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August 2011 - Posts

Dear IT: If you ignore me, I'll ignore you

Published: August 31 2011, 09:52 AM | 4 Comment(s)
by Jeffrey Abbott

Consumerization of IT. So what? My spellchecker may not recognize it yet, but it's the latest trend in IT. Actually, it's an observation. It's not about some easy, new, and efficient way to get IT done. In fact, for IT management, it's the unfortunate result of having fallen behind. IT is getting bypassed.

Consumers of IT services have driven the demand for cloud-based services. IT management is scrambling to deal with it. For IT, it's a risk. It's unfamiliar. It's decentralized. It's a threat. Should IT embrace cloud? Internal? External? Public? Private? Hybrid? Should they support mobile devices? Which ones? Personal computers in the home? Which OSs? Tablets? Web-based apps?

The answer is yes, and IT knows it. But the $100,000 question is: "How can IT enable all the methods that IT consumers choose to consume while supporting all the apps that they want to access?" Well... it can't. At least not all at once. But progress is better than perfection.

Because IT is becoming consumer driven, IT needs to provide consumer-driven IT. This means that IT needs to listen to its customers. In the past, IT based its service decisions on guidance from finance, legal, and operations executives. "Reduce exposure to risk. Directly control security. Manage configuration and compliance." But the game has changed. If IT is not providing the path of least resistance to productivity, (again) it will be bypassed.

So IT appears to be behind the 8-ball, but the game is just beginning. The answer may lie in another trend... communities. Whether it's company internal, product user groups, or social or professional networking, online communities provide the ultimate access to nearly any audience. IT has the opportunity to re-establish itself as a business enabler simply by asking, listening, prioritizing, and delivering. Consumers of IT business services want to know their options for today and into the future. Tell them. Ask them. Involve them.

For example, the fastest way to get me angry enough to bypass you, go over your head, or ignore you, is to ignore me. Yet the best way to keep me under [your] control, is to communicate with me. Often.

Most enterprise employees would agree that the experience of logging a trouble ticket with IT, or requesting access to an unsupported service, is a less-than-personal experience. How could IT know what people really want? How can IT consumers communicate a "wish list" to IT, and talk about it?

By embracing the online communities that IT consumers are using, IT stands a realistic chance of understanding the challenges of its customers, identifying solutions, prioritizing their delivery, and maintaining control of IT. Yes, the security, and risk, and all that matter, but remember, the services themselves matter more.

*Public domain image courtesy of Vera Kratochvil.

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By: Jeffrey Abbott
Jeffrey Abbott ( @JeffreyAbbott ) is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Cloud Commons at CA Technologies. In this role, Jeff focuses on industry trends and IT management challenges to position the company’s cloud solutions to viable market segments. When he’s not thinking about clouds, Jeff is often...
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Why cloud computing hype isn't bad for IT after all

Published: August 23 2011, 10:21 AM | no comments
by Jay Fry

A week or two back, ReadWriteWeb ran and published the results of a reader poll of the "most over-hyped cloud technologies." Amusingly, the results (aside from a NoSQL mention) read like the basic NIST definition of the key components of cloud computing. Software as a Service, private clouds, Infrastructure as a Service, and Platform as a Service all made the top 5. 

Wow, I thought. That barely scratches the surface. Plenty more cloud computing terms were enjoying their moment of irrational exuberance, but were being left out in the cold by this particular survey. A few Twitter conversations unearthed some very deserving nominations. Not to be forgotten: 

  • Hybrid clouds.  Apparently hybrid clouds didn't have quite enough hype-y-ness to make the list. Weird, considering that term tends to be the punch line to nearly every cloud strategy and direction conversation that I hear. Better luck at next year's awards ceremony, I guess.

     
  • Cloud bursting (nominated by @reillyusa and @AaronMotsinger). Some folks have been arguing back and forth about whether it is really a legitimate (or even possible) use case. @pdowning1077 noted he much preferred the term "capacity on demand," but that doesn't help settle the argument.

