Bladewatch.com

There was a brief discussion about the Itanium processor:

• HP and Intel have a long term working relationship including their commitment to the Itanium platform
• Itanium is a secure platform with significant investment which includes a long term road map which extends through to the Kittson processor through 2014 and beyond.

The viewpoint was to clearly re-iterate commitment to the Itanium platform and establish that it has a consistent extended roadmap and that customers can continue to invest and use systems based on the Itanium processor.

There were also comments relating to the announcement on Oracle that they are to stop development for Itanium based servers illustrating two main elements, Oracle have committed to continue supporting platforms that run on Itanium as well as concerns with regards to the announcement from a HP customer standpoint and end consumer choice.

There are two interesting articles written about the subject here and here, one discusses the future for Itanium and the other discusses Oracle’s drivers for the announcement.

Both resinated with me on several levels. In summary the martin macleod, bladewatch official verdict.

Itanium is here to stay for the time being, would I personally choose Itanium over an x64 system? It would depend on the usage case and also the ability for the application and underlying layered components and operating system to exploit the benefits of the processor. The end is not nigh for Itanium, as one vendor announces that support for future products is to cease, that closes a door to that platform, however there remain enough to justify the platform. Besides in an increasingly commoditized world where we live in the here and now, where the lifecycle of a platform may be less than five years because the operating system the hardware, the database or midleware goes out of support; statements like in seven years time this wont run of that are significant to those making the announcements, to everyone else, it’s “thanks very much for that, that’ll be something to worry about in four to six years then”.

Let us remove the emotion from the debate:

• Oracle thank you for your comments, for your future platform support – very useful.
• Intel, HP, what’s next for Itanium and everything else in the here and now?

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http://news.techworld.com/personal-tech/3277379/x-factor-contestants-warned-after-250000-data-breach/

Would-be contestants of Simon Cowell’s US X Factor might have got more public exposure than they bargained for with the news that the details of 250,000 of them have been lost after an attack on the TV show’s database.

The records were stolen from TV network Fox Broadcasting and included personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth, but not credit card details, said UK tabloid, the Daily Star, which broke the news.

“This week, we learned that computer hackers illegally accessed information you and others submitted to us to receive information about The X Factor auditions,” read an email sent to those affected by the attack.

An interesting article which reminds me of the Sony data loss and outage last week on their PlayStation network, often it’s not so much the fact that data got lost or that it could have fallen into un-anticiapted user groups, it is more an issue of perceived responsibility and communication. Many a user can accept mistakes happen, if you detail what has happened, what the anticipated risk is and what actions you are taking to rectify or mitigate the impact. On the Sony angle, it was interesting that my nephews are not trading in their PlayStation 3 for an Xbox-360 because of data loss, but because the network was down and ‘they couldn’t play online against each other’.

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I was doing some research on the IBM X Series servers which have been announced powered on the new Intel processor Xeon E7, they have an interesting post about the innovations that have been combined in order to deliver servers optimised for the next generation cloud and virtualization application and infrastructure deployments, do check it out. The focus on improving the scalability and ease of re-deployment as well as improving i/o performance and possibilities brings new opportunities and applications for their series eX5 servers.

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http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110427a.html

HP Enterprise Services today announced it is among the first partners to become an SAP-certified global provider of cloud services in support of SAP solutions.

HP provides standardized IT solutions and services based on shared resources via the internet enabling the delivery of SAP® applications to clients in a scalable manner via HP Hybrid Delivery Cloud Services .

The certification provides assurance to clients using SAP applications through HP’s cloud services that they can benefit from:

• increased flexibility, which enables business process alignment to meet immediate market demands;
• rapid provisioning, which speeds their ability to implement application and business process changes; and
• a highly reliable architecture and access to the latest cloud services with no infrastructure capital outlay required, which results in much lower costs and risks for companies to consume the full benefits of enterprise applications.

