The Army is stepping up its efforts in the data consolidation initiative with APC2 – the Army Private Cloud – aiming to reduce its number of data centers from 200 to less than 20. The private cloud environment is aimed at reducing costs and energy use while improving the Army’s cybersecurity posture and speed of innovation as well as a push for quick and flexible deployment of apps and increased uptime.
The DMTF (formerly known as the Distributed Management Task Force) that focuses on developing standards around cloud computing recently issued two documents: “Architecture for Managing Clouds” and “Use Cases and Interactions for Managing Clouds”. These documents will form the foundation of the DMTF’s ongoing cloud standards work. The documents were produced by DMTF’s Open Cloud Standards Incubator, formed in April 2009 to address the need for open management standards for cloud computing.
While healthcare is often seen as lagging when it comes to adopting new IT, it does not seem to be the case with the cloud. Accenture reports that healthcare organizations are looking toward cloud computing at nearly the same rates as other sectors:
– 32% of decision makers said they are using cloud applications (32% in manufacturing, 29% in education and 35% in retail)
– 73% are planning to move more applications to the cloud (75% in technology and government sectors)
Accenture sites cost savings, economies of scale and privacy (yes privacy) as the motivators, noting that cloud providers typically offer more robust security “than is available in-house. Cloud players’ livelihood is protecting data.” Dadong Wan, Accenture.
A new report this weekfrom Forrester discusses the “coming upheaval in tech services” and the effect of the cloud and the rise new technology has on traditional service providers who rely on consulting and multi-year contracts. The report details how “The worst economic downturn in 70 years coupled with the technology change of cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) undermines the future validity of traditional IT services business models,” according to report authors John McCarthy and Pascal Matzke. “While many service provider strategists recognize that some form of change is coming, it’s unclear how the disruption will play out or what the scale of the impact will be.”
IT consultants will have nothing to worry about though, even if the $450 billion market dips a bit in the coming years. CIOs can anticipate lower IT costs on as-a-service solutions for infrastructure and software, but the analysts predict that costs will return-at a higher percentage, as CIOs come to rely more on the vendors for higher-value cloud services and support.
Cloud computing has not only been on the minds of countless private companies around the country, but also a high priority for the federal government. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has presented a solid case for cloud computing and incentive for agencies to make the move. Some agencies have moved faster than others, and even state governments are getting in on the cloud. State CIOs are updating their IT infrastructure in anticipation of new requirements for state health insurance as dictated by the new federal healthcare legislation from last year. By 2019, states can expect an estimated 24 million constituents to use state health insurance. State and local governments see promise in the cloud as a way to not only save money, but to share resources, increase efficiency and deliver new innovation. While not everyone is ready to move to a government cloud, Google is at least making it easier for agencies to use their public cloud tools (like e-mail, applications and more) by receiving the certification required by federal law to provide services to the government.
The government move to the cloud has definitely been established and the path has been charted. But what does that road look like, and what has been done so far? This week, Kundra released some information on what steps agencies have made so far. Agencies trying to streamline operations and better engage with citizens by moving in-house software and services to the cloud. The Social Security Administration launched a cloud-based online knowledge database that will answer more than 1,000 frequently asked questions. The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) is using the cloud for better management of their cases. Kundra states that the use of the cloud allowed the FLRA to improve its use of IT infrastructure and ability to get more out of existing systems to respond to business needs. To translate that into numbers, the new case-management system — which uses Intuit’s Quickbase — took less than 10 months to implement and will reduce total cost of ownership nearly $600,000 over five years. The General Services Administration (GSA) is still evaluating the cloud, planning to implement a better e-mail system. The proposed system will integrate 15,000 mailboxes to the cloud and eliminate infrastructure currently located in 17 different places around the world. According to Kundra, once implemented, the agency expects the new system to save the agency 30% in costs over the first two years.
