Going Green: It’s about Strategy and Planning

I thought I’d kick-off the post-Thanksgiving, Black Friday, pre-Christmas rush with some interesting news and analysis in the area of Green Computing. I mean this time of year—especially in these trying economic times—is all about getting the best deal for your dollar. And, when it comes to IT that should mean looking at your energy efficiency plans and systems effectiveness. These are two hallmarks of going “green”.

In a recent eWeek blog, Michael Vizard comments, “Green Computing is about 80% process, followed by another 20% of random product upgrades related to eliminating obsolete equipment that already costs more than it’s worth.” He goes on to refer to a Forrester Research report that shows only 35% of those companies surveyed had any real type of green computing strategy and that 20% had no plans. Yikes. That leaves a whole lot of people in the twilight zone.

Obviously, the benefits are clear, especially in these difficult economic times. But, it also requires “the need to spend money to save money.” So, the bottom line is that green computing requires strategy, planning, and tactics just like any other key initiative. Luckily there are a lot of resources available to make your green computing initiative a likely success. Again, Michael Vizard gives some advice by pointing to new ideas from Sun and HP. There are interesting server concepts from Sun that go beyond the usual consolidation tactics to include:

•    Examining application processing power requirements, with an eye toward how developers will create more event-driven applications
•    Pushing more application load to the server and installing more thin client systems that need less energy and power than PCs
•    Sun’s new generation of Flash Memory products that are inherently more energy efficient like their new Amber Road storage products (Sun Storage 7000 product line)
•    Move to more energy efficient Ethernet networks that will come with the transition to 10GB Ethernet

Meanwhile, HP is attacking energy efficiency in a place that is probably often overlooked: all those printer assets scattered across your enterprise. HP has created a Green IT Action Plan, that includes simple things like printing on both sides of the paper, to creating scripts that can automatically turn off printers at night, recycling cartridges, and replacing old printers with multi-function devices.

In short, the concept of Green Computing provides tangible bottom-line results in terms of efficiency and cost. As such, it deserves the proper strategic assessment and planning that you’d bring to any key initiative. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to implement it from both a process and product standpoint. Once again, it’s a situation where trying times can provide an opportunity to improve Enterprise IT. Go for it.

The Latest News from Amazon, Sun, HP, and IBM

I thought I’d highlight some of the more interesting news items from the last week and then give a short summary about what these announcements portend for the year ahead.

Amazon announced the public beta of Amazon CloudFront, a new web service for content delivery. With it you can distribute content using a worldwide network of edge locations that provide low latency and high data transfer speeds. Just like other Amazon Web Service (AWS) offerings, CloudFront is self-service with no up-front commitments, no long-term contracts, and works on a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme. Pretty cool.

I also thought it was pretty cool and just in the nick of time that Sun Microsystems announced a major coup with the Wikimedia Foundation. The announcement describes how Sun will help Wikimedia build a secure and scalable open source web infrastructure using Sun Fire x4500 and x4150 servers and Sun StorageTek storage arrays. The collaboration will enable Wikimedia to host ever-increasing volumes of rich media and video content and also support the collaborative development and testing of new Wikipedia content and applications by its global network of users. Good news and good timing indeed.

HP’s Critical Facilities Services division is focused on building energy-efficient datacenters or retrofitting existing ones. HP bought EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a consulting firm, last year after they jointly worked on a project to consolidate 85 datacenters around the globe into just six. In a new InfoWorld article, Bill Kosik, managing principal of the new HP division, talks about the nuts and bolts of datacenter efficiency and the impact of targeting power distribution systems. As he says, “It’s not sexy stuff, but it makes a big difference.” Also, HP announced their Green Business Technology initiative, which aims to help businesses cut costs and triple datacenter capacity with new energy-efficient technologies and services. It may not be sexy, but judging from HP’s most recent financial results, it sure helps the bottom line.

Finally, IBM launched a new services offering in the cloud computing arena. Combining consulting and implementation services, IBM hopes to dispel concerns over security and reliability with services that help businesses assess the total cost of ownership, as well as, design and implement cloud computing operations. IBM also announced a new program called “Resilient Cloud Validation,” which will enable vendors of cloud computing solutions to undergo a certification process to gain an IBM stamp of approval and a logo mark to prove it. I know what you’re thinking. But, it’s a step in the right direction and as IBM invests more in the cloud, as the saying goes, all boats will rise.

