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What Does "Rationalize" Mean?

Mark Lukianchuk — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:09:00 GMT

I've been looking into the concept of "rationalize" recently given the work I'm doing related to our new CA Cloud 360 solution. In this new offering, we even have a stage called "Rationalize" where we help our customers examine and understand their portfolio of existing applications and look at suitable candidates for migration to cloud computing platforms. But all of this has me wondering, what does "rationalize" really mean?

Taking a look at some online dictionaries, I saw the following at Dictionary.com:

"to remove unreasonable elements from"

That seems to be the traditional IT view of rationalization - the desire to cull unneeded services from the herd of existing enterprise applications. This definition is a bit simplistic, though, especially when you look at what cloud computing is supposed to do for an organization. Let's take a look at a sample business service such as corporate email.

Company XYZ is currently running Microsoft Exchange, and while they're generally happy with it, the CIO is looking at alternatives. Here are a few:

Keep it running as-is (the "do nothing" strategy)
Run an open-source equivalent at the enterprise (say Open-Xchange)
Switch to Google's Gmail or an alternative
Keep Exchange, but have it hosted by a third party provider
Move to Microsoft Exchange Online and have Microsoft host it

Email happens to be a commodity service that has many alternatives, so XYZ's CIO has many options to choose from, many of which come with good ROI justification and performance guarantees. Net-net - the CIO of XYZ isn't looking at getting rid of email, just seeing if it's something appropriate to be spending internal resources managing. As a corporate steward of IT, the CIO's job is to always look at alternatives that can provide the same or better quality to the company with less cost.

However, if we look at another corporate application, say an engineering toolset, the CIO may have a few different options to choose from. They might include:

Keep it running as-is in the data center (again, "do nothing")
Move it to an alternative data center (perhaps offshore to benefit from labor arbitrage)
Outsource the hosting and management of the application
Keep control of the application in-house, but use an IaaS provider for compute capacity
Replace the engineering tool with a SaaS alternative (if available)
Rewrite the engineering tool on a common PaaS platform along with other applications

Unless the engineering application isn't being used at all, decommissioning it isn't in the plan, but what criteria should be used to decide if, how, and when this application should move to take advantage of cloud computing benefits? Regardless of the criteria considered it should be something that is consistently applied across all of the applications in the enterprise, so that priorities can be set based upon business criteria and not guesswork (or worse, emotion!).

And that's the whole point about rationalization. I found a much more appropriate definition at another online dictionary, Merriam-Webster.com:

"to apply the principles of scientific management to (as an industry or its operations) for a desired result (as increased efficiency)"

Thanks Merriam-Webster, now we're really talking about the meaning of rationalize.

*Image courtesy of stock.xchang.

Innovation: Is it how you manage, or what you manage?

Lisa Sass — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:39:00 GMT

Rolling over to a new year brings changes to benefit plans affecting millions of healthcare consumers. Managing how those changes go into effect is the year-round challenge for my friend, a senior IT executive for a large benefits provider. Over a recent dinner, he brought up how his company is investing many millions in projects designed to improve patient safety and system security, along with process improvements to protect margins. I asked how the lengthy list of projects was going to be managed, and he gave an exasperated sigh: "Spreadsheets."

I was shocked. This is a company noted for its progressive approach for adopting technology to deliver products and services. Cutting edge facilities and processes have been highly-refined to deliver a higher level of safety and accuracy than its more traditional counterparts while being held to stricter compliance requirements, and they lead their nearest competitor by a wide margin. Yet, all that innovation was being managed by spreadsheets? As much as I would like to believe that companies readily adopt solutions that can help drive innovation faster and with better business intelligence, in reality many organizations cling to outmoded project management tools that cannot keep pace with the demands of an increasingly-complex marketplace and regulatory environment.

My friend's challenges are the same as many others: methods cobbled together over many years by managers-long-gone whose major contributions ended with mastering conditional formatting. As we discussed how far project management as a discipline has come over the years, we also discussed how far project management tools have advanced. These days, a company that invests so much in projects can't afford to ignore the importance of having a complete portfolio view, especially when those projects depend on making confident, informed decisions that impact the safety of healthcare consumers, compliance, and business value.

By next New Year, I'm hoping the answer to how his organization is managing projects is met with a smile and, "CA Clarity PPM."

Read more about how one healthcare benefits provider saved millions while facing healthcare reform and a growing demand for new services.

Thinking about reporting to the CDP ? Just Do It!

Cynthia Curtis — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:50:00 GMT

I often have discussions with colleagues from other businesses about the fact that they would like to start reporting on their carbon emissions and energy usage, but it seems like a daunting challenge. My advice to them is always the same: Just Do It! CA Technologies has been reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) on our energy usage since 2006 (CDP reporting questionnaire #4), and during that time we’ve come a long way – both in terms of our ability to gather data and information, and our ability to create actionable, value-creating projects as a result of that information. However, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are now if we hadn’t taken the first step. While every business is different and each organization needs to customize this effort to their own particular situation and operating methodology, here are some detail about how started the ball rolling, how we’ve progressed over time and some things we’ve learned.

Gather what you can, identify what you don’t know
When the CA Technologies board decided to report with the CDP for the first time in 2006, Brett Prochazka, CA Technologies Senior Principal of Facilities Services, was tasked with the project. As he explains it, “We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We were starting with nothing, so as a technology and software company, we went where we thought we could get the most detailed information – the energy bills from various offices.We quickly learned that, for a variety of reasons, there was not as much detail there as we had hoped.”

“Only eight offices out of 150 plus locations could provide us with the monthly energy usage details by kilowatt/hour that we needed to make our initial estimates. But that is what we had, so that is what we went with. We took the kw/hr rate for those locations, identified the kilowatt per square foot burn rate in each office, averaged it out and multiplied that by the square footage of the entire enterprise to identify the number kilowatts we consumed. We then translated this into carbon emissions and we had our first number. It wasn’t the most sophisticated method; however we learned a tremendous amount in the process and identified areas for future improvement. A key lesson we took away from this initial effort was transparency. Be very clear about your methods, be upfront about the fact that you’re going to make mistakes, and keep everything in the open. This way nobody can accuse you of greenwashing.”

Improve over time
Since this initial foray, we’ve made sustainability a key tenet of CA Technologies corporate culture and as a result have been dedicated to continuing to improve our reporting capabilities. Some of the areas where we’ve progressed include:

Number of offices reporting: We’ve continued to identify offices that can provide detailed energy usage information to improve our visibility. We now have 56 out of 134 locations reporting on a monthly basis (a number of locations have been consolidated). These locations represent about 85% of the total square footage in the company.

Emissions factors: We started taking emission factors into consideration. This provides detail about the amount of carbon released per kw/h by the utility at each location (coal vs. natural gas vs. hydro), and results in a much more accurate understanding of our carbon footprint.

