IPM Defies Economic Stagnancy with Unprecedented Growth

IT firm puts 2012 expansion goals in play with senior staff appointments and a new service and product rollout plan 

NEW YORK, NY – Feb. 21, 2012 – As businesses rally to emerge from the lingering effects of a stagnant economy, IPM, Inc., an award-winning IT consulting and systems integration firm, ends 2011 with record-breaking numbers, including a 31 percent revenue increase and a 32 percent staff boost. With IT trends such as cloud computing, Windows 7 migration, and virtual desktop solutions driving IT investments this year, IPM is proactively taking steps in 2012 to better serve clients and keep them in stride with the pace of business. IPM recently appointed former Vice President of IT for Tiffany & Co, Philip Alberta, to CIO and former Director of Enterprise Applications for Dewey & LeBoeuf, LLP, Jim Kannengieser, to Program Manager.

“IPM’s success is anchored in the business approach we take to IT. Instead of IT driving decision buying, we work with stakeholders to evaluate technology decisions based on their short- and long-term business impact,” said Myron Bari, President and CEO of IPM. “It is this business practice, combined with a strengthened team, new service offerings and strategic partnerships that will continue to fuel our growth in 2012.”

Despite year-over-year growth since it opened its doors in 1984, IPM’s performance last year set new records. Company milestones included:

• Ten new client offerings, ranging from EMC VNX for unified storage and Microsoft System Center for system management to Microsoft Office 365 for cloud services, Citrix Virtual Netscaler (VPX) for cost-effective load balancing and Windows 7 migrations.

• A 31 percent revenue increase attributed to the company’s deep-rooted Microsoft and EMC partnerships, in-house certified consultants and engineers, expansive product portfolio, and onsite, dedicated relationship managers, Peyton McGinnis (Microsoft) and Mike Mochnal (EMC), who facilitate timely access to product managers, technology roadmaps, new programs and best practices.

• A 32 percent boost in IT, sales and administrative staff, to support the growing Citrix, Microsoft and EMC practices.

With aggressive plans in play to exceed last year’s business milestones, IPM has kicked off the New Year with several strategic efforts already in place. In January, the company strengthened its organization by adding two IT business leaders to its team. As CIO, Alberta directs IPM’s organizational processes, continuously evaluating programs to maximize efficiency and further progress across all business practices. He also plays an integral role in developing executive client relationships, mapping solutions to business objectives and ensuring maximum value is realized from project investments. As Program Manager, Kannengieser cross-manages client program projects, implementing program policies and protocols, directing project-level activity and collaborating with the team and client to ensure overall program goals are achieved.

Looking ahead, below are other initiatives IPM will execute this year to support its 2012 goals:

• Emphasis on building private clouds and bridging the gap between public and private.
• Continued investment in the company’s infrastructure practice and associated vendors. 
• Launch an IT executive roundtable series to provide a forum for new technology review.

To learn more about IPM, please visit IPM online or call 212.645.5070.

About IPM, Inc.

Founded in 1984 and based in New York City, IPM is an award winning IT consulting firm recognized as the go-to partner for the assessment, design and implementation of leading edge technologies. The firm’s in-house, results-driven professionals, have proven expertise in Windows 7 deployments, virtual desktop implementations, infrastructure solutions and on/off premise cloud design and migrations across both mid-market and enterprise organizations. IPM is the longest standing Citrix Platinum Partner in the Northeast and also maintains Microsoft Gold, EMC Velocity, and VMware Premier Partnerships.

IPM is also a founding member of the M7 Global Partners, a purpose-built organization comprised of the industry’s seven leading IT services firms providing unmatched resources for desktop solutions and cloud services. M7 Global Partners was named Microsoft Virtualization Partner of the Year 2011. 

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However, a recently announced partnership between VMware and Kaspersky could go a long way toward rectifying the problem, according to a report from InfoBoom contributor Douglas Bonderud.

