FNT sets out its ambition: to be the ERP for infrastructure service providers

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1 FNT sets out its ambition: to be the ERP for infrastructure service providers Analyst: Andy Lawrence 12 Dec, 2014 German software company FNT, a relative latecomer to the datacenter management software market, is quickly establishing itself as one of the leading suppliers in infrastructure management with a cluster of datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) and datacenter service management (DCSM) products, as well as a roadmap that shows an ambition and vision beyond most suppliers. The long-term goal is to be to infrastructure service providers what ERP is to large businesses. The 451 Take FNT is a company that defies categorization because it offers a wide range of management tools that extend some way up the IT stack (physical, logical and virtual) and out across the infrastructure of devices and networks. It is not just its breadth that makes FNT a little different: other DCIM suppliers tend to play up the functions and play down the underlying software, while FNT emphasizes that it offers a complete platform for infrastructure management. Datacenters are at the center of most digital infrastructures, so it's essential that FNT establish a good foothold as a DCIM supplier. It still has work to do here, both in branding and on the monitoring side where it currently offers fewer functions than some competitors, but it makes up for that elsewhere. Overall, FNT's scope and vision are aligned with our view of where infrastructure and service management are going, and its execution and capabilities so far suggest that sooner or later, the bigger suppliers are going to start taking note. Copyright The 451 Group 1

2 Context FNT, which started out as a services company offering some tools for cable management, has grown its DCIM revenue by more than 100% in two years, mostly driven by adoption in its native Germany, but also in the rest of Europe and the US. Its software is used by more than half of the largest public companies in Germany, although not all use FNT's Command software for datacenter and core IT resource management. The product is wide in its scope and can be used by any organization with a complex physical infrastructure. Apart from expanding into areas of IT service management and into the management of external supplied services FNT is set on international expansion, with offices in the US, Romania, Singapore and Dubai, as well as an indirect presence in Moscow. As detailed in our previous report, FNT is a 20-year-old company based in Ellwangen, a small town in Germany. For the first decade, it focused on services, supporting mostly large clients with infrastructure management tools and services. Since 2004, it has been turning itself into a software company, initially focused on cable and network management, but increasingly based on its core asset management and DCIM system, Command. The company was founded by CEO Nikolaus Albrecht and CTO Horst Haag and has revenue of $20-25m, of which three-quarters is classed as DCIM, or perhaps more broadly, datacenter management software. Revenue is split fairly evenly between licenses, maintenance and services. Because FNT's software spans IT service management and cable/network management, as well as DCIM, it can be hard to classify; competitors operating purely in DCIM and related datacenter markets might dismiss it, saying it is not directly in their sector and is more focused on IT service management (ITSM), or is even a product aimed at running an entire digital infrastructure, even a telco network. 451 Research classes FNT's Command as both a DCIM product and a DCSM product, which combines processes and data from both ITSM and DCIM. FNT's medium-term goal is to establish Command and its companion product ServicePlanet as an ERP equivalent for the service provider. By this, it means, more broadly, any company with a substantial inventory of physical and virtual assets supporting a digital infrastructure. This includes enterprise IT (i.e., automobiles, financial services), IT service providers, colocation and multi-tenant datacenter operators, and communication service providers. It also offers a SaaS-based product for smaller companies. FNT has an extensive vision that includes building out monitoring, workflow, the software-defined datacenter and, ultimately, more automation sometimes through partnerships and interfaces, other times directly. Copyright The 451 Group 2