Automation through CA ecoSoftware: The reporting process was becoming more sophisticated and time consuming as we continued to make progress. We realized we needed a better way to do this than Excel. So, being a software company, we created a platform that we called CA ecoSofware which allowed us to track details on carbon emissions, water use, recycling, waste generation, gas, transportation and more. Over 30 employees now enter data into the system as it becomes available and the organization has greatly benefitted from the time savings and additional insights this platform provides.

Identifying opportunity in the data – and the market
The old saying goes; you can’t improve what you can’t measure. That is certainly true when it comes to measuring carbon and energy use. As we’ve moved down the path of gathering energy use information we’ve identified a number of areas where we and improve and benefit the company as well. A few examples include:

Offices using too much energy: As we gathered data, it became clear we had some offices using substantially more energy than similar offices. By taking a closer look at these locations, we were able to identify some of the inefficiencies and correct them, in the process dramatically lowering energy costs.

Inefficient data centers: The data also highlighted the vast amount of energy we were using to support our data centers. We used this insight to begin an initiative to improve energy efficiency at all levels of our data center infrastructure, substantially lowering energy costs and streamlining operations.

Leveraging expertise to create sustainability products: As our efforts and understanding in the sustainability space expanded, we realized there were market needs that we could use our expertise to address. We launched our CA ecoSoftware solution in 2009 to enable other businesses to streamline their data collection, reporting and monitoring efforts and to help them identify opportunities in sustainability.

Keys to moving forward
When Brett and I spoke about key lessons learned over the 5+ years of reporting with the CDP, he summed things up perfectly.
1.Get Started: Do the best you can out of the gate and realize you will have to improve over time.
2.Automate: As you improve and expand your efforts, automate as much as possible. It makes things a lot easier.
3.Governance: Put a governance program in place to get all the data you can access collected in a timely and consistent manner.
4.Opportunity: Once you are rolling, keep your eyes open for opportunities in sustainability that you can capitalize on within your business and your areas of expertise.

WYDSIWYN is Back!

Jackie Kahle — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:28:00 GMT

In the 1980's, companies like Aldus and Interleaf revolutionized the electronic publishing industry by offering software which took advantage of a new generation of graphical workstations. Enabling users to layout their publications and see on the screen exactly how the document would look when printed, the solutions were dubbed "WYSIWYG" (pronounced wizzy-wig), which stood for What You See Is What You Get.

At the time I was working at Digital Equipment Corporation, which had a growing electronic publishing business focused on providing the hardware (servers, networking, mass storage, etc) and the back-end production publishing software necessary to implement a complete electronic publishing process.

The problem was that we were getting zero attention from the media and industry analysts because our products were largely invisible to end-users and weren't as snazzy as all the front-end software and workstations. So our small but scrappy marketing team decided to beat the WYSIWYG vendors at their own game, and coined a new term: WYDSIWYN (pronounced wid-zee-win) which stood for What You Don't See Is What You Need.

Our pitch was that in order to successfully implement all these great new publishing front-end tools, you need the back-end infrastructure and "plumbing" to tie it all together. We even created a logo of sorts for our business - a pyramid that represented a stylized iceberg , with the WYSIWIG guys positioned as the visible tip of the iceberg, and the bigger, more significant part of the iceberg (WYDSIWYN) invisible under the water line.

I was reminded of this story 25 years later in our recent meeting with Brian Madden (@brianmadden) on the consumerization of IT. He was scratching his head wondering why CA Technologies was even talking about this. After all, we don't provide devices like smart phones or tablets, social media tools, or any consumer-based software. After hearing our story, he commented that he now understood that CA Technologies handles "all the boring back-end stuff that actually enables IT shops to deliver consumerization-based services" (see Brian's full blog post about this).

I couldn't have said it better myself, but Brian's comment also got me thinking that we need to talk a bit more about some of the cool and exciting (and definitely non-boring) solutions we do provide like our Smart Phone app for CA Clarity and our involvement with the Cloud Commons Marketplace.

Nonetheless, sometimes boring is good, but I also think there is definitely a new-found sense of excitement from our customers as they have grown to understand the capabilities we provide to help them model, assemble, automate, assure, manage and secure the complete infrastructure needed for the consumerization of IT, whether in a virtual, hybrid or cloud environment. We call it Business Service Innovation (no acronyms this time!).

For proof that our customers are "getting it", look no further than the 700+ executives who have chosen to register to attend our Consumer Driven IT event this Thursday, February 9th across 25 cities in US and Canada. In fact, Brian is attending one of the events to see for himself. We will be writing additional posts about this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more!

Application Portfolio Management: The first step in transforming the business of IT

Robert Stroud — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:26:00 GMT

Every CIO I speak to faces similar pressures - business demand is increasing, especially with the millennials and the consumerization of IT, and at the same time budget increases cannot keep up with inflation. Being a glass half-full person I see this as a wonderful opportunity for the IT organization to focus on its primary charter: driving business value by transforming the business.

Last week while returning from the ISACA Strategic Advisory Council meeting I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with a senior representative of a large healthcare organization who was returning from an organizational leadership meeting. The discussion - which started on a discussion of mobility and the manner that it had changed our lives - led into the action from his meeting which is to drive business transformation, which is going to be centered primarily on technology. Challenges faced in the healthcare organization are similar those faced by many organizations. Organizations face existing application operating and maintenance costs that consume a significant percentage of the budget, they see widespread duplication across the portfolio and massive complexity due to years of acquisitions and siloes of development. The silos of development and lack of visibility across the complete estate makes day-to-day delivery a struggle let alone the offer the flexibility to transform the business.

The healthcare CIO is not alone. Most large organizations are in the same position and with the mandate to transform, many organizations are starting the transformation process and funding it with the savings realized with the implementation of an Application Portfolio Management (APM) program.

Application Portfolio Management provides a comprehensive understanding of your applications and their value to the organization including relevancy, costs (all costs), duplication, use, compliance with organizational objectives, and then creates a scoring framework. APM moves you from an unclear inventory of applications with limited understanding of each, to a defined inventory with comprehensive data on the business value and technical condition of each application. Once you have implemented an APM process you will have a strategic process for effective decision making that can be leveraged not only with existing investments but also with your future investments and can be used for sourcing determinations.

One company that benefited as part of such a transformation is Nordea Bank, who saved €3.5 million in one year by rationalizing its business application portfolio in the first phase of their initiative.

Getting back to my healthcare colleague the concept of APM resonated with him as they are moving to a cloud based sourcing program. Knowing what they have and its criticality as they determine if the application is a cloud candidate or not based on confidentiality and data requirements is important.

The hardest piece of APM is the inventory and evaluating and I will cover this in my next blog.

Does Cloud Computing Really Make Things Greener?

Dhesikan Ananchaperumal — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:53:00 GMT

Today in The CA Cloud Storm Chasers Blog, George Watt, Vice President, for the Enterprise and Cloud solutions group at CA Technologies, discusses the company’s progression through three levels of green awareness and maturity in its early cloud years. The levels included are:

1. Collateral Greenage
2. Deliberately Green
3. A Measured Approach

To find out more about each of these levels and how cloud computing can “make you greener,” check out George’s blog post “Pragmatic Cloud: Peeling the Cloud's Green Onion” here.

