What with all the virtualization hype, one would think that virtual servers had the option of parting the Red Sea or walking on it.
While there's a great deal of promise in virtualization, there's also the peril of managing virtual servers, as Luke Kanies, founder of the Puppet project, points out in a blog post.
You have significant problems when you rely on golden images (i.e., virtual images complete with all necessary services): image sprawl, updating your images, and image state vs. running state...Maintaining these (virtual) images is more like managing a foil ball: it's difficult to pull apart, difficult to press back together, and if you get too many of them, they just get into the way.
It's perhaps not surprising that Kanies sees Puppet as the answer to this image sprawl and confusion:
If, instead, you use a single, base image for all of your work--I call these images stem cell images for what are hopefully obvious reasons--and then use a tool like Puppet to configure them, once they're running, you avoid all of the above problems: you have one image to maintain, and it's necessarily simplistic, you use the same tool and the same configuration base across all images, and Puppet keeps your machines updated within 30 minutes of any central change.
His point is good. In moving from physical machines to virtual machines, we've tended to gloss over the complexity that this introduces, preferring to focus on all the efficiency gains virtualization promises.
In other words, the sexier that virtualization becomes, the more important (and, dare I say sexy?) systems management becomes. Suddenly, Hyperic, Reductive Labs (the company behind Puppet), RiverMuse, Zenoss, GroundWork, and other IT management companies take center stage as virtualization, and the cloud-based computing trend it enables, become de facto IT strategies.
As this new competition emerges, however, the IT management companies that know the cloud best will do best. So far, crowns probably go to Reductive Labs and Hyperic, as both have aggressively targeted cloud-based computing. Over time, however, this may change.
Regardless of the eventual winner, it's good to see IT management gaining some sex appeal.
As we navigate the second year of a global recession, enterprises need to be looking for ways to optimize existing infrastructure. Sure, new IT projects will bring in additional technologies, an increasing percentage of which will be open source and software as a service, but the pressure is on to do more with less.
Hyperic, an open-source systems management company, just released a new service--Hyperic Operations IQ--in partnership with open-source Business Intelligence vendor JasperSoft, which promises to do just that.
Hyperic isn't taking any chances on the integration with Jasper server, either: the company hired JasperSoft's ex-chief technology officer, Barry Klawans, to lead development on the integrated product.
I normally don't care much about product announcements, as this blog is more about strategy than technology. But I like what Hyperic Operations IQ promises: a tool that gives IT executives and business managers the same insight into IT performance and Web operations as highly technical system administrators. In other words, Hyperic and JasperSoft are lowering the bar to systems management utility.
As Javier Soltero, Hyperic's founder and CEO, declares:
For companies who are dependent on Web technologies, access to data center and application performance metrics is a critical strategic weapon that should not be limited to the IT and operations teams. Service-level interruptions or downtime can have serious implications to a company's bottom line.
With Hyperic Operations IQ, our customers can see everything that's happening in their data centers at every level of the stack. They'll be able to make better and timelier decisions to support their customers and strengthen their businesses.
This is a smart business move. Why? Because the more people within its customer base that Hyperic can invite into its product experience, the more support it will have at renewal or upgrade time. Making systems management an executive affair is shrewd and should pay dividends.
Disclosure: I am an adviser to JasperSoft.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Zenoss recently announced an expansion to its open-source systems and network management product, creating Zenoss Professional Edition to focus on medium-size enterprises. It's a smart move, but in talking with Zenoss CEO Bill Karpovich this past week, Zenoss is actually doing exceptionally well with large enterprises.
Tyco Enterprises, Johns Hopkins, VMware, and others are public references for Zenoss, but these aren't even the ones I find the most interesting. Unfortunately, the others can't publicly be named....
Still, given Zenoss' traction with large companies and its triple-digit percentage revenue growth quarter-over-quarter, it's perhaps not very surprising, therefore, that Forrester Research recently suggested, "Zenoss looks like a strong competitor for large frameworks."
Which isn't, of course, to say that Zenoss shouldn't sell to medium-size enterprises. Rather, it's just that, like other open-source companies before it, big companies may end up consuming Zenoss' time and attention. That's not a bad thing.
Roberto Galoppini has a great write-up on Hyperic, a leading open-source systems management company, and its efforts to crack the European market. After seeing 50 percent of its downloads trend toward Europe, Hyperic has begun hiring technical and sales resources to manage its growth there.
It's no surprise to see Hyperic doing so well. Hyperic has long been one of the most prudent open-source companies, managing (and driving) its growth well. Lately it has been delivering things like CloudStatus to help companies monitor their cloud-based computing resources. (As a testament to how good it is, Hyperic was the first to discover Amazon's recent S3 outage.)
As Hyperic continues to execute against its business model, I expect that it will increasingly reap from the fertile ground of Europe. Sometimes companies get exactly what they deserve.
We are or shortly will be in a recession. While perhaps not cause to celebrate, it's also not cause for alarm as the best companies will emerge all the stronger for the experience.
Good open-source companies will be primary beneficiaries of a downturn, as Stephen Elliot of IDC points out with regard to open-source system management vendors like GroundWork:
With economic uncertainty building on IT organizations, we are seeing enterprise IT organizations tightening their belts when it comes to IT budgets and initiatives. As open source management solutions continue to mature and increase their functionality, they will see more opportunities on the enterprise scale.
I single out GroundWork because I had the opportunity to talk with Dave Lilly, CEO of GroundWork, in advance of next week's Open Source Business Conference 2008 (March 25-26, San Francisco), and got the inside scoop on how the company is doing. GroundWork exemplifies the "unfair advantage" that open-source vendors have when IT buyers actually need the software to work at a reasonable price.
... Read more
It had to happen (and not just because Savio asked when it would happen). Today Red Hat (which seems to be making a lot of noise during Oracle's OpenWorld event :-) and Hyperic joined forces to create a common systems management platform. The ice between the two has thawed at last:
For years, the JBoss Operations Network [JON] team has been developing code on the Hyperic platform. Red Hat will be contributing its updates and enhancements to this new open source project. Both companies will work to maintain, govern and extend management capabilities within the new open source systems management platform project. Additionally, Hyperic and Red Hat will work jointly to include this base in both future Hyperic and Red Hat systems management products....
... Read more
I like this idea. Will Hurley of BMC is calling for a meet-up of those on the vendor and customer side of systems management. Why? To allow people to get together to shape the future of the systems management market.
One-on-one with a vendor is useful but limiting. This idea provides for a more collaborative approach to solving customer problems:
... Read more- prev
- 1
- next
