Posts tagged Application
Optimizing the Virtual Cloud
Jul 29th
BURBANK, CA–(Marketwire – July 29, 2010) – Cloud computing is a revolution for corporate data systems. Instead of having to install and maintain costly server hardware on-site, enterprises can now subscribe to a cloud service and literally use computing resources as they are needed. When they are no longer required, those resources are used elsewhere. The idea has firmly taken hold; a prominent motion-picture company recently turned to a cloud for their highly compute-intensive animation needs, and certainly saved major costs by not having to utilize in-house resources.
One element that makes cloud computing so attractive is its use of virtual servers. It boggles the mind to think that a user at a corporation can access the cloud and actually launch their very own complete server for needed tasks. When that task is done, that server is no longer needed and it simply ceases to exist. The incredible gains that virtualization has brought in hardware and space economics — to cloud computing and everywhere else — are still being realized.
But as we all know, while we all have our heads in the clouds it is important to keep our eyes on the ground as well. In the case of cloud computing, that “ground” is the hardware hosting virtual systems — hardware that is still subject to drastic system slows courtesy of file fragmentation.
All hard drives suffer from file fragmentation — and hard drives are the place that data for virtual systems, and hence a computing cloud, is stored. In comparison to a traditional server, a virtual environment has a few added steps to data storage and retrieval, however, and fragmentation can have even more of an impact. When a file request occurs on a virtual server, the I/O request is relayed, at the least, from the guest system to the host system — which means multiple requests are occurring for each file request. When a file is fragmented into hundreds or thousands of fragments, there are multiple I/O requests for each fragment. This operation creates an enormous amount of unnecessary overhead on disk subsystems.
Virtual disks also suffer from “bloat” — their sizes are dynamically set to grow, but they don’t shrink when users or applications remove data. This wastes the space that could be allocated to other virtual systems.
The latest in technology automatically and invisibly prevents a majority of fragmentation before it occurs, totally negating the effects of fragmentation in virtual environments. Because free space is also consolidated as part of the process, virtual disk “bloat” is eliminated. Enterprises can now take full advantage of cloud and virtual computing without ever having to worry about the performance drain from fragmentation again.
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VMworld® 2010, the Leading Virtualization Event of the Year, Comes to San Francisco and Copenhagen
Jul 27th
PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – July 27, 2010) – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that VMworld® 2010 makes its return to San Francisco Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at Moscone Center and will also be held Oct. 12-14 at The Bella Center in Copenhagen. With more than 19,000 attendees expected worldwide and more than 200 sponsors and exhibitors, including Global Diamond sponsors Cisco, Dell, EMC and NetApp and Global Platinum sponsors HP and Intel, VMworld 2010 will spotlight VMware and the industry’s commitment to virtualization and the transformation to IT as a Service.
The theme of VMworld 2010 is “Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds,” showcasing the journey to cloud computing through virtualization. Attendees will explore new roads that will help them discover, learn and break new ground in transforming IT.
VMworld offers attendees informative deep-dive technical sessions and hands-on labs training, plus access to a wealth of technology and cloud partners gathering in San Francisco and Copenhagen. Attendees will share and gain practical knowledge around virtualization best practices, building a private cloud, leveraging the public cloud, managing desktops as a service, virtualizing enterprise applications and more.
This year, all VMworld labs will be powered by the VMware LabCloud portal, a self-service interface custom-built to enable attendees to access lab courses and content, allowing VMware to increase the number of labs offered and provide attendees more opportunities to explore how virtualization can make a powerful impact on their organization. VMworld will stage more than 22,000 lab seats through 480 simultaneous user workstations during the four-day event. To build out this environment, VMware has committed more than 75,000 man-hours in lab creation and development to produce 30 lab topics — all of which are powered by the VMware vSphere™ cloud infrastructure platform and hardware technologies donated by more than a dozen sponsors. The labs will cover everything from virtualized desktop infrastructure, through the VMware vSphere-powered datacenter and into the VMware-powered cloud. With easy access to more than 150 VMware subject matter experts on hand to answer questions and explore options, participants will get one-on-one attention and still have the flexibility to move at their own pace.
