1. WHITE PAPER
IBM Offers ISVs a Fast Track for Virtual Appliance
Deployment on New IBM PureSystems
Sponsored by: IBM
Mary Johnston Turner Jed Scaramella
August 2012
IDC OPINION
Increasing use of virtualization and cloud architectures is creating new challenges for
enterprise-class ISVs that must deploy and integrate solutions across a myriad of
unique customer environments and infrastructure platforms. As a result, enterprise
customers and ISVs are exploring a range of new and more simplified infrastructure
architectures and application software deployment and support strategies.
Converged systems that combine hardware and software elements create a simplified
and integrated server, network, and storage platform that can improve operational
efficiencies and increase time to value. Interviews with a number of application
software ISVs indicate that virtual appliances optimized for converged systems are
becoming important delivery options because:
 Virtual appliances can be deployed more quickly and integrated into existing
customer environments much more efficiently — often in hours rather than weeks.
 Virtual appliances optimized for converged systems can provide significant
application performance improvements because the system is optimized for the
needs of the application and can be maintained in a more stable and consistently
managed state.
 ISVs are able to reach new groups of customers, engage new types of channel
partners, and launch innovative go-to-market programs by delivering a solution that
can be easily downloaded and installed and remotely managed.
Many ISVs interviewed by IDC see virtual appliances optimized for converged
systems as a game changer that will help them create more varied and cost-effective
delivery and support models over time.
IN THIS WHITE PAPER
This white paper discusses the application deployment and management challenges
created by increasing enterprise use of virtualization and cloud architectures. It
discusses the use of virtual appliances optimized for deployment on converged
systems as one option for addressing these challenges. Profiles of three ISV partners
in IBM's recently launched Ready for IBM PureSystems program describe the
benefits and business impacts of this strategy.
GlobalHeadquarters:5SpeenStreetFramingham,MA01701USAP.508.872.8200F.508.935.4015www.idc.com

2. 2 #236380 ©2012 IDC
SITUATION OVERVIEW
In today's fast-changing, hypercompetitive markets, IT agility has become a critical
success factor for many enterprises. IT executives and line-of-business managers are
looking for ways to use IT to stay ahead of their competition. They expect IT teams to
support an ever-growing number of users and business processes with little or no
increase in head count. Maintaining predictable application performance while
accommodating the need for rapid change requires a new approach to IT
infrastructure.
IDC's research indicates that these pressures are rapidly driving enterprise
datacenters to transition away from traditional, inflexible client/server architectures
that tightly couple application and infrastructure resources. In their place, virtual
servers, converged systems, and cloud environments are being deployed to
standardize and enable automated, dynamic pooling and sharing of compute,
storage, and network resources across a range of applications and user groups.
IDC predicts that nearly 120 million virtual and physical servers will be installed by
2015. In addition, IDC expects that approximately one-third of North American
datacenter IT spending will be devoted to private cloud initiatives by 2013. IT decision
makers are pursuing virtualization and cloud to improve business agility, control
capital and operating expenses, and improve application performance and availability
(see Figure 1).
FIGURE 1
Top 5 Private Cloud Goals
n = 200 North American private cloud IT managers
Source: IDC's U.S. Private IT Cloud Systems Management Survey, 2011
31.5
47.5
78.0
87.0
91.0
020406080100
Control IT headcount
Improve application performance
and availability
Control IT operations costs
Control IT capital costs
Improve business agility
(% of respondents)

