What did PernixData announce?

Here's what PernixData said about its technology:

PernixData, the leader in virtualizing server flash, announced today the general availability of PernixData FVP™, the industry’s first and only hypervisor for server side flash. This revolutionary software virtualizes all server side flash into a clustered acceleration tier that enables IT administrators to quickly, easily and cost-effectively scale-out storage performance completely independent of storage capacity. The result is unprecedented read and write performance for all virtual machines (VMs), without the need to change existing server and storage infrastructure. With flash storage virtualization, PernixData fundamentally changes how storage is designed and operated in virtual data centers.

PernixData FVP is installed in minutes and with no changes necessary to VMs, servers or storage. With a few clicks of a mouse, IT teams can aggregate available server side flash into clusters that are used to satisfy the storage performance needs of the virtual infrastructure. Unique advantages of PernixData FVP include:

• Scale-out performance independent of storage capacity: With PernixData FVP, increased storage performance across an entire data center is as simple as clustering more server side flash. Performance can be architected based on specific VMs or application requirements rather than being exclusively tied to data store requirements.
• Seamless deployment: The PernixData FVP technology leverages the investment in infrastructure that companies already have in place. The software is deployed in less than 20 minutes, with no changes (or reboots) required to VMs, servers or primary storage.
• Full support for VMware cluster operations: PernixData FVP uses patent-pending Flash Cluster™ technology to enable any host to remotely access the flash device(s) on any other host in the cluster. This technology enables PernixData FVP to seamlessly support all VMware operations and products, such as vMotion, DRS, HA, Snapshot, VDP, Site Recovery Manager™, Horizon View™ and vCloud Director®. Live migrations and distributed resource management functions continue to operate transparently with PernixData FVP, with no changes to workflows and no hits to application, network or storage performance.
• Full read and write acceleration with fault tolerance: PernixData FVP is the only server side solution to support full read and write (write through / write back) acceleration for maximum performance across all virtual applications. Writes are replicated across clustered hosts to ensure complete fault tolerance.

Snapshot analysis

First of all let me say that it does appear that PernixData could add significant value to VMware-centric computing environments. The ability to both accelerate storage performance and to increase overall storage reliability and availability using shared cache and flash-based storage could really be of help. If a company has chosen Xen, Hyper-V or KVM as their hypervisor standard, however, PernixData doesn't have a product to be of help. Since this is the company's first product, I'll assign this issue to the "start up blues" category and hold tightly to the belief that these other virtual processing environments will be addressed in time.

I do believe that much of the company's messages make a great deal of sense. It is true that many physical host systems are not designed to support the type of storage traffic that a herd of virtual machines on a single physical host can create. Using a shared/clustered cache of data combined with flash-based storage can certainly overcome that design limitation. Reads and writes can be accelerated and the fact that updates made to data can survive the loss of a virtual machine or physical host could be of great value.

Where the company has inserted flash into the flow of data going to and coming from the storage subsystem is very interesting and is different from what I've seen coming from other suppliers of flash-based storage.

Misuse and abuse of the term "hypervisor"

My biggest beef has nothing to do with the technology. I have problems with the messaging and the attemtp to co-opt the term "hypervisor."

Hypervisors are described in my O'Reilly Media book, Virtualization: A Manager's Guide in the following way:

Virtual machine software allows the entire stack of software that makes up a system to be encapsulated into a virtual machine file. Then a hypervisor can run one or more complete virtual systems on a physical machine. There are two types of hy- pervisors: A type 1 hypervisor runs on top of the physical system. A type 2 hypervisor allows a guest system to run as a process under another operating system. Each of these systems processes as if it has total control of its own system, even though it may only be using a portion of the capabilities of a larger physical system.

You'll note a mention of storage or flash is not part of that description.

Time and again, companies that have developed interesting technology turn to misleading catch phrases to get the industry's attention rather than speaking about what they're really doing in clear, unambiguous and persuasive terms.

The list of suppliers that have tried to co-opt an industry term and repurpose it to suit their purposes is long. Examples would be the use of "storage hypervisor" by IBM, Virsto Software, now part of VMware, and now "flash hypervisor" by PernixData.

The key thought appears to be that these suppliers believe that the industry won't pay attention to them, their products and their messages unless they hop on the coattails of something that is already successful. Some examples are "storage hypervisor" and "flash hypervisor" being used to describe storage virtualization technology even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with hypervisors and processing virtualization.

In the end, these attempts to jump into the limelight of some other technology only serve to increase levels of confusion and don't really shed any real light on the technology being offered by these companies. It appears to me that they're cynically hoping that the confusion they've created will lead people to ask a question about what they mean and thus, begin a conversation that might eventually lead to coercing people to see a demonstration or read the company's marketing materials.

Summary

Regardless of how good the technology is, I can't offer my support to companies that appear to be doing their best to increase the levels of confusion in an already confused market by trying to co-opt the term hypervisor.

I'd suggest that if you must speak with those companies at all, it would be good to ask them what their technology has to do with encapsulating workloads so that multiple virtualized workloads can be hosted on the same physical host.

"For the first time ever, there exists a massive global communications platform, providing tremendous reach for even the most modest of companies wishing to expand their horizons – literally."

Mason went on to say that Cloud Computing leveled the playing field and offered SMBs opportunities that were previously limited to large enterprises. While the technology offers a great deal of promise, I would urge that SMB decision makers move forward with caution rather than leaping onto the world stage with both feet.

Large enterprises have staff members with deep expertise in the regulations, the tax laws, the requirements for privacy and data protection that exist in each country they serve. SMBs often don't have either the staff or the expertise. For example it would be wise to understand the answers to the following questions and many more:

• What are the implications of the regulations protecting customer data?
• Are there special requirements for the length of warranties in some countries that differ from those in other countries?
• Do some countries require sales or other taxes be collected and the proceeds to them on a regular basis?

While it is quite possible that a SMB would enjoy increased levels of success by reaching out to a broader market, I'd suggest building a large base in their home country and incrementally reaching out more broadly as the company gains needed experience. Jumping into the world market before a company is ready could lead to "interesting challenges" rather than to the promised land of a world wide presence and greater revenues.

If cloud computing and the newest mobility technology are used properly, it is possible that SMBs can find the promised land of increased sales and reaching a broader market. Used improperly, those same tools can also lead high costs of litigation, unhappy customers and heartache. I'd advise SMB decision makers use caution and careful planning not just blind enthusiasm. I'd also advise that these decision makers seek out those who have already taken that journey and ask for advice. There are many service providers, IT suppliers (Including IBM, of course), and other SMBs who have experience and expertise to share.

What is heleos?

Embrane describes heleos as "the industry’s first multi-service, distributed software platform for powering software-defined network services, including server load balancers, firewalls, VPN termination and SSL offload." In other words, Embrane heleos is a network virtualization tool designed to encapsulate network connections in order to allow them to be made more secure, more reliable and more flexible. Embrane's goal for heleos is to make the network as agile, easy to provision and elastic as systems running virtualized workloads. Embraine heleos makes it possible for networking capabilities to be configured as a multi-tenent resource as well.

What Embrane has to say about the new version of heleos

With this latest version of heleos, Embrane introduces vTopologies – Layer 3 overlay networks – that provide greatly increased agility, scalability and isolation in enterprise and service provider data centers. Among the many advantages of vTopologies is the ability to completely mask internal IP addressing from the underlay network. By virtualizing the network in this manner, enterprises can benefit from application isolation and dramatically simplified IP address management while service providers can easily and cost-effectively support multi-tenancy and customer-provided IP addressing.

