Blade Watch

One of the conversations I have been having with colleagues and CIOs is a question that’s been on my mind for some time. What I am about to say is in no way negative and is not to be taken as criticism of the way ahead. There are exciting times ahead for the end user community, for vendors and investors alike. The question is as follows.

As we virtualize and commoditize the infrastructure, the individual components become less significant in a way, whether it’s a server from vendor1 or vendor 11, does the actual underlying tin matter?

1. Absolutely – I have a specific price point that I seek to achieve, that can only be done through our purchasing agreement with vendor8, or absolutely because we want the management software, the extra bits which you just don’t get from any other vendor (real or perceived).
2. No – it will be replaced every few years and besides my servers, my applications are abstracted from it, I want the cheapest hardware financially and operationally.

The problem is that we’re for the time being going forward. (The time being between now and when the data center is virtualized and floats around the enterprise, the cloud or whatever device can power and host it at the lowest cost, a Mac Mini perhaps).  Between now and the future then, data center 3.0 I’ll call it, how do we differentiate ourselves? How do we isolate our servers, our software from the competition?

• Price – but dear me, many a business has gone down that route and volume is key at this point else margins eat your profits – and what about concepts like support costs and service delivery?
• Functionality – great, but dear me reader, functionality is expensive and requires real investment and do our beloved users want to pay for said functionality, everyone says yes until the invoice arrives for approval and sign off
• Apple-ness – by this I mean belief in the product, belief in the service that only Apple seem to be able to achieve in the notebook/pc world – you mean you haven’t got one of these, oh well, maybe next year

I wonder then, going forward as the industry changes, both inside IT and outside the IT industry where the lines are drawn and where go, going forward, is branding enough? Is price or feature competition effective enough as a vehicle to protect revenues. Is Apple’s benefit that regardless of the perceived limitations not that the fans just sit and go wow, look at the design and buy it anyway? How do we then do this in the IT industry? Where commoditization, where hierarchical structures are changing, it used to be that server guy Mike made the recommendations on servers, but Fred who runs trading now wants to know what can be done about this data center space problem, IT is crossing the boundaries that we spent years creating, how then do we change the marketing, the lines of communication and support frameworks to meet this new target audience?

How do we sell servers or software, or a concept to a business unit, a CEO or CFO when concepts of MegaHertz, memory support, or number of PCI slots don’t quite raise the excitement that Mike has when the nice account manager says take a look at this, 5 pci slots and a redundant power supply!

We could go down the services route, indeed, fantastic, would you like  a 2u server or a virtualization product as part of a service? No capex, I repeat No capex, but as the world gets smaller, that poses the old problem, fine I’d love to have my virtual desktops powered by your service, but just one thing, I’ll have it hosted in India, at India prices, not at your UK prices, no they’re too much, and can I have that free mouse mat. I like mouse mats.

We need change, we need progress and development, a move to a scenario where the IT and business merge to create a unified platform for revenue generation, I just wonder if combined the two business units, are ready for this new world as are the vendors. Does this mean a rebrand of IT, a convergence where we offer a range of solutions mixing software and hardware with services and service delivery an overall solution comprising of everything you need, and does that mean the user gets closer or further away from the vendor? We’ll have to see,

http://www.poweredbycloud.com/

PoweredByCloud was the first major cloud computing conference to take place outside the US. Although other events have subsequently taken place, this year’s conference will confirm the event as the Market Leader for business leaders and strategists in the space. Technology buyers and media from across Europe, the Middle East and Asia — not just on the consumer side but also on the enterprise side — are likely to be represented in force. If your company is serious about communicating with the paying early adopters in cloud, then our 2010 event is likely to be the best venue to do that.

Check out this cloud conference, I wonder what topics around the cloud space will be discussed, whenever I mention cloud it means so many different things to different people, from a hosted Exchange environment to a pay on use virtualization or grid service, we’ll have to see.

VMware

New Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture Enhances Security When Sharing Data Center Resources Across Virtualized and Enterprise Cloud Environments

SILICON VALLEY, Calif.—Jan. 26, 2010—As enterprises move toward a data center that is 100 percent virtualized, Cisco, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) today announced that they are expanding their long-standing collaboration to deliver new design architectures that help customers evolve virtualized data centers to be more efficient, dynamic and secure. The three companies introduced an end-to-end Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture that provides enhanced security in cloud environments by isolating the information technology (IT) resources and applications of different clients, business units or departments that share a common IT infrastructure. As part of their collaboration, Cisco, NetApp and VMware will also offer a cooperative support model for these pretested and validated design architectures to help customers quickly build a unified, virtualized infrastructure.

