Leveraging Virtualization from an IT Project to a Business Strategy

Editor's Notes

• #4: Just about everyone in the industry is aware that IT Needs To Drive Revenue…but the reality is that business demand is outpacing IT budgets and resources – as well as traditional means of deliveryWith the recent recession and credit crisis many CIOs see flat budgets as the new normal. CLICK BUILD! But the demand for IT isn’t flat, it’s increasing. IT has always struggled to keep up with business demand, but for many CIOs the problem is getting significantly worse. A bad economy doesn’t stop the business from needing more from IT. In fact, in times like this, the business needs more from IT. Now more than ever, business is not just dependent on technology, it’s driven by it. Navigating the business through a turbulent economy requires fast adjustments in business technology, whether to adapt to changes in customer demand, drive costs out of processes to improve margins, react to competitive threats, comply with new regulatory requirements, or to integrate mergers and acquisitions.CLICK BUILD After years of trying different ways to align IT with the business, it’s become increasingly clear that IT’s biggest alignment challenge is keeping up with the business. There has always been a mismatch between the speed of innovation the business needs, and the time it takes for their IT organizations, or even an outsourcer, to deliver using traditional methods. IT has improved its efficiency in many ways, but the gap between IT supply and business demand is too big, and growing too fast, to rely on traditional approaches. What IT needs is a game changer. And that’s exactly what CA provides with its cloud computing solutions. Of course, with all the excitement comes a lot of hype and noise, so let’s step back for a minute to look at what cloud computing really is.
• #12: RIGHT: ORGANIZATIONS WITH MORE SIGNIFICANT ROLLOUTS VIEW VIRT MGT AS VERY!!! IMPORTANT, AND LESS THAN 8% SAY NOT IMPORTANTAnalysts describe a measurable lag between new technology adoption and management adoptionVirtualization management is still underinvested versus more mature areas (e.g. network, storage, systems, etc.)Configuration management. Start with improving configuration management, which is necessary to orchestrate the relationship among large numbers of dynamically changing VMs, physical servers, storage, and network resources. These tools are often referred to as “provisioning tools,” which refers to a higher state of configuration change management.2. Capacity planning and VM placement. As your virtualized pool grows in size, you will need tools that analyze capacity trends and optimize where your VMs run to minimize hardware footprint. These tools will be able to alert operations and engineering when resources are running low to guard against overprovisioning. You want to maximize capacity utilization to squeeze the most value from your server investments, but doing so without sufficient visibility is dangerous.3. Performance monitoring. Performance measurement will rise in importance as you increase the number of VMs per physical host and drive up overall utilization. We find this to be a particularly critical tool as you approach 20 or 30 VMs per physical server. To prevent problems from affecting user experience with multiple apps, your administrators need VM-aware performance monitoring tools that can help pinpoint issues.4. Real-time automation. As your virtual environment grows in size and complexity, you’ll need tools that can perform real-time automation by adjusting virtual or physical infrastructure to compensate for failures. Many IT services, like virtualization management, are reaching a level of complexity where sophisticated mathematical algorithms and object models of the services are more precise and efficient than even your most talented engineers.
• #13: ENTERPRISES ARE FINDING, AND INDUSTRY EXPERTS ARE STRONGLY ADVOCATING THAT…TAKING A LOOK AT JUST A FEW EXAMPLES, WE HAVE SEEN WHERE CUSTOMERS AND ANALYSTS ARE COMING FROM:END: Provisioning is a particularly powerful exampleOne customer who told us this was Cadence….
• #14: CUSTOMERS LIKE ELBIT – AVOID POINT PRODUCT – SEE TO MUCH RISK AND PREFER INTEGRATED SOLUTION
• #15: MENTION FUJISU AUSTRALIA – IF A TOOL TOUCHED A PHYSICAL SERVER – ITS GOING TO MANAGE THE VIRTUAL SERVERMENTION VIRTUAL ARCHITECT?MENTION HOW CISCO UCS IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF THISMulti-domain = server, storage, network, apps e.g. VMware virtual switch, Cisco UCSPlus physical and virtual, on-site and off-site
• #17: From http://www.ca.com/us/news/Press-Releases/na/2010/CA-Technologies-Support-for-VMware-vCloud-API.aspx
• #19: PLAN, BUILD and RUN
• #20: Accelerate application deployment - leverage automation to speed the progression of applications from development to production. Enable your existing infrastructure to deliver cloud services - combine self-service with automated provisioning to empower users to turn-up new services on-demand.Build elasticity so you can dynamically allocate resources - deploy application workload to optimally match server resources with policy-based provisioning.Automate the provisioning of physical, virtual and cloud resources - dynamically shift system resources to support variable, up-to-the-minute business requirements, help meet SLAs, improve utilization and data center initiative ROI.Orchestrate and automate routine processes that span different departments - increase the agility of IT operations by automating manual data center tasks and processes across technology silos and platforms. Embed rigor and process so that you can run an efficient IT organization that is built on repeatable workflows in accordance with defined policy - standardize data center management with policy-driven configuration tracking and template based change that help you to create, run and audit policies governing performance, security, regulatory and standards compliance. Standardize and automate configuration management to minimize business disruptions –deep configuration and dependency visibility helps manage operational complexity by simplifying configuration tasks and allowing safe change.
• #25: Going forward, they will automate dynamic provisioning resources.