Introducing Hyper-dense virtualization

Hyper-dense virtualization is about running even more workloads on even fewer machines, slashing the cost of datacentre power & cooling even further saving on software licensing, support contracts and physical infrastructure.

Whether building a Cloud, running a web farm, hosting 100's of sql-databases or serving up 1000's of virtual desktops; hyper-dense virtualization enables you to run more of everything more VMs, more connections, more clients.

The latest range of Hyper-Dense virtualization appliances from VMC deliver a tight, highly tuned integration of the worlds fastest commercially available server appliance and a choice of enterprise class hypervisors from VMware and Citrix.

At VMC we bring the disciplines of high-performance computing to the world of datacentre virtualization; enabling you to realize the full potential of Hyper-dense virtualization right out-of-the-box.

Cloud Computing Explained

This little video seems quite simple, but has some powerful reminders:

1. Make sure your provider has the same level of security that you would have on site
2. Ensure you understand the service level agreements and what happens if they are not met
3. Be clear as to what services 'must be available' for your users - and make sure they agree to...
4. What happens if you cannot access the Internet? or if the Cloud Provider goes bust!

• Cloud computing explained
• |
• silicon.com

Also, don't forget the data remains your responsibility where ever it's held so make sure your Cloud provider so check all stored data is encrypted, and do make sure you know where in the world that data is being processed or stored - data protection legislation still applies to your data in the Cloud.

It's that time again

We're closing down for Christmas on the 23rd and will be back on the 4th of January 2011. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support in 2010 wish you all a Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

All the best from Nick, Steve, Andy & the VMC team

We keep getting better

Watch out for news release from Virtual Machine Company next week.

Visionary analysts over-egg Cloud adoption

If we're not going to own any infrastructure in 5 years, how come the latest surveys suggest that only 5% of organisations polled have plans to go Cloud.

I suspect that Garnet, IDC et al are still overstating the situation when they say that 40% of organisations are using 'Cloud' today. It is more that many are using SaaS applications, managed email, as well as off-site Storage & Disaster Recovery.

I work with plenty of organisations who are delivering ICT as a service and referring to it as 'Internal Cloud' and many more who use Virtual Private Clouds to centralise their companies business applications they use a mix of their own equipment in colocated datacentres and mash up of SaaS applications, like Salesforce.com and hosted email/exchange services.

Don;t get me wrong I think that the future for much of IT is in the use of 3rd party services and organisations will be pragmatic adopting new "Cloudy" services as they become cost effective and add value to/remove costs from their businesses. But, franky I don;t see Millions of businesses dumping their IT in the next 2 years do you?

I have often thought that the true value of industry forecasting and punditry is to make astrology look respectable...

Plug into your local Cloud

At the turn of the 20th century most big businesses owned their own power sources. It was very expensive, increasing the business costs dramatically and the ability/inability to generate power became limiting to the growth of business generally. Which was bad for the economy; as we all know that increased business costs effect the cost of the product to the consumer. If the cost of the product is too high then it won't sell and the business will fail. The solution was clearly a shared power resource - a main power plant that could rent power a piece at a time to the business, hence the creation of the electric companies. A positive spin off was the wide adoption of power to the home and the eventual arrival of home working.

Cloud computing offers the same type of service to businesses and people at home. There is no longer a need for a business or organisation to front the cost of building or maintaining their own data centres, because now you can rent a moment in time to perform the processing you need, and pay for what you use - that's why power companies are helping Cloud providers design their billing systems.

Orange joins Cisco, EMC, VMware to form cloud computing alliance

In what is clearly the biggest news story of the week it's reported today that Orange Business Systems, the network service provider and mobile operator, is to provide the billing know-how for the 'pay as you go' cloud offering from the increasingly borg'd industry triumvirate of Cisco, EMC and VMware.

The Flexible 4 Business Alliance expands on the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition that Cisco, EMC and VMware established early last year and allows them to deliver complete Cloud Solutions.

EMC has clearly learned some valuable lessons from the closure of it's Atmos Cloud service in July this year:

1) If you make hardware that allows people to build Clouds, stick to the knitting.