So, add it all up and what do you get? Well, I think despite all the doom and gloom, what we’re seeing is the responsiveness of the technology industry. It’s the constant push forward despite the difficult odds and a tired constituency. There’s good news in here for everyone. Cloud computing is getting more viable every day. Better systems are rolled out and implemented in web-based infrastructures that drive efficiency in cost and flexibility. It seems the more challenges we face, the more dynamic the computing world gets. These four announcements bode well for what’s ahead in the new year. Get ready.

The Perfect Storm Will Fundamentally Change Enterprise IT

If desperation is the mother of invention and experimentation, then get ready for a fundamental shift in the way businesses look at enterprise applications and IT. As we head into 2009 with global economy grinding slowly down, and the world’s largest economy poised for a deep recession, the only questions left are how painful will it be, how long will it last, and how different will the IT landscape look?

The perfect storm will result in a dramatic change in the way businesses consume and implement technology. Open source software (OSS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will break-through in a big way, as the vendors of these offerings better match the economic value proposition with the long-term viability of their solutions. As “movements” both OSS and SaaS have come a long way towards establishing strong positions in the areas of flexibility, speed, and customization, while underlining the value of community support. These are major coups. But they’re made all the more valuable by the economic crisis.

Here’s a summary of the most interesting stories on this front:

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says technologies such as Linux and open-source software can help enterprises cut costs during tough economic times. Zemlin says users should look to open source and Linux, systems management tools, and virtualization technology to keep budgets in line. Read more here.

Another eWeek blogger notes, “the end result of all this freezing of capital expense spending has been an increase in interest in software-as-a-service applications that can be paid for as an operating expense and open source software that is mostly free.” Alfresco Software says they’ve seen quarter-over-quarter revenue growth between 50-100%. xTuple executives, meanwhile, say the number of downloads they’ve seen for there ERP software that runs on top of the PostgreSQL database has moved past 170,000.

I found this article regarding Leo Apotheker’s recent admission that SAP would slow down the roll out of it’s SaaS offering called SAP Business ByDesign “because of fears over what the impact this product would have on the company’s profit margins” testament to my call that 2009 will indeed by transformational. And I use that term quite broadly.

Finally, a note of caution is sounded in this article for open source vendors that they shouldn’t get ahead of themselves. It’s still about end user customers. Open source vendors have to be vigilant and proactive: “don’t pretend that just because no one asks for something it’s not something they want. Sometimes the greatest and most pressing needs go unarticulated precisely because they’re so huge.”

More Bang for Your Buck: Vendors Strike Back

Sun unveiled new systems and storage solutions for MySQL claiming these will allow customers to scale for growth with up to 3X better performance and up to 83 percent lower costs. Read more here.

Sun also announced what they touted as “the world’s first unified storage appliances” that greatly simplify storage management and problem solving at not-seen-before speed and scale. The storage systems, code named “Amber Road”, and now known officially as the Sun Storage 7000 family, included customer validation with reports of increased performance and cost savings up to 75%. Read more here.

Oracle was in the news announcing the latest version of Siebel CRM 8.1.1, which includes industry-tailored customer self-service, customer loyalty, and support for open standards. Read more here.

Oracle also announced continued momentum with Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales. It provides secure access to enterprise application data and services and delivers a productive user experience through a combination of personal information, Internet content, phone conversations and enterprise data. Read more here.

HP said that it has teamed up with NetSuite to deliver NetSuite’s software-as-a-service business management applications to small and midsized businesses through the HP channel of 15,000 value-added-resellers (VARs). Read more here.

HP also took aim at the mainframe market stating that more than 250 customers worldwide have switched from mainframes to HP Integrity systems and that customers have seen cost saving up to 70%. Read more here.

Microsoft made news in the small and midsized business arena by launching Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008. Read more here.

New Server Solutions from HP, Sun, and Microsoft

HP recently unveiled two new products: the HP g7725 thin client and the HP ProLiant xw2×220c blade workstation. These systems are geared towards those in the high performance computing (HPC) market where companies are running compute and graphics-intensive software. This market is getting a lot attention these days and with good reason – it crosses over many industries from engineering, oil and gas, to financial services. The thin client is based on an AMD dual-core processor and an ATI Radeon integrated graphics card, while the workstation can be configured with one or two Intel Xeon processors and Nvidia graphics. These products join the HP portfolio of thin client and blade servers with the goal of making the management of “your IT environment easier while securing your data, reducing energy costs and improving uptime.”

