DataZen - Data Center and IT Infrastructure, Data, Systems and Service Management

Are you insinuating that Amazon is shorting you, or that you enjoy expanded space and time?

2010-10-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

On the cusp of the GA version of the Amazon AWS connector for CA Process Automation, a gift from…

The new tier has limits, but offers the chance to experience Amazon Web Services provision.

From the article, I noticed something odd…

“The allocations announced included 750 hours per month of free EC2 and Elastic Load Balancer usage, which the company claimed was equivalent to continuous running.”

Last I checked there were 745 hours in the longest month of any given year, when accounting for Daylight Saving adjustment. So, the insinuation of “claimed” implies that somehow AWS was shorting us on our free (as in free beer).

Legacy matters: why the IBM mainframe continues to thrive

2010-04-10T07:59:00.000-04:00

Legacy matters: why the IBM mainframe continues to thrive: "Legacy matters: why the IBM mainframe continues to thrive"

IBM breaks OSS patent promise, targets mainframe emulator

2010-04-10T07:57:00.000-04:00

IBM breaks OSS patent promise, targets mainframe emulator: "IBM breaks OSS patent promise, targets mainframe emulator"

Is IBM splitting hairs with open source?

2010-04-10T07:56:00.000-04:00

Is IBM splitting hairs with open source?: "Is IBM splitting hairs with open source? by Scott Merrill"

@Vambenepe Enterprise application integration patterns for IT management: a blast from the past or from the future?

2010-04-07T15:59:00.001-04:00

William Vambenepe: "Enterprise application integration patterns for IT management: a blast from the past or from the future?"

Relational databases aren't right for the cloud

2010-03-28T17:25:00.000-04:00

Computerworld > Relational databases aren't right for the cloud: "Relational databases aren't right for the cloud
New database processing methods are required, says Dave Linthicum"

Understanding cloud and 'devops'--part 2 | The Wisdom of Clouds - CNET News

2010-03-28T17:07:00.000-04:00

Understanding cloud and 'devops'--part 2 | The Wisdom of Clouds - CNET News: "Understanding cloud and 'devops'--part 2
by James Urquhart"

Cloud Computing Start-Up Picks the Lock on Hypervisors | Cloud Computing Journal

2010-03-24T13:08:00.000-04:00

Cloud Computing Start-Up Picks the Lock on Hypervisors | Cloud Computing Journal

There Is Still No Open Source Software Market -- Seeking Alpha

2010-03-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

There Is Still No Open Source Software Market -- Seeking Alpha: "There Is Still No Open Source Software Market"

IBM games highlight benefits of 'Smarter Planet' | Crave - CNET

2010-02-07T16:03:00.002-05:00

HP was the previous anchor vendor for the big orb at Epcot, and AT&T prior to that. IBM is paying Disney a lot for their turn at this premium venue. I haven't been to Epcot recently, so I hope they are putting their marketing dollars to good use and providing a forward thinking message aligned with the original intentions of Epcot. I suspect however that it's more of the same commercial drivel. Somehow I just know that Walt is rolling over in his grave.

Private Clouds Are A Fix, Not The Future -- InformationWeek

2010-01-13T15:36:00.004-05:00

Private Clouds Are A Fix, Not The Future -- InformationWeek

While most public cloud service providers (CSP) seem to be poorly equipped to provide enterprise grade services, I can see this clearly changing. I agree with the assertion that public CSP's will be able to drive out costs that internal IT would be challenged to match. Scale is one aspect, but efficiency through automation and sustainable data centers, as well as the ability to design and source bespoke equipment and software (related to scale) is beyond the grasp of most but the largest IT shops.

Obama to Name Howard A. Schmidt as Chief of Cybersecurity - NYTimes.com

2009-12-22T06:12:00.000-05:00

Obama to Name Howard A. Schmidt as Chief of Cybersecurity - NYTimes.com: "Obama to Name Chief of Cybersecurity"

Forrester: "How Can EA Address Key CIO Issues?"

2009-12-15T18:21:00.001-05:00

"How Can EA Address Key CIO Issues?"

Enterprise architecture should be a central tool CIOs use to advance their IT agenda. But often CIOs don't know what to ask for from EA, and architecture teams believe their charter is "to do architecture." Frequently, the clearest mission is reducing IT costs via technology standardization. This is a fine mission, but EA can do more. The work we did with one Forrester client illustrates how EA can help CIOs succeed in other critical ways.

The CIO of a financial services companybrought us in to improve how business and IT worked together. Business leaders treated IT as an order taker, which basically meant that IT had to be reactive and tactical. Low cost was executive management's overriding concern. We worked with this organization to use architecture to shift this business perception. Architects were embedded with business relationship management. These architects mapped business requests into a longer view and educated business leaders on how a more strategic approach would provide better benefits at lower cost. Business-focused road maps became part of IT planning and budgeting, linking IT activities to business needs and goals. The impact of these changes is that IT in this firm is shifting from order taker to business partner, which was the CIO's objective.

How EA can advance the CIO's agenda is an ongoing focus of our research and client advisory. Several recent reports illustrate this: In "The Five Essential Metrics For Managing EA," Jeff Scott describes metrics CIOs can use to monitor their EA program's effectiveness. Henry Peyret, in "Enterprise Architects Must Link Business Processes With MDM Strategies," describes how EA teams can contribute to business process optimization withinformation architecture that addresses sourcing the right information for business process effectiveness. An upcoming document -- "The State Of Enterprise Architecture 2010: Organization, Priorities, And Support" -- will examine how well EA teams deliver recognized value.