*Image: digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pragmatic Cloud: Peeling the Cloud's Green Onion

George Watt — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:56:00 GMT

Does cloud computing really make things greener?

The Green Onion's Three Layers

Recently my colleague Dhesi Ananchaperumal and I were invited to speak at several conferences on the topics of energy management and consumption, and cost reduction. During those sessions I was asked to share some of our experiences in our journey to providing a private cloud and to discuss whether the cloud made CA Technologies greener. In preparation for these sessions I realized that we had actually progressed through three levels of green awareness and maturity in our cloud's early years. (You can watch a short YouTube video of one of our sessions here.)

1. Collateral Greenage

Though it would make me very happy to begin by stating that we had a greener planet in our sights when we created our private cloud many years ago, that was not at all the case. We created our cloud to address a serious business agility challenge that was impacting product quality and extending our delivery times; and to address resource requirement challenges caused by demands that changed with our business lifecycle. It was only as our service matured that we realized that, in addition to addressing our agility and business cycle challenges, our private cloud had also brought some green benefits.

We did not truly appreciate this until we were asked to participate in an exercise to help reduce our corporate real estate footprint. We had been consolidating facilities routinely, though this project would require a concerted effort. In the first phase the team was asked to replace 19 labs. A second opportunistic project the following fiscal year required closing another 25 in one quarter. It was during this exercise, and all of the financial analysis that accompanied it, that we were made aware of some of the green benefits of our cloud implementation. We realized the cloud economics that are widely discussed now, and our focus on resource pooling, automation, and operational efficiency had resulted in the provision of services with reduced overall energy consumption.

Initially we focused only on the financial benefits related to reduced consumption. Though later we came to understand that whenever we were greener we almost always had reduced expenses, and when we reduced expenses we were often greener (as a result of reduced consumption). And as a cloud provider it was certainly a very good thing to have business value that could be relevant to both the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Sustainability Officer. It was also at this point that we realized just how valuable our partnership with the Finance team was.

2. Deliberately Green

Once we discovered this "collateral greenage" effect, we realized that it was an area that deserved some deliberate attention. Our company had begun to focus on sustainability as a key corporate initiative; and I cannot think of any company that does not have minimization of costs listed somewhere in their corporate objectives. We began to deliberately seek green benefits and focused on improving our infrastructure "with green in mind". And whenever we were greener in this context, our costs were lower. The team was able to purchase less, to raise the chiller and air handler temperatures, reduce copper consumption, and reduce carbon consumption by thousands of tons. This resulted in a significant contribution to our sustainability objectives. (CA Technologies has recently become one of the top ten green companies in the United States.)

Deliberately Challenged - "It's not that easy, being green."

Though we had success with our deliberate initiatives, and our increased awareness and capability enabled us to be opportunistically green, we realized we were far from obtaining the maximum value possible, both in terms of cost reduction and green benefits. As well, creating reports that demonstrated the value of what had been accomplished was extremely challenging. It involved a lot of mind-numbing human effort, and many of the reports were of value for a very limited amount of time. A high priority "out of cycle" request for executive information could result in a 48-hour fire drill for one or more people; possibly worse if the data had never before been requested.

The impact of not having this data readily available created several challenges:

How could we accurately identify targets for "green action"?
How could we demonstrate the value of those actions in a business context?
How could we be confident that the actions we took actually had the impact we intended them to have?
How could we know when those actions added cost or made us less green?

3. A Measured Approach

And this is where the discussion returns to Dhesi. As we were trying to address these questions we had another "slap yourself in the forehead" moment. Dhesi, a friend and colleague, was now a customer of our cloud service. He had experience in this domain and, as we learned, was creating what became the CA ecoSoftware enterprise energy and sustainability management solutions. Of course, we turned to Dhesi for assistance and guidance (and software). Though what's critical here is, as I have stated in other contexts, measurement is key. And improving the timeliness of the data, reducing the cost required to produce the measurement, and reducing the manual effort required (and potential for human error) will improve the effectiveness of such a program.

Are all clouds green?

So, does simply moving to a cloud make you greener? Probably. (How's that for commitment?) There are two things to consider. First, there are some who are very good at "traditional IT". Not knowing whether you are amongst those makes answering the question a challenge. Though if you're not doing anything cloudy I would bet that cloud computing will make you at least a little greener. Second, it's possible to do anything poorly, so I would bet there are some cloud providers (both private and public) who are not yet recognizing the full potential of cloud computing in terms of agility, expense reduction, resource optimization, and sustainability.

Overall I do believe cloud computing can "make you greener". Though there are many other things that must also be considered when deciding whether to adopt cloud computing.

This blog is cross-posted at Pragmatic Cloud. Follow @GeorgeDWatt on Twitter.

Don’t Ignore Capacity Planning in the Cloud

CA Community — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Karen J. Bannan is a prolific writer, editor, blogger, and moderator. She is also the executive editor of Smart Enterprise. Karen has been writing about technology for more than a decade, first for PC Magazine and then eWeek, where she covered servers, workstations, and storage. Follow her on Twitter: @KarenBannan.

Karen shares her insights on the importance of capacity planning – a vital component of cloud computing – and how CIOs can determine how their IT resources will meet the needs of their customers. The article below was published on Smart Enterprise.

Don’t Ignore Capacity Planning in the Cloud

The DB2 reference Guide is back!!

Marcel den Hartog — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:54:00 GMT

For decades, the CA DB2 Reference Guide (originally started by Platinum Technologies) has been THE source of wisdom for DB2 DBA’s working on the IBM mainframe. The format, the content and the structure somehow was exactly right, 1 source of information replacing many different manuals simply helps people to do their job more efficient…

Now, some of you might ask; “a DB2 reference Guide, on paper? Isn’t that very 90’s?”. And it is. But last November we had to disappoint so many people @ IDUG who came to our booth to collect the latest Reference Guide that it was clear that it may not be “en vogue” but it’s very much appreciated to have something on paper. I have seen old DB2 v8 reference guides that were used so often by so many people that they had to be kept together with duct-tape, staples and other means. If you own one of these, please send me a picture (zMarcel@ca.com) and I will post them somewhere.

This year’s DB2 version 10 Reference Guide is bigger and heavier than ever. With every detail about everything "DB2" you can imagine, and more. How about almost 7 pages about the ALTER command and all it’s possible parameters? Or 5 pages of Naming Definitions, 15 pages of SQL functions, all DB2 Utilities (On-line & Stand-alone), DB2-, DSN, TSO, IRLM and other commands, all System Tables, User Tables, LOB Low level Space Map Page information and every possible return code..

