Microsoft, Forrester: Tomorrow’s CIOs must prepare their organizations for Cloud, Mobility, Enterprise Social and Big Data

Over 100 CIOs hear how mobile, cloud, enterprise social and big data will drive at least 80% of IT industry growth by 2020 at Microsoft’s Breakfast With Visionaries event

KUALA LUMPUR, 6 December 2012 – At Microsoft’s Breakfast with Visionaries event, over 100 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) heard from Forrester and Microsoft how mobile, cloud, enterprise social and big data will dominate the next decade and drive at least 80% of their industry’s growth by the year 2020.

Dane Anderson, Vice President, Research Director and Region Manager for industry analyst Forrester Research highlighted how the role of the CIO was evolving in the face of these industry “megatrends”, saying, “The role of the CIO is changing fast – from being a facilitator of technology deployments to becoming a technology solution specialist. Organizations now look for CIOs who move beyond concentrating on IT as a force for operational automation, integration and control to seeing how technology can serve as a business amplifier and source of innovation. In fact, 80% of CIOs acknowledge that they should actually be spending two-thirds of their time with the business.”

Danny Ong, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, Microsoft Malaysia.

Anderson also pointed out that Malaysian CIOs and their counterparts in emerging markets needed to especially take heed noting, “There are times when global tech trends affect many regions and countries in the same way at the same time, such as the tech recession of 2008 and 2009; but 2013 will not be one of those times. Instead, there will be wide diversity in tech market performance by country.” To illustrate this point, Anderson highlighted how emerging markets will account for almost one-third of global IT spending and drive 53% of IT spending growth in 2012. Cloud, mobility, big data analytics and enterprise social will prove to be key categories of enterprise IT spend.

CIOs also heard from Microsoft Malaysia’s Chief Marketing and Operations Officer Danny Ong, who demonstrated the company’s unique approach in helping them navigate and leverage the four IT industry megatrends. “Microsoft’s solutions span the breadth and depth of consumers and businesses to help transform Malaysian businesses and lives together. For the past 20 years we’ve been in Malaysia, we have provided integrated solutions across software and cloud solutions, which are also interoperable and conform to industry openness standards by design. For CIOs, this is good news because it means that they can work with us as a trusted partner and advisor to help them get the most out of their IT investments, contribute to business bottom lines, improve efficiencies and maximize resources,” he said.

Dane Anderson, Vice President, Research Director and Region Manager, Forrester Research.

Danny added, “For organizations using Microsoft solutions, this means having familiar apps and platforms that your people want to use, the flexibility to use what’s right for your business, and ultimately having our commitment to enterprise capability to help you succeed.”

Speaking as a panelist at the event, Andy Tan, Senior General Manager, Information Technology Department for Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund concurred, “Without a doubt, Malaysian organizations are already starting to see the impact of these four megatrends from the highest levels of management to employees at the frontlines. Working with Microsoft as a partner has been an especially helpful and rewarding experience to help us capitalize and optimize the opportunities that these megatrends bring.”

Andy Tan, Senior General Manager, Information Technology Department for Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund.

Industry analysts are in agreement that the four megatrends will certainly drive consumer-driven experiences and a new computing paradigm, which will, in turn, accelerate the magnitude of change today and provide enterprises with new opportunities:

• Cloud computing will lower barriers to entry for market players to access computing power, require more flexible development models, more efficient application delivery and drive greater speed to market
• Mobility will drive a need for changing, flexible work styles as well as mew and different types of devices, with a growing expectation for always-on connectivity and anywhere access to apps and data
• Enterprise social will see a cultural shift in how people interact, with online customer engagement now becoming a business differentiator, as well as discovering new ways to connect and share
• Big data will see massive data growth and the availability of third-party data, which leads to globalization of markets as well as more segmented customer audiences

Industry Expert Says Malaysian Organizations To Benefit From Next Generation Business Intelligence Solutions

Microsoft holds event in Kuala Lumpur featuring independent research firm on business intelligence gains

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – November 15, 2011 – Malaysian businesses stand to benefit greatly from the next generation of business intelligence solutions. This is the message heard by dozens of leading information technology executives at an information session in Kuala Lumpur hosted by Microsoft featuring industry analyst firm Forrester Research, Inc. and co-sponsors HP and Intel Corporation. John Brand, Vice President at Forrester Research was the featured speaker at the business intelligence event.