New Enterprise Features

In addition to vTopologies and vLinks, Embrane also introduced several additional features that enable enterprises to benefit from network agility. New enhancements include:

• ESM Projects – administratively isolated environments that users can use to build and deploy heleos-powered network services and vTopologies.
• OpenStack Neutron Plugin – a plugin that allows the seamless provisioning and insertion of Embrane software-defined network services via OpenStack Horizon and OpenStack Neutron
• Interoperability with VMware vCenter – Allows heleos-powered network services to easily be used to service workloads created by VMware vCloud Director  
• IPv6 Support – support for both IPv4 and IPv6 to help customers enable IPv6 without disrupting the IPv4 network
• heleos UI - Reduces the time to provision, configure, and maintain network services
• Support for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) – enables heleos-powered network services to bypass the virtual switch for greater performance and density.

Snapshot analysis

Embrane's heleos is a network virtualizaiton product. The company competes with many larger players including Cisco, HP, Juniper, IBM and a whole herd of smaller players. Embrane wants to show that network virtualization doesn't have to be a computer science project and can benefit organizations of all sizes.

To emphasize this simplicity, Embrane presents the capabilities of heleos as "application centric networking" rather than using network virtualization or software defined networking as do other competitors.

The thought of being able to encapsulate networking capabilities and configurations with virtualized workloads is attractive. This would allow organizations to stand up, operate and eventually shut down workloads, the storage and the networking capabilities they use quickly and efficiently.

Please introduce yourself and your organization (Jim DiMarzio, CIO)

My name is Jim DiMarzio. I have been CIO, Director of IT at Mazda North American Operations since September 2001 and have over 26 years of IT experience with 20+ of those years being in automotive companies. At Mazda, the IT staff and I migrated all dealer system functions to graphical web applications and provided field managers with a web based contact system that includes real time Key Performance Indicators for each dealer. We also implemented a strategy that has at the core a partnership relation with the business areas. This culture promotes searching for opportunities to employ cost effective new technology in areas like wireless Sales and Service applications, "scoreboards" to focus employees on corporate targets, and dashboards or portals to provide a single consolidated view of a dealer for the field manager.

Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) is headquartered in Irvine, CA.  MNAO oversees the marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through more than 700 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City.

What are you doing that needed this type of technology?

We currently host multiple consumer facing sites for US, Canada, Mexico, MyMazda Mobile App.  These sites are the main focal point from which our customers and prospects are able to view products, get quotes, order accessories and learn about our new technology SkyActiv.  We also place advertising on various sites via banner ads and from time to time we may have home page takeover on companies such as Yahoo, ESPN, CNN, etc. that sends a lot of traffic to our sites.  Rackspace plays an important role in ensuring site stability by proactively monitoring while keeping the Mazda team informed and engaged in the stability of the sites.

What products did you consider before making a selection?

We evaluated three other companies before selecting Rackspace.

Note: Jim didn't indicate which other providers were considered.

Why did you select this product?

We started the evaluation process by establishing a set of criteria that comprised of support for existing business needs, solid knowledge and competency in existing technologies, forward thinking in new technologies and trends, high degree of customer support and service and finally cost.  Rackspace came out well ahead of the pack.

What tangible benefits have you gotten through the use of this product?

Rackspace’s Fanatical Support is just that Fanatical Support.  Through every encounter whether it be from their sales staff, back office staff to support engineer they’ve provided us Fanatical Support.  The proactive monitoring from the Critical Applications Services team is a huge value-add to our business. We can now proactively scale for future demand.

What advice would you offer others?

Establish a strict set of criteria’s.  Ensure the company you select will is proactively looking at new technologies and adapting to change and most importantly will work as a partner in making your company successful.

Yes, I know it's hard for some of you to believe it but it's true. Microsoft knows that it's a heterogenous world out there. It knows that it's a heterogenous data center in here. What you might not know is that Microsoft fully embraces interoperability.

Yes, publicly.

Likewise, privately.

I know that many of you have a problem of one type or another with Microsoft. I also know that a large percentage of you love Microsoft. You can't please everyone but I'd have to say that Microsoft is really trying to do just that with its new flagship operating system, Windows Server 2012.

But how can I make such an assertion after so many years of Microsoft's Linux bashing, patents, lawsuits, and battles against all things not Microsoft?

Microsoft is transforming. That's how.

Ten years ago, I wouldn't have made that same assertion. As you might know, I'm a Linux evangelist, open source writer, Wintel admin, Apple convert, and many other things. But I've never been one to mince words or take the path of least resistance when it comes to my IT career. I'm known, on the job and off, for my brutal honesty, for my quick wit, my ability to filter through the "nonsense", and for always giving my best effort to a problem. I digress.

From what I've observed, Microsoft's view of cloud is realistic. From its understanding of data center heterogeneity to creating cloud-based applications such as Office 365 to developing new operating systems that have cloud services built into them, it has proven itself to be a formidable cloud computing company.

The significance of Microsoft's "revelation" that the data center is heterogeneous can't be passed over without comment. I think that, for many years, Microsoft saw itself as the unwelcomed cohabitor of UNIX in the world's data centers. UNIX folk had the old, "There goes the neighborhood" attitude with Microsoft's mid-range servers taking up rackspace and floor space in the once holy UNIX-dominated data centers. Once Microsoft became a major business force, its data center occupancy was accepted and embraced, albeit still somewhat begrudgingly. As Microsoft's popularity in the data center grew, I think it decided that it should be the only resident in those alternating hot and cold aisles. However, the UNIX fans and open source nerds believed differently.

All parties made their points and have learned to live alongside each other in an almost peaceful fashion. Apart from the holdout religious zealots, we've all learned to get along. We've learned to tolerate each other and to work together. Microsoft gained a new, realistic view of the data center and has been a primary force in its transformation. 

To Microsoft, I say, "Well done." Now it's time to get busy on those virtual desktops.

What do you think about Microsoft's new heterogeneous data center tolerance and acceptance? Do you think that they've matured into this newfound attitude or do you think they were forced into it? Talk back and let me know.

Here are a few findings from the study:

• Security is a problem as companies implement BYOD
  • Only 21% of the respondents' companies perform a remote device wipe (clear the contents of storage, passwords and the like to bring the system back to its out-of-the-box state)
  • Only 31% of the companies enforce a policy requiring the use of device passwords
• Companies either don't have BYOD policies or are not enforcing them
• Companies don't have polices to protect data in public clouds
  • 27% of respondents indicate their company has a policy in place
  • 20% said that their company didn't have a policy
  • 47% said their company didn't have a policy now, but there was a plan in place to write one
  • 6% responded that they didn't know
• Staff often don't understand the implications of their use of their own device and yet 80% of businesses haven't trained their staff to understand the privacy and security risks the use of these devices can pose.
• The survey findings showed that the use of Apple computers was on the increase — 65% of the respondents indicated their company will support Macs in the next 10 months, 75% indicated that they'll support Macs within 2 years.

   

   

 Snapshot analysis

I'm always suspicious of vendor-sponsored studies. Quite often, they are self-serving, badly executed and offer, at best, misleading results. It doesn't help that many of the PR folks start their promotional messages with references to reports offered by other research firms.

