What typically happens to smaller firms when they are being eaten up by mega-companies like IBM seems pretty obvious – they go to the dogs. Key executives will leave the team, product roadmaps will lose their binding character and strategy will get fuzzy due to the sheer magnitude of the organization and its inherent complexity. But not so with SoftLayer / IBM.
It has become obvious over the past 6 months that IBM’s senior management had more in mind than a pure opportunistic acquisition when they bought hosting firm SoftLayer in the summer of 2013 for 2 billion USD. Eric Clementi who was among the early cloud advocates within IBM has made a strategic bet that will enable IBM to regain its position as one of the key cloud leaders in the market over the next 2–3 years.
vCOPS? vCAC? Where and When It Makes Sense to Use VMware Management Solutions
By Chris Ward, CTO
I’ve been having a lot of conversations recently, both internally and with customers, around management strategies and tools related to virtualized and cloud infrastructures. There are many solutions out there and, as always, there is not a one size fits all silver bullet to solve all problems. VMware in particular has several solutions in their Cloud Infrastructure Management (CIM) portfolio, but it can get confusing trying to figure out the use cases for each product and when it may be the right fit to solve your specific challenge. I just finished giving some training to our internal teams around this topic and thought it would be good to share with the broader community at large. I hope you find it helpful and know that we at GreenPages are happy to engage in more detailed conversations to help you make the best choices for your management challenges.
The core solutions that VMware has brought to market in the past few years include vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS), vCloud Automation Center (vCAC), IT Business Management (ITBM), and Log Insight. I’ll briefly cover each of these including what they do and where/when it makes sense to use them.
vCOPS
What is it? vCOPS is actually a solution suite which is available in four editions: Foundation, Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise.
The core component of all four editions is vCenter Operations Manager which came from the acquisition of Integrian back in 2010 and is essentially a monitoring solution on steroids. In addition to typical performance and health monitoring/alerting, the secret sauce of this tool is its ability to learn what ‘normal’ is for your specific environment and provide predictive analytics. The tool will collect data from various virtual or physical systems (networking, storage, compute, virtual, etc.) and dynamically determine proper thresholds rather than the typical ‘best practice’ model thus reducing overall noise and false positive alarms. It can also provide proactive alerts as to when a problem may arise in the future vs. simply alerting after a problem has occurred. Finally, it also does a great job analyzing VM sizing and assisting in capacity planning. All of this is coupled with a very slick interface which is highly customizable.
The Advanced and Enterprise editions of the suite also include vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM), vCenter Hyperic, vCenter Infrastructure Navigator (VIN), and vCenter Chargeback Manager (vCBM).
vCM automates configuration and compliance management across virtual, physical, and cloud environments. Essentially this means those pesky Windows registry key changes, Linux iptables settings, etc. can be automated and reported upon to ensure that your environment remains configured to the standards you have developed.
Hyperic does at the application layer what vCOPS does for the underlying infrastructure. It can monitor operating system, middleware, and application layers and provide automated workflows to resolve potential issues.
VIN is a discovery tool used to create application dependency maps which are key when planning and designing security boundaries and disaster recovery solutions.
vCBM is utilized for showback or chargeback so that various lines of business can be accountable for IT resource utilization.
Where is it best utilized?
The vCOPS suites are best suited for environments that require robust monitoring and/or configuration management and that have fairly mature IT organizations capable of realizing the toolset’s full potential.
vCAC
What is it? Stemming from the acquisition of DynamicOps, this is primarily an automation/orchestration toolset designed to deploy and provision workloads and applications across multiple platforms be they physical, virtual, or cloud based. Additionally, vCAC provides a front end service catalog enabling end user IT self-service. Like most VMware product sets, vCAC comes in multiple editions as well including standard, advanced, and enterprise. Standard edition provides the base automation toolsets, advanced adds in the self-service catalog (the original DynamicOps feature set), and enterprise adds in dynamic application provisioning (formally vFabric AppDirector).
Where is it best utilized?
If you have a very dynamic environment, such as development or devops, then vCAC may well be the tool for you. By utilizing automation and self-service, it can take the time required to provision workloads/applications/platforms from potentially days or weeks down to minutes. If you have the issue of ‘shadow IT’ where end users are directly utilizing external services, such as Amazon, to bypass internal IT due to red tape, vCAC can help solve that problem by providing the speed and flexibility of AWS while also maintaining command and control internally.
