Kevin McIsaac
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- Project Assurance
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28 January 2006
Conclusion: 2006 will be the year that server virtualisation technology becomes mainstream on x86 based servers. IT Organisations are combining commodity x86 based servers with virtual machines and Storage Area Networks (SANs) to build agile, low cost server infrastructure. They are reporting many benefits including excellent TCO, rapid provisioning, increased resource utilisation and simple, low cost high-availability and disaster recovery.
Of the three core technologies used to build this infrastructure, virtual machines are the newest and most rapidly evolving. In 2006, IT organisations must understand this technology, and the vendor landscape, to ensure they make the right strategic choice for the next 5 years.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 January 2006
- Project Assurance
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28 December 2005
Conclusion: Since the beginning of the dot.com boom of the late ‘90s, there has been considerable debate over which web server should be used. By 2004 the web server wars were over with two clear victors emerging, IIS from Microsoft and Apache from the Apache Software Foundation. IT Organisations (ITOs) should move beyond debating the technical merits of various product and select an organisation wide technology standard based on existing investment, skills or alignment with strategic platforms. As part of an ongoing strategy to reduce infrastructure complexity (see “Infrastructure Consolidation: Avoiding the vendor squeeze”), ITOs should create a pragmatic plan to migrate to the new standard.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 December 2005
- Strategy & Transformation
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28 November 2005
Conclusion: With the maturing of Server Virtualisation on industry standard (X86) and RISC/Unix servers, all IT organisations should evaluate its role in optimising IT infrastructure. See IBRS research note “Infrastructure Consolidation: Avoiding the vendor squeeze” October-05).
The recommend strategy is to start by using server virtualisation to enable the consolidation of non-production systems (i.e. dev/test/QA), progressing to consolidating smaller non-mission critical production applications and finally creating a virtual server infrastructure that simplifies and enables load-balancing, high-availability and disaster recovery. A well executed server virtualisation strategy will reduce complexity and increase agility, leading to better alignment of IT infrastructure with the applications requirements and business strategy.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 November 2005
- Strategy & Transformation
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28 November 2005
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 October 2005
Conclusion: The US State of Massachusetts' policy that by 2007 all Executive Department documents must be stored in Open Document Format (ODF) or PDF is a significant milestone in the ongoing migration from proprietary systems to open standards. The statement is founded in the belief that open standards are the best option for ensuring that official public records are freely and openly available for their full lifecycle. Experience with other open standards (ASCII, TCP/IP, SQL, HTML) demonstrates their central role in interoperability, confirming this belief.
Microsoft will resist ODF in an attempt to maintain control over a critical standard in one of its most profitable product lines. However, like other open standards before it, and for similar reasons, ODF will become the common standard for office documents, though due to the ubiquity of Microsoft formats this may take 6-8 years.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 October 2005
- Strategy & Transformation
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28 September 2005
Conclusion: Infrastructure Consolidation has been a hot topic since the IT downturn in 2001/2. Unfortunately, this topic has been hijacked by IT vendors and used as justification for purchasing their latest high-end technology. To date most consolidation efforts have been technology projects with poorly defined goals that rarely go beyond implementing a specific technology. As a result most consolidation projects fail to deliver lasting benefits.
To ensure long term benefits, IT organisations (ITOs) must view infrastructure as an asset to be optimised for an appropriate mix of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), agility and robustness as required by the business. The critical success factor is the recognition that complexity is the key driver of these characteristics and that a planning process (not technology) is necessary to reduce and control complexity.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 September 2005
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 August 2005
Conclusion: While the introduction of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) will have a significant impact on the storage environment though 2006/7, over the next 12 months clients should be wary of the hype vendors will use to promote it. By year end 2005, technical staff should gain a basic understanding of the key features/benefits of SAS. Though 2006/7, IT organisations should begin using SAS, in conjunction with SATA, in DAS, SAN and NAS configurations when it provides a lower cost storage alternative [i.e. than Fibre Channel (FC)] while still meeting application and data service level requirements.
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 August 2005
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 July 2005