Since I've spoken with the folks from Acronis on many previous ocassions and think that what they have to say is worth hearing, I took some time to review the survey and the findings of the survey. Here's my quick take:

• In part, this exercise is a effort to support Acronis' own marketing efforts and to make potential customers aware of the company and its products.
• Acronis is using the results of this study to offer some suggestions about best practices to clients and potential clients.
• Acronis, while gathering data for its 2013 Data Protection Trends Research Survey, interviewed more than 121,000 IT Professionals from around the world. The results are based upon 4,300 completed surveys. It is not clear if these "IT Professionals" are decision makers or individual contributors.
• Although the use of staff members' own smartphones and tablets and the subsequent use of public clouds for storing company contact lists, proprietary documents and presentations is well advanced, few companies have really taken the time and effort to build and enforce effective policies for security or data protection.

It would be worth your time to seek out and read through the eBook detailing the survey and its findings Acronis has published. The findings quantify and support the anecdotal data I've gathered during conversations with clients and with attendees of events. In short, they're worth considering.

Who is Scale Computing?

Here's how the company describes itself:

Scale Computing develops scale-out clustered IT infrastructure products for small to medium-sized organizations based on its patented ICOS [Intelligent Clustered Operating System] technology. Since launching its initial scale-out storage solution in 2009, Scale has grown to over 1,000 deployments. Scale is currently expanding its footprint throughout the datacenter with what analysts are calling the industry’s first hyperconverged architecture, HC3. Scale’s HC3 seamlessly integrates storage, servers and virtualization into a scalable, turnkey infrastructure that’s as easy to manage as a single server. Designed specifically for IT generalists, HC3 is ideal for those who have not yet adopted virtualization due to cost and complexity, enabling them to run highly available applications.

Scale Computing's products

Scale Computing claims that its products were built from the ground up to support virtualized environments. Since they're using the same basic components used by other suppliers of industry standard, X86-based, system, I couldn't help but wonder what they were doing that differed in any significant way from what others were doing.

The answer appears to be that Scale Computing has thought out what would be needed to support the typically workloads and computing environments of small to medium businesses and has implemented systems that address all of the basic requirements without also requiring customers to have a huge staff of computer scientists on staff. This means balancing memory, processing, storage and networking to properly support SMB workloads. 

Scale Computing currently is offering two different systems, the HC3 and the HC3x, combined with software that makes it simple to provision, configure and deploy physical and virtual systems. It is based upon the use of open source virtual machine software reducing the overall cost of software and hardware.

Scale Computing's systems deploy sophisticated and patented storage and network virtualization technologies to provide disaster tollerance and failover right out of the box.

The company's solutions were designed to be both very cost efficient and scalable.

Scale Computing's target customers

Scale Computing understands that SMBs need the same capabilities as do larger companies, but seldom have the staff or infrastructure to support complex technologies. The company would point out that customers need simple, easy and reliable solutions not computer science projects and has built hardware and software designed for SMB.

Although I wanted to get into the finer details of what the company was doing, Jason said it was easier to show people a demonstration than it was to discuss all of the ways complex technology was packaged for use by a smaller company. After watching the demonstration, I have to agree with him.

It seemed simple enough to deploy Windows and Linux workloads that even I could do it.

Although the company is a relative newcomer and is competing with folks such as Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM, I'd recommend that IT decision makers from SMB organizations see the demo themselves.

In short, NComputing believes that market pressures, budget constraints and a mobile workforce are increasingly driving organizations to desktop virtualization as a viable alternative to traditional PC computing. Furthermore, the company believes that its combination of simplicity, performance and value removes the barriers and accelerates the adoption of desktop virtualization for today’s high priority IT initiatives, including mobility, BYOD and migration to new Windows operating environments. That's quite a mouthfull, but the company's technology could make a big difference.

What's new in vSpace?

Here's how NComputing describes vSpace 7.1:

Support for the Latest Microsoft Windows Desktop Environments

The new vSpace Server software extends application and desktop virtualization capabilities for the latest Microsoft Windows desktop environments, including Windows Multipoint Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. This ensures a richer user experience with improved graphics performance and expanded USB peripheral support.

Quick and Easy Scalability to Manage Large Scale Deployments

With this new release, vSpace Management Center support for vSpace Server 7.1 software enables IT administrators to easily manage and scale virtual desktop deployments to tens of thousands of users through a simple web-based management console. Using vSpace Management Center, IT administrators can remotely manage vSpace Server software instances on PCs, servers and client devices, such as NComputing L300 or M300 thin clients. These management capabilities extend to vSpace Client for Windows on PCs, laptops and also BYOD, whether deployed at a single site or multiple sites. The vSpace Management Center dramatically reduces the administrative overhead for IT managers to easily maintain and control their virtual desktop environment. Adoption of vSpace Management Center is growing rapidly: 60 percent of customers represent corporate environments, while 17 percent are in education and 15 percent represent manufacturing, healthcare and retail markets.

New Support and Subscription Programs

World-class software support and new product innovation from NComputing ensures that customers realize maximum value from their desktop virtualization technology investments. Membership in the NComputing Support and Subscription (SnS) programs is now available for the vSpace Server and vSpace Management Center software products. Customers who participate in the vSpace Support and Subscription programs are entitled to the new 7.1 software release immediately. Customer purchasing of NComputing SnS is increasing, and more than 80 percent of SnS purchasers have chosen our Premium Support option.

Snapshot Analysis

NComputing is one of the few suppliers that focuses on creating virtual environments using operating system partitioning and virtualization. This approach is more efficient and can offer higher performance than relying on virtual machine technology, such as suppliers like Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware do.

NComputing has found success creating virtualized environments for Small to Medium size Businesses (SMB), Government projects and virtualized departmental or workgroup solutions for larger organizations. The company's virtualized environments can be made to execute on much smaller systems, use much less system memory and require much less storage than similar configurations that are based upon virtual machine software.

Why? Virtual machine software is based on encapsulating a complete environment that includes an operating system, applications, database, networking and storage components. This means, of course, that each virtual environment requires the processing, memory and storage to support a complete environment.

Operating system virtualization creates a separate partition for each workload, but is based upon a single operating system instance. So, the amount of server processing power, memory and storage are sharply reduced and, here's the added kicker, the performance can be far better. Add virtual access technology and a selection of intelligent, but thinly configured, remote devices and it is possible for many people to share the resources of a fairly small server. This is the approach NComputing is offering as a way to address the needs of its clients.

While this approach is very useful and has a long track record of success, suppliers such as Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware have focused on marketing a different approach, using virtual machine software. This approach offers similar capabilities to share systems and isolate workloads while offering a greater amount of flexibility (each workload can have its own operating system), but requires more processing power.

Can lower cost, smaller systems, higher performance and increased levels of simplicity win out over what the bigger companies are offering? NComputing thinks so. You might too, if you take a few moments and see a demo.

Please introduce yourself and your organization.

My name is Dr. Edward A. Fox. I serve in three related roles that tie to our work on disaster preparedness. I'm Professor, Department of Computer Science (where I teach courses and engage in related research and service), Faculty Adviser to Virginia Tech's Vice President for Information Technology (including advising about campus IT, and liaising with University Libraries), and the Director of the Digital Library Research Laboratory (DLRL). The DLRL was established as a Virginia Tech research laboratory, supported by Information Technology and the Department of Computer Science.

Over the years, our work related to digital libraries has covered theory, software and system development, experimentation, and human issues. Our mission statement explains that we work on: integrating the best of information retrieval, multimedia, hypermedia, and visualization with the best and most humanistic aspects of living libraries. Virginia Tech is a top research university, part of the state system in Virginia, and one of our nation's landgrant universities. It has about 30K students.

What were you doing that needed this type of technology?

Crisis, Tragedy, and Recovery Network (an NSF supported grant project), is a digital library network that researches a broad range of services relating to different kinds of tragic events. Through this digital library, we collect and archive different types of CTR related information such as Websites, Photos, Videos, Blogs, and Tweets.

