Is There a Business Case To Be Made In Favour of Virtualising the Desktop?

If you are looking at desktop/notebook replacement or optimisation now, what are the options and considerations that should be on your mind as you weigh up the options? As one of my colleagues stated a day or two ago, “given that so much has come to market over the last 12 months, not forgetting developments at Citrix, Microsoft as well as VMware, at one level, it is all very exciting and full of possibilities, at another, it bloody confusing!” So what are the options?

Well the “straightforward” option might be to simply replace all desktops and laptops in a like for like switch and consider moving to Windows Vista. At one level this offers simplicity of change in as much as the new operating system is unlikely to pose to a major headache for users. However before such a transition be attempted it is absolutely essential that a thorough evaluation of application compatibility be undertaken. There are some clear management benefits that can be achieved with Vista, especially in the area of policy setting , particularly around power management. However as an interesting side note, one senior IT director mentioned that had made the decision to defer a move to XP SP2 because of application compatibility issues. For his organisation the move from XP SP1 to Vista apparently holds fewer problems due to the superior sand boxing in Vista (i.e. you really can run things reliably in compatibility mode). To put it another way, he said more of their XP SP1 applications ran successfully under Vista without modification than under XP SP2.

However, there are now many alternatives to running “standard” desktops and laptops. Great to have choices, but it does make life a little more complex. Such alternatives include, but are by no means limited to, application streaming, desktop virtualisation, application virtualisation, virtual machine plus application capture, and a more traditional terminal service driven application approach to name but a few. But our research shows that it is not simple to make a business case for going down the 'virtualised desktop' route. That mix of solutions holds lots of potential cost savings in management, and possibly in hardware too. But, and it is very big but, it is hard to make a case for some of the newer elements therein and especially on the new management tools for virtualised desktop that are only just beginning to trickle out.

We are also seeing that it is a prime objective for CIOs to make solid 'NOW' business cases which I and several of my colleagues suspect means that we will only see a slow take up of desktop virtualisation solutions unless there are extremely clear forcing factors to accelerate adoption. It is now clear that CIOs are extremely reluctant to base any investment case on futures or too many assumptions reflecting just how hard nosed business stakeholders are nowadays.

Thus there is now a clear onus on desktop virtualisation vendors and, indeed, on the analyst community to help explain just what options are available, where they fit, where each is inappropriate and, perhaps most importantly of all, what is the business case for adopting such solutions. No small job here then.

Behind the scenes at the National Gallery provides plenty of food for thought.

I recently had the pleasure of attending an event which took a group of analysts and journalists ‘behind the scenes’ at the National Gallery to see some of the work HP is involved in.

Combining new and old has always fascinated me. The sight of a Victorian frontage hiding a glass and steel interior may horrify the purist, but for me, the contrast and aesthetic effect created is simply fantastic. (I was on a stag weekend to Dublin recently. The Guinness storehouse is an example of this on a grand scale).

Hence, on that premise alone, the National Gallery trip seemed like a pleasant – but only vaguely relevant – way to spend an afternoon. In hindsight, not only did it remind me why technology is so important for adding colour to our busy lives, it was also relevant to my interests in information management and sustainability.

The topic of the day - restoration and analysis of the collection at the National Gallery, is relevant but only to a point – highbrow art is not to everyone’s taste. However, combining technological advancement with ‘traditional pastimes’ is relevant to us all. And, as we seem to find less and less time in which to enjoy ourselves, we need all the help we can get.

So, the two sides of the day. First we were treated to lectures on the restoration work being carried out on some of the paintings. HP provides the equipment (and sponsors a doctoral post) to carry out non-invasive studies (imaging) so that the gallery can learn more about composition; x-ray imaging reveals the artist’s original plans -many paintings are altered during their creation- and other information on colour pigments and so on. All fascinating stuff, if that’s your thing.

The second part of the day was about creating new applications and communities by liberating information. Or at least, that’s what I now see it was about. A sizable investment in on site technology and the National Gallery’s website has created a resource that allows the user to access practically any work in the collection. High resolution zooms (useful if you are into studying the actual painting, as opposed to admiring it), and a whole load of useful search and referencing capabilities are now at the user’s fingertips.

