Thoughts from 35,000 feet (Yes, in the CLOUD)

Some Random Thoughts after my trip to VMWARE Partner Exchange and the long 6 hr flight back. A little bit long read but I think you will find this useful. Will be posted on my blog and twitter feed as well.

IT is undergoing a major transformation led by 3 seismic shifts happening at the same time.

1. End user experience

• The computing model of desktop centric processing is giving way to anywhere, any device access that is creating a fundamental change in end user computing driven by the adoption of tablets, smartphones and also the users increasingly being of the millennial generation.
• The new end user expects data to be social, mobile and available instantly regardless of how they access it
• BYOD (Bring your own device) adoption will increase and IT will be forced to adjust and accommodate the new "smart" devices coming into the organization. Telecommuters will also help increase adoption of BYOD
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) will hit a tipping point this year with adoption of BYOD and Windows XP finally coming to end of support.
• Data stores like box.net and dropbox are increasingly being used in the corporate environment. The security/compliance implications for this is hastening the adoption of enterprise grade cloud storage like MozyPro and VMWARE Project Octopus

2. Back end Transformation

• Legacy client/server computing models created a behemoth infrastructure that was slow to adapt and be provisioned. We are sitting on 20-30 year old technology and only the hardware has gotten faster. 
• Legacy IT infrastructure didn't have the elasticity and provisioning capabilities that was required for an agile time to market that is being demanded by the business users. 
• Commoditization of IT means resources can be obtained as a service regardless of whether it's Infrastructure, platform or software or x (anything). End users are already using this and sometimes IT is not even aware.
• Cloud (essentially a pool of network, storage, compute and virtualization resources that can be provisioned quickly) is becoming the new norm for the IT infrastructure
• Private Cloud Market space will be $45 Billion by 2016
• Customers increasingly are moving towards Private Cloud and the industry has begun to recognize this shift
• Private/Hybrid Clouds will dominate the adoption of cloud technologies with federation between the private/public cloud to be key piece of the solution.

3. Front end Transformation

• Big Data (large unstructured data) will start to dominate the market space especially with open source tools like Hadoop, Hive & Pig
• Big Data storage will start to take a bigger role in the next 24 months with NAS devices supporting HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System). EMC Isilon is uniquely positioned in this space as it recognizes HDFS as a supported protocol
• Big Data analytics like GreenPlum or SAP BW appliance will also start appearing on customer's requirement list
• Platform and software needs to be developed on more agile platforms that support the interaction between new end user computing models and dynamic back end infrastructure
• Tools like BMC, CA, VMWARE, Microsoft and niche offerings from open source vendors like Red Hat and Ubuntu are making this happen

Network/Security concerns

• With all these transformations, networks have to become faster and be able to scale data centers
• Adoption of 10G will increase especially within the data center and in some cases 40G/100G will not be far away
• Software defined networking (SDN) is gaining mainstream traction. Companies like HP, IBM, Dell and Brocade are betting on this to steer customers away from Cisco. 
• Security at all levels, network security with BYOD and adoption of 802.1x authentication for new "smart" devices
• End point security, at the device, server level will need to be virtualization and cloud ready. If a VM running inside a private cloud with enforced security policies is moved or federated to a public cloud, the security policies should follow the VM
• Enterprise Single Sign-on, SIEM or Security Incident Event Management will all need to adapt as workloads become transient

In all, the next 24-36 months will see a huge opportunity for the reseller market, 

