Category: Cloud

The ability to easily generate virtual machines tends to lead to a willingness to do more, and soon the IT manager finds virtual machine sprawl on his hands. In some cases, overallocation shortchanges operations elsewhere. Then as the number of virtual machines per host server increases, I/O problems start to develop.

Meantime, third parties had already spotted the issue. Xsigo, with its I/O Director, and others seek to virtualize the I/O and move it out of the hypervisor’s virtual switch onto a hardware device, where packets are separated into their respective storage and network destinations, relieving the host server of work.

As we shall see, management tools are paramount once the virtual environment is generated.

When Moon Son, director of IT infrastructure at Orchard Supply Hardware, a California chain of 91 stores, became head of the company’s data center in 2006, he realized immediately he would have to rebuild from the ground up around virtualization. He virtualized 13 host servers, and in the end, tripled the number of production systems to meet expanded company goals.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226800073

“Public cloud providers claim superiority over on-premise IT infrastructures on two fronts: cost and QoS,” noted the firm.

Right now the public cloud lacks any standard SLAs, so most companies using cloud services are opting for a private-cloud setup and even as SLAs improve in the public setting, “those with QoS requirement levels for which public clouds cannot cater will keep to private clouds (including shared or virtual private clouds, or both),” according to the report.

Public-cloud providers also are grappling with issues of security — or, at least, customer perceptions of security.

http://www.phoneplusmag.com/news/2010/08/report-cloud-offerings-grappling-with-qos.aspx

“This new tool shows how much money I.T. departments could be leaving on the table,” says Cory Vander Jagt, VP, Astadia ITX.

Astadia’s 4 step ITX process for doing this is described in more detail at www.astadia.com/itx.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/astadia-launches-roi-calculator-for-cloud-computing-100971789.html

The area of digital forensics concerns any digitally-stored evidence. There is some risk in digital forensics — legal, professional, ethical and IT technical risk.

However, many organisations have not put in the necessary preparation to handle these risks.

At the workshop Dr Brian Cusack, leader of the AUT University Digital Forensic Research Laboratories, discussed a draft working document to provide guidelines to identify, collect and/or acquire and preserve digital evidence.

The standard for corporate governance of IT (AS/NZS ISO/IEC 38500:2010) includes principles that provide a checklist for IT investment decisions and a framework to evaluate, direct and monitor the use of IT in organisations.

While he used Australian case studies, these issues are relevant to organisations here. He also discussed common problems in IT projects — often it is not the technology itself he says, but the way organisations use it.

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/special/cloud-computing-iso-standards-in-the-pipeline

Microsoft began charging Windows Azure customers in early February, and by early June claimed to have garnered some 10,000 paying customers. However, so far use of ACS continues to be free because it’s available via Microsoft’s AppFabric Labs environment in a manner similar to a community technology preview or CTP.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3897451/Windows-Azure-Gains-Single-Sign-On-Support.htm

The generic name for what the IT department will need to be really good at is “IT service management.” Though this philosophy has been around for decades, even when IT designed, built and ran virtually all the systems its end users needed, it’s going to take on far more importance in the age of cloud-style outsourcing.

Randy Steinberg, a national specialist leader at Deloitte Consulting and expert in IT service management, observes that many organizations are starting to realize that cloud computing will change the skills they need in their internal IT department. “You can see evidence of this in the industry already — some of the fastest growing jobs are in IT Service Management, sourcing experts, service definition skills and procurement.

Another source for my story, Rob England, a consultant who writes a blog about IT service management called the IT Skeptic, also noted how the interface between an internal IT department and the rest of the organization will change as cloud takes off. “One aspect that doesn’t get enough attention is that service desk becomes more important not less,” England said.

“Carr’s “IT Doesn’t Matter” is coming true – the cloud will help break down the isolation of IT as a cultish specialty and place Information as just another department.”

We know from our reporting at FCW and Government Computer News that ITIL is quite popular around government. Even though one can see plenty of anecdotal evidence of ITIL uptake, it turns out that good research about ITIL adoption rates and return on investment are hard to come by. The IT service management vendor Hornbill has a recent user survey about ITIL use that has some interesting data about the areas of ITIL that current adopters are most interested in.

http://fcw.com/blogs/tech-briefing/2010/08/itil-and-cloud.aspx