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.
Highlights from IBM Analyst Insights 2013
By Torsten Volk on Nov 26, 2013 1:46:30 PM
Rapid Evolution – OpenStack Is Growing Up
By Torsten Volk on Oct 28, 2013 9:21:05 AM
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 .
War of the Stacks: OpenStack vs. CloudStack vs. vCloud vs. Amazon EC2
By Torsten Volk on Oct 14, 2013 2:25:19 PM
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.
VMworld 2013 Digest – 8 Companies You Should Take a Closer Look At
By Torsten Volk on Sep 3, 2013 12:02:14 PM
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.
OpenStack Thoughts – Part 2: Impact on VMware
By Torsten Volk on Jun 20, 2013 9:56:22 AM
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.
Dell’s Clean Slate Approach to Enterprise IT
By Torsten Volk on May 8, 2013 7:22:09 PM
Breaking News: Dell Acquires Enstratius to Further Complete Its Cloud Story
OpenStack Thoughts – Part 1: Key Business Considerations
By Torsten Volk on Apr 22, 2013 10:27:18 AM
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?
The Software-Defined Datacenter: Part 3 of 4 – Questions and Battlefields
By Torsten Volk on Sep 24, 2012 11:24:05 AM
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 Software-Defined Datacenter: Part 1 of 4 – The Basics
By Torsten Volk on Aug 16, 2012 6:00:58 PM
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.”