November 2nd, 2009

Oracle's Virtualization Story

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Application virtualization, Clustering software, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Security in virtualized environments, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Oracle Corp., Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Storage Management, Server Virtualization, Utility Computing, Tools & Techniques, Hardware, Storage, Servers

Oracle has been part of the virtualization software market for quite some time. I’ve been following their efforts since they developed technology to support Digital Equipment Corporation’s VAXcluster technology. Their Real Application Cluster (RAC) has been a good example of processing virtualization and their Oracle Cluster File System is an example of storage virtualization. Oracle’s Adam Hawley, Direct of Product Management for Oracle VM, brought me up to date on Oracle’s efforts in the areas of virtual machine software (Oracle VM), their implementation of the XEN virtual machine software project. My quick take is that Oracle’s offerings in the area of virtualization technology will be well received by Oracle’s installed base.

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July 20th, 2009

Savvis on Cisco's Unified Computing System

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 2:48 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Consumer use of Virtualization, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Network Virtualization, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Data Center, Virtualization, Environment, Cisco Systems Inc., Savvis Communications, Data Centers, Servers, Storage, Hardware, Data Management

Bryan Doerr, Chief Technology Officer, Savvis and I communicated about Cisco’s Unifed Computing System (UCS). Here are his answers to some questions that were posed to him.  Since Savvis currently operates 29 data centers (a total of 1.4 million square feet of space), his views could be seen as representing very large organizations as well as hosted and managed services providers to some extent. Read on to read more about Mr. Doerr’s comments.

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July 9th, 2009

Google Chrome Musings

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Linux, Marketing, Mobile computing

Tags: Google Inc., Google Chrome, Tools & Techniques, Linux, Operating Systems, Management, Software, Dan Kusnetzky

Google has recently announced that it is doing some interesting arithmetic, that is Google Chrome (the Web browser) plus Linux equals only Google Chrome. While I find the math somewhat suspect, I understand their goal. Google wants to unseat Microsoft as the primary on-ramp to web-based or cloud computing applications. Can the company’s strategy work?

Well, the answer is a somewhat weak “yes.” If, and only if, an individual’s entire computing experience can be delivered from the ‘net, Google’s software combined with industry standard devices could be an acceptable on-ramp.

If the computing experience requires access when disconnected from the ‘net, Google’s approach would only be marginally acceptable. If an individual is hooked on personal productivity software, personal financial software, media players, and does everything from mind mapping to writing music, software from quite a number of other suppliers would be a necessary add on.  Google’s Chrome (the operating system) appears at first glance not to be a friendly place for other software suppliers unless they are able to reproduce their applications using Chrome APIs and development tools Google supplies.

I’m not sure that Google’s math will add up to an overwhelming success in replacing Windows, Mac OS and/or Linux as the operating system for on-ramp devices.

May 7th, 2009

Comments on Cisco UCS

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Clever marketing, Marketing, Off topic, Virtualization

Tags: TCO, Cisco Systems Inc., Tool, Roi/Tco, Productivity, Data Centers, Finance, Managerial Accounting, Storage, Hardware

I’ve been reading a number of interesting commentaries on Cisco’s launch of UCS and thought you might find them interesting. Having provided data for similar tools while at IDC, I’m convinced that these tools should be completely understood before their results are taken as gospel. It’s critical that readers understand several things about these vendor-created tools including the following:

1. Where did the underlying data come from? Is it neutral?
2. Is it complete and accurate?
3. Is the tool comparing apples and oranges or apples and apples?
4. Is the supplier acting out of “benchmarkmanship” by including unnecessary hardware or software for the competitor to make their producta look better?

In the end, any tool provided by a supplier ought to be viewed carefully and not believed outright.

Dan Busby, VP of Engineering for eGenera, in a post titled, A closer look at Cisco pricing, pointed out that it appears that the Cisco’s study was evaluating was an HP Bladesystem and that the cost calculator included some hype that would tend to confuse the uninformed.

Dave Robers, CEO of Vyatta, in a post titled, Selling your data center soul for 20 percent, also challenged some of the TCO claims made by Cisco.

When reviewing Cisco’s TCO data, I can’t help but be reminded of something attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  I’m sure he would have added benchmarks, ROI studies and TCO studies to the list had he known about them.

