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.