Appliance Megatrends.

Trend One: Storage Grows--Workgroup Storage Explodes

Man is a creature of storage, from garages to filing cabinets to tape libraries. Computer storage capacity doubles steadily every year.

The web makes information more readily available and the web-based economy dictates faster action. This empowers the basic decision cell: the workgroup. Until recently, storage vendors and IT professionals have been focusing on enterprise, transaction-oriented application storage. There is a vast pent-up demand for workgroup storage. This demand is only starting to be matched by a corresponding Network Attached Storage offer.

Trend TWO: Information On The Web

The World Wide Web increasingly provides the bulk of the information required to make business decisions and to execute business transactions. This challenges many of the accepted computing notions of central, in-house information control and storage. In fact, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are providing online backup and these same providers offer to "virtualize" your storage and to provide you with a "data tone."

According to the Gartner Group, "The network will be the storage system of record."

Applications are also outward bound: applets are now widespread and increasing in size and complexity and Application Service Providers (ASPs) now offer temporary or permanent web access to hosted applications ranging from a graphic editor to a full Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. According to the Gartner Group, "Network computing is emerging in 1999. By 2001, it will be the primary method with which a majority of new business applications are developed."

Trend Three: Ubiquitous Clients

As the server is being redefined, so is the client. The personal computer is losing its quasimonopoly as the computing client of choice, as it is attacked on a very broad front. Cell phones deliver e-mail and stock quotes and the upcoming generation of set-top boxes offers capabilities to download and store music, games, and information from the web, as well as buffer TV programs (and bypass commercials). Auto PCs merge email, GPS, Internet access, and music; PDAs deliver downloaded MP3 music; digital cameras allow users to edit and post graphical contents on the web; intelligent notepads capture your handwriting; and electronic books with downloadable contents are on the Christmas shopping lists.

This trend is only starting. How long will it take before your car keeps track of its maintenance record and your wristwatch (not your desktop) keeps today's appointments?

For Sun. Microsystem's Scott McNealy, "Everything with a digital or electric heartbeat is going to be connected to the Internet."

Two years ago, personal computing was becoming a commoditized market dominated by Wintel and a few mass vendors and merchants. These new devices redefine the rule of the game and who the players are.

Trend Four: Server Operating Systems Drift Up--Windows Is Not The Universal Answer Anymore

Twenty years ago, mainframes were coming under attack, as IT departments realized they spent more effort on maintenance than on new value-producing services. The rate of innovation was slowing down; the whole infrastructure seemed to acquire a life of its own and to drift out of control.

Windows-based servers now face many of the same issues. This creates an opening for a new model and, as the economy abhors a vacuum, this model is emerging. It is the appliance.

Trend Five: Open Platforms

The new operating environment starts with a return to basics: focus on the application and the user--not on the operating system. To do this, it must be in tune with the changing nature of the workplace, the economy, and society. The new computing utility must recombine technologies to serve new needs, as business recombines operations of web-based enterprises to address changing market conditions.

The platform supporting new business models must be fast, reliable, eminently reconfigurable, and not closely controlled by any specific player. Linux offers the most convincing and the most successful technology and business model for executing the appliance vision, which is probably why over fifty-five percent of the world's Internet Service Providers run Apache on Linux.

Trend Six: NAS Goes To SAN, Appliances Rule The Web Network Attached Storage, thin servers, and appliances were considered synonymous. They will follow very divergent courses over the coming years. In one course, departmental and enterprise NAS will merge with the Storage Area Network (SAN). Basic technologies are almost identical with a very compact real-time operating system over a low cost chip (often an Intel 960). What remains to be done is to add file system semantics and directory services on the SAN or to back-end rack-mounted file servers with access to the enterprise disk farm. This will be accomplished in the coming three years, resulting in a very powerful infrastructure for massive automated back office processing (data warehouses and transaction processing). In the second course, workgroup and small office NAS will morph into appliances, offering a much more attractive set of services to a specific population. According to Business Week, "By 2002, annual shipments of information appliances may e xceed those of PCs."

