Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

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Folks interested in the survey. Please join and let us know what you think!

Despite a downturn in the global economy, many organizations are paying a lot of attention to GRC (governance, security and compliance). Virtualization is penetrating in the markets and it is not a trend that is about to stop. The reason why virtualization is penetrating is due to the flexibility it offers organizations, but this flexibility comes at a cost, like any other freedom: vulnerability or exposure to risks. Without a solid control of your people, processes and technology, in this fast and dynamic changing world, your business could be dissolved in no time. Cloud Computing, where virtualization will be a key building block, for Data Centers worldwide, will only increase that "data in transit" challenge where it will cross borders and boundaries. When we lifted the curtain, we forgot that we suddenly were talking to whole world: naked! So the intention of this survey is to gauge your experiences, challenges and understanding of the security dilemma, that could cost u...

I've created some here. Budget considerations for 2009 & Desktop Virtualization Thanks for your time :-)

Microsoft's getting squeezed at the high end of the PC market by elegant Apple computers running OSX and at the lower end by less expensive desktops and netbooks running Linux. The web metrics firm also said Internet Explorer's market share fell below 70 per cent for the first time in more than ten years, to 69.8 per cent. IE lost 1.5 points in November alone, dropping a total of 5.8 per cent market share so far in 2008, with one month still left to go. Competing web browsers Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari gained 0.8 per cent and 0.6 per cent market shares respectively during November alone, according to Net Applications. If those trends continue, Internet Explorer will fall beneath 60 per cent market share in 2009. Source

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...

Tier-1 global service providers such as Accenture, ACS, Cognizant, Capgemini, CSC, EDS, Genpact, HP, IBM, Infosys, LogicaCMG, TCS, Satyam and Wipro continue to increase their global presence. The difference is that service providers such as IBM and Accenture are looking to tier-2 and tier-3 Indian cities for expansion, while the Indian providers Infosys, TCS and Wipro are heading toward cities in South America and Eastern Europe. In a way, the choice of the right city has become more important than the choice of the country. It is rather the city (than the country), which represents a more accurate package of attributes that service providers seek. Thus, Cebu City and Monterrey matter more than the Philippines and Mexico from a decision-making standpoint. This study identifies those locations that are globally recognized for their “specific” outsourcing services offerings as well as the ones that are establishing themselves as specialized locations for particular outsourcing functions....

This is like telling someone politely to "use their imagination". Virtualization may be a great to consolidate your assets and pack them up in lesser space but no oen can save you from the lack of certain critical skills. Comprised of feedback from over 1,000 respondents within more than 800 different government, enterprise and small-to-medium organizations worldwide, only 21 percent of 759 respondents currently deploying virtualization have any kind of systems management solution for their virtual infrastructure. Overall, survey responses demonstrate that: * Approximately 27 percent are managing the performance and availability of their virtual systems with the same tools they utilize on their physical servers; * Just 17 percent are simply monitoring the virtual hardware or the operating system; and * Only 10 percent are proactively gauging end-user response time while 15 percent are simply considering it. The survey also revealed that 40 percent of respondents are ...

Weighed down by energy prices and the housing crisis, employers laid off workers in stores, factories and forsaken building sites. With more job cuts expected in coming months, there's growing concern that many people will pull back on their spending later this year when the bracing effect of the tax rebates fades, dealing a dangerous setback to the shaky economy. These worries are rekindling recession fears. "The deteriorating jobs climate will dampen many a barbecue this weekend. It's hard to celebrate when you are out of a job," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research. In June alone, employers got rid of 62,000 jobs, bringing total losses so far this year close to a staggering half-million — 438,000, according to the Labor Department's report released Thursday. The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs a month for employment to remain stable. The jobless rate held steady at 5.5 percent after jumping in May by the most ...

IT outsourcer Infosys ’s clients are increasingly dissatisfied with the company’s service, according to a respected report into the IT outsourcing industry. The 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing State of the Industry Report ranked Infosys 56th for client satisfaction after polling customers. The previous year it was in the top 10. “[Infosys] clients reported a noticeable shift from customer service to corporate revenue generation, and a corporate culture that has become disappointingly elitist,” the report found. Infosys is emblematic of the Indian IT industry as it struggles to withstand changing macro-economic forces and graduate beyond simply being a service provider to become a strategic partner to its clients. The company’s approach to that challenge is examined in a profile in the new issue of Information Age magazine. The findings of this new report suggest that in its quest to become a strategic partner, the company may have sacrificed simple customer service. Rest is here ...