Although there are a host of questions that still need to be answered, especially around privacy and security concerns, the journey for government cloud computing charges forward. From Datamation, the payoffs of the cloud could be significant, and the White House is leaning on the agencies to develop preliminary plans for shifting to the cloud. With a hulking federal computing infrastructure that amounts to a $76 billion annual budget, the cloud is beginning to win acceptance as the next wave of government IT, if only gradually.
It all boils down to what IT operations management professionals everywhere want; better, faster, leaner operations that are on-demand and cost less in money and resources. With an increase in the definition of the cloud and standards for use from NIST and FedRAMP, the government is able to move faster than before to a federal cloud. Stay tuned for more developments over the last few months of 2010.
A recent article in Network World brought up some interesting predications for the future of IT operations management and how a holistic approach of end-to-end management is becoming even more critical.
Accenture’s managing director of cloud computing, Jimmy Harris brought up these main points.
Enterprises are taking a more services-centric view.
With more robust cloud services, enterprises will not be managing infrastructure from an operational and service delivery perspective but essentially acquiring it (infrastructure) as services.
Fewer bodies are needed for maintenance, enhancements and operations and there will be an evolutionary maturing of roles and technologies focusing on ITIL-like processes.
IT’s job will be to define the level of performance expected from service providers and be able to demonstrate that they’re in fact meeting those performance levels — but not necessarily doing the management and monitoring itself.
It is a telling statement that Harris does not see a need to bring in a whole new set of monitoring tools to manage all of these different services. That’s precisely why you DO need a tool that can aggregate between all of the different applications and services to provide one view of your entire IT infrastructure. The ability to see all components using one tool is instrumental in IT service delivery. And, with cloud computing, this has never been more important because the different components that make up a single IT service can reside in a number of places. Whether it’s the enterprise’s data center and in a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud with a web front-end for an application which is then hosted by the public Amazon cloud; you have to have a way to meet service levels and manage performance of your services and applications.
It all comes down to simplifying IT. The cloud has provided a great way for businesses to be able to move faster and scale even better than ever before. Many service providers are far ahead of the curve when it comes to cloud, and enterprises are sure to follow close behind.
Not yet, but this week Google Apps were GSA certified in a move that “gives the company a leg up in the race to move federal networks at other agencies into the cloud.” This new version of Google Apps is geared for federal, state, and local government agencies in the U.S. and includes Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and support for government-mandated policy and security measures.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is launching a more intensive system monitoring program to include status updates every 24 hours on every network desktop and every data platform. According to Jaren Doherty, Deputy Secretary for Information Protection and Risk Management for VA, this new initiative is part of the agency’s long term project to gain visibility of every device on the network and infrastructure including routers, switchers and servers.
For those that haven’t fully embraced the cloud computing shift, you’re becoming a minority. A recent Yankee Group survey found that more than half (nearly 60%) saw cloud computing (including Software as a Service and online services, naturally) as helpful to the business, with only 40% calling it immature. More than two-thirds said that internal clouds were more attractive than public clouds.
But good news for those Google conspiracy theorists – only 17% viewed Google and Amazon as “a trusted cloud partner.” What’s even more interesting is to compare that number to another survey from Evans Data which shows Google and IBM dominating the cloud market. Google ranks as the top player in the public cloud market with 40% of respondents, and IBM with 30% picking them as the best private cloud provider.
Wonder what Amazon would have to say about that? Yet another survey crowns them as the king of cloud computing, where Google and Microsoft failed to take the top spot in any of the seven categories. The categories in question ranked Amazon highly when it comes to cloud foundations, cloud infrastructure, cloud network services, cloud platforms, cloud applications, cloud security and cloud management
…the demand for cloud among hosters and service providers was crystal clear. Every cent they made was based on adding value (in the form of services or capabilities) on top of delivering computing power, and the higher the margin between operational costs and revenue, the more money they made. The one thing cloud computing excelled at was driving operational efficiency and lowering costs.
