Tag Archive | "VDI"

Road Trip – Gartner Infrastructure & Operations Mgmt Summit

Tags: Availability, Best Practices, BSM, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Change, CIO, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Gartner, IT Management, ITSM, Mobile, Monitoring, Service Level, Service Providers, Service Value, Social Media, Spending, Transformation, Trends, VDI, Virtualization


I traveled the globe from October to February meeting with customers and our sales teams discussing NetIQ’s IT Operations Management (ITOM) value and solutions, then I traded in wings for a bit.  Now it’s time for one of my favorite battery re-charging conferences of the year, the Gartner Infrastructure and Operations Management Summit (IOM).  I enjoy the Summit to see old friends in the vendor community as well as many old analyst friends, but this year there is a lot of buzz around the Summit and ITOM has become the talk of the town again.  Here are few quotes and phrases from the opening pages of the Summit Agenda:

  • “Delivering Accelerated Business Value:  Cloud, Mobility and More”
  • Hot Topics:
    • Enterprise mobility
    • Private/Public cloud computing
    • Moving beyond server virtualization
    • Cost optimzation
    • Data center space, power and cooling
    • ITIL and process improvement
    • Improving IT service quality
    • Business value
  • “The reign of the PC is over.  A new era is emerging, one that will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver services to users.”

There are many sessions on the power of these emerging technologies, how we will manage them, how we will deliver value to the business and how technology is no longer just operating the business – technology is powering the business.  At least that’s what our businesses are expecting in the coming couple of years and how the competition with the service providers is stacking up and pushing the IT Wake Up call.

I’m jazzed to start my day tomorrow with 3 back to back keynotes with a couple of old friends:

  • 10 Emerging Trends that will Impact Infrastructure and Operations – David Cappuccio
  • Applications 2020:  The Impact on Infrastructure and Operations of Current and Emerging Trends in Applications – Valentin Sribar
  • The IT Operations Scenario – Ronni Colville & Deb Curtis

 

Then we move into lunch, come see us at the NetIQ solution showcase to chat about the sessions with my old friends and how we see their insights coming to life in our every day worlds.  I’ve been posting on the need for IT to better align in how it speaks of technology in the business as services and driving top line revenue rather than just bottom line with cost savings for a while now.  In the last bullet above from the opening pages of the agenda, the one thing that did strike me odd is “deliver services to users”.  I would restate that as it is how we will “deliver services to our customers”  to drive revenue.  Yes, driving efficiency into the organization is part of the IT balancing act, but the first focus has shifted to the customer and value.

Then I’ll finish the afternoon with:

  • Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012:  Will You Be Able to Manage Them? (Before They Manage You?) – Cameron Haight
  • Compuware, VMware and Dell will provide simultaneous session with a App Performance, Cloud Mgmt and a CIO Panel, repsectively – How will I choose?
  • 2 More Choices to Make:
    • VDI and other Virtualization Strategies to Securely Support and Manage a Dynamic Workforce – Neil MacDonald & Philip Redman
    • Leveraging Mobility, Content and Communication in you Business Processes – Bern Elliot
  • 2 More Final Choices to Make:
    • Lessons Learned from Early Adopters of Social IT Management – Jeffrey M. Brooks & George Spafford
    • Networking and Mobility Trends for the Next Decade – Tim Zimmerman

Then we are back to wrap up at the NetIQ solution showcase with a head spinning with many new viewpoints and ideas.  I look forward to speaking with many of the attendees to gain their insights into the sessions, stop on by and join the conversation, follow us in real-time on Twitter and send your comments to these posts.

As you can see from my agenda for just the first day, many new trends to wrap our management arms around to provide flexibility with balance of controls.  Change is coming fast and furious and managing it with controlled risk will be the key to the successful in the coming year.   I have some choices to make tomorrow regarding the sessions I can attend, but look forward to hearing about the risks and value of new technologies applied to our business challenges.  You even see a little Social Media has creeped into IT Management.  Wonder what that’s all about?  🙂

I’ll send a few early comments on Twitter tomorrow during my adventures.  Follow:  @BSMHub this week and catch the real-time insights, at least my perspective, of the conference.  I’ll post my take aways each evening.  Drop me your comments, I’d love to hear what’s happening out there in the real-world.

Michele

Consider Desktops in the Cloud for BYOD – NetworkWorld

Tags: Availability, BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, DaaS, IT Management, IT Management Tools, Monitoring, NetworkWorld, Performance, Service Providers, Service Value, VDI


The Hub Commentary_

I’m not so sure I agree with this latest in the cloud development, Desktop-as-a-Service.   How many times do you rent this session before it would have been cheaper to just supply the device with software or deploy a VDI in your environment?  Renting is never cheaper.

