As always, the candidates for Research of the Month are our Research of the Week award winners during the month, which were for June:

"Best Practices for Managing Mobile Voice and Data Costs"

"Developments in UC Mean It's Time to Update Your IP Telephony Road Map"

"Private Cloud Computing: The Steppingstone to the Cloud"

"The What, Why and When of Cloud Computing"

So, two weekly winners in networking and two weekly winners "in the cloud", so to speak. And the winner for the month (and again, your ratings were a factor here) is:

"The What, Why and When of Cloud Computing"

Our multidisciplinary and wide-ranging research here shows you how cloud is really progressing.

Congratulations to the 43 Gartner analysts who authored the 27 individual research reports included in this Special Report - a truly massive undertaking!

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Best Practices for Managing Mobile Voice and Data Costs" by Phillip Redman

This note provides some hands-on advice, primarily directed to our North American clients but in large parts universally applicable, on how to manage mobile voice and data costs. This is a hot topic as more and more of our clients experience consumption of these services growing at a faster rate than rates are declining and thus despite good price reductions witness how overall spend continues to go up.

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Developments in UC Mean It's Time to Update Your IP Telephony Road Map" by Steve Blood

The note illustrates the broader implications of unified communications on organizations' IP telephony road maps. Telephony can no longer be considered in isolation. Developments in UC will change how organizations manage communication across multiple channels.

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At a Keynote session at this year's Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit, a panel of Gartner analysts discussed the hype and realities of cloud computing and what organizations should do to take advantage of this new services delivery option.

Gartner analysts Stan Zaffos, Cameron Haight, Mark Fabbi, and Tom Bittman took part in a Gartner keynote panel entitled "Cloud Computing - Will It Impact Infrastructure and Operations?" on Tuesday. Each analyst gave his perspective of cloud computing from his area of expertise including Storage, IT Operations, Networking and Servers respectively. The main takeaway from the panel is that cloud computing is less about new technologies and more about the process of delivering value added IT services to the business. Without an understanding of the IT services that are being delivered, the processes involved, the service expectations of the business, and the associated costs, IT organizations will not be able to take full advantage of cloud computing.

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For the week of 14 June, of the five weekly analyst picks, the following was judged to be the Research of the Week:

"The What, Why and When of Cloud Computing"

Cloud computing moves beyond pure hype to early adoption. Our multidisciplinary and wide-ranging research here shows you how cloud is really progressing.

Congratulations to the 43 Gartner analysts who authored the 27 individual research reports included in this Special Report - a truly massive undertaking!

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Private Cloud Computing: The Steppingstone to the Cloud" by Thomas Bittman

This note helps separate hype from reality when it comes to cloud computing and where certain services should be placed. Not all services benefit from being in the form of one to many and delivered over the Internet, yet IT Organizations wants to leverage the scalability and cost effectiveness of the Cloud Computing paradigm.

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As always, the candidates for Research of the Month are our Research of the Week award winners during the month, which were for May:

"Managing the Data Center Cost Portfolio During a Recession," 6 May 2009
"Toolkit: How to Calculate TCO for Server Virtualization," 19 May 2009
"Case Study: How WAN Optimization Rescued a Virtual Desktop Deployment at Low Cost," 7 May 2009
"Best Practices for Deploying Hosted Virtual Desktops," 26 May 2009

And the winner is:
"Toolkit: How to Calculate TCO for Server Virtualization," 19 May 2009

Why? Well, in this case, YOU made the decision here. This Toolkit was given "5 stars" by Gartner for I&O Leaders clients. (The other reports receiving client ratings scored in the 4 to 4 ˝ star range). Additionally, I believe this is a great example of the value-add that Toolkits deliver to our Gartner for IT Leaders clients.

Congratulations, Stewart and Phil!