Trend Seven: The Death 01 The One-Trick Pony

First generation appliances were very narrowly defined (e.g., filers and web caching). They were, in essence, proving a concept to technology-oriented enthusiasts. The next generation, the one "crossing the chasm" to serve mainstream users, will offer a richer array of capabilities, just like the cell phone or the PDA are doing now. For appliances, examples of evolutions include web caching growing into web preprocessing and post-processing, file servers offering automatic continuous workstation backup, and appliances serving the specific needs profiles of a specific population. For instance, schools will have appliances, making it easy for students, teachers, and parents to post papers, securely access their individual records, browse through educational sites (and only those), set up chat rooms about school policies or the upcoming field day, and more. An appliance is not defined anymore as a single-function device, but as a server providing a finely targeted, highly coherent, and highly reliable set of ser vices for a well-defined user population.

Trend Eight: It's The Application, Stupid

Mass adoption of workgroup NAS and appliances has lagged analysts' expectations. This was due to the lack of a powerful industry champion and the lack of a compelling value proposition. As a user, or the head of a department, I am mildly interested in expanding sharable storage capacity. If you want to get me excited, show me, instead, how I will resolve my productivity and Quality of Service issues: I want to avoid rework and downtime due to lost files or a corrupted operating system with RAID 5 protection of precious data and full-system backup and restore. I want to speed up web research and e-commerce transactions through advanced caching and pre- or post-processing techniques. I want to license and serve multiple copies of an application (that may be web-based or locally cached) for those deadlines when all hands are on deck, scrambling to deliver through the night and the weekend.

IDC projects a market of 56 million information appliances in 2002. Solutions will drive this explosion.

Trend Nine: Management Comes Out Of The Closet

Twenty years ago, the central IT "glass house" viewed the personal computer as disruptive, fought it, and lost. In the past few years, re-centralization has brought power back in the hands of central IT, but the mandate is now very different. IT creates, manages, and monitors the environment that enables a more productive, customer-oriented enterprise. Management frameworks and tools are a major part of today and tomorrow's infrastructure. Workgroup NAS and appliances are only now starting to deliver some of the tools required. These tools fall into three categories:

* Setup tools, that allow a thin server to be up, on the network and accessible within fifteen minutes. These fast setup tools are the signature of appliances and are usually available, web-based, and of adequate quality in a pure Windows networking environment. Support for NetWare 5 or Appletalk is less widespread and often more limited.

* User and application management tools that allow users or department heads to understand and project into the future application access needs and storage capacity increases and place an ROI value on the appliance. User management tools will enable productivity, Quality of Service, and user value. For now, these are still rudimentary or non-existent.

* Device and network monitoring that allow network administrators and call centers to monitor network traffic and anticipate HDD failures or file system overflow. Exception conditions cause the appliance to send a mail message to the operator or a SNMP alert to the enterprise framework. This type of capability is only starting to appear in appliances. By end 2000, incident handling will be a required check-the-box item for any workgroup or departmental appliance.

Trend Ten: The Emerging Appliance

Tomorrow's appliance is emerging. It will evolve along three lines.

Platforms will converge towards Linux on Intel. Linux captured 16% of the computer server market last year, according to Business Week, and the Gartner Group predicts that "by the end of 2000, the dominant platform for appliances will be the Linux operating system, running on a scalable Intel architecture." Quality of Service monitoring will speed up adoption with features such as administrator-controlled RAID level and administrator alerts being required of any shared workgroup or departmental appliance in 2000 or 2001.

Market-specific solutions will be the "killer app." Appliances will differentiate and win in the marketplace based on their ability to deliver targeted solutions for specific users. This will be accomplished through partnerships between appliance manufacturers and software vendors. Such solutions will appear in 2000 and proliferate in 2001. Appliances will increasingly provide the solution of choice for users looking to combine effective, hassle-free computing, and storage with access to web and e-commerce application and resources as the foundation for continuously improving their effectiveness and fulfillment in their profession or vocation.

Jean-Yues Chevallier is the director of marketing for network appliances and storage at Microfest.