ITBM
What is it? Think of ITBM as more a CFO tool vs. a raw IT technology tool. Its purpose is to provide financial management of large (millions of dollars) IT budgets by providing visibility into true costs and quality so that IT may be better aligned to the business. It too comes in multiple editions including standard, advanced, and enterprise. The standard edition provides visibility into VMware virtualized environments and can determine relative true cost per VM/workload/application. Advanced adds the physical and non-VMware world into the equation and enterprise adds the quality component.
Where is it best utilized?
The standard edition of ITBM makes sense for most mid-market and above level customers who want/need to get a sense of the true cost of IT. This is very important when considering any move to a public cloud environment as you need to be able to truly compare costs. I hear all the time that ‘cloud is cheaper’ but I have to ask ‘cheaper than what.’ If I ask you how much it costs to run workload X on your internal infrastructure per hour, week, month, etc. can you honestly give me an accurate answer? In most cases the answer is no, and that’s exactly where ITBM comes into play. On a side note, the standard edition of ITBM does require vCAC so if you’re already looking at vCAC then it makes a lot of sense to also consider ITBM.
Log Insight
What is it? Simply stated, it’s a dumping ground for just about any type of log you can imagine but with a google type flare. It has a very nice indexing/search capability that can help make sense of insanely large amounts of log data from numerous sources thus helping greatly in event correlation and troubleshooting as well as auditing.
Where is it best utilized?
Any environment where log management is required and/or for enhanced troubleshooting/root cause analysis. The licensing for this is interesting because unlike similar products it is per device rather than a per terabyte of data model, which can potentially provide a huge cost savings.
vSOM and vCloud Suites
vSOM (vSphere with Operations Management) is simply a bundle of traditional vSphere with vCOPS. The editions here are a little confusing as the standard edition of vCOPs comes with every edition of vSOM. The only difference in the vSOM editions are the underlying vSphere edition.
The vCloud Suite includes most of what I have described above, but again comes in our favorite three editions of standard, advanced, and enterprise. Basically, if you’re already looking at two to three a la carte solutions that are part of a vCloud Suite edition, then you’re better off looking at the suite. You’ll get more value because the suites include multiple solutions and the suites, along with vSOM, remain licensed by physical processor socket vs by the number of VMs.
Leave a comment if you have any other questions or would like a more detailed answer. Again, GreenPages helps our customers make the right choices for their individual needs so reach out if you would like to set up some time to talk. Hope this was helpful!
Download this webinar recording to learn more about VMware’s Horizon Suite
Amazon Web Services turns eight: Highlights…and the future
Amidst the World Wide Web turning 25, a company in Seattle was having a little celebration of its own.
On March 14 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of Amazon S3, described as “a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs.”
To say the eight years which have passed since then have been a success is an understatement to say the least.
With over 5,000 consulting and systems integrator partners, 3,000 technology and ISV partners, as well as more than 1,100 software listings for customers, it’s difficult to argue against Amazon as the market leader in infrastructure as a service.
In April last year Amazon announced the S3 cloud was storing more than two trillion objects – or 20 objects for every single person ever born on Earth. To put it into …
Cloud Wars – How Many 800lb Gorillas Can Fit in the Room?
There is a common phrase, often attributed as a Chinese proverb/curse, “May you live in interesting times.” For those following the cloud technology space, we are definitely living in interesting times. In their latest magic quadrant report on IaaS, Gartner describes the market as still evolving and maturing. This would imply the market leadership is in flux, yet according to Gartner “AWS is the overwhelming market share leader, with more than five times the compute capacity in use than the aggregate total of the other fourteen providers in this Magic Quadrant.” I would say that makes AWS an 800lb gorilla in the room that the competition must get by. Many of those competitors could be considered 800lb gorillas in their own right. Microsoft, IBM, Google are not small companies, yet AWS has managed to create a dominant position in the marketplace.
Drawing a Bead on SharePoint
The hottest new wave of marketing — digital social influence — is intersecting with one the hottest areas of cloud computing — software-as-a-service (SaaS) collaboration and documents/objects sharing.