Over the last 5 years, we have collected and archived data about scores of  different crisis events that have occurred around the globe. This has benefited from our collaboration with the Internet Archive. The total size of the data collected is over 10 TB and so we were in need of a software solution like LucidWorks to process data and provide services through our digital library.

What products did you consider before making a selection?

We have used open source software packages like Lucene, Solr, and Weka. We also have employed a number of software systems over the years that we developed, like SMART, CODER, MARIAN, Envision, ETANA, CITIDEL, Ensemble, and SuperIDR. Having worked since 1978 with information retrieval and multimedia technologies, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning software, we considered related algorithms and toolkits. We also have worked with repository, content management, and digital library systems connected with the Open Archives Initiative, including DSpace, Fedora, and Drupal.

Why did you select this product?

The LucidWorks Big Data framework fits well with our goal of processing/indexing large collections of web archive (WARC) files. Since we have around 10 TB of WARC files and since LucidWorks can ingest and process WARC files directly (through Hadoop and its file processing, as well as related workflows), our needs were directly met.

In addition, the packaging together of a number of open source software tools into an integrated system, that works well for corporate clients too, has meant that it is faster for us to use this platform in classes and in research projects. Further, we were able to work out a collaborative connection with LucidWorks, in return for our sharing and disseminating related educational modules suitable for those interested in LucidWorks.

What tangible benefit have you gotten through the use of this product?

First, we have benefited from a smoothly operating suite of software.

Second, we have benefited from support provided by LucidWorks personnel as we have worked to make the software operate on three different hardware systems.

Third, we received assistance through documentation and support when using the software in a graduate level course on Information Storage and Retrieval.

Fourth, once we had configured the software for System G, a 'green' supercomputer at Virginia Tech, we are able to quickly process data for events like the Boston Marathon Bombing and to develop a series of supporting User Interface prototypes. Now that we have processed a part of our data using the software, it appears certain that we can meet our goal to process the 10 TB of data using the software and then be able to make the processed data available for public/research use.

Finally, thanks in part to an agreement that LucidWorks will continue to collaborate, it appears likely that we may receive support from NSF for a follow-on project to extend and broaden the CTRnet work.

What advice would you offer others?

LucidWorks is a good partner to work with. Though it is important to understand one's application and to have technical expertise in the area, as well as to study about each of the tools connected with LucidWorks, they are quite helpful on technical and related matters, and provide high quality support.

It took us some time to configure the software to fit with our design, but once we were done with that, it was easy to process the incoming data automatically and to have the results accessible through the User Interface.

We are confident that others who face a similar issue regarding processing a large amount of similar data can tailor the product to their needs and enjoy the results.

Finally, we recommend that those interested consider using the suite of educational modules we have developed.

Maybe my idea of Microsoft becoming the next major cloud provider isn't so bizarre after all. I think I stepped onto the idea landmine that Microsoft is going to announce by the end of this year or early next.

The possibilities for a Microsoft Cloud are really unlimited.

I know that sort of statement is a bit cliched but not so much so if you look at all the evidence. The picture becomes less blurry and the story less bizarre.

Desktop Operating Systems

Microsoft has dominated the Desktop with its operating systems for more than thirty years now but there have been changes in recent times with the adoption of new technologies such as tablets that use "lite" operating system versions, client programs that allow interoperability with Windows systems, and a great move toward "OS neutrality."

Microsoft knows that the traditional desktop operating system's days are numbered. Microsoft also knows that the trend toward OS neutrality is going to majorly bang its operating system profits in the traditional sense. In other words, people won't be buying computer systems and installing a purchased copy of Windows onto it anymore. Those days are almost over. Windows 8 is probably the last of the traditional OS Mohicans.

"Microsoft didn't invent the Cloud. It didn't invent the personal computer. It didn't invent the first operating system. But it did write the applications that made all of those things possible and it made those things better. It still does and it will continue to do so."

Desktop operating systems of the future will be those of the cloud-based variety. You will only use client software to access them. You probably won't know or care where they're hosted nor will you be bothered with any traditional software. All applications and programs that you use will come from App stores. You won't even deal with ISOs anymore. You'll pick your deployments from a dropdown list, click 'Go', and then enjoy your new system within minutes.

For the end user, the desktop will be no more than an App accessed over a secure channel with all data stored on the corporate network or a private storage area to which you subscribe. Think cloud desktop connected to Dropbox.

Server Operating Systems

Microsoft also knows that cloud computing is the best way for businesses to deploy new applications and workloads. Therefore, Microsoft will also offer server clouds with multiple options.

Here are the options as I foresee them:

• Traditional virtual servers - A full operating system
• Cloud servers - Virtual private clouds
• Multi-tenant servers - Think Parallels here
• Applications and Application Clusters - Next section

There are probably going to be more options that I haven't considered but these are the most likely candidates for initial commercial success.

Microsoft will have to provide traditional virtual private servers (VPSs) to its customers at least in the short term. I think that VPSs will go away permanently in a few years. Customers will lose interest in managing standard systems and move toward cloud systems and application clusters.

Microsoft should buy Parallels or develop similar technology so that it can provide multi-tenant services to customers. Some customers will have such low needs that a traditional VPS will be too much and cloud servers will be extreme overkill. Multi-tenant systems provide businesses with the ability to host their sites inexpensively and with ease. Hosting providers have been doing this for years.

Applications and Application Clusters

Probably the biggest market for the Microsoft Cloud is application deployment via application clusters. In fact, the term "application cluster" will morph into virtual application or simply, application. Application clusters have the most potential because customers will realize that the operating system is merely a substrate onto which their applications are deployed. That substrate will decrease in significance over time.

For example, if a company wants to deploy a CRM application, a developer would select CRM from the list of available applications and click 'Go.' The CRM would appear in a few minutes ready to use and customize.

For purely custom applications, I foresee Microsoft providing an application template or framework onto which developers can build their code and specific requirements. There probably will be an integrated IDE in which developers can work as well.

An even better look into the future would include an Enterprise App Store where businesses could select the applications they want to deploy from the store. They could begin their subscriptions right then, deploy the application, and use it all within the time it takes for a coffee break. Now that's agile!

That's pretty much what you have now with Office 365. A few clicks and you're done. Office 365, in my opinion, is the way of the new Microsoft.

Think of Microsoft as the company that it started as way back in the dark ages (Pre-Internet years) of the mid-1970s. It has returned, or attempted to return, to its roots of being "One Microsoft." A single company that provides the best software possible to its customers, which it has consistently done since 1975.

Microsoft didn't invent the Cloud. It didn't invent the personal computer. It didn't invent the first operating system. But it did write the applications that made all of those things possible and it made those things better. It still does and it will continue to do so.

Microsoft has positioned itself well in this brave new era of computing, just as it for the personal computing era back in those early days. If you think Microsoft is going to be left behind, or go out of business, you're sadly mistaken. The cloud is just the beginning for the new, old, One Microsoft.

What do you think? Do you think Microsoft is going to break into the realm of cloud provider for desktops, servers, and applications such as Office 365 and Outlook.com? Or, do you think it will remain simply as a software company that sells applications? Talk back and let me know.

Note: In case you don't get it, the monohedral and the bizarre is a direct reference to Eric S. Raymond's, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" book based on Linux development and the rise of so-called open source software. Monohedral refers to the notion of "One Microsoft" and the bizarre part is as I've stated, the idea that Microsoft should enter the cloud arena as a provider and competitor.

Original graphic created by Meghan D. Cox. Used with permission.