3. ©2012 IDC #236380 3
Converged systems are increasingly viewed as building blocks for these highly
dynamic virtual and cloud datacenters. Examples of converged systems include the
recently introduced IBM PureSystems family, which leverages IBM expertise in
system design and system integration to deliver a new converged system that could
be rapidly deployed and optimized for specific workloads. IBM took a clean sheet
approach in designing PureSystems, which combines hardware and software
intellectual property from IBM's Systems and Technology Group and Software Group,
to achieve better performance, security, and reliability.
Converged systems enable rapid infrastructure deployment and streamlined
automated provisioning and management because network, storage, server,
virtualization, and infrastructure management and control software components are
preintegrated and standardized.
IDC studies indicate that enterprises are increasingly looking to adopt converged systems
in order to simplify datacenter management and operations. In a recent IDC survey, 44%
of customers indicated that they are considering deploying converged systems in the next
three years. This fact is particularly true among organizations with a higher rate of
business change because an agile environment can better handle disruptions to IT.
Virtualization, Cloud, and Converged Systems
Create Application Deployment and
Management Challenges
For third-party application ISVs, the integration and configuration demands of traditional
datacenter environments, where each customer relies on a unique mix of servers,
networks, storage, hypervisors, and management software, can result in complex
deployment and support situations. Senior technical staff are often called away from
more important research and development activities to help troubleshoot a customer-
specific integration problem that may often be related to the customer environment
running on a different security or software level than the application requires.
Customer concerns about integration challenges can slow or derail the purchase of
new application software as IT decision makers worry about time to value and total
cost of ownership (TCO). In fact, IDC data indicates that IT spends more than
three-quarters (76.8%) of its time and resources on provisioning and maintaining the
IT environment and less than a quarter on value-added initiatives. Increasingly,
customers cannot afford to devote this amount of time and resources to provisioning
and maintenance tasks and are looking for more efficient options.
These challenges are exacerbated in virtual and cloud environments because
applications are no longer directly associated with specific infrastructure hardware
and software resources. ISVs find that they need to devote extensive resources to
testing and validating application performance and compatibility with increasing
numbers of hypervisors, operating systems, storage resources, and network
equipment as well as databases, security software, and other middleware
components. In many cases, ISVs need to rely on manual, customized processes for
deploying applications because their ability to automate deployment is limited by the
diversity of individual customer environments.

4. 4 #236380 ©2012 IDC
Application deployment timelines are also impacted by the fact that new application
implementations often require customers to participate in an extensive configuration
planning, infrastructure resource acquisition, systems integration, and application
deployment process in order to implement the ISV's software. This cycle can take weeks
or months depending on the customer's internal approval and integration processes. In
some cases, the customer may need to get multiple approvals to purchase and integrate
the necessary hardware and middleware in addition to buying the application itself.
Once the application is deployed, updates and patches much be tested and validated
with a wide range of configurations because not all customers upgrade or patch
supporting infrastructure and middleware on the same cycle. IDC interviews with a
range of application ISVs indicate that it is common for vendors to spend weeks or
even months working with customers during the predeployment and postdeployment
phases in order to ensure that the application is stable and performing as expected.
In an environment where customers expect to be able to deploy virtual machines
(VMs) or access public cloud services in minutes, application ISVs cannot afford to tie
up customer IT staff for months in planning, deployment, and integration programs. In
order to stay competitive, ISVs need to find ways to accelerate application
deployment and simplify ongoing application support.
Virtual Appliances and Converged Systems
Address Emerging Application Deployment
and Management Challenges
Converged systems provide a well-defined, tightly integrated, and automatically
configurable infrastructure platform that can be quickly customized to support the needs
of a wide range of applications. Because the converged system platform is shipped in a
standardized and stable state, application deployment patterns, policies, and processes
can be predefined and automated for large-scale repeatability on these platforms. Core
policies enforced using automated patterns can be quite sophisticated when the state of
the underlying infrastructure is well defined. They can include automated management of
high availability, SLAs, security, multitenancy, and isolation requirements.
Virtual appliances can package and automate the deployment of these predefined
patterns, policies, and deployment workflows, including required operating systems
and middleware technology. The result is a highly automated deployment process for
predefined standardized infrastructure configurations that can be completed in
minutes remotely rather than in weeks onsite. Application software updates and
patches can be coordinated with converged system updates to simplify and
streamline the life-cycle support of the application software.
Beyond achieving faster application deployment, virtual appliances can help ensure
better application performance because the enabling middleware, database, and
infrastructure can be appropriately sized, configured, and maintained for the specific
needs of the virtual appliance application. For many ISVs, virtual appliances provide a
means to reduce deployment costs and cycle times while presenting opportunities to
extend channel partners to organizations that may not have the technical skills to
support more complex, customized deployments but can handle the distribution and
support of a virtual appliance.

5. ©2012 IDC #236380 5
IBM Offers ISVs a Fast Track for Virtual
Appliance Deployment on New IBM
PureSystems
The recently introduced IBM Virtual Appliance Factory and Ready for IBM
PureSystems program offer ISVs a turnkey solution for rapidly creating and marketing
virtual appliance versions of existing software products. Specifically, the IBM Virtual
Appliance Factory provides a downloadable tool kit to help ISVs define and create
virtual appliances for deployment on the IBM PureFlex System (see Figure 2).
FIGURE 2
IBM Virtual Appliance Factory Overview
Source: IBM, 2012
Key elements of the toolkit include the IBM Image Construction and Composition Tool
and the IBM Virtual Activation Engine, which enable ISVs to create predefined
bundles of base virtual images combined with middleware and application software
and automation installation activators and extensions that can be rapidly deployed on
and integrated into the standard IBM PureFlex platform system.