“It’s clear that a tremendous opportunity exists for Cisco, NetApp and VMware to enable real change in the data center,” said Tom Georgens, president and CEO of NetApp. “Our visions are aligned around the concept of a dynamic data center that will be the foundation of cloud computing and that will enable enterprises, integrators and service providers to deliver IT as a service [ITaaS]. In this scenario, IT becomes a dynamic asset that is more efficient and can better adapt to changing business needs. This new era of IT has stringent infrastructure requirements that our companies are ready to meet today—together.”

“Virtualization of the network, server and storage infrastructure is radically reshaping today’s data center,” said Paul Maritz, president and CEO, VMware. “The dynamic data center built on VMware® vSphere™, along with Cisco and NetApp® technologies, will provide the foundation for both private and public clouds and the ability to move data and applications between these clouds. A shared virtual infrastructure requires that resources for different tenants are isolated while delivering on promised service levels. We have integrated our technology with Cisco and NetApp not only to accelerate our customers’ journey through their data center transition, but also to deliver an outstanding customer experience.”

I’m genuinely excited about this announcement, and I am hopeful that we will see some interesting results going forward, I wonder if this might bring us closer to data center virtualization, the concept of taking the IT infrastructure to the next generation through collaboration from these three platforms. The more we can evolve the data center both in support, in architecture and in delivery, the more we can fully utilize the capacity we have, to deliver the services we need, on budget, on time and in a way that meets our corporate social responsibility and business sponsor requirements.

Platform

U.S. Defense and Intelligence Communities to Benefit from Platform’s Private Cloud Management Software

TORONTO, Canada, Jan. 26, 2010 — Platform Computing, the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software, today announced a strategic partnership with Instrumental Inc., a leading provider of architecture, design and integration services for high performance computing (HPC) and data storage in the government and commercial sectors. The partnership enhances Platform’s global service capabilities and gives users an end-to-end, full service solution that maximizes the value of Platform’s private cloud management and HPC cloud-enabling software solutions, Platform ISF and Platform ISF Adaptive Cluster.

As U.S. government agencies and departments evaluate the potential cost savings, service level improvements and greater resource utilization offered by various cloud computing models, there is a recognized need for a technology-agnostic platform that can support and integrate legacy, heterogeneous HPC environments while also managing a wide-range of hardware, operating systems and virtual machines. In order to maximize prior technology investments, government agencies must invest in technologies that prevent vendor lock-in and that work with multiple types of operating systems.

“Platform’s ISF and ISF Adaptive Cluster can provide government agencies the scalability and performance needed to manage their data center resources while evolving to cloud-based infrastructure services and also adhering to federal requirements for open standards, compliance and budgetary requirements,” said Tripp Purvis, Vice President, Business Development, Platform Computing. “Given our longstanding partnership, Platform is in close alignment with Instrumental to ensure that our mutual HPC customers are able to efficiently manage compute- and data-intensive workloads in the cloud.”

It’s interesting to see the different organizations and bodies utilizing a range of technologies including HPC solutions to deliver their IT services, whether it’s grid computing, application virtualization or as a vehicle to achieve more with less, anything vendors and service providers can do to help end user business benefit has to be a good thing. Private clouds can be a great way of changing the way we provide core cross business services such as email, storage or compute services, the concept of buying utility on demand, moving away from a server per application or infrastructure for a specific business unit to a more commoditized way of doing business where I pay for what I need in the most economic location on the most efficient infrastructure. This does not mean moving away from where we are, nor does it mean changing everything, it can be simply looking at consolidation of roles, looking at our processes, our business requirements and establishing how we can achieve the same results with a different platform, a cloud solution for email centralized in an efficient data center rather than duplicated regional email hubs for example.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100113xa.html

HP and Microsoft Corp. today announced a three-year agreement to invest $250 million to significantly simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes.

The companies plan to deliver new solutions that will:

* be built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model;
* advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation; and
* eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower the overall costs.

This agreement represents the industry’s most comprehensive technology stack integration to date – from infrastructure to application – and is intended to substantially improve the customer experience for developing, deploying and managing IT environments.

An interesting announcement from HP and Microsoft, I wonder what future products and services we might see as a result of this three year agreement, anything we can do to improve the return on investment, reduce deployment times, and assist business leaders in getting empowerment from their technology has to be a good thing. I’m off to read up more, do check it out.

3Tera

(Aliso Viejo, CA – January 12, 2009) — 3Tera®, the leading developer of cloud computing platform software and utility computing services, today announced  new educational and certification programs to provide customers with expertise in building world-class cloud computing services and solutions. Initially, two certification programs are available, Certified Cloud Operator and Certified Cloud Architect, designed to address the needs of cloud computing professionals.

“Rapid development and deployment of applications are key reasons thousands of users are adopting cloud computing through our service providers and we’ve designed our certification programs with that in mind,” said Bert Armijo, SVP Marketing and Product Management, 3Tera, Inc. “Our certification programs offer instruction and hands-on labs covering the essential elements needed for rapid success in the cloud – basic concepts, advanced technologies, best practices, automation, and business continuity.”

