Converting IT pain to operational gain

Summary: Advances in technology are outpacing the adoption of new capabilities. The issue: Large companies can’t keep up with the changes and are stuck running legacy information technology architectures and old datacenter technology.

By John Rhoton for Transforming the Datacenter | April 11, 2013 — 16:05 GMT (09:05 PDT)

This content is produced by our sponsor Microsoft.  It is not written by ZDNet editorial staff.

Advances in technology are outpacing the adoption of new capabilities. The issue: Large companies can’t keep up with the changes and are stuck running legacy information technology architectures and old datacenter technology. The moving parts involved include:

• Budget
• Technical Transformation
• Architecture

Each of these has significant bearing on the future. We have been riding the leading edge of a technology wave that is changing how we work, the computing devices we use, and the back-end systems that support our operations, and how we adapt to that will separate winners from losers.

The changes have come quickly, and the innovations continue, often faster than big companies can respond. Much of this has happened during a slow economy and at a time when controlling costs is front and center on every IT manager’s to-do list. To further complicate things, government regulations are mandating long-term retention of data, which stresses capacity. Business managers are also demanding more sophisticated analyses of all this information to help them better market to customers. To top it off, ad hoc design changes generally lead to increased complexity over time, which increases the probability of error and triggers additional operational costs.

While these are not trivial matters, there is plenty of hope despite the challenges.

IT decision-makers can even achieve transformation to some extent with their current infrastructures for now, as long as there is some flexibility and agility baked in, and the platform is stable.

As the economy begins to improve and companies can no longer ignore the depth of technical transformation that has occurred in recent years, many executives have become impatient at the underperformance of their datacenters. While there are no quick fixes, the good news is that by taking a fresh look at IT strategy and the design of the datacenter, it becomes clear that datacenter transformation is possible.

Transformation is essential to remain competitive in today’s fast-moving world. The way I see it, the path forward is to not think in terms of patching the datacenter. Organizations instead need to assess their IT needs in the context of longer-term business objectives and act accordingly.

Let’s admit it: it is no small endeavor. Your datacenter needs to help you acquire and analyze the business intelligence you need to run smart operations. You need to be able to support a mobile workforce and communicate with mobile customers. You will also need to learn how best to manage those communications, as well as support and leverage machine-to-machine communications.

The silver lining is that addressing these needs is the first step in architecting the datacenter that meets your operational requirements and then you can think about what’s next.

Topic: Transforming the Datacenter

Open #DataCenter Alliance Announces that UBS Chief Technology Officer Andy Brown will Keynote at Forecast 2012

Rackspace CTO John Engates to Deliver Openstack Industry Perspective, New Big Data Panel Joins Forecast 2012 Agenda

 

 

 

 

 

PORTLAND, Ore., May 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) today announced that UBS Chief Technology Officer Andy Brown will be a keynote speaker at the Open Data Center Alliance Forecast 2012 event. Brown plans to address enterprise requirements for the cloud and comment on the progress of industry delivery of solutions based on the ODCA usage models. In his role as chief technology officer, Brown is responsible for advancing the investment bank's group architecture, simplifying the application and infrastructure landscape, and improving the quality of UBS's technical solutions.

In related news, the organization also announced the addition of Rackspace Chief Technology Officer, John Engates, to the event's agenda with the delivery of an Industry Perspective session on the role of industry standard delivery of cloud solutions. Engates will focus his discussion on the role of Openstack in cloud solution delivery and its alignment with the objectives of open solutions required by ODCA. A Big Data panel was also added to the agenda featuring panelists from Cloudera, Intel, SAS and Teradata following last week's announcement of a new ODCA Data Services workgroup. The organization also announced a host of executive IT experts to be featured in panels at the event. Held on June 12, in conjunction with the 10th International Cloud Expo in New York City, ODCA Forecast 2012 will bring together hundreds of members of the Alliance, industry experts and leading technology companies to showcase how ODCA usage model adoption can accelerate the value that cloud computing represents to organizations through increased efficiency and agility of IT services.

