the potential to significantly

expand iTRACS' exposure in the global market and leverage a wider audience

through CommScope's global sales channels. As the integration of the two

companies continues, iTRACS should be able to leverage CommScope's global

services organization as well. For datacenter managers and those involved in

datacenter investment decisions, the partnership of the two companies may create an

easier path to a transparent, managed infrastructure. Having the cabling technology

at the core of emerging converged systems and highly virtualized datacenters along

with the ability to manage everything that is connected to the cabling is becoming a

must-have for IT and facilities organizations.

Strengths

iTRACS has built its name in the DCIM market by concentrating on a deep

understanding of the interconnectivity at the heart of the datacenter and a compelling,

context-rich 3D visual representation of datacenter elements. The vendor has

demonstrated return on investment and the business value of DCIM and, as a result,

has elevated its conversations from facilities and IT organizations up to C-level

decision makers. In a very competitive market, iTRACS has built up solid mindshare

around its solution and has established partnerships with key members of the DCIM

ecosystem including VMware, Intel DCM, RF Code, and HP (via the DCIM Open

Exchange Framework) to enable granular, accurate, and real-time data collection.

Opportunit ies

iTRACS and other vendors that sell enterprise-class DCIM solutions face a challenge

in proving the value and ROI to end users who experience "sticker shock" when first

investigating DCIM. Confusion exists in the market among end users, who are

choosing from a myriad of options to manage their infrastructure, including Excel

spreadsheets, point solutions that address one aspect of DCIM, and full-fledged

DCIM suites that provide complete visibility, analysis, and reporting on datacenter

assets. The opportunity and challenge for iTRACS is to 1) continue improving how

they communicate the strategic value of DCIM to CFOs and 2) engage with

©2013 IDC #241280 17

customers early in the discovery phase to help them understand how iTRACS is

priced and bundled versus other solutions, with the CPIM and Open Exchange

Network functionality both included in the base price. IDC believes that some

enterprises may not pursue the iTRACS solution to the RFP stage because of

perceived high cost, perhaps limiting its broader adoption. Initiatives to change

market perception would help iTRACS grow its installed base. In addition, by

continuing to work with customers after the sale and deepening the reliance on

iTRACS for analytics and business agility initiatives, the vendor can prove the ROI

and longer-term viability of its solution.

Nlyte

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Nlyte is an IDC MarketScape Major

Player worldwide. Nlyte's DCIM suite has earned respect amid a crowded market.

The 10-year-old software company reports strong adoption of its solutions and is

rapidly expanding its sales force and investing in channel sales. The current version

of its DCIM suite is Nlyte 7, which includes seamless integration with other enterprise

system management solutions. IDC believes that Nlyte's focus on change

management and asset management and supporting decisions based on cost of

service delivered will define the company and position it well for the needs of CIOs in

the next several years.

Nlyte includes out-of-the-box integrations with many of the industry's most common

management platforms, including BMC's change management, discovery and CMDB,

VMware, HP, RF Code, and Server Tech along with Intel's DCM real-time monitoring

layer. These integrations are available as an option within the Nlyte suite and bring

strategically important functionality and benefits to the larger datacenter management

tasks at hand. As a smaller, focused software company, Nlyte is able to leverage the

close relationship between sales, R&D, and its customers' needs. The company is

focused on larger enterprise datacenters and other environments in which increasing

operational efficiency is a high priority.

Strengths

Nlyte has done an excellent job in educating the market about DCIM and helping end

users understand the value of an extensible DCIM solution. Nlyte's messaging about

operating the datacenter as a business resonates with decision makers and elevates

the discussion on DCIM to C-level executives. Beyond a tactical facilities or

datacenter tool, Nlyte is positioning its solution as a business life-cycle management

and decision support solution and recognizes the need to interface with ITSM tools

and includes this as a core part of its offering today. This is a critical differentiator in

the market, and IDC expects it will open more doors to adoption than a facilities-

focused or IT-focused message. Nlyte's DCIM solution was developed by people with

strong datacenter management backgrounds who brought with them best practices

and industry experience in IT management.

Opportunit ies

Nlyte often makes the "short list" of solutions considered for deployment. In certain

cases, some large, risk-averse organizations are hesitant to invest in a company that

does not have the strong financial backing and stability others are perceived to have.