According to a recent Forrester report, “No other software segment enjoys the same positive market dynamics of advancing technologies, business innovation, and companies' implementation plans.” - Forrester Research, Inc., “Understanding The Business Intelligence Growth Opportunity – September 2011”.

“We see business intelligence becoming more pervasive throughout Malaysia as companies here raise their competitiveness by getting strategic, tactical and operational insight into their customers, products, business processes and operations,” said Danny Ong, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, Microsoft Malaysia. “Microsoft is taking the lead in business intelligence by giving Malaysian companies flexible deployment options that provide them with the necessary security and capabilities for today’s critical applications. And we’re doing it at a lower total cost of ownership, with better user experience.”

Microsoft’s approach to business intelligence is to offer a cloud-ready information platform to help customers more effectively take command of their expanding data in order to optimize their operations, find greater efficiencies and capitalize on new opportunities. Today the company’s solutions help their customers drive insights throughout their information work base so that all employees are empowered to gain strategic value from vital information. They do this by delivering business intelligence solutions through the market’s leading productivity and collaboration platforms, Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint, while providing powerful management tools built for IT professionals on the SQL Server platform.

In Microsoft’s goal to deliver pervasive business intelligence to organizations as quickly and efficiently, they have, also partnered with HP to create a range of data management appliances from self-service BI to the highest end of data warehousing that meets transforming organizational needs. Increasingly, organizations are turning to business intelligence appliances which fuse applications; infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system which help organizations optimize employee productivity and decision-making, while simplifying the delivery of applications for IT.

“Today, business intelligence appliances are becoming an increasingly important vehicle in our journey to the cloud. Customers get the flexibility they need in a solution that delivers results right out of the box,” said Dan Kogan, Regional Director, SQL Server Data Appliances, Microsoft Asia. “Looking ahead, business intelligence will be more pervasive. Business intelligence shouldn’t be a specialty. It should be a natural part of everyone’s job. In the future, companies that best manage explosive data growth and derive the best insights from it will be the most competitive.”

As data volumes continue to grow at exponential rates, the upcoming SQL Server “Denali” will give customers even greater confidence in their mission critical applications and help them unlock breakthrough insights across the organization. The technology itself is designed to quickly build solutions across traditional servers, appliances, and private and public clouds.

“The cloud not only makes managing the oceans of data easier and less expensive, it can help companies create new capabilities and products that weren’t before possible,” said Kogan.

Red Hat Continues Middleware Industry Momentum

MALAYSIA, 12 May 2008 -- Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that JBoss Enterprise Middleware solutions have been recognized in two recent analyst reports. Independent technology analyst firm Forrester Research has included JBoss Enterprise Middleware solutions in its latest report on the application server marketplace.

JBoss was included in Forrester’s April 25, 2008 “Application Server Quality: Review Your Assumptions” report, which surveyed application development professionals to determine their perceptions regarding the quality of available application servers. Red Hat was also included in recent research by Gartner, Inc., which positioned the company for the third time in the Leaders Quadrant for its Magic Quadrant report on the enterprise application server marketplace.

Forrester specifically challenges five widely held beliefs, or "myths," about the application platform market including “Open Source Support Is Riskier Than Conventional Support Models.” The report notes that:
“Red Hat, the parent company of JBoss, registered no ‘does not meet expectations’ comments from respondents, a notable accomplishment since all other vendors registered at least some negative comments.”

“Only 10 percent of respondents reported that JBoss Application Server 4.x had introduced new critical bugs — the best result among the surveyed major platforms. JBoss Application Server 4.x also had the lowest reported rate of non-critical bugs that compromised an application project.”

“Eighty-six percent of JBoss users are confident that it can handle their largest workloads.”

“In our view, the findings of Forrester’s latest report highlight the value that JBoss solutions offer to customers,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president of Red Hat’s Middleware Business Unit. “We believe JBoss Enterprise Middleware offers better support, greater customization and more scalability for enterprises than the traditional monolithic middleware solutions.”

In April 2008, Red Hat was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in Gartner, Inc.’s “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers, 2Q08” for its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. The Gartner Magic Quadrant represents Gartner’s judgment of vendors’ ability to execute and the completeness of their vision in a technology market, in this case, the enterprise application server market.

“We believe our evaluation by Gartner in the Leaders Quadrant in the enterprise application server market further emphasizes that open source middleware is ready for the enterprise,” said Muzilla. “JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is trusted by many leading enterprises as a stable, flexible and secure base for their operations, and is a trusted name in both the open source community and the middleware community as a whole.”