Anturis collects information from running systems using an agent. This agent can monitor the company's website, tranasctional systems, system logs and many other components of an IT solution. The data that has been gathered is sent to Anturis' cloud-based tools where it is analyized. Alerting and reports are delivered back to the company making it possible to head off problems or troubleshoot systems when problems do arise.

While Anturis appears to be offering useful tools, these tools appear to provide similar capabilities to products being offered by a whole host of other suppliers. Anturis is competiting with players as big as BMC, CA, HP, IBM and Microsoft. It is also competing with an ever-growing list of smaller companies as well. It is clear that the company is going to have to work hard to get potential customers' attention and convince them that the Anturis offering is going to do what they need at a better price than the others.

It appears, at first glance, that the product that Anturis has designed has the capabilities needed by smaller businesses. The pricing appears very reasonable although Anturis talks about "monthly pricing" rather than laying out the actual costs. Let's see how the market responds.

What RainStor has to say about this release

RainStor’s database runs natively on Hadoop and has been deployed by more than 20 global telecommunication providers, 10 multi-national banks and a number of government agencies to significantly reduce cost, complexity and compliance risk when managing Big Data. RainStor partners with industry leaders such as Dell, EMC, HP, and Teradata in addition to Hortonworks, developers of the only 100% open source Hadoop distribution. RainStor is designed for massive scale, runs on the lowest-cost hardware, provides the broadest possible query options including standard SQL, Pig, Hive and MapReduce, and reduces storage footprints by up to 97% through its patented compression technology.

What’s new?

RainStor has added the following to the first-ever enterprise security-grade database for Hadoop:

• Security:/
• • Data Encryption – Scalable, rapid data encryption at rest to protect massive data volumes
  • Data Masking & Views – New SQL functions to mask sensitive data. When combined with table-level security, these functions ensure that unauthorized users only see masked data
  • Kerberos / LDAP / Active Directory/ PAM support – Standard authorization and authentication capabilities to enable trust within a Hadoop environment.
  • Audit Trail and Tamper-proofing – Built-in auditing functionality to log and track all data changes to meet regulatory compliance requirements
  • Configurable data disposition (with record-level delete) – Efficient deletion of individual records from tables containing trillions of records in clustered environments, enabling efficient data lifecycle management.
• Search:
  • Faster data exploration through free text search
  • Boost query performance by 10-100X
  • Minimal resource overhead from extremely low (1-5%) index load
  • Extreme scalability by searching across billions of records (multi-petabyte)
  • Simple management with no index sharding.

Analysis

RainStor's goals appear to be to address possible security risks that are associated with Hadoop to analyze "high value" data, that is data that could be the basis for identity theft, fraud or other nefarious activities and to increase the adoption rate of Apache Hadoop by improving its search capabilities.

Banking, financial services and government organizations have been rapidly adopting Apache Hadoop to analyze massive databases containing data that could be the source of big problems if it should get into the wrong hands. RainStor saw an opportunity to add a number of security features to Apache Hadoop to address this issue. Here is a list of what has been added:

• Users of the RainStor database must be authenticated. 
• RainStor database adds access controls and polices that control what actions an authenticated user may do
• An audit layer records what authenticated users are doing and when
• The data is encrypted to protect the privacy of retained data
• An "immutability" layer is designed to control what changes can be made to committed data

RainStor points out that this release of its database offers multiple access tools for business query and analysis across petabyte scale data sets running on Hadoop making it a useful tool for a number of different types of access and analysis.

Analysts using RainStor Database can access data using SQL (SQL-92, ODBC/JDBC), MapReduce, Pig and Hive and RainStor's own Lightning Search.

RainStor is one of a number of companies in the Hadoop community trying to enhance and improve the capabilities of Apache Hadoop. Others that should be noted are Cloudara, Cloudspace, DataStax, Greenplum (EMC) IBM,  Intel, MapR Technologies, Pervasive Software, Platform Computing (IBM), Univa and others.

Please introduce yourself and your organization.

My name is Ian Nate, and I'm the Sr. Online Marketing Manager for Adaptive Computing. Adaptive provides policy-based optimization software for High Performance Computing and Private Cloud environments. Adaptive Computing's High Performance Computing and Cloud Management software runs some of the largest supercomputers and data centers in the world.

Adaptive Computing is the largest provider of policy-based optimization software for High-Performance Computing (HPC) and private cloud environments. Adaptive Computing manages the world's largest private cloud computing environment and the #1 position on the HPC Top500 list with Moab, a self-optimizing dynamic cloud management solution and HPC workload management system.

Moab®, a patented multi-dimensional intelligence engine, delivers policy-based governance, allowing customers to consolidate and virtualize resources, allocate and manage applications, optimize service levels and reduce operational costs. Adaptive Computing offers a portfolio of Moab private cloud management and Moab HPC workload management products and services that accelerate, automate, and self-optimize IT workloads, resources, and services in large, complex heterogeneous computing environments such as HPC, data centers and private cloud. Our products act as a brain on top of existing and future diverse infrastructure and middleware to enable it to self-optimize and deliver higher ROI to the business. 

What were you doing that needed this type of technology?

We have an ongoing need for timely communication with not only our customer base, but also new prospects and evaluators, on a global basis. Since the majority of our marketing communications are conducted from the United States, we needed a way to automate our marketing processes, including: email correspondence, form submission, landing pages, and lead nurturing. One of the most important factors was having a tight integration with our CRM platform, Salesforce. Most importantly, as any organization can attest, we were really looking for ways to shorten the sales cycle and make our marketing efforts more impactful. Since we conduct webinars, email campaigns, and other marketing efforts, keeping them as integrated as possible and simple to execute was imperative not only for their success, but to ensure that they even got done!

What products did you consider?

We considered many marketing automation platforms, including Pardot, Marketo, Act-On and a few others. We had previously been using a simple email marketing tool and a de-duplication tool for Salesforce, and wanted to replace them both and add more advanced features, like lead scoring, while automating many of the processes that were taking my valuable time. Salesforce integration was a strict requirement, but ease of use was next on the list, since all marketing automation is run through me, and I have other responsibilities in addition to these.

Why did you select this product?

The decision really came between Marketo and Act-on, two fantastic companies with great software. We really found Act-On to be the best fit, not only because their software is simple, easy to use, and quick to implement, but because their philosophy in the marketing automation software space is unique and compelling - no long term contracts, simple user interface and integration, and excellent customer support. Their implementation tools were fantastic and quick to deploy, and their documentation is some of the best I've used. Still, their solution was robust and didn't leave us wanting for features.

What tangible benefit have you received through the use of this technology?

Our first goal was to really automate the lead to sales process, not only from the web, but from other mediums like trade shows and webinars. Since Act-On seamlessly integrates with GoToMeeting, and their importation tools to Salesforce are simple yet elegant, this was an immediate benefit. Also, tying our web forms to Act-On provided the immediate benefit of not having them go through my hands at any point.

Previously, I had to dump a MySQL database, format the data, import to Salesforce, and assign tasks before the salespeople even saw the leads. Now, it's all automated, and I'm no longer a bottleneck. Because of this automation, we're seeing our salespeople touching base with new prospects while their still hot - some of which get contacted within an hour or two, rather than a week or two, when they're much colder. This has really helped to shorten our sales cycle and provide immediate tangible benefit to our worldwide sales organization.

What advice would you offer others?

My best advice that of due diligence. Take demos, attend webinars, evaluate, and this goes for any solution your intending on implementing. Also, you really need to find the right solution, but also the right company. In the marketing automation space, there is stiff competition and great battle-tested software, but the companies you purchase from can vary widely.

