Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect

The trap of unchecked virtualization complexity can have a stifling effect on the advantageous spread of virtualization in data centers. Indeed, many enterprises may think they have already exhausted their virtualization paybacks, when in fact, they have only scratched the surface of the potential long-term benefits. Automation, policy-driven processes and best practices are offering more opportunities for optimizing virtualization so that server, storage, and network virtualization can move from points of progress into more holistic levels of adoption. The goals then are data center transformation, performance and workload agility, and cost and energy efficiency. Many data centers are leveraging automation and best practices to attain 70 percent and even 80 percent adoption rates. By taking such a strategic outlook on virtualization, process automation sets up compan... (more)

A Peaceful Leap to Cloud Computing

This guest blog comes courtesy of Dr. Chris Harding, who leads the Cloud Computing Working Group at The Open Group. He can be reached at c.harding@opengroup.org. By Chris Harding History has many examples of invaders wielding steel swords, repeating rifles, or whatever the latest weapon may be, driving out people who are less well-equipped. Corporate IT departments are starting to go the same way, at the hands of people equipped with cloud computing. Last week I was at The Open Group conference in Boston. The Open Group is neutral territory with a good view of the IT landscape: An ... (more)

The World Needs to Know: What Does Oracle Really Want with Android?

The bombshell that Oracle is suing Google over Java intellectual property in mobile platform powerhouse Android came as a surprise, but in hindsight it shouldn't have. We must look at the world through the lens that all guns are pointed at Google, and that means that any means to temper its interests and blunt it's potential influence are in play and will be used. By going for Google's second of only two fiscal jugular veins in Android (the other being paid search ads), Oracle has mightily disrupted the entire mobile world -- and potentially the full computing client market. By ask... (more)

Proper Planning & Execution for Massive Application-Consolidation Projects

Our latest BriefingsDirect interview is with an executive from HP to look at proper planning and execution for massive application-consolidation projects, specifically by examining an HP project itself. By unpacking this multi-year application consolidation project across global supply chains, we learn about best practices and execution accelerators for such projects, which often involve hundreds of applications and impact thousands of people. These are by no means trivial projects, and often involve every aspect of IT, as well as require a backing of the business leadership and th... (more)

How Networking Is Changing

As data center planners seek to improve performance and future-proof their investments, the networking leg on the infrastructure stool can no longer stand apart. Advances such as widespread virtualization, increased modularity, converged infrastructure, and cloud computing are all forcing a rethinking of data center design. And so the old rules of networking need to change because specialized, labor-intensive and homogeneous networking systems need to be be brought into the total modern data center architecture. The increasingly essential role of networking in data center transfo... (more)