6. 6 #236380 ©2012 IDC
 More rapidly deploy and scale application
 Deployment time cut from 6–7 hours to
30 minutes
 Improved deployment predictability and
repeatability
 Easier, more cost-effective maintenance
Innovation Insurer Virtual Appliance
for IBM PureSystems
The use of predefined bundles that are proven and optimized for deployment on
standard expert integrated systems streamlines or eliminates many postdeployment
configuration steps, which in turn reduces complexity and human error and improves
ISV development and deployment cycles. This speeds customer time to value with
faster, simpler, and more reliable deployments.
Once the virtual appliance has been created, ISVs upload their solution entry
description to the PureSystems Centre, a new catalog of unified content showcasing
PureSystems optimized solutions. IBM supports PureSystems Centre partners by
including a detailed, searchable listing page for the product in the online IBM
PureSystems product marketplace. Virtual appliances can be downloaded directly
from the ISV Web site and are sold via ISV channels and direct sales staff. ISVs can
opt to sell only the virtual appliance or to ship customers a prepackaged solution
including the application software already deployed on a standardized IBM
PureSystems platform. Validated virtual appliances can be branded with the "Ready
for IBM PureSystems" mark. Many ISV partners are also being featured at IBM
PureSystems events around the world.
IBM PureSystems Partner Experiences
Early IBM PureSystems partners have chosen to participate in the IBM PureSystems
virtual appliance program because they see an opportunity to minimize delivery and
deployment complexity, reduce support costs, improve application performance, and
gain increased visibility and leverage with IBM channels and customers. Partners
interviewed by IDC view their ability to offer customers a virtual appliance deployment
option as a game changer that not only will allow them to reduce the cost and complexity
of deploying the application but also will drive them to rethink the overall architectures of
their software products to simplify and remove complexity and costs wherever possible.
Innovation Group
Innovation Group provides both software products and business process outsourcing
services to insurance and financial services customers globally. In addition to serving
80% of the top 20 global insurance companies, Innovation Group supports the
needs of many tier 2 and 3 auto, property, and casualty insurers with less than
$1 billion in revenue. These insurers are
striving to grow their business, reduce costs,
and streamline business processes to stay
competitive. Many of them are looking for
alternative software delivery models such as
software as a service (SaaS) or virtual
appliances in order to streamline their IT
environments and reduce TCO.
Innovation Group's Innovation Insurer
software solution is an integrated browser-
based suite that includes Insurer Policy,
Insurer Analytics, and Insurer Claims
modules. It is an end-to-end solution with one data model, one rules engine, one
process engine, and a common set of administration tools that support the end-to-end
insurance value chain.

7. ©2012 IDC #236380 7
Innovation Group decided to partner with IBM to develop a virtual appliance for the
IBM PureFlex System in order to provide customers with a solution that can be more
quickly deployed and more efficiently maintained than the firm's traditional on-premise
deployment of the software solution. As with most SOA applications, the packaged
software solution can be complex to deploy and integrate in a customer's existing
environment. As a result, Innovation Group had to commit staff with significant
technological expertise to support field installation and ongoing support services.
Deployment processes were inconsistent, and meeting customer deployment
milestones was challenging.
The development of the virtual appliance version of Innovation Insurer allows
Innovation Group to more rapidly deploy and scale individual modules or the entire
suite on a predictable and repeatable basis. The firm is able to use less skilled staff to
complete most implementations. A comparison of traditional deployment processes
used prior to the availability of the virtual appliance shows that Innovation Group has
been able to reduce the typical single server database and application deployment
process from 6–7 hours to just 30 minutes. Customer IT organizations using IBM
expert integrated systems save additional time by not having to integrate network and
systems infrastructure prior to application deployment.
The process of scaling the application environment has also become much more
streamlined. As customer requirements increase, the IBM PureFlex System can
rapidly add more CPU or disk resources as needed.
The virtual appliance program also allows Innovation Group to standardize
and streamline application updates and patches because the environment
remains stable and predictable, thereby simplifying many routine maintenance
processes and allowing the use of more automated, remote systems to take care of
these activities.
Innovation Group reports that its experience with the program was very well defined
and efficient. Starting with an internal analysis and planning session, Innovation
Group felt that IBM provided solid support and sufficient resources to help create the
virtual appliance in just a few months. Beyond the technical support, Innovation
Group felt that IBM was a supportive partner in exploring creative pricing models that
are enabling Innovation Group to expand its delivery models across expert integrated
systems and private, public, and hybrid cloud software services.