The anti-malware company's product, he said, will provide a centralized, robust protection scheme for VMware implementation, duplicating its functionality for traditionally structured systems.

That said, the real value may be in the way the Kaspersky offering takes advantage of virtualization technology itself. Rather than having to be installed on every client machine used by such a framework, Bonderud reported, the product operates as a single appliance that nonetheless provides protection across the network.

"Kaspersky has a solid track record in network security and integration with VMware only makes sense if the company wants to get ahead in the virtual security world. The notion that this appliance is the be-all, end-all, and that it completely eliminates the issues found in most dedicated security programs is something that real-world use will have to bear out. Security appliances are only as powerful as their weakest point," he wrote.

A CompTIA study recently found that executives are acutely alive to the security concerns facing them, the InfoBoom contributor added, with interconnectivity proving a particularly vulnerable point. About 70 percent of respondents said that information security would be a higher priority this year than the last, and four out of five expect their organization's budgets for protective measures to increase.

However, according to Bonderud, the technology itself will need to improve before decision-makers start seeing real value in return for their invested funds.

"The integrated VMware virtual security appliance from Kaspersky Lab is a step in the right direction, and away from resource-hogging standard security measures," he noted, but added also that the industry would need to pick up the pace significantly in the near future.

Experts agree that protection for virtualized systems should address threats to every layer of an implementation. While application-layer malware is probably the most widely recognized menace to IT security, it's important not to overlook the potential damage that can be done by network- and server-layer attacks.

Getting the most out of virtualization means taking advantage of the less-publicized advances in, among other areas, networking technology. According to IT Business Edge blogger Michael Vizard, the network layer is critically important to a successful virtualization implementation.

Many companies are working hard to provide the kind of network infrastructure that can help make virtualized solutions maintain a high level of performance, he wrote. However, it’s less obvious how quickly fiber optic technology will supplant and replace Ethernet standards for business use.

“What is unclear is to what degree 10, 40 and even 100 GbE products will take hold. There’s obviously a lot of interest in the networking community, but storage vendors are arguing over the merits of 10 GbE versus next-generation 8 and 16 Gigabit-per-second fiber channel systems. That’s a debate that will most likely continue through the rest of the decade,’ Vizard asserted.

However, it does appear that 10 GbE networking technology is beginning to fall in price, as new standards become more widely available to companies looking to support increasingly virtualized IT infrastructures, he noted. What’s more, one marketing vice president told Vizard in an interview, the 40 GbE standard could be close behind in terms of price cuts.

Change is coming at the storage level as well, the IT Business Edge blogger noted. The increasing popularity of solid-state hard drives – which provide a major performance boost over their traditional hard disk drive predecessors – creates a potentially elevated level of storage traffic. This, in turn, means that the network layer will see a further ballooning of demand.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the advent of heavily virtualized IT infrastructures will create the need for major new investments in the data center. Indeed, experts say, the ability to do more with less processing power will cut costs substantially, more than making up for any upgrades needed for legacy network or storage technologies. Needless to say, of course, every company’s situation is different and thorough planning is a necessary step.

CloudStack, Citrix stated, is already the leading platform in its market sector, used by companies like Zynga, Nokia and Datapipe to build and maintain Infrastructure-as-a-Service products. In contrast to other offerings that add cloud-like management elements to basic server virtualization functionality, CloudStack is fully open-source, supports multiple hypervisors, and helps provide the tools to solve the key automation and scalability issues of the cloud.

"With tight integration with the Citrix cloud portfolio, our customers gain access to an unparalleled set of cloud virtualization, orchestration and networking solutions that are not only best in class individually and optimized to run collectively, but also designed to work with the hardware, software and management products customers already have deployed," cloud platforms group vice president and general manager Sameer Dholakia stated.

