We talk a lot about cloud computing these days, but whatever happened to virtualization? The up-and-coming technology of yesteryear is making headlines again this week in a variety of ways. ReadWriteWeb re-posted a virtualization shoot-out, highlighting different features of various vendors. While VMware leads the market, the gap is closing fast, according to PCWorld. Now is the time to virtualize, but, how will you manage your virtualized data centers? Virtualization management is critical, and there are a number of point solutions out there to help you manage your performance, capacity and configuration of virtualized environments. (We would like to point out, why manage just one aspect, when you can manage it all-in-one?)
According to some experts, the “"management of virtualized server environments has traditionally been about provisioning resources with a particular focus on increasing utilization of hardware and enabling companies to wring maximum return from their virtualization investments. This trend is shifting, though, and organizations are now looking for ways to improve the performance of applications running in these virtual environments.” (Sounds like a job for ScienceLogic!) IT operations management meets mission critical when you consider the consolidation of the entire fabric of the data center into resource pools for server, networking, storage and compute resources. As we’ve said before, traditional ITOM is now acting more and more like a service provider – and didn’t we say service providers were paving the way for the rest of us?
Not to be outdone, the network guys are pointing to problems between server virtualization and network management, citing a poll asking what the biggest technical challenges facing organizations today included. Jon Oltsik found that network adds, moves, and changes were the most challenging.
You’ve thought about private cloud, but have you thought about clustering? Mike Vizard wants to make sure you know that “clusters are probably the most advanced form of shared infrastructure we have in the enterprise today.” He states that “as the march towards private cloud computing continues, it seems that a convergence between clustering technologies and cloud computing is almost inevitable.”
Everyone knows that cloud computing is the wave of the future, even despite some setbacks to the industry thanks to Amazon this week. But what’s it worth to you? Try $240 billion. The latest estimate from Forrester predicts that the global cloud computing market will grow from a $40.7 billion in 2011 to $241 billion in 2020. And, it all comes full circle with this final note: Virtualization will recede to the background as new technologies take over.