18 #241280 ©2013 IDC

In this way, Nlyte has the potential to be overlooked in a nascent market that has

seen less-focused solutions disappear. Some of these IT organizations, wary of

purchasing into a smaller company in a new market, either stay with an incumbent

vendor or choose another very large DCIM provider, even though they were

admittedly impressed with the capabilities that Nlyte's solution offers. In its 10th year

and celebrating a number of big customer wins, IDC believes Nlyte is on the right

track, but it will need to prove it has the staying power in this competitive market.

Panduit

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Panduit is an IDC MarketScape

Major Player worldwide. Panduit is a privately held company with annual revenue of

approximately $1 billion. The company got its start in 1955 with a solution to simplify

wiring and cabling. As a progression of its strengths in network solutions to organize

infrastructure and solve business problems, Panduit developed its physical

infrastructure management (PIM) solution and in 2011 acquired Unite Technologies

and subsequently the datacenter and energy management technology to complement

PIM. The combination of the two comprises the Panduit DCIM solution.

The company's foundation on the facilities side enables it to build trust with

datacenter facilities managers, and IDC believes most of Panduit's growth will come

from midsize and large enterprise datacenters. A large portion of Panduit business

comes from cabling and cabinet/rack infrastructure, which it sells for specific

converged infrastructure architectures including Cisco, IBM, Rockwell, and others.

Panduit has shown particular strength in providing solutions for smaller datacenters

and recently announced its SmartZone rack energy kit, which provides real-time

power and environmental monitoring and alerting at the rack level.

Strengths

The Panduit auto-discovery functionality is well respected in the industry. The

effective use of auto-discovery has been an Achilles' heel for many DCIM providers,

but Panduit has been able to populate users' DCIM tools with a high degree of

reliability and accuracy through its auto-discovery feature. For end users to make

decisions based on DCIM analysis, they need to have a strong degree of trust and

belief in the accuracy of the data within the solution. In addition to its auto-discovery

feature to populate the tool, Panduit has a solid services team that operates globally

through company-run and partner service providers. Panduit has the ability to deploy

its DCIM solution quickly, and this contributes to its strong customer satisfaction

record. Panduit also provides global datacenter advisory services, enabling another

avenue to market its PIM solutions.

Opportunit ies

One of Panduit's key strengths is its ability to tightly integrate its own hardware and

software to provide a solution that is very easy to deploy and run. Although for some

end users this approach simplifies and speeds adoption of DCIM, but it is also

perceived as proprietary, which carries a negative connotation in the DCIM space.

IDC believes that Panduit could address the needs of large enterprise and service

©2013 IDC #241280 19

provider customers through more aggressive marketing of its virtual machine

capabilities, if the company chooses to participate in this portion of the market.

Of central importance is Panduit's ability to quickly integrate the DCIQ tool (gained

through the Unite Technologies acquisition) with its PIM tool to deliver power and

cooling monitoring and control seamlessly with the datacenter hardware management

features.

Raritan

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Raritan is an IDC MarketScape

Major Player worldwide. Raritan has been involved in enterprise datacenters since

1985, with its legacy in KVM, power, and serial monitoring and management

solutions. The company's DCIM offering, dcTrack, is an essential element within its

lineup of integrated solutions to monitor and manage the key interrelated elements of

a datacenter's infrastructure — assets, capacity, and energy. dcTrack delivers

additional value through the use of other Raritan offerings, including its intelligent

PDUs for device-level monitoring, smart environmental sensors, and PowerIQ energy

management software. The company also sells its own asset management sensors

called Intelligent Asset Tracking to enable real-time inventory of assets. In addition to

its own integrated solutions, Raritan has developed partnerships with a number of

other providers including BMC, Cisco, RFCode, VMware, and Vigilent. Raritan has

built a solid reputation with dcTrack, and the solution is well regarded in the market

for its feature set and capabilities in providing a holistic view of the datacenter.

Raritan has a worldwide sales and services presence. In 2011, Raritan restructured

its DCIM organization and established it as a separate business unit to become more

nimble and customer focused. Based on customer feedback, this has worked well

and has contributed to a partnership attitude with a close integration between sales,

service, and Raritan's R&D team.

