“Infineta Systems delivers solutions based on several technologies that significantly reduce the amount of traffic running across today’s data center WAN interconnect. Our groundbreaking innovation centers on the patent-pending Velocity Dedupe Engine™, the industry’s first-ever hardware deduplication (“dedupe”) engine. Unlike alternatives, the Velocity Dedupe Engine enables our solutions to maintain the highest levels of data reduction at multi-gigabit speeds while guaranteeing port to port latencies in the few 10s of microseconds. As a result, Infineta’s solutions enable customers to accelerate all data center applications (such as replication and backup) – including ones that are highly latency sensitive. It does so while reducing overall costs incurred by this growing, bandwidth-hungry traffic.”

Link here.

I am not convinced, yet.

“As the data center industry grows increasingly obsessed with energy efficiency, cloud computing presents a compelling opportunity to reduce data center power bills, according to a leading expert on IT power issues. 

‘There are powerful economic factors pushing us towards cloud computing,’ said Jonathan Koomey , a researcher who has studied data center energy use at Stanford and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. ‘One of the major reasons is the more efficient use of power by cloud computing providers.’”

Link here.

“For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking, according to a new study by IBM. The study is the largest known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews, with over 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders across 60 nations and 33 industries polled on what drives them in managing their companies in today's world.”

Link here.

Good replication software.

“In late 2006, software security firm Double-Take Software (DBTK) went public at $11. While there was an initial rise in the stock, the past couple years have seen it fall to less than half that, and while it recovered somewhat, its value remains a bit below that IPO price today.

Now, Double-Take has agreed to a $242 million buyout from private-equity firm Thoma Bravo, which will be organizing the deal under the auspices of one of its portfolio companies, Vision Solutions, which develops availability and disaster recovery solutions for IBM (IBM) products.”

Link here.

“Science has managed to reveal some crazy things that fly in the face of almost every commonly accepted management practice. Here's the latest: Rewards for top performers lead them to worse performance. And if you want to foster innovation, bonuses won't work either. Rather, it's all about letting people slip from under line management and strike out on their own, on projects they care about.”

Link here.

“Forget McGruber. Now we've got MicGoogle -- Microsoft(MSFT) and Google(GOOG) are seemingly accidentally creating a bona fide small-business action hero.”

Link here.

“Google Apps may not be a true threat to Microsoft's enterprise business now, but Google's cloud-based productivity apps have forced Microsoft to tinker with Office, a key part of its business model. Both rivals face mighty challenges in the valuable battle for Web apps in the enterprise.”

Link here.

"What's Happening :: Storage virtualization is becoming more common as companies realize the benefits of consolidating storage-area networks and streamlining their management. As with applications and servers, storage virtualization enables IT departments to decouple data from dedicated devices. An appliance serves as a go-between from applications and operating systems to the mass storage, enabling you to manage them all using one console. Thirty-eight percent of IT professionals surveyed recently by CIO said they are piloting or have deployed virtual storage technology, and another 31 percent are interested in it.

Why you care…"

Link here.

“If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry.”

John McCarthy, MIT Centennial (famous for coining the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’)

The challenge with using Ubuntu for anything Enterprise is that the support group is limited.  How do you stand in front of your boss with no army of tech support behind you when the fit hits the shan?

“If you're building an internal or private cloud, Canonical wants you to use Ubuntu Linux 10.04 as your operating system of choice. To that end, the newest version of Ubuntu includes a feature set called Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. In keeping with its open source pedigree, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is integrated with the open source Eucalyptus http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/110909-open-source-companies-list.html#slide4 private cloud platform, making it possible to create a private cloud with much less configuration than installing Linux first, then Eucalyptus.”

Link here.

I am not sure I agree with them all.  What do you think?

Link here.

“In an article in the Daily Mail this week, British cosmologist Stephen Hawking outlined not one, but three, theoretically realistic ideas for traveling through time, one of which he says is even practical.”

Link here.

