Inside the Briefcase
Tegile Systems‘ Vice President of Marketing, Rob Commins, stopped by recently to both introduce the company and to fill me in on what the company is doing to make storage more efficient, perform better and cost less.
The report “Data Center Infrastructure Management Market: Investments, Geographical Analysis and Worldwide Forecasts (2012 – 2017)” defines and segments the global Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) market with analysis and forecasting of the global revenues.
In the Four Personas of the Next Gen CIO published March 3, 2012, four personas of the CIO were identified: Chief Infrastructure Officer, Chief Integration Officer, Chief Intelligence Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer (see Figure 1). This research of 79 progressive CIO’s identified the key projects for each of the personas. As part of the survey, respondents were asked what key disruptive technologies would make an impact in the enterprise in the next year.
In the second of a two-part series on storage virtualization and based on a new InformationWeek report, Strategy: Storage Virtualization Guide, Network Computing takes a closer look at the pros and cons of the available storage virtualization options. Part 1, The Importance Of Storage Virtualization,” examined the various places within the IT infrastructure where storage virtualization can take place, including servers and disk arrays, and via physical and virtual appliances.
AppSense, the leader in people-centric computing, today announced a major update to the AppSense User Virtualization Platform focusing on simplified set-up and administration, extended enterprise management controls, and user self-service options. A pioneer in the user virtualization category, AppSense virtualizes, manages and delivers users across any combination of physical and virtual desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
Historically, independent software vendors (ISVs) have thought of software licensing primarily as a means of protecting their intellectual property (IP) and maximizing revenue. Effective software licensing technology, after all, is essential for ensuring that IP is not intentionally or unintentionally used in a way that violates contracts. he right software licensing structure can also help ensure that ISVs receive incremental added revenue for incremental added value. Neither of these software licensing value propositions is going away any time soon.
SpiderOak, the `zero-knowledge’ cloud backup, sync and sharing environment, today announced the release of SpiderOak Blue
VMware Inc., provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure offerings, announced Monday formation of VMware Accelerate Advisory Services, a group of former chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers (CTOs) and industry consultants, dedicated to enabling senior enterprise business and IT executives to deepen their understanding of how cloud computing can deliver business value across an organization.
Technologies like virtualization and cloud computing promise enormous leaps in efficiency and flexibility, but they can lead organizations into a quagmire if they don’t plan properly for the transition, says Bill Hurley, CIO, CTO and executive vice president of Westcon Group. Without proper planning, organizations can stall in the midst of their transitions to virtualized environments or the cloud, finding themselves with a bundle of sunk costs and no path forward.
Dell today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wyse Technology, the global leader in cloud client computing, to significantly extend its desktop virtualization offerings.
While they may not necessarily own as many servers or data centers as their large enterprise counterparts, the potential and benefits of virtualization do not elude small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Asia, although hurdles such as awareness and skills gap still exist, analysts say.
Virtualization represents a sea change in IT practices. Bound for years by the “one application, one server” rule, IT infrastructure was over capacity, underused and not cost-effective. With the advent of virtualization and the associated move to hosting multiple virtual machines on a single server, many of these problems disappeared.
Joyent, the global provider of cloud computing software and services, and ICOS, leading Italian distributor of IT enterprise infrastructure solutions, today announced a strategic agreement to provide SmartDataCenter software to local channel partners and service providers.
It wasn’t all that long ago that virtualization was viewed as cutting edge technology that was useful for development and testing but not for real production implementations. But the advent of hypervisor based virtualization technologies like VMware’s ESX Server and Microsoft’s Hyper-V Server radically changed that perception.
Cloud computing has taken center stage over the last two years as the hot enterprise technology, but in the database realm, the public cloud and off-site hosted database services still represent too many unknown factors to truly have mass adoption. According to the co-author of the InformationWeek “State of Database Technology” report, the public cloud is so far having very little impact on enterprise databases.
Data center professionals can rid themselves of messy racks, sub-standard under floor air distribution, and cable sprawl with a minimum of heartache and expense. Whether the data center mess is created over years of mismanagement or whether the cable-choked data center is inherited, solutions for both quick fixes and longer term evolutionary changes exist. This paper outlines several innovative approaches for dealing with the symptoms of chaos and for eliminating the root causes of disorder.
ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced an updated release of the ManageEngine Applications Manager performance monitoring software package. Applications Manager 10.2 extends single-pane-of-glass monitoring support to both Oracle JRockit and IBM Java Virtual Machine (JVM) environments.
IT virtualization, the engine behind cloud computing, can have significant consequences on the data center physical infrastructure (DCPI). Higher power densities that often result can challenge the cooling capabilities of an existing system. Reduced overall energy consumption that typically results from physical server consolidation may actually worsen the data center’s power usage effectiveness (PUE). Dynamic loads that vary in time and location may heighten the risk of downtime if rack-level power and cooling health are not understood and considered. Finally, the fault-tolerant nature of a highly virtualized environment could raise questions about the level of redundancy required in the physical infrastructure. These particular effects of virtualization are discussed and possible solutions or methods for dealing with them are offered.
Linux has long been known for providing not only a range of options for small and midsize businesses (SBMs) with its variety of “flavors,” but is often regarded as the OS of choice for companies that want direct control over their data. Now, new data shows that Linux use is growing more rapidly than ever thanks to robust performance in virtualized environments.
first blush, private clouds can look a lot like virtualization. But first looks can be deceiving. While it’s certainly true that we see virtualization management products extended–for example, with self-service portals–in ways that make them look superficially like clouds, we’re really talking about different categories of software.
In the past, there was no real distinction between the switches found in a data center and those used elsewhere in the organization. But this has changed. Today, a cloud data center behaves as a sort of compute fabric, where any server can run any application. As a consequence, the data center infrastructure must adapt to this new, more flexible environment.
Informatica Corporation today announced it was cited as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave(tm): Data Virtualization, Q1 2012″ published January 5, 2012.
Billions of words have been written about “the cloud” and its benefits, implications, and challenges. Hundreds of vendors have sprung up or re-positioned themselves as cloud companies, and there is a vast amount of real business change underway. However, I have seen very little that explains for the layperson what is actually new about the cloud that makes it so interesting and important.
I don’t know about you, but virtualization has been on an exponential curve for me and my career. I first was exposed to virtualization 1999, and it was with VMware Workstation. From there, I’ve developed with almost every VMware product and expanded my virtualization prowess to Hyper-V and other technologies. Virtualization took off for me in 2007 when ESX 3 came into my responsibility set. Since then, life hasn’t been the same.
A November InformationWeek report, The Zen of Virtual Maintenance, laid out the virtualization management challenges. The report says 30% of respondents to a survey of IT managers said they run 10 to 20 virtual machines per physical host server, up from only 15% a year ago, while 3% run 21 to 40 VMs per host server, unchanged from a 2010 survey. The number of respondents who said they run 40 or more VMs per service inched up to 8% in 2011, from 7% in 2010.
Virtualization technology offers many ways to increase application availability. Before installing anything, however, it is wise to consider how much availability is enough for each application.
Blogs, Featured Blogs, VirtulizationSOURCE: NetworkWorld One of the main reasons for deploying desktop virtualization is the security advantages it can provide, such as keeping sensitive data off the endpoint, according to Citrix. And Citrix is practicing what it preaches at its Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., headquarters where employees, for example, use the Citrix virtualization product Citrix Receiver for smartphones and tablets. Read ...
Organizations need to do a better job of understanding the potential downsides that cloud computing and virtualization can have on their ability to maintain the resilience and availability of their applications and data, Vision Solutions concluded in its State of Resilience 2011 report, which it unveils today in a Webcast at 10 a.m. CST. The overall state of resilience has suffered as the result of increased level of complexity due to the different IT protection schemes put in place to cover virtualization and cloud.
There’s evidence in the channel that organizations are growing increasingly gun-shy about following through on desktop virtualization pilots and deployments. Their uneasiness, according to virtualization experts, stems from higher than expected infrastructure costs, technical complexity and a return on investment that’s typically slower to materialize compared to server virtualization.
While many businesses have made significant investments in virtualization solutions, there are still plenty of opportunities to expand the use of virtualization technology in both enterprise and small and medium-sized businesses. For example, IT analyst firm Focus reported that there is still 50 percent to 70 percent growth remaining for virtualization within businesses it surveyed.
