EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

As promised in my previous post on "Software Defined Storage - Why Customers Should Care", I want to follow-up with a brief overview of the competitive landscape.

Almost one year into the discussion about the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), it is time to take inventory of the state of the discipline. As a reminder, the ultimate goal of the SDDC is to abstract and centralize the
management of compute, network, storage, operating systems, middleware and applications in order to dynamically place workloads where they can run in the most cost efficient, secure and compliant manner.

Why pay $1,500 per virtual desktop, if you can have a physical machine of the same performance-level at half the cost. While the functional and maintenance advantages of virtual desktop computing are evident, the per machine CAPEX often is the key stumbling block for this type of project. It is very hard to convince your CFO to write a check for more money per virtual machine than it would cost to acquire physical desktops.

Why pay $1,500 per virtual desktop, if you can have a physical machine of the same performance-level at half the cost. While the functional and maintenance advantages of virtual desktop computing are evident, the per machine CAPEX often is the key stumbling block for this type of project. It is very hard to convince your CFO to write a check for more money per virtual machine than it would cost to acquire physical desktops.

A friend of mine recently asked why I am even still interested in enterprise computing when all the innovation is happening within the consumer electronics sector. Smartphones, tablet computers, e-book readers, and audio streaming devices have changed the way we live our daily lives. Now that I read the NYTimes on my iPad, I get through a substantially larger part of the newspaper, compared to when I was reading the paper edition. Now that I use “Read it Later,” I finally get to actually read all the interesting website articles that I bookmark during my workday, while relaxing in the evening on the couch with my iPad. Since I have Rhapsody on my iPhone, I get to actually listen to my favorite rare albums while driving to work. My Squeezebox streaming music players on my nightstand and in my living room allow me to listen to my favorite global radio stations, or I can create my own custom channels, by entering a number of my favorite bands. My home alarm system is controlled through an online dashboard or an iPad/iPhone app, so that I can turn off specific motion sensors or the entire system remotely.

A friend of mine recently asked why I am even still interested in enterprise computing when all the innovation is happening within the consumer electronics sector. Smartphones, tablet computers, e-book readers, and audio streaming devices have changed the way we live our daily lives. Now that I read the NYTimes on my iPad, I get through a substantially larger part of the newspaper, compared to when I was reading the paper edition. Now that I use "Read it Later," I finally get to actually read all the interesting website articles that I bookmark during my workday, while relaxing in the evening on the couch with my iPad. Since I have Rhapsody on my iPhone, I get to actually listen to my favorite rare albums while driving to work. My Squeezebox streaming music players on my nightstand and in my living room allow me to listen to my favorite global radio stations, or I can create my own custom channels, by entering a number of my favorite bands. My home alarm system is controlled through an online dashboard or an iPad/iPhone app, so that I can turn off specific motion sensors or the entire system remotely.