Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

Dublin VMware Forums: Ireland’s IT Challenges Similar to the States

By Rob Strechay

I had a very enjoyable time with our Irish partner Triangle and distributor Sanalyse yesterday in Dublin.  It was very fun to see what a positive reaction the more than 400 people that attended had to Akorri BalancePoint.  Here are some of the interesting things that came out of our discussions with the end users there:

  • Many are into “phase 2” of their VMware deployments
  • A majority were running around 60 guest on 5 – 10 ESX servers
  • They were looking to move to virtualize “tougher applications” like SQL, Oracle, SAP
  • They had a mix mash of different storage
  • Still fighting budget battles; looking to move projects along this summer
  • 99% using VMware with a small percent using Hyper-v and VMware, and even smaller percent that were Hyper-v only
  • Many were looking for partners to help them with capacity planning

What I found most striking was that the cost savings messages we had been hearing from end users in the States for the past year, were the same there.  Some of the things I kept hearing were:

  • “I need to do more with less.”
  • “I need to add servers without adding head count.”
  • “I have more storage but no visibility.”
  • “How do we account for all of this?”

Obviously we were happy to talk to these folks about how BalancePoint has been helping customers in the States for years solve these problems.

Cloudy with a Chance of Skepticism

Pretty much unanimously they were tired of hearing about cloud.  In fact, I heard a funny story while I was there.  Apparently, Ireland’s Department of Finance from the Chief State Solicitor’s Office spoke out saying that you shouldn’t use a cloud of any type.  I guess someone didn’t get the memo that clouds can be private or public nor read the article (below) about the local investment in public cloud infrastructure before making his statement.

Both IBM and Hewlett Packard have established cloud computing competency centres in Ireland which created 190 jobs and involve a combined investment of €36 million. Microsoft, which is identified in the e-mail as a cloud computing supplier, invested $500 million (€366 million) in building a data centre in Dublin which opened last year and will provide these services.

Attending this event just proved to me that IT is the same around the world, just at varying stages, and that all governments can say things with unintended circumstances.

March 24, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion, Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Microsoft Demos IE9

By Rich Corley

At the MIX10 Developer Conference in Las Vegas earlier this week Microsoft previewed its new IE9 browser.  Microsoft has made some cool optimizations in IE9, adding hardware acceleration and a new Javascript engine but the most compelling thing I see in IE9 is Microsoft’s support for HTML5.

HTML5 has been slow to roll out….it’s been in works since June 2004.  Guys like YouTube already have an HTML5 based player but I think the adoption by Microsoft will bring HTML5 to the mainstream.

So what’s so cool about HTML5?  Well first of all it will be easier to design webpages using HTML5.  HTML5 introduces a new set of elements which make it much easier to structure pages.  The other main advantage is HTML5’s support for video and audio content.  It will now be easier to embed these objects into a webpage.  There will be no need to use Adobe’s Flash anymore to support video in your webpage.  Although I personally have no issues with Flash many do and I think the move to HTML5 will accelerate the development of richer applications.

The one potential downside of IE9 is that it doesn’t support XP.  I’m ok with that since I’ve moved most of my environment to Windows 7 but I can understand how that will give some people grief.  Microsoft has given no date for the delivery of IE9 but I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

March 19, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Time Flys

By Rich Corley

Wow, it’s amazing how quickly a year goes by.  My marketing department has been on my case to start blogging again so I took a look and realized my last blog was over a year ago!

A lot has gone on in IT over the past year.  I think the most amazing thing I see is how the rapid adoption of server based virtualization continues at a mind boggling pace.  I haven’t seen any numbers from analysts lately but from the customers I talk with I’d say the majority of enterprises have adopted server virtualization in some form.  Some are still playing with it in their development labs but most have also deployed it into production.

Now that enterprises have laid the groundwork for dynamic infrastructure by virtualizing their infrastructure the next logical step is toward Services Based IT, or what many are referring to as the “Cloud”.  Over the coming weeks I’ll be blogging about what I see happening with Cloud and how products like BalancePoint are necessary for successful Cloud deployments.

It’s a great day here in Boston today…I think I’ll brush off the bike and go for a ride.

March 17, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

The Next Big Thing

By Lisa Crewe

I’m excited to share that Akorri was named to the Wall Street Journal’s list of Top 50 Venture Backed Companies today.  This is the first year the Journal has published this list and it’s exciting that Akorri made the cut. 

