EMA Research Blog: Navigating IT and Security Horizons

In an ideal world, customers would be able to fully take advantage of the benefits of hybrid cloud by rationally matching infrastructure parameters -cost, performance, reliability, availability, security, regulatory compliance, scalability- with the requirements and dependencies of each application.

I thought I’d begin the year by making some predictions about what to look for in 2016 in the area of IT service management (ITSM).  For those of you who have been following my blogs with any regularity, and particularly for those who sat in on our webinar for the research report “What Is the [...]

Cloud computing can speed up deployment, reduce costs, and increase efficiency and connectivity. It can open up new ways to get computing work done, but more importantly, the inherent connectivity can change the way employees interact with each other and with customers. It can also change the way companies interact with suppliers and partners. The ease of standing up new apps and connecting with users through mobile devices, as well as the minimal capital investment, can spur innovation.

IT administrators love to write scripts – at least, the most talented ones do. Scripting provides a powerful platform to automate simple and repeatable tasks. However, like with most powerful tools, there is an overwhelming temptation for scripting to be overused. When faced with a project deadline, a high-pressure failure event, or even just the need to simplify day-to-day events, administrators can unintentionally create scripts that are so complex they actually put the business at risk. I must confess that during my 2 decades-long tenure as an IT administrator and engineer, I’ve written a lot of scripts…a LOT of scripts…and learned a lot of important lessons. Scripting was never intended to replace application programming. Its purpose is to provide a quick and easy resource for performing simple and repeatable tasks. It is not uncommon, however, for scripts to start simple but balloon over time into complex code that is virtually unintelligible even to its author.

Have you ever tried to create a major slide presentation on a tablet? Or edit a large spreadsheet? Or write a long document? Probably not. While it’s certainly possible to perform more substantial business tasks on a tablet, the small screen real estate and limited system resources (e.g., processing speed, memory, graphic support, etc.) are typically insufficient in current tablet form factors. However, carrying a laptop around with you everywhere you go just so you can access email is not very practical either. The reality is that we live in a multi-device world where the average worker employs 3 – 5 different computing devices in the regular performance of their job function. . . . and I would argue that’s exactly how it should be. Each user employs the device they prefer to optimally perform tasks at any particular time or place.

The Havana release of OpenStack was launched on October 17, about three weeks prior to the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong.  As always, there are many new features -high availability, load balancing, easier upgrades, plugins for development tools, improved SDN support, fiber channel SAN support, improved bare metal capabilities- and even two new core components, Ceilometer -metering and monitoring- and Heat -orchestration of the creation of entire application environments- to admire. Without any doubt, OpenStack is becoming more enterprise ready with each new release .