We found Act-On was the right fit for us - we're a medium sized company, with really one person to handle marketing automation, and that person can't commit full time hours to the solution. We are also a growing company, and on the cutting edge of technology, so we need to be agile, move quickly, and have a solution that we will not outgrow in years to come. We found Act-On was the perfect fit. In fact, during a case study process with Act-On, we both announced that we were winners of the Red Herring Award for the Top 100 Companies in North America. More than anything, that was validation that we'd made the right decision.

This time, the company is launching Puppet Enterprise 3.0, a new release of their well-received Puppet Enterprise.

What Puppet has to say about Enterprise 3.0

Here's what Puppet has to say about the new release of Puppet Enterprise:

• Scalability and Performance- With today's on-demand and flexible cloud architecture, customers expect to create and manage hundreds—or even thousands—of applications and virtual machines in just minutes.

   

  Puppet Enterprise 3.0 offers unmatched performance and scalability to help customers move faster and meet the growing demand for cloud applications.

  Puppet Enterprise customers can expect a nearly 200 percent increase in performance from the latest release, allowing them to respond to business changes more quickly. They can also expect a nearly 100 percent scalability improvement, enabling them to manage twice as many cloud nodes in the same deployment.

   

• Orchestration- It's almost impossible to discover and manage large numbers of virtual, transient cloud nodes with traditional methods, such as configuration management databases (CMDBs), custom scripts and spreadsheets.

   

  The orchestration engine in Puppet Enterprise 3.0 has new capabilities tailored for customers automating cloud infrastructure, enabling them to efficiently discover and then orchestrate complex management operations on large volumes of cloud nodes.

  Using the orchestration engine's fully dynamic and pluggable discovery service, Puppet Enterprise customers can take advantage of any data source or real-time query results to quickly locate, identify and group cloud nodes.

  Customers can also use the orchestration engine's new progressive deployment capability to deploy changes in phases, testing at each stage and so minimizing the risk of rolling out changes to production.

   

• Software-Defined Infrastructure- The management of compute, network and storage resources is typically siloed into separate organizations using separate tools, which slows time to production. Puppet Enterprise 3.0 enables IT teams to deploy cloud applications faster, with fewer errors, by providing a unified, software-defined approach to automating management of compute, network and storage resources.

   

  Today, pre-built configurations for automating Juniper, Cisco, NetApp, and many others devices are freely available on the Puppet Forge , Puppet Labs’ online repository of more than 1,200 ready-to-run configurations.

Additional Key Capabilities of Puppet Enterprise 3.0

• Discover and Browse Resources- Puppet Enterprise's graphical user interface enables customers to easily discover and browse any and all service resources throughout their infrastructure, in real time.

   

   

• Enterprise Platform Support- Customers can now get full functionality support across all major enterprise platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IBM AIX, Solaris, and all major Linux distributions.

   

   

• Reusability of 1,200+ Puppet Forge modules -  Customers can now take advantage of pre-built configurations available on the Puppet Forge, without the need to modify modules for their specific environments.

Snapshot analysis

I've spoken with a number of users of Puppet Labs' software and have yet to have heard a complaint. To a person, the comments are positive and point out that although it takes a while to learn all of the features and capabilities offered by the software, Puppet Labs Enterprise gets the job done. They will almost always point out that if the software doesn't meet some specific requirement that a company has, there are ways to either use extensions created by other users of Puppet Enterprise or build it in-house.

Puppet finds itself in a very noisy, complex market for management, automation and orchestration tools. Suppliers such as IBM, HP, Microsoft, and VMware offer tools that target their own installed base. Suppliers such as BMC, CA and many others are offering tools that target specific problems. Puppet has taken a very pragmatic, focused approach to their market and has not tired to be everything to everyone, everywhere, always.

Puppet's approach has been to directly address administrators, operators and developers rather than putting on flashy, costly marketing events designed to reach IT management. They've relied on the fact that their tools have been designed by the people needing to manage, automate and orchestrate complex environments to win over potential users of the software.

If your organization has a complex environment that includes physical, virtual and remote/cloud resources and you're at wits end trying to keep things under control, it would be wise to try the free download out and see if it will make life simpler.

Rackspace and CERN openlab

This time, John and I were discussing the fact that CERN openlab, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced that it is collaborating with Rackspace to a deploy hybrid cloud computing environment. Openlab is an established framework that CERN uses to bring in external industry partners so that they can work together on technologies that may be used in the future. The goal is discovering the origins of the universe.

While CERN's computing environment is not representative of many commercial companies, the fact that this group of highly technical, highly expert people would select this environment is interesting.

It demonstrates that computationally intensive "technical computing" tasks can be happily running locally, out in the cloud, or some reasonable mix of the two.

I didn't speak with a CERN representative. Here are John's thoughts about their selection of Rackspace:

Large Hadron Collider is offline for refitting

During the time that the The Large Hadron Collider is offline for refitting, CERN is not sitting still. They are working to build an IT infrastructure to support the collider when it has twice the current capacity. This means building an infrastructure of 15,000 servers.

During the time that the collider is offline, CERN wanted to be able to use their server infrastructure for other purposes. They are envisioning being able to use both general-purpose and specific-purpose servers as part of an in-house cloud computing environment.

Why OpenStack?

Quite a bit of CERN's applications are written to run in the Phython development and run-time environment. Much of OpenStack is built using the same language. This meant that OpenStack would fit right in and be of immediate use.

At this point, CERN has four IT staff that have contributed code to OpenStack.

This also means that CERN can get "under the hood" of the cloud infrastructure and make it meet their needs. If what CERN needs is useful elsewhere, technology they develop can be made available to others. If what others develop is useful to CERN, they'll be able to easily take advantage of that technology. John described this as a "virtuous cycle."

Benefits CERN hopes to get

John's understanding is that they have a need for a tremendous amount of computing power. They have also invested time and effort in OpenStack and hope to leverage OpenStack to enhance what their limited staff can do.

They like the fact that one day, systems resources can be used to support an experiment running on the Collider, and the next day, those resources could be available to process and analyze the huge mass of data (they're collecting petabytes of data per minute during experiments).

Why RackSpace?

John believes that they chose to work with Rackspace because it is currently running one of the largest cloud resources in the world and that resource is running OpenStack. He thinks that they want to take advantage of OpenStack to create a private cloud today and, possibly, take advantage of public cloud resources at some point in the future.

What CTERA has to say about version 4.0 of its cloud storage platform

CTERA version 4.0 adds many new features across the CTERA application suite, with emphasis on a unified client for enterprise-class file sync & share and backup, plus secure mobile collaboration. With the new release, CTERA now offers per-tenant SLA policies that control in which storage bucket their data is stored, wider platform support for backup of virtual servers, and expanded scalability to hundreds of thousands of users.

Key features of the new platform release include:

• Team Collaboration: Plan-based control over user privileges to create and use team workspaces, derived from Active Directory groups. Corporate IT can thus restrict file sharing in a scalable, transparent manner.
• Mobile Security Policy: Remote wipe and "sandboxing" of synchronized files on the device, supporting Apple iOS and Android devices, with Windows Phone 8 planned soon.
• Cloud Storage SLAs: Differential service levels by storage pool, enabling customers to differentiate their offerings to end-users based on storage infrastructure features, such as redundancy, performance or uptime guarantee.
• Enhanced Scalability: Supporting multiple database servers for customer instances in the cloud, making it possible to scale out a CTERA-based service to multiple customers with hundreds of thousands of connected gateways and end-points.
• Microsoft Hyper-V Backup: Hypervisor-level backup that allows fast backup, replication and recovery of VMs on Hyper-V servers.
• Microsoft SharePoint Backup: Application-aware backup and recovery of SharePoint servers. This is added to Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Active Directory backup, already supported by CTERA.
• Active Directory Integration: Full integration with corporate Active Directory and LDAP for user authentication and single sign-on (SSO). This includes support for complex tree and forest topologies, as well as Kerberos authentication protocols.