Nerds and dreamers go here.

Virtualization and/or cloud computing are not silver bullets for your company’s woes.  Be smart about how you will support the business.  The challenge is for business leaders to communicate to IT the priorities of the organization so that IT can build systems which turn those into realities.  Too often, there is a communication breakdown between the business leaders and the IT leaders.

“Although cloud computing service providers can help companies cut IT costs, many large and mid-size companies can achieve equivalent or greater savings with in-house systems based on the same technologies. But there are no clear guidelines that dictate when a company should keep their systems in house, or when they should look for an external service provider, an IBM (IBM) executive said Tuesday.”

Link here.

There are five essential characteristics of Cloud Computing which define the underlying service standard. 

Characteristics

On-Demand Self-Service -- A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad Network Access -- Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms.

Resource Pooling -- The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction.

Rapid Elasticity -- Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service -- Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service. Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Deployment Models

Based on these characteristics, there are five deployment models that can be mixed and matched to accommodate the service levels stipulated for your systems, predominantly as it relates to performance and availability.

Public Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Private (Internal) Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Enterprise Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns. It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Hybrid (Federated) Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.

Virtual Private Cloud – a cloud service that simulate a private cloud inside a public cloud infrastructure.

The success of Virtualization is predicated on storage.

“The amount of information in the world is set to rise 44-fold in the next decade according to IDC, with much of that increase coming from the rise in cloud computing.”

Link here.

Today begins a brief series on the Evolution of Cloud computing.  Cloud Computing is taking hold of the Data Center compute model and is shaping the way businesses think about their interaction with compute resources.  While the term “Cloud Computing” is still somewhat nebulous, a definition is beginning to take shape and standards are forming around the core offering.  Let’s explore those definitions, those standards, and take a look at the challenges we face in achieving the ultimate vision.

The following describes the topics that will be covered:

1.       Defining the Cloud

2.       Roots

3.       Virtualization’s Role

4.       Major players

5.       Vision

6.       Where are we today?

7.       Challenges

8.       Cloud Economics

9.       Case Studies

Defining the Cloud

Let’s start with a definition.  So many folks are vying for the opportunity to put their own spin on what Cloud Computing means, it’s appropriate for a 3^rd party to aggregate the community’s thoughts and posit something we can all agree upon as the baseling.  I prefer to work with the following definition from the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.”

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Source: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

SSD is the next major hurdle in terms of storage speeds and electricity consumption reduction.

Sandforce is a company that makes an ASIC, which becomes the enterprise engine behind even commodity SSD.

This will be an interesting company to watch.

“SandForce transforms data storage by pioneering the use of commodity flash memory in enterprise and client computing applications with its innovative SSD Processors. The world’s most demanding applications are driving the need for ultra-reliable, high-performance and power efficient data storage solutions – they demand SandForce.”

Link here.

Public? Private?  The service models are different and certainly the value propositions are different. 

“At the Cloud Computing Expo held this week in New York, executives from Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) shared how they see cloud computing working its way into the enterprise.

The companies offered disparate visions, however, with Microsoft emphasizing its public cloud offerings and Oracle touting tools for building out internal clouds.

Both software giants agreed, however, that enterprise use of clouds is best done on an as-needed basis, in what their executives called ‘a hybrid model.’”

Link here.

ARIN has been clamping down over the last 18 months or better to make sure that public IPv4 space isn’t misallocated, now that the supply is getting short.  In the early days, ISPs tossed out IPs like corn feed and now the chickens are coming home to roost.  So with the impending IPv6 rollout, what is happening?  Shady men with trenchcoats are pushing IPv4 space in dark alleys.

“Organizations slow to adopt IPv6 take heed: Surging requests for IPv4 addresses are quickly drying up the available store, raising the specter of an IPv4 black market that could dramatically increase the cost of obtaining a presence on today's Internet.”

Link here.

Connectivity – external and internal – continues to grow.  Aside from Cisco-Kerr black holes and the random Data Center wormhole, are we reaching a speed limit?  How does this impact multi-locational compute clusters?