Alex Cullen

Research Director, Enterprise Architecture, Forrester

Microsoft Acquires Opalis Software

2009-12-13T01:23:00.002-05:00

Microsoft acquired my former (2008) employer Opalis Software, for a undisclosed sum, which was rumored to be $60M USD. Considering other more recent acquisitions, such as CA's acquisition of Optinuity, after the OEM and potential acquisition deal with Opalis came apart, for much much less, I would suspect that MSFT offered much less as well.

There is some excellent talent in the Opalis organization, including CTO Charles Crouchman, formerly with CA from the Cybermation acquisition and his Product Management (Wes, Gp, Kaj) team and Engineering team. There is also an excellent Support organization led by Jeff.

This acquisition brings some much needed automation capabilities to Systems Center, and with the previous white-label prep done during the CA OEM partnership and existing Opalis integration to SCOM should enable a quick time to market for Microsoft. There were previous plans to include the ability to use Powershell scripts within the automation objects enable more complex logic and tighter integration with Windows and all the interfaces.

I'll be interested to see how this plays out, especially how it might be leveraged with Azure, in the public cloud, as well as how it might assist with enabling private clouds. There is also strong potential in Hyper-V virtualized environments including how you might orchestrate across other virtualization platforms, such as VMware and Citrix. Opalis fostered a fairly broad set of integrations to various heterogeneous partners, including BMC, CA, HP, IBM, and others that could prove interesting in light of co-opetition. Those integrations across the broad range of systems management tools, including service desk, virtualization, storage, network, provisioning, etc is a big part of the value proposition. ITIL focused on the processes, and each of these aforementioned tools is a point solution but orchestration allows them to work together in a Unifed Federated Architecture (tm) to support interoperability in a enterprise architecture.

Azure Gets its First Commercial ERP App | Cloud Computing Journal

2009-11-29T17:59:00.001-05:00

Azure Gets its First Commercial ERP App | Cloud Computing Journal

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IBM boosts Juniper pact, plays down Cisco rivalry | Technology | Reuters

2009-07-24T17:04:00.000-04:00

Spotted this article just after I made my last post.

So, like I said in that last post... as partnerships start to get closer, consolidation.

more

Cisco, H-P Square Off in Hunt for Revenue - WSJ.com

2009-07-24T16:55:00.000-04:00

We should anticipate much more Clash of the Titans, as technology giants like Cisco, HP, IBM, Oracle et al look for ways to increase growth. Watch IBM get closer to Brocade and Juniper, while HP invests in it's networking business and Cisco starts to ship it's UCS servers. Oracle will digest Sun and then make some smaller but key acquisitions to bolster the portfolio, as usual. These will make for strange bedfellows despite the spirit of co-opetition.

more

Inside Cisco Systems' Unified Computing System

2009-07-23T09:32:00.003-04:00

Marc Staimer, President of Dragon Slayer Consulting, provides a concise overview of the key and unique aspects of UCS.

VN-Link is certainly unique and key to visibility for management of UCS.

Marc gives short shrift to UCS Manager, which I believe will be an emerging key aspect.

more

Create Pools to Simplify Blade Management in Cisco UCS

2009-07-22T12:33:00.001-04:00

Another element of the Cisco UCS approach that provides simplicity in managing to scale.

more

2009 HP Tech Forum Paul Miller, VP ESS Mktg

2009-06-17T13:12:00.001-04:00

High level presentation on the convergence of virtualized infrastructure to support Cloud services.

#hptf 2009 HP Tech Forum Paul Miller General Session

View more OpenOffice presentations from HPintheEnterprise.

Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency

2009-06-17T13:07:00.001-04:00

McKinsey & Co from the Uptime Institue Symposium

Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency

View more OpenOffice presentations from McKinseyandCompany.

The Secret to Dealing With Infrastructure Headaches

2009-06-14T08:19:00.003-04:00

by Rohit Sharma

In our ideal webworld, developing and deploying consumer-facing web-based applications should be as easy as 1-2-3.

Step 1: Develop

Step 2: Deploy

Step 3: Scale

And as every single successful application on the web teaches us instead, the magical step 2 of deploying and scaling the application is the most treacherous part of it all. With clouds of all kinds — compute, store and networking — hovering hopefully around us, application developers would love to focus on refining the application vs. worrying about fixing underlying infrastructure.

more...

Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS

2009-06-12T16:25:00.003-04:00

I felt aged when I reviewed the timeline and noted that I was a journeyman with C/Unix in the early 80's when AT&T released Unix System V, Thompson and Ritchie won the ACM Turing award and Sun was founded. Ah, and the green glow of the terminal from my DEC PDP 11/70. Makes me wonder what would've happend if I had taken that job as a kernel developer with Bell Labs, instead of staying in Texas with my sweetheart whom I've been married to for twenty-two years. - Mark

Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS

After four decades, the future of the operating system is clouded, but its legacy will endure.

by Gary Anthes

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9133570&taxonomyId=89

Data Center Overload

2009-06-12T07:50:00.005-04:00

This is a good primer for non-IT'ers, on the state of the data center. The amount of energy required and the form-factors of computing are shifting, while our dependence on the internet and the services it delivers are galvanizing to "utility" status. - Mark

Data Center Overload

By TOM VANDERBILT

Published: June 8, 2009
The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html

The Evolution of Cisco’s Data Center Strategy

2009-06-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

"Cisco’s data center strategy is unfolding. It’s gone from a focus on consolidation to virtualization to automation."

"From complexity to simplicity, rigidity to flexibility, isolation to shared infrastructures, power-hungry to power-efficient, siloed IT teams to transparent organizations, and discreet to integrated platforms – the next-generation data center won’t be as disjointed or sedentary. With unified computing and virtualization, data centers will be more scalable and agile."