Reshaping Cisco: The world according to Chambers | The Economist 09/08/2009
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In case you missed this article on Cisco before you headed out for your Labor Day weekend, There’s a wealth of information on where Cisco’s been and where John Chambers intends to take them. Of particular interest is their foucs on virtualization:
“In the case of servers, souped-up computers that dish up data, the market shift Cisco intends to ride is virtualisation. In essence this means that the servers in a data centre are turned into a pool of computing power to be tapped into as needed rather than being used individually. Virtualisation creates a lot of complexity, to which Cisco has found an answer, says Robert Lloyd, who heads the group that has developed what Cisco calls the “unified computing system”. Its parts—servers, storage disks, memory—are held together and managed by a powerful switch running Nx-OS, one of Cisco’s operating systems.”
As a Cisco Select Partner here at i3 Business Solutions, we see their products as essential to “making things really work.” As more and more of our business systems– and personal networks of devices– get interwoven and integrated, I can only think that Cisco ultimately will be in the middle of it, making them all work together.
via Reshaping Cisco: The world according to Chambers | The Economist.
Master Virtualization And You Master The Cloud | Plug Into The Cloud | InformationWeek 12/10/2008
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“Smith and Pieravi’s presentation cites three stages of virtualization, with it implicit that getting through stages one and two is a prerequisite to cloud computing. Stage one is server consolidation through virtualization in the data center, along with virtualization of software development and testing. This stage already has taken place at many enterprises, and Smith and Pieravi say in 2008 we entered stage two, where implementation of virtualization leads to flexible resource management, juggling virtual machine operation through the day for dynamic load balancing, high availability, and disaster recovery.
“Stage three will begin in 2012, and according to slide nine, will take advantage of the virtualization skills gained in stages one and two. By knowing how to build and store virtual machines or design them from templates, IT managers will build virtual machines and send them over the wire to run in the cloud.
via Master Virtualization And You Master The Cloud – Plug Into The Cloud – InformationWeek.
IBM to Consolidate 3,900 Servers onto 33 Mainframes 08/01/2007
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Centralization vs. decentralization, aka the glass room vs. distributed computing using servers and workstations, is a long-running argument in the IT world.
Well, the pendulum is taking a full swing again in 2007, this time to “lean and green” virtualization of servers — onto IBM System z mainframes! Click here for the full story:
IBM to Consolidate 3,900 Servers onto 33 Mainframes
“In what it touts as “the most significant transformation” of its worldwide data centers in a generation, IBM announced Aug. 1 that it will consolidate about 3,900 of its own servers onto 33 virtualized System z mainframes running Linux to save electrical energy and cut back on its carbon footprint. “
Economist.com | IT complexity 11/27/2004
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Economist.com | IT complexity: “Tony Picardi, a boffin at IDC, yet another big research firm, comes up with perhaps the most frightening number. When he polled a sample of firms 15 years ago, they were spending 75% of their IT budget on new hardware and software and 25% on fixing the systems that they already had; now that ratio has been reversed�70-80% of IT spending goes on fixing things rather than buying new systems. According to Mr Picardi, this suggests that this year alone IT complexity will cost firms worldwide some $750 billion. Even this, however, does not account for the burden on consumers, whether measured in the cost of call-centres and help desks, in the amount of gadgets and features never used because they are so byzantine, or in sheer frustration.”
Gates: ‘Free hardware all round’ | silicon.com: "’… 06/01/2004
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Gates: ‘Free hardware all round’ | silicon.com: “‘Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs, you can almost think of hardware as being free,’ he said, speaking at the Gartner Symposium in San Diego. ‘I’m not saying it will be absolutely free – but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor,” he added, referring to networked computers and advances in the internet’s speed.
Microsoft has often been at odds with the computer hardware industry during the past 20 years, given its dominant position in software through its Windows operating system. “
