Bladewatch.com

We’ve been making remarkable progress over the last few years with blade technology. From the early days of small servers which could be deployed in volume, with perceived limitations in cpu, ram and disk, to the current generation with options for SAN storage, GBs of memory, multi socket, multi core systems with 10GB Ethernet.

The opportunities with blade servers have been realized both from an operational and technological sense, but there are still opportunities and business requirements that we need to explore, innovation is an ongoing process and the more we innovate the platform, discuss challenges and solutions, the more we can develop the blade platform and realize it potential even more as a platform for revenue generation and business empowerment.

I got asked the other day what I perceived as the key benefits of blade technologies the other day and here are a few:

• More servers in the same space footprint, 96 blades in a cabinet for example against 22 1u rack servers
• Ease of deployment and management, using the on board blade and enclosure management tools, combined with a deployment tool.
• Connectivity can be made easier and less complex when using integrated switches, and with converged networking we can reduce the number of physical patches and ports reducing power consumption.
• Converged power and connectivity, fewer power and network cables on a per server basis, only using the power you need to drive the servers when using the integrated energy efficient power supplies and power management tools, which might shut down power supplies or cooling on demand.
• The concept in which you can deploy application infrastructure on demand, I want a CDO system, not a problem, bring online enclosure C and deploy the CDO build.

There are more, but that’s off the top of my head. I know one company I had spoken with had simply liked the concept of reduced patching as this meant less calling out a service provider to build another server, the blade enclosures were pre-patched and all that was needed was some switch configuration, combined with fewer cables requiring auditing and management.

So what are the challenges (real and perceived):

• Volume server deployments continue to present issues around cooling and power requirements in some data centers, particularly if you are deploying a volume of blades in a small footprint. We are seeing innovation in this space.
• Proprietory technology – every blade conference I go to normally has a manager asking when we will see interoperability on the enclosures – but the nature of the product does not lend itself to this, we will have open standards, open and discussed best practices and configurations, but the concept of putting vendor blade a in enclosure vendor b is not something that meets either the vendor or the customer in some respects. We’re seeing further innovation in best practice and open standards.
• Different management technologies and standards – this might sound harsh and is more operational in nature, some of the terminology, some of the ways we do things in the blade world differs from vendor to vendor, that’s to be expected, but the more we can remove any barriers to entry, from cost and in terms of technology, the more we can on board end users and create opportunities in the blade space.

The innovation of the blade platform continues, and the more the end user community gets involved, and the more vendors communicate with their customers, the more we can establish a dialogue, share best practice and operational stories, discuss new ideas, to innovate not just because it’s a business requirement, but because it could equally be a business opportunity. Today’s innovation could be tomorrow’s business requirement.

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http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21974

A slew of new players, encouraged by government, are seeking to enter the UK market in the wake of the financial crisis. Metro Bank, the first new high street player for over 100 years, opened its doors recently and Tesco and Virgin are both looking to become full service lenders.

However, in a review based on consultations within the industry, the watchdog warns that these entrants face “significant challenges” in attracting customers and expanding their market share.

The OFT highlights technology as a key concern because entering the market involves “significant IT investment, often in the form of sunk costs, which can account for up to two-thirds of start-up costs”.

A great article, and I wonder how much of these start up costs are real or perceived, particularly with concepts of virtualization and cloud computing, granted there will be the standard security and compliance regulations to work within, but at the same time as a new entrant to the market, you might take advantage of the lack of legacy platforms, standards and ways of doing things.

Concepts like buying in your initial internet banking platform or framework, commoditizing the desktop and server model in which they are replaced every few years, or virtualized to reduce initial costs, combined with importantly the right range of technologies to provide what each department needs and not necessarily the concept of bank standards, if it’s a desktop with the banking applications and nothing else, is it a desktop running windows that I really need, or an imac with Firefox? Granted I could be accused of simplifying or being over enthusiastic, but the nature of the technological innovations and improvements that are out in the market place make achieving start-up business opportunities that bit easier, blogs, social media combined with a smart business plan and virtual call centers, virtual helpdesk make actually providing key banking services less expensive and less challenging than it might have been the case even a few years ago.

