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
