Business Service Management Hub

VMware announced that it is launching Cloud Foundry, a move that will put the company smack dab in the center of the Platform as a Service (PaaS) market. The project is in Beta for now.

As I wrote in Understanding the Different Levels of Cloud Computing, PaaS “…provides a platform on which you can build applications usually linked to a particular vendor.” VMware is traditionally known as a company that provides the software to build out virtual machines, a key component in building and deploying private clouds, so this takes them in a new direction.

Geva Perry, writing on his Thinking Out Cloud blog, says what’s interesting about this offering is that it offers a series of VMware branded services such as data and messaging services, but also uses an open architecture that enables enterprises to link other non-VMware services. This is in contrast to Salesforce.com, whose PaaS offering is really designed to lock you into the Salesforce platform (which is fine if that’s where you’re working, not everyone is about customer relationship management).

This is an intriguing offering for any IT pro because it provides a central place where you can build your cloud infrastructure with a mix of public and private services. Now what’s really interesting here is the open nature of this platform. If it’s truly open, and depending on how flexible the API is, perhaps you could also connect the whole kit and kaboodle to your monitoring tool. Imagine how that would be?

I’m not certain this is possible having just seen the picture of the architecture in the blog post, but if it were, it opens up some interesting possibilities as it would allow you to have the means to monitor your entire system from a single view, a pretty attractive idea.

If it’s not that easy to connect to an external monitoring system, it should be because this type of connectivity has to become a priority. IT pros need to have the tools to monitor the whole system wherever it resides and a tool like this that mixes services should provide that.

Photo by jenny-bee on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

While attending the CeBIT technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany, I saw a presentation by Paul Strong, CTO at VMware for Europe, Middle East and Africa, where he spoke about the relationship between cloud services and IT.  One thing he said really struck me: “When you pull apart software, you’re pulling out business processes.”

It’s a notion that really makes sense, but he took it even further. He said that 80-85 percent of your business costs are related to software. If I had been asked that before seeing this presentation, I think I would have said hardware was more costly, but Strong pointed out that this is because it’s very difficult for most enterprises to achieve the kinds of economies of scale to bring cost down. What’s more, he said that complexity drives cost.

That brings to mind the Dawn of a New Day farewell email that Ray Ozzie sent to Microsoft employees to announce his departure last fall in which he said, “complexity kills.” Specifically he said:

Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT.  Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test and use.  Complexity introduces security challenges.  Complexity causes administrator frustration. And as time goes on and as software products mature – even with the best of intent – complexity is inescapable.

Software complexity is not only bad from a design standpoint, it also has a profound impact on IT and how they deal with patch management and upgrades and the myriad of problems and challenges associated with maintaining software in the enterprise.

That’s why Strong says moving non-critical processes to the cloud makes so much sense because cloud software vendors remove a lot of the complexity associated with enterprise software maintenance. They reduce the processes to a smaller, more manageable number of patterns, and they deal with upgrades and server maintenance for you.

From  your perspective, it changes the role of IT. As Strong said, it enables IT to return to its core purpose to map technology to business needs and to make smarter choices. Your job is no longer babysitting the software, but watching the entire system and making sure those systems work as they should and meet the needs of your organization.

Photo by Jimmie, Jackie, Tom and Asha on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

VMware has introduced a new iPad app for IT professionals that enables you to monitor your virtual machines from the iPad. The vSphere Client app was approved and available in the Apple App Store as of March 18th.

This tool brings monitoring to mobile devices. While some tools like Windows Intune let you access the monitoring console from a mobile browser, VMware built an app from the ground up to give IT professionals access to the virtual machines they monitor from wherever they are from the iPad..

You can monitor performance, keep an eye on your host servers and all of the virtual machines associated with those servers in a visually attractive, easy-to-manipulate interface.

The way it works is you download the app, log into your VMware account and you get access to all of the servers under your watch. You click a server and you can see the all of the virtual machines running on it. It even provides little icons like Windows and Red Hat to let you know which virtual machines are running a particular operating system. You can see a shot of this screen below:

Once you have a server displayed you can put it in maintenance mode or even reboot it remotely from your iPad if need be.

Clicking on a particular virtual machine displays a screen with information about that virtual machine such as recent events, and each virtual machine has controls like the server that let you suspend, stop or restart it as needed.

What’s more you can see the amount of memory and CPU that the chosen virtual machine is using from the server as a whole.

We like to show many examples of different types of monitoring on this blog, and this new tool from VMware brings virtual machine monitoring to a new level. It might not be as comprehensive as the tools you have access from your PC, but it provides a lot of good information to help you manage and understand your virtual machine environment from an iPad and from a monitoring perspective, that’s pretty exciting stuff.

Screenshot courtesy of 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…)