Global DCIM Industry Leader Cuts Losses, Leaves Market

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED TO TMC NET’S TRANSFORMING NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

CA Technologies, a massive vendor of DCIM infrastructure, has made the difficult decision to leave the data center infrastructure management markets. When the leader to any market calls it quits, this leaves doors of opportunity open to the rest of the market – a very niche market set to reach revenues of over $1B in 2019. But, will anyone grab on?

Seen as a key growth sector for many companies, DCIM technologies have led to a huge “non-demand” in software add-ons that would give leverage and power to global proprietary systems. Unfortunately, while this technology is desirable, no one seems to really understand it. Even most of its adopters struggle to use this centralized, energy data center.

Facebook, one company that gets it, has been using DCIM technologies from its CA DCIM vendor for a while now. They consider it an asset, because with the scale of growth Facebook continues to see, centralized data and analysis is vitally important in ensuring that very minimal data doesn’t get overlooked. Through CA DCIM technologies, they have been able to monitor energy consumption, necessary in keeping systems cool and providing continually rapid speeds to consumers across the planet.

The truth is, DCIM technologies are desired by many, hated by most. They are a niche product that most IT professionals simply do not get. They are, however, beginning to understand the power that DCIM holds. Because of this, there is hope. Unfortunately, CA Technologies won’t pay its bills with the future market. No one needs software solutions for a product they don’t know how to use.

Instead, CA Technologies will be changing its structure of doing business, while continuing to provide support to businesses, which have successfully adopted CA DCIM technologies. CA Technologies will continue to provide them with DCIM services, maintenance releases and capacity expansions, as existing customers. However, the rest of the evolving corporate world won’t be as lucky.

From here out, CA Technologies will only focus on end-to-end IT infrastructure monitoring of networks, middleware, databases and applications. They will also provide monitoring capabilities for data center energies and cooling, while implementing the capabilities of DCIM’s predecessor, ecoMeter. In-demand tools from DCIM’s complex software structure will not be included. There will be no visualization of the physical data center layout or of asset management.

 “DCIM is what I would call a vertically integrated solution that has the asset component, the workflow component, and then the monitoring component,” stated Fred Weiller, Senior Director of Product Marketing for CA Technologies’ infrastructure management portfolio. “We decided that continuing to develop a more vertically integrated DCIM solution was not the best use of our resources in terms of providing new capabilities to our customers.”

Due to low demand, CA Technologies has to make a strategic decision for the advancement of the company and its future product rollouts. They plan on “expanding reach across enterprise infrastructure, horizontally,” and perhaps staying in the “industry of tomorrow,” retaining part of that market share of $1B.