Shades of IT Management 2.0?
I’ve frequently railed against the outmoded view of IT management solutions, perpetuated by prevailing taxonomies and category definitions that are biased toward incumbent, legacy-focused vendors. Emerging vendors (like rPath and others), which are more in step with next-generation architectures and approaches, are all lumped into a nebulous bucket related to virtualization or cloud or some such thing.
So, it was with great satisfaction that I witnessed several events unfold this week.
It begins with a report published by JP Garbani and Thomas Mendel at Forrester Research which bids farewell to last-generation IT management definitions and promises a new taxonomy in better alignment with where architectures are headed (elastic, virtualized, application-centric) and business requirements are taking us (zero-latency, lean, massively leveraged human capital).
(The parenthetical notations are mine, not Forrester’s. Next week, I’ll share my specific views on the characteristics of IT Management 2.0–both commentary on Forrester’s emerging definitions and color on other points of view.)
This was followed by the announcement that CA will acquire 3Tera, an early innovator in elastic infrastructure (with a very slick user experience for visual server orchestration). And, finally, word that VMware will acquire EMC Ionix products including FastScale and ConfigureSoft to bolster its own efforts to dominate the IT management tool chain.
This is all good news for next-generation management vendors like rPath and others who will benefit from an increasingly clear market context.
It seems that shades of IT Management 2.0 are emerging.
DevOps: A Movement Emerges
Why do entrepreneurs do what they do?
Certainly many reasons, but I think one in particular stands apart: The belief that a problem is worth solving. In my experience, this is the essential motivation and the source of the passion, commitment and sacrifice that makes us half-crazed at times.
But how do you really know a problem is worth solving?
You know when the market begins telling your story—an unaided and authentic discovery of your problem space—and the pattern repeats until it’s a bona fide movement.
rPath has been the fortunate beneficiary of several movements: the rise of virtual appliances; the emergence of virtualization and cloud computing—and the attendant need for automation to deal with scale; and the changing nature of IT budgets and the need for automation in order to scale and “do more with less.”
Cap Ex Boon, Op Ex Bust? Virt and Cloud Drive Need for Automation
NetworkWorld’s Denise Dubie wrote an interesting article about this week’s IT management technology acquisitions by IBM and Dell. Dubie points out that IT management technologies offer intriguing capabilities to big tech vendors looking “to further expand their products into the management realm.” Dubie also notes that “the drive to acquire management capabilities is a byproduct of trends such as virtualization and cloud computing.”
It seems that virtualization and cloud may be a cap ex boon and an op ex bust.
As I said in my post yesterday, IT needs to get out of the infrastructure business. Today’s IT leaders are looking for ways to accelerate IT and deal with compounding system scale without adding cost or resources, and that’s where rPath comes in. rPath provides a next-generation system automation solution for provisioning and maintaining systems across physical, virtual or cloud environments. Massive scale at little or no marginal cost.
Toward an Application-Centric Data Center
Talk to any enterprise CIO today, and you’re likely to find an executive on a mission—a mission with a clear mandate to get IT out of the infrastructure business.
They’ll tell you that IT has been mucking around in the weeds for far too long.
They’ll tell you that time and budget are wasted managing software and physical infrastructure many layers beneath what business lines really care about.
They’ll tell you that infrastructure has no impact on business value—that it’s a costly distraction to what really matters: Applications and business services.
The Three Principles of Enterprise Appliances
What’s an appliance these days?
“Appliance” usually means “virtual appliance:” a dormant virtual machine that is pre-configured and ready to run an application. To add a new instance of the application, you simply copy the VM into your virtual infrastructure and start it. For manageability, a virtual appliance is typically a black box; it updates itself and keeps itself patched. Virtual appliances are a powerful way for ISVs to deliver complex applications (and rBuilder is a powerful tool for building them).
Knowledge Management Basics Inform System Release Lifecycle
I’ll make a confession: I’m not organizationally gifted.
This was painfully clear recently when I frittered away frustrating moments of a busy day searching for a document that I needed … now! It occurred to me that, had I organized and versioned the document more appropriately, I would surely have what I needed—without delay and without the heart palpitations.
(Incidentally, it also occurred to me that if a horse had a horn it would be a unicorn; some things just are as they are and so they’ll always be; alas, my organizational skills may remain as elusive as a mythical horned beast of childhood lore. In the meantime, I’ll argue that there is a method to my madness. Really.)
