Sandra Gittlen’s article “Extend your data center’s life expectancy” on infoworld.com shares strategies that can help you get more out of your current data center.

Because of the shaky economy, Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner, says he’s been bombarded lately by large organizations looking to avoid the cost of a data center upgrade. “Any data center investment costs at minimum tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars. With a typical data center refresh rate of five to 10 years, that’s a lot of money, so companies are looking for alternatives,” he says.

Kumar finds that many companies can get an extra two to five years from their data center with a combination of strategies, including consolidating and rationalizing hardware and software usage; rolling out virtualization; and physically moving IT equipment around. Most companies don’t optimize the components of their data center and, therefore, bump up against its limitations faster than necessary, he says.

Here are more strategies from other IT leaders and experts:

• Relocate noncritical data.
• Take the pressure off of high-value applications and infrastructure.
• Standardize servers and storage.
• Virtualize whatever you can.
• Root out and retire unused or low-utilized devices and applications.
• Contain test and development sprawl.
• Look for duplicate data in your storage arrays.
• Push your developers to use effective coding.
• Rearrange the furniture.
• Analyze your energy efficiency.

Welcome to “Cloudy Wednesday”. Each Wednesday, Evolving Solutions will focus on the latest news and information on cloud computing.

With many customers fully virtualized, it’s time to take them the rest of the way toward a true cloud solution, said Carl Eschenbach, at the Global Technology Distribution Council Summit in Newport Beach.

In the article “VMware’s Eschenbach: Six Ways To Drive Transformation Into Cloud” on CRN, Scott Campbell shares Eschenbach’s strategies on how the IT channel can take advantage of clouds.

Here are the strategies Eschenbach suggests:
1. Deploy Private Clouds
This still represents the largest opportunity, says Eschenbach.
2. Deploy/Manage Public Clouds
“We can help build public cloud and do that by leveraging the services that our partners have,” Eschenbach said.
3. Partner with Service Providers to Resell Cloud Services
VMware, and distributors can “bridge the gap” between public service providers and the VARs to sell public services back into the private cloud.
4. Assist Hybrid Cloud Migration
There is an opportunity to take applications that exist in data centers today and helping them move to public cloud, whether it’s software as a service or just a public cloud provider.
5. Buy and Resell Private Clouds
Building private clouds themselves or going to a service provider who has already built one and buying a rack.
6. Migrate/Transform/Build Applications on Top of the Cloud
“Companies have to think about selling software as a service and how to do that without disrupting the massive revenue streams they have today,” he said.

The final result will be significant adoption of cloud in the market by customers, Eschenbach said.

In his article “Reigning in Unstructured Data” for Computer Technology Review, Ken Cheney talks about unstructured data in a virtualized world.

With the proliferation of NAS storage devices, diverse file servers running all sorts of apps (not just databases), and cloud-based services, the growth of unstructured data in businesses is unfettered.

According to Cheney, in the wild and wooly world of unstructured data it’s important for companies to think out their data management and storage plans up front to ensure all of that info is handled correctly.

As more companies (and more smaller companies) jump on the virtualization bandwagon, things will only get more complicated when it comes to securing their unstructured data like the reams of Word and PowerPoint and PDF documents stuffed into their soon-to-be virtualized servers. Of course, these companies want to reap the cost-savings associated with server virtualization, but fail to think through the security implications as they make this move.

If you need more proof that the need for good, secure management of storage in our ever-virtualizing world is only going to grow, you only have to look to IDC’s latest numbers on the storage software market. The total size of that market segment hit $3.4 billion this quarter, up 11.3% over the year-ago-quarter. Within the overall storage software category, data protection and recovery software sales accounted for more than one-third (34.2%) of the total.

Welcome to “Cloudy Wednesday”. Each Wednesday, Evolving Solutions will focus on the latest news and information on cloud computing.

At VMworld Europe in Copenhagen, VMware CEO Paul Maritz offered an unvarnished assessment of how he sees the pricing model for virtualization and cloud resources evolving over the next decade. In his CRN article “VMware CEO Maritz: Get Ready For Consumption-Based Pricing”, Kevin McLaughlin discusses Maritz’s comments.

“We are going to have to move towards more of a consumption-based model,” Maritz said. “We are trying to keep the licensing stable for as long as we can, but in 10 years from now, things will have changed quite radically.”

Considering that consumption-based pricing is a percolating issue in the IT industry, and one that will likely fuel future friction between vendors and their customers and partners, reaction was mixed among those in attendance.

“He’s never been that forthright and direct about this issue,” said Keith Norbie, vice president and CTO at Nexus Information Systems, a VMware partner. “However, anyone who thinks the industry isn’t going to this kind of model is kidding themselves.”

Mike Strohl, president of Entisys, a solution provider and VMware partner, says he’s encouraged by the way Maritz is tackling consumption-based pricing because it makes things clearer to customers. But Ken Phelan, CTO of Gotham Technology Partners says VMware could find it difficult to institute consumption based pricing. “I can see why VMware would want this but I’m not sure they’ll be able to pull it off.”

Even though many data center virtualization startups have moved on to the cloud, virtualization is still one of the IT industry’s most charged buzzwords. In his article “Virtualization 100” on CRN, Kevin McLaughlin talks about the latest trends and includes a comprehensive list of who’s who in the virtualization space

According to McLaughlin, although vendors often claim virtualization is just a stepping-stone to the cloud, there is still a lot of innovation going on in the industry. And since early ROI for virtualization has been impressive, companies are working to get the same advantages going in other parts of IT.