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http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21971

The alliance comprises of more than 70 firms with over $50 billion in collective IT spending that have committed to a vendor-agnostic roadmap for buying decisions and data centre planning. Intel is acting as technical advisor.

The roadmap comprises 19 prioritised usage models designed to address emerging technical requirements for data centre and cloud infrastructure and based on open, interoperable systems that can be sourced from multiple vendors.

The group has set up five technical work groups focused on infrastructure, management, security, services, and government and ecosystem. Each group will define the requirements of prioritised usage model toward the delivery of a detailed technical documentation suite to be utilized by vendors and members as guidance for deployments.

I read this on Finextra, and it got me thinking and wondering what best practice and concepts might arise from such an alliance, could we see open type standards facilitating financial and enterprise specific requirements. Could we for example see discussions on creating internal clouds for storage, for email, for virtualization or file and print. It’s an interesting read, do check it out.

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http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/article_detail.html?compURI=tcm:245-786357

PALO ALTO, Calif. — HP today unveiled its vision for the “Instant-On Enterprise“ – organizations that embed technology into everything they do in order to better address the rapidly changing needs of customers and citizens.

HP also announced new integrated solutions that help businesses and governments create their own Instant-On Enterprise.

With the adoption of mobile and cloud computing, everything is becoming connected and immediate. As a result, customers and citizens expect responses in seconds and “instants,” instead of weeks and days.

New research conducted on behalf of HP reveals the role of IT is shifting from chiefly being the administrator of the enterprise, to becoming one and the same with the enterprise.⁽¹⁾

• 86 percent of senior business and government executives believe that to better serve customers and citizens they must rapidly adapt the enterprise to meet changes in consumer expectations.
• 78 percent believe that technology is the key to business and government innovation.

It’s great to see HP further their expansion into the enterprise and government markets, to addressing the needs of the business and the CIO, being able to offer the right combination of services, products and platforms for the enterprise and at the same time the individual business unit is increasingly where the opportunities are developing.

The enterprise whether it’s a public body, a not for profit or private enterprise is changing, we’re facing global markets, global challenges from similar sized enterprises and start-ups alike, the old rules of the IT department being a box ordering and charge back platform are changing. I need my IT to be part of the business function, an empowerment tool for revenue generation, customer fulfillment and communication device, at the same time, each component within the enterprise has their own business drivers, their own requirements in which the concept of standards or enterprise rules do not necessarily match business investment and buy-in to technology. For the Front Office where client interaction, where performance and risk analytics count, I want the best because it will pay dividends, for the retail bank, for back office where I just need everything to hum along, be online but if one part fails, another can take over, who runs the technology, who does the transaction verification or provides the underlying tin may not be as fundamental to my business.

With this in mind as a vendor, as a service provider and crucially a CIO, understanding the business requirements, knowing what the drivers are, where it fits within the IT food chain is the issue, changing IT from being a box provisioning device and maintenance provider, to one of service provisioning and service management becomes key. I want IT to be the adviser to the project and BAU teams, I want IT to be helping me make the right decisions where IT counts, choosing the right range of services or products around the range of services that I define as requirement. This can mean a shift to areas which might be deemed uncomfortable, deciding which parts are core, which parts we want on a private cloud, on private infrastructure, and which bits we might want to buy-in, server racking, server decommissioning, even email or the desktop for example.

The instant on enterprise is an exciting concept both for the enterprise, the multinational seeking to see how it can transform the possibilities in terms of cost, diversity and dynamic service provisioning, and the smb space where the barriers to competition, to getting access to transformational technologies and business opportunities might be realized through concepts like buying in compute, storage or infrastructure on demand, making the difference between serving that deal for that new client today and tomorrow.

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