Having only had a short time to play on it, I know I’m hugely underplaying the features. However, the net result is a system which creates opportunities for a range of activities; from tourists planning gallery visits, to scholarly groups carrying out research or sharing information.
In short, the gallery has extended the reach and influence of its entire collection to a global audience. The collection can be scrutinised in infinitely more detail than ever before, without actually being there.

The gallery has to address information storage and management as knock-on effects. While it applies new ideas to old works, it also creates new, but not insurmountable challenges for itself. One of the solutions the IT department is currently playing with is virtualisation. Interestingly, although there are limitations on the use of images from its collection, the gallery seemed relatively relaxed about its 'IP' being disseminated globally. Perhaps the knowledge that the real thing hangs on its wall helps somewhat.

As an example of how moving bits instead of atoms can enrich work and play, I believe this one deserves thinking about. The fact that the example stems from a relatively surprising source makes it even more interesting.

Technology, when applied thoughtfully and appropriately can improve the way we interact with the world, and lessen the impact of us doing so.

It is this sentiment that all organisations should seek to apply to their people, products and processes, instead of charging into the data centre and seeking to reduce power consumption before really thinking about what the business wants to achieve.

Not If or When, The Question is What?

A few weeks ago I pointed out that IT management tools are finally, after many decades of masquerade, ready to deliver the functionality that their product descriptions infer, namely capabilities to actively manage nearly all elements of the IT infrastructure rather than simply monitor if systems are up and “running”.If one takes this as a valid starting assumption then one really must consider how organisations can best move their systems management thinking forward.

Some IT managers may be tempted to ask the “should I really look at automating my systems management processes”? To which the answer is very clearly yes. The pressure on IT to deliver more flexible services to its customers is immense whilst the workloads now placed on IT administrators is almost overwhelming. Doing nothing on automation, the “If” question, is no longer an option.

So we then move on to the “when” side of things. Often this is phrased along the lines of “sure we will adopt this technology (whatever it may be) when the time is right and when the technology is mature enough”. Frankly, and at long last, for automating very many systems management and administrative tasks that time is now. The technology is now advanced enough to deal with many routine, repetitive tasks that consume so much scarce It personnel resources. Now I do understand that the automation of well understood, and sometimes even well documented, IT processes will grate for many of my IT generation who can remember numerous occasions when IT solutions did not quite deliver what was promised. For systems management automation this is a major challenge and one that needs to be addressed quickly. The technology is available, but often the trust of said systems is not there.

Which just leaves the question of “what” management tasks to automate. Well this will vary organisation by organisation. And if the trust of new management automation tools is not there then the identification and testing of the automation of simple tasks should be the first step to take. It will consume some of those scarce personnel resources but the investment in locating and automating tasks will quickly prove to be of immense value. And not just in saving time but potentially in raising the quality of the IT services delivered.

Asset + IT asset management = enterprise service management. Perhaps.

The IBM Tivoli Pulse event a few weeks ago left me with a clear thought. Convergence between enterprise asset management and IT (asset) management) is a long haul. This is not a bad thing – except – and we know this to be true of some IT vendors – there is always the risk that if things don’t move fast enough, interest is lost, ideas go stale, people get distracted.

Am I saying IT vendors are a bit fickle on occasion? Moi?

I don’t expect IBM to get bored easily though, but I do expect it to start looking for ways to catalyse the consolidation between the two camps.

So what’s all this about anyway?

The view is that there are significant benefits and economies of scale to be found in consolidating the visibility, control and management of assets owned or used by an organisation, which traditionally are divided into two classes: enterprise (non IT) assets and IT assets.
By having a single view of an asset base, services can be better aligned to the goals of the business, because it has better control over the things it uses to deliver the services which define it as a business, and better control over the services which support it as it does its business.

