The Infrastructure Conspiracy. 210245) Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) Buying BI? Talk to Users, not Technologists. Real Questions for BI Vendors Click through to see the questions Ann discovered that can make a tangible difference in your diligence. Last month in a post about open source business intelligence, I shared what I thought was an interesting thought from an interview I'd done with Mark Madsen, founder and president of BI research and consulting company Third Nature.
BI vendors have "over-served the market," he said, giving users lots of bells and whistles they don't necessarily want. He told me: When you look at the products out there, it's just like the old spreadsheet, there are so many features that are almost never used. The open source products that are out there, whether it's the databases or the integration tools or the BI tools, they don't provide as much as the big, mature, proprietary solutions, but they cover the "good enough. " They hit what 80 percent of the market needs. ... Madsen isn't the first person who has shared this idea with me. Announcing The VCE Coalition. Underlying Trends I see this announcement as a perfect storm of multiple themes that are tearing through our industry. If we just look at technology, there's plenty to point at: -- the advent of cheap and plentiful x64-based computing platforms, best exemplified by Intel's latest Xeon processors in Cisco's UCS -- the widespread adoption of desktop and server virtualization, best exemplified by VMware. -- the underlying convergence of server, network and storage architectures at a physical, logical and operational level.
Any way you describe it, I'd argue that the current technology landscape is fundamentally different than just a few years ago, and shows every sign of moving even more quickly in this direction. If we look at IT itself, there's also a lot to point to: -- IT's ambition to transform itself into an effective internal service provider, using cloud-like concepts -- a new openness to consider new strategic sourcing options for infrastructure and IT services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, etc. Gartner releases cloud computing 'rights and responsibilities' Analyst firm, Gartner, published a set of guidelines intended to ease relationships between cloud vendors and users. As cloud computing becomes more pervasive, the ecosystem (including vendors and analysts) is seeking ways to align expectations among relevant parties. Gartner specified "six rights and one responsibility of service customers that will help providers and consumers establish and maintain successful business relationships:" The right to retain ownership, use and control one's own data - Service consumers should retain ownership of, and the rights to use, their own data.
The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes - All computing services - including cloud services - suffer slowdowns and failures. However, cloud services providers seldom commit to recovery times, specify the forms of remediation or spell out the procedures they will follow. My take. Storagezilla. IT 2.0 : Next Generation IT infrastructures. How a switched of CRAC reduced efficiency in the Data Center - data centre news | The Hot Aisle. Published by Steve O'Donnell on Wednesday 7th July 2010, 15:47 | Related | Filed Under Yesterday Chris Leahy (my Technical Facilities Manager) and I were agonising over why we had low plenum pressure in our Data Center and why we were seeing symptoms of hot air trapped in the roof void.
We looked at all the normal stuff: Leaks in the plenum spaceBadly sealed floorCable access holes improperly sealedBlockages in the plenumBad seals between the plenum and the CRAC units In the end we worked out what the problem was. In fact it was behaving just like three fully open floor tiles. A standby CRAC unit without non-return dampers will allow cold air to back-flow into the hot-zone.We generally specify CRAC units in our designs with non-return dampers for this reason. So here is the lesson of the day – don’t make asumptions that switched off kit is neutral! Infiniband: Extending Beyond HPC to Support Emerging Cloud Appli. Public vs private: Which cloud is best for business?
Last year, people were still arguing over definitions of cloud computing, but this year the technology has gained momentum. From the hardware top cats through to the security bigwigs, the vast majority of the tech community is getting on board and bringing out their own products to tackle any obstacles the new model might face. Yet one fight still rages on: public or private? Public The public cloud is essentially outsourcing your data centre. An external company offers up its data centre for rent and you can chose the number of servers or the amount of storage you want to run out there, as well as the applications. You can then access it remotely from a PC. The key selling point of this model is cost savings.
There is also a widely adopted “pay as you go” model with public clouds, allowing you to rent the space from as little as an hour – often used by developers testing applications – up to months or years but paying by the month rather than in a big lump sum. Private Pros and cons. Virtual I/O Blog. Oracle is currently reviewing the existing Xsigo product roadmap and will be providing guidance to customers in accordance with Oracle's standard product communication policies. Any resulting features and timing of release of such features as determined by Oracle's review of Xsigo's product roadmap are at the sole discretion of Oracle. All product roadmap information, whether communicated by Xsigo or by Oracle, does not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This website contains certain forward-looking statements about Oracle and Xsigo, including statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Oracle's acquisition of Xsigo, anticipated customer benefits and general business outlook. SGI builds Universal data centre containers. SGI is making some big changes to its ICE Cube family of containerised data centres, adding new models that will be able to house standard server racks for the first time. Its new Universal containers, due in the third quarter, will be able to accommodate all of SGI's server and storage gear, including its Altix UV scale-up and Altix ICE scale-out supercomputers.
Until now its containers have been designed primarily for SGI's proprietary, half-depth Rackable servers. Because the new containers will use standard racks, customers will also have the option to use server equipment from other vendors. That brings SGI's strategy in line with those of IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and the other big container vendors. Sun Microsystems was also in the containers game, but it's unclear if Oracle will continue to sell those products. None of the vendors wants to sell a container filled with third-party gear - it wouldn't make business sense. The container market is small but growing, according to IDC. Do Unified Data Center Products Mean Lock-in? - InternetNews.com. Unified Computing products -- which combine computing, storage and networking all in one chassis, have become more popular these days as data center giants have taken the one-stop shopping approach.
There are pros and cons to this. On the one hand, there's a lot to be said for one bill for everything and knowing that the vendor has tested and integrated all of the hardware. On the other hand, does buying all the gear you need for your data center from one vendor mean you are now locked in to that vendor? Enterprise Storage Forum examines both sides of the issue. Cisco's (NASDAQ: CSCO) Unified Computing System (UCS) and entry into the server market a year ago sparked a new IT arms race and has forced data storage, server and networking vendors alike to come up with a strategy for data center convergence.
Read the full story at Enterprise Storage Forum: Unified Data Center Stacks: Risk of Vendor Lock-in? FCoE multi-hop; Do you Care? — Define The Cloud. Magazine June 2010. The Conflict over Data Center Convergence | Blogs | ITBusinessEd. Vendors such as Cisco, EMC, IBM and HP for the last several months have been advocating for the adoption of a new class of servers that tightly integrates servers, storage and networking functionality. From a technology perspective, these systems are easier to deploy, addressing one of the biggest concerns that senior IT executives and business leaders have about the cost of computing.
After all, the cost is in all the IT specialists that need to be hired to run our servers, networks and storage. These new servers set the stage for consolidating many of those positions by making it easier to for fewer IT people to manage integrated sets of server, networking and storage resources. As you might well imagine, this sets these vendors up for conflict with the rank and file IT staffs that many of them previously counted on for support. There has always been a divide between IT and the business customers they serve. Obviously, this latest conflict is just getting started.