Members

Middleware and Operating System Adoption Rate Survey
Thank you to all 260 people who responded to the August 1 through September 29, 2007 Middleware and Operating System Adoption Rate Survey. The primary focus of this survey was to better understand how quickly our customers adopt new releases and phase out old releases of distributed (non-mainframe) operating systems and middleware that a Tivoli product may depend upon. This survey is helping us to better align our middleware and operating system prerequisite support with the needs of our customers by gaining an improved understanding of:

• How long we should wait after a new middleware or operating system release is generally available before we add Tivoli product function that requires that new release.
• How quickly our existing Tivoli product function should support a new middleware or operating system release.

Some immediate things that we learned from the survey include:

• New middleware releases tend to get put into production either right away or -- more likely -- 13-18 months after they are made available.
• Operating system and middleware fix-packs and service-packs tend to get into production within 6 months.
• About a third of our responders have policies that govern how quickly things can be put into production. Nearly half do not have such a policy.
• Most operating system and middleware releases stay in production about 2 years though the responses varied greatly from 1 to 4 years.
• Most of you keep 2 releases of a given operating systems or middleware in your production environments, Some of you keep 5 or more releases in production at the same time.

Tivoli Integration Module Survey
389 people participated in the Tivoli Integration Module Survey, which ran May 31 to August 1, 2007. Thank you to those of you who took the survey. The primary focus for this survey was to validate the usage and usability of various features that currently exist in the Open Process Automation Library (OPAL) On line Catalog and possible new features that could be implemented in OPAL.

Here are the results of the survey:

• 36% were aware of OPAL which is a 16% increase from the 2006 survey.
• There is an increase in the number of integration modules that have gone into a production environment
• 35% want the ability to provide a rating and review for integrations that they use. 30% indicated ratings and reviews from other users impact their decision to use an integration.
• The top three features that are important when searching for integrations, the ability to search by: 1) Product 2) Solution, such as Service Desk and 3) Open Search Field versus Searching by Integration Type, Industry, ITIL processes.
• Summary of repeated comments: IBM is the preferred vendor where people go to get integration modules for their Service Management environment.

What we, IBM/Tivoli  learned, was even though there was a 16% increase in the number of people who are aware of the OPAL catalog from last year, continued communication and broadcasting to customers about the 600+ integration modules in the catalog is necessary.

Customer Portal on ibm.com
134 of you responded to the May survey  - THANK YOU!

Results:

1. 98% would use a portal site created by IBM/Tivoli


2. If IBM were to offer information/resource of value through a portal
   • 76% would find a quarterly pod cast on various topics of value
   • 9% would find a Feedback capability into Tivoli of value
   • 88% would find "Meet Tivoli expert" of value
   • 75% would attend Bi-yearly webcasts from the Tivoli Executive team
   • 91% would find links to key pages/information on ibm.com of value
     Other ideas you came up with that would be of value:
     • blog to discuss all Tivoli technical issues
     • product updates/fixpack info
     • enhancement requests in progress with status updates
     • training for all products on pod casts


3. You ranked these requirements of Tivoli in order of your preference. Here are the consolidated ranked results:
   1. Product Quality
   2. Out of the box capability and integration among products
   3. Ease of Deployment
   4. Technical Support
   5. Communication
   6. Account/Sales Support
   7. Product Requirement Process
   8. Longevity of product evolution and support


4. As a customer the #1 need from Tivoli can be summed by saying you need better communication, faster time to value and enhanced product quality, support and training


5. 36% were a user of product(s) recently acquired by IBM. When asked how best could Tivoli serve you as a customer, some of you gave the following answers:
   • Clear Product documentation
   • Workshops, technical, to understand event flow and how products integrate
   • More details of integration plans and roadmaps

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to complete the May survey. Your feedback is being communicated to the right people in IBM/Tivoli.

Summary of Server Virtualization Survey<
Over 120 responses to the survey

Major virtualization platforms used in production:

VMware(46%), System p AIX(31%), Microsoft Virtual Server(13%), Sun Solaris Containers (10%)

70% of responses want a common set of tools to manage both physical and virtual environments

57% of responses are using Virtual machine movement (e.g. VMotion)

42% unsure if virtual environment is more difficult for problem identification and resolution.

Tivoli tools important to customers for managing a virtual environment (left most important to least important right)

ITM, TSM, CCMDB, TAM, TPM, TWS, TIM, TLCM, TSLA, ITUAM, TSA/MP

Top reasons for using server virtualization

• Sever Consolidation & Reduce Server Hardware purchases
• Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
• Improve Server Utilization
• Reduce floor space requirements

The IBM Tivoli team would like to thank all of you who took your time to complete the survey on virtualization. Your feedback will influence our product plans and help us design the products that interest you most.

TUC Members Communications Preferences
Thanks to the 285 Tivoli User Group members who responded to a survey on communications preferences that was conducted in February and March. Here are highlights from the survey.

When asked what forms of communications they preferred to receive from IBM on new products, events and other news:

• 37% said an e-newsletter
• 25% said the Tivoli or TUC Web site
• 24% said Tivoli or TUC events
• 11% said webcasts; only 5% said podcasts

When asked what IBM news interests them the most:

• 27% said getting more from existing products
• 24% said new products
• 15% said Tivoli events
• 11% said IBM strategy and news
• 6% said upcoming podcasts and webcasts
• Only 5% said new business trends

When asked how often they preferred to receive communications from IBM:

• 31% said monthly
• Only 4% said daily or quarterly

When asked which IBM e-publications they read regularly:

• 31% said IBM Tivoli Monitoring Newsletter
• 29% said IBM Software Newsletter
• 21% said Tivoli Advisor

When asked which IBM Web sites they visit regularly:

• 49% said www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/
• 17% said www.ibm.com/itsm
• 14% said http://www-306.ibm.com/software/Tivoli/ Tivoli user groups/index.html

Two questions were specific to the TUC Web site (www.tivoli-ug.org)

When asked if they'd ever contributed content to the TUC site, 94% of survey respondents said no.

When asked which incentives were most likely to motivate them to contribute content to the TUC site:

• 27% said a personal technology item as a recognition gift for top contributors
• 25% said a thank-you letter from IBM that is also sent to the contributor's company
• 20% said receiving recognition for contributions at a TUC event or on the TUC site
• 20% said being named or featured on the TUC site as a contributor

Thanks again for your participation in the survey. Your communications preferences will be communicated to the Tivoli Marketing and Communications organization through internal e-newsletters. Your opinions will help us develop and offer you more effective communications in the future.