A miracle cure for all IT ills was how some commentators seemed to view virtualisation and cloud computing this time last year. With the market for these services maturing somewhat, and with clients understanding the capabilities of both concepts all the more, Jimmy Kehoe, director of sales and marketing at Datapac commented that the main virtualisation technologies selling are server virtualisation from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix – in that order.
“In addition, storage virtualisation from companies like EMC and HP are also selling well. Server virtualisation is still a very attractive option for most businesses for the same reasons as five years ago. But with less than 20% of servers in Ireland virtualised at present, there are still many organisations either virtualising their data centre or planning to do so.”
Out of the companies Kehoe mentioned, Francis O’Haire, technical director, DataSolutions, pinpointed Citrix and its XenDesktop product as one of the core offerings that has made a genuine impression with Irish businesses. “At the moment we are seeing a big rise in demand for desktop virtualisation and specifically XenDesktop,” said O’Haire, reasoning that users are at the stage where they can no longer hold off on doing PC upgrades and are also under pressure to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7.
MARKET SHARE
“While the adoption of desktop virtualisation isn’t necessarily going to save them anything on their initial capital outlay, the incentive to radically reduce the complexity and ongoing cost of managing their desktop infrastructure is driving them to adopt or at least test out the XenDesktop solution,” he added.
Adding weight to Kehoe’s opinion, senior consultant with Brandon Consulting, Gary Melvin said that in terms of infrastructure virtualisation products, he would see VMware and Microsoft being the leaders in the market. “Although VMware is a more mature offering, the new System Center licensing model from Microsoft and the closed gap on functionality will result in Microsoft taking a larger market share than previous,” he said.
‘FALSE START’
Citrix’s own Dave Austin, who is the company’s director of product marketing in Europe, said that many virtualisation and cloud projects have been the victim of “a false start” due to “the misconception that it’s just like virtualising your servers, as well as the lack of understanding of the requirements and poor vendor/technology selection”.
Stating that many customers had a misunderstanding of the capabilities of the cloud and virtualisation 12 months ago, Austin said that one such incorrect assumption was that the only choice in desktop virtualisation was a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) desktop.
“The capabilities and underlying technologies of desktop virtualisation are generally better understood than a year ago,” he added, “and that desktop virtualisation technology includes server hosted shared desktop (or remote desktop services as many will call them), server hosted virtual desktops (HVDs), and both streamed desktops and client hosted virtual desktops for client-side execution.”
ORGANISATION-WIDE
Austin claimed that whereas the perception a year or more ago was that virtualisation was only suitable for “a small subset of use cases supported by HVDs”, today virtual desktops can be considered for the entire organisation.
Tim Murphy, founder and MD, Strencom added that the various misconceptions surrounding the cloud and virtualised services are clearing somewhat. “Thankfully, reality is emerging over all the hype. The misconception was in believing all this hype,” he said. “Clients are beginning to see that cloud computing makes sense for virtualisation and virtualisation in many cases makes sense for cloud computing. Combined together, the promise of delivering the next generation data centre is really where our clients are signalling the true value.”
SLOWING ADOPTION RATES
Paul Large, CTO with the PFH Technology Group, defended VDI to a certain extent, but also noted one of the main obstacles to the virtual desktop concept at present is the amount of understanding out there amongst clients about “the levels of supporting infrastructure such as servers and storage that are required”. He added that this is contributing heavily to the “slowing adoption rates” of VDI.
Large also noted that that server consolidation is still a big seller with disaster recovery (DR) capabilities being one of the main business benefits followed by space and power savings. “There are many version updates around at the moment which add further capabilities such as thin provisioning, better power management and improved DR options so server virtualisation remains a very busy area,” Large added.
KEY ENABLERS
From a cloud perspective Citrix’s Austin said that everybody is talking about the capabilities of the services involved but that there are still “so many definitions of what a cloud really is” that it confuses matters. Server and desktop virtualisation technologies are key enablers to the cloud, he added, in that they remove the reliance of physical devices and allow a different line of thinking about the systems required to support and organisations business needs.
“An organisation that has implemented server and/or desktop virtualisation has effectively developed an internal cloud because of the hardware independence and the ability to react to change and new requirements,” he said.
“The extension of this is to move all or parts of the internal cloud to an external cloud provider and this is the area that is beginning to see growth. However, it is areas such as redundant bandwidth connections, the unease of moving confidential data outside of the company walls and potentially into foreign data centres and the requirement for more advance management tools that means this move is still a trickle at present.”
ANOMALY
George Dowling, who acts as head of virtualisation practice for Fujitsu believes that Ireland is something of an anomaly in the global market for cloud computing as we have not seen the levels of adoption here that have been common throughout the US, Japan or even across Europe.
Elaborating, Dowling told ComputerScope that part of the reason for this may be Ireland’s somewhat unique position in not falling under the requirements of the US Patriot Act or the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act.
“Due to this, adoption of services that could appear to be cloud computing components has been somewhat piecemeal. There are few providers, Fujitsu being one of them, where customers can be assured that neither their cloud provider nor the co-location centre will be hosted in places that put unwittingly inside the Patriot or RIP Act’s ‘control’,” said Dowling.
“For Irish organisations this risk is a major consideration; for Government Departments and their data, it is not even up for consideration and Government data cannot yet be deposited in the cloud, especially if the cloud is partly or completely outside of Ireland. To this end, the Department of Finance has advised all Government Departments not to purchase any cloud-based service without obtaining legal advice.”
