Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

The Global Shift is happening. SaaS, Cloud Computing and novo infrastructures and requirements are going to come from emerging markets. We all knew it and the more I see it happening, and the more I have spoken to my C-level friends and have been saying it all the time: " invest in Asia, if you want to survive the next revolution ", I am convinced that some of them might be just a bit too late now. But I did warn them in time. Do you want to know where you must already be looking at now? Africa and S. America! I have been spending a lot of time lately in several countries such as Ghana , Uganda etc and see a slow revolution starting up. I will be traveling to Uganda again in October/November. Anyways, here's the research that Forrester did: SaaS is a priority for 74% of Chinese firms, the research found, with 29% planning to pilot SaaS projects in the next 12 months. In Europe, the majority of organisations are interested but have no plans to pursue SaaS, while in the ...

After beating expectations with its second-quarter results last month, Silicon Valley stalwart Intel is feeling positive about demand for its small chips in an increasingly mobile marketplace. Although the macroeconomic outlook does not look good for the average Western consumer, Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) believes that the vast potential of emerging markets is still out there and waiting to be tapped. That's why it is aiming smaller and smaller--it unveiled its smallest chip ever earlier this year--and why it hopes one day to produce the world's first $100 laptop. Intel also sees growth opportunities in the West for cheap, portable mobile devices--hence its recent collaboration with the Portuguese government for 50-euro ($77.88) laptop-style "netbooks." Source to the full interview

In the corporate environment this energy shortage is equally apparent. Increasingly, IT managers are being told there is no more electricity available for their data centre, forcing organisations to relocate it to accommodate their continuing growth or to look at other strategies to reduce power consumption. A moderate-sized data centre with 100 servers and 10 terabytes of networked storage uses 1300 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy a year. It is estimated that data centres represent 2% of global energy consumption; about the same as all the world's airlines combined. With ever increasing demands on IT, how do organisations rationalise energy consumption in the data centre while accommodating growth? AllAfrica is covering

As part of the Dynamic Desktop Initiative led by Citrix Systems, VXL believes that by streaming both operating system and applications to the virtual desktop, burdens on IT support are significantly reduced. Dynamic desktops provide the best TCO, security, performance and flexibility, allowing businesses to thrive in a dynamic world. VXL is one of the first thin client manufacturers to receive Citrix Ready verification on their desktop appliances and have designed a range of models designed specifically for the Citrix application delivery infrastructure. Keep ignoring Africa and you just might be a bit too late. Link

I can still feel the excitement my class went through last week in Kampala. They have a couple of copies of all our "VMware Movies". As a trainer, it is really the coolest thing to have, really!! Enjoy this movie... Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Share Photos - Free Video Hosting PS: Sorry YouTube had some issues with the Vid Length, so I went to MotionBox and later to Dropshots ;)

We held a very successful press conference in Kampala, Uganda and later on handed out the workshop certificates to our candidates. The press was very curious about the "Green Grid" so I have also handed out some copies of it to them. I will provide the link if the Ugandan Daily when they publish our news.

We're third day into the workshop. Things are moving real fast and the project members are learning stuff all the time. So what is so exciting about this workshop? Did you watch the movie? : All the stuff that I train, I make movies with the VMware Workstation 6.0.1 (yeah, latest version, Hon!) and the candidates don't have to come up to me all the time, "Watch them movies!", I tell them. I am also using Microsoft's OneNote (which I neat, I must admit, it gets the job done) to instruct the candidates and then upload the vids on the NFS so they can play them. Complete VI3 on the WorkStation 6.0.1 : No I'm not nuts! We've covered all the virtualization aspects and next week I'll be demo'ing the ESX server (2 ESX Servers, Virtual center and Openfiler, all of them on my laptop!). Ain't it cool? Virtual Appliances all the way : We're playing with Virtual Appliances like OTRS , openQRM , Vyatta , Sakai (All of them I built thanks to my friends o...

Just keep you folks updated on our hotshot virtualization journey across Africa (East Africa BTW): Visited two (of the 8 client sites): They have made tremendous progress, really proud of the folks. They are all getting geared up for the Virtualization workshop which I will be giving (beginning 19th - 26th). travelled about 1200+ kms , fortunately our Toyota Prada kept me warm and cozy. The trip can be back-breaking, but the gratification to see clients excel surpasses everything. Green Grid template + Press conference: This will be fixed tomorrow as I sweat and invite folks from major telecom providers, largest University in East Africa (who too will be trained by me), The Netherlands embassy, the representatives of the Ugandan Govt and some hardware vendors such as HP. should have the presentation done by tomorrow! Training/workshop: Making final preps to have the candidates fully prepared for the training! More later...