• Convergence of network, compute, storage resources. VARs will need to start hiring folks who understand this new converged infrastructure be it HP VirtualSystem, IBM CloudBurst, vBlock or Flexpod
• Abstraction of hardware (software defined data center) using management, orchestration, provisioning tools that allow self service users to dynamically request resources. Whether the resource is private or public; whether it's HP, IBM or Cisco is immaterial in this new paradigm shift
• VARs will need to invest in more services skills especially around Private Cloud, VDI and Security implementations.
• VARs that can facilitate the adoption of cloud for customers and show them true RoI, TCO and security/compliance will ride this new wave. VARs will also benefit from a capacity-on-demand model where they can charge their customers a pay-as-you-go service.
• VARs that can help a customer with front end, back end and end user transformation will control the IT spend for that customer and also decide the underlying infrastructure
• VARs will most likely need to establish a relationship with boutique development houses or look at creating a software development practice under their Cloud Practices
• Open Source platforms like Hadoop, Hive, Pig, Juju will be adopted and commercialized by a number of vendors.
• VARS needs to invest in Cloud Security partnerships to address growing concerns of workload mobility.
• Everything will be an APP. Applications like Oracle, MS Exchange/SharePoint and Video/Unified Communications will all be a virtualized app on top of a cloud infrastructure

Our Blueh2ocloud strategy is hitting all the right points mentioned above. I think specific product mixes like vBlock, BMC Software, CA, VMWARE and storage like EMC Isilon, VNX are gaining traction. From a network/security side, Cloud Ready networks and Cisco Identity Service Engine are hot for us now. We have a number of unique things like Cloud-in-a-box and VDI-in-a-box where we are productizing the solutions and making it easier for us to sell this. We are also working on combining some solution offerings like Hadoop/Isilon/Greenplum ..!! Keep it locked in to our cloud website www.blueh2ocloud.com

Check out our blueh2ocloud.com for more specific details about our product/solution offerings.

Comments/Feedback are welcome.! 

-Vinu Thomas, Director of Cloud

BlueWater

VMWORLD 2011 Highlights

Key Product Announcements

Networking
VXLAN - Logical networks to be extended among virtual machines placed in different subnets. Flexible, scalable cloud architecture in which new servers can be added in different subnets. Migration of virtual machines between servers in different subnets

Hardware
Teradici APEX PCOIP Offload card - With 2GB of onboard memory, each Server Offload Card can support up to 64 displays at a resolution of 1920x1200, up to 32 dual displays. PCI-E Expansion card with future support for mezzanine formats. Offloads PCOIP compression from CPU.

Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery to the cloud via VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 - Enterprise grade disaster recovery delivered via public cloud service providers leveraging SRM (FusionStorm, Hosting.com, iland, VeriStor).

Cloud

• VMware vCloud® Datacenter Global Connect - Giving customers the power to use public cloud services across multiple providers in multiple geographies as if from one cloud. Bluelock, Colt, SingTel and Softbank Telecom are expected to be the first providers to offer Global Connect services.
• VMware vCloud® Connector 1.5 - Faster, more reliable delivery and management of virtualized workloads from enterprise datacenters to public clouds, accelerating hybrid environment portability. Also introduced was vcloud.vmware.com, a new online destination where enterprises can find public cloud service providers, test drive services, and begin transferring and managing workloads in the cloud.
• VMware vFabric™ Data Director - Manage, provision and deliver access to a growing set of diverse data sources required for application development in the cloud.
• VMware vFabric Postgres - The first database integrated with Data Director, a fully compliant PostgreSQL relational database engineered to take full advantage of VMware vSphere's underlying virtualization resource capabilities.
• Project AppBlast - provide the universal delivery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any device supporting HTML5, enabling instant remote access to applications without the heavy footprint of the underlying operating system.
• Project Octopus - tool that can provide a DropBox service for the enterprise.

Virtual Desktop
VMware View™ 5 - New levels of innovation and performance with integrated 3D graphics support, unified communications and Persona management.

Security & Mobility
VMware Horizon™ Application Manager - Extending the benefits of user-centric identity, policy and entitlement from SaaS Apps to virtualized Windows applications via VMware ThinApp®.
VMware Horizon Mobile (formerly MVP) - Establishes and securely manages a connected mobile workspace in isolation from their personal Android mobile environment.