     
  • Cloud brokers. Forrester has been posting some interesting research for its subscriberson this new role (also defined by NIST in the July 5 version of its standards roadmap, if you want a standards org to weigh in for legitimacy). I'd say this conversation is still very early. The hype wagon train for this term has just set off down the road.


But probably the most impactful comment was another by @pdowning1077. "How about just the term ‘cloud' [in general]?" he asked. How could they forget to include the mother of all hype-worthy terms in their polling? 


So much hype that "cloud computing" becomes meaningless? 

The same week of all this discussion, David Linthicum reported that cloud computing (the term) had now become essentially "meaningless." That comment came on the heels of Gartner's annual publication of their hype cycles. A quick scan notes that cloud computing is still close to where it was last year, just nosing over the (hype-laden) peak of inflated expectations. Private cloud computing is rapidly moving to join it, perched perilously over the trough of disillusionment, ready to take the leap. 


OK, no one would argue with the extreme levels of marketing attention from everyone from start-ups to 30-year-old software companies (who, us?) to service providers. But just because a bunch of marketing people are in a frenzy doesn't mean we should write off the trend they are talking about as a bunch of meaningless fluff. 


The hype has caused IT to pay attention to cloud computing 


In fact, if I'm reading the market right, I'd say that there are actually some really good things that have come out of the hype around cloud (and continue to do so). 

  • We suddenly had something to call this good idea. There were a bunch of technologies and entrepreneurs out there struggling for several years to put a palatable name to what they were working on. Some started off calling this grid computing, some utility computing, and others more obscure terms than those. But, the early hype around cloud computing a few years back gave a name to the idea. We pulled several of these companies into CA (Cassatt and 3Tera, to name two), but many others were struggling with this same issue. One of my early posts on this blogwas about how the term private cloud may not have been precise or perfect, but it enabled us to have the right conversation. I think the same thing goes for the overall cloud computing concept.
     
  • It created a way to catch the attention and imagination of enterprise IT. By talking about a Big Vision of IT infrastructure that matched compute supply with compute demands at any given time (and matched costs accordingly), ears perked up. It was the next logical topic to discuss with the IT guys who were fresh from thinking about how virtualization could free them up from particular pieces of hardware. In a world in which IT is fighting for every budget dollar, mostly just to keep treading water, an idea about how to get off this downhill hamster wheel is at least appealing to consider. That's step one. (Ken Oestreich, by the way, has a great blog from a few months back on the brief history of the vision of cloud computing.)
     
  • The hype extended the discussion past the technologists to the business people. All the hubbub over cloud computing got the business users excited at a time when the economy was giving them little to be excited about. "So, you mean I might have a way to turn some of these business ideas into reality, despite the drubbing that the sour economy has given us and the measly budget that my IT partners say we have at our disposal?" This has been important - the business guys are the ones, in the end, pushing when IT starts to get nervous and pulls back from the visionary edge that cloud puts them on.

     
  • The hype has pressured big vendors into some self-reflection that will be beneficial for their customers. Many of the larger vendors jumped on the cloud bandwagon through new offerings, blatant rebranding of old offerings (shame on you), acquisitions, and the like. To make any of these moves, vendors have had to take stock and rethink what they can and should be providing given what their customers want. In some cases (like here at CA with Nimsoft), it causes the vendors to broaden the set of customers they are actually serving.

 

  • The intense amount of discussion has started an intense amount of scrutiny, revealing how useful cloud can actually be. One thing that happens when the hype levels reach fever pitch is that people start pushing back. The recent demand for real-world examples and exasperation over cloud outages has been the natural backlash from being force-fed lots and lots of best-case scenarios, rainbows, and unicorns. Journalists and analysts have often helped push for these kind of reality checks, though they also tend to pile on as technologies or ideas drop into the "trough of disillusionment" that Gartner is so fond of describing. Enterprise IT, business users, and the vendors themselves all eventually do a fair bit of policing, sometimes too late for their own good, but we seem to be headed in this (positive) direction right now. 