8. 8 #236380 ©2012 IDC
 Reduce time and staff expertise needed for
deployment
 3-week process reduced to 60 minutes or
less
 Applications run 4–6 times faster with
integrated application acceleration
 Improved scalability and multitenancy
support
Alteon Virtual Appliance for
IBM PureSystems
Radware
Radware is the provider of Alteon, a fully functional application delivery controller
(ADC) solution that ensures high levels of security and performance for compute-
heavy networked environments. The solution includes global application disaster
recovery, performance optimization, and end-to-end encryption. Radware offers
sophisticated analysis of application and
network behaviors to detect and mitigate
malicious denial of service attacks
disguised as legitimate traffic.
Radware has relied on virtual appliances to
deliver its products for a number of years. It
also offers its solutions as traditional
packaged software and is in the process of
launching a SaaS-based option.
Radware became an early participant in
the virtual appliance program in order to
provide its customers with a more efficient
and stable virtual appliance option that can
be deployed and activated in 60 minutes. Prior to creating the Alteon Virtual
Appliance (Alteon VA) for IBM PureSystems, Radware had faced a number of
challenges deploying and maintaining Alteon VA implementations. Specifically,
customers were reluctant to deploy dedicated hardware to support a virtual appliance,
so Radware often had to invest time and resources to integrate its virtual appliance
solution with customers' existing datacenter and network environments.
Radware partnered with IBM to create a standardized application delivery controller
virtual appliance using KVM and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on the IBM Flex
System platform. This PureSystems virtual appliance allows Radware to offer IBM
PureFlex System customers a highly standardized, predefined solution that can be
deployed quickly and managed effectively. Radware reports that the application runs
four to six times better in this type of environment compared with customized
deployments of its virtual appliance. This performance impact is largely due to the
entire implementation being fine-tuned on an end-to-end basis for a specific
integrated system.
Customers see not only important performance benefits but also significant
improvements in time to value. Previously, customers could expect a three-week
process to procure the product, integrate the product into the existing environment,
and complete configuration of the application itself. With the PureSystems virtual
appliance, customers that already have an IBM PureFlex System expert integrated
system in place can activate the Radware license in 20 minutes via the IBM
PureSystems Centre. They can avoid delays associated with integration and cabling
and leverage the built-in IBM Workload Deployer technology to drive a 10-minute
configuration workflow process. Radware tells customers to plan on 60 minutes for
deployment just to be safe.

9. ©2012 IDC #236380 9
 Simplify initial deployments for data-at-rest
security
 Accelerate deployment time from days to as
little as 30 minutes
 Avoid customer configuration errors
 Reduce overall support and maintenance
complexity and cost
StoreSafe Virtual Appliance for
IBM PureSystems
Internally, Radware has found that the virtual appliance optimized for the IBM
PureFlex System is also enabling significant improvement in the performance and
cost of the Radware Alteon SaaS service. Historically, Radware has encountered
challenges in managing a high-density multitenant service delivery environment.
Using the virtual appliance, the company is now able to support as many as 256
tenants on a single IBM PureFlex System platform.
Radware found that the IBM PureSystems Centre provided extensive support
throughout the process of developing and validating the Alteon Virtual Appliance for
IBM PureSystems. Radware reported that in the past, it participated in vendor-
sponsored platform validation programs that were poorly defined and dragged on for
anywhere from 6 months to 12 months. The process enabled by the PureSystems
Centre brought together all required IBM and partner resources using a detailed
process and plan. As a result, the validated solution was ready in 2 months.
Beyond the well-defined technical process and availability of resources, Radware has
found that the PureSystems Centre portal provides an efficient means for sharing
information about the virtual appliance with customers and other IBM partners in a
consistent, easy-to-navigate manner. The availability of a downloadable 30-day free
trial using the virtual appliance is also creating more marketing and lead generation
opportunities for Radware.
Bloombase
Bloombase, a worldwide provider of information security software and services
solutions, partnered with IBM to create a virtual appliance for its Bloombase StoreSafe
Storage Security Software Appliance, which protects corporate and user
persistence/storage data from confidential information disclosure and unauthorized
tampering via use of strong encryption and patented watermarking technologies.
The company's goal was to enable customers
to more easily manage the software and to
respond to customer interest in alternative
delivery models. The firm felt that a virtual
appliance based on the IBM PureFlex System
would simplify initial deployments and reduce
implementation complexities while improving
application stability and performance.
Traditionally, Bloombase would spend days at
a customer site working through integration
and configuration challenges that were unique
to the customer's environment. The firm
reports that hardware compatibility problems and software configuration errors were
frequent and time consuming. As a result, senior technical staffs for both Bloombase
and the customer were often required to troubleshoot the situation and complete the
installation. Now the virtual appliance can be deployed and configured in as little as 30
minutes instead of days.