“Notwithstanding an aggressive first strike by Extreme Networks, switching vendors are largely mum on when and in what configurations they will ship 40G Ethernet products.

Extreme announced and demonstrated four-port 40G Ethernet modules for its Summit X650 stackable edge and BlackDiamond modular switches at the Interop conference here this week. Extreme is pricing the modules aggressively: $1,000 per port, which is only $85 more than the average selling price of a 10G Ethernet port, according to Dell'Oro (DELL) Group.”

Link here.

Not your typical IT-related post, but worthy of reading to understand where the markets are right now.  IT is a function of business and if the business is sour, if money is tight, then often IT is one of the first places to feel the pressure to “do more with less.”  IT is often considered a cost-center for an organization and this designation means that no matter how hard IT works, the best it will ever do is not spend AS much as was planned.  Turning IT into a revenue-center is the first step in putting IT in the light it belongs as a serious support mechanism for organizational and revenue growth.  For most of us, IT is central to the modern marketplace as both support and sales.

“Wall Street was upbeat in mid-April because the country's four largest banks (Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase(JPM), Citibank(C), and Wells Fargo(WFC)) all reported what Wall Street considered "turning the corner" earnings and all the CEOs except Bank of America's Moynihan were positive on the immediate future. The data, however, do not lead to such conclusions.”

Link here.

Free network management tool.  I hear good things.

http://www.spiceworks.com/

“Tuesday, in a much anticipated joint public announcement, VMware and Salesforce.com leveraged their enterprise expertise and came to market with VMforce, a platform-as-a service offering designed to enable Java developers to create and deploy new enterprise applications in the cloud with the ease, flexibility, security and scalability that is needed in today's enterprise environment. What does it mean to IT?”

A Java app development platform in the cloud.  Does it make you jump for joy?  Meh.

Link here.

“Google's top energy executive has offered some simple steps for making data centers more energy-efficient, including raising the thermostat to 80 degrees Fahrenheit -- or 27 degrees Celsius -- to cut down on cooling costs.”

Link here.

“The U.S. economy produced more upbeat news with its 3.2% GDP growth in the first quarter, making it three straight quarters of expansion, the U.S. Commerce Department announced Friday. Strong business investment and consumer spending led the increase.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected a 3.4% rise, after increases of 5.6% and 2.2% in the third and fourth quarters of 2009, respectively.”

Link here.

“1.We’ve updated our support mutual positions – for the first time explicitly calling out on the VMware HCL and the EMC eLab Matrix that Oracle 11g (single instance for now, RAC via RPQ) is officially supported.   Also, we’ve setup a specific Virtual Escalation Team process for Oracle on vSphere on EMC.  

2.We’ve completed and documented a TON of solutions validation work to show how, across all EMC platforms and protocols (ASM and dNFS use cases), a simple solution can be designed to enable instant VtoP if absolutely needed – think of this as a “get out of jail free” card.”

Link here.

“First, there's ‘Open’.”

Link here.

“The diverse needs of enterprises suggest that there is no single IT approach that could possibly resolve all IT pain points within a company. While IT executives are in the stage of combining their operational practices with innovation, they realize that any new technology deployment involves a change in business process and management. And IT transformation could be a costly endeavor if it isn't done right from day one. As a result, many CIOs are taking a pragmatic approach, embracing new technologies that would enable them to keep ahead of technological obsolescence without disrupting the existing business process and management imperatives. This sort of operational balance is well received by a lot of enterprises that are looking for technology extension, not replacement.