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Best Practices for Deploying Hosted Virtual Desktops” by Brian Gammage

Best practices on how to do something differently or more efficiently are always helpful to Gartner clients because they can prevent a lot mistakes and restarts. Those clients that are considering or are implementing virtual desktops should read this research note to learn more about the experiences of other companies with HVD.

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Honors for this week go to:

"Toolkit: How to Calculate TCO for Server Virtualization"

This Toolkit helps in selecting the right applications to virtualize and accounting for the cost of software licensing under virtualization. It is a relatively simple framework for determining the savings or identifying unexpected costs that need to be overcome before proceeding.

Congratulations, Stewart and Phil!

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Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Cost Optimization. If these topics are keeping you up at night, then it is not too late to join us for an exciting conference June 23-25 in Orlando.

We will have over 40 sessions on the topics that matter most to leaders of IT infrastructure and operations that contain forward-thinking, strategic ideas in addition to tactical solutions you can take back to the office on Monday morning. Visit us here for details and register today.

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Please join me for this webinar on a timely and important topic that includes new and updated content!

Depending on what you have done already, Gartner's research indicates that the recommendations we have here can save you 5-15% in the shorter term and 20%+ longer term.

To join, please click here.

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Honors for this week go to:

"Toolkit: How to Calculate TCO for Server Virtualization"

...as it helps with selecting the right applications to virtualize and accounting for the cost of software licensing under virtualization. It is a relatively simple framework for determining the savings or identifying unexpected costs that need to be overcome before proceeding.

Congratulations, Stewart and Phil!

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You may have noticed that three of our I&O Key Initiatives - IT Modernization, Virtualization/Consolidation, and ITIL/Process Improvement - have a new look (the Key Initiatives links are at the center right of IT Leaders I&O home page). Basically, what we have done is further categorize our best research for each of these Key Initiatives and in doing so, increased the number of research reports highlighted by threefold or more. First, we categorize the research into three phases: Plan, Build and Run. (For each Key Initiative, there are I&O leaders in each phase.) Second, within the phases, we build "Collections" - a body of research centered on a particular area. For example, in Plan, there is typically a "Getting Started" Collection - essentials of what you need to know to get started with that Key Initiative.

To help us decide how we proceed from here with this expanded coverage, could we please have your feedback?

Please take a few minutes to respond to our new interactive poll, located at the bottom right of this page.

Here's some further explanation of the voting levels in the poll:

- Extremely high value – do other KIs this way
- High value – expand Collections but not KIs
- Some value – no need for any expansion
- No value – the initial KI coverage was fine
- Not sure – can't decide

Thank you in advance for your participation here!

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I&O leaders - including network managers - tell us about the intense pressure they are under to reduce costs. Well, my webinar on 20 May (at 8 AM EDT and repeated at 11 AM EDT) can help you fund ways to reduce networking costs. This is one area in which you may be able to achieve savings that take effect this year! Previous versions of this webinar (this one contains new material) have been extremely popular, so please register now.

Please join us! To register, click here.

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Honors for this week go to:

"Managing the Data Center Cost Portfolio During a Recession," 6 May 2009

Why? This report methodically analyzes the major data center cost elements and, in so doing, recommends a set of actions you can take now to lower costs.

Congratulations, Lars and Rakesh!

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Case Study: How WAN Optimization Rescued a Virtual Desktop Deployment at Low Cost” by Severine Real and Joe Skorupa

Almost every company wants to know how other companies have approached problems so that they can learn from a forerunner's experience. This Research Note analyzes the impact of a UK-based real estate company's decision to deploy virtual desktops for remote users at two locations as a test prior to full deployment. They quickly encountered many problems that needed to be addressed prior to a full corporate rollout. Gartner clients that are considering VDI should read this Research Note.

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Since this planned acquisition was announced, speculation has grown about what this means to the IT industry. So many questions - like what happens to JAVA and MySQL, not to mention Sun's server and storage products!

Here's your chance to hear Gartner's latest views on this industry changing event. You can register by going here.

We hope to "see" you there!

