Welcome to Alexander Ervik Johnsen's Virtualization Thoughts! In this column Alex will discuss what's new, get the low down on the differences, and what's not that tipptopp within the virtualization scene!
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Will Desktop and Server Virtualization Boost Data Storage Spending in 2010 |
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 19 January 2010 09:48 |
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The last couple of years it's been a growing popular trend to virtualize server in the datacenter. Virtualization means big sales for data storage vendors, and EMC, DELL and NetApp are the companies best positioned to take advantage of the trend, according to a new report. Since the introduction of Virtual Desktops this market is accelerating even more, with virtualization of users desktop, storage requirements and needs will grow in 2010 and beyond is my take on the matter. We tend to focus on the Virtualization vendors with the likes of Citrix, Microsoft and VMware being the biggest players in the market. But, what about the storage vendors? They must see profits on the rise, since more virtualization equals more storage needs.
William Blair & Co. analysts Jason Ader and Dmitry Netis penned a 141-page report on the data storage sector that was released yesterday. Server virtualization, they wrote, "is the key technology development that will shape the future of the storage industry."
In the near term, that's good news for the vendors. "As servers become centralized and virtualized in mainframe-like grids, storage needs to become more distributed and networked," Ader and Netis wrote. For every $1 spent on server virtualization projects, customers spend roughly $2 to $3 on storage, they said.
But in the long term, server virtualization could hurt the data storage vendors, "as it will result in a siphoning of management functionality from the storage device to the server, raising the risk that storage systems will gradually become commoditized just like servers," the analysts wrote.
With data created by businesses and consumers doubling every 18 months, the $45 billion storage systems and software market should see mid-single digit growth, but vertically integrated stacks assembled by large vendors, which integrate compute, storage, and network layers, could place storage specialists at a disadvantage if the concept catches on, the report said.
While EMC and NetApp are best positioned, focused niche providers such as Compellent and Isilon "are also worth watching because of their innovative approaches to solving the problems of data growth and management," according to the Blair analysts.
"Longer term, storage-centric players will have to contend with increased threats from diversified vendors such as HP and IBM that aim to collapse the storage function into their stacks," they said.
EMC's majority stake in server virtualization leader VMware gives the data storage giant a big stake in the server virtualization market while hedging against the commoditization of its storage business, the report said.
They predicted greater use of capacity optimization technologies such as deduplication, thin provisioning and tiered storage to increase utilization, and a transition to Ethernet-based storage networking technologies such as FCoE, iSCSI and network-attached storage (NAS).
"While the transition to Ethernet-based storage will not happen overnight, the implications for incumbent [Fibre Channel] infrastructure vendors are clearly negative," they said.
So, while we are pushing to new hights when it comes to Server and Desktop Virtualization in our part of the industry, there are another part of the industry making big bucks on our effort to virtualize. Makes sense, and I hope the storage vendors gives their best effort to give us SANs and NAS's that gives us the best performance, which we need due to several factors around virtualization and provisioning.
Check out the report here
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Is there a killer app for the cloud? |
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Written by Alexander Ervik Johnsen
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Tuesday, 05 January 2010 11:16 |
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Unless you have been visiting outer space or had your head buried deep down in the sand lately, you have by now heard of the term cloud computing. Cloud computing can be defined as service-based computing, where a company buys software or storage as a service (SaaS) from an internal or external provider.
There are many good examples of cloud computing in action these past years, such as e-mail from either Microsoft(hotmail), Yahoo or Google(gmail). Instead of running your own mail servers, you simply allow your employees to use the services provided by those companies to eliminate the capital costs of doing it yourself. You may not have complete control, or get everything your heart desires in a mail solution, but the price sure is right. It will be interesting to see how long these companies can go without charging for these services. Another example is Windows Live, with Windows Live Messenger maybe one of the most used of such applications. It's not completely hosted in the clouds, because you have a client you download and install, but you can also use the Windows Live Web Messenger which is such an app!
Another "Software as a Service" cloud company is SalesForce.com, which provides software to manage customer relations management (CRM) and sales campaigns. Not having to build out the infrastructure for these applications internally can save big money, and enable the people in the IT department to focus on delivering new customer facing applications which impact the bottom line.
The desire for companies to reduce costs and focus IT on core business applications which can increase profits, productivity of the companies employees and last but maybe most importen the shareholders value brings us to the killer apps for the cloud.
So what is this killer app, which app is a killer app in the Cloud? I have a good suggestion, what about iTunes, let's face it, we are flooding over with ipods,ipod touches and iphones. The one thing I hate with iTunes is every time I change my computer or reinstall it. If I had had my iTunes app in the cloud, this would be simple for me, I cloud hook my iPhone up from any place at any time and have no problems. Yes, you cloud do this with a Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp in the Clouds like the one that Amazon EC2, they offer XenApp, but not XenDesktop to my knowledge yet that is... but what if I cloud have iTunes as a standalone app in the cloud? Now that would be something!