2) Work with people you trust to deliver integrated offering - it's an open secret EMC & Cisco are engaged.

3) You need specialist expertise to collect the money - Like Amazon, Orange has extremely efficient microbilling capability

I predict this will be a great success amongst Global organisations and governments who want their own private cloud infrastructures, and for service providers looking for a one stop shop for the delivery of what will become core infrastructure.

European IT Managers cool about Cloud

In February this year Computer Associates released an interesting report titled ‘Unleashing the Power of Virtualisation 2010_Cloud Computing and the Perceptions of European Business’ rather long title but actually a very interesting survey I would recommend downloading a copy from here. The survey covered the attitudes to virtualisation and cloud computing at 550 IT managers in 14 European countries with 65% of those surveyed having over 3000 employees and the remainder between 1000 and 3000.

After several readings of the results conclusions I would draw is that the growing confidence that is coming from the rapid and successful rollout of virtualisation projects is pulling the Cloud concept up the adoption curve very quickly. Evidenced by the fact that was only 17% of European IT managers identified “Cloud Computing” has been transformational to their business 47% of them are adopting cloud type delivery models for internal ICT services.

It is quite clear that the delivery of internal Cloud environments facilitated by increasingly robust virtualisation technologies is seen by European IT managers as a way of regaining control of the corporate computer environment thereby forcing down runaway IT costs that are widely acknowledged as a drag on the bottom line.

Hot as Hell Data-Centers Impact Business Values

With energy consumption from ICT systems now accounting for over 40% of average office energy bills it is essential for business to consolidate their computing requirements through virtualisation of resources onto fewer more powerful systems.

The UK’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme came on line on the 1st of April - but according to consultancy Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) this is no joke.

As energy costs for business already set to soar over the next 5 years PwC suggest that the CRC could act as a costs multiplier - with poorly managed energy systems adding up to 20% to those increased energy costs.

As part of the governments scheme, participants will have to purchase allowances to emit CO2 and report their emissions. On the back of this reporting scheme, results will be published in a league table with bonuses paid to the best performing companies, and fines for the profligate.

PwC estimates that 5,000 businesses with energy bills in excess of £500,000 p.a will be affected with a typical company with a £1m p.a. energy bill seeing an additional £500,000 added to the already increasing energy bills over the next 5 years.

Bottom line for investors is that with CRC adding 2-6% to the annual operating costs, a large power hungry data-centers directly impact the companies value.

Cloud Computing: It's like computers on the Internet innit!

It's the future of technology! A disruptive shift of computing stack to online services! Well what ever we think it is it'll all be clearer after this word from Simon Wardley from Canonical...



Loved it...

What is a Cloud?

There's been a load of debate over Cloud and what it is... Thanks to Pete Peterson of Wells Fargo Bank for providing this useful extract and link to the NIST source

This NIST definition is the most concise and "share"able definition I've read. My favorite so far. Clip included:

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models."
- NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

Whilst virtualization technology is an obvious aid to 'Cloud' computing. It's probably worth saying that virtualization is not The Cloud - to the users I speak to it's clearly a way of describing computing as a utility or outsourced service delivery; which includes pretty much all the traditional managed services, some new ones and layered under SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.

Zimbra - Clouds gather in an Azure sky?

Interesting moves in January with the announcement that VMware would acquire Zimbra. For those who don;t know Zimbra they are a credible alternative to Exchange Server, in my opinion not as rich, but if you're a business a darn site better than GoogleApps.

By combining Zimbra with the SpringSource technology looks to be a lot more than an extension of the ongoing virtualization spat it, looks like a move against Microsoft. Take a look at the blog post by VMware CTO Steve Herrod it has zero to do with virtualization.

Bringing together all the components necessary to compete with Windows Azure and Micorsoft Hosted Services.

From an ego standpoint you could understand it if they launched a vCloud service themselves, but if they really want to challenge/irritate Microsoft it would make a lot more sense to make this competing technology cheaply available to Azures true cloud competitors: Amazon, IBM, Salesforce.Com who have the customers now. Let's watch and see, no doubt we'll return to this one again.