10. 10 #236380 ©2012 IDC
By deploying the solution as a virtual appliance, Bloombase is able to ensure that initial
implementations are consistent and stable. Customer configuration errors are being
significantly reduced because preset defaults and a wizard-based configuration tool can
be provided and optimized for the IBM PureFlex System environment. Ongoing support
and maintenance costs are also lower because the platform remains stable and
predictable, allowing for more consistent and automated updates and patches.
Overall, Bloombase believes that use of the virtual appliance model is helping it
reduce deployment costs, improve application performance and stability, and improve
its customers' overall total cost of ownership.
Bloombase said that the level of support and collaboration it has received from IBM
has exceeded that which it has received from other major infrastructure providers.
The PureSystems Centre process was well defined, and IBM supplied extensive
technical support and testing resources via the local IBM Innovation Center. The
entire process took less than two months.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
As enterprise IT organizations make more extensive use of virtualization, private
cloud, and public cloud resources, software purchase decisions will be heavily
impacted by concerns about time to value, ease of implementation, efficiency of
support, and overall application performance. Enterprise IT organizations continue to
feel head count and budget pressure and will insist on solutions that minimize internal
demands on their top technical staff.
For ISVs, virtual appliances optimized for converged systems are likely to become an
important delivery option for customers that want a simplified deployment and support
experience. IDC expects that many ISVs will find that they need to support a range of
delivery models over time because customers will have different preferences for
traditional packaged software, virtual appliances, and SaaS-based services
depending on the application and the customer's existing environment. For ISVs that
are just beginning to evaluate SaaS-based delivery of their applications, virtual
appliances can provide the basis of a scalable, hosted delivery option using public
cloud resources to enter the market rapidly.
Many ISVs expect that customers will increasingly demand a range of pricing and
licensing options to match the growth in the variety of deployment and support
choices. They also expect that increasing the range of delivery options will create new
opportunities to reach out to nontraditional customers, engage new types of channel
partners, and launch innovative go-to-market strategies. ISVs should look for
infrastructure partners that can help them adapt pricing and packaging strategies
while gaining access to new channels and customers.

11. ©2012 IDC #236380 11
Challenges
The introduction of virtual appliances can be disruptive to both the ISV and its
customers. IT employees who are skilled in supporting complex integrations and
software customization may resist the introduction of a more standardized, remotely
supported product. Enterprise IT organizations may also resist the introduction of new
infrastructure platforms to support virtual appliances if the infrastructure vendor's
equipment has not yet been validated in the datacenter environment.
ISVs will need to develop strategies for understanding the organizational requirements
as well as the functional requirements of their customers in order to offer customers the
most appropriate delivery and support option. ISVs will also need to enable channel
partners and programs in order to make sure their partners can effectively target specific
options to specific types of customers. Over time, ISVs must develop detailed frameworks
to help customers and channel partners evaluate the time to value, performance, and
life-cycle operations costs associated with each available delivery option.
CONCLUSION
ISVs that proactively explore new delivery options including virtual appliances
optimized for converged systems will be well positioned to extend their market
presence while reducing development, deployment, and support costs. The benefits
of developing a virtual appliance option will impact ISVs in a number of ways beyond
the immediate benefits of reducing deployment costs and enabling more stable and
predictable application performance and support.
Lessons learned about how to simplify, standardize, and automate application code
and deployment processes will also carry over to traditional packaged versions of the
software and can enable more efficient and scalable SaaS-based cloud delivery
options. To stay competitive in today's rapidly evolving software industry, ISVs need
to offer a range of delivery options that match cost, performance, and time to value
with customers' individual priorities.
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