The rankings were calculated based on how each company scored in the following components: the track record of success for the venture-capital investors who sit on the company’s board (Board Ranking); the amount of capital raised by the company over the last three years, in comparison to its peers (Total Equity Ranking); the track record of success for the company’s founders and chief executive (Executive Ranking); and the recent growth in the value of the company (Valuation Ranking). As a last component, Dow Jones venture-capital reporters and editors also reviewed and ranked the companies. Overall rank is based on a weighted combination of all five components.

Here’s the write up on Akorri from the article.

Founder: Rich Corley
Year begun: 2005
Industry: Information Technology
Product/Service: Software for managing virtualized servers and the entire network environment inside large datacenters
Investors: BlueStream Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners
Full-time employees: 52
Why it’s hot: An entrant in the hot datacenter-virtualization arena, Akorri said in a press release that it posted 134% fourth-quarter revenue growth from a year earlier.

Akorri wants to make the view less cloudy for the cloud’s engineers — those datacenter managers who oversee the virtualized servers that power growing numbers of Web services for consumers and businesses. As virtualization caught on earlier this decade, it became clear to Rich Corley that datacenter management tools didn’t understand virtualized machines. “I saw the problems on the horizon,” he says, and concluded an entirely new paradigm was needed. So he founded Akorri with $8.4 million from early VC investors — he’s has raised $48 million total — and built a management system that both understands virtual machines and helps pros manage datacenters as a single system, rather than as individual components. The tools pinpoint problems quickly so datacenters can better utilize the equipment they have, get competing parts of the system to play better together, and boost overall performance, says Mr. Corley. Because they aren’t buying things they don’t need, equipment costs fall. Engineers’ time troubleshooting drops 80%, and finger-pointing among various tech teams goes away, Mr. Corley says. Meanwhile, they can plan more confidently for the future. Such selling points resonate. Fourth-quarter sales rose 82% from the third, says Mr. Corley. –Riva Richmond

March 10, 2010 | Filed Under Akorri News & Opinion | Leave a Comment 

Moving Deck Chairs on the Titanic? Ionix Changes Hands … Partially

By Rob Strechay

In a very interesting move and one that makes perfect sense to me, EMC has sold assets (software, development and sales) to VMware.  I think this is an extremely shrewd move by both companies.  But what does this mean to the customers?  Chad’s Virtual Geek blog has a great break down of what went from EMC to VMware and why. 

My thoughts are this.  The Ionix deal went a long way to ensuring that EMC and VMware will not overlap or compete in the management arena as VMware transitions from a hypervisor company to a virtual server and application management company.

What I find very interesting is that this now disconnects the server and storage domains.  If you know Akorri , we’re all about servers and storage, or what we call cross-domain.  Now I am sure there will be overlap within the EMC and VMware portfolios in the future (probably on purpose).  Perhaps one will  leave off or even hand off to the other’s management software.  So does this mean you will need a multi-vendor solution for cloud and virtualization infrastructure management?  I argue yes.

What’s the likely overlap?  I’m thinking SMARTS ADM / APPSPEED and the rest of the SMARTS family.  Almost instantly APPSPEED becomes a formidable APM management platform.  No longer just being J2EE application mapping and performance.  Now it can start to competing with the likes of HP BAC, Dynatrace, AppDynamics,  Bluestripe, Solarwinds, and many more.

As Chad states in his blog on the subject, cross licensing and integration among the software vendors has happened for many years – especially the cross-licensing / OEM’ing of SMARTS by Cisco and others to improve their correlation and event management.

So what does this mean to the customers?  I really don’t think it changes too much in the way the products operate today.  In the future will they become more VMWare specific?  Doubtful.  In fact this could be very positive for the development of the software.  Moving from inside a hardware-come-software-company-lately to a pure software company may bring life and future development focus to the products. 

At the end of the day the winner seems to be VMware in this.  I think for EMC it is a push given the development money spent over the years, the rebranding, and the acquisition costs.  Customers may win too – but we will have to see.

I don’t think it’s necessarily “moving deck chairs on the titanic” but I do think that it draws a line in the sand for the companies and reveals where they are not going to compete.

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion | Leave a Comment 

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