Vendors Show Midmarket Solutions At Midsize Enterprise Summit Europe

While there were only a limited number of vendors on tap at the Midsize Enterprise Summit Europe 2008 in Barcelona this week, they all had one thing on their mind: Hitting that increasingly important midmarket, which according to many has become an integral part of their sales drive. Here's a roundup of the vendors that made it out to Spain and what solutions and services they were offering to midsize enterprise IT executives.

Microsoft Making Midmarket Push

Microsoft was hammering home the message that "software enables you to compete in the new world of work." With a strong focus on its unified communications solutions, the software giant offered midsize enterprise CIOs and IT executives a glimpse at some products it said will give smaller companies a competitive edge, such as customer relationship management software, collaboration software, enterprise resource planning software and business intelligence software. The centerpiece, however, was Office Communicator and Office Communications Server, unified communications solutions that tie together voice, video, instant messaging and presence and make them available through popular applications like the Office suite and Outlook e-mail.

Microsoft said its solutions for the midsize enterprise can reduce costs, are easy to implement and learn and can boost productivity.

CA Joins The Midsize Party

Along with detailing its recent partnership with VMware to virtualize disaster recovery sites, CA showed off and demonstrated its CA XOsoft Replication and CA XOsoft High Availability solutions, tools designed to support business continuity, backup, data protection and disaster recovery over any distance.

According to Charlie Smith, CA's director of technical sales for recovery management, XOsoft offers midsize companies a cost-effective solution that offers enterprise-grade failover and application availability. Smith said that while the midmarket often struggles to replicate data over small pipes, XOsoft is "ideally suited for a midsize company that doesn't have enterprise infrastructure."

Here, Smith stands next to a demonstration of CA's XOsoft solutions.

Cognos Promotes Business Intelligence

Cognos, an IBM company, gave midsize companies insight into its TM1 MidMarket Edition, a financial performance management solution designed exclusively for the midmarket to support financial processes from planning, budgeting and forecasting to consideration, reporting and analytics. According to Cognos, the TM1 MidMarket Edition can automate and manage financial performance management processes by engaging, empowering and monitoring executives, line-of-business managers and staff across functional areas and business units.

SAP Scales To Midmarket

Software maker SAP showed off three solutions geared toward the midmarket at the Midsize Enterprise Summit. First, it detailed the Business All-In-One Fast-Start Program, a comprehensive ERP solution tailored to industry specifications. Second, it showed off its Business Analytics solutions, tool to offer insight into business performance, management performance and data visibility. And, lastly, SAP showcased Business ByDesign, an on-demand SaaS ERP solution.

According to Peter Philipp, SAP solution manager, Business Analytics can offer midmarket companies better business performance across all lines of business, while Business All-In-On Fast-Start Programs enable midsize companies to grow and scale quickly, and Business ByDesign helps them move away from spreadsheet-based point solutions into next generation Web-based ERP tools that can be accessed on-demand, quickly updated and offer same-time ERP benefits.

Philipp said SAP's midsize solutions can offer medium-sized companies lower costs, greater efficiency and "one version of truth in data instead of it being spread out over different systems."

VMware Virtualizes The Midsize Enterprise

Aside from the obvious misspelling on its signage -- maximize business continuity amd uptime? -- VMware was on hand to give midsized IT brass the goods on its line of virtualization offerings. The vendor discussed VMware ESX Server, a virtualization layer that abstracts processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines; VMware ESX Server 3i, a thin hypervisor integrated into server hardware to enable security and reliability and lay the foundation for a dynamic, automated data center; VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), a solution that dynamically allocates and balances computing capacity across a collection of hardware resources aggregated into logical resource pools; and VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, its end-to-end solution for server-based virtual desktop computing that offers midsized users control and manageability while offering the end users a familiar desktop experience.

VMware also highlighted VMware Infrastructure 3, its data center management and optimization suite that ties together a number of VMware's offerings to create a virtualized IT environment.

CommVault Manages Data

CommVault hit the show floor of the Midsize Enterprise Summit to showcase the benefits of its Simpana Software Suite, a single-platform architecture offering data protection, archiving, replication, resource management and search.

According to CommVault, the data management solution uses a single code and a set of common services for backup, recovery, replication, archive and retrieve operations to give midsize companies a new level of operational efficiency.

The CommVault Singular architecture, dubbed the Common Technology Engine, offers optimized data movement, easy expansion to support changing business requirements and secure control, the vendor said. Additionally, disk-based capabilities enable more access to users and can raise the value of managed data.

DNS Offers Managed Security

Managed service provider DNS was a little bit out of place among the rest of the crew on the show floor, as the sole professional and managed services provider. According to Mike Wawro, managing consultant for UK-based DNS, IT security has become a necessity for companies of all sizes and DNS offers services across the full security lifecycle, such as setting strategy and policy, designing and delivering secure infrastructures and offering service support and 24/7 operational management.

For managed security services, DNS offers firewall and VPN, authentication, identity management, security monitoring, vulnerability assessment and content security.

Wawro said midsize enterprises are best suited for DNS' services, because they often don't have the time and resources to devote to adequate security coverage and face challenges when the company begins to grow and security has to scale.

"With us they don't need security specific staff," he said.

Here, Wawro (right, facing forward) and other DNS representatives share their story with IT executives.

FalconStor Locks Down Data

FalconStor Software gave midsized CIOs a look at its Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Virtual Appliance, which the vendor said offers a host of data recovery functions. According to FalconStor, the CDP Virtual Appliance offers file and database recovery in one minute; virtual-to-virtual recovery in two minutes; mailbox recovery in three minutes; physical-to-physical recovery in five minutes and physical server to virtual machine recovery in 10 minutes.

Business Intelligence With Information Builders

A lot of talk was heard at the Midsize Enterprise Summit about business intelligence solutions. Information Builders, makers of WebFOCUS business intelligence solutions showed IT execs how it's done.

According to Information Builders, WebFOCUS offers three levels of business intelligence -- strategic, analytic and operational -- which enable midsize organizations to optimize business performance. WebFOCUS, like the name suggests, delivers Web-based access to business intelligence information to provide in-depth analysis for tactical decision making.