Anything the cloud provider and application development organizations can do to make the platform more accessible, and solve business requirements has to be a good thing for cloud and the end user community. Increasingly whether it’s the small business seeking a way of delivering their business requirements, or the CIO at a multinational thinking that there must be another way, that we can illustrate the business benefits, mitigate the business risks and onboard users brings not only new opportunities for revenue, but further adoption and ‘faith’ in the platform. That Jill uses it, that she is happy with it, might just mean that I might think about what we’re doing for that next infrastructure project, is it 16 blades with SAN storage and Exchange I need, or an email cloud?

http://www.wbjournal.com/news45351.html

The future of cloud computing is anything but cloudy.

Business and IT executives are saying the pay-per-use advantages of cloud technologies make it the wave of the future.

“I think the recession has really accelerated the evaluation of cloud technology,” said Michael Werner, senior platform strategist with Microsoft out of the company’s Waltham offices.

“Everyone’s taking a look at how to optimize their business, and they’re taking a look at the technology that runs their business specifically”

I think we will see more of cloud, I wonder how much of this is being driven by the adoption of new technology, or businesses rationalizing their services and saying that’s not core, and having the service provided by another provider, whether it’s email or a virtualization environment. Do check out the article.

So I put together a few bullet points and thoughts about 2010, in terms of what I feel end users will be thinking about, what technologies we might see being in demand and what vendors to keep an eye on. I have no doubt forgotten some vendors/technologies, and for that I apologize.

In the meantime, may I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and joyful New Year for 2010, wherever you are.

With that, back to the 2010 type content stuff:

Top issues/predictions for 2010

• More companies looking seriously at cloud – particularly for hosting particular components or services – a virtualization or Exchange cloud
• Further interest in the convergence of storage and Ethernet down the one connection – it reduces your support and deployment times
• Debates about carbon reporting, data center efficiency and data center management or design
• Investigations or discussions about follow the sun or follow the moon ways of doing business and IT
• Ongoing data center consolidation and virtualization
• Change in enterprise computing, I wonder if there will be a flatter de-centralized way of doing business combined with more white labelling?
• Business competition, complexity and agility to increase as we bring on new markets and new business units – do we use the same branding, the same infrastructure?
• Integration of IT services to business lines, or business lines to IT in the enterprise?

Top 2010 technologies

• Blade servers
• Virtualization -server, desktop and network
• Converged network and storage adaptors
• SAN storages
• Solid state disks
• Application virtualization
• Converged systems management possibly to the application layer – achieving more with less

Top vendors to monitor for 2010

• Cisco – Unified Computing System and where that leads us
• Dell – their servers continue to get better
• HP – in terms of systems management/business agility
• DataSynapse – what they can do to aid virtualization and grid computing
• Platform – scaling up the possibilities of grid computing
• Iceotope – how they will help wiith data center capacity and systems cooling
• Teradici – can we extend the possibilities of their technology to further desktop virtualization – can I have a pc down a wire from the cheapest geographical location on my network – London pcs from India, from China?
• VMware – wonder how they will continue to protect market share and innovation of the virtual platform
• Citrix and Microsoft in terms of their products in the virtualization space.

Which countries am I watching with interest for developments/demand? Easy – East is where the innovation, the money and the excitement is:

Russia, India and China – components of what economists call the BRIC countries.

HP

HP today announced three new offerings to help businesses and telecommunication service providers realize the benefits of cloud computing while optimizing costs and mitigating the risk of adoption. Research conducted on behalf of HP shows that more than 90 percent of senior business decision makers believe business cycles will continue to be unpredictable in the next few years. As a result, 75 percent of the surveyed chief information officers (CIOs) acknowledge the need to invest in more flexible technology, be able to scale it up and down rapidly, and communicate faster with technology partners.(1)

Anything the vendors and service providers can do to reduce the costs, and improve the access to cloud computing solutions has to be a good thing for cloud as a platform, and in illustrating its business relevance and platform opportunities. I’m off to read up more about what HP is offering in this space.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=20873

Industry association TM Forum says the ECBC has been established to help “understand the needs of the largest global cloud buyers and ensure any impediments to the uptake of cloud technology are removed”.

Other members include Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, AT&T, BT, CA, Cisco, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia Siemens Networks, Telecom Italia and Telstra.

The council has identified several areas they will work on, including common cloud services product definitions, security issues, interoperability, data portability, APIs, service provider benchmarking and network performance and latency issues.

This is great news, reaching out to understand individual end user groups can be a great way of onboarding new users, and in innovating the offerings not only in terms of technology and process, but in billing and integration from an end user standpoint?