So while a lot of the hype can seem like so much wasted energy from all parties, when the trend or shift being hyped actually has merit, something useful comes out the other end. Now, would most of us (advertising agencies and ad reps excluded) prefer some way to skip the aggravation of this process and jump right to the end? I'd bet so. However, consider this all a bit of a trial by fire. The only way for something to be proven strong enough to pass through the fire is, well, to actually do it. 


So, hold your nose and smile. Hype is good - with a few important caveats. Be critical. Be well-armed with the right questions to ask in order to discern the valuable from the merely fancifully over-marketed. Be ready to see the value in approaching something a new way, even if it's something you've done the same way for decades. Be pragmatic enough to know it won't happen overnight or with the wave of a magic wand. 

If it makes you feel any better, cloud computing isn't the only term getting the Gartner Hype Curve treatment this year. Added to the list, according to this ReadWriteWeb article, were big data, gamification, Internet of Things, and consumerization. Misery loves company, I guess. 

And, in the meantime, it may be time to come up with your own term to start campaigning for next year's Cloud Hype Awards. I think the hype is here to stay for a while longer. 

*Image used under GNU Free Documentation License, downloaded from Wikipedia.

This blog is cross-posted at Data Center Dialog. Follow @jayfry3 on Twitter.

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By: Jay Fry
Jay Fry is vice president of marketing, Cloud Computing, at CA Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing and management for innovative enterprise software companies. Prior to CA, Jay was vice president of marketing at cloud computing start-up Cassatt and founded the marketing department...
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Wallace and Bird Hosting soar: how they save on hardware while delivering more complex apps

Published: August 16 2011, 09:23 AM | no comments
by Jay Fry

Many of the cloud service providers that we are working with here at CA Technologies are small, but aggressive. These are the guys that know their business really, really well and are the ones who are targeting their niches pretty successfully. The ability to focus and be nimble are some of the key indicators of success in the service provider space. 

We've been calling folks like these "Cloud Accelerators" - given how instrumental these service providers are being in the adoption of cloud computing -- and we have been profiling some of the more interesting ones. 

Bird Hosting strikes me as a great example of one of these "accelerators." They may not be on your radar screen yet, but Bird Hosting is a cloud service provider that's nimble and all about the personal touch. They not only deliver cloud hosting and other key services to customers, you can find them answering questions on WebHostingTalk.com. They post reviews talking through the pros and cons of the newest rev of their cloud platform. They even run a hardware review site. (After all, there are benefits for a service provider to know this stuff.) 

They do all this with 10 employees, 3 locations...and they have 3,600 customers. 

Bird Hosting's CEO, Michael Wallace, answered a few questions about their operations, what's key for a service provider's cloud platform, and even what's up with their name. Read on: 

Jay Fry: You're a relatively small service provider. How many data centers do you need to effectively serve a nationwide customer base? What else is important? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: We started in Seattle. When you have a data center in Seattle and customers in New York, the content isn't delivered as quickly as you'd like - content delivery speed is important. We saw a need for something more central in the U.S., and so we went to Dallas. We now have 3 data centers (Seattle, Dallas, Washington, D.C.) and can cover the whole United States effectively. 

In fact, we have customers across the world. We have customers that range from small shared-hosting accounts to large corporations. For example, we support a travel organization in New York, a food chain also in New York, as well as Costco. We host and produce videos that have 360-degree views of sheds and playgrounds that Costco sells. 

Jay Fry: How did you get started in the service provider business? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: We originally started in 2005. My father was one of the pioneers of the Internet; he started an ISP in 1991. I started out doing web hosting with some big corporate website hosters. I found that they were subpar, both from how they presented themselves to the services they offered. So I decided to do my own. I had the knowledge to do it. And I had just returned from a lengthy tour of duty with the U.S. Air Force in Iraq and was ready to take a bold move and launch my own business. 