But things are a bit different this year… The cost of printing and shipping has gone up dramatically due to the size of the latest version of the guide, so you can order them, but they will cost about 15 Euro. To wet your appetite however, we will give away free guides for those who register here: (http://www.ca.com/gb/lpg/forms/emea/fy12/uk/mf/91122_90307.aspx ). First come, first serve. We have about 50 to give away for free, so reserve yours today!!. And leave a comment in this blog if you like them or if you think we can improve….

Service Catalog - The Driving Force to Deliver the Cloud

Eric Feldman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:33:00 GMT

With the widespread adoption of cloud services, there is enormous effort to define offerings and align to market based pricing.

Let's face it. If you are going through a cloud transformation initiative, one of your business drivers is to reduce expenditures. In order to calculate your savings, you must have at least some basis of comparison of the service cost or value. And to calculate service costs, you must first define those services. This is a business exercise, yet I see many companies incorrectly focus their cloud initiative exclusively on their infrastructure.

But how does a Service Catalog help with an enterprise or MSP cloud initiative?

We can explain this better with a more familiar metaphor. When you are in a restaurant, you have no knowledge of the types of stoves, cooking utensils, or what brand of knives the chef uses. While you will see a waiter or server write your orders on a piece of paper, you are not aware of the ticketing system used - whether the paper is given to the kitchen staff, or the order is entered into software. In reality, what is in the kitchen is almost irrelevant.

What you are aware of is the menu and the descriptions of choices which can be written in elaborate or simplistic terms. You know the price, and how the food offerings are bundled. And you might know the approximate time your food will be delivered, either informally, or by explicit obligation. Remember the pizza guarantee, delivered in 30 minutes, or it is free?

Do you really care how your food is prepared in terms of the type of equipment used as long as it meets or exceeds your expectations, provides good value for the price, and service is appropriate? Does it matter how many burners are on the stove, or how many BTUs it consumes per dinner?

A similar environment exists for cloud services. When you request something from an enterprise catalog, you do not care what, if any, automation tools are employed, nor do you typically care about the process used to deliver the service. You do care that the service is delivered in the expected timeframe, is appropriate to your needs, and if being charged for its use, is priced competitively to market equivalents.

As a result, the Service Catalog becomes the central and primary component of a cloud initiative. In this regard, we refer to a Service Catalog as the "driving force to deliver the cloud." It provides the basis and environment for which cloud services can be defined and delivered.

The Service Catalog is not the actual service - regardless if it is cloud based, virtual, or with physical elements - but it provides a representation or abstraction of the various components and parameters. A Service Catalog is not the process, but provides seamless access to the process from an end user. A Service Catalog is not the infrastructure, but enables a pathway to leverage its use via the process. And a Service Catalog is not a specific entry to a general ledger, but it does publish the price, and can calculate and charge for the service usage.

When planning cloud service deployments, many IT organizations concentrate their efforts on infrastructure and tools. I refer to this as a bottom up approach - the equivalent of a new restaurant deciding upon the brand of stove, pots and pans, and refrigerator before the recipes or menu are prepared.

A better way may be the top down approach - beginning with a type of cuisine, recipes, pricing, and menu - and then building the appropriate kitchen. IT operations are really no different. Cloud service deployments should begin with the service portfolio, the service definition, and how they will be published in the service catalog, or the driving force to deliver the cloud.

For an example of how CA Technologies is leading the industry in providing agile and innovative cloud solutions, see our recent announcement for the CA Private Cloud Accelerator for Vblock^TM Platforms, a new solution to enable enterprises and managed service providers to offer automated self-service delivery of infrastructure as a service.

Menu image used under Creative Commons License courtesty of pellis.

Consumer Driven IT in Review – 9th edition

Jackie Kahle — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:06:00 GMT

Now What? Consumer Driven IT encompasses a variety of technologies and the issues are varied and daunting - supporting many different devices, securing data and access across private and public clouds, ensuring 24/7 service delivery, developing mobile-friendly apps and shortening application lifecycles to meet increasing demands.

It is no surprise that our customers often ask "What do I do next?" "How should I get started?" There are two takes on this that are worth highlighting. The IDC whitepaper IT Consumers Transform the Enterprise: Are You Ready? has four recommendations for IT:

1. Embrace the cloud and leverage it to focus on strategic initiatives.

2. Embrace endpoint diversity.

3. Accelerate automation of management and control functionality.

4. Focus on security, particularly new challenges associated with supporting diverse endpoint devices and protecting critical confidential data stored in the cloud.

We also heard pragmatic advice in a recent meeting we had with industry guru @BrianMadden (http://www.consumerizeit.com/). Here's a summary - for more details, see Brian's blog HERE

Take an inventory and find out what your users are actually doing and what tools they find useful to get their jobs done. I would add that this must be approached carefully to ensure you get honest responses - reassure your employees that you are not out to penalize them or take action to prevent their using these tools moving forward.
You will need a broad array of input across the company and from many different functions, so establish a committee to focus on developing an integrated plan for IT consumerization. Marketing and Sales are likely to have very different perspectives on what is needed than Finance or HR.

Sound advice all around, and things to consider as organizations move from being overwhelmed with IT consumerization to being confident with a plan to leverage it.

Here's what else was in the IT consumerization news the last few weeks:

February 2: PwC: Most enterprises still catching up to consumerization of IT via PWC. 4^th annual Digital IQ survey highlights how top-performing US organizations show greater mastery in how they leverage digital technologies by offering mobile tools for customers, measuring data through social media, mobilizing applications to the public cloud and the innovative use of business intelligence.

February 1: IT Salaries: growth reflects positive changes in the IT job market via Meridith Levinson, CIO-Asia. Demands of IT consumerization are causing higher salaries for some IT professionals in Asia.

Healthcare in your pocket: the unstoppable rise of mHealth by Scott Bauman via Greenough. Just a fancy word for the consumerization of healthcare IT, and it is inevitable.

January 30: Cloud and mobile blurs into other people's IT by Dion Hinchcliffe via Enterprise Irregulars. As much of 30% of IT spending may already be outside IT's control and budget. This is a transformational moment for IT to move to become "information enablers".

January 28: Three trends that change business: mobile, social and cloud by Maribel Lopez via Forbes. Consumer driven IT is so much more than just BYOD or IT consumerization.

January 27: Gamification: the buzzword that can ruin your apps and business by Galen Gruman via InfoWorld. The concept of taking consumer-oriented gaming interfaces and applying them to business apps enters the IT consumerization ecosystem.

January 25: Dispelling Six Myths of Consumerization of IT, new research study from Avanade. There is less resistance to embracing IT consumerization than you might think.

The Consumerization of IT helps level the SMB playing field across the world from IDC. New research shows IT consumerization paying dividends for SMB, particularly in developing countries.

Use your smartphone for business presentations by Joseph Fieber via CIO.com. It is always with you, so why not use it?

January 24: Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise survey results from IDG Enterprise. Survey of 1,900 IT and security decision-makers shows growing adoption but lingering security concerns.