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"How to Assess Your IT Service Availability Levels" by Donna Scott

This Research Note analyzes polling data collected at Gartner's Data Center conference in Las Vegas in December 2008. Since there aren't any metrics for service availability, this research represents measurements for IT services (ITIL v.2, ITIL v.3) or business services (ITIL v.3), which are otherwise known as end-to-end application availability metrics. The metrics involve end-to-end availability. All enterprises should measure the availability levels of mission-critical IT services - if you don't measure, then you can't identify opportunities for continuous improvement and this RN provides guidance on how to go about creating metrics.

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For April, the research of the week winners were:

"Cloud Storage: Benefits, Risks and Cost Considerations"
"Case Study: Saving a University Network From 37,000 Marauding Students"
"Gartner's Telework Action Plan Is Key to Successful Implementations"
"Toolkit: Comparing Cloud Computing Infrastructure Providers"

Of these, "Toolkit: Comparing Cloud Computing Infrastructure Providers" is the winning report for the month.

Why? Deciding to use a cloud service for I&O should involve a rigorous evaluation and that is exactly what Lydia provides here.

Congratulations, Lydia!

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As many of you are deciding whether you should accomodate demand for additional data center capacity in-house or in the cloud though external providers, I invite you to read Brian Gammage's blog post on the marginal returns of virtualization for an intriguing discussion on the impact of Moorse's law on the returns from server virtualization and how this should influence the timing of investment decision and service pricing negotiations.

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For the week of 26 April 2009, our Analyst Picks were a selection of research notes on cloud computing. The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Toolkit: Comparing Cloud Computing Infrastructure Providers"

The cloud infrastructure service market is evolving rapidly and every service provider is unique and the market is evolving rapidly. This Toolkit helps selecting a cloud infrastructure service provider (CISP), conducting a structured evaluation of each vendor's system architecture, network architecture, storage architecture, security capabilities, self-management tools, customer support model, operations quality and pricing model.

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The news blares that this latest outbreak is at "near-pandemic" levels. This is the time for I&O Leaders to be prepared and not panic; however, being prepared may mean you need to ensure your enterprise can implement its contingency plans if warranted. We at Gartner have responded quickly to advise our clients here; click here for our suggested actions that you should take.

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For the week of 19 April 2009, our Analyst Picks were all recently published reports dealing with networking/communications. And the top pick award goes to:

"Gartner's Telework Action Plan Is Key to Successful Implementations," 6 November 2008

This framework is essentially a checklist that covers all the bases to help ensure you implement a successful teleworking operation. The framework covers ten critical aspects and each aspect - and the analysts highlight the key factors you need to consider in that aspect.

By the way, our criteria for selecting the week's best research is your feedback. This research was given "five stars" by the clients who rated the research. So, when you read our research, please take a few seconds to rate it.

Congratulations, Leslie, John, and Scott!

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This is news – big news.

Oracle's acquisition would represent a milestone: the first time a prominent hardware company will have been acquired by a software company. The large systems landscape, currently represented by two behemoths, IBM and HP, will expand on a third axis with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun's hardware and software portfolio. The shape of the landscape, however, is still in flux. Other vendors such as EMC (VMware), Dell, Cisco, Fujitsu, Linux operating system distributors, emerging fabric-based vendors and cloud infrastructure services will also battle for new opportunities. On the packaged software front, SAP and Microsoft are the largest non-hardware platform-specific companies and HP is the largest software stack-agnostic systems company.

What remains unclear about the acquisition is how committed Oracle will be to Sun's broad roadmaps of hardware, software and operating system strategies - what stays from the Sun roadmap, and what gets the coup de grace (for more insight, see "Oracle/Sun Deal WILL Change Competitive Landscape in IT"). Sun's installed base worldwide is as varied as a rainbow coalition spanning Sparc variants, legacy and recent, from heavily mainframe-featured as the Fujitsu chip designs to power-efficient T-class Niagaras. They also broadly span a price range from $5K to $1M. According to Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison, the entire acquisition was worth the $7.4B outlay for Java itself. But Oracle has been a proponent of rock-bottom priced hardware running Oracle's high-value, but pricey software - the cheaper the hardware supporting Oracle applications and databases, the better the overall value proposition to the enterprise. This core principle could warrant users contemplating the risk in making investments in high-end Sparc systems.