Jay Fry: A recent article in SearchITChannel by Carl Brooks talked about the fact that the market is starting to realize that enterprises who are building private clouds and service providers that are selling public cloud services have some very different needs. Can you talk a bit about what you think is important to have in a cloud platform for service providers like yourself? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: Two things that are very important are cost savings and flexibility. With CA AppLogic [what Bird Hosting uses], I'm not limited. It's a platform that allows me to offer a full range of services. Before I had to have separate machines for each individual task. We had to have a box for Windows, a box for Linux, and when we added customers, we had to add more dedicated boxes. With AppLogic, you don't have to be limited to a certain OS. You have a cluster of servers and it allows us to run all of our applications on top; it's neutral. So that helps us save money - we are able to standardize hardware and we can even save power. 

Jay Fry: Speaking of saving power, I've heard you talk about how much you've reduced your environmental impact. Can you quantify what you've been able to do? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: When we first started our business, we sold a lot of dedicated servers. Each would have a power draw even when idle. CA AppLogic allowed us to take those boxes and cram them into a virtual environment. Customers on dedicated servers were able to run as virtual dedicated servers instead. Customers were paying for a given amount of resources; we would give them the resources and they would run their environment. We cut back from 6 full cabinets to just one cabinet in one data center. 

We were able to take 200 boxes and put that into 10 boxes. In our Dallas facility, for each of our cabinets we have two power drops, which costs $960 per cabinet - just for power. We were able to cut back 10 power drops, saving us about $10,000 per month. 

Jay Fry: Service providers are all looking for ways to define a niche that they can own, build up new revenue opportunities, and grow their margins. What has your cloud platform decision and approach meant competitively? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: It allowed us to broaden our market. We could have stayed where we were and offered shared hosting and dedicated servers. But using AppLogic has allowed us to venture into more complex application hosting. It allows us to create more complex environments with ease. Those environments usually would have taken us a long time to set up if we were going to do it in a physical environment-running cables from an end gateway or a firewall to a hardware load balancer to machines. That's what AppLogic does in software. 

We can support more complex applications. We wouldn't be able to offer as many value-added services without AppLogic. We can do so quickly and efficiently, scaling things up or down as much as they need. And then we can charge per resource. 

Jay Fry: Do you see IaaS providers like Amazon as competitors? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: I don't consider Amazon a direct competitor - they can't do what we can do. We have a running joke - customers come in and say "our uptime is 70% with Amazon Web Services." We can give them close to 100%. 

Jay Fry: You also do a lot of stress testing with your hardware. What has that meant for customers? What have you found? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: CA AppLogic is designed to take a bunch of small systems and merge them into a cloud. With more cores and more memory on each machine, you can get more out of each machine without adding more hardware footprint. We decided to start a little testing to find out what are our limits, what can we do? We tested different types of hard drives and configurations, different controllers, to see what worked best. 

Testing the efficiency of servers brought me into a whole new area. I now run a hardware review site on the side. The stress-test work helps us figure out what machines can handle without impacting performance. 

[Note: you can contact Michael directly to talk about any of his results if you're interested in more details.] 

Jay Fry: Do your customers know anything about cloud computing? Does it matter to them? 

Michael Wallace, Bird Hosting: There has been a lot of confusion and debate with the cloud. When I started out, we heard concerns about sharing data. We see less concern about that now. They do see the power of cloud computing and interact with it if they are using our virtual private data center offering. We dedicate a given group of machines to a customer and they get access to the CA AppLogic portal so they can build applications the way they see fit. They use CA AppLogic to virtually build their infrastructure. 

... 

Thanks for the time, Michael. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the name, you'll be happy to hear that I (of course) didn't let that go. Here's what Michael said about the name: "When we started looking for names, I was also looking for a mascot. That's where Bird Hosting came from." Did he try other more, er, ferocious names? "HostGator was taken," said Michael. "And Dog Hosting was too gangster for me." 

