Yes the markets a mess and we seem to be going down a giant rabbit hole of indeterminate proportions. The cascading volatility of global economic markets aided and abetted by real-time communications has been a speculative issue explored by economists for years along with the productivity puzzle that Alan Greenspan used to be preoccupied with from time to time.
I would suggest however that the issue is no longer speculative: it seems clear that the global financial underpinnings that were hammered out in Bretton Woods in 1945 to create the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund can’t keep up with the runaway freight train that is IT-fostered globalization. Somehow a new structure will have to be put in place so the next few months are going to be fascinating to watch.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/19/20080 comments
A recent report in Computerworld says that “Gartner Inc. has ranked virtualization as the No. 1 strategic technology for next year, not for its ‘tremendously obvious’ ability to virtualize servers, but for its increasing capability to virtualize just about everything else in a data center.” (In last year's report, virtualization was ranked No. 5.) Gartner says the disruptive potential of the technologies considered was a major factor in the selection criteria used.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/15/20080 comments
Don't look now but two of the most powerful trends in IT might be on a collision course: hosted desktop virtualization (a.k.a. VDI) and Web 2.0, both of which have growing importance for enterprise desktops. But let's backtrack a bit. I've been noodling about these issues for some time now, but they sort of crystallized in my mind after a discussion with David Lavenda, VP of marketing with a New York-based company that specializes in enterprise Web 2.0 called WorkLight.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/14/20080 comments
Whatever else happens next year, it's going to be interesting to see what the other large IT suppliers besides Microsoft do in virtualization. Oracle is a case in point. The company got into the market last November with
Xen-based Oracle VM,
a product targeting the company's enterprise Linux base (not the broader market, it's worth noting). It has no licensing cost and some nifty features including free live migration. (The primary cost is for support.) In terms of management, the company offers Enterprise Manager, which, like Microsoft's VMM 2008, can manage both virtual and physical machines.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/13/20080 comments
I’m still sifting through all of the announcements from VMworld, like a medieval scholar poring over manuscripts back in the day (less dust though…not good for the laptop). And, of course, I keep coming back to the complexities of VDC-OS. If you have a mind given to the nuances of complexity (and my wife assures me, for better or worse, that this is indeed the case) then there’s plenty there to keep you occupied. Like vStorage, for example.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/08/20080 comments
Cloud computing didn't come up in the vice presidential debate recently but if it did I guarantee you it would have been every bit as vaguely referred to as some of the other items that that were addressed. But while we expect vagueness from candidates (sad to say), technology markets need a little more precision to function optimally.
Cloud computing is so hot right now that even VMware had to jump on the bandwagon. But its not so much the hype that’s the problem as the fact that vendors are pushing the definitional envelope and now the term itself has become almost absurdly elastic. As Herb Torrens writes in a news story on our site and Doug Barney blogged about, Larry Ellison and has been quoted as saying "I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing…it's complete gibberish.…When is the idiocy going to stop?" Three words: thank you Larry.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/05/20081 comments
One of the goal’s of VMware’s VDC-OS is over time to move the data center towards a new level of flexibility and scalability. According to Bogomil Balkansky, Senior Director of Marketing, the notion is akin to “building a giant computer from piece parts.”
Balkansky says that the goal is eventually to emulate Google, which is of course is well known for building its data center out of industry standard x86 “building blocks.” This “lego-set” approach has its advantages but it’s worth pointing out that it stands in sharp contrast to the notion of a ”data center in a box” associated with efforts like Sun’s Project Black Box, a prototype, according to Sun, of the world's first virtualized datacenter.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 10/02/20080 comments
As a student of Tai Chi and the martial arts, I’ve noted that while some battles are worth fighting and others are not, others are just confusing. There’s been a battle going on for many years between IT and telecom vendors and suppliers over something called convergence. There have been many concrete examples of IT suppliers stealing thunder from the telecom guys and some of the other way around. For the latter, take a look at AT&T’s recent announcement about cloud computing.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 09/30/20083 comments
You may have noticed I’ve been talking a lot about Cisco lately. A recent article in PC World talks about “Cisco fatigue”. I’m not sure what that is exactly but whatever it is, VMware doesn’t have it. The collaboration between Cisco and VMware is an especially interesting one because the two companies have a lot in common. The intellectual roots of both trace back to Stanford University and both are neighbors (Cisco in San Jose, VMware in Palo Alto).
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 09/28/20080 comments
I have a keen interest in what’s happening with desktop virtualization and mobile clients. In this context, I recently talked with Citrix product manager Al Grandville. Turns out Citrix is working with Apple on using iPhone for both XenDesktop and XenApp applications as he discusses in a blog post.
Like VMware’s vClient initiative and its universal client concept, Citrix wants to bring its core hosted product offerings to as many different types of devices as possible. Grandville says the company has mobile clients available today for both Windows Mobile and Symbian devices but the performance is not where they’d like it to be. But he points out that both iPhones and the increasing availability of 3G are game changers. The difference is in the all–important aspects of both screen size and user interface (which of course Apple has excelled at) as well as the improved response time and bandwidth capacity of 3G wireless coverage, now accessible with the latest version of iPhone.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 09/25/20080 comments
Now that the dust has settled, I've had a chance to think a bit more about the show and VMware's new strategy initiatives. Overall, I think the company did something it had to do especially with the industry waiting to get "the word" from newly installed CEO Paul Maritz. Although Maritz, like Greene, has a somewhat laid back style, he did come out swinging in putting forth a few interesting new directions with the tripartite VDC-OS initiatives.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 09/23/20080 comments
VMware cloud computing rumors have been in play for a while now given the company's
major data center construction efforts in Washington State. (In a few years,
will license plates there have a tagline that reads "The Data Center State"?)
At VMworld I had a chance to speak with Wendy Perilli, Director of Product Management
for Emerging Business, about this. I asked her outright if the company had any
plans to go down the path of providing services out of that facility. The outright
answer was no. Fair enough, I would have been surprised to hear otherwise since
doing so would be a radical change in business model best left for another time
in the company's development.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 09/22/20080 comments