Peak 10's hybrid cloud strategy

In the context of cloud computing, not surprisingly, the notion of deploying a hybrid cloud that connects traditional enterprise IT infrastructure with the next generation cloud computing platform (both public and private) is growing in popularity in the marketplace. Peak 10, a managed services provider that offers managed hosting services in both physical and virtual environments for SMBs and mid-sized enterprises, has made noticeable efforts to bring the hybrid approach into fruition. Aside from adding a multi-tenant enterprise cloud service to complement its existing private cloud offering, Peak 10 has focused on demonstrating the unique capability of its 'Cloud Plus' platform. As its name suggested, the 'plus' component is to emphasize Peak 10's ability to support a hybrid approach that many customers are asking for. Thus, using 'Cloud Plus' offerings (both multi-tenant enterprise cloud and private cloud), customers are able to seamlessly interconnect existing IT infrastructures hosted in Peak 10's datacenter facilities with Peak 10's clouds.

Tier 1 believes this is a sensible approach to increase the stickiness of enterprise customers while driving cloud migration based on individual requirements and timetables. Pure Fishing is a textbook example of how existing managed hosting customers embrace Peak 10's Cloud Plus offering as part of the company's IT transformation initiatives. However, this approach does rely heavily on technology partners and consultants to bridge the gaps in extending business functionalities across multiple operational environments. Not surprisingly, Peak 10's product team is deeply involved in the service provisioning for the initial cloud deployment and manages seamless integration between cloud services and managed services.

What is in Enterprise Cloud Plus?

Enterprise Cloud Plus service is a multi-tenant offering that delivers cloud computing with dynamic load sharing and seamless scaling. It also supports cloud bursting for demand spikes while running specific workloads. The enterprise cloud is being supported by multi-datacenter clusters out of Peak 10's 19 datacenter facilities and it is accessible via the public Internet and private network (both VPN/IP Sec VPN and private line connectivity). In terms of pricing, Peak 10's enterprise cloud is not the typical 'pay as you go' utility-based consumption model, although it is moving customers from a capex to opex model. The contract-based pricing with minimum commitment suggests that Peak 10 is putting its bet on niche enterprise segments where customers are familiar with usage patterns of their existing workloads and are willing to outsource specific workloads (typically non mission-critical workloads) to a cloud partner for operational efficiency. Peak 10's cloud service customers include companies in the health care, gaming and technology verticals. With more managed hosting customers coming to the end of their business lifecycle, Peak 10 expects to see a surge in demand from existing managed hosting clients.

T1R take

Peak 10 fares well in its cloud offerings by being able to demonstrate a high degree of service flexibility and manageability. To try and differ from many of its peers in the managed hosting space, Peak 10 implements a high-touch approach to grow contract value from existing enterprise customers. Although the uptake is picking up, Peak 10 has plenty of room for growth. Going forward, Peak 10 needs to be cognizant when implementing its high-touch service approach as the barriers to entry in this arena are relatively low and an adroit newcomer can offer just the right mix of price, quality and service component to entice business customers. The notion of delivering 'consulting as-a-service' with no strings attached is coming of age in the industry. And the unspoken truth is that service value lies in the eyes of the beholders. For SMBs, the availability of procurement options could be convincing enough to get buy-in.

Boosting IT innovation is more an operational challenge than a technology barrier. Many of the IT projects fail to deliver on their promise because enterprise users are reluctant to make a change based on both rational and irrational factors such as insufficient training and the workplace complacency syndrome. The human factor is hard to ignore. And cloud players must play a proactive role in facilitating innovation efforts that can benefit all parties within the company's IT ecosystem.”

“The security standard used to protect credit cards isn't up to the task and upgrades that are planned for this fall do virtually nothing to improve it, a security expert told Interop attendees this week.”

Link here.

“When you're comparing cloud computing service providers, traditional IT product selection skills may not cut it. Consider these 8 questions for your working checklist.”

Link here.

6 million java developers now have a place to hang out:

www.force.com

A PaaS environment for Java developers? 

Do we need that?

“It's a battle IT leaders have been waging for years: At some companies, CEOs still think IT should report to the head bean counter. A debate among CIOs on this topic has created some valuable food for thought.”

Link here.

“In January VMware released the first public draft of its vSphere 4.0 Hardening Guide.”