Citrix also announced that the CloudStack 3 integrates network virtualization functions, offering a version of the company's NetScaler framework. This provides businesses with a lot of virtual infrastructure with some piece of mind about the security of their information and the reliability of the connections between their public and private cloud systems. Additionally, the built-in network services catalog could be a great new feature for service vendors, giving them the ability to create highly customizable offerings and providing the opportunity for upsells.

CloudStack 3's polished end user interface is an example of the product's emphasis on simplicity, Citrix said. In addition to making CloudStack 3 easier to use, the UI allows clients to quickly implement advanced automation and management features, which are often a complicated stumbling block for users of less intuitive systems.

Finally, the company also rolled out its new partner program, announcing the availability of 2,200 "Citrix-ready" products.

Citrix's experience in the desktop virtualization and server virtualization spaces has prepared the company admirably for the advent of cloud computing as the next big thing in enterprise computing, according to experts. As the technology continues to become more popular in the business sector and better understood by the populace, Citrix could find itself well-positioned in the burgeoning cloud market.

Not only do these trends mean that additional flexibility is being demanded from virtual infrastructures, they also impose new levels of stress on business networks, thanks to the need to shuttle information back and forth from remote services.

"To be fair, creating entirely new network environments is easier said than done. But there is a growing legion of virtual networking solutions that promise to drive efficiencies in existing infrastructure while making them more amenable to highly fluid data and application environments," Cole wrote.

While there are several new entrants to the network visualization marketplace, the established powerhouses there could prove to be tough nuts to crack, he added. Along with Cisco's new 40 and 100 GbE switching products, the company recently introduced a powerful Easy Virtual Network offering that could make the task of scaling capacity up and down much easier.

Cisco, according to Cole, has also rolled out a new capability for its Nexus 1000v virtual switch – VXLAN support. The blogger said that this provides an impressive increase in flexibility for use in systems both inside and outside of a company's core network.

This isn't to say that the virtual networking industry doesn't have some challenges to surmount, he noted. The development of open standards for the technology's use is still some way off, and many of the most important players haven't yet gotten on board with those efforts.

However, Cole wrote, that's no reason not to focus on the virtual network sector.

"On the contrary, much of what has already been promised in the cloud can't happen without a flexible, dynamic network infrastructure. And as we've seen in server environments, abstraction is the easiest way to go about it," he said.

Experts say that businesses looking to get the most out of their virtual infrastructures will need experienced personnel to help them reach that goal. This could mean that, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses, well-rounded IT staff with demonstrated cloud and virtualization skills will see themselves in high demand in the near future.

Here is an unmodified WI 5.4 login page:

As much as I like Citrix, I would prefer having my own corporate logo front and center, instead of “Citrix XenApp“. You would think that this would be done in the Appearance tab of the WI Access Management Console, as in earlier versions. This is not the case. For version 5.4, this only controls the image on the applications page (more on that later).

Unless otherwise mentioned, all of the modifications will be done to files in the following directory:
         <siteroot>\app_data\include\
Please make sure to make backup copies of any modules before you modify them.

To change the logon page logo, you’ll need to edit layout.ascx. Open it with your favorite ASCII editor (NotePad will do just fine), and around line# 195 you should see:


if (layoutControl.isLoggedOutPage) {
   brandingImg = (Include.getSiteBranding(wiContext) ==
      UserInterfaceBranding.DESKTOPS) ? "CitrixXenDesktopLoggedoff.png" :
         "CitrixXenAppLoggedoff.png";
} else {
   brandingImg = (Include.getSiteBranding(wiContext) ==
      UserInterfaceBranding.DESKTOPS) ? "CitrixXenDesktop.png" :
         "CitrixXenApp.png";
}


Copy your logo to the site’s media directory, and update the last line with the name of your logo file. In a pinch, you can just rename your logo to CitrixXenApp.png (after renaming the original Citrix file), and you would not even need to modify the source. It would have been nice if Citrix would have made it into a configurable option in the WebInterface.conf file. Maybe in a future version …

Once the file is saved and we refresh the browser (an IISRESET is not necessary for any of these modifications), we should see our logon page with the updated logo:

There is too much whitespace above the logo, with the result that the logo is crowding the logon box. Open up fullstyle.inc, and search for the #horizonTop img CSS selector.

