Introduction

We provide a focused range of e-Infrastructure strategies, technologies, economics and directions research and analysis services (See About Us for company details) for three communities of customers:

• Enterprise IT Users.
• Enterprise e-Infrastructure Vendors.
• Business and Technology Press and Media.

We focus our research and analysis on the core e-Infrastructure for enterprise computing today:

• Research Overview below gives an overview of our research coverage.
• Latest Research below gives details of our latest research products.
• Research Coverage gives for full details of our coverage.
• Research Process gives an overview of our research process, input sources and product outputs.

Our research has served dozens of the leading enterprise vendors (visit Vendor Partners for examples), and hundreds of enterprise users (visit Enterprise IT Users for a partial list). From our research and analysis process, we create a focused range of core Products, which are combined to deliver the Services offerings above.

Enterprise e-Infrastructure
The Internet and e-business have fuelled a large wave of investment in IT e-Infrastructures. Software Strategies focuses its research and services exclusively on this key area, and on the key vendor solutions within it, as depicted in Chart 1 opposite. We cover the principal elements of enterprise e-Infrastructures and architectures, including:

• Server hardware platforms, with a special focus on Intel Architecture-based systems.
• Operating systems, with a special focus on Windows 2000/2002.
• Middleware software.
• Storage systems, networks and software.
• Applications enabling technologies and architectures.
• Standards, interfaces.
• e-Infrastructure management services and solutions.
• Services and support for the above.

We have built a high reputation for our extensive work on the Microsoft software platform, Windows 2000, Intel Architecture servers, and related platform topics through our director's leadership of the Enterprise NT Management Forum consortium from 1998 to 2000.

We focus on covering the new generation of "industry standard" systems-based e-Infrastructure, based around Intel Architecture systems and Microsoft software, operating and middle-ware software, open enterprise storage, systems management, and industry standard IP networking reflects the major importance off, and rapid growth these technologies have undergone. We also view and evaluate these comparatively alongside the main other alternatives For more details of our research domain coverage, click here on Research Coverage.

Our overall research process (shown graphically in the chart below) covers a wide range of primary and secondary sources, using a number of research techniques, and the resulting research is held in our research database. From this, we conduct reviews, make studies and comparisons, produce summaries, tables and charts. These are then used to create the final products shown in the lower boxes. (Click on any of these for product details.)

Software Strategies research, products, events and services are all geared to:

• Supporting senior and mid-level enterprise IT management and executives.
• Are concerned with strategic assessment, positioning, broad capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.
• Seek to provide objective and measurable high level data on performance, reliability, capacity, price/performance and TCO wherever possible.
• Provide clear, independent guidance on the economics and costs of the options covered.
• Aggregating, summarising and compressing field and customer experience, technology uptake and new developments concisely and useably.
• Helping our user customers define and refine their architectures, plans and e-infrastructure strategies.
• Helping our vendor partners articulate and communicate their messages and solutions, and providing them with accurate feedback, advice and opportunities.

Our research is selective, highly targeted, aggregated, summarized, analyst evaluated and interpreted, with the emphasis on usefulness and conciseness for busy senior IT executives, rather than mere volume and instant currency. The latter needs are well served by existing pure news media already. Nor do we provide blanket coverage of every IT technology and market as attempted by the large international analyst firms, some of whom either saturate their subscribers with excessive volume, and/or provide undifferentiated services of a somewhat average quality. Our tight focus enables services and deliverables of real depth and authority to be provided within our research domain.

We do not provide detail feature-function technical, or "how to operate" instructions, as these widely available from vendors, other technically targeted services or training firms.

Click on one of the following principal research domain names to view our coverage of that domain, or Browse to scroll the entire coverage table:

• Operating Systems, With A Special Focus On Windows 2000/2002.
• e-Infrastructure Middleware Software ,With A Special Focus On The Microsoft Software Platform.
• Server Hardware Platforms, With A Special Focus On Intel Architecture-Based Systems.
• Storage Systems, Networks And Software.
• Applications Enabling Technologies And Architectures.
• e-Infrastructure Management Services And Solutions.
• Alliances, Partnerships, Services and Support for the Above.
• Application Service Provision and XSPs.

• Click on Products and Services, for more details of our products and services.
• Click on Vendor Partner Detail for more details of selected vendor partners.
• Click On Industry News for current industry news and reporting.