3 FNT now employs 200 people, and its software is used by 25,000 end users at more than 500 organizations. This includes half of the DAX30 (Germany's largest traded companies), including all of its car makers, seven out of 10 airports and many telcos. Named customers include Daimler, NORMA Group, Vodafone and NCB GmbH. The company has a number of trading partners and resellers, while technology partnerships include RF Code (for RFID data collection/monitoring); Future Facilities (CFD capacity planning); Intel (integration with Datacenter Manager); Tridium (Niagara data collection/monitoring tools); and Tableau (a third-party tool for reporting and creating dashboards). Products One way to understand FNT's technology and positioning is to think of it as a large, configurable infrastructure management database a kind of configuration management database spanning physical, logical and virtual, coupled with tools and applications for data collection, data exchange and transformation, and data management, all built using an Oracle database. On top of this core, FNT provides infrastructure management applications, workflows and processes, including those that span the physical, logical and virtual assets. Because it can be used in this way, 451 Research classes FNT's core Command product as both as a DCIM product and a DCSM product. In addition, it also has a service management product, ServicePlanet, described below. Command has four main components (all based around the core database structure): C base, Command's asset management module. This is the core asset database, plus some basic change and configuration capabilities, and the underlying mapping for reporting and other applications. FNT has an asset library of more than 40,000 components that customers can download or access online. C gate is an integration and connectivity component enabling managers to interface with and pull information from SAP, Microsoft Visio and Windows Management Instrumentation interface, as well as other ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow and HP's Universal CDMB. C gate includes the ability to pull in geographical information system (GIS) data, which is useful for managing WANs and telco networks, or distributed estates of equipment. The telco function, using the supporting GIS and cable management capabilities, is designed for companies with extensive WAN infrastructure, but could also be useful for datacenter service operators wanting to get a better view of their overall network routing and the interdependencies and risk. (This will be the subject of an Copyright The 451 Group 3

4 upcoming report). C logic this is effectively FNT's description for application modules or add-ons. It includes a wide range of functions, such as reporting and capacity planning; the management of physical and virtual servers; power and environmental reporting; managing software licenses; and the management and routing of communications networks. Business applications such as billing and overall capacity planning are available. Integration with Intel's Datacenter Manager is also part of C logic. C line is Command's physical infrastructure management module. With C line, managers can track the location, interdependency and interconnectivity of devices. ServicePlanet In 2013, FNT added ServicePlanet to its portfolio. This product is designed to work with the underlying infrastructure management systems controlled by the operator (that Command would be used to manage, for example), but also to include all resources and applications that are not under direct control such as public cloud, hosted applications and private cloud services operated by partners. This tool enables managers to track and view all the IT that they are managing or using from a service and business point of view. It tracks services and SLAs, as well as licenses, permissions and costs across the lifecycle; the tool can show the data on a dashboard so that the manager has a complete view of the digital infrastructure as a portfolio. The product is effectively a hub, drawing from multiple sources, including Command. FNT positions this as an important component in the modern IT period it is, in effect, a tool and a platform for managing the digital infrastructure, virtual or physical, public or private. FNT argues that by using a management tool in the center, companies are able to tailor and customize their IT for their users, even though components may be public and mass-produced. In this sense, it is reducing the loss of scope that usually comes at the expense of scale the consumption of a mass-produced service. Competition FNT's function set is wide, and that means it has a lot of competitors. These range from, at the core, DCIM suppliers that have extensive suites to various companies that have infrastructure, asset or service/portfolio management systems. Part of IBM Tivoli or HP's software offerings for asset, change and configuration management could be competitive. Copyright The 451 Group 4

5 Certainly, FNT competes with those large equipment suppliers that offer end-to-end suites, such as Emerson Network Power and Schneider Electric, as well ABB and Siemens, which have lower sales and market share in DCIM but have pieced together functionally wide suites. Panduit, CommScope (itracs) and Cormant also have suites and, like FNT, began with cable and connectivity management. Given its asset management and workflow focus, FNT may also come up against Nlyte Software sooner or later. At present, monitoring specialists such as FieldView Solutions and Modius are probably more complementary than competitive. In spite of the competition, none of these is quite like FNT. Apart from winning sales in the fairly unpenetrated DCIM area, one of FNT's challenges is to boost use of its software by the many large companies that already use its software. Although some companies uses Command extensively (one company has seven million assets in Command), many use it only for specialist applications or as a subsidiary database to the main IT asset management database. This is an opportunity, but also a sign that in some of its markets, it is fenced in by incumbent competitors. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses FNT has a strong product and very good customers in its native Germany. It has a far-sighted and thoughtful approach to the infrastructure market. Opportunities Threats The converging management of physical, logical and virtual assets calls for the kinds of products and approaches that FNT offers. Large service providers will like FNT's unified approach. By crossing departmental boundaries, FNT can find itself in complicated sales situations and competing against many different products. It may need to add more monitoring capabilities. FNT is chasing big companies with complex management issues. This is territory that attracts giant competitors. Copyright The 451 Group 5

6 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: Copyright The 451 Group 6