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Compuware Publishes New Whitepaper and On-demand Webcast: Performance in the Cloud
Jul 27th
Whitepaper and Webcast Detail How Companies Can Manage the Performance and Availability of Applications in the Cloud
DETROIT, Jul 27, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) — Compuware Corporation /quotes/comstock/15*!cpwr/quotes/nls/cpwr (CPWR 8.20, -0.06, -0.73%) has published a new whitepaper titled: “Performance in the Cloud.” The paper examines how companies can manage the performance and availability of applications in the cloud by using real-time data to monitor cloud service providers. An on-demand webcast on performance in the cloud is also available at: http://bit.ly/cn5P26.
Cloud Computing is driving a fundamental shift in the way organizations build, deploy and use applications, and it’s raising expectations on how quickly and cost-effectively new IT functionality can be made available to the business. And even though the delivery chain for these “borderless applications” now crosses organizational and geographic boundaries, users will still expect the applications to perform well, and they will hold IT accountable if they don’t. IT is faced with managing an increasingly complex and diverse delivery chain, consisting of dozens of service and content providers spread around the world.
The challenge for IT is to meet the business expectation of faster delivery of new functionality, while at the same time maintaining end-to-end visibility and control of application performance and availability across an inter-dependent, but independent, network of service providers.
This Compuware whitepaper and on-demand webcast provide real-world insight into how companies are successfully addressing this challenge, and how they can get objective, real-time data on the performance and availability of their prospective cloud service providers to assist them in their decision-making process.
Together, Compuware Vantage and Gomez deliver the market’s only application performance management solution that provides broad visibility and deep-dive resolution across the entire application delivery chain, spanning both the Enterprise and the Internet. These unrivaled capabilities make Compuware the global standard for optimizing application performance.
Follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/compuware and http://twitter.com/Gomez_Inc.
Compuware Corporation
Founded in 1973, Compuware provides software, experts and best practices to ensure applications work well and deliver business value. Compuware solutions optimize end-to-end application performance for leading organizations around the world, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: http://www.compuware.com.
The Compuware logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=5950
This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com
SOURCE: Compuware
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Rich Vs. Poor IT Organizations
Jul 26th
Why some IT organizations are progressing while others seem to be stuck in neutral.
What makes one CIO more successful than another is changing. In the past, deep knowledge of technology was critical. Now, a deep understanding of the business and how to move it forward has become the key metric.That change is reflected not just in how much money the CIO’s organization receives, but also who the CIO reports to. To find out what’s driving these changes, Forbes caught up with Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research at Gartner Executive Programs.
Forbes: What’s changing across the CIO landscape?
Mark McDonald: The differences between rich and poor IT organizations are real and getting bigger.
How do you define rich and poor?
Richness is a level of IT performance as well as budget and standing in the enterprise. It’s not just who has the most money. It’s whether you’re a strategic player and effective at what you do. These CIOs do tend to get more money, but they have a higher propensity to spend it more strategically. The richer IT organizations have been more proactive about cutting waste out of IT and they also do things faster. The poor organizations are hedging their bets across the whole organization.
Is size of the overall corporation a factor?
No, it’s more an understanding of how to create value in the enterprise. The poor IT organizations believe they create value by properly managing IT resources. In other words, “I’m proving to you that I don’t waste the company’s money.” The rich IT organizations view it as, “Look at what we can do and how promptly we can be responsive to the business.”
Does cloud-based computing level the playing field here?
No, absolutely not. There are two reasons. One is that the cloud is a giant red herring for IT organizations that are not rich because all they’re looking at is cost arbitrage. That only gets you into trouble. You think you’re solving a problem but you’re just getting another one. We’ve seen a lot of people aggressively move applications into the cloud. They’re moving 50% to 60% of applications that are not mission-critical. The poor organizations see this as a way of solving their infrastructure problems. The rich organizations are making this move to create more room for more value to the enterprise.
Using your terminology of rich and poor, do the rich get richer by doing this?
The rich are definitely getting richer, as measured in terms of budget, standing in the enterprise, creating the company strategy, and CIOs not reporting to CFOs.
What percentage of CIOs are on the rich side?
About 22%.
How many are in the middle?
Almost 30%. And there is a solid 50% that are poor and getting poorer.
What happens to that 50%? Do they get replaced or do the companies not realize they have a problem in the first place?
The reality is they’ll be relegated to administrative irrelevance. That’s the unifying theme. If you define your IT organization as enabling the business, that’s an indication you’re headed in the poorer direction. When you have organizations that talk about how IT contributes to the business and makes it transformational or directional, that’s an early indicator the attitude of the CIO is pointed toward the richer side.
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