Reposted from our previous blog platform:
There has been an e-mail string going around HP in the last week, trying to figure out how, as one writer put it ,“Oracle Solaris is the number one choice for mission-critical systems finds a Coleman Parkes Research survey, which was conducted on behalf of HP.” A better quote would have been that Oracle Solaris WAS the number one choice, something that anyone who reviews the IDC or Gartner shipment data for the last number of years would not be surprised to know.
I have now seen the research, and not surprisingly, the initial quote was just a small bit out of context. The data came from a survey, commissioned by HP, of technical and business end users across various industries in the UK.
The actual question, as better summarized here, shows that Solaris runs 29% of the mission critical install base, with HP-UX closely behind it at 25%, Windows at 21%, and AIX at 18% among those who responded to the survey. However, a different question - which vendors have mission critical solutions installed at the customer site provides 50% for HP, 49% for IBM, and 42% for Oracle/Sun. That definitely suggests that most customers are multi-vendor - once again, not a big surprise for those in the IT industry.
I also learned that you should never base a business plan on what people intend to purchase in the future without any actual purchasing numbers to back it up. Nevertheless, the key forward looking question in this survey, namely which vendor can bring a converged, mission critical infrastructure running UNIX to market was a tie between HP and IBM both at 39%, and Oracle/Sun a distant 16%. To me, this definitely doesn't suggest that customers think that Oracle Solaris is the number one choice for mission-critical systems today.
Besides all the posturing and guessing about the future, there was some useful information in the survey. Key barriers to improving mission critical environments included the costs of change, risk of migration, proving the business case, and keeping the business operational while implementing the new systems. The survey also showed that while a significant number of customers will be moving workloads away from UNIX platforms in the next 3 years (38%), there is still a big chunk of customers who plan to stay with UNIX (43%), deploy more or upgrade their UNIX (13%), or review UNIX (6%). Once again, with overall UNIX industry revenue numbers more or less flat at the best of times, this is not a big surprise.
Finally, and actually to start the survey, there were several questions around what customers though they would need to run mission critical systems in the future. The key answer, at 77%, was mission critical reliability and scalability built on industry standard components, along with flexibility and reduced complexity between servers, storage, and network. Not a shock, but these were key ideas behind the HP Mission Critical Converged Infrastructure and the new HP Integrity Blades. You might even come to the conclusion that HP occasionally listens to our customers' requirements.
Now, these results were from customers in the UK. Are things different where you live?
Jacob
PS: I've been in touch with the HP people who helped get this survey completed. They are trying to figure out a way to post it publicly, at which point you can see the results for yourself. I'll pass along the URL when that happens.