Cisco Highlights

• Cisco UCS achieved the highest score ever recorded for the VMware VMmark 2.1 benchmark with a 21% performance advantage over other identical server core count.
• Introduction of the Virtual eXtensible LAN protocol jointly developed by Cisco and VMware, Broadcom, Arista, Red Hat, and Citrix and submitted as an IETF Internet Draft. VXLAN essentially allows cloud builders and providers to surpass traditional VLAN scale boundaries through MAC-in-UDP. Read more about it in this short white paper.
• New virtual form factor ASA, which provides ASA capabilities such as NAT and VPN in a virtual form factor that can be deployed with the Nexus 1000v as part a secured virtual networking infrastructure for VMs.
• Additional integration with vCloud Director to additional automation and role based access to the networking capabilities offered by Cisco’s virtualized networking solutions on VMware.

We look forward to seeing more from the following vendors:

1. vKernel
2. AppSense
3. Bluelock
4. ConRaid
5. Nutanix

Building a Strong Base For UC in the Cloud - John Marchese, BlueWater, for Information Week

The cloud computing tornado we’ve all been caught up in hasn’t lost one bit of momentum over the past few months—if anything, additional pressure has been placed on IT to develop a cloud strategy, the sooner the better. However, moving an inefficient business process to the cloud just perpetuates the problem. And, the recent economic climate has meant that the goal of optimizing business processes via technology has often been put on the back burner while organizations focused on reducing operational and capital expenditures.

 

Some stats: 71% of the of 393 business technology professionals responding to our April InformationWeek Analytics Cloud ROI Survey are either using or considering cloud technologies, with software as a service the top response. For 90% of those using or evaluating cloud, IT is in the thick of the decision-making process, putting to rest the idea that business is primarily driving this bandwagon.

 

As trends go, cloud is big. But this is not the first time most of us have been around the hype block. It was only a few years ago when the movement to IP-based private branch exchanges promised to let us ride the unified communications wave all the way to efficiency nirvana. Now that cloud services have emerged as the top prospect to reduce IT capex, expedite delivery of new applications, improve business agility and minimize IT support costs, we need to explore the impact these services have on existing technologies.

 

In this report, we’ll discuss how to prepare for the use of cloud services while extracting the maximum value from what you already own, and from investments you’re preparing to make. To do this, we’ll focus on unified communications; it’s an ideal case study of how to make the most of existing investments while also leveraging the best the cloud has to offer.

 

Read more at:

http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/5/3093/Cloud-Computing/strategy-uc-and-the-cloud.html

Posted via web from blueh2ogroup's posterous

Tell us how your school system would benefit from mobility technology and win a wireless makeover worth $35,000!

Mobility Solutions based on wireless technology are helping schools just like yours compete more effectively and innovatively than ever before. How? By connecting administrators, teachers, students, parents, and others anywhere, anytime to the information and resources they need over a secure, reliable wireless network.

BlueWater and Cisco have teamed up to offer a wireless makeover to one deserving school district. If you can tell us in 500 words or less how you would use mobility technology to unplug your school - you’ll have the chance to win a wireless makeover worth up to $35,000!

If you’re in the New Jersey and Long Island area, your school district could win! Visit http://www.winwithbluewater.com to enter the challenge!

About BlueWater Communications Group

Phone Number: 212.324.4379
Fax: 212.324.4399
E-Mail: jaime.mehnert@blueh2ogroup.com
Website: http://www.blueh2ogroup.com

BlueWater is focused on providing high-performance, holistic, cohesive IT infrastructure solutions to growing companies. We specialize in providing organizations with Full Life Cycle services in Unified Communications, Collaboration & Video, Virtualization, Consolidation & Data Center, and Security solutions to increase productivity and improve business operations. Our Managed Service, BLUE, provides proactive support and remediation preventing costly downtime, under a flexible contract, utilizing custom technology and industry-standard tools to optimize your IT investment.

At BlueWater, we believe that many organizations are not being adequately served by their technology vendors. While there are many companies that will "sell" technology there are few that can bring a life-cycle solution approach to technology that is linked to your business strategy. This increases your ability to maximize your return on IT investments. BlueWater is a true technology partner linking technology to your strategic and financial objectives.