Systems/Enterprise:
THINK DYNAMICS ADDS STORAGE FOR
GRID POOLING
by William Fellows for the451.com
Think Dynamics - think automated management of datacenter server resources?
Think again. The Canadian company is using its server-driven experience to
segue into storage configuration management, which it hopes will give it a
broader enterprise reach and make it more attractive to companies putting both
servers and storage on networks.
Impact assessment
The message
In a major development of its product platform and a natural extension of
its
strategy, Think Dynamics is adding storage resource configuration to its
server management suite. ThinkControl currently pools server resources and
makes them available on a subscription basis. By midyear, it will do the same
for networked storage resources.
Competitive landscape
Think Dynamics claims ThinkControl offers automatic decision making on top
of
a provisioning foundation - compared to point products from competitors like
Jareva (now owned by Veritas) and Terraspring (Sun). Altiris is the other key
competitor. Moreover, Think Dynamics supports a service-layer model -
resources provisioned according only to needs. A new focus on storage
configuration management will pit it against a raft of competitors from SRM to
virtualization, including the likes of IBM, HP and CA, as well as a slew of
startups.
The451 assessment
With its key competitors bought, where does that leave Think Dynamics?
Building out a greater value proposition by embracing storage. A single
instrument for pooling system-wide resources (server and storage) is
compelling. But can it gain a foothold? Other vendors have yet to offer this
kind of thing.
Technology
Founded in September 2000, Think Dynamics shipped ThinkControl
1.0
in February 2002, and it's about to unveil version 2.4. This release is an
extension of the existing platform, which automates provisioning and manages
capacity, performance and service levels. It will include finer-grain control
over network application layers to improve predictability and utilization. The
company describes it as 'pooling' or 'virtualizing' resources, which can then
be accessed on a subscription basis.
A 3.0 version of the software, due by midyear, will be a leaping-off point
for
a new value proposition that can address the element of the datacenter it
hasn't so far worked with - storage. Think Dynamics says 3.0 will provide
management of SANs in terms of creating zones and LUNs, and attaching and
detaching devices. It sounds like 3.0 will offer functions that sit somewhere
between virtualization and 'active' storage resource management - possibly a
tool that could be leveraged by both.
Although Think Dynamics says it will extend ThinkControl to support OGSA
grid
computing specifications, it cautions that the applications it's aiming to
support in enterprises don't lend themselves to being split into tasks that
can be processed across a distributed network, as grid computing requires.
It's not feasible to split up an eBay or eTrade process, the company says.
Moreover, grid computing requires that applications are written to a specific
set of APIs that can be dispatched to distributed resources by a scheduler or
management system, whereas ThinkControl is premised on putting resources where
the application that requires them is.
While Think Dynamics says utility computing is topping CIOs' list of
priorities, it's basically just a new billing model in its book. It has
modules of its suite that address this (through charge-back) and other CIO
concerns: server consolidation, disaster recovery, capacity on demand, high
availability, testing environments and automated provisioning.
Moreover, although it was at the recent Blade Server Summit, Think Dynamics
says the greater opportunity right now is in conventional server environments.
That's simply because it's going to be another couple of years before there is
significant investment in and use of blades across industries. They key
difference between the two, as far as the company is concerned, is that blades
have a control plane and regular servers don't.
Strategy
The field is crowded with competitors, and Think Dynamics hasn't
won
a lot of customers yet. It hopes a new deal with IBM will change all that -
but rival Terraspring doubtless holds the same hopes for its deal with
IBM.
For all the hard work it has put into its technology and partnerships,
Think
Dynamics can't point to any more customers than it did a year ago, although it
claims these were beta users at the time, and only became revenue-bearing
accounts in the fourth quarter of last year. An entry-level price for its
software is $75,000.
Bell Globemedia and Inflow are its two non-aligned customer accounts. Tira
Wireless is a customer, but is owned by Brightspak, the same VC that owns
Think Dynamics. IBM isn't a customer; it's a partner, and there's some joint
marketing activity, but it doesn't sound like Big Blue will become a revenue
stream yet. Think Dynamics says this is due to a six- to nine-month sales
cycle it's now experiencing, but it promises new customer announcements over
the next few weeks.
The company is going to raise another round of funding later this year - it
got $7m from Brightspark in 2001.
With its principal competition now acquired by larger players - Jareva by
Veritas and Terraspring by Sun - where does this leave Think Dynamics? Sun and
Veritas both claim they bought the best technology available after due
diligence. Not so, says Think Dynamics. Neither, it claims, knocked on its
door. Moreover, Sun got Terraspring (founded by ex-Sun staff) for a song
because it was basically broke.
If this is the case, Think Dynamics will be hoping it doesn't meet the same
fate. While it claims it isn't building a business to be bought, business
plans envisage all manner of exit strategies for investors, and acquisition is
usually high on the list. IBM could certainly bolster its position through
acquisition. It had been working with both Think Dynamics and Terraspring in
the autonomic area, and HP's utility datacenter software currently uses an
older version of the Terraspring software Sun now offers.
IBM and HP, as well as Microsoft, Oracle and EMC, are cited as business
partners by Think Dynamics.
Competition
Resource management and resource pooling is a hotly contested
field, but Think Dynamics claims ThinkControl offers automatic decision making
on top of a provisioning foundation - compared to point products from
competitors like Jareva and Terraspring. Altiris is the other key
competitor.
Moreover, it supports a service-layer model - resources provisioned
according
to needs, such as response time, location, testing or recovery. By contrast,
Jareva loads the same software stack on to each server no matter what its
actual use is. The emphasis on service-level management brings Think Dynamics
into competition with the capacity planning expertise of companies like
Peakstone and Resonate. And a new focus on storage configuration management
will pit it against a raft of competitors, from SRM to virtualization,
including the likes of IBM, HP and CA, as well as a slew of startups.
Courtesy www.the451.com
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