Continuing on this theme, he said there are some customers who have outsourced small process driven applications or perhaps their e-mail function to cloud but most at this stage are really doing “preparatory work” to enable them to move to a cloud environment when the standards have been defined. “It is in this background work area that Fujitsu is seeing the most customer activity and it bodes well for the future,” he added.
END-TO-END MANAGEMENT
When Ronan Geraghty, business manager, server and tools, Microsoft Ireland, spoke to ComputerScope he obviously mentioned in-house virtualisation tools that have found fans in the last year and continue to do so, on a daily basis.
Noting that it’s now one year since the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, he said that in that time the company has seen large growth in the premium editions of Windows Server; an enterprise-class operating system with virtualisation built-in – a feature “that resonates with the mid-market segment in particular”.
The previously mentioned Microsoft System Center IT infrastructure and server management solutions hub is also “performing strongly”. Continued Geraghty, “end-to-end management of servers, applications and also process automation are increasingly seen as key drivers of IT efficiency and customers are increasingly choosing Hyper-V 2008 R2 and System Center to get a complete, cost-effective system with complete lifecycle management which can help them lower the cost of their operations while improving the availability of their data centre services.”
In terms of the cloud, Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standard (BPOS) suite was, to be fair, mentioned by plenty of people other than the Microsoft man, though he did say that it has brought “enterprise grade software to the cloud”, providing our customers with the benefits of our market leading Exchange Server capability whilst also providing the cost and flexibility benefits of cloud-based delivery.
FUTURE
So, if there have been some successes that have emerged from the hype surrounding virtualisation and the cloud in the last 12 months, now that we all have a clearer perspective of the capabilities and adoption rates – just where will the next year to 18 months bring us?
Fujitsu’s Dowling interestingly says, “Well 18 months ago; this is not where I would have said we will be today. Now virtualisation is well established as a technology and we are surfing on the cusp of the wave which is virtual desktop and cloud services. I know the wave will break, but I don’t know exactly when but I do not see that there are any new technological developments really necessary to make it happen.”
EASE OF USE
Citrix’s Austin somewhat agreed with Dowling’s assessment in that he pointed to “more of a trend than technology, i.e. ‘consumerisation’,” as something that will force IT departments to adapt to the way employees, customers, and partners consume applications and services from the Internet.
“We expect to see more self-service and greater emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. Desktop virtualisation and moving applications, desktops and services to the cloud will help address this trend,” he continued.
Austin did also note though that “internet congestion will likely have to be addressed within this time frame and adoption of IPv6 as well as advanced traffic management and optimisation for burgeoning video traffic will likely occur.”
Dan King, Digiweb hosting manager also said that “the market has settled down a bit through mergers and acquisitions” so we’re beginning to see “something of a standard being developed for the cloud”.
He continued, “The market is working well towards interoperability, making it much easier for customers of cloud and virtualisation services to move provider. Thus if the customer has any concerns regarding reliability or security of the service, it’ll be pretty easy to switch to another provider. This will force all providers to compete on a fairer playing field and hopefully improve service.”
EXEMPLAR NETWORK
CTO with Trilogy Technologies, Neil Stone Wigg commented that the biggest emerging technology to affect this area as a whole lies not in virtualisation itself or even the data centre, but rather it is in the communications backbone. “The building of the State-backed Exemplar network will turn the move to the cloud from a controlled pace, into a flood. Those companies who have got themselves into a position to service this flood, will reap the rewards,” stated Stone Wigg.
Meanwhile Kevin Cahill, head of solutions design with BT Ireland said that in the next 18 months we will see a significant growth of cloud based business applications services. “Emerging technologies are being developed to assist in the move to Cloud services or virtualisation and not its hindrance,” he said, before wanting, “its wider adoption will be hampered through the lack of innovation around security in keeping pace with cloud and virtualisation.”
FEDERATION
Another main player in the cloud and virtualisation sector is EMC Ireland and Graham Stevenson, a technical consultant with the company said now that clients are “moving along their journey to cloud computing”, one of the most difficult concepts and solutions is federation of cloud data centres.
EMC have recently announced the first phase of this in EMC Vplex which allows clients to “federate” their information across private cloud infrastructures with other internal cloud data centres in different geographical locations or with external cloud providers. That is to say, that it will allow workloads and their information to exist in a true virtual state, independent of location.
ON THE MOVE
Dell’s Paul Kenny, who is head of consulting in Ireland, made the point that a potentially overlooked capability of cloud managed services which may find more interest in the next year is the potential for cloud based data encryption for mobile workforce users. “With an increasingly mobile workforce comes the necessity to shield mission-critical data from loss or theft. This service helps ensure that business-critical and sensitive data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands,” Kenny stated.
SOLID STATE DRIVES
Coming at things from a very different angle Triangle Computer Services’ senior technical architect, Donal Byrne wisely noted that Solid State Drives (SSDs) have started to become available in storage arrays and he expects this will increase throughout 2011. This should, he added, push the limits in terms of workloads that are possible to run virtualised systems and remove any barriers that previously existed around running IO driven applications and servers in a virtualised environment.
“Also grid architectures at the hardware level, such as IBM XIV on the storage side, along with Cisco UCS on the server side will allow for increased density of compute power to underpin virtualised cloud architectures. Finally there will be further improvements in the management stack around virtualisation and cloud to help make management easier of what are becoming complex areas,” concluded Byrne.
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