Strengths

Raritan has defined itself in the DCIM market by providing an open, robust solution for

midsize enterprise datacenters. This segment of the market has unique needs that

Raritan understands, including the ability to integrate solutions when needed, based

on an architecture that enables choice and flexibility. Raritan commits a large portion

of its revenue to R&D and has a solid financial backing to enable the staying power

needed in the DCIM market.

Raritan has established a number of partnerships within the DCIM ecosystem to

enable its users to gain the full benefits of its DCIM solution, including integration

enterprise system management solutions and building management systems. IDC

believes that DCIM solutions will be increasingly purchased by decision makers on

the IT side and less by the facilities organizations, and Raritan's strength in working

with IT providers will help with market awareness and adoption of dcTrack.

Opportunit ies

Raritan's dcTrack provides visibility and management into the IT elements of a

datacenter, and PowerIQ (purchased separately) provides visibility and management

20 #241280 ©2013 IDC

of the power elements of a datacenter. End users with limited budgets may decide to

deploy only one of Raritan's tools instead of both, and as a result may not realize the

full benefits of its DCIM solution. By not choosing the full DCIM solution, end-user

customers will not be able to view, analyze, and control their entire infrastructure on a

single pane of glass, which IDC believes could be a deciding factor in a competitive

market, especially in midsize enterprises, going forward. Integrating these tools and

selling as a single solution may be preferable, especially in midsize enterprise

datacenter sales where users tend to prefer bundled solutions.

Schneider Electric

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Schneider Electric is an IDC

MarketScape Leader worldwide. Schneider Electric is a global provider of energy

management and solutions, with a presence in many datacenters around the world.

From its legacy of providing power starting in the mid-1800s, the company today

addresses power management, IT room management, building management, security

management, and process and machines management with focused solutions. Total

revenue in 2012 was 24 billion euros, and Schneider Electric employs more than

140,000 people in 100 countries.

Schneider Electric purchased American Power and Cooling (APC) in 2007 to expand

its datacenter management solutions business, and in 2011 the company released its

DCIM solution, StruxureWare for datacenters, to address customers' needs for

management infrastructure. At the end of 2011, Schneider purchased Viridity, which

developed EnergyCenter and EnergyCheck power management tools. This

acquisition further expanded Schneider's IT portfolio.

StruxureWare for datacenters is a collection of five modules, each focused on a

particular aspect of datacenter management and control. Schneider Electric's

objective is to obtain new customers by meeting their specific needs with one module

and then growing the footprint to manage the entire infrastructure. Based on customer

conversations, IDC believes that this approach may work particularly well with large

organizations that prefer to tackle one management problem at a time.

Schneider Electric reported that customer adoption of StruxureWare was very strong

in 2012 and indicates a shift in the market from learning and comparison to actual

investment in solutions. Customers that came from the APC acquisition tended to be

more midmarket focused, but the acquisition by Schneider has enabled growth with

new customers into large enterprise and service provider implementations.

Strengths

StruxureWare for datacenters is a robust set of tools that enable customers to

manage change, plan for future needs, and increase overall efficiency in an intuitive

GUI. Beyond these core capabilities, StruxureWare also addresses customers' needs

with energy procurement, utility cost management, and carbon emissions tracking.

A DCIM provider with a global footprint, long history in the industry, and strong

financial backing is often preferred by DCIM purchase decision makers. Schneider

Electric has these qualities and is already present in many of the world's enterprises

with its power solutions and global support services team. In a nascent market, trust

©2013 IDC #241280 21

is a key differentiator, and Schneider Electric has built that trust on the facilities side

of the business.

Opportunit ies

The challenge for Schneider Electric is to transition its conversations and trust built on

the facilities side of the business to the IT side of the business. This is not an easy

transition but is a necessary one to grow into large IT organizations and service

provider accounts. Partnerships with global IT providers and best-of-breed point

solutions in the DCIM space will speed this transition. Schneider Electric has

announced several key partnerships, but further connecting with IT decision makers

through additional partnerships and ROI messaging will strengthen its position in the

market, especially with large enterprises.

Sentilla

According to IDC analysis and buyer perception, Sentilla is an IDC MarketScape

Contender worldwide. Sentilla is a software company founded in 2003 and based in

California. Its flagship offering, Data Center Performance Management Platform

(DCPM), provides visibility and analytics across an organization's physical, virtual,

and cloud infrastructure. In this way, Sentilla focuses on helping IT professionals

make decisions about where to place workloads in an increasingly hybrid IT

environment.

