In the course of addressing customer needs in our consulting practice, Toigo Partners International has developed tools and "enhancements" to existing software products to aid us in our efforts. Over time, some of these tools have evolved into software products that we have come to depend upon and often leave behind with our clients once the engagement is complete.

Building on this experience, we are setting out to develop software technologies that will aid consumers in performing their data modeling, security and disaster recovery planning efforts successfully.

Looking at the stack of data management, provisioning and protection requirements that must be met before any sort of realistic information lifecycle management or utility computing infrastructure vision can be realized (the red layers in the diagram below), we believe there is much work to be done. The monopolistic objectives of large vendors are unlikely to produce solutions that will work in contemporary heterogeneous environments, and industry organizations, for all of their rhetoric around "coopetition," are equally unlikely to produce meaningful, standards-based approaches.

Management software for automated resource provisioning and data protection is still in its infancy.
It is the Achilles Heel of current ILM and Utility Computing strategies.

A More Pragmatic Approach

At TPI, we are approaching our application development efforts pragmatically. Where our own talented staff can develop software functionality, we will do so. Some of these products will be made available to TPI clients for use in their own shops.

In addition, we are working with a number of independent software developers (ISVs) to help them, individually, to add customer value to their core products. We are also assisting them in identifying suitable partners whose products can be enhanced by the ISV's wares to provide greater overall business value. Truth be told, very few smaller ISVs have any chance of competing effectively against the larger software and hardware vendors. They have an advantage, however, of being bound to an installed base of users, enabling them to innovate and to respond more quickly to market opportunities. TPI's goal is to facilitate efforts to bring innovative and effective solutions to the market by aggregating the talent and capabilities of multiple ISVs to create truly integrated and modular software functionality sets.

Join the Effort

If you have a software product in the data characterization, platform characterization, provisioning management or protective services space, and you are seeking partners for co-development, testing and validation, or other services, please contact us.

It is going to take an open, cooperative effort to resolve the knottier problems of utility computing. TPI can help.