Comments on: Safe bets for IT spending in '09

Even if the economy gets really ugly next year, there are tech areas that are close to being sure things for spending growth.

[jessiethe3rd]

One thing I believe you left out which will definitely be high spend is virtual communication strategies. One big expense for business now days is travel... whether that's in the sales arena or just partner to partner communications companies are looking for ways to cut down on the cost to do business. One strategy that seems to be catching more and more wind are technologies like WebEx, LiveMeeting, video conferencing, and VoIP technologies. Companies are budgeting big spends with Cisco, Microsoft, and a host of other players to cut down on the time and expense to communicate. I believe this initative will grow in 2009 due to the fact that companies and the government is serious about "green" style initatives that save time and money.

[Penguinisto]

Re: Virtualization... already way ahead of you there. We're buying Dell R900's with 64GB of RAM and 4xquad-core processors. 50 guest servers ran (until recently) across just two physical machines (at avg. usage), and only uses 35% of the pooled memory (plus only 15% of pooled CPU) . I say "ran because I recently added two more cluster members for some anticipated expansion. As it is, I have tons of room even if I still only used the two boxes.

I recently added the two physical boxes since an emergency + VMotion would leave half the previous cluster size running a bit heavy. You best bet is to insure that if your total cluster were suddenly cut in half, that the surviving members use no more than 60% of any one resource - be it RAM, CPU, bandwidth.

I'm still adding guest VMs as needed, but even with four machines + VI3 and a decent SAN, vs. the price of, well, 50 new physical servers? No-brainer, folks.

Cisco is already pimping their new 7000-series core switches... that said, a dual 6509 rig in VSS formation should be more than plenty for most mid-sized applications... no need to blow off a quarter-million bucks (or so?) on a setup now; you can do that later when you have better justification and a bigger budget to buy the goods with.

The rest I can agree with to an extent, though YMMV...

[Penguinisto]

oops - typo; should've said "35% of each server's pooled memory", which means that if all of the vm's were piled onto one box, it would eat 70% of that box' available RAM.

Same figures w/ the CPU.

[Stephano21]

Excellent post, although I find your combination of virtualization as a winner along in combination with Loglogic , Logrhythm and Arcsight (with Logger) as beneficiaries in the security space odd as those 3 vendors all depend on appliances for their solutions. IMO Hardware appliances that are really application servers in disguise will be the big losers when virtualization really takes off. If you are unwilling to buy into server sprawl why would an appliance still be be attractive? Appliance sprawl is just as problematic as server sprawl. Pure software solutions that can be deployed on virtualized environments are going to rule the day.