Virtualization in APAC will be a must-have technology, I have said that in the past and I can tell you that now. I have years of experience in these markets and know how the stuff works out there, while in Europe we are still , sometimes, in the mode of "mmm--we'll give it a spin", other businesses around the world need it massively! I'm still not sure how they extracted that number but I guess it'll excite some folks for sure. So if Europeans still keep lagging behind, I won't be surprised that all that expertise and know-how too will shift to APAC. Anyways here's the news: IT market research firm Springboard Research reported that the virtualization software and services market in Asia Pacific will grow at an estimated CAGR of 42% to reach US$1.35 billion by 2010 with CIO interest in the technology increasing steadily. A survey of CIOs from large and mid-sized enterprises in Australia, China, India and Singapore showed that 50 percent of CIOs want to de...

The poll is here and the current results look like this: also join the LinkedIn discussion to say what you really feel about it!

77% stated that if they do not change their current backup infrastructure within the next year, they will not be able to manage their current growth. 73% revealed they use both tape and disk for their backup storage media. Ed Ahl, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Gresham commented, “ The results highlight the fact that companies need faster backup and recovery options and better visibility and manageability of their backup infrastructures. They need a solution that keeps up with their runaway data growth, without constantly forcing them to buy additional technology which further exacerbates the issue. With 73% of respondents using disk and tape in some combination, this clearly indicates that what is needed is the capability ...

Drawn from the hundreds of IT products evaluated by the InfoWorld Test Center over the past year, our annual awards recognize the most capable, most polished, most groundbreaking, and most valuable products on the IT landscape. Find out which products earned top honors in our slideshow series. See them here.

Some interesting things come on the surface here. Laurianne requested me to read it so I'll try to do full justice on the content/survey. In a nut shell. That survey, like all the surveys is done on the web. I did one myself yesterday where I was approached by a research firms president "personally" (you know via his email that shot out across the web yesterday to $2 Million of you out there) What I liked and agreed: The consultant's need. Honing and grooming in-house dudes is good but did you address the HA recruitment/retention? Without that it is hard to say: "Oh we hired and trained..." and before you move on to the next question the respondent hasn't finished saying: "...and he left!" DRP is very crucial as in security (which by the way was not addressed) Organizational drama/in-house tussle is the big party-pooper. Yes it is! That is why I keep saying, CxOs need to not only look at the ROI but also commit actively. Systems integration has...

This is what I conclude from this research that Symantec did. Before you read this, please think about this: SaaS is coming like a freight train, why do you think talwented people would want to stay here if you can't offer them enough salary and cannot help them expand their horizons? Hiring new talent is a big problem as well since they are looking for jobs at different levels, you do not seem to be on the radar. (When I say you, I mean the customers who are sub-consciously moving their data centers, slowly but gradually, towards a hosting- and pay-as-you go model) SaaS fight: Vendors with SaaS models are also bound to fight aggresively for talent. They need everything that the customers had/have: Applications, Servers, OS, Broker architecture and even process architecture, everything! The model of pay "10 folks real good" works better than offering meager salaries to hundreds of them. Clients just don't have the insight in training their staff on stuff that is yet...

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The survey has shown that server consolidation was the primary driving force for virtualisation take up, with 79% of respondents. Server utilisation was second with 70% of respondents, but assumedly those who responded in favour of consolidation were naturally concerned with utilisation as well. By VMware’s own admission the research has been conducted by the company themselves, so you wouldn’t expect the results to be negative and damaging. What is an interesting feature of the research is that more then 91 percent of organisation surveyed claimed to be familiar with virtualisation technology. Link

AberdeenGroup research shows that 31 percent of organizations surveyed have virtualization deployed within their IT infrastructure. The same research also shows that virtualization has strong adoption rate, largely due to companies’ need to cut costs through server consolidation and resource flexibility. About fifty percent of companies surveyed either have deployed or plan to evaluate some virtualization solutions. However, it was only a matter of time before a red flag was raised about how these new logical environments are going to be secured for high availability, disaster recovery and business continuity. Bottom line, end users need to start thinking not only about using virtualization for high availability and disaster recovery but also, about how to protect their newly virtualized environments. If you are a CIO, Infrastructure Manager, IT Manager or even a concerned CEO, I would strongly advice you to read this whitepaper .

I am not surprised at all. Who wouldn't? Rackspace sponsored a study of 245 customers of its managed hosting business and found that 57 percent of their internal infrastructures were virtualized. Of those surveyed, 72 percent said they would host business-critical applications on virtual machines. In the "of-course you would say that" category, 71 percent of the respondents said they would prefer to host those mission-critical applications on a virtualized platform provided by a managed hosting provider such as RackSpace. Not surprisingly, of those respondents who had not used virtualization yet, 64 percent said they would like to try it with assistance of a hosting provider. Original link.