I am going directly for the ESX version for our project in Africa. I was initially planning the VMware Server in production for our 8 clients (its is one project, but the clients handle their activities individually), but this offer is absolutely impossible to ignore! So I don't see any reason to sticking to the VMware Server plan anymore! This week we are “kicking off” a new promotion called VI3 Foundation targeted at customers that want the advanced functionality of VI3 but for smaller deployments. For $3,000 a customer gets VirtualCenter Server 2.0 plus three 2-processor licenses for VMware Infrastructure 3 Starter Edition. So for $3,000 an SMB gets our hypervisor based virtualization platform (ESX Server) and our fully functional management product VirtualCenter. For more information you can go to our website. I said this was an evolution and it is. VMware was the first company to introduce a free virtualization product with VMware Server in Summer of 2006. We were the first co...

Where are we today? Working on the Green Grid talk/presentation. Here's a look at what I am working on, not done yet but will be done tomorrow. It seemed like a neat template to me ;-) Got my vaccinations. Got some more advice from my friends on personal and professional matters. I did have a long discussion with my wife on the usefulness (or uselessness) of talking about Green Grid, environmental responsibility and other stuff. I think people all over the world are just the same. They just happen to care about other things. I firmly believe that when it comes to saving our planet (I know, I should have said "Environment" , but then nobody would "care"), then it will be very hard to ignore. Anyways we will continue with our struggle and somewhere along the road, I hope, we will look back and say: " I am glad we all did it together, we hosted our data center together, we shared our electricity bills and we came out winners together"

Every day, I will talk about something about what all the work I have been doing for the project and what all I have in my head, and that, my friends, you know very well , is a mass of unlimited data! Servers: Anyways here I will be proposing HP DL 385 servers. Locations are spread across the country. P Vendor selection: We have already chosen a good and trusted partner, who is , obviously, a HP partner. Pre-VCP training: I will be training the staff, that I hired in the past months, with VMware suite of products. We will cover all products. This will be a customized training and is NOT meant to prepare them for VCP. Very soon we will work with our VATCs to arrange VCP training and certification for our project members. Choice of Hypervisor: Should VMware truly annouce the ESX price slashing, as rumored, then we will accelerate our project plan to adopt ESX and not using VMware Server as the transition virtualization product. Press Conference: I am trying to arrange a press conference ...

Really? First I'd like to know what do you really define a mission critical application? A simple email server for an e-commerce firm is "heavily-mission critical" and all those "mission critical" apps are already running on the hypervisor. It is premature for hosting providers to offer virtual servers and it is unlikely that virtualisation will save its users money, according to survey research conducted by Rackspace Managed Hosting, a recognised leader in the global managed hosting market. These were two major points arising from more than 300 responses to an e-mail survey of Rackspace customers, in which 87% of those who responded confirmed they would not share a server with other hosting customers. Most of them also confirmed they believe virtualisation is not ready for mission-critical applications. "Perhaps companies that have already started offering virtual hosting have jumped the gun," says Rackspace spokesman for the South African market, Geo...

With Parallels software's server product coming up, they look to explore the developing countries for a hefty share of SMB market. Phoenix Software, one of the foremost software republishers, and Parallels, leading provider of innovative desktop and server virtualisation software for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux communities, have finalised an agreement whereby Phoenix Software will serve as the exclusive distributor of Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels' market leading solution that enables users to run Windows, Linux, or any other x86 operating systems at the same time as Mac OS X. Through the development of ground-breaking virtualisation solutions for both servers and workstations, Parallels is helping to alleviate the cost and headache associated with a traditional IT infrastructure. Virtual IT infrastructures help corporates lower operating costs, improve user productivity, and maximise hardware value by reducing the total number of machines needed to complete critic...

Just a couple of pictures again. I spoke largely about Virtual Appliances: I spoke largely about openQRM and its provisioning capabilities. You'll soon hear about what we intend to do with openQRM.

They say a pictures speak volumes. So I'll post some pics here on my tour to the Uganda Technical College, Elgon. Here I am letting Jessica open up the Virtual Appliance OTRS and log on to the helpdesk system and filing a complaint! :-) So if you are watching the VMWorld. I guess you can see it pretty clearly. Honestly I like the discussion on the VMworld (yawn..oops sorry) but you are digging me, right? Not to mention that we are on that virtualization road. The question is when to start and not anymore why or how... PS: Thanks to John Troyer (VMware), Don Langley and Matt(openQRM), Allan & Dave (Vyatta), OTRS for sharing their slides and collaborate with me to build their virtual appliances.

Well Eastern Africa atleast. I drove a couple of hundred miles (Check on the map on my RealTravel Blog). This is scheduled to end soon and I'll be wrapping up the stuff. Will keep you all posted!

TarryBlogging continues vigorously (Well you guys/gals know me). I was having some trouble keeping time. (Working like 14-18 hours a day). But I am (as we speak)on the RealTravel . Please do search for "tarry" (duh..sorry) and you'll find me there. You'll follow my trip across the country and follow my impressions about the country (and also upcountry) out there. I am obviously pushing Virtualization all over the place! (hehehe) More later... Take care, Tarry