Other killer apps that come to mind is what ever big vendor flavour you may have of innvoice systems, these systems like Agresso, Visma or other needs big infrastructure to work, like salesforce you could have this in the cloud and save the same money and manpower.
Please, if you have any suggestions to killer apps for the clouds please drop a comment! |
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year |
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Written by Administrator
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Thursday, 24 December 2009 13:53 |
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Just wanted to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thanks for reading ervik.as, hope you will keep it up in 2010 as we will have much in store for next year! 2009 has been a awesom year for Ervik.as and 2010 looks bright! |
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Virtual Predictions for 2010 |
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Written by Alexander Ervik Johnsen
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Tuesday, 22 December 2009 13:11 |
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This year has more or less been blessed with one thing, Yes, you guess right already, application, server and desktop virtualization. There are more players at the table with solutions to taunt VMware, which is a good thing!
Next year I think we will see the fall of Thin Clients, why you may ask? Well, in Norway where I live, there have been sold thousands of thin clients the past several years. Some customers I've talked to said that the price is just not right anymore, they get a workstation or laptop for almost the same now as for a thin client that matches the user needs. But, that is not the biggest problem, next year when the upcoming Citrix XenClient will hit the market, it may be that Dell,HP and Lenovo(and others) will have XenClient from Citrix OEM'd into their laptops, so that companies can give their employees the Buy-Your-Own-PC (BYOPC) alternative and still deliver corperate desktop to the user. This is a good thing for many many IT departments, because they have many IT admins working with just the laptops and workstations in their organization.
Here is my top 10 short list for 2010
- Citrix XenClient - will be a huge thing next year
- Virtualizing the network provides the similar benefits as server,application and desktop virtualization - LineSider Technologies should be a company to watch
- Virtual Desktops, VDI - more adoption and higher numbers of users working out of a virtual desktop than in 2009.
- More Cloud Computing vendors, today the only one that actually brings good stuff to the table is Amazon
- Private clouds - for corperate
- Citrix XenApp 6 codename Parra - Will bring HDX Technology which is greatly anticipated by many, Microsoft OCS 2007 will work both with video and audio(NOW IN TECH PREVIEW!)
- Security for Virtualization and Cloud Computing
- User Profile Virtualization - I've been dreaming of moving a user in real-time from one Citrix XenApp server to the other via console, if the user profile were to be completely virtualized we cloud make this happen or?!!
- Buy outs, somebody big is going to buy somebody small - hey, this needs to go in here! Potential companies to be bought by big names: RES, AppSense, RingCube, Veeam and probably some others... let's face it, big names now have a lot of cash because of low activity in this space in 2009.
- VMware CVP - VMwares alternative to Citrix XenClient, but they have yet to show us anything, so this goes down on my list
There you have my list, I may be totally wrong or I might be right, who knows... thanks for reading!
Please, feel free to comment below! |
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Why do we want to virtualize mobile phones |
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Written by Alexander Ervik Johnsen
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Tuesday, 08 December 2009 12:40 |
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There are some exciting news for fans of VMware’s products now, as the company has revealed that they are planning to launch phones with Dual OS Virtualization software built in by the time 2012 lands. That's where my thoughts start to play, why on earth do we want to have OS virtualization on a phone?
I can think of some reasons, if you have a phone(in the future) that can run both iphone OS and Android side by side, just as you soon can run Windows Xp and Windows 7 with Citrix XenClient.
But, I can think of probably 100 reasons why this is not a smart move, let me list some things up...
1. Phones are just not stable enough, yeah they are not, even after 20-30 years in the making... even the iPhone OS has problems, and so does all the rest... did anybody forget Windows Mobile and the stability problems?
2. Mobile Phone makers are interessted in the mass markets, like how do we make a new model that we know will sell in huge numbers, to a price tag that is affordable for most people? If we are to have a virtual OS on a phone, that would mean more expensive phones
3. Now why do I want to run 2 OS's on a mobile phone? Give me a mobile phone OS that is flexible, userfriendly and stable, now that's something I want... iPhone is close and so is Android, but c'mon I might be wrong, but I sure as hell don't want these 2 to run on the same mobile phone device...
The big thing here is that this will work simultaneously, meaning that you’ll be able to complete specific tasks using the OS of your choice - which can be very handy for some of us or not? Yes, I want to start a discussion here :)
VMware is working hard on the new technology and states that they want the software to be seamless and intuitive for the user, with mass production likely to begin sometime in 2012.
Anybody agree or disagree? C'mon VMware, give us a Type-1 hypervisor that will work, and show it to us like Citrix is doing with their Citrix XenClient, not just talk and slides... Yes, I'm talking about the VMware CVP...
So first Type-1 hypervisor that works... then mobile phones... I maybe laugh about my thoughts in a couple of years... but I'm willing to live with that... |
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