Content management and collaboration grapple with consumerization of IT by Adam Riglian via TechTarget. Consumer tools versus enterprise collaboration tools are not that different, but there is a real risk of silos.

January 23: Game On: the Consumerization of IT - new InfoWorld Channel by Eric Knorr via InfoWorld. InfoWorld has joined the IT Consumerization party by launching a new channel devoted to it.

Hey, IT: stop trying to catch up to consumerization and start trying to stay ahead by Colin Steele via ConsumerizeIT. IT might want to start to think about adding a consumer advocate to their staff.

January 20: What MegaUpload's demise teaches about cloud storage by Ian Paul via CIO. Forewarned is forearmed - you must be careful where you trust your data.

Consumerization: the view from IT you may not like but need to hear by Galen Gruman via InfoWorld. What Sean P. Silverman, CTO of Bartlett Tech thinks of IT Consumerization and why IT is not all wrong.

NEW from CA Technologies This Week:

Check out our new Solution Brief "Consumer Driven IT: Thriving in the New Normal" to learn more about this trend and how CA Technologies can help.
Act now: Exec Event on February 9th-"Consumer Driven IT: Thriving in the New Normal" event on February 9^th, happening across 25 cities in the US and Canada. To register go to www.ca.com/consumerdrivenit
Service Assurance blog post from Denise Dubie (@DDubie) explores how IT can get control over mobile apps.

Ready, Aim, Fire: The Case for Cloud Planning

Mark Lukianchuk — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:59:00 GMT

A little more than a year ago I presented a session on cloud computing at a CIO conference where I highlighted the three key issues preventing cloud computing adoption: security/privacy, availability and performance. However, in doing some research for a session I gave at CA World this past November, I realized that things have changed. Back in the mid-1990s companies were nervous about leveraging the Internet for these same reasons, and a few years later were equally concerned about moving virtual machines into production.

Today, everyone is using the Internet and running VMs in production, so it's logical to assume that any artificial barriers to cloud adoption will also be broken, certainly in the next 12-18 months. Companies no longer need to know what cloud computing is, they need to learn how to use it.

From many conversations I've had with CIOs and senior IT leaders I've found a growing trend towards companies dipping their toes into public SaaS offerings like Salesforce.com while simultaneously building out some sort of private "cloudish" environment (the "if you build it they will come" strategy). In many cases, the less critical applications were targeted to move first, along with new services launched directly into the private cloud. But is that the best solution?

In my CA World session titled "Cloud Transformation for the Enterprise" I discussed 4 major criteria that need to be considered when it comes to cloud adoption: cost, risk, speed (or agility) and value (or quality). Ironically, most of the people I've spoken with do not consider cost as the main driver for cloud computing. The real #1 driver is speed, and its associated reduction in time-to-market for new and updated services. This should immediately make you think about how to prioritize the migration of cloud applications and services.

If that's the case, should you move your less critical applications to your private cloud first? Should you consider using a public cloud? The answer of course is "it depends" - security, governance and risk all play a role, as well as the need to support handheld devices, drive revenue, etc.

I haven't heard many customers tell me that they have put a thoughtful, detailed plan in place to look at their existing and future applications and services - and determine which ones are actually suitable for a cloud computing environment, based upon technology fit, business value and other criteria. Some are better off remaining in the data center. And, of course, deciding what to move before starting to build out an internal cloud or getting compute capacity from a public cloud provider. Moving without planning (detailed or otherwise) can work, but the risk is pretty high. If you're wrong, costs can actually go up instead of down and quality can suffer. That's the "ready, fire, aim" approach.

That's why I make the case for cloud planning. Do a portfolio analysis of your applications and services first (or at least a good subset of them). Understand any service level requirements, KPIs and key metrics. Project your capacity requirements for proposed target environments. Have a testing plan. Once you have all of that in place, then negotiate contracts and open your checkbook, knowing that you're managing costs, managing risk, maintaining quality and doing it at the right pace to meet your business needs.

Employee Engagement: Green Teams Key to Early Momentum in Corporate Sustainability

Cynthia Curtis — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:42:00 GMT

When CA Technologies made sustainability a driving principle of our organization we immediately got to work on some good-old-fashioned governance initiatives. We performed a competitive analysis, gathered as much information and data as possible on our current status, set up a project management office to help drive key initiatives, and developed key metrics and lenses for examining projects and priorities. While doing this work, it quickly became clear that to integrate sustainability into the corporate culture as well as drive efficiencies and cost savings we needed engaged employees and a motivated workforce.

Green Teams Help Focus Grassroots Energy

As we reached out to employees around the world to discuss sustainability, it was obvious that there was good stuff happening. Individuals and ad hoc teams were spearheading projects and acting as advocates for their workplace. Unfortunately, there was no way to track success, share information, or even know what initiatives were underway in the various offices.

Enter Green Teams. The concept is simple: Develop small groups of committed employees at individual offices and provide them with structure and corporate support in order to harness their innovation and effort in a manner more likely to produce concrete results. In order to test the concept and the process, we decided to initiate a pilot program to start. We chose three offices around the globe - Sydney, Paris and Framingham, Mass. - and recruited 44 employees to be part of the effort.

Providing Green Teams with Structure Promotes Success

In order to support the team’s efforts, we provided each group with:
•Potential projects: We had defined a list of 12 pre-approved sustainability projects of which each team had to choose three
•The Playbook: A business plan template defining the key components of the initiatives that the teams were responsible for defining and executing on
•Data: Baseline data related to their projects, if available
•Executive leadership: Each team had a direct line to me and my team for support and executive coaching

Prior to executing, the team needed to develop and get sign off on:
•Business model
•Metrics for measuring success
•Project plan
•Communications plan
•Budget

After sign-off, the teams executed on their projects in a two month sprint. Currently we are reviewing benchmarks and data from the first group of sustainability projects completed by the three pilot green teams. We are also gathering feedback from a post-project employee survey to identify changes that have occurred as a result of the projects. Initial indications are that results are very positive, both from a cost reduction perspective, as well as from an employee awareness point-of-view. We’re also reviewing “lessons learned” and taking away ideas that will help us execute more effectively on projects going forward and that we can share across the business.

Nine additional locations around the globe have already requested permission to start their own green team and we are in the process of recruiting leaders at these offices. Our intent is to roll out the green team initiative globally, thereby empowering local employees at every location to define and execute on projects that are of key importance to them in their geographic area (i.e. water conservation may be more important to some, building efficiency or recycling to others).

Stay tuned and we’ll keep you up to speed on the green team initiative as we continue to roll it out throughout CA Technologies. Be sue to visit often for posts on the projects that the first three teams chose, how they executed on them and the results produced.

What specific actions can you take if you want to implement "consumerization" at your company?