However, it does insure a standard configuration and provides the most current version of the operating systems and productivity tools.

The other component I’m not sure I buy into is why the business should incur additional charges to accommodate employees bringing their own devices.  This will require both the rental and subscriptions to air time where wi-fi is not readily accessible.  We all use our devices for both personal and professional reason, so when does the cost of the subscriptions roll from the business to the person?

I haven’t been able to find the pricing to run the numbers, but enabling employees to access files and applications from their personal devices and from any location is part of doing business these days.  Paying by the drink and buying the air time for both personal and professional use smells like a pricey proposition.  If there were not revenue in it, the hosters would not be in business.

I do see having access for emergency situations useful.  Management must also be baked into the service as well to insure quality and availability.

Just because it can be in the cloud doesn’t necessarily mean it must be in the cloud.  Where is your VDI, in the cloud, sourced or on premise?

Michele

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Desktop-as-a-Service is an interesting way for IT execs to provide cloud-based Windows desktop sessions, as well as shared resources such as storage. DaaS can help companies roll out new desktops and support Bring Your Own Device policies.  (Read Full Article…)

VDI’s Impact on Network Infrastructure – ITBusinessEdge

Tags: Business Service Management, End-to-End View, IT Management Tools, Monitoring, VDI


The Hub Commentary_

Virtualized Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) can save organizations on the hardware with the thin client, but as Arthur points out there are additional costs to consider and with everything there is a break-even and savings point with volume.  We are back to the dumb terminal!  What is old is new again.

I do agree that there is a cost on the network and network bandwidth has to be planned for accordingly, much like video conferencing that gets left on long after a meeting and when we all received our first desktop and connected to a news download site as a screen saver.  Doh!

I’ll also mention that there are support savings to be gained as well in having such a standard end point to manage and service, however, the support organization will require an end-to-end management view of the infrastructure in order to be able to monitor incidents.  This requires the integration platform that brings all of the infrastructure together for a complete view as a service in order to pinpoint whether it is network, VM, the application, the hardware, etc.

I do believe the hardware savings is the small piece of the ROI when implemented correctly.  The support costs with the right tools to view the end-to-end performance will be the greatest savings to the organization.

How are you planning for your VDI implementation?

Michele

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It’s been clear for some time that the initial rosy ROI projections surrounding Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) didn’t exactly tell the whole story.  (Read Full Article…)

IDC Says 2011 Client Virtualization Will be Mainstream

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Monitoring, Service Level, VDI


As part of their top 10 picks for 2011, IDC is predicting that Client Virtualization will become a mainstream, strategic desktop choice for the enterprise. I have to say that I agree. If you think about the many hours (and therefore the large amount of money) wasted on desktop support alone, the concept of desktop virtualization becomes a no brainer for any medium to large enterprise. However, the concept of virtualization, while nothing new, extends far beyond that.

So what exactly is the hype about? Think about it – how many users in any given organization install software and then either never use it, or use it just the one time? If your business is anything like the various places I’ve worked at the answer is “Many!”.

Each instance of software you install needs to be both licensed, supported, and an end of year audit can land you some pretty hefty charges when your asset management software reports that you are way over your licensed number of users.

Virtualization of the end user desktop addresses this and many more issues. You simply put together a gold standard for each of your user groups and can then deal with exceptions on a case by case basis. Upgrades and security patches can be pushed quickly and effectively and security holes closed very fast without disturbing your user base.

So the question is, if this is so basic a concept, why is it only being predicted as catching on now?

The answer to this question is just as basic as the concept itself – monitoring!

If you are running all your desktop users off a central data center, what happens when you have a failure? Who is affected? How quickly can you find the root cause and get your users back up? what is the fine balance between availability and maintenance? Difficult questions, but questions that can be quite easily answered with todays software that tracks service management, SLAs and change. Really today it’s just a matter of finding the right software package, and engaging the VDI vendor you prefer and to IDC’s point, your desktop user base is virtualized.

So, I’m curious to see how 2011 pans out for desktop virtualization. My money is on the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Business Service Management (BSM) vendors…

Jonathan Golan

Service Models and Virtual Desktops – Hand in Hand

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Service Model, Service Value, VDI


I have had this discussion many times and with some coaxing have decided to write about it here. The conversation typically starts with the basic question of – how does one create an accurate service model for a virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment with such a high degree of dynamism? A Service Model is typically a hierarchical representation of a service. That service can be made up of any number of applications, dependency, and components. The service model is also heavily influenced by the audience that will be viewing it (look for a separate post on this).