A recent article from Datamation showcases the relationship between service providers and the cloud even further, stating that “The emergence of highly elastic, pay-per-use, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing services has redefined how hosting services are packaged, priced and provisioned. Traditional hosting services have been sold in highly customized fashion, under relatively inflexible long-term contracts. These services met most customers’ needs in the past, but are quickly becoming commoditized by a new generation of IaaS alternatives. Now, hosting companies must determine if they want to match the hyper-elasticity and self-provisioning capabilities of today’s leading IaaS providers.”
We saw back in our government FOSE survey that cloud computing is set to follow a similar path as virtualization has over the past couple years. Both virtualization and cloud computing saw a dramatic increase in planned tools from 2009 to 2010, with a 15% jump for virtualization management and a whopping 20% jump for the cloud. We’ve known since 2008 that virtualization and cloud computing were the next wave of technological changes for IT operations. The latest Gartner CIO survey lists Virtualization as number 1 (number 3 in 2008) and cloud computing at number 2 (number 16 in 2008). Virtualization technologies are maturing and user expectation are changing.
Some say that “cloud computing is virtualization taken to its logical conclusion”, but is that really the case? Ellen Rubin says that it’s actually the cloud that is giving virtualization a chance to get back into the spotlight. It appears that VMware has taken the opportunity to jump headfirst into the cloud hype, and with perfect timing. The numbers don’t lie, VMware reported exponential growth (a 48% increase) with their Q2 revenue numbers from 2010 over 2009 (but that may also be because the economy is better this year).
With more and more companies turning to virtualization and cloud computing technologies to manage their IT infrastructure, there is an increased need for effective and integrated network monitoring. IT network management will need to adapt and scale for more distributed networks, and avoid “virtual stall”. Virtual stall can occur when enterprise IT is not ready for the rapid growth associated with virtualizing data centers and introducing the cloud. Scalability, management, process and coordination issues are all key factors of virtual stall, mostly due to a lack of automation and reporting in virtualization management tools. Service delivery can suffer without automated monitoring of virtual machines to coordinate and integrate complex systems.
Whether or not you think that virtualization paved the way for the cloud, or that the cloud is just a natural continuum for virtualization, we think that the two technologies make a perfect match. Users are demanding always-on and always-connected resources, which means that it is becoming even more critical for businesses to align their technology goals with their business goals. Efficient real-time monitoring and reporting for virtual environments becomes even more important with the on-demand and self-service nature of the cloud. Some may say that virtualization and cloud computing are disruptive or even confusing technologies, but without them, IT would not be able to move as fast as it is today.
“That ought to be against the law!” We’ve all said that about something we hadto pay for, like IT maintenance contracts – the single largest expense for many IT shops. Seeking to balance customer value with vendor revenue and fees, Gartner has formed the Gartner Global IT Council for IT Maintenance and drafted a “code of conduct” with clauses including:
fair percentage ranges for annual maintenance fee hikes or reductions, and long-term caps on increases
the ability to stop or alter support at any time for unused products
response times and support levels “based on application criticality and other business factors”
“It’s a good start. Customers need a good base line and a bill of rights evens the playing field. There could be more rights across the lifecycle, and third-party maintenance should be a key requirement.”
Ray Wang, Altimeter Group
Amazon’s CTO (a Ph.D. expert on distributed computing systems) makes the case for enterprise clouds in this slideshow, addressing “false clouds” and myths, as well as the decision-making process for buying, deploying and maintaining servers. (AWS is 8 years old!) There’s too much information to do justice here in short bullet points, making this slideshow a must see.
Download the report from InformationWeek that looks at using cloud services for unified communications (UC), focusing on how to make the most of existing technologies while leveraging the cloud. There’s even a discussion on the cost vs. service tradeoffs between using managed services or a cloud provider. The report is free for a limited time.
We’ve been talking about cloud for months for both enterprise and government, with the appointment of Vivek Kundra as federal CIO accelerating the pace. But is the reality of cloud computing in government in any way keeping up with the hype? While federal agencies are expressing interest in cloud, adoption has not been as common.