CA Community — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:13:00 GMT

Brian Madden is known throughout the world as an opinionated, super technical, fiercely-independent desktop virtualization expert. He's written several books and over 2,000 articles about desktop and application virtualization. His blog receives millions of visitors per year and is a leading source for conversation, debate, and discourse about the application and desktop virtualization industry. Brian is also the creator of BriForum, the premier independent application delivery technical conference. Engage with Brian Madden via LinkedIn | Twitter | Email

Last week while on the East Coast for meetings, I had a chance to sit down with some CA [Technologies] folks to discuss their initiatives around the consumerization of IT (or consumer-driven IT, as they call it). Since my focus has been on virtual desktops for the past decade, I didn't really know anything about CA [Technologies]. In fact I'd be hard pressed to name a single product of theirs. (Does Unicenter still exist? Or something about backups?) You can imagine that I was a bit surprised (in the good way!) to arrive to a room full of people who all wanted to talk about consumerization.

CA is actually jumping into consumerization big time. What's interesting is that they don't make the sexy stuff that end users see, rather they handle all the boring back-end stuff that actually enable IT shops to deliver consumerization-based services. (Think identity management, security management, data management, etc.) CA's conversation was led by Jackie Kahle (twitter | blog), and we talked about a lot of interesting things over the course of a few hours. (Look for more on that conversation and what specific things CA is doing in the consumerization space in the next few weeks.)

The most interesting part of the meeting was...to read the rest of Brian Madden's post, click here.

The Moral Dilemma; Invest or ....

Marcel den Hartog — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:11:00 GMT

Everybody in IT knows that most of the IT budget is spent on "keeping the lights on". This is seen as "not good" because, according to some, IT should spend more money on innovation, adding business value etc. Spending 60-80% on keeping the lights on is equivalent to "wasting money". And somehow, nobody ever seems to question statements like this. Well, I do...

Please look back 24 months. We hardly caught our breath after crisis # 1 when crisis # 2 hit us. Frozen budgets for up to 3 years in some cases, but budget was invested in innovation because of projects using Cloud and Virtualization. However, because budgets remained flat, the money had to come from savings elsewhere, so we cut some staff, we delayed the acquisition of new hardware, we didn't not upgrade some software and all was well. After almost 15 years of continuous growth, we suddenly felt that we actually COULD do the same with less. We thought.....

But did we actually do a proper risk-assessment when we made those decisions? What we did not realize is that we are more dependent on IT than ever, and that it would take some time for things to take effect. And a well managed system doesn't turn into a "sub-optimal" managed system overnight...... Some 8 months into crisis #2, we see the effects of NOT spending enough money on "maintaining the current state". Maybe its anecdotal evidence, but I see more systems failures than I have seen in a long time. I personally experienced the unavailability of Internet Banking systems, Airline booking systems, travel websites and others and I read about many more in the trade magazines and online publications or newsletters.

Let me first say that I too know that we sometimes spent money on the wrong things in the past. Many projects to make IT better exceeded budget, many hobby projects were too expensive and things could have done smarter. But simply making a sweeping statement that spending 50% of the IT budget on maintaining and optimizing the IT Infrastructure (which happens to be the backbone of the company) is the wrong way to spend the IT budget is naive and misguided. To make the comparison, a production company doesn't spend 60-70% of the production budget on innovation; they spend most of the money on keeping machines running that make the goods that generate revenue.

Am I comparing apples and pears? I do not think so. All I DO know is that in the past few years, selling software that simply helped to optimize the existing IT Infrastructure was sometimes seen as a sub-optimal investment. Here is a surprise, it's not. How much does it cost a financial institution when their Internet Banking goes down for several days and how does this compare with the savings that created the unstable IT Infrastructure that caused this? Spending money to make the existing IT Infrastructure more reliable is well worth it.

Please leave a comment, I am curious to hear your opinion.

How IT Can Get Control over Mobile Apps

Denise Dubie — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:38:00 GMT

Consumer-driven IT will require CIOs to put policies in place, provide mobile capabilities and optimize performance to keep end users happy.

Mobile devices and applications will force IT executives' hands in 2012, but the change could be for the best if CIOs and other high-tech leaders better understand what end-users want, enable an agile environment to support new technologies and minimize risk when it comes to smartphones and cloud apps.

If it isn't obvious enough in everyday life that smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are becoming the norm - meaning their introduction to the workplace is here - recent research gives IT executives the proof they need to prepare for the mobile revolution of 2012. For instance, according to early estimates from Flurry Research, some 6.8 million Android and Apple iOS devices were activated and nearly a quarter of a billion apps were downloaded on Christmas Day 2011 alone.

Savvy IT professionals know to be worried about this deluge of devices. A recent CA Technologies survey of 729 respondents show that 53% find security the biggest challenge their organizations faces with mobile technologies. Eighteen percent cited mobile readiness. A second question asked what challenges an IT organization faces when employees use their devices at work; one-third of 433 respondents cited sheer variety as the biggest challenge, 26% said non-supported devices and 17% worried over providing apps.

While CIOs are right to be worried, that worry will hopefully lead to awareness and action to help IT organizations get in front of mobile challenges or at least meet end-users halfway when it comes to providing secure apps. And now with end users bypassing IT in some instances, IT leaders must get proactive when it comes to mobile.

Here are just a few actions CIOs can take to stay in control of mobile in their environments:

Set the Standard: IT organizations that want to better control the mobile devices and applications entering their environment must establish use policies and present those to end users. The previous stereotype of IT simply saying "no" to new technologies goes out the window, and IT leaders must communicate to end users that the IT organization understands the needs of the end-user community and can create the standard of use for mobile devices, apps and other technologies. Obviously, once established, the policies must be enforced and perhaps updated at times to meet the demand of the end-user community as well as the security constraints of IT, but in 2012, denial is not an option when it comes to mobile technologies in the workplace.

*View entire "Passing the Buck" Cartoon here.

Become Mobile-Ready: IT leaders know mobile is a reality now. All the talk of consumer driven IT, bring-your-own-tool/technology (BYOT) or bring-your-own-device (BYOD) isn't lost on IT. Online technology jobs board Dice.com reported this month that tech hiring managers and recruiters are seeking mobile developers this year. If end users are bringing their devices to work and expecting to download applications, IT can start by offering mobile-ready versions of in-house applications and enable some productivity improvements for employees. Customers could also take advantage of such mobile updates and the business will ultimately win.

Minimize Risk with IAM: When IT accepts that consumer devices will become tools in their environment, they can begin to control the mobile revolution for their enterprise and their consumers. Restricting devices entirely might not be realistic, but IT leaders can determine which company data, applications and other resources will not be available to mobile platforms. For instance, identity and access management (IAM) technologies can help IT organizations allow access to corporate apps to those end users with privileges from mobile devices. The challenge is to protect the data and apps when accessed via mobile devices.