"The Forecast agenda features a who's who of enterprise IT leaders, all of whom are assembling to share their best insights in deploying cloud services," said Marvin Wheeler, ODCA chair. "Adding CTOs on the caliber of Andy Brown and John Engates to our agenda underscores the high regard that both the organization and our first event are generating. For organizations considering cloud deployments in 2012, this is a rare opportunity to learn from their peers and see the latest in solutions advancements."

ODCA Forecast 2012 will feature sessions on top issues associated with cloud deployment including security, service transparency, and industry standard delivery of solutions. The Big Data panel complements planned panels featuring the first public discussions of charter and progress of the organization's recently formed Data Services workgroup. With leading experts from enterprise IT, service providers and the data center industry on hand to discuss the top issues and opportunities offered by cloud computing, attendees will have a rare opportunity to network with leading thinkers and gain critical knowledge to help shape their own cloud deployments. Alliance solutions provider members will also showcase products that have been developed within the guidelines of Alliance usage models.

Leading managers from some of the largest global IT shops have formed the group of panelists for the event, and today the Alliance is announcing several new panelists who will share their expertise across areas impacting the cloud, including security, management and regulation. The Cloud Security Panel will now feature Dov Yoran, a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance. Ray Solnik, president of Appnomic Systems, a leading provider of automated Cloud IT performance management solutions has joined the Cloud Management Panel. The Cloud Regulation Panel is pleased to welcome Gordon Haff, senior cloud strategy marketing and evangelism manager with Red Hat. Haff will also be part of the Cloud Software Panel. Jeff Deacon, chief cloud strategist with Terramark, will be part of the Service Provider Panel. The Cloud Hardware Panel will feature John Igoe, executive director, development engineering for Dell. Other new panelists could be found at www.opendatacenteralliance.org/forecast2012 .

Forecast 2012 is supported by the following sponsors: Gold Sponsors Dell, Hewlett Packard and Intel Corp, silver sponsor Red Hat, Pavilion Sponsor Citrix and McAfee and breakfast sponsor Champion Solutions Group. Media and collaborating organization sponsors include Cloud Computing Magazine, Cloud Security Alliance, CloudTimes, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the Green Grid, InformationWeek, Open Compute Project, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), SecurityStockWatch.com and Tabor Communications.

All Forecast attendees will also receive a complimentary pass to International Cloud Expo as part of their ODCA Forecast 2012 registration representing a tremendous value for Forecast attendees. For more information on the Alliance, or to register for ODCA Forecast 2012, please visit www.opendatacenteralliance.org .

About The Open Data Center Alliance

The Open Data Center Alliancea" is an independent IT consortium comprised of global IT leaders who have come together to provide a unified customer vision for long-term data center requirements. The Alliance is led by a twelve member Board of Directors which includes IT leaders BMW, Capgemini, China Life, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., National Australia Bank, Terremark, Disney Technology Solutions and Services and UBS. Intel serves as technical advisor to the Alliance.

In support of its mission, the Alliance has delivered the first customer requirements for cloud computing documented in eight Open Data Center Usage Models which identify member prioritized requirements to resolve the most pressing challenges facing cloud adoption. Find out more at www.opendatacenteralliance.org .

SOURCE: The Open Data Center Alliance

Operations-as-a-Service (or IaaS + PaaS + SMEs)

Guest Post from Richard Donaldson

 

I’d been holding out a bit on writing this as it really is a synthesis of ideas (aren’t they all) with special mention of dialogue with Jeffrey Papen of Peak Hosting (www.peakwebhosting.com)…

I’ve been collaborating and speaking extensively with Jeffrey on the next phase of “hosting” since we are now moving beyond the hype cycle of “Cloud Computing” (see previous post on “The end of the Cloud Era”).  The community at large (and people in general) love the idea of simple, bite sized “solutions” with pithy and “sexy” naming conventions (think <30sec sound bites) and that was the promise/expectation around “the cloud” as it was popularized – a magic all in one solution whereby you just add applications and the “cloud” will do the rest. Yet, the promise never quite met expectations as the “cloud” really ended up being an open standards evolution of “virtualization” – nothing wrong with that, just not the “all in one” solution that people really wanted the cloud to be (ps – all in one refers to the aforementioned of applications just being pushed thru APIs to the “cloud” and the “cloud” manages all underlying resources).