“Often they’re not ready for or they’re surprised by the amount of work, of cost and the time to deal with the security and the procurement that’s involved in getting to that point. They figure it should take one to three months, when it’s more like six months to a year.”
Chris Bell, Deltek Inc.
Some vendor insight regarding federal cloud usage:
Lots of vendors are educating agencies about how to move into cloud in compliance with federal mandates and laws
Procurements will come since the economies it offers government are too big to be ignored
It’s probably not best to focus solely on saving money – instead, agencies should see if cloud advances the agency’s mission and then look at the costs to determine fit
Finally, if you’re still trying to figure out how to spend your summer vacation, here are some suggestions (whether you consider yourself a geek or not). It’s too late to make Comic Con unless you’re on the west coast, but other upcoming suggestions including live-action role playing, Star Trek, pirates, Harry Potter and space academy for adults.
Ever watch folks and how they use various applications? When you do some research around the science of Situation Awareness, you realize that human behavior in user interfaces is vital to understanding how to put information in front of users in ways that empowers the users inline with what they need.
In ENMS related systems, it is imperative that you present information in ways that empower users to understand situations and conditions beyond just a single node. While all of the wares vendors have been focused on delivering some sort of Root Cause Analysis, this may not be what is REALLY needed by the users. And dependent upon whether you are a Service Provider or an Enterprise, the rules may be different.
What I look for in applications and User Interfaces are ways to streamline the interaction versus being disruptive. If you are swapping a lot of screens, inherently look at your user. If they have to readjust their vision or posture, the UI is disrupting their flow.
For example, if the user is looking at an events display and they execute a function as part of the menu. This function produces a screen that overcomes the existing events display. If you watch your user, you will see them have to readjust to the screen change.
I feel like this is one of the primary reasons ticketing systems do not capture more real time data. It becomes too disruptive to keep changing screens so the user waits until later to update the ticket. Inherently, data is filtered and lost.
This has an effect on other processes. One is that if you are attempting to do BSM scorecards, ticket loading and resource management in near real time, you don’t have all of the data to complete your picture. In effect, situation awareness for management levels is skewed until the data is input.
The second effect to this is that if you’re doing continuous process improvement, especially with the incident and problem management aspects of ITIL, you miss critical data and time elements necessary to measure and improve upon.
Some folks have attempted to work around this by managing from ticket queues. So, you end up with one display of events and incoming situation elements and a second interface as the ticket interface. In order to try to make this even close to being effective, the tendency is to automatically generate tickets for every incoming event. Without doing a lot of intelligent correlation up front, automatic ticket generation can be very dangerous. Due diligence must be applied to each and every event that gets propagated or you may end up with false ticket generation or missed ticket opportunities.
Consider this as well. An Event Management system is capable of handling a couple thousand events pretty handily. A Ticketing system that handles 2000 ongoing tickets at one time changes the parameters of many ticketing systems.
Also, consider that in Remedy 7.5, the potential exists that each ticket may utilize 1GB or more of Database space. 2000 active tickets means you’re actively working across 2TB of drive / database space.
I like simple update utilities or popups that solicit information needed and move that information element back into the working Situation Awareness screen. For example, generating a ticket should be a simple screen to solicit data that is needed for the ticket that cannot be looked up directly or indirectly. Elements like ticket synopsis or symptom. Assignment to a queue or department. Changing status of a ticket.
Maps
Maps can be handy. But if you cannot overlay tools and status effectively or the map isn’t dynamic, it becomes more of a marketing display rather than a tool that you can use. This is even more prevalent when maps are not organized into hierarchies.
One of the main obstacles is the canvas. You can only place a certain amount of objects on a given screen. Some applications use scroll bars to enable you to get around. Others use a zoom in – zoom out capability where they scale the size of the icons and text according to the zoom. Others enable dragging the canvas. Another approach is to use a Hyperbolic display where analysis of detail is accomplished by establishing a moveable region under a higher level map akin to a magnifying glass over a desktop document.