Put Business First: Personal devices in the workplace shouldn't blur the lines between what's important to the business and what matters most to the end user. While smartphones and tablets can provide productivity benefits to employees, they can also be used for non-professional pursuits during work hours. IT organizations can monitor the network to understand the application traffic, identify the business-critical needs and perhaps even throttle the apps that aren't relevant to the business. IT's priorities will continue to be focused squarely on the business and by monitoring traffic and prioritizing problems, tech leaders can ensure they continue to deliver high-quality IT services.

Keep an Eye on the Cloud: The monitoring shouldn't stop at the physical network. If IT suspects business managers or other employees are signing up for cloud services without their approval, then IT should also monitor the cloud. CIOs must understand what is being used by the company employees and how. Technologies available today can help IT gain visibility into applications on premise or in the cloud, whether it is private, public or a hybrid of the two. Monitoring traffic and cloud activities will also ensure applications perform as expected for end users and the business.

For tech leaders, awareness is critical to gain control of mobile apps in today's sophisticated IT environments as it is now easier than ever for end users to download apps or adopt cloud services without necessarily going through IT.

Denise's post is also viewed on the Service Assurance Daily Blog.

Five Global Partners Recognized for Cloud Computing Achievements at CA Technologies MSP Symposium

David Resnic — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:16:00 GMT

Today we announced the five winners of the first annual CA AppLogic Partner Awards, which were handed out at "Accelerate the Cloud Miami 2012," a CA Technologies MSP Symposium event. ScaleMatrix, DNS Europe, CorePLUS World, Cirrhus9 and Bird Hosting were recognized for their achievements in leveraging the CA AppLogic® cloud computing platform, and for their contributions in helping to expand the ecosystem of independent software vendors, service providers and end users.

My colleague Chrisitne Needles provides a great summary of the awards, including descriptions of the winners and links to the press release and photos, on the CA Cloud Storm Chasers blog. You can read her commentary by clicking here.

R.I.P. IT?

Robert Stroud — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:16:00 GMT

After being a technology geek for the last 30 years, the one thing I know for certain is that the only constant is change! I love getting a new piece of technology and learning how it can make my life better. I am not alone in this; we are breeding a generation where "geek is chic." It's a generation that doesn't think twice about adopting technology whether it's at work or play. They give little thought to Facebook or Twitter posts ranging from where they are - despite privacy concerns - to immediate feedback of a bad meal that they just had. Some describe this generation as "all about me," but I describe it more as "it's all about NOW!"

This generation and their virtual members (I count myself as one) have an amazing impact on the speed of change and if those in traditional IT organizations are not ready, you'll be swept up in this rapid evolution ... or is it a revolution?

I recall when I started in IT, our IT organization would move slowly, carefully and in an extremely methodical manner. We delivered almost all aspects of the IT environment from the mainframe to the cables that connected those consuming IT. We would carefully manage each complex change with checklists that were checked and double-checked; we would have meetings to discuss actions and would do dry runs of complex change to ensure that we wouldn't impact any aspect of a system's availability. Lead times for change would be weeks and months and if you didn't like our standards, timeframes or imposed requirements - too bad. You could scream all you liked; we simply went back into our data center behind our locked doors to the place you were not allowed access to

At this time technology was a privilege.

But something has changed. I believe we are at the tipping point where technology is no long a privilege it's a right!

Yes, technology changed - we have our PCs, the internet, the Blackberry and of course my beloved (this week) iPad - but I think that fundamentally what has changed is they education system. We now have an emerging workforce of the "empowered" generation who are conscious of technology all the while we have educated the remainder to leverage it for value and good.

As I was filling my rental car this morning at the gas station I witnessed a parent with their school age children and they were playing with an iPad. As I commented to the parent at the pump he told me they were doing their homework assignment. The children, I was told, are ages 6 and 7.

For those of you in IT, it's no longer about the delivery of magic behind closed doors. The focus for you is changing. You are moving truly into the service industry, delivering IT-enabled business value by focusing on the service and its delivery. This all is potentially delivered through a complex value chain of providers. You can no longer hide behind rules that say "no." You must alter your posture to say "yes," while focusing on the risks involved and how to effectively communicate and empower the business to accept risk where appropriate and how to mitigate it where it's not.

Will IT go away? No. At least not in the short term! Will roles change? They have changed already. The challenge or question for individuals is "to change or not to change?" If you don't, you may be left behind!

This blog also appears on the CA Service Management blog.

R.I.P. IT?

Robert Stroud — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:06:00 GMT

At this time technology was a privilege.

But something has changed. I believe we are at the tipping point where technology is no long a privilege it's a right!

This blog also appears on the CA Project and Portfolio Management blog.

Five global partners recognized in first annual CA AppLogic Partner Awards

Christine Needles — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:11:00 GMT

On Monday night at "Accelerate the Cloud Miami 2012," a CA Technologies MSP Symposium event, the team was very pleased to give out the first annual CA AppLogic Partner Awards to five very deserving partners. ScaleMatrix, DNS Europe, CorePLUS World, Cirrhus9 and Bird Hosting were recognized for their achievements with the CA AppLogic® platform - including technology innovation and success in thought leadership and driving awareness, as well as support and participation in the Cloud Commons® ecosystem.

Take a look at today's press release for more details, and click here for photos.

Following are a few highlights of the awards:

CA AppLogic Partners of the Year

ScaleMatrix (Americas recipient), a provider of cloud solutions with an infrastructure-based approach, and DNS Europe (EMEA recipient), a London-based European cloud hosting provider, were selected for their exemplary overall contributions to the CA AppLogic partner community, and for their ongoing commitment to driving platform advancements and awareness in the marketplace.

I asked ScaleMatrix' Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Chris Orlando to share his thoughts about receiving the award. He said:

"The close relationship formed between ScaleMatrix and CA Technologies has been one of the contributing factors to our early success in the cloud and managed hosting space. Flagship products like CA AppLogic, CA ARCserve, and Nimsoft provide great differentiation and play a key role in providing the enterprise class solutions our clients demand. Being named Partner of the Year is a great honor, and we look forward to what our two organizations will be able to do together in 2012."

And Stephen Hurford, Cloud Services director of DNS Europe, had this to say:

"DNS Europe is honoured to receive this award from CA Technologies in recognition of the work we've been doing with CA AppLogic in Europe. It's very exciting for us to be part of the expanding community of AppLogic service providers and businesses taking advantage of this revolutionary private cloud platform. Looking forward we see significant opportunities for DNS Europe to expand our range of AppLogic support and development services throughout Europe and beyond, forging even stronger relationships with other leading partners in the global community of CA AppLogic MSPs."

CA AppLogic Cloud Trailblazer

CorePLUS World, an on-demand service provider delivering a complete outsourced solution for IT and application services, was recognized for its innovative approach to delivering IT services via the CA AppLogic platform.

CA AppLogic Market Influencer

Cirrhus9, a cloud computing systems integrator specializing in managed services, deployment and migration solutions, and qualification and validation services, was honored for its long-time commitment to driving market awareness and contributing to various CA AppLogic communities, such as the LinkedIn AppLogic Users Group and @AppLogic Twitter feed.