DCPM can integrate with ITSM and BMS tools and is VMware ready. The current

release, V5, supports model-driven "what if" planning scenarios to analyze

deployment strategies. DCPM enables visibility into resource usage, power

consumption, and demand trends. The Web and mobile-device based analysis,

announced in 2012, provides dashboards for performance, location, and power

consumption of hardware assets.

Strengths

Especially for smaller enterprise datacenters with fewer support staff, the ability to

deploy a DCIM solution quickly is critical to success. The auto-discovery features and

intuitive GUI make Sentilla's DCPM an attractive solution for smaller to midsize

organizations that do not have the time and human resources to support a complex

rollout. With no other products besides its DCIM software, Sentilla is considered very

open and nonproprietary, and this message resonates especially well with IT decision

makers.

Opportunit ies

The DCIM market has been challenging for smaller software vendors such as

Sentilla, which do not have the existing customer base to draw on from a related

facilities or IT business and build upon customer accounts like their larger competitors

do. Many larger organizations with a low tolerance for risk are hesitant to bring a new

solution such as DCIM and a new provider with a shorter history in the datacenter

space into their ecosystem. This has been a barrier to growth in the DCIM market but

is a reality faced by all of the smaller software vendors. Proving to the market that it

has a DCIM solution worth investing in will take time and trust. Marketing its customer

22 #241280 ©2013 IDC

wins will build trust, and Sentilla's ability to wait out the market until more widespread

adoption occurs in 2013–2014 will determine its longer-term success.

E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E

This IDC MarketScape evaluates the current capabilities and future strategies of 10

providers in the worldwide DCIM market, which is a rapidly growing and evolving

space. The scoring and weighting in this IDC MarketScape is designed to factor in a

changing base of decision makers and balance future requirements with current

offerings and expected capabilities in three to five years. Although it is impossible to

declare market leaders in three to five years, this IDC MarketScape strives to provide

the analysis to support and identify the providers that should be considered in

purchase decisions and will likely be Major Players defining DCIM going forward.

DCIM purchase decisions for both enterprise and service provider datacenters will be

shaped by the need to accurately plan for future capacity, increase efficiency of

datacenter resources, and manage growth and change. In the longer term, the DCIM

solutions that are able to coordinate with the larger enterprise IT organization and

support strategic decisions, as opposed to solving tactical problems only, will prove

the value of DCIM and emerge as Market Leaders.

Many providers have emerged with many methods of providing insights and data

reporting on the infrastructure. Consolidation and partnerships will continue and will

serve to further refine and focus the market. Especially for service providers and large

enterprises, the differentiation of DCIM tools will come through their ability to support

strategic business decisions.

G u i d a n c e f o r D C I M B u y e r s

With often a significant financial and time commitment to implement DCIM, it is

imperative that buyers know their goals for DCIM and their internal resources at the

outset. IDC finds, from conversations with end users, that the information they sought

with a DCIM implementation is often just the "tip of the iceberg" in how the information

can be used to answer larger questions. For a DCIM implementation to be considered

successful, IDC recommends that C-level decision makers be involved to include

broader organizational support. Instead of limiting a DCIM implementation to simply

environmental monitoring or asset tracking, end users should include broader IT

management questions and choose solutions that enable the two-way transmission of

data to support decisions and receive maximum value from the investment. In this

way, the DCIM purchase decision becomes strategic, as opposed to tactical.

The first question many buyers ask is "how much does it cost?," and with many

solutions starting at $250,000, many have quickly dismissed the possibility of

implementing a robust DCIM solution. Instead, these buyers have shifted their focus

to more tactical point solutions, such as environmental monitoring, power monitoring

and usage, and asset management and change management. These point solutions

often cost less and have the benefit of a near-term ROI but don't provide the full value

of DCIM.

©2013 IDC #241280 23

IDC believes that a better approach to DCIM would be to include internal constituents

from the IT and facilities groups, as well as strategic planning and the CFO. The

planning and deployment will take longer, and the initial cost will be higher, but the

benefits will include a much broader set of life-cycle management, change

management, and auditing functionality in addition to capacity planning.

