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Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009, Virtualization and Cloud Computing Rule

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Gartner analysts today highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations. The analysts presented their findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held through October 16.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 include:
Virtualization
“Much of the current buzz is focused on server virtualization, but virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly. Virtualization to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication) can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information. Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.”
Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.”

SolarWinds Debuts Free VM Monitoring Tool

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SolarWinds, provider of downloadable network management software has released a new free tool, SolarWinds VM Monitor, and an update to its flagship Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) that will allow IT professionals to take advantage of the key characteristics of SolarWinds’ solutions — enterprise-class performance combined with affordability, quick deployment and ease of use — to manage and monitor their virtual deployments.

SolarWinds VM Monitor delivers an intuitive, desktop dashboard that continuously monitors a VMware ESX server and the associated virtual machines by providing real-time monitoring of ESX health indicators.

The SolarWinds VM Monitor is free and available for download on the SolarWinds site. Orion NPM is available now and pricing starts at $2,475 (USD) for 100 monitored elements including first year maintenance. Orion NPM customers, currently under maintenance, get the 9.1 updates for free.

Novell Buys BSM Tools Vendor Managed Objects

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Novell today announced a definitive agreement to acquire the business service management leader Managed Objects. The acquisition will extend Novell’s portfolio of data center solutions by adding tools to provide a unified view of all information and workloads.

“The acquisition of Managed Objects by Novell illustrates Novell’s commitment to an expanded management strategy and makes them a strong competitor in the service management market,” said Tim Grieser, program vice president, enterprise system management Software, IDC. “Managed Objects is a recognized player in BSM and has a proven track record with some of the largest companies in the world. With Managed Objects, Novell can more easily have business conversations in the data center with CIO’s, line of business managers, and key business stakeholders. This new service management focus represents a step in the right direction for Novell and adds significant credibility to Managed Objects customers that may have had concern about a smaller company.”

The Managed Objects products complement and extend Novell’s existing workload management and virtualization solutions by adding flexible service modeling, leading Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) technology, advanced analytics and unique Web 2.0-based visualization technology. Customers can extract IT configuration and workload information in near real-time into a robust CMDB, model how the IT configuration provides business services, and then generate visualizations and dashboards that dynamically show how IT aligns to business services. By providing a single view of data center workloads across any physical or virtual environment, system administrators can understand and respond to issues in a business context reactively, pro-actively, or automatically.

Novell will acquire Managed Objects for an undisclosed sum using current cash. The acquisition is expected to close during Novell’s first fiscal quarter 2009 subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions. Managed Objects will be fully integrated into Novell’s Systems and Resource Management business unit.

Managed Objects

3PAR and Symantec Announce Joint Development Project

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3PAR, global provider of utility storage, is readying an announcement about a development project with Symantec to integrate 3PAR thin provisioning technology with Veritas Storage Foundation to allow granular, automated, non- disruptive space reclamation within the 3PAR storage array. 3PAR and Symantec have teamed together to bring to market an industry first—the automated use of filesystem-level intelligence to continually optimize storage utilization and deliver infrastructure automation.

The joint project between 3PAR and Symantec fosters development aimed at giving Storage Foundation the ability to track the mapping of block-level capacity to thin provisioned volumes on 3PAR InServ Storage Servers. This capability is intended to allow the Veritas File System within Storage Foundation to periodically communicate the location of free blocks to the 3PAR array as file deletions and changes happen within the filesystem. This partnership will enable 3PAR arrays to use this granular filesystem-level information to autonomically reclaim unused space within thinly provisioned virtual volumes, thus maintaining high capacity utilization without impacting host applications.

With this joint effort, 3PAR and Symantec have become the first vendors to announce the development of a granular, intelligent, and automated mechanism for reclaiming unused storage capacity based on the sharing of intelligence gathered at the filesystem level.

3PAR

SteelEye Introduces Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster

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SteelEye Technology, provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for multi-vendor IT infrastructures, today announced SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster at Storage Expo 2008 in London. This solution extends SteelEye’s leading business continuity technology for Linux environments by enabling organizations with shared-storage Linux clusters within a data center to leverage another off-site replicated node for disaster recovery. The unique product offering is ideal for Linux users looking to cost-effectively extend existing high-availability capabilities as well as for those instituting first-time high-availability clustering and disaster recovery technologies.

As the burden of enterprise data grows, heightened emphasis is placed on how to manage, store and, most importantly, secure that data. By adding additional node for disaster recovery, SteelEye is providing data protection whether the server is local or on another continent. It provides additional protection for unforeseen events as well as planned downtime, such as data center moves.

IDC’s recently published Availability and Clustering Software (ACS) forecast shows that ACS products supporting Linux and open-source environments are carving out a significant presence in this worldwide market–with an expected doubling of revenue-based market share from 9.1% of all ACS revenue in 2007 to 18.1%, by 2012.

Specifically, SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster offers outstanding robustness and flexibility in its optimized host-based data replication technology. It allows for the inclusion of a remote system as part of a local shared storage cluster, extending disaster recovery protection to all file systems as if they are part of a classic shared storage cluster. Similarly, existing shared storage clusters can be enhanced with disaster recovery protection. Armed with SteelEye’s trademark flexibility, the product also integrates easily and automatically with heterogeneous hardware and software environments as well as existing SteelEye product offerings.

Isilon Systems’ Cluster Storage Systems Certified With VMware ESX 3.5

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Isilon Systems today announced that Isilon IQ X-Series clustered storage systems have been certified and integrated with VMware ESX 3.5. Isilon’s clustered storage systems create a high performance and highly scalable, single, shared pool of storage – delivering up to 20 Gigabytes per second of performance and 2.3 Petabytes of capacity in a single file system and single volume – to enable instant access to critical business information, while dramatically reducing the costs and complexity of managing storage growth. By combining Isilon clustered storage with VMware Infrastructure and VMware ESX 3.5, enterprises can eliminate traditional storage as a bottleneck and create a scale out, virtualized infrastructure – from servers to storage – which increases data center flexibility and utilization while reducing costs.

Using VMware ESX 3.5, enterprise businesses can streamline their IT infrastructure into single points of management for both server and storage, maximizing the utilization, flexibility and value of these resources. As a result of deploying these virtualized computing environments, the performance, ease of use and cost reduction requirements for enterprise storage increase and serve to considerably amplify the challenges of traditional SAN and NAS storage systems.

By combining VMware Infrastructure 3.5 with Isilon X-Series clustered storage systems, enterprise businesses can obtain the efficiency and high availability that VMware Infrastructure 3.5 offers in the storage environment and eliminate the barriers associated with traditional storage. This integration delivers a scale out, virtualized IT infrastructure with servers, network connections, and storage all consolidated into single points of management, significantly improving scalability, performance and ease of use across the entire data center, while dramatically reducing IT overhead.

Powered by OneFS, Isilon IQ X-Series delivers the industry’s first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of file-based data, setting the standard for scale out file storage. OneFS is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon’s award-winning IQ family of clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 1920, 3000, 6000, 9000, 12000, Accelerator-x, and EX 6000, 9000 and 12000. Isilon also provides a robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ, SmartConnect, SmartQuotas, and SyncIQ that leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of data protection and automated data management.