So, as the Cloud Hype dissipates (love the metaphor), we are sorta back to the same basic elements that make up Infrastructure – Datacetners, Compute (IT), Communications (switches/routers), Software that manages it all (virtualization, cloud, etc), all accessible thru the to be built APIs.  Put another way, we are coming full circle and back to centralized, on-demand computing that needs one more element to make it all work – Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

I was inspired to write this today when I saw this post from Hitachi: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226920/Hitachi_launches_all_in_one_data_center_service - “Japanese conglomerate Hitachi on Monday launched a new data center business that includes everything from planning to construction to IT support.  Hitachi said its new “GNEXT Facility & IT Management Service” will cover consulting on environmental and security issues, procurement and installation of power, cooling and security systems, and ongoing hardware maintenance. It will expand to include outsourcing services for software engineers and support for clearing regulatory hurdles and certifications.”  This is the comprehensive “build to suit” solutions the market has been seeking since the cloud – it includes everything to get your infrastructure building blocks right and is provided as a service – but what do we call this service????

How about “Operations-as-a-Service“!!

OaaS pulls together the elements in IaaS + PaaS + SMEs.  It outsources the “plumbing” to those that can make it far more cost effective thru economies of scale.  Sure, there are a select few companies who will do this all in house: Google, eBay, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple (trying), and of course, Zynga.  Yet, these companies are at such massive scale that it makes sense – and yet, they even have excess (at least they should) capacity which is why AWS was born in the first place and we are now seeing Zynga open up to allow gamers to use their platform (see: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Zynga+news/news.asp?c=38455).  Yet these are the exceptions and not the rule.

The rest of the world should and is seeking comprehensive, end-to-end Operations as a Service provided by single vendors.  It doesn’t preclude the market place from buying discreet parts of OaaS individually, however, the dominant companies that will begin to emerge in this next decade will seek to add more and more of the OaaS solutions set to their product list thereby catalyzing a lot (I mean a lot) of consolidation.

I will be following up this blog with a more detailed look at how this concept is playing out, yet in the mean time would very much like to hear the feed back on this topic – is the world looking for OaaS?

rd

Original Post: http://rhdonaldson.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/operations-as-a-service-or-iaas-p...

Cold Aisle Containment System Performance Simulation

By: Michael Potts
April 25th, 2012

In an attempt to reduce inlet temperatures, BayCare Health System in Tampa Florida installed a cold aisle containment system (CACS) in a section of their data center. Results were varied, with temperatures improving in some areas, but actually increasing in others. In order to understand these results, airflow management solutions provider Eaton simulated the data center’s performance using Future Facilities’ 6SigmaDC computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The simulation’s results matched those of the physical data center. With the information at hand, it was determined that CFD software could be used to diagnose the data centers cooling problems.

Future Facilities Website: http://www.futurefacilities.com/

This paper from Eaton details the results of their CFD diagnosis of the BayCare facility, describing the process of analysis in depth, as well as offering solutions to the cooling infrastructure. First, the process of cold aisle containment installation is outlined, offering details from both the simulation and study of the physical data center. Next, it explains Eaton’s performance simulation and measurement of the facility’s function after installation, mimicking the center’s airflow, device models and locations, as well as temperature. Lastly, a framework of the full diagnoses is presented, offering conclusions to the unexpected temperature increases.

Learn the full process of data center diagnosis in this detailed simulation. Click here to download this paper from Eaton on the diagnosis of the incorrectly performing cold aisle containment system at BayCare Health System.