Thursday, 06 August 2009
Written by Administrator
Great article in Network World. The article shows why Cloud Computing with a service component is the wave of the future. Not every company is going to have someone who is equipped to manage the internal infrastructure in the cloud. However in order to compete in today's business environment, virtualization is important. The companies that are succeeding are doing more with less. Which then points to a virtual infrastructure with a little added bonus, support.
The new breed of cloud provider offers the service component which enables any company to run as efficiently as a nimble web 2.0.
Enjoy the article.
By Denise Dubie , Network World , 05/20/2009
LAS VEGAS -- Despite the reported benefits of virtualization, a majority of IT managers polled at Interop this week say they experience problems with the technology and don't always realize the cost benefit.
Network Instruments polled 120 network managers, engineers and IT executives at Interop to learn how IT organizations are putting server and desktop virtualization technology to use. Fifty-five percent reported they virtualized mission-critical servers, including e-mail and Web servers, and another 50% said they run DNS and DHCP servers on virtual machines. And nearly 40% have already extended virtualization to their desktop environments.
Yet 55% told the network analysis vendor they experience more problems than benefits with the technology, while the remaining 45% said they had realized the benefits of virtualization. Among the problems were a lack of visibility and tools to troubleshoot performance problems in virtual environments for 27% of respondents. More than one-fourth of those polled at Interop cited a lack of training on virtual infrastructure and 21% expressed concern over an inability to secure the infrastructure.
For nearly 60%, the primary problem with virtualization was a lack of experience to appropriately manage the technology and nearly 50% said that technology implementation costs were too high, according to Network Instruments.
Managing the technology doesn't seem to have become less challenging for network managers. Last year, nearly 40% of 117 network managers polled at Interop also listed virtualization as the emerging technology that represents the "greatest monitoring challenges," according to a joint survey conducted by Network Instruments and NetQoS.
"Not surprisingly, a high number of companies have deployed critical network services on virtual machines," said Charles Thompson, product manager at Network Instruments. "The number of organizations without appropriate monitoring tools, however, definitely caught my attention. Without proper tools, application performance can unnecessarily degrade and network teams waste hours troubleshooting."
Thursday, 06 August 2009
Written by Administrator
 When I was a kid in the early 1970s, I heard a lot about Interferon. This was some magical substance that was supposed to cure cancer, kill viruses and perform other incredibly important things, such as power a rocket to Mars. Interferon this and interferon that. A lot of hype, with not a lot of action, since interferon was scarce and expensive. This changed in 1980, when the interferon gene was able to be mass produced, allowing it to become one of the most successful pharmaceuticals ever to come from genetic engineering. But, back in the 1970s, Interferon seemed to be all hype and no real action. Some people are asking me if this is the case for Cloud Computing. Recently, within past year or so, you have seen everybody jump into the game with their version of how cloud computing is going to change the future of.....(you fill in the blank). From supply chain management of the local pizza joint to delivery of music videos. They all were getting some angle on cloud computing. So, in order to temper this overwhelming overuse of the phrase cloud computing, we need to come up with a universal standard of what is and what is not cloud computing. The timing could not be better for The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This US Government entity is working with teh GSA Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the OMB to come up with some basic standards to allow for cloud interoperability and portability. (Hopefully, I am not confusing the rest of the world, by referencing the CIO of the GSA, OMB, and NIST. The .gov folks sure love to use letters to describe themselves). Since the US Government is the single largest buyer of IT infrastructure in the world (US$70 billion annual budget), they are a great place to start for standardizing how vendors structure and deliver cloud computing to government entities. NIST is working with commercial vendors to come up with a baseline of what is and what should be included in the basic ideas of cloud computing. This includes the definition of delivery models for cloud, including: Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS); Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The government has asked for input from commercial cloud providers, so that the US Government can assess what is the prevailing private sector lowest common denominator for cloud computing. Companies have been asked to fill out a Request For Information (RFI), not to exceed 25 pages and submit to the GSA by email no later than May 26, 2009. I like that the request was not for typed forms to be filled out in triplicate and sent via USPS with sufficient postage. This last reference goes back to my cynical fear of long and drawn out governmental bids of years past.