On Sun's other landscape is open source. Oracle will assume the mantel Sun wore when it proclaimed itself the largest OSS company in the world – a strange title for Oracle who has put premium value on its own internal creativity and acquisitions of blue-chip software companies. That will challenge Oracle messaging in creating a new image of dynamic software development through community processes and reference specifications such as the Java community without imprinting its own signature indelibly on the independent development process. To get more perspective on what Oracle's acquisition could mean to IT leaders, please see the "hot off the press" research. This is just our initial analysis; you will see a lot more coming from Gartner on the implications here; in the works is a Special Report that will examine the broad and intriguing possibilities that this acquisition could mean in the market. So, please stay tuned!

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Our award this week goes to:

"Case Study: Saving a University Network From 37,000 Marauding Students", 1 April 2009

Case studies are one of the report types we do that clients can not get enough of! This is primarily because the case studies show what their peers have done in similar situations to their own. This report is a showcase of what constitutes an excellent case study. Congratulations, Robin!

Speaking of seeing what other clients have done in similar situations, have you tried Peer Connects as of yet? This is a new capability available to Gartner for IT Leaders clients that can get you in contact with a peer that is dealing or has dealt with your issue. Try it!

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I&O leaders - including network managers - tell us about the intense pressure they are under to reduce costs. Well, here's a webinar that can help you fund ways to reduce networking costs. Previous versions of this webinar (this one contains new material) have been extremely popular, so please register now. Neil Rickard will be hosting the webinar at an "EMEA-friendly" time (and with EMEA-oriented content); I will be doing a North American version at 11 AM EDT.

Please join us! To register, click here.

By the way, our Analyst Picks this week have a networking theme and networking has a special "track" at our I&O Management Summit, 25-27 June on Orlando.

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The top research for the week of 5 April 2009 is:

"Cloud Storage: Benefits, Risks and Cost Considerations", 1 April 2009

With all the hype around cloud computing, here is a pragmatic research report that clearly lays out when to use cloud storage services - and when not to. These services deserve serious attention; as the report points out, 2009 is THE year of cloud storage!

Congratulations, Stan and Adam!

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For the month of March, the weekly winners were:

"Has Market Consolidation Killed IT Operations Management Tool Innovation?"
"Getting Off Windows XP Is More Important Than Windows Vista vs. Windows "
"Toolkit: Estimating the Cost of Cloud Infrastructure"
"Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Cost-Optimization Efforts"
"How to Determine Whether You Can Afford More Infrastructure Risk"

By a quirk of calendaring, there were five "Research of the Weeks" in March – due to when we "go to press". Therefore I am going to duck the hard decisions and choose TWO winners this month. Both were highly rated by clients like you and very popular in terms of the number of "hits".

The first winner is:

"Has Market Consolidation Killed IT Operations Management Tool Innovation?"

David Williams poses a question on the minds of many IT Operations-minded clients – and goes about addressing it with solid analysis.

The second winner is:

"Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Cost-Optimization Efforts"

You might think this is an easy balancing act and straight-forward (Hey! We've got to focus on the near-term, period!) – but Barbara Gomolski and Kurt Potter show that it is a delicate balancing act – and tell us how to go about achieving that proper balance.

Congratulations, David, Barabara, and Kurt!

P.S. Why do we do these blogposts? For you – this is compelling research that we want to bring to your attention again – in case you missed it when it first appeared as an Analyst Pick.

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Thank you all for participating in our recent poll to select last year's Research of the Year !