April 24th, 2009

Comments on VMware vSphere Launch

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Marketing, Virtualization

Tags: VMware Inc., Cloud, Time-to-Value Public Cloud, Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, Workforce Management, Strategy, Human Resources, Management, Dan Kusnetzky

From time to time, I am sent proactive, preemptive commentary from a supplier. That supplier hopes to focus my attention on something, change my opinion to something closer to their opinion, or in some other away have an impact on my research.  Since I’m open to learn from executives, I almost always read their commentary. On occasion, I republish something here.  This is just such an occasion. Ian Knox, Director of Product Management at Skytap, had the following commentary sent along to me.

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April 22nd, 2009

VMware Launches vSphere

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Data Center, VMware Inc., vSphere, VMware vSphere 4, VMware Data Recovery, VMware vShield Zones, Data Centers, Mainframes, Storage, Strategy

VMware’s vSphere was the topic of conversation when I spoke with Bogomil Balkansky Vice President of Product Marketing for VMware a short while ago. It appears that the VMware mantra for this product is “IT as a Service: Efficiency, Control, Choice.” VMware is doing its best to compare what they are now offering to the telephone system.

This comparison, however, has been made often for topics such as “software as a service,” “utility computing” and a few other industry catch phrases. What’s not clear is if the market will believe VMware any more than when suppliers such as HP, IBM and others said similar things nearly a decade ago.

What is clear is that VMware wants everyone to believe that they’ve cut through years of industry buzzwords and catch phrases and are now offering, with the help of their partners, the perfect set of tools for organizations to create their own in-house clouds and then to use cloud resources offered by outside suppliers as the situation requires. They’re even going so far as to call this “the new mainframe.”

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April 21st, 2009

HP Adds to Thin Client Portfolio

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Access virtualization, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing

Tags: Hewlett-Packard Co., Thin Client, Thin Clients, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Storage Management, Utility Computing, Hardware, Storage, Dan Kusnetzky

Once again, I had a wonderful conversation with HP’s Tad Bodeman, director of marketing, Thin Client Solutions. This time we discussed new hardware (HP gt7720 performance series and both HP t5730w and HP t5630w Flexible Series thin clients, RDB enhancements and client automation support being offered by HP.

How HP Describes the Announcement

Here’s what HP has to say about its announcement:

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April 20th, 2009

Platform Computing Orchestrates - Sympony 4.1

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, High performance computing, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Virtual processing software, Virtualization

Tags: Product, Platform Computing Inc., Linux, 64-Bit, Aerospace & Defense, Tools & Techniques, Operating Systems, Software, Processors, Semiconductors

Platform Computing is known, when known at all, for powerful, complex, parallel processing (read high performance computing) software. They have recently launched an update to their product, Symphony that targets financial services workloads.

From what I’ve been able to determine, the company makes the following claims for Symphony 4.1. My uninformed, and probably stupid, comments follow:

• The product took 15 to 18 months to develop.
• The product includes a new feature dubbed “Direct Data Transfer” that “provides users with the ability to transfer applications data directly out to the grid engine without going through the product’s infrastructure.”
• Symphony 4.1 also has a data compression capability that reduces the overhead of transferring large amounts of data.
• This version of the product also makes it possible for multiple instances of a service to share data. This would also reduce the amount of data being transfered about in a Platform grid.
• Symphony now supports 64-bit Windows and Linux environments

Snapshot analysis

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November 28th, 2008

Business Service Automation: HP and Virtualization

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Management software, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Mobile computing, Professional Services, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Hewlett-Packard Co., Virtualization, Business Service, Automation, Strategy, Management, Dan Kusnetzky

Michel Feaster, Director of Products, Business Service Automation, of HP and I had an interesting conversation about managing, automating and orchestrating workloads and system resources. Although a cringe a bit when HP uses “BSA” as an acronym because it makes me think of things such as the BSA Motorcycles or the Boy Scouts of America rather than HP, an understanding of the concept behind this HP-centric catch phrase is important to those who have embarked on the journey to a more virtualized environment. Read the rest of this entry »

October 8th, 2008

Cisco SONA

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Virtual storage

Tags: Network, Cisco Systems Inc., Dan Kusnetzky

Cisco caught my attention by asking me if I wanted to see the results of a study indicating how organizations are seeing Web 2.0 and/or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application adoption. Having executed dozens of studies of this nature while I was at IDC, I was interested in the results, but even more interesting to me was the methodology. While this study was only representative of people at a specific event, the results can not been seen as representing the views of the market as a whole.

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