3D displays get around the limitations of a small canvas a bit by using depth to position things in front or behind. However, 3D displays have to use techniques like LOD or Level of Details, or Fog to enable only more local objects are attended to, otherwise it has to render every object local and remote. This can be computationally intensive.
A couple of techniques I like in the 3D world are CAVE / Immersion displays and the concept of HUDs and Avatars. CAVE displays display your environment from several perspectives including top, bottom, front, left, right, and even behind. Movement is accomplished interacting with one screen and the other screens are synchronized to the main, frontal screen. This gives the user the effect of an immersive visual environment.
A HUD or heads up display enables you to present real time information directly in front of a user regardless of position or view.
The concept of an avatar is important in that if you have an avatar or user symbol, you can use that symbol to enable collaboration. In fact, your proximity to a given object may be used to help others collaborate and team up to solve problems.
Next week, I’ll discuss network layouts, transitioning, state and condition management, and morphing displays. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I’ll take a shot at designing a hybrid, immersive 2D display that is true multiuser, and can be used as a solid tools and analysis visualization system.
Not to pile-on, but here are five tested and recommended quick fixes (including duct tape) along with some recommendations for Apple. I don’t believe that this could be Apple’s Waterloo, as some are speculating, and the chorus at the end of the iPhone Antenna Song says it all: “If you don’t want an iPhone don’t buy one. And if you don’t like it take it back”. (Or get a free bumper case as Apple announced in their press conference.)
Savvis has launched a new set of “private” cloud services that can be deployed in about an hour (vs. 90 days for a comparable data center) that provides extra security measures and service level agreements. The two service profiles are “Essential” – a basic, private data center service and “Balanced” – with greater levels of support and performance. “Premier”, for mission-critical applications, is planned.
VMware released vSphere 4.1, said to significantly improve scalability and overall performance, stating, “Our vision is to make cloud computing real for customers and vendors alike, and we believe vSphere is the software to do it.”
Here’s a short video clip, The Promise of Cloud, which demonstrates how an e-learning company quantified the economies of scale they realized with their transition to cloud computing.
Fair warning: while there are many clear benefits of cloud computing, service users are still ultimately responsible for ensuring availability and security of their applications and services in the cloud. Read how one company found itself vulnerable to malware, site crashes and compromised code, due to their provider.
The Obama Administration has halted spending on 30 government financial system modernization projects – estimated at $3 billion – and is calling on agencies to submit “new, more streamlined project plans”. Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO, who has been working to build parity with private-sector IT, will review the highest-risk projects.
How much can you save by making better, more design-efficient decisions regarding your data center? Possibly 30%, according to IBM. Besides the obvious how reliable, how big and how to save moneys, they also identified five key trends driving data center design decisions today:
energy costs outweigh capital costs so build what you need now, not what you expect to grow into
a modular and flexible infrastructure that allows you to adapt to a growing customer base
cooling is key – the worst cooling systems can cost 2.5 times more than the best ones
virtualization is not just for servers – consider virtualized storage
self-diagnosing data centers that monitoring of heat, server and disk events that could signal an impending failure (sounds familiar!)
A bit of bragging…Virginia is ranked the #2 America’s Top States for Business (behind Texas). Judging categories included the talent of the workforce, the local economy, technology and innovation and access to capital. On the flip side, Virginia was in the bottom half when it comes to the cost of doing business and the cost of living.
OK. You’ve got a huge task before you. You walk into an organization where you have an Event Management tool, a Network Management application, a Help Desk application, performance management applications, databases ad nauseum… And each becomes its own silo of a Beast. Each with its own competing management infrastructure, own budget, and own support staff.
(Photo Credit: MSDN)
I get emails every week from friends and colleagues facing this, as well as recruiters looking for an Architect that can come in for their customer, round up the wagons, and get everything in line going forward.
Sounds rather daunting, doesn’t it. Let’s look at what its going to take to get on track towards success.
You need to identify and map out the Functional Empires. Who’s running what product and what is the current roadmap for each Functional Empire.