Change:
   padding-top: 75px;
         to:      
   padding-top: 30px;

… and refresh the screen:

Much better! I happen to think this has a nice, clean look. If however, you feel like adding a corporate logo (or image of corporate headquarters) as a background image, you would need to make three additional modifications.

The first two modifications would be in fullstyle.inc to remove the background tags from .horizonPage and #horizonTop (HorizonBgBottom.png and HorizonBgTop.png, respectively).
The third modification would be to replace the background of the body CSS tag in loginStyle.inc with your background image.

After saving the files and refreshing the screen, we get:

If you decide to go with a background image, it would probably be a good idea to take the opacity down to around 40-50%, so it doesn’t overpower the screen.

Now, on to the applications list …

As mentioned above, the logo in the upper-right corner is specified in the Appearance section of the Web Interface Access Management Console:

In order to add our background image to the applications page as well, we simply need to replace the color CSS tag with our background image, and voila!

For more TechDev articles, please visit the TechDev Corner.

Instead, he said, far more extensive use of virtual infrastructure in the business world has made the technology the rule rather than the exception. What's more, the role of virtualization in the enterprise will continue to change dramatically over the course of 2012.

"Probably the most important virtualization trend that lays the ground for the future is support for the dynamic datacenter. Most organizations are already taking advantage of virtualization for server consolidation. The next stage beyond server consolidation is the ability to move virtualized resources between different hosts with no downtime," Otey wrote.

With new products from the likes of VMware already on the market and offering this capacity, the Windows IT Pro writer said, more businesses will adopt the technology in order to provide a means of easily managing often-extensive virtual workloads without imposing major demands on the work-hours of tech staff.

The use of virtual desktop infrastructure, as well, is likely to see increasingly widespread uptake in 2012, according to Otey. The ability to provide a fully featured desktop experience without the need for a stand-alone PC could prove difficult to resist for companies looking to do more with less in an uncertain economic climate.

Instead of having to buy a computer for every employee, and upgrade all the software on it manually, IT departments can simply provide thin clients or cheap older machines that can be automatically updated from a remote management console.

The technology is also set to be applied more frequently to the application layer, Otey added, adding virtualization's flexibility and simplicity to the app world.

"Application virtualization makes it easy to deploy new applications, and because the applications are essentially sandboxed, they don't need to be installed on the client to run nor will they interfere with other applications that may be on the client desktop," he wrote.

While every company's IT situation is different, experts agree that there are few organizations out there that couldn't benefit from some degree of virtualization usage. Whether the technology is implemented with the idea of easing workloads or simply to save money, the benefits are numerous.

The companies, which also incorporated Cisco Systems' Unified Computing System into the new product, said that the new hybrid solution would greatly improve the ability of users to manage and deploy virtual desktop systems throughout their organizations.

According to EMC vice president for solutions Parmeet Chaddha, the technology is designed to scratch business users where they itch.

"EMC is laser focused on developing and delivering solutions that address our customers' most pressing requirements. Our new solution for Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop demonstrates EMC's virtualization leadership because it is an optimized, simplified and high-performance architecture which seamlessly leverages the advanced functionality inherent to Citrix and EMC VNX unified storage platform," he said in a statement.

The new solution provides the benefits of EMC's FAST suite, as well, according to the statement. That product has posted impressive test results, the company said, including a client startup time of five seconds even in the midst of a 1,000-user login storm, and similarly positive marks when subjected to other tough load conditions like patch application and anti-virus installation.

Flexibility is another key quality of the hybrid product, Citrix and EMC said, in particular the ability to scale a virtual implementation up or down on demand. This is possible thanks to the use of advanced new flash technology in the management tools provided.

