Links that I have found interesting for October 20th:

• Integrien Files Four Patents for Real-Time Performance Analytics – extend Integrien’s four existing patent filings in the development of a new mathematical foundation for analyzing IT performance data to enable the prediction of performance and availability problems in complex IT systems.

  “Recently, we’ve begun to see claims from traditional systems management vendors of ‘predictive analytics.’ However, the underlying foundation of these technologies is based on standard statistical methods and techniques,” said Dr. Mazda Marvasti, CTO of Integrien. “Through our experience with live customer environments, we have learned that these standard methods are inapplicable to IT data and that a new foundation is required to make sense of such data. These patent filings represent the latest work in the development of this foundation, without which, real-time, predictive analytics for IT performance data is not possible.”

  * This is a great PR!! SMACK! Don't we have even one patent laying around that could put us in the predictive/proactive space?? *

• Tideway’s CEO on the Green Data Center – the new key metric is “performance-per-watt,” and there is plenty of scope to improve it. The problem is the people, processes and systems required to drive this initiative forward are seriously lagging behind. A research program on best practices set up by the EPA has only 54 volunteers. Most data center administrators are nowhere close to knowing what’s running on which servers in their data centers. That makes adoption of more efficient hardware and co-locating software programs on a single box through virtualization risky, slow and arduous.

The announcement of the definitive agreement for Novell to purchase Managed Objects has been on the street for almost a week now. I’ve held back partly because of a pressing work engagement, but also to try and really think about this some on my own. I’ll admit I do not know much about Novell, its recent acquisitions, vision or strategy. What crosses my mind about Novell is their legacy and recent entrance into the world of open source Linux with SUSE and virtualization with ZENworks stuff.

I’ve read through their website and see the very early beginnings of marketing and spin to play in the enterprise buzzword bingo game of datacenter automation, virtualization, Linux servers/desktops, compliance, security and basic systems management. From what I see they have a long ways to go to fill in the gaps if one was to compare them to the mega product suites of the incumbent “big4” or “other6”.

Some questions that initially come to my mind are:

• What’s the bigger strategy and vision?
• Is this really a CMDB play with BSM as a nice to have?
• Will MO become a Novell oriented solution?
• Will the Novell name keep exclude MO from some clients and opportunities?
• Will this help or hinder their green field competition against the “big4”?
• Will they be relegated to only compete with the “tier 2” business service management providers (Quest Software, Compuware, ASG, etc)?
• How will Novell fill out some of the key gaps in its portfolio to fully enable an end-to-end solution that can leverage MO’s architecture and data collection capabilities? (systems, network, application, service, transaction, user experience, etc.) I see a big need here, starting with basic systems, network and application management (open source opportunities?).
• How will the MO target markets or customers change?
• Will MO sales and engineering team experience be diluted by other product quotas and priorities? BSM takes a unique sales team and ideally a very consultative approach to sell the value proposition and overall lifecycle. With more products to sell, how will this impact the overall BSM message?

I hope to speak with some of my friends at MO in the near future as the dust settles to get a glimpse into the future vision and strategy. In any case, it’s all business and the MO products can and will continue to stand on their own and remain a viable option for many around the world. I look forward to developments here and within the field in competitive situations. There will no doubt be wins and losses for both of our companies!

Other notable press and discussion available here:

• Denise Dubie – NetworkWorld
• Chris Kanaracus – NetworkWorld
• John Dragoon
• Novell Website
• Novell PR on Managed Objects Acquisition
• All Google news on acquisition