EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

What does Big Data mean to traditional enterprise IT? Organizations of any size and industry are becoming more and more aware of the incredible importance of capturing, managing and analyzing the data available to them. The more comprehensively companies are able to tap structured and unstructured data sources, the quicker they can refresh this data and the more successfully they make this body of data available to all business units, the better they can develop advantages in the market place. Today’s business units are demanding the rapid implementation of these big data use cases, as well as optimal resiliency, cost efficiency, security and performance.

As every year, IBM invited the analyst community to Stamford, CT, for a deep dialogue on today’s most important topics in enterprise IT. Here is a short overview for everyone interested in IBM’s current world view.

When it comes to cloud technologies, discussions often get passionate or even heated. It’s all about the “war of the stacks”, where much Cool Aid is dispensed to get customers to buy into the respective cult. This discussion reminds me of the old days of enterprise IT, where everything was about technology instead of business value. You either bought one thing or the other and then you were locked in for a half decade. Dark times.

Every year after VMworld EMA receives countless inquiries regarding the most notable vendors on the show floor. This time around, we have compiled a list consisting of startups taking a new look at traditional IT challenges, as well as larger and more mature companies that have launched industry transforming initiatives. Ultimately, this list of eight extraordinary vendors is focused on one central concept: customer value.

At EMA, we constantly receive inquiries regarding what OpenStack means to the VMware portfolio. Is it a competing technology? Are OpenStack and vCloud complementary? Why did VMware join OpenStack? What are the typical use cases for OpenStack as opposed to vCloud? To address these questions, let’s take a step back and take a look at what OpenStack is and, as importantly, what it is not. This post is building on my previous article on the business value of OpenStack.

Breaking News: Dell Acquires Enstratius to Further Complete Its Cloud Story

OpenStack’s huge momentum is undeniable. IBM, RedHat, NetApp, Rackspace, HP, Dell, Cisco, Intel and even VMware have committed significant funds and human resources to this project. But why would companies, that are otherwise competing rather fiercely, sit on one table to build an OpenSource cloud platform?

After talking about the “grand vision” of the Software Defined Datacenter (SDD) in part 1 of this series and discussing the individual components required to build out the SDD in part 2, this third part will be all about the three core challenges and controversies:

The ultimate goal of the Software-Defined Datacenter (SDD), a term coined only a few months ago by VMware’s Steve Herrod, is to centrally control all aspects of the data center – compute, networking, storage – through hardware-independent management and virtualization software. This software will also provide the advanced features that currently constitute the main differentiators for most hardware vendors. The following quote by Steve Herrord succinctly sums up the bad news that VMware is delivering to many of these vendors: “If you’re a company building very specialized hardware … you’re probably not going to love this message.”