That centralized management console is a third important advantage provided by the system. Thanks in large part to Citrix' XenApp technology and its successful integration into EMC VNX, users can optimize their storage use through compression and replication techniques, as well as manage all pertinent applications from the same place.

Management technology for virtualization, experts say, is likely to prove a decisive factor in the success of enterprise deployments. The increase in complexity accompanying the use of more extensive virtualization in an organization can be difficult or impossible for IT departments to handle without the assistance of automation in provisioning, monitoring and maintenance. The most powerful systems can be rendered useless by a lack of the kind of functional streamlining and simplification provided by the new EMC product.

Currently, one of the hottest specialties in the Canadian IT sector is the server virtualization professional, according to a recently released study from Randstad Technologies. Aside from project managers, IT workers with server virtualization skills saw some of the fastest growth in demand.

Particularly among small businesses, the company said, there was a spike in the need for server virtualization specialist. Randstad said that the 8 percent rise in demand for such personnel was enough to push them to the top of the most-wanted list for companies with fewer than 1,000 total employees. Additionally, they were the specialty cited most often by CIOs and vice presidents responding to the survey.

Regionally, Quebec had the highest level of demand for server virtualization experts, the researchers said. Nor were these the only infrastructure professionals needed in the province, which had the greatest need for this category of workers in general.

The survey, which was commissioned by IBM, found several other notable trends in Canadian IT hiring. Demand for security personnel was also on the rise – again, particularly in Quebec – and larger businesses across the country expressed a need for technical project managers.

Positions continued to be available for business analysis workers as well, according to the researchers, noting that this skill set has been “steadily in demand” for years now.

South of the border, in the U.S., the news of late has been fairly positive for IT workers. Despite a generally stagnant trend for IT spending overall, a report released this week by employment firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas saw the tech sector’s layoffs fall to their lowest levels since mid-1997.

“Several trends in the sector, including the advancement of cloud storage and the push to develop more portable computing devices, such as [tablets] and smartphones, is helping to create and protect jobs in the sector,” CEO John Challenger said in a statement.

Nevertheless, the same variance in employment demand among different skill sets was seen in the U.S. company’s study, with the picture remaining significantly brighter for those who have stayed up to speed with the latest technology.

The study indicated that the Massachusetts-based company owns a little less than two thirds of the market for purpose-built backup appliances at 62 percent, the publication said. EMC's strong position is likely to prove profitable in the future, the analysis firm added, given its predictions of rapid growth for the market as a whole.

IDC said that PBBA revenue should increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25.6 percent through 2015, which would push the yearly total up to $5.3 billion by the end of that period.

"We believe this explosive growth will continue through 2015 and is a result of users' desire for improved backup window timing, faster recovery times, effective virtual server protection and seamless integration with existing backup applications. We also believe customers are gravitating towards PBBA solutions as a way to control their data protection capital and operational expenditures," IDC data protection and recovery research director Robert Amatruda told eWeek.

EMC said that effectively catering to customer demand for solutions that help enable other advancing technologies, like server virtualization and cloud computing, should allow EMC to consolidate its position atop the market, according to the news source.

One of the company's regional directors of project marketing for backup and recovery systems, Shane Moore, told eWeek that EMC's ability to scale to the degree demanded by highly virtualized and cloud-based systems is a powerful differentiator that helps drive its competitive gains.

"By implementing EMC PBBAs, customers have achieved an 81 percent reduction in time spent managing backups, average payback periods of seven months and a return on investment of 450 percent over three years," Moore said in an interview.

EMC's financial performance and stock price of late have clearly reflected the company's operational strength. According to Reuters, the firm's announcement this week that it would meet analyst targets of 9 percent annual growth sent shares on a 6 percent rise, helping to calm nervous investors who had recently been disappointed by less favorable results posted by rivals IBM and Oracle. EMC also has a history of outperforming its own predictions, the news agency noted, adding that some analysts believe the 9 percent figure may actually understate the company's true potential growth.