Analysis

With the ever-present focus on cost reduction strategies and the increasing need for agility, cloud storage would appear to address quite a number of challenges facing companies today.

Storage could easily be spun up or down as needed by actual workload requirements without forcing the company to acquire storage devices or pay for the data center floor space, power and cooling storage requires.

Companies could conduct a pilot of data-intensive applications without having to purchase systems or storage. If the pilot was successful, the companies would then have a choice of pulling the workload back into their own data center or leaving it in the data center of the cloud service provider(s).

The challenges faced by this concept usually fall into one of the following categories:

• Performance — Will the outsourced storage be able to keep up with the demands of the application? Will the service provider step up and offer a service level agreement?
• Cost — Will the actual cost of using outsourced storage live up to the promises made by the service provider?
• Management — Will the outsourced storage fit into the company's management infrastructure easily or will it require training and a new set of management tools?
• Security — Will the cloud service provider be able to prove that only company authorized individuals will be able to access and use the data stored in the cloud? Stories about widespread snooping by the U.S. Goverment has increased concerns in this area.

CTERA has engineered version 4.0 of its cloud storage products to address all of the above concerns. Data is encrypted before being launched into the network and is maintained in encrypted form in the service provider's data center. The company holds the encryption keys so the service provider can't offer back-door access to the data. CTERA's portal makes management of the cloud storage service easy. Furthermore, data can be stored in several different cloud services offering increased levels of reliability.

When companies consider the costs of acquiring and managing storage, taking advantage of cloud storage services can appear to be a very appealing option. CTERA believes that version 4.0 of its cloud storage platform with its file synchronization and sharing features, mobile security and the ability to support service level agreements, makes cloud storage even more attractive.

This huge amount of data is why you're hearing so much about big data and why its understanding is difficult. As I've said in the past, data has always been big relative to our capacity to store, retrieve, analyze, organize, archive, and purge but now the situation is almost out of our collective control.

We know how the data is generated. We know generally why we're generating that data. We know what we're supposed to do with that data but what we don't know is how to handle that much data.

"...we, as a technology community, weren't really prepared for big data or its management."

In fact, we're not even sure how to handle the metadata generated by big data. 

As a side note, you might have heard a lot about metadata lately concerning the private information that the NSA has captured and analyzed. Metadata is data about data. It's a strange concept but, simply stated, metadata is a description of your data and you use metadata all the time but might not realize it. For example, when you snap a digital picture, the metadata for that picture is the size, date, location, dimensions, pixels, and so on.

Other types of metadata:

• Means of creation of the data
• Purpose of the data
• Time and date of creation
• Creator or author of the data
• Location on a computer network where the data were created
• Standards used

All you have to do to check out metadata for a photo is to right click the photo file, select Properties, and then select the Details tab.

You can see that metadata also takes up space but is not the data itself. It is data about data. So we could discuss big metadata as well as big data. Now you probably have a better idea of why our data grows at such a high rate, when you understand that there's more to data than just the data itself.

To clarify, metadata doesn't make big data big, it makes big data bigger.

Now that you have an understanding of data and metadata, you can now explore what big data is.

Big data is a lot of data. It's more data than we've ever dealt with before and from more disparate sources. Plus the metadata. It's a lot to think about. It's a lot to store. It's a lot to analyze. And those are the major issues of big data.

When data becomes so big that its sheer size is the problem, it is big data.

Still, you might wonder, what makes big data so difficult to understand?

As I stated above, we have data generated from disparate data sources: cell phones, satellites, electronic sensors, text messages, logfiles, etc. Data from so many sources is very complex. 

To explain further, if all of your data is photographs, then your data is simple. You add complexity when you have multiple data types and multiple data sources. If you run a logistics company, such as UPS**, then you have data coming in from many sources. Let's just look at three of those to consider the complexity: employees, trucks, and packages. Of course, their actual data is far more complex but I will take those three as a good example.

Data from trucks could include truck location (GPS tracking), fuel consumption, maintenance records, purchase price, insurance records, number of loads delivered, driver name, and so on. Now think about all of the different data points within each of those general areas. Maintenance records could include oil changes, tires, battery, every single replaceable part, damage, mileage, and more. Multiply all of those data points by the thousands of trucks that UPS currently has in operation. 96,394 total vehicles.

To the truck data, add all of the employee information that you can think of. Add in the data for the truck drivers, the truck packers, the truck unpackers, maintenance personnel, medical records for employees, vacation tracking, device tracking, uniform tracking, and any other employee related data points. 397,100 employees. 

Add in the third data source, packages, to the mix. Package weight, origin, insurance, destination, shipping method, dimensions, pickup information, connecting points between origin and destination. 16.3 million packages per day.

You can see how quickly the data points grow along with the volume of data that UPS deals with. UPS collects a lot of interesting and different data points. Those statistics in that list are not raw data. Statistics are the result of analyses. Consider the number of database servers, the amount of storage, and the energy cost to generate the data on that single page.

This is big data. You have to collect, store, analyze, organize, purge, and use the data. It's that process from collection to use to purge that is the great unknown of big data. Big data is complex and difficult to manage.

The management part of big data is where the lack of understanding comes from. There are very few people who know how to manage that volume and complexity of data. Most companies have grown their own pieced together solutions. Each department usually tries to manage its own data in various forms. What happens is not only do these companies have huge amounts of disparate data, the data is stored in disparate locations, and in disparate data technologies. Big data. Big mess.

Now you should have a better understanding of what big data is, where it comes from, why it's big, and what the problem is with big data. If you still don't have a clue as to how to manage big data or what you'd do with it, join the club, you have a lot of company.

Why do you think big data is so difficult to understand? Or is it? Talk back and let me know.

Note: I used UPS as an example since I know that it generates a lot of data. Currently it manages over 16 petabytes of ones and zeros.

*According to IBM's analyses.

**UPS (United Parcel Service) - I'm using it as an example for illustrative purposes only. I have no affiliation with UPS and I happily use the service.

Please introduce yourself and your organization.

I'm Hussein Sh-Ibrahim, IT Director, Professional Healthcare Resources. Professional Healthcare Resources (PHR), based in Annandale, VA, is an innovative company dedicated to helping thousands of Maryland, Virginia, and DC patients improve the quality of their lives. From skilled nursing to therapy to personal care and hospice, PHR helps those recovering from recent hospitalization or illness, those facing their final days, or those who just need some assistance with the activities of daily life.  Founded in 1994, PHR cares for over 2000 patients per day.

What were you doing that required this type of technology?

Three years ago, PHR moved from a paper-based patient care system to a digital system using tablets as client/input devices.  Today, six IT professionals support the entire PHR network of servers, networks, storage, clients, and applications.  The physical datacenter infrastructure is based on 40 HP and Dell servers, including virtual machines, communicating over an Ethernet / iSCSI network to a shared Astute ViSX Performance Storage Appliance.  Healthcare applications, primarily related to patient care, are built upon Sybase databases.  Microsoft SharePoint is the collaboration tool for all employees and is also supported by the ViSX.