Link here.

The security question as it relates to virtualization is a growing topic. VMware is forward-looking on this one.

“At the Cloud Computing Expo held this week in New York, executives from Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) shared how they see cloud computing working its way into the enterprise.

The companies offered disparate visions, however, with Microsoft emphasizing its public cloud offerings and Oracle touting tools for building out internal clouds.”

Link here.

“Every hot trend needs an icebreaker. When it comes to green data centers, a key pioneer was the Fannie Mae Technology Center in Urbana, Md., which in 2005 became the first data center to earn certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program, a voluntary energy efficiency rating for commercial buildings.”

Link here.

<sarcasm>Clearly, Fannie’s priorities are in the right place.</sarcasm>

1.       VCP

2.       MCTS

3.       CCA

4.       CompTIA Strata Green IT (wha?)

5.       ITIL v3 Foundations

Link here.

“Standard cloud computing contracts are one-sided documents that impose responsibility for security and data protection on the customer, disclaim all liability, offer no warranties, and give the vendor the right to suspend service at will. So why would you bother to sign on the dotted line?”

This statement identifies the differentiation metric for Cloud services: Service Level Agreements.  No person, no department, no business functions without them.  We do best when they are explicit and negotiated at the start of service delivery, but rest assured you are responsible for a certain service level whether you’ve been told it explicitly or not.

Link here.

“An engine nozzle turns a dramatic array of colors during a recent hot-fire test at NASA's White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, N.M. A team of engineers from Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Johnson Space Center in Houston conducted tests on a cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane engine to measure the engine’s performance for future use with in-space vehicles.

Last month, eight altitude chamber tests were performed using an Aerojet workhorse engine to gather design data for future lander and in-space engines. Using the altitude chamber, which simulates the space-type vacuum environment, engineers were able to attach a larger nozzle and vary the propellant mixture ratios to test the engine's overall operating capability. This technology could be selected for future use with vehicles designed for transport, descent, or ascent to another planetary body or asteroid.”

Why do we test?  In the words of a good engineer, “it makes us look kind of professional.”

Link here.

“For 25 years, the NAS Division has been dedicated to providing scientists and engineers with the supercomputing resources and simulation tools needed to carry out critical NASA missions and make new scientific discoveries for the benefit of humankind.”

Wow.

Link here.

“Seagate today announced it has tightly integrated its EVault backup software and cloud storage service with Microsoft's Data Proteciton Manager disk-based backup appliance to offer multi-vendor application backup managed through a single dashboard.”

More tech to support the cloud.  Remember: virtualization is predicated on storage and Cloud Computing seems to be, thus far, predicated on hardware abstraction (ie virtualization), so Seagate’s foray into making cloud computing easier for the regular joe is a true sign of the times.

Link here.

“Bob Lutz, the 77-year old veteran car executive, said that when he joined General Motors in 2002, the company’s culture was “inwardly focused not customer focused.” As Lutz who will retire next month explained in an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, metrics in manufacturing, purchasing, and operations were allowed to trump the business of serving customers needs for new and different vehicles. Lutz’s words echo those of another former auto executive whom I recall speaking similarly about his company more than a decade ago.  That company was Ford Motor.”

That’s not the Bob Lutz I know.

Link here.

“Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud computing, has agreed to pay $142 million for Jigsaw, which operates a wiki-style business contact database. The deal also has an incentive element, which increases the price tag by 10% if certain milestones are met.”

Looks like Salesforce.com is on the move yet again.

Link here.

“Users who turned to cloud computing for some of its obvious benefits, such as the ability to rapidly expand and provision systems, are starting to shift their focus to finding ways to fix some early weaknesses.”

Link here.

“The hype around cloud computing would make you think mass adoption will happen tomorrow. But recent studies by a number of sources have shown that security is the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. The reality is cloud computing is simply another step in technology evolution following the path of mainframe, client server and Web applications, all of which had — and still have — their own security issues.”

Link here.