Chuck's Blog

Is 2010 The Year Of Widespread Desktop Virtualization?

Many of think this could be the case.  It looks like a "perfect storm" cloud be shaping up in the industry to fundamentally change this piece of the IT landscape.

The thought is timely, given VMware's recent VMware View 4 announcement.  Check out the details from VMware here, or see Chad's excellent writeup here.

So, let's look at the enablers -- and the inhibitors -- and how they might play out in the very near future.

Getting To Good: Vblock + Acadia Customer Reaction

So, I now have been in front of 6 different senior IT audiences since Tuesday's announcement.

Note: this might give you a sense of how frequently I have the privilege of interacting with customers.

I've been able to present the case for VCE, focusing on Vblock and Acadia, and I"m starting to see a consistent pattern in the reaction -- at least so far.

Thought I'd share it with you, because I think we're going to see more of this going forward.

The VCE Coalition: Redrawing The Landscape

So, everyone has had a bit of time to digest yesterday's news.

And -- as expected -- there are those that are recognizing that the lines in our industry have been redrawn in a subtle but important way.

Put differently: there's a new "stack" to consider.

Behind The Vblock

 One of the most interesting parts of today’s VCE announcement is the Vblock – pre-integrated infrastructure for virtualization at scale.
 
Today, I thought I’d go behind the scenes, and interview one of the primary architects behind the Vblock – Jim Dowson (EMC Distinguished Engineer & CTO, Global Services).
 
I had the pleasure of hearing Jim and Phil Harris of Cisco (CTO, Strategic Alliances) present the Vblock in detail to one of our partners, and wanted to share some of their insights with you.

Introducing Acadia

There's a lot to talk about in today's VCE announcement, but one aspect that deserves closer inspection is Acadia, the joint professional services company being announced today.

The good news: there's a lot of good thinking that's gone into Acadia.  The challenge: if our competitors are going to take an unfair swipe at something, it's a likely target.

So, let's get started: what is it, why does it exist, how is it different, etc.?

In a word, it's all about enablement.

Announcing The VCE Coalition

So, today's the big day -- I finally get to talk about something I've been working on for some time: the bringing together of three industry leaders to accelerate the transition to fully virtualized environments and private clouds.

Thankfully, I can stop being coy, and start to speak publicly about this important industry development: what it means for customers, and what it means for the industry.

There are so many interesting angles on this I'm sure I'll have no shortage of blog material for some time to come. 

And -- this being my blog -- I get the luxury of telling the story from my personal perspective.

Questions And Answers

Occasionally, I get pinged by a journalist to answer industry-level questions for specific publications. Sometimes the material gets used, sometimes it doesn't.

This time, I thought the questions were deep enough -- and broad enough -- that some of my readers might be interested in the dialog.

I've posted the questions I received through the email, as well as my personal take on what the responses might be.

Let me know if you'd like to see more of this sort of material, or not, as the case may be ...

Big Appliances Vs. Virtual Pools

As the industry starts to move to fully-virtualized models, and cloud-like environments, I'm encountering a specific debate around IT philosophy.

The question revolves which is better for IT: purpose-built appliances, or pools of generic resources that are dynamically used?

And it's turning out to be one of the more contentious issues going forward.

Can You Call A Big Pile Of Disk "Cloud Storage"?

Well, there certainly are many who think so.

On the vendor side, I'd put 3Par, IBM, NetApp and doubtless a few others I forgot to mention.

Being the ever-pragmatic marketeer, I've been guilty of slapping new labels on old ideas a few times over the years -- and sometimes gotten away with it.

But in this case, I don't think it's going to work.  Clouds are very different -- or will be very soon.

A Quick Note On Primary Data Dedupe and I/O Density

My, that's a geeky title for a post, isn't it?

Wanted to dash off a quick observation that might impact your thoughts around this topic.  At the very least, it's something to be aware of.

Fasten your seatbelts ...