Sun debuted a new midrange server, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440. This new system is best utilized in those situations where throughput is more important than CPU speed, such as database workloads and virtualization. Priced at $132,995 it’s aimed squarely at an area that’s been getting a lot of attention from hardware vendors – high performance, low cost, and massive scalability all in one box. The T5440 appears to have it all and has the benchmarks to prove it.

And, last but not least, Microsoft announced Windows Server 2008 R2, which is an evolutionary update to Hyper-V. Microsoft has added live virtual machine migration, which is critical in an automated data center, allowing companies to move virtual images between host machines in less than two seconds. They also claim it will be more reliable, faster, and able to run in more configurations. At the same time, Terminal Services was renamed Remote Desktop Services, providing full-on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and gets enhanced remote management capabilities and Web-based access to a remote desktop instance. Windows Server 2008 R2 will support more than 64 processing cores.

Making a Strong Case for SaaS in the Enterprise

I thought I’d continue on the subject of Software as a Service (SaaS) and it’s viability within the enterprise because it’s an especially timely subject given that Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce User and Developer Conference is taking place this week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Look for a future post that will summarize the highlights from this event.

But, what I wanted to do in today’s post is come back to a recent video and white paper that Peter Coffee, the director of platform research for salesforce.com, recently made. You can find both by going to his blog posting What the Cloud can Carry. He makes a strong case that SaaS is not only viable within the enterprise, but that, indeed, the future of application delivery, development, and deployment is here with the rise of Platform as a Service (PaaS). (Force.com is salesforce.com’s platform for building and deploying enterprise applications.)

First, Coffee debunks the myth that SaaS solutions are “applications lite” because they arose out of a decision based on a business model: optimized for simplicity and targeted at small and medium sized businesses. He’s quick to point out that moderate extensibility, however, is not enough to propel SaaS into the enterprise. But, he says, “No one should fall into the trap, though, of thinking these simplest SaaS applications represent the limits of what SaaS can do – or what Platform as a Service (PaaS) can enable.”

He then goes on to describe – with real-world examples from Starbucks, Dell, and Dobly Labs – that both internal and external applications are better built on PaaS. To make his case he explains that the evolution of metadata-based customization and multi-tenant architecture can demonstrably handle the workloads of many of the world’s largest companies. At the same time, enterprise information handling requirements and operating environments have evolved to make the strengths of the service model increasingly relevant to companies both large and small.

Finally, he concludes with by something we should all reflect on by stating:

“Enterprises are thus facing challenges on many fronts for innovation in processes and partnerships, growth in data volume and variety, and improvement in data handling and protection. Corresponding strengths of capacity and reliability are enhanced by superior governability and standards-based interoperability in the cloud computing model (and the Force.com platform in particular): these alone are enough to make the Platform as a Service a credible option. More than that, however, the economics of lower initial investment, more rapid time to value, and dramatically greater freedom to experiment and innovate are benefits that make the cloud compelling.”

Let’s watch this in general, and where salesforce.com’s going in particular. They are clearly the leaders and everyone needs to take notice.

SaaS in the Enterprise: A Step at a Time

Recently InfoWorld published a story that summarized twenty mistakes that IT needs to avoid. They were all, generally, interesting and valid. But the one I thought most relevant to our audience was one that cautioned companies on mismanaging their software-as-a-service (SaaS) strategy, by not thinking about the right balance between traditional enterprise software deployments and SaaS.

Of course, the SaaS business model is here to stay and will evolve even further, reaching deeply into the organization. All you have to do is look at the success of Salesforce.com to see that. But, in order to achieve success and scale SaaS vendors have had to ensure the viability of their business model by limiting what it can do and that’s why, for example, most customization is kept to a minimum. Of course, that last part is also a strength, especially if  you’ve ever had to live through an implementation of traditional commercial enterprise software.

Again, a key decision factor on whether or not to pursue a SaaS alternative has to be whether there is a viable business reason to do so. Once the course has been set then you need to think about how it will affect IT. In an article published by Microsoft giving an enterprise perspective on things, the following areas were deemed critical for consideration:

•    Data security standards
•    SLA guarantees
•    Migration strategies
•    In-house integration requirements
•    Reporting services

This has been a high-level view of the benefits and considerations an enterprise needs to understand before undertaking a SaaS project. Speed, flexibility, and low cost are exceedingly tempting and valuable, but they’re not the only things to consider. Integration and composition are critical components in the architecture strategy to incorporate SaaS successfully as a fully participating member within a service-centric IT infrastructure.

Of course, we can expect a great amount of evolution as enterprise computing meets SaaS. It will be exciting to be a part of and, once again, the customer wins.