The resulting mascot has an uncanny resemblance to Twitter's feathered friend, if I do say so myself. Or the stars of a certain iPad game I've gotten myself hooked on. 

But no Angry Birds here. Just a set of happy customers benefiting from Bird Hosting's personal focus on delivering what experience dictates is required for service providers to soar: performance, reliability, and value. 

You can read the Cloud Accelerator profile of Michael and Bird Hosting on the CA Technologies site. The site also features other luminaries who are setting the pace for cloud computing. 

 

This blog is cross-posted at Data Center Dialog. Follow @jayfry3 on Twitter.

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By: Jay Fry
Jay Fry is vice president of marketing, Cloud Computing, at CA Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in marketing and management for innovative enterprise software companies. Prior to CA, Jay was vice president of marketing at cloud computing start-up Cassatt and founded the marketing department...
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Why Do You *NOT* Love Going to VMworld?

Published: August 15 2011, 08:05 AM | no comments
by Andi Mann

In my last post, I asked why you love going to VMworld, and gave you a few of my reasons - like the people, the technology, the announcements, the sessions, the labs, and the parties.

But like any business trip, it is not all fun and games, beer and skittles, rainbows and unicorns.

So why do you *not* like going to VMworld?

Like my last post, I'll go first. Here are some things I really do *not* love about going to VMworld - as well as some upsides to take the sting off :) :

  • Las Vegas - Moscone at San Francisco was great, but I have been to Vegas so much now that I am getting tired of it. 
  • Copenhagen - Copenhagen is really expensive and hard to get to from the US, and the Bella Center is so far out of town, away from most hotels, with barely anything nearby.
    • Upside: Copenhagen really is a beautiful city, and if you have a spare day you can visit the fabulous Louisiana nearby.
  • The internet access - WiFi (and 3G) at VMworld is always over-subscribed and under-provisioned, though this is not surprising for such a large event. Especially in Vegas, where the casinos don't want you to do anything except eat, drink, and gamble, I don't expect the Venetian to be any better than Moscone last year. 
    • Upside: it is a great excuse not to answer that email/IM/DM from your boss!
  • The conference food - let's face it, conference food is rarely gourmet, and VMworld is no different. In their defense, when you are serving 15,000+ people you will never get Tetsuya's, Moto, or Le Gavroche. 
    • Upside: both Vegas and Copenhagen have some great food - albeit outside the conference - including what is currently considered the best restaurant in the world.
  • The VMworld website - well, the less said about that the better. Suffice to say, it frustrated me so much this year that I spent an afternoon redoing the EMEA hotel listings in a usable format. 
    • Upside: once you have registered and scheduled your sessions, you really don't need the website anymore.
  • The hangover(s) - I love the parties, but not the hangovers. So be careful what, how much, how early, and how late you drink. I try to alternate hard drinks with soft drinks  so I can stay longer and suffer less (my regular is vodka & lime; my change-up is lime and soda) . It keeps me hydrated and  you can't even tell it is non-alcoholic. 
    • Upside: a hangover means you probably had a great night at a great party with some great people. :)
  • The main party - I know loads of people loved them, but aged rockers Foreigner (with just one original member) were not my bag. And having seen INXS live at Sydney pubs (like the famous Manly Vale) in the 80s, why would I want to see them old and busted with no Michael Hutchence? 
    • Upside: This year The Killers are playing the party - at least they have had a chart hit this millennium!

But really, while I can complain about all these little things, in the end they do not really matter. I still love going to VMworld :)

That said - what do you *not* love about going to VMworld?

 

This blog is cross-posted at Andi Mann - Übergeek. Follow @AndiMann on Twitter.

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By: Andi Mann
Andi Mann is vice president of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies. With over 20 years’ experience across four continents, Andi has deep expertise of enterprise software on cloud, mainframe, midrange, server and desktop systems. Andi has worked within IT departments for governments and corporations...
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Why Do You Love Going to VMworld?