On paper, it’s a common sense principle of ‘single version of the truth’. In practice, it will take most organisations a long time to get there because the asset guys and the IT guys are facing the notion of giving up some level of control or ownership. For people more used to repairing trucks or moving physical goods to specific places, and for people more used to making sure email servers don’t crash, it is understandable that one could have difficulty in seeing the world from the others’ point of view. But mutual understanding and appreciation isn’t actually what’s required. Mutual access and roles-based manipulation of the same, consistent information is. Two disparate groups of people collaborating physically, or ‘giving things up to each other’ isn’t the issue. But this I fear, (or fear of this, in fact) could be the rate limiting factor.

As long as each side has the access to the information they need to carry out their jobs, the source of the underlying data – as long as it’s consistent – is hardly relevant. Furthermore, the asset guys ‘get’ services, the IT guys know how to make things talk to each other and stop them falling over – both sides in fact have things they can teach the other. Figuratively.

So the long haul sentiment comes about from the human nature angle I outlined above, and the fact that this year’s star customer at Pulse was the same as last years. Its not going very quickly, yet.

Also, IBM is treading (too) carefully in that it went to lengths to maintain a clear demarcation between talking about Maximo customers (its enterprise asset management (EAM) customers acquired during the MRO purchase) and Tivoli (systems and IT management) customers for fear of being seen to be favouring one over the other, or perhaps running into the type of uncertainty Oracle’s recent acquisitions created. This makes the audience it has for actually evangelising the notion of convergence artificially small, which is ironic, given it owns two customer bases with minimal overlap which form the foundations for what is a pretty sensible idea.

Rather than taking the softly softly approach, what needs to happen is for IBM to start providing the reasons why, and help customers work around the reasons why not. And then find as many McCarran Airports as it can to become advocates.

I have to say I’m a little surprised at the (apparent) lack of buzz on this from the Tivoli or Maximo customer base, as there must surely be an opportunity for asking IBM to ‘step up and prove it in my organisation’.

Microsoft’s virtualisation story was pretty cool at MMS, so why’s it all gone quiet?

I had a few days in Vegas at MMS (Microsoft Management Summit) at the end of April, just before I moved house and then took some time off to get things straight. When I got back it was like the whole thing never happened. Even a quick Google search on ‘Microsoft+virtualisation’ gives me content from 2005 from the fifth finding down. Weird.

It wasn’t like Microsoft didn’t say anything of note either: pricing for virtualisation capabilities inside Windows Server 2008, support for non-Microsoft virtualised environments, and the big one which hasn’t really been talked about loudly up to now from any vendor with management products – managing virtualised environments. Sure, the word ‘Beta’ was all over the place, but that’s what we’re used to.

I’ve not quite decided yet if virtualisation needs calling out specifically as a candidate for special management focus, and that’s possibly a conversation for another time. Until organisations get their bearings, fine, after that virtualisation needs to be seen as the means to an end it really is, and managing as such. The fact that generating change in a virtualised environment is slicker than in a physical environment does make the case for an equally slick approach to management, but that’s not the same as treating virtualised and physical environments as separate entities. There are too many management silos already.

But the virtualisation product-in-beta-list wasn’t the most interesting bit. That came when Microsoft, by placing such a low price point ($28 or some seemingly made up figure) on the virtualisation component of Windows Server 2008 made the clearest statement of intent / reality around virtualisation yet. Virtualisation isn’t the exciting bit. What organisations do in their virtualised environments is the exciting bit. The fact that it’s Microsoft saying this means virtualisation is no longer hip or sexy, but it is real, because now it’s a mainstream activity.

And that’s why I thought there’d be more out there on this: there were a few mumblings about ‘being late to the party’ (which only make sense if you forget there is an entire world outside of the fortune 500) and managing non-Microsoft environments circulating before hand, but then again, as a group we’re quick to gripe but slower to acknowledge change. Or maybe, as the conference silly season was / is in full swing, everyone simply went home and immediately got on a plane for the next one. I know I did (and the house move, obviously). IBM Tivoli Pulse next.

PS. A big thumbs up to everyone who got a mention in the IIAR analyst of the year poll. Our stable mates MWD and Redmonk did rather well, and for a relative newbie we’re rather pleased with our own showing too.