So, Uncle Sam (or in this case, his newly appointed lieutenants, Vivek Kundra FED CIO and Patrick Stingley, first federal cloud CTO, aka the Federal Cloud Czar), asks the commercial sector to come up with a few basic key characteristics and their various delivery and deployment models.
So far, NIST has come up with this basic overview:
Key Characteristics:
On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed, without requiring human interaction with each service's provider.
Ubiquitous network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
Location independent resource pooling. The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
Pay per use. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimization of resource use. Examples are measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organization accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.
Note: Cloud software takes full advantage of the cloud paradigm by being service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.
Delivery Models:
Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure and accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.
Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider (e.g., java, python, .Net). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but the consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.
Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to rent processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g., firewalls, load balancers).
Deployment Models:
Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization.
Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).
Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group.
Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).
Each deployment model instance has one of two types: internal or external. Internal clouds reside within an organizations network security perimeter and external clouds reside outside the same perimeter.
Note 1: Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm. Its definitions, use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time.
Note 2: The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud approaches.
I like what I have read so far. It is my hope that by bringing together the leading suppliers of cloud computing, along with some of the largest existing users of cloud computing, that the US Federal Government can understand what it has the potential to buy and use. If the US Gov't jumps onboard, the naysayers and Luddites will eventually follow. Mark my words, Cloud Computing is going to be big.
Thursday, 06 August 2009
Written by Administrator
Regardless of the economic climate SMBs are always faced with doing more with less due to the constant demands of the marketplace. Most SMBs invest more into their IT than any other area due to the realities that without it, companies loose money and miss out on opportunity. IT Optimization is an approach that can lower operational costs and help SMBs become agile and responsive to business challenges. With ever shrinking budgets ITO has been taking an increasingly dominant role in the way IT departments approach delivering services.
So then, the question is how IT managers, when faced with dramatic resource challenges and ever growing business needs cope?
The goal of reducing complexity should be freeing up precious resources to support and enable growth. Existing IT infrastructure can be optimized and re-envisioned. Typically businesses over purchase technology, create systems and environments with increasing complexity that tend to catch up and bite them over time. Companies find the quickest and expedient way to enhance IT systems, but this piecemeal approach saps resources that can be used to increasing core business efficiencies and drive market innovation. At its best, IT systems should never be a hindrance to management’s ability to make fully informed decisions within a minimum of time.
During the evolution of a company IT departments tend to end up with an over bloated infrastructure. Conventional wisdom dictating that a new server should be purchased for every major application, especially since servers have become more and more affordable. This leads to systems that tend to be vastly under-utilized and have a hard cost to maintain that seems to only grow. Very few companies have the capability or the resources to completely re-do or replace their existing systems. Fortunately, there are solutions out there that can put IT managers on the path to consolidation:
Virtualization – This method greatly reduces the issue of underutilizing hardware by using software to virtually divvy up a physical server into multiple virtual servers. This drastically reduces utility costs, increases the effectiveness of hardware by orders of magnitude, and increases reliability and redundancy.
Cloud Computing – Further building on virtualization, cloud computing promises to make the next quantum leap in on-demand computing. Going from a physical infrastructure to an abstracted cloud platform may be a difficult jump for IT managers but the advantages are tangible. Being able to tap into computing power from a massive array of inter-connected servers, scale on demand and pay as you go. No longer will you be hampered by physical infrastructure, need more CPU resources to handle a spike in traffic, no problem, just increase the amount of resources demanded from the cloud in real time and your off to the races. The same can be said with storage, bandwidth, and memory. Freeing an IT infrastructure from the physical has serious advantages both on the agility of a company and the capital expenditures of hardware purchases that can be jarring.
Eventually, if you have a growing and successful business, IT departments must implement some form of ITO. Streamlining existing processes, enabling agile business response, increasing business intelligence, improving company collaboration, and running lean and smart. Taking a cold eye and looking at your existing infrastructure, and processes may not be an easy task nor will it be done in a near term but any growing SMB must set IT goals that leads to built-in efficiency and yields the tangible results that can be a determining factor between success, and failure.
Danny Kim
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