(5 votes, average: 9.6 out of 10)
Loading ...Putting the Cart before the Horse
Cisco has come forward with a new vision for the data center. This may really be what I have maintained for the last 15+ years. The future will happen when the “computer is really in the network.”
This is Cisco’s first big shot in a war to control the data center of the future. This strategy, Cisco’s Data Center 3.0, envisions switches at the heart of the architecture with service regulated commodity status for the underlying technology. Essentially, the switches become the epicentre for running and controlling all IT decision-making. Cisco envisions the orchestration of infrastructure services from pools of servers, storage, and network resources over Gigabit Ethernet networks.
Cisco’s comments about the data center can be found