The big challenge in modeling a VDI environment has to do not so much with the virtualization, but the means by which the VDI solution handles the logged off users. Based upon the implementation when a user logs off for the day, their data is stored, and the system itself is torn down freeing up resources. Basically, this means that user johnW would be logged into virtdesk_123 one day and would then have virtdesk_982 at next power up. Further, virtual desktop could potentially be hosted on different hosts based on load balancing policies.

An additional challenge to creating the service model is introduced when the requirement of maintaining a history is present. For example, performance trends, behavior models, etc.

The primary means I use to tackle this challenge is to not focus on the desktops. I instead focus on the user and more specifically their role. It is the identity that matters, not the physical infrastructure. This simple answer to a complex scenario allows one to easily address the challenges mentioned above. Historical information is stored against the user object as opposed to the dynamic desktops. Of course, the argument will usually come up around the tracking of software and virus scans. Again, I focus on the user and their roles. If the client has an entitlement system where by users are entitled to use specific software packages based upon role membership, then this model becomes even easier.

The service models will vary based upon the needs of the audience who wish to see the information but, I will typically start with something that looks like the following. Top level of Roles, followed by a sub category of Users per role. The user will then have a list of information categories such as assigned template/desktop(s), entitled software, service requests, and environment health. Against each of these I will typically link in the information befitting the category complete with some business logic to control the role up of state through the service model.

I am not going to pretend that any environment is perfect. I also realize that it may not be as easy as it sounds to follow this method based upon tools being used in a specific vdi environment. It is however the method I use when I approach vdi service model. It is easier to have a plan as a starting point going in that not to have one at all.

I am hopeful that this was of some help to you. I am always open for new methods to do this so if you tackle this differently with less pain, please enlighten me, I would love to hear it.

How are you managing your virtual desktops?

John

BSM could help resolve VDI network challenges

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, Enterprise IT, Monitoring, Networking, VDI


Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides many advantages for IT by removing a number of the variables involved in managing individual networked PCs. When you give end users what is essentially a dumb terminal with a set of defined services, it can be easier to control and maintain, but it can also present challenges across a network because the entire system is dependent on the network with nothing offloaded to the individual machines (as with stand-alone networked PCs).

According to a recent post by David Greenfield on Network Computing, this is even more pronounced when you spread out from a LAN environment to a WAN. He cited several studies that use a variety of formulas to determine just how much bandwidth is required for each user across the network (before you start hearing loud complaints about network performance).

He writes:

A good rule of thumb when running PCoIP is three users per 1Mb. This allows for variance in the display activity between multiple users and provides a range of bandwidth most likely to provide acceptable performance for user.

Whether you buy that or not, it’s a number that you can work with as a basis for discussion if nothing else. If you figure that you require this much bandwidth, you can start to set your monitoring equipment to let you know when the system starts to degrade below these levels (before it reaches a critical state and your IT help desk is bombarded with angry phone calls).

For end users, a sudden slow-down might seem like a front end service issue, when in fact, the problem is the underlying network or a database processing problem. Having BSM monitoring in place can not only help you ensure (to the extent it’s within your control) that the network throughput is operating at the maximum rate possible, but you can also determine if one of the underlying hardware or database connectors on which these services depend is what’s causing the problem.

With BSM in place, you can watch the entire system, and that can help you solve your VDI problems before they reach a point where it adversely affects your user base.

Photo by olishaw on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Is The Future of IT in BSM?

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, IT, VDI


Oh my, there was a lot of bad news about IT jobs last week. First of all Computerworld published a story called, As cloud grows, IT spending flatlines and then Forrester released a report suggesting that recent IT spending was actually hurting IT jobs growth. It’s enough to make an IT pro throw up his or her hands in despair.  But perhaps BSM could be the answer. 

While it’s clear there are some disturbing trends, it doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom. Let’s explore the numbers for a moment first. IDC says public cloud computing spending is going up at a fairly dramatic rate. This corresponds with a loss in IT jobs and the easy conclusion to make is that the shift to the public cloud is costing jobs (whether true or not).

Meanwhile, the Forrester report points out that companies are spending on IT infrastructure, yet not producing the corresponding jobs you would expect to coincide with that spending. What does it all mean?

It’s hard to find firm answers, but let’s assume that some of this jobs lag is due to trends like investments in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). By their nature these machines require less maintenance, at least on their face. You can upgrade them from the back end. You don’t have to deal with users downloading viruses, but these machines require far more network monitoring to be sure you are getting decent throughput across the system — and that’s where BSM comes in.