You need to be aware of any upcoming product “deals”.
You need to understand the organizational capabilities and the budget.
In some instances, you’ll need to be strong enough technically to defend your architecture. Not just to internal customers but to product vendors. If you’re not strong enough technically, you need to find someone that is to cover you.
You need to understand who the Executive is, what the goals are, and the timelines needed by the Corporation.
ITIL is about processes. I tend to label ITIL as Functional Process Areas. These are the process areas needed in an effective IT Service. FCAPS is about Functional Management Areas. It is about the Functional Areas in which you need to organize and apply technology and workflow. eTOM adds Service Delivery and provisioning in a service environment into the mix as well.
The standards are the easy part.
The really hard part is merging the silos you already have and doing so without selling the organization down the river. And the ultimate goal – Getting the users using the systems.
The big 4 Wares vendors are counting on you not being able to consolidate the silos on your own. I’ve heard the term “Best of Breed” is dead and “A single Throat to Choke” as being important to customers. These are planted seeds that they want you to believe. The only way to even come close to merging in their eyes is to use only one vendor’s wares.
When you deviate from addressing requirements and functionality in your implementation, you end up with whatever the vendor you picked says you’re gonna get.
You need to put together a strategy that spans 2 major release cycles, and delineate the functionality needed across your design. Go back to the basics, incorporate the standards, and put EVERYTHING on the table. Your strategy needs to evolve into a vision of where the Enterprise Management system should be in the 2 major release time cycle. The moment you let your guard down on focus, the chances that something thwart movement forward, will present itself.
Be advised. Regardless of how hard you work and what products and capabilities you implement, sometimes an organization becomes so narcissistic that it cannot change. No matter what you do, nothing gets put into production because the people in the silos block your every move. There are some that are totally resistant to change, evolution, and continuous improvement.
And you’re up against a lot of propaganda. Every vendor will tell you they are the leader or market best. And they will show you charts and statistics from analysis firms that show you that they are leaders or visionaries in the market space. It is all superfluous propaganda. Keep to requirements, capabilities, and proving/reproving these functions and their usability.
And listen to your end users most carefully. If the function adds to their arsenal and adds value, it will be accepted. If the function gets in the way or creates confusion or distraction, it will not be used.
Recently, I happened across a discussion on LinkedIn where an Architect at a Network Solutions Vendor was looking for a management framework specifically around deploying tools, information, and technology to manage their own products. EM7 is a very innovative way of advancing a companies management strategy towards its customers.
When you look at other management applications, you end up with a plugin needed for each application. For example, in Tivoli, you’d have to develop an ITNM/IP module. Then for:
Performance management you’d have to develop an AppPack for Proviso.
Event management you’ll be doing Netcool rules and automations.
Dashboards, you’d need to develop some Impact and TBSM views.
Ticketing, you have yet another integration point.
All in all, you’re probably looking at 4 (or more) developers with different skill sets.
The multiple problem is exacerbated when you consider supporting patches and upgrades across these various product lines. And then you have to productize this, sell it and support it.
EM7 makes A LOT of sense here. You develop Dynamic Applications, runbook automations, performance management, discovery, custom dashboards, event management, custom reports, and even Knowledge Management into a nice, exportable, licensable package. And you can sell this as a Dynamic Application, a PowerPack, an Appliance coupled with EM7 framework, or as an EM7 All In One ISO image.
If you need to integrate with other applications, there are many ways to redistribute content as well as reports and events. We know that differentiators in your business and services segregate you from competition.
The first step? Ask somebody about your thoughts, concerns, and direction! What are your requirements? Timelines? How can we help? ScienceLogic EM7 can be your Differentiator.
In the ENMS card deck, holding the wild card differentiates the rest of your hand. If you have a lowly pair, a wild card changes that into a more formidable 3 of a kind. If you already have 3 of a kind, a wild card morphs that into a full house or 4 of a kind. You choose which way you want to win. ScienceLogic EM7 is your wild card – the card that fits everywhere.