Missing Meta Data Needed for Effective Storage Management

Ever since time, or at least Computing time, began most of the focus has centred around the processing of data. Until recently it would be straight forward to argue that too little attention has been given to the long term storage of said information. But as the volume of data being generated soars and the costs of storing it escalates dramatically it is clear that something has to be done.

Over the course of the last ten days I have visited the EMCWorld show in Las Vegas, been present at the opening of the IBM Global Archival Centre in Guadalajara and spoken with both HP and Fujitsu Siemens about various aspects of storage management in modern business. And there is one thing on which all agree - it's time for change.

Traditionally there have been two approaches to the long term storage of data. One was to leave it alone until the "system", usually a business application, dies or if there is just too much data to leave it at rest move some of it to tape. The decision of just what data to move off of the spinning disks was usually based on how old it was or, in sophisticated cases, when it was last accessed or modified.

Now this might be better than nothing but in today's high pressure, litigious business world where attention is grabbed by anything that saves money or that can help generate new value it is clear that such basic methods of data archiving are simply not tenable in sophisticated tiered storage architectures where information may need to be retrieved with great speed. Enter Content and Document Management systems coupled with clever archiving management software.

Until recently such systems have required considerable effort to get in and running and as a consequence have usually been deployed in only key situations. But now some vendors have started to deliver software that helps to automate the discovery and categorisation processes that form the foundation of ECM / EDM systems. Step one “Discover” just what data is out there in the enterprise and step two “categorise” it in terms of its importance and in terms of by which management policies it should be controlled.

It then becomes possible to define policies that describe just how and on which platforms different classes of data should be held. Then everything else is relatively straightforward (if you can ignore the internal politics associated with questions of data classification and importance ranking). Modern software and the experience of best practices obtained in the real world are now offering the chance for wide spread data classification to happen. And it is this meta data and classification that hold real promise to help in the effective administration of data over long periods of time. Automation is the key as is not attempting to do everything at once.

Finally “Management” Not Just “Monitoring”

Almost since the world was created, at least the IT world, computer systems and all the associated, and increasingly complex, plethora of associated equipment has required feeding and watering. Few systems, with perhaps the notable exception of the AS/400 sorry System i no wrong again the i, manage to keep themselves functioning efficiently, if at all, without the care and attention of skilled IT professionals. As the number of systems to be controlled and looked after increased the gods of IT, better known as the software vendors, started to build tools to monitor the condition of servers and storage. Strangely these monitoring tools were called “management” systems.

Today with every organisation seeking to optimise both the availability and effectiveness of its IT systems the demand for true systems management tools has never been greater. The increasing deployment of virtualised systems adds further to the need for tools that really help with the automatic management and administration of systems. Just in time many of the tools that have previously only provided capabilities to monitor systems have moved forward and, at last, are bringing to market true management functionality and options to automate many tasks that until required the undivided attention of sys admins.

Now it is interesting to note that it is not just the vendors who have traditionally supplied monitoring / management tools that are bringing updated offerings to market. Alongside IBM Tivoli, CA Unicenter, HP OpenView and BMC Patrol, the management giants,can now be found a range of newer, though not new, entrants. Amongst these is the industry behemoth that is Microsoft and it is interesting to note that the company is rapidly developing not only management tools to help automate the administration of Windows systems but is actively developing capabilities to manage virtualised systems, including those running on their hypervisors supplied by other vendors.

Then there are other suppliers such as Quest and EMC amongst the raft of virtual system management specialists who are putting together strong offerings. The management space is finally able to deliver, at least from the software supplier side of the equation, management and automatic administration capabilities; it is no longer just concerned with monitoring.

This situation then raises the obvious question, namely are IT professionals ready to exploit the management and automation capabilities that are now becoming available? I hope that the take up of these capabilities will be rapid although I do detect that many system admins still consider any management automation capability with more than a little scepticism, and perhaps with some concern over their job security. Granted these management tools need to prove themselves in the real world and that the vendors have a duty to deliver them with some idea of how they can be best exploited. They must be utilised as widely as possible if IT is help its business customers to exploit as fully as possible the benefits that IT delivers.