Category Archives: IT Transformation

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How The Data Center Is Becoming Software-Defined

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How pervasive is the concept of software-defined?

In mid 2012 VMware CTO Steve Herrod and others began to articulate the concept of the software-defined data center. This concept was just as often received as a marketing position from vendors as an observation about the evolution of the data center. At the time, I blogged about the basic concepts of the software-defined data center and followed-up the initial post with an additional blog posts about storage challenges in the software-defined data center. Other posts addressed related topics such as how cloud adoption contributes to the evolution of APIs.

Now, since many months have passed, which can be measured in dog years in high-tech, I would like to revisit the concept of software-defined as it pertains to storage as well as compute and networking, and its status in 2013. I believe that the software-defined data center has moved beyond concept, putting us on the cusp of a time when new architectures and product offerings will make it a reality. Continue reading →

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EMC Data Protection Advisor For As-A-Service Cloud Environments

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What can you do to ensure data protection as you move to cloud?

Services-based storage, infrastructure, and data protection trends and technologies are recurring topics in this blog. Awhile back I wrote a post about enabling data protection as-a-service discussing the need for centralized management at cloud-scale, multiple service rates based on customer data protection needs or usage, and historical data for analysis and trending. The reality is that you can only get so far with legacy products built for physical environments. At some point, management tools, like the data center environments they support, need to be remade to the requirements of the day. Effective data protection solutions are no exception.

Data protection needs are more acute for as-a-service cloud models and require new approaches. Now, with the release of EMC Data Protection Advisor 6.0, I would like to share what it means to augment a successful data protection solution and extend it with a new distributed architecture and analysis engine to cloud deployments, without losing any usability benefits (i.e. without making it complex). Continue reading →

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EMC VMAX Cloud Edition Speeds Storage Service Delivery

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What if you could get proven enterprise-class storage in cloud-ready configurations?

IT infrastructure is acquired to meet the demands of the business it supports. For years the approach has been either turnkey involving mostly the purchase of server resources to support specific applications augmented by storage or a la carte with IT purchasing compute, networking, and storage technology from preferred vendors to launch new applications.

More recently, the time-to-market for new applications and services has shrunk, driving organizations to new ways to acquire and deploy complex technologies to meet accelerated delivery needs. For the cloud era, EMC has adapted its industry-leading Symmetrix VMAX to meet a storage consumption need for high-performance, enterprise cloud storage on-demand. 

Today, EMC introduced VMAX Cloud Edition: a self-service, enterprise-class cloud storage delivery platform that accelerates time-to-value for enterprises and service providers building private, hybrid, or public clouds. VMAX Cloud Edition applies the single-SKU approach to infrastructure to provide predefined storage service-levels for customers that require a multi-tenant, “as-a-service” delivery platform. EMC VMAX Cloud Edition provides pre-packaged classes-of-services with predictable performance at predictable price-points. Continue reading →

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Service Providers’ Role In Providing Higher Value Services

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Service providers or carriers own the network infrastructure that supports the Internet, and are well-positioned for cloud computing. I addressed some of the opportunities and challenges service providers face in an earlier post about carriers and clouds. Interestingly, though these businesses have a service-orientation in the front-office, they still have a network operations mindset in the back-office shaped by years of focusing on call completions, tariffs, and a corresponding revenue model. Some service providers offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and storage-as-a-service (STaaS), for example, but it’s really only outsourced resources instead of a cloud services model.

Telecommunication service providers look at cloud service providers including IaaS suppliers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers like Google App Engine, and recognize opportunities to leverage their core competencies and networks for new services. To realize these opportunities, however, service providers need to think and act differently to take advantage of cloud computing and compete in the cloud market. Continue reading →

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Platform-As-A-Service For The Enterprise

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PaaSIs platform-as-a-service (PaaS) relevant to the enterprise?

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offers small organizations compute, network, and storage resources on par with the IT capabilities afforded previously to only larger, well-capitalized organizations. Now, PaaS has the potential of taking this IT on-demand concept a step further with applications and services.

IaaS was first popularized by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The startup community embraced the model where no upfront capital expenditure was required, and IT burden was significantly reduced because IaaS provided both infrastructure and operations management for a fee.  This model gave startups, and larger enterprises alike, a much faster time to market than building out infrastructure themselves.

Since being introduced, IaaS has gone mainstream in enterprise organizations. EMC itself is 92% virtualized and provides IaaS to its internal customers.

Following a similar course taken by IaaS, PaaS is currently available on the fringe of enterprises from providers like Heroku and CloudBees, as well as more established providers like Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure. Like IaaS before, PaaS could gain significance as the offerings mature and enterprises get savvy to the benefits of this platform model. Continue reading →