Published: August 15 2011, 08:02 AM | no comments
by Andi Mann

I love going to VMworld. It may be my favorite conference of the year (after CA World, of course!).

If you love going to VMworld too, then I would really like to know why.

I'll start ...

For me, the best part of going to VMworld is the people, the technology, the announcements, the sessions, the labs, the parties, and the buzz:

  • I meet great friends, colleagues, customers, analysts, tweeps, and journalists who I hardly see during the year - even though I never seem to have enough time to see everyone I want to!
  • The labs are reportedly excellent, and it is hard to beat them for in-depth hands-on training. I'm hoping to finally attend these myself this year, if only I can find the time!
  • There are always interesting announcements, whether from VMware or their partners (like CA) with a load of cool new tools. I can't wait for the keynotes!
  • The Solutions Exchange is always amazing. Every year it gets bigger, with even more cool new tech. As an übergeek, I totally love it, and typically spend hours just wandering the booths!
  • The SWAG from VMware and the Solutions Exchange vendors is always neat. It is fun to see what are 'the cool tchotchkes' every year, and the fun games, contests, and things to do on the booths make it feel like a fun fair!
  • The parties - oh my goodness, the parties! I never get to all of them (my competitors don't invite me as much as when I was an analyst ;) ), but especially this year in Vegas, the parties should be a lot of fun.
  • There are always loads of great sessions, if I can get to them between meetings. I learn so much every year, and this VMworld should be no different.

I am really excited to be speaking again this year - I would love to see you there!

Speaking of the sessions, I am really excited to be speaking again this year. In Las Vegas I am presenting  'Extending the value of  VMware solutions: How to design, deliver, and maintain reliable, mission-critical virtualization and cloud services' (session SPO3974).

I think this will be a really useful session, where I will explain how you can leverage your investment in great foundational technologies from VMware to design, deliver, and maintain mission-critical virtual and cloud services, including how to smooth your evolution and revolution to private, public, and hybrid cloud, with key excerpts from my book, 'Visible Ops - Private Cloud: From virtualization to private cloud in 4 practical steps'. Please book SPO3974 into your online schedule builder for Wednesday, August 31 at 10:00 a.m. PT. I would love to see you there!

Plus, please don't miss a couple of my CA Technologies colleagues speaking too:

  • The Agony and the Ecstasy: Two Days in the Life of a CIO - Karen Sage, our vice president of Alliance Solutions, will present this Super Session on Monday, August 29 at 2:00 p.m. PT. Karen has incredible experience and insight into the world of the IT executive, and will discuss how converged cloud computing infrastructure is radically reshaping how organizations will use technology to increase innovation and improve business agility.
  • Avoid Virtual Stall with Linked Clones - Allan Andersen, vice president of Product Management, will present this breakout session on Thursday, September 1 at 10:30 a.m. PT. Alan is a fascinating guy and really smart, and will explain how to extend VMware View Linked Clones to reduce storage costs, simplify management, and overcome virtual desktop stall, plus how other enterprise management technologies are critical for the success of VMware View deployments.

Also, CA Technologies will be giving away a limited number of free copies of 'Visible Ops - Private Cloud' at the CA Technologies booth (#439) in the Solutions Exchange. They will be there every day, so you can pick them up and have a chat with the great people on the CA booth. You might catch me there too, in between meetings. Even better, come along on Wednesday, August 31 at 11:15 a.m. PT (right after my session), when all three authors 'of Visible Ops - Private Cloud' - Jeanne Morain, Kurt Milne, and myself - will be there to give away and sign copies too!

So if you are going to VMworld, let me know. I would love to connect, maybe hit a party or two together!

And let me know why you love going to VMworld too!

 

This blog is cross-posted at Andi Mann - Übergeek. Follow @AndiMann on Twitter.

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By: Andi Mann
Andi Mann is vice president of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies. With over 20 years’ experience across four continents, Andi has deep expertise of enterprise software on cloud, mainframe, midrange, server and desktop systems. Andi has worked within IT departments for governments and corporations...
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