That’s because virtualization isn’t just happening in the data center. Desktop virtualization is making inroads and storage virtualization startups have been getting lots of attention lately. Perhaps the hottest part of the market is virtualization management, where startup companies are building tools and functionality that plugs gaps in big companies’ portfolios.

With today’s IT environments being more complex than ever with virtualization and cloud computing as well as the physical environment all competing for resources and often having conflicting demands, Network World published an article by Kerry Lebel “Automation tools for a complex environment” to highlight automation tools that can help IT organizations to a solution by focusing on six key areas for automation.

• Application release automation – look for flexible, cross-platform solutions that automate deployment activities, including upgrades, changes and patches, allowing for different environments, owners and processes.
• Run book automation – find a solution that automates and standardizes IT ‘housekeeping’ processes.
• Virtualization automation – look for solutions with intelligence to predict needs for both increased resources, automatically adding virtual machines when needed, and workload fluctuates, de-provisioning virtual machines when they are no longer needed.
• Application process automation – consider a single automation platform that supports all mission-critical applications and services across physical, virtual and cloud environments as well as understand dependencies across the entire IT organization.
• Job scheduling – look for a platform that works across all computing platforms, encompasses calendar- and event-based scheduling and supports old and new applications.
• Managed file transfer – find a solution that automates the entire process, ensures data accuracy and delivers secure, encoded file transfers.

Most organizations in today’s business environment run multiple database management systems while seeing a rise in the amount of data stored and the need for quick and easy access to that data. Virtualization solutions & products can increase your company’s data and server efficiency.

Is your data center not virtualized yet? Here are seven reasons from CIO author Logan Harbaugh on why you should virtualize:

1. Virtualization allows you to get the most out of your server hardware since adding multiple operating systems and applications to the same server brings greater utilization
2. Redundant services can be set up for better fault tolerance since hypervisors allow operating systems and applications to migrate from one system to another
3. All operating systems are on one hypervisor meaning management can be administered through a single interface. IT will find that managing a dozen virtual servers is much easier than a dozen separate physical systems especially with the availability of management add-on tools
4. Applications can be partitioned on separate operating systems for greater reliability
5. Provisioning new servers for prototyping, testing and migration requires no additional hardware and set up is simple
6. Virtualization can bring more energy efficiency
7. Virtual desktop infrastructure can save on PC costs

Our first Fall seminar will be focused on virtualization and how VMware can
help you manage your virtual environment. With the introduction of VMware
vSphere 5, product licensing models are changing to give customers the
opportunity to move to a more cloud-like “pay for consumption” approach to
IT. And we will take a look at how Virtual Desktop computing is changing how
we do business today.

This is a unique opportunity to learn and understand more about Virtual
Desktop Infrastructure, applications and the transformation that is happening
today making organizations more automated, competitive and agile. The
cloud era is here.

We’ll also be hosting an IBM seminar about “New Opportunities in Storage to Optimize your Business”. You will learn how IBM storage and IBM Tivoli software solutions can help you take advantage of the breakthrough economics of smarter computing. Topics we will be covering:
- Store more with what is in your datacenter
- Reduce the cost of protecting your data
- Move data to the right place

Advancements in Virtualization
Hosted by Evolving Solutions
Thursday, November 10, 2011
11.30 am (Lunch Included)
Crave Restaurant
1603 West End Blvd
St. Louis Park, MN 55416
RSVP at www.evolvingsol.com/virtualization
Or call 1.800.294.4362
FREE

New Opportunities in Storage to Optimize Your Business
Hosted by Evolving Solutions
Thursday, November 17, 2011
8:30 – 12:45 pm (Followed by Lunch)
Doubletree
1500 Park Place Blvd.
Minneapolis, MN 55416
RSVP at www.evolvingsol.com/storagebriefing
Or call 1.800.294.4362
FREE

IT analysts report in a recent CIO article “How Desktop Virtualization Can Help IT Manage Consumer Devices” that desktop virtualization in many of its use cases fits neatly into problem areas that client companies face, such as the consumerization of IT. In other words, end users using non-standard computing devices such as tablets and smart phones, anytime and anywhere.

The clearest solution is to create a virtual desktop that runs on a server in the data center that can be launched and viewed easily by any end user and device. This is, of course, the full blown virtual desktop solution. But it is important to remember that desktop virtualization should be looked at as a range of implementations not as “a solution” or even a “set of solutions”. Working with a partner such as Evolving Solutions to identify the range of desktop virtualization implementations will help organizations at all levels find a solution right for their situation and their budget.

In our last blog post we identified two tips from Network World’s recent article “The 5 Biggest IT Security Mistakes” to help IT Security groups navigate the new challenges faced in the era of virtualization and cloud computing. Here are three more tips for success:

• Although virtualization holds tremendous promise in eventually improving security, especially disaster recovery, the reality today is that many IT security teams are lagging in this area. IT security needs to recognize and evaluate the new challenges to determine what works best for their virtualized environments.
• Develop a comprehensive plan for dealing with data breaches. Many states have different compliance laws to follow if data is breached. Add to that federal law requirements and the cross-organizational impacts and you’ll see the need to have an action plan prepared and in place.
• Although it is necessary to have solid “partnerships” with IT and security vendors, the organization continues to need to keep a critical eye on vendor innovation and offerings.