Educating technology markets and communities is now, more than ever, a function of influence, social media, digital word of mouth — and of cultivating an ecosystem of trusted collaboration. The role of social media and the power of personal connections have really become dominant forces in how people learn how to find and use technology.
This is such a major departure from the past — marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than the previous 50 — that any instruction on what actually works best these days is highly prized.
MongoDB and Fujitsu Deliver Seamless Integration for Cloud Solutions
Fujitsu RunMyProcess and MongoDB extend their existing collaboration to deliver seamless integration for cloud solutions to joint customers.
More than 350 companies around the world deploy Fujitsu RunMyProcess-based workflow applications that integrate MongoDB. Fujitsu RunMyProcess provides a cloud platform for the creation, deployment and operation of business applications, with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface. The integration with MongoDB allows application developers to securely store and access their data from any device and location. MongoDB provides real-time database statistics, allowing platform users to build ad hoc and complex data analytics.
«By integrating MongoDB into our platform, we provided a secure and reliable database solution that meets our quality and technical standards,» said Matthieu Hug, CEO of Fujitsu RunMyProcess. «Furthermore, our partnership is strengthened by a mutual dedication to bringing solutions that enable agility and better customer experience.»
Application Performance Doesn’t Have to Be a Cloud Detractor
For years, the benefits of moving to the cloud – including lowered costs, flexibility and faster time-to-market – have been espoused. But among IT professionals, there remains widespread reticence about migrating mission-critical applications over, due in large part to performance concerns. “Can the cloud really deliver the same level of speed and reliability as physical services?” IT asks. Business managers often minimize or downplay these worries, saying that the potential business benefits to be reaped are just too mission-critical to ignore.
Therein lies a major conflict. Regardless, as numerous surveys like this one from IDC demonstrate, cloud adoption is moving forward at a rapid pace. Clearly, the cloud is where we’re headed. IT must learn to accept the cloud as just part of how services are delivered today, rather than some exotic and potentially dangerous new technology. The good news is IT’s concerns about application performance are not insurmountable and can actually be eased with specific approaches.
Caught! The Real Culprit of Shadow IT
Once you learn the definition of shadow IT, it shouldn’t be too shocking to learn how widespread it is at companies large and small all over the world. I hate to assume, but the odds are, that you yourself have used a non-IT approved SaaS option for the same reason as everyone else, myself included. We’re all expected to do our jobs faster, and at a higher quality than we did in the past, and sometimes it’s just too easy to go behind the backs of those whom we perceive to slow us down, or act as a blocker.
A recent study showed that eighty percent of those polled admitted using SaaS applications and tools without IT’s approval, which, when you’re part of that eighty percent, isn’t all that shocking. The real kicker is the revelation of who has been using shadow IT SaaS solutions more than anyone.
How government CRM tools are addressing complex public sector needs
Nishant Shah, Senior Analyst, Government Technology
Stories about frustrating experiences with government agencies abound. Typically, they are due to a combination of service delivery failure, lack of transparency, and inadequate communication. Fortunately, many governments are beginning to address these issues with a greater sense of urgency. The need for action is being manifested in new policy and an operational focus on better service delivery globally, with customer relationship management (CRM) tools as integral as ever.
Ovum’s recently published Decision Matrix, Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a CRM for Constituent Service and Case Management in Government, examines the competitive dynamics for CRM in the public sector market and analyzes six leading software application suites to inform agencies’ selection processes.
With a focus on civilian and administrative agencies such as tax/revenue, immigration, and health/human services, it expounds the topics discussed here with rankings and detailed evaluations of Oracle, KANA, SAP …
Three quarters of charities say IT not up to scratch, survey reveals
Research from Eduserv has revealed that for three in four UK charities, inertia from the IT department is stunting growth and putting doubt into future fundraising activities.
The research, of 100 digital and IT leaders in UK charities including Oxfam, Macmillan and Unicef, found concern from heads of digital over moving with the times. Survey respondents argued this lack of ‘digital transformation’ would impact fundraising (73%), reputation (71%), and the ability to deliver the right services (59%).
For 75% of charities there was no clear IT strategy in place to move into a digital world, while more than half (52%) reported discord between IT and digital teams which added time to project deadlines.
There are three issues of responsibility that IT and digital need to address, according to Eduserv. These are mobile strategy, digital application strategy and ownership of the CRM system.
And according to respondents, for heads of digital …