jklincewicz's blog

Hearing that phrase from the nice officer that just pulled you over is like fingers on a chalkboard for most of us. But since we usually are in possession of, and understand these simple documents readily, a traffic stop is a day at the beach compared to the licensing madness that surrounds the use of most commercial software.

One of the most frequently asked questions about Cloud Computing regard the necessity of hypervisors. I believe most reasonable individuals agree that while they are not absolutley NECESSARY, for most instances, they certainly make CC economically feasible.

Citrix Synergy (Part 2)

Last week I addressed some of the new software announcements that came out at the 2010 Citrix Synergy. At its core, Citrix has always been a software company. What many people in Corporate Data Centers do not realize is the Citrix is a pretty big player in Networking hardware. They keep to the niche of Application Delivery Controllers, and do it quite well.

So I spent the entire week at the Citrix Summit/Synergy event for partners/customers. Those of you who have worked in or with Data Centers in the past 20 years or so are probably familiar with Citrix. Many people are familiar with a product now called XenApp, previously known as Presentation Sever, Metaframe, or Winframe depending on your longevity in the business. Essentially Citrix invented Terminal Services for Windows which allowed users to access programs running remotely on Windows servers using very little bandwidth. Many users still call this “running Citrix.”

By now, everyone is familiar with the “wait and see” attitude the powers-that-be are taking toward Cloud Computing, particularly the Public Cloud.

Certainly, the concerns of Security, Availability and Portability still loom large, as well as the lack of SLA guarantees are causing CIOs to pay lip service by re-dubbing their Virtualized Data Centers “Private Clouds” and placating the other C-level execs by adopting “Cloud” without really doing anything new.

Virtually the same ?

A few years back when Virtualization was new, and I was selling physical servers, I was surprised at some of the questions I got from perspective purchasers. As the Compaq / HP ProLiant line of servers touted a very robust hardware management framework called Insight Manager, many customers were curious as to whether this software would monitor virtual servers as well as it did the physical ones.

From a Cloud Provider perspective, once we get beyond the “feature” wars of the various virtualization methods available for Clouds, we begin to look at management. Whether we are managing physical or virtual resources (CPU, Storage, Memory, Networking, etc.) or provisioning and patching, the pains are pretty much the same. Hypervisor virtualization, of course, can greatly simplify a lot of the “grunt work” associated with the physical world. Cloning from a template is a lot easier in software than with physical sheet metal and cables.

For those unfamiliar with the concepts of Open Source software, let me offer this definition from Whatis.com : “In general, open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit. Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available.”

I am always intrigued by the notion that Cloud Computing should provide the “illusion of infinite capacity.” Illusion seems to belong to the domain of magicians. How does it fit into the realm of so scientific a discipline as Information Technology?

Does size really matter?

This age-old question has been applied to many topics, but in this case I am talking about Cloud Providers. Everyone knows the usual suspects; Amazon, Microsoft, Google and SalesForce head the lists of Iaas, PaaS and SaaS providers. As in the golden days of the Internet, the idea of First Market Move still seems valid. Once your name is established as the “leader” in any activity, there is a clear advantage in being thought of first when it comes to evaluating solutions.