Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Those zones or pods will be built in a fashion similar to the modular datacenters sold in large shipping containers equipped with their own cooling systems. But datacenter pods don't have to be built within actual containers. The distinguishing features are that zones are built with different densities, reducing initial costs, and each pod or zone is self-contained with its own power feeds and cooling, Claunch says. Cooling costs are minimized because chillers are closer to heat sources; and there is additional flexibility because a pod can be upgraded or repaired without necessitating downtime in other zones, Claunch said. (Read more about how to reduce cooling costs in the datacenter.) "Modularization is a good thing. It gives you the ability to refresh continuously and have higher uptime," Claunch said. By not treating a datacenter as a homogenous whole, it is easier to separate equipment into high, medium, and low heat densities, and devote expensive cooling only to t...

The company is planning to invest heavily in its online infrastructure to meet the expected demand. Providers, including arch-rival Google as well as Adobe and Amazon , are now increasingly able to replace and augment the functionality of local PCs with web-based services running on large distributed server farms. For Microsoft, this capability represents an attack on its traditional PC operating system and office application business. To counter this, it will set up 20 new data centres over the next 20 years at a cost of a billion dollars each. Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's VP of global foundation services, speaking to the US media, said "We're going to reinvent the infrastructure of our industry,". It took Chrapaty's team two years to set up Microsoft's first cloud data centre, which opened in Washington State last year. Because of the high energy requirement, the server farm was purposely located close to a new hydroelectric power station. It took the te...

Virtualization is the number-one strategic technology for 2009, Gartner said at its Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla. this week. Gartner analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends it predicts will be strategic for most organizations, defining "strategic technology" as having the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Taking it a step further, Gartner defines "significant impact" to include factors such as high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. Gartner said the technologies impact an organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable a strategic advantage from early adoption. "Strategic technologies affect, run, grow and transform the business initiatives of an organization," said David Cearley, vice president and distin...

Are you going to be there. I'll be meeting some industry friends there, do let me know if you can make it. Give me a call or mail me at tarry.singh (AT) gmail.com so we can meet up. Agenda: Flip through their online brochure

First, I want to highlight some tidbits in the keynote that Gartner's John Enck gave at the opening of the IBTA Tech Forum. Initially he challenged the assumption that VMware is a secure platform that is immune to attacks and viruses. He mentioned that security is still a point of immaturity in VMware and that VMware issued a fix for known vulnerabilities in its product just a week prior to VMworld. While I believe that VMware is more secure than Windows was in its early days, more vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered as it is more widely deployed. Another interesting tidbit that Enck shared had to do with some of the new management functions that server virtualization makes possible. Enck specifically mentioned that because the images of each individual VMware virtual machine (VM) is stored in what is called a VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) file, it opens the door for companies to assign metadata to these files including service oriented metadata. In so doing, companies...

Naveen Mishra, Senior Analyst-Servers of Gartner finds that the market size is very small at this point in time, but the growth in the coming months and years will be rapid. While there is no sequential pattern observed in the adoption of virtualization-no pattern exists for server, storage, desktop, application or other infrastructure virtualization-a close observation shows that it is primarily servers that have caught up and storage virtualization is witnessed in the datacentre environment in the Unix space. However, the emerging trend is x86 server virtualization, which most companies including Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix etc., are driving consciously with their products and solutions. The virtualization scenario is currently purely need-based and is a priority area for CIOs for areas where it proves itself with benefits. For instance, at Gati Ltd., G S Ravi Kumar, CIO has gone in for storage virtualization as a first ste...

Magic Software a provider of application platforms, and business and process integration solutions, announces the support of uniPaaS, its revolutionary application platform, for Microsoft's Windows Mobile operated devices. uniPaaS is the industry's first Rich Internet Application (RIA) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform to feature a single development paradigm that automatically handles the Client and Server partitioning. uniPaaS can also deploy in multiple modes -- on-premise as well as on-demand. uniPaaS lets Magic application owners and ISVs extend their service and product offerings to include RIA and SaaS deployment, while significantly lowering the application maintenance and delivery costs. As part of the uniPaaS launch campaign, Magic Software will participate as a Platinum sponsor at the forthcoming Gartner Web Innovation Summit, the meeting place for Web 2.0 innovation, SaaS and Cloud Computing. Magic Software will present uniPaaS at the Solution Showcase, and ...

So Gartner, the largest technology adviser to corporations, is saying the corporate shift to cloud computing is underway and destined to be a highly disruptive force in the industry. That struck me as intriguing, since a rapid advance of cloud computing into the corporate world is not a given, despite the consumer success of cloud-based services like Google, Facebook and others. On Tuesday, I caught up with Mr. Tully, who is based in London, and asked him to elaborate on his cloud computing comments. “On one level,” he said, “this whole cloud thing is about shifting assets away from enterprises and to service providers.” That, Mr. Tully added, should mean strong growth for corporate service providers. So far, there have been a few cloud-model corporate service suppliers, like Salesforce.com, and announced plans and investments by big corporate technology vendors like I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and EMC. Internet giants like Google and Amazon.com are are offering some corp...