Like any useful tool, the information you get out of it is only as good as the

information you put into it. If your company can only commit a half-time employee to

managing the solution, you will need one with a highly intuitive GUI that needs very

little hands-on time, versus a solution that requires the coordination of multiple groups

in real time to accurately assess and manage resources. Expectations regarding the

output of the tool and its usefulness across the organization should be set

appropriately.

G u i d a n c e f o r D C I M P r o v i d e r s

The DCIM market has experienced considerable churn, with the exit of a number of

participants even in the nascent stages of this market. In conversations with end

users on why they invest in certain providers and not in others, and after analyzing

other business factors that contribute to success, IDC believes that DCIM providers

should focus on the following:

Technology and selling partnerships. End users today want to deploy best-of-

breed solutions and want a DCIM solution that can interact with a broad range of

other technologies to deliver the best possible solution. IDC has found that DCIM

providers that have formed technology partnerships with Intel for Data Center

Manager (DCM) for real-time metrics, RF Code for its environmental and location

sensors, and Romonet for TCO analysis, for example, appeal to a wider range of

potential buyers. From a selling partnership perspective, many DCIM providers

have leveraged relationships with larger IT organizations for the ability to enter

into conversations with the IT organizations within larger multinational end users.

Connecting their company's DCIM with an IT organization's datacenter solutions

is a conduit to more potential customers.

Global service and support capability. The ability to provide service and

support in multiple regions is a key differentiator for many DCIM buyers. With

datacenter expansion taking off in new regions of the world, and as companies

become more global, the need to provide support in multiple geographies

increases. In addition to the global support, localization of the DCIM solution is

critical, including the ability to customize reports based on local power metrics.

Sales force laser focused on DCIM. Many providers have a large base of

existing datacenter customers upon which they can sell their DCIM solutions.

However, the sale of management software is very different from a hardware or

infrastructure sale in both the conversation and constituents. Simply having a

relationship with a company does not ensure that the company will purchase

your DCIM solution just because you offer it. Having a dedicated sales force that

can converse in a CFO's/CIO's language and understand their issues is critical in

transforming the relationship to include infrastructure management software

sales.

24 #241280 ©2013 IDC

Clear, transparent pricing model. IT organizations have expressed a need to

make cost comparisons between different vendors' solutions and the need for a

"no surprises" contract. DCIM vendors that have standardized on a per-rack

pricing model are becoming the norm, and those that base their pricing by assets

or numbers of seats need to have a very clear pricing model and set their

prospects' expectations on price appropriately to ensure customer trust and

satisfaction. With the level of competition and discounting in the market, DCIM

buyers will demand a clear pricing model or go elsewhere.

Full upstream and downstream support of data. The DCIM solutions

evaluated in this IDC MarketScape have built-in reporting and analytics.

However, to be perceived as "open," and to increase the strategic value of DCIM,

full upstream and downstream transfer of data is a requirement for success. The

integration with BMS and ITSM solutions will become more common, and the

ability to support the transfer of data will be a key differentiator in the market.

L E A R N M O R E

R e l a t e d R e s e a r c h

Worldwide Datacenter Census and Construction 2013–2017 Forecast:

Datacenters and the New Physics of IT (IDC #241031, May 2013)

Key Forces Shaping Datacenters in the 3rd Platform Era (IDC #240270, March

2013)

Worldwide Datacenter Infrastructure Management 2012–2016 Forecast (IDC

#238205, December 2012)

Worldwide Datacenter 2012–2016 Forecast (IDC #237866, November 2012)

S y n o p s i s

This IDC study uses the IDC MarketScape methodology to provide an assessment of

10 vendors participating in the datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) market.

The IDC MarketScape is a vendor assessment tool designed to compare vendors'

current capability and strategy relative to one another and to the factors that IDC

believes will be most conducive to success in the DCIM market. This evaluation is

based on a comprehensive framework and set of parameters that assess vendors

relative to one another, and to those factors that will contribute to success in the

DCIM market in the short and long term.

"Datacenter managers have many choices in how to approach infrastructure

management, and implementing a DCIM solution is a critical step in supporting

business agility. Decisions on which provider to choose should transcend tactical

capabilities such as asset management and environmental and power monitoring,

and include strategic capabilities such as advanced analytics to ensure the long-term

success of the implementation." — Jennifer Koppy, research manager, IDC's

Datacenter Trends and Strategies research team

©2013 IDC #241280 25

C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e

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