BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
Compuware, which has made a name for itself selling mainframe IT services for 37 years, is re-launching itself as Compuware 2.0, and this time the message is not about technology, nor is it about putting programmers in a client's office for two years. Rather, Compuware 2.0 is about business solutions and best practices that allows companies to do their work better, in an holistic manner.
Compuware's vice-president for operations Raaj Shinde said that Compuware 2.0 was an effort to re-connect with the customer after building up a dull reputation as a "mainframe" company.
One of the key areas Compuware is focusing on is IT service management or business service management. The issue at hand is not database performance and network router congestion, but the end-user experience. It is the management of service levels in a complex IT infrastructure that is keeping many CIOs up at night.
Unlike the competition, which he said was focused on IT-oriented systems management, Compuware claims to be different by focusing on business-oriented service management and the end-user experience.
It provides solutions not just to monitor systems, but to proactively fix problems or scale-up resources as and when needed. Compuware Vantage is the solution that does the monitoring, both with agent-based (software that runs on the box) and agentless configurations.
He said that retailers Carrefour and Neiman Marcus had successfully used this to empower their retail systems and ensure that no delays occured at check-outs.
Other areas that Compuware focuses on include its traditional mainframe productivity solutions and data privacy. He said that just a few weeks ago, the central bank in China passed a regulation that forbade real customer data to be used for software development.
Shinde said that the mainframe market was still growing, though not in terms of new customers, but existing customers adding capacity. He also noted that last year IBM sold more mainframes than it had done in the previous 10 years combined, such is the level of growth seen in the industry.
"Asia is seeing a tremendous crazy manic growth happening. In the past year we have opened several new offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Bangalore," he said.
Compuware is also exploring the possibility of a new office in Malaysia and is continuing to grow its staff in Singapore, which provides coverage for Thailand.
He said Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are countries where growth was only limited by the number of skilled staff he could hire, as the company tried to keep up with demand and interest.
Shinde also said that the take-over of BEA by Oracle was good for the industry.
"BEA was not doing that well. It needed someone with deep pockets and market penetration. Competition is good, and I think that BEA and its Weblogic Aqualogic platform is necessary in terms of market presence to make sure that innovation in middleware continues at a frantic pace.
"If it went out, IBM would have no competition in that space other than open source," he said, noting that Compuware fully supported the BEA platform.
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Next