Going forward, PHR plans to implement approximately 200 virtual desktops to improve desktop support, enabling an easier to manage, more reliable infrastructure for the end user devices - tablets and Windows PCs.

With the legacy installed HP StorageWorks and Dell PowerVault storage systems, capacity utilization was not optimized, but performance was the biggest issue with the user community.  Automation of all patient care processes has been an ongoing effort, which has placed new demands on the storage infrastructure. With patient satisfaction a primary business driver, the IT team was charged with improving response times for all the patient-facing applications.

What products did you consider before making a selection?

PHR looked at various storage solutions, including but not limited to hybrid arrays (looked at Nimble) and the Dell EqualLogic solution, and determined that they were too expensive and/or didn't have the right balance between performance, cost and environmentals.

Why did you select this product?

After researching the Astute Networks' ViSX performance storage appliance and then talking with customer references, PHR decided to take advantage of the Astute's "try and buy" offering.  During the 30-day evaluation period and after seeing the initial outstanding performance results for themselves, PHR was convinced.

What tangible benefit have you received through the use of this product?

We saw both technical and business benefits.

Technical Benefits:

• Easy Deployment - PHR connected the Astute Networks ViSX appliance in a matter of minutes, once the Ethernet local area network with the iSCSI protocol was deployed.  PHR had been using direct-attached storage, but found migrating to iSCSI-based storage was a very easy upgrade.
• Dramatic Increase in Performance - The difference in performance between the old DAS array and the ViSX appliance was like night and day.  And, after PHR deployed its first ViSX appliance into production, we saw a dramatic increase in the responsiveness of our Sybase database applications.
• Improved Backup Capabilities - What used to take 4 - 5 hours, now completes in less than an hour, enabling PHR to do other backups in that we were not able to do before.
• SharePoint Performance Improvement - SharePoint is running signifcantly better than when it was running on the servers' hard drive.

 Business Benefit:

• Increased Employee Productivity and Efficiency - Virtual machine application performance has been optimized. Productivity and efficiency is up as well, because employees can now quickly access patient data like never before.

What advice would you offer others who are facing similar circum­stances?

If you are challenged by optimization, Sybase application performance, random IOPs performance for VM and virtual desktops, Sharepoint response times, meeting backup window goals, and/or increasing data center environmentals (i.e., power, cooling and floor space) - you should look into Astute ViSX solution and its try before you buy program.

The sample

One of the biggest issues I have with most surveys is that the sample doesn't represent the market as a whole. More often, the survey respondents represent the attendees of a company's own event.

To compound the problem, the limited sample is analyzed and the results are presented as if they represent the entire worldwide market. The result is that the survey results can be seen as self-serving and only marginally useful when it comes to learning more about the industry as a whole.

Quorum is up front with the comment that the report comes from the careful analysis of its own call center's data. So, the results can, at best, be seen as representing Quorum's own installed base rather than shining a light on the thinking of the industry's decision-makers.

Here's how Quorum describes the data:

Quorum derived statistics from incoming calls in its IT support center, representing a cross-section of Quorum's hundreds of customers. Quorum's customers are small- to medium-sized businesses that span a wide variety of industries in the United States, EMEA, and Asia/Pacific.

It is clear that the findings must be considered indicative of Quorum's own customers and not necessarily representative of the market as a whole.

Summary of Quorum's findings

Quorum's analysis of its call-center data led the company to present the following information. The top causes of failure are:

• 55% hardware failure
• 22% human error
• 18% software failure
• 5% natural disasters

Quorum went on to review the ways most companies prepare for disasters including the following:

• Tape and Disk backup — Traditional approach to disaster planning. Quorum cites the fact that setting up this type of backup can be complex and it may be difficult to recover entire distributed, multi-tier, multi-site workloads using this method.
• Cloud backup — An up-and-coming approach. While this method appears appealing, Quorum says, it may actually increase recovery time rather than reducing the time it takes to return to normal operations.
• Hybrid cloud backup — The combination of the traditional tape/disk backup with cloud backup. Quorum points out that this makes it possible to keep an up-to-date image of what's executing. Furthermore, Quorum states, it would be possible to immediately return to operations in a cloud environment.

Quorum's recommendations

Quorum's conclusion is that organizations are best served by setting up a "continuous back-up process" that relies on moment-by-moment snapshots kept in the cloud.

Snapshot Analysis

I've read quite a number of studies that focused on causes of disasters and suggested approaches to disaster planning. While I was with IDC, I worked with the team that conducted research in this area.

Those studies often showed that the human element was a much larger percentage of the causes of IT failure. Hardware and software problems were responsible for a much smaller segment of these failures. That being said, Quorum's customer base might have better administrative tools and processes than the market as a whole and so the results would be skewed towards system or system software failures.

In my view, Quorum is right to suggest that having a disaster plan and tools in place to constantly monitor workload execution would turn most "disasters" into momentary irritations rather than events that put companies at risk.

If you're interested in reading the report, please visit Quorum's website for more information.

What is Network Virtualization?

Network Virtualization is the use of excess computing and networking capability to build an artifical environment upon which network workloads can operate. Below are some of the reasons this technology is important. (Taken from my O'Reilly Media book, Virtualization: A Manager's Guide.)

When organizations have the following goals, network virtualization technology is the best solution:

• Improving network reliability — When the organization needs constant network access in a data center, two or more physical networks supplied by different providers are typically installed. Network virtualization makes it possible for network communications to fall over from one network to the other in the case of a failure.
• Improving network performance — Increased network throughput can be achieved if several, or perhaps all, outside network communications links are used simultaneously to improve overall network performance as well as to increase network scalability. The bandwidth of available network links can be segmented to prioritize network traffic so that important activities will be served first.
• Improving network security — If network security is a key requirement, the data center network can be configured as several secure zones. Only specific network traffic may cross from one zone to another or from the internal network to the external network. This reduces the possibility of clients or servers being infected by worms, viruses, or other malware. It is also possible to allow clients to only see servers they are allowed to access, even though other network resources are available.

CloudBand

Here's how Alcatel-Lucent describes the components of its CloudBand family of products.

• The CloudBand Management System brings together the wide area network (WAN) and the data center resource pools to provide global visibility and control over the cloud environment.
• The CloudBand Node is a pre-configured, all-in-one cloud platform that allows service providers to immediately implement CloudBand and begin offering cloud-based compute and storage resources across the cloud. It includes hardware and software that can be delivered in a central office or data center-deployable rack. The CloudBand Node is designed to greatly streamline the service launch process and accelerate time to market.

Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand claims to help service providers orchestrate distributed data centers, manage application life-cycles, better leverage their network infrastructure, automate management of network nodes, and support open and multi-vendor environments. The goal, of course, is helping service providers simplify how their environments work, making it easier for them to scale up and down network-based workloads, and reducing overall costs, all without impacting services.

Analysis

Amir's introduction to CloudBand was filled with comments about the benefits that service providers and end user organizations can receive through the use of virtualization technology in general, and through network virtualization in specific. Alcatel-Lucent, along with many other IT hardware and software suppliers, including Brocade, Cisco, HP, IBM, and Juniper, are all pushing the concept that the proper and careful use of virtualization technology can offer organizations greater flexibility, reduced costs, and the ability to acquire and use new technology without facing disruption of their current infrastructure.

While the technology could most certainly benefit large and medium-size companies, Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand is targeting only the needs of service providers. This, I think, is a bit short-sighted.

While cloud computing is certainly an important part of the market's future, many organizations are going to continue to implement and support their own internal network rather than outsourcing everything to cloud service providers. Some of the other suppliers that are also offering network virtualization products appear to have a broader focus.