Well that is what the Gartner thinks where VMware may get stuck in its boots. The same thing which I describe from my Puddle perspective. I think VMware will have to really work on the humbling down and getting to the little fellas and explaining the value of virtualization to one and all. There is still time! "The enterprise is going to be very leery of Microsoft, but the on-ramp to VMware is a bit steep for small businesses. VMware doesn't want to lose that potential business, but the company was getting a bit drunk on enterprise dollars," says Thomas Bittman, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst. "Microsoft could grab small businesses and grow up, and VMware should do anything it can do to get that market share, even if it costs revenue." By packaging its hypervisor with a server release, Microsoft will gain access into many accounts -- except the adoption curve may mirror that of servers, which could hold Hyper-V back a bit, Bittman says. But ov...

I am getting several call from industry leaders within large customer ranks who want to really know what Gartner is really doing and how they can utilize better, real-time and on-the-field researches/road-warriors to get the information that really matters to them. I will be doing a couple of analyst calls in the coming weeks and will post the results here.

Personally, I prefer to go deep into every vendors strength and weaknesses before telling customers and audiences across the Globe before making a decision. you just cannot tell a customer: " Define your strategy and don't get blinded". We it is far too generic and does not really help a customer when he has tons of folders lying on his desk. Anyways, I can fully understand that it is itself not easy as a consulting firm to push advise to the customers in a highly volatile and disruptive market. My tip to my Gartner friends: Get the specifics out, the audience appreciates that ;-) Anyways here's the news from the Arab site: ITP.NET It has predicted that virtualisation will be the highest-impact trend affecting infrastructure and operations through 2012. Thomas Bittman, vice president and analyst at Gartner, advised enterprises against following a specific vendor's vision. He instead advised users to determine their own vision of architecture control and build t...

I didn't get an invite but I'm sure you are out there watching it. Check out the Agenda! and Brochure here .

I will be commenting on the presentations that will be given at Cannes. It will be more practical in nature and will focus on not just warnings but will also be, in some cases, remedial in nature. Stay tuned!

Lots of discussions on Virtual Infra. NEC Corporation along with its European affiliated companies today announced that NEC present its broad expertise as one of the world’s leading providers of business solutions in the fields of telecommunications and IT technology at Garner Symposium/ITexpo ® 2007 in Cannes starting November 8. NEC is a Premier Sponsor of this event and it will be second sponsorship after recent event in Florida in the United States. NEC will demonstrate various technologies, innovations and solutions to empower business environment. NEC booth is located at PS13. Key areas of demonstration for NEC at Gartner Cannes are: IT & Security From business continuity to grid computing, NEC delivers infrastructure for demanding business. NEC is also changing the client landscape with its virtual PC class thin client system that provides enterprises with enhanced functionalities combined with reduced costs. We also provide high performance, rock-solid multi-biometrics...

And I called it myself, GDM (Global Delivery Model). Search my blog from it ;) Anyways... The report, Alternative Delivery Models: A Sea of New Opportunities and Threats, says that IT leaders must explore these models or risk having business units implement the solutions without their knowledge and support. Alternative delivery models require IT functions to acquire, package and deliver IT in new ways, the report said. “These alternative delivery models start from externals. Software-as-a-service is not something you buy and install in-house, it’s something you get from outside as available functionality, and you adapt to it,” said Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. So this article really doesn't say much, but I can tell you a few things, where you should pay attention to and start adapting to: "Pay-as-you-go" models : That is the foundation of the SaaS, VaaS or even DaaS (data center as a service), where you copy all your infrastructur...

WOA'H, Fabric,...I just couldn't help laughing, I did stop at Green IT though. No SOA, No SaaS?? SOA isn’t on the list because we are looking at some of the implementation technologies for service oriented architecture,” says Gartner analyst David Cearley. For instance, business process modeling (BPM) isn’t even a technology, but it’s a necessary precursor to introducing new technology. “SOA without BPM will not deliver on its process to the business,” says Cearley. Cearley argues that metadata management falls into a similar category. Without the upfront work on developing an information infrastructure SOA will stumble. ZDnet are carrying these predictions.

I wanted to kick back to this article and start my own rebuttal but I must admit there are a lot of clients who NEED virtualization very badly but are totally confused with the licensing, usage and are in a "state of flux". They need a strong reason to believe that Virtualization is a boon. But currently it costs you a lot. That is a simple fact! I don't blame VMware for cashing on it, they made this technology a hero. I personally think that freeing Virtualization is not just going to make them any happier as its not just the cost but also the benefits and dangers that they need to weigh out properly. Eventually you do pay a price to have a new technology in your shop. Is this article another hint to push VMware to reduce prices? Or even free ESX Server? I did mention one that VMware can go the IBM way and start concentrating on the services. Milking your core product is a good thing but I think the industry needs reassurance that its all gonna be fine. VMware could bett...

Neil McDonald has written a paper "Security Considerations and Best Practices for Securing Virtual Machines" Here are the TOCs. What You Need to Know 1.0 Introduction Analysis 2.0 VM Security During Planning, Installation and Configuration 3.0 VM Vulnerability and Configuration Management 4.0 VM Intrusion Prevention 5.0 VM Identity and Access Management 6.0 VM Network Access Control 7.0 VM Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery You can get that Gartner copy DocID ID# G00144828. PS: BTW, I got the link from a Top Security Executive. I haven't read the article so I can't say comment on it.