Same goes with the cloud. As I wrote recently in Cloud Control: Staying on Top of the Hybrid Cloud, “One consideration you might want to take into account when choosing an external cloud vendor is the extent to which it provides information for your monitoring systems.” As an IT professional one your big responsibilities in the future will be in monitoring your internal and external systems.

And these are just a couple of the small examples where BSM comes in. Remember, as a system BSM provides a way to monitor the health and well-being of your entire technology infrastructure, and it lets you see the business benefits of these technologies.

As you come to understand the information moving through these systems, you can begin to see the impact of technology across the entire organization and that kind of information is valuable.

That’s why I might not be exaggerating when I say that the future of IT might be in BSM because it is going to be increasingly important for organizations moving forward to understand the entire IT infrastructure and BSM can help you do that.

Photo by gwire on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Standards in Support and Taxes for the Luxory

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Cost Reduction, IT Management, IT Management Tools, SaaS, Support, Transformation, VDI


I’ve seen a bit in the news about support, the consumerization of devices in the workplace and virtual desktop infrastructures that has brought this post together.  We seem to ebb and flow with new toys in the workplace and standardization of support.  The plain truth is that the standard environment is the most cost efficient.  If the role did not dictate that a given device be provided by the company to the individual, why would we assume we must support it?  I understand it did not come with a capital expenditure and made the employee accessible, if they choose to be, however, it does carry a significant cost burden that is often overlooked.

Service and support is commodity.  It is something that can and should be easily outsourced and the service provider will either standardize the support or will tax the customer for the varying types of devices that are supported.  I know that sounds harsh, but in these days where we should be seeking to spend less on operating and more on innovating this is one of the easiest and biggest cost saving area.  In most IT Operations budgets, the service and support function represents about 10% of the budget.  Tools no longer need to be in-house and custom if the business would rather not outsource, there are good SaaS offerings on the market to at least alleviate the burden of supporting the tools, paying the big boys maintenance taxes and paying for customized support of a commodity function.

I’ll make another bold statement, we care too much about the “end user” for the wrong reason.  No one outside of a data center even really knows what an “end user” is, but we all know who is our customer.  IT has to make this transformation to drive business growth and this is one of those starting places in knowing who is really the customer.  Whether or not our “end user” in the business is really happy or not with IT services is a debateable point.  The most important factor is whether or not we are able to transact business and support our buying customers that grow the business.  This is the mindset shift that needs to occur.

So supporting the latest version of iPhone from whichever provider and carrier and how happy our “end users” are when we re-image their machine because it is far cheaper to re-image to standard than figure out what they downloaded that broke something.  It’s about keeping the business productive, growing and making the customer of our goods and services happy and buying.  We should be automating the operations and shifting this attention, focus and resources on the growth side of the see saw.

I know this post is a bit controversial.  This is something that happens with each new toy that comes to market and budgets loosen, we forget the good efficiency practices we put in place in lean times.  I’ve answered hundreds of inquiry calls on this subject just before this function gets outsourced, the services are cheaper because the service provider will impose a standard and tax for the luxory.  We should be doing the same with good business service management practices shifting our focus and resources to the growth of business.

Are you taxing for the non-standard or spending more reacting and maintaining?

Michele

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Network World — Cost-saving technologies remain a priority for IT in 2011 and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one of the technologies at the top of the list.  (Read Full Article…)

Best Practices in Maximizing VDI Success – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, IT Management, Support, VDI, VMware


The Hub Commentary_

I challenge folks to put on their strategic business service management practice hats when they approach extremely strategic projects like VDI.  This is an area that has the large cost savings potential or biggest failure and money sucking projects.

Yesterday, I came across a couple of articles regarding the support of any device an employee has to avoid capital expenditure.  My mid career roots are deeply planted in the service and support arena and the human cost of supporting non-standard infrastructures is the biggest misuse of resources in a service and support organization.  VDI projects are about standardization and cost reduction, but that will only occur successfully with the proper management baked in from the beginning.

I agree with the article considering the network impact and security, etc. are all areas to explore and plan for, but the management of the infrastructure and a view for the service and support staff is a must have planning and design consideration upfront – not an after thought for implementation.

We had the opportunity to work with an extremely large retail organization this past year for the purpose of putting the face on top of the VDI infrastructure for the service and support organization.  Huge cost savings are realized with standard images, lighter desktops and a face to the infrastructure that indicates where the failure is when the business cannot access an application.

How do you visualize and manage your end-to-end VDI?

Michele

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Network World — Cost-saving technologies remain a priority for IT in 2011 and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one of the technologies at the top of the list.  (Read Full Article…)