Gartner analysts recently sought to point out paths to IT leaders for transitioning to private cloud computing reports a recent article in CIO. Gartner has found that, simply put, if speedy IT services are important, the business should be shifting from traditional computing into virtualization in order to build a private cloud that, whether operated by their IT department or with the help from a private cloud provider, will give the business an edge. Gartner recommends that transitioning a traditional physical server network to a virtualized private cloud should be done with strategic planning in capacity management and staff training.

Gartner analysts also emphasized that building a private cloud is more than just adding virtual machines to physical servers. Transitioning the data center to be more cloud-like causes the business to make architecture decisions, centralize IT operations, acquire servers optimized for virtualized environments and map security, applications, identity and information management to cloud strategy.

Jon Brodkin’s recent article on CIO discusses new research from Duke University and Microsoft tackling the increased powering complications from data center virtualization.

A virtualized power shifting (VPS) system budgets power with an application-aware power distribution in mind. VPS dynamically shifts power among various components to efficiently utilize the total available power budget, as workloads and power availability vary. Power is distributed among application components in the correct proportions to achieve the best performance.

Research shows, in contrast to existing powering techniques that use only one power control knob, VPS uses multiple power control knobs and selects the optimal combinations of power settings to optimize performance within the available power budget. Although VPS is still a work in progress, it still seems likely the capability could be integrated into future power management systems.

In a recent Tech Trade post by Eric Savitz he points to three reasons why Dell may be in the market to buy a networking solutions equipment company with Brocade as its main focus.

• The PC market is arguably headed into an accelerating secular decline (units and ASPs) at the hands of tablets – Dell’s cash engine.
• Dell has clearly been seeing success cross-selling Ethernet switching with servers and storage, evidenced by reported results and qualitative commentary from Dell executives.
• In early June,  Dell made a shelf filing for a potential $3.5 billion debt filing; the company also has $7 billion in net cash.

Brocade is a likely choice as Dell looks to realign the company away from secularly less attractive businesses and incrementally toward future growth in the enterprise.

Bernard Golden in a recent article from CIO discusses the second myth regarding cloud computing security: public cloud computing security rests solely with the cloud service provider (CSP).

The reality is that security in a public cloud computing world is a responsibility shared between the cloud service provider and the user or organization. The provider is responsible for security in the infrastructure up through the interface point between the application and hosting environment, and the organization is responsible for security with respect to interfacing with the environment and the application.

Appropriate security configurations must be made within both the environment security interface and at the application-level. These two areas are not within the realm of control for cloud service providers, so discussions about shared security responsibility are critical in ensuring public cloud computing security.

Bernard Golden in a recent article from CIO discusses the first myth regarding cloud computing security: private cloud computing is secure merely by way of the fact that it is deployed within the boundaries of a company’s own data center. This first myth comes from a misunderstanding between traditional computing and cloud computing. Cloud computing has both virtualization and dynamism.

Within data center virtualization, virtual machines can communicate completely via traffic within the hypervisor and never hit a physical network. Today, many of the security appliances used to examine inappropriate or malicious traffic and packets are installed on the physical network. In other words, one insecure application can communicate attacks to another without the organization’s security measures ever having a chance to come into play.

Also, cloud computing requires a higher degree of automation to achieve agility and elasticity benefits which leads to less manual interactions. Many organizations have a mismatch between their security practices and the reality of what a cloud computing, even a private cloud, require.

On Wednesday, June 22nd we will discuss the final security myth in this cloud computing article.

Evolving Solutions today announced that it has been qualified to deliver professional services on Brocade’s IP networking products. This new partnership will allow Evolving Solutions to offer a broader range of IP professional services solutions to help customers realize a greater return on IT investment.

“With the network being the critical component for secure transportation of data, our customers need end-to-end networking,” said Jaime Gmach, President, Evolving Solutions. “Partnering with the industry leader allows us to deliver networking solutions that meet future data center demands while reducing costs and business risks.”

For complete details please check out our press release.

Bernard Golden recently published an article on CIO regarding two myths of cloud computing security. Over the next couple of posts we will discuss these myths.

Overall, security, is constantly cited as an inherent benefit of private cloud computing and a fundamental shortcoming of public cloud computing. But is this really true? Perhaps it is a question of thinking through each service and finding how to best mitigate concerns to create secure environments on both fronts.

Mr. Golden points out that the cloud computing security truth is far more ambiguous. He states a common problem is that too many people are making the private vs. public cloud security question ‘black and white’. A far more productive conversation would be to determine what security actions must be taken to achieve as secure an application as possible given the constraints of time, budget and risk tolerance.

Check back Monday, June 20th for a discussion on the first myth of cloud computing security.

Wide Area Networking (WAN) optimization is now helping companies move their data centers into cloud computing. A recent article by Tim Green of Network World discusses trends for WAN optimization.

WAN optimization continues to meet its main function of making response times faster over WAN links, but now through software that runs on virtual machines it is becoming practical for use in public and private clouds. We may also see an increase in the need to bring WAN optimization to the application level. The flexibility of application use that cloud computing environments can enable require infrastructure that can optimize delivery of those applications. It may be valuable to have WAN optimization built in as a service for the application to call upon but there can be challenges with optimization at the application level.

Check back Wednesday, June 15th for an interesting article on cloud computing security.

The rise in data center virtualization and cloud computing has created several management challenges for IT organizations. Jim Metzer from Network World speaks to two challenges and suggests route analytics to help mitigate.

So what are two of the new challenges? First, there is now not a single repository of routing information. Second, with virtualization and cloud computing network traffic can change paths from point A to point B on a regular basis.

Ok, so what is route analytics you may ask? The goal of route analytics is to provide visibility, analysis and diagnosis of the issues that occur at the routing layer. Routing analytics provides an understanding of preciously how IP networks deliver application traffic by creating a map of network-wide routes and all IP traffic flows that traverse these routes.

Some of the benefits seen from route analytics include:

• Improved and more efficient troubleshooting
• A tool to show clients/customers that the IT organization has the expertise to meet SLA requirements.

Data center expert Vanessa Alzarez from CIO asks the question what data center hardware should enterprises keep when making the move to deploy cloud computing models in their data centers.

This question is not new to IT management and CIOs. Making decisions about what hardware to keep and let go was a challenge as companies adopted data center virtualization. Now, this same question comes into play with cloud computing.

Ms. Alzarez points to two essential questions to start with:

• What is the potential value of moving from on-premise to off-premise or “as-a-service” model?
• Does the cost of managing and maintaining on premise (including human/capital resources) outweigh the cost of simply taking it out and moving to a cloud?

As with any new technology, challenges and new questions arise underscoring the importance of working with a partner like Evolving Solutions to determine the right cloud computing solution.

Check back Friday June 10th for a post on Route Analytics.