CA AppLogic Top Technical Contributor

Bird Hosting, a cloud service provider and longtime CA AppLogic customer, was recognized for its ongoing contributions to the advancement and development of the CA AppLogic platform.

Thanks to all who participated in the CA Technologies MSP Symposium and to all of the partners for all of their contributions to the ecosystem!

Which is more complex: a jet airplane or a cloud data center?

Marvin Waschke — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:50:00 GMT

I am in the midst of writing a book on Cloud Standards (expected to be available on or about June 20, 2012). There are only a handful of standards that apply directly to clouds, but the number of standards that cloud computing inherently relies upon is enormous. I have lots of leeway in writing about standards in the book, mainly because it is hard to think of a computing standard that does not apply to cloud in some way.

There is a reason for that: cloud is the culmination of almost everything in computing up to now. Of course, that means that there is very little in cloud that is new (yes, I did just suggest cloud is old, too). The components and technologies that make up a cloud implementation are the same technologies that have been used for decades. So, why all the talk about cloud today? What's new are the ways all the technology fits together, the scale of its application, and its wide variety of uses.

Look at the giant data centers built by providers like Google and Amazon. They have racks and racks of perfectly ordinary computers with processors and memory that are faster and more compact than those of twenty years ago, but otherwise, not very different. Most storage is still spinning disks. Cloud data centers communicate with their consumers via networks that follow standards that have been around for twenty years. Yet they do things that have never been done before. And their cumulative complexity is truly amazing.

I did some Google research and back of the envelope calculation the other day, and promptly gave up. I tried to compare the complexity of a 737 airliner (which I happen to have been slightly involved with designing) and a cloud data center. Boeing says that a 737 has 367,000 parts. Google says that one of its data centers has 650,000 cores. Is it fair to compare airplane parts to cores? That is the point where I gave up, but think about this: which is harder? To rivet, bolt, and glue together 367,000 parts and make them fly? Or wire up 650,000 processors and make them tell me that there are 367,000 parts in a 737? Both are staggering tasks and command tremendous respect, but the data center has the numbers.

This brings me back to standards, which occupy quite a few of my thoughts lately - makes sense for someone writing a book on the subject. How is it possible to make these absurdly complex clouds work? Aside from the impressive effort of the engineers who put them together and keep them working, it is also because they are built on experience that has been accumulating for the last half century. And much of that experience is embodied in the standards that hold clouds together. For example, the interconnection between processors in a data center is often Ethernet, the standard for the data link layer in networking since the ‘80s. Why does it work in this extreme application? Because experience has tuned it and streamlined it, and made it efficient enough to do a job that far exceeds its original intent.

It is precisely because of this experience that clouds can be both complex and reliable and why I am enjoying writing my book. Over the next few months, I will share with you some of the random thoughts that come up as I'm writing. I hope you enjoy the posts, and I look forward to sharing the final book with you this summer.

*Image courtesy of stock.xchang.

The Increasing Importance of Managing Vblock Platforms

Stephen Elliot — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:07:00 GMT

One of the hot button topics at Cisco Live in London with customers of VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms is the increasing recognition of the importance of management. Many Vblock Platform customers have neither purchased any management for the converged infrastructure nor considered how the workloads or services will be managed.

To optimize the TCO, management should be at the forefront of any converged fabric buying decision. Why? The proper planning for both the fabric itself and the workloads will enable TCO optimization over both the short and long term.

The right management enables VCE customers to utilize automation and other key capabilities to reduce the risks associated with moving workloads onto a Vblock Platform and accelerate the deployment cycle. For example, capacity management provides the "what-if" analysis of workloads that aid in optimizing Vblock Platform resources and enables smoother workload migrations. Another example is planning a Vblock Platform-based virtual desktop service and the importance of a streamlined provisioning process.

Click here to learn how CA Technologies five solutions for managing Vblock Platforms -- Capacity Management and Reporting Suite, Migration for SAP Applications, Private Cloud Accelerator, Process Automation, and Virtual Desktop Automation -- can help you achieve the financial, efficiency and environmental advantages of cloud computing.

Mobility: Whose cost is it, anyway?

Chris O'Malley — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:37:00 GMT

We will be posting excerpts taken from blogs that Chris O’Malley, CEO of Nimsoft, writes for Computerworld on “Perspectives.”

Chris O’Malley’s latest Computerworld blog "Mobility: Whose cost is it, anyway,?" explains how IT organizations can help line-of-business financial managers increase productivity through mobile devices while driving down costs.

Cloud IAM Services-Everyone’s New Punching Bag

Merritt Maxim — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:36:00 GMT

Any new product or technology is invariably accompanied by certain levels of skepticism and cynicism. Whether it is the latest smart phone lacking a certain mega-pixel camera or a new version of enterprise software not supporting a given operating system or standard, critics will always appear to question these new products' viability.

As we enter 2012, cloud computing, or more specifically, Identity and Access Management as a cloud service, is seeing a healthy level of criticism around its viability and maturity. This is to be expected as with any new product or offering, but based on my discussions with customers and partners over the last few months; some of this criticism is unfounded.

Yes, organizations have certain levels of trepidation around IAM in the cloud, but interestingly many of these concerns are business and operational not technology issues. Questions such as:

Physical locations of datacenters
Disaster recovery/backup procedures
Ownership and storage of data in cloud
Auditing procedures
Background screening on datacenter employees

These are all valid questions and now that even Virginia is susceptible to seismic activity, surprisingly common. But these questions should not be reason for skepticism. The reason is that these issues can be solved and addressed. If customers' questions were focused purely on underlying technology issues such as lack of standards support or lack of support for certain use cases, it would be cause for concern as such issues would indicate a mismatch between customer requirements and the actual technology (anyone remember PKI in the late 1990s?).

When concerns focus more on business issues, that is cause for optimism. Security professionals need to look no farther than the growth of identity federation as a proof point. Although identity federation had some early hiccups on standards and implementations, many of the obstacles for federation were centered around contractual issues between partners and how to execute/manage such relationships. The continued maturation of identity federation has proven that these business issues have been resolved and that federation has grown successfully without continued technological obstacles.

There is no doubt that there are still many technology issues that have to be addressed with cloud IAM, but we can look to initiatives like SCIM as proof that the industry is committed to solving these. When it comes to cloud IAM, in the words of the great 1980s band Timbuk3, "The Future is So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades."

New CA Private Cloud Accelerator for Vblock Platforms Offers Automated Self-Service Delivery of IaaS

David Resnic — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:31:00 GMT

Stephen Elliot, vice president of product management, CA Technologies, provides a brief overview of CA Private Cloud Accelerator for Vblock^TM Platforms, a new solution that drives Business Service Innovation by enabling IT to provide rapid, predictable and secure provisioning and delivery of cloud infrastructure and critical IT and business services. This is the company's fifth solution certified for use with VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms, all of which are based on our Unified Automation solutions. To learn more, read today's press release.