The nominees for Research of the Year were:

- Energy Savings via Virtualization: Green IT on a Budget

- Toolkit: Use Best Terms and Conditions in Cellular Negotiations to Save Millions of Dollars Over Two Years

- Understand the Risks of Skipping Windows Vista

- Virtualization Changes Virtually Everything

- Toolkit: Bandwidth Estimation Model

- Toolkit: Running IT Operations as a Business

May I have the envelope please? And the winner is (insert drumroll here) … By garnering 36% of the votes, the winner is …

Virtualization Changes Virtually Everything

This was a gargantuan undertaking on what we have been calling the most impactful trend in I&O. This Special Report was a collection of 39 Gartner reports - a definitive view on what's happening and trends. 31 Gartner analysts made contributions here. (Unlike the Academy Awards, I won't list all - but all, thank you for an excellent job. However, I'd like to first single out Phil Dawson for leading the effort and to Phil Dawson, Tom Bittman, Cameron Haight, Brian Gammage, and Neil MacDonald for each one of them authoring or co-authoring five or more reports here.

That's the "I" side of I&O. On the "O" side, we have a close runner-up - with 31% of the votes - for:

Toolkit: Running IT Operations as a Business

This research report is a pragmatic guide to how to make running IT ops as a business really happen.

Congratulations to Deb Curtis and Ed Holub for an excellent job here!

And that concludes our annual "awards show" …

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Has Market Consolidation Killed IT Operations Management Tool Innovation?" by David Williams

This research note assesses the implications of consolidation activity by the Big Four vendors on start up companies that are developing innovative technologies. Organizations that acquire a best of breed tool to solve a specific problem will need to be on the lookout for signals of an impending acquisition of their point vendor, as future product innovation may be stifled post acquisition.

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"How to Determine Whether You Can Afford More Infrastructure Risk," by Cameron Haight and Ray Paquet

This research note provides companies with guidance on how to calculate the acceptable level of risk their organization can withstand. It is a critical thinking process that companies need to undertake as they respond to the economic crisis by cutting costs that could potentially lead to increased risk in another area, and prepare for the future. For those folks who like graphs, there are two to illustrate their points.

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The Research of the Week award goes to:

"Getting Off Windows XP Is More Important Than Windows Vista vs. Windows 7", by Michael A Silver and Stephen Kleynhans

This note helps organizations that are still on Windows XP understand how little time there is left to plan a graceful migration and how that time line compares to the time line of prudent migration to Windows 7. Skipping a Windows release (like Windows Vista in this case) sounds like a good way of saving money and effort but timing will be of utmost importance this time.

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The research of the week award goes to:

"Toolkit: Estimating the Cost of Cloud Infrastructure" by Lydia Leong

Cloud infrastructure services may provide cost savings over internally hosted solutions. This Toolkit helps organizations calculate and compare the costs of hosting an application within their own data center with those of doing so on a cloud infrastructure service.

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In our recent webinar, I asked which of five key cost optimization actions that I&O leaders felt that they had reasonably completed ("reasonably complete" = 70% or more). 215 participated; here are the results:

Compared results with peers and established a cost-cutting team - 24%

Renegotiated major vendor contracts - 56%

Consolidated/virtualized I&O - 36%

Streamlined I&O ops - 26%

Optimized multi-sourcing - 17%

(Note: Percentages add up to more than 100% due to the multiple-choice nature of the poll.)

The overall finding here is that I&O leaders have not completed these cost-optimization opportunities. Hence, greater implementation can help alleviate this year's budget-cutting pressures. Note that not all of these actions can be accomplished in the short-term.

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Our selection this week goes to:

"Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Cost-Optimization Efforts," 27 February 2009

Earlier this year, Gartner introduced a four-level framework to optimize IT costs. In this report, Barabara Gomolski and Kurt Potter provide specific short and long term actions you can take in each level. Hence, this serves as a convenient checklist with which you may identify additional opportunities.

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