Technology providers seeking certification by SAP must undergo an extensive audit process that validates the operational integration of the provider’s cloud capabilities with SAP applications. The comprehensive audit includes reviews of a services provider’s technical, physical, management and logical security processes supporting SAP applications. After successful completion, the entire process undergoes recertification every two years.

This announcement illustrates the opportunities that exist and can be created in the SAP space, through HP being able to offer a certified SAP cloud based solution, very cool.

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http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110425xa.html

HP today announced HP Strategic IT Advisory Services designed to help chief information officers (CIOs) use IT as a key driver of innovation, growth and profitability.

HP Strategic IT Advisory Services help CIOs:

• Build an IT strategy: Clients collaborating with HP gain greater insight to develop an IT strategy that aligns with business goals to meet the changing demands of their customers and citizens.
• Innovate business services: Clients create technology-empowered business services, using techniques such as a hybrid delivery strategy and business benefits analysis, which are specifically tailored to meet and respond to the needs of the clients’ organizations. This includes insight on how cloud computing, enterprise architecture or service management contributes to the success of their enterprise strategies.

The success of CIOs is increasingly being evaluated against enterprise objectives.

Analyst firm Gartner Inc. indicates that most external assessments of enterprise value and viability will include explicit analysis of IT assets and capabilities. In addition, new revenue generated each year by IT will determine the annual compensation for most new Global 2000 CIOs.⁽¹⁾

“Our research shows that by 2016, innovation accomplishments will be among the top three selection criteria for new CIOs,” said Ken McGee, vice president and fellow, Gartner. “This trend is indicative of the extent to which IT will be so closely aligned with enterprise goals that it is the key driver in growth and profitability. To get to this future state, IT must move from supporting to empowering the enterprise.”

Interesting announcement from HP, anything the vendors can do to offer advice, past experience in upgrading or deploying new technologies or in suggesting best practices has to be a good thing. That they might illustrate the pain points and empower customers to realize the potential from their investment and deliver change and innovation can only be a good thing for IT and the end user community.

I wonder if this consultancy will also include supplying both the expertise and the training?

Can I have HP come in on several levels to help identify issues both technical, operational and political? Why does it take four weeks to deploy a server? It can be as much an issue with relation to sign off practices, vendor or supplier relationships as well as the project manager not necessarily using the process properly to get the activity done.

The example I use in this case was the consultancy that I met, when they got approached by a CIO complaining of poor delivery from IT, they sent in:

• Help desk manager
• Server guy
• Project Manager/Consultant

Each had to identify core issues within their realm for delivery failures, or issues identified, the results were impressive as we got to see the three tier issue, three viewpoints, crossing communication, investment and focus on the wrong things from each perspective.

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We had keynote presentations from the HP team comprised of Mark Payne, Frederic Dussart, Jose Maria De La Torre, Alfons Buxo and Richard Curran from Intel.

Initial presentations were about the current issues facing CIOs, changing and evolving business models, increasing technological advancements and a changing work force. The need for an always on enterprise, one which keeps up with the trends of the marketplace. The biggest challenge being IT sprawl and the ongoing 70% spend on keeping the lights on with the remainder on investment, affecting the ability of IT to deliver the level of service and agility that the business needs, which is where the concepts of Converged Infrastructure can help. Having the right tools in place to be able to deploy infrastructure on demand through one portal using industry standard tools, technologies and best practices.

It was interesting to see the slides and hear about how HP had continued the innovation of their Converged Infrastructure offering from 2009 through to 2010 and the present day with references to their 3PAR and networking acquisitions. There was mention about HP offering a portfolio of products and services to offer a leading Cloud Ready Converged Infrastructure composed of carefully select products which could be centrally managed through the one portal to bring virtualization of the network, server and storage, resilience built in, orchestration delivering self service and management, with a modular approach allowing you to select the bits you need to get started and grow the infrastructure with your business.

The Richard Curran keynote about Cloud Computing was interesting and I liked in particular the statement that IT needs to get involved in the cloud message and projects which it does. I’ve always thought like the simple concepts like server support, if we’re not involved, below the radar to speak, we’re not influencing the decision, working as a team and delivering value. When it comes to cloud, to data center migrations or virtualization and change in the enterprise, we need to lead the discussions lead the message and the concepts to be a part and an innovator, not a business unit left behind or absorbed by the change.

Some interesting statements were made, by 2015 there will be more than 1 billion online users with more than 15 billion devices connected consuming an estimate 1 Zetabyte of internet traffic, rightly so, as we onboard more users, the demand for infrastructure for storage, for capacity as well as services and applications continues to grow as does the demand for data center physical, virtual or mobile. The conversation moved on to delays to cloud adoption around security, process and standards or perceived risk, how the cloud as an industry and a service provider needs to answer and work with these to deliver an approach on a per customer and industry basis. There was mention about the new Xeon E7 processors which bring enhanced scalability, flexibility and reliability, borrowing some features from the Itanium processor, and discussion on Intel investment in Fibre Channel over Ethernet with their Converged adaptor.

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http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110503c.html

HP today announced a worldwide early access program for the upcoming HP P6000 Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), which is targeted for general availability this summer.

With an installed base of nearly 100,000 EVA units worldwide, the program is a significant opportunity for clients to accelerate storage consolidation projects and reduce data center costs without retraining administrative staff.

Part of the HP Converged Infrastructure portfolio, the HP P6000 EVA is the company’s fifth generation EVA and features increased capacity and performance improvements. The HP P6000 EVA, one of the easiest to manage storage arrays available today,⁽¹⁾ is typically deployed for core enterprise applications from messaging to enterprise resource planning. With the HP P6000 EVA, clients have the opportunity to modernize legacy infrastructure and increase return on investment.

If you currently own or use one of HP’s EVA storage solution, there was an announcement that they have an early access program so do check it out if it is of interest.

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http://www.napatech.com

ANDOVER, Massachusetts, May 3, 2011 – Napatech is to demonstrate a new VMware-based data distribution solution for virtual network appliances at Interop Las Vegas (8^th to the 12^th of May). The virtualization solution allows multiple network appliances to be consolidated onto a single server platform without having to change the application or the operating system. Napatech’s network adapters ensure that each virtual network appliance receives the data it requires at full line rate with zero packet loss.

“Virtualization has proven highly successful in consolidating multiple applications and workloads on fewer servers. This helps reduce space and power consumption and thereby cost. The Napatech virtual appliances solution brings the benefits of virtualization to OEM vendors’ network appliances for network monitoring and analysis, test and security by allowing several virtual network appliances to share data captured by the Napatech network adapter”, said Erik Norup, President Napatech Inc.

Very cool, anything Napatech can do to further the possibilities in monitoring both in terms of performance or data capture for analysis has to be a good thing. I’m off to read up more.

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http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/dells-future-beyond-the-pc-business/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Michael Dell built his company and his fortune in the personal computer business. But the company’s future is increasingly going to rest on services and the bigger gear used in data centers — server computers, storage and networking equipment.

That was Mr. Dell’s overall theme in a pair of interviews on Friday, one onstage at a health technology and investment conference in California and one afterward.

The company has changed considerably, especially since Mr. Dell returned as chief executive in January 2007, though its reputation is still as a PC company. “A lot of people think of Dell as what it was five or 10 years ago,” he said. “But we’ve moved much more into the core of information technology, into the data center.”

An interesting post from the New York Times reminding us that Dell are firmly in the data center and services space. Dell’s continues to innovate their PowerEdge and Blade server offerings, with further movements into converged infrastructure, as well as storage and networking, exciting times are ahead

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I’m over with HP at their Technology@Work 2011 event in Madrid, so you will possibly see me walking about as we see what announcements and new technologies or services they have to meet business requirements or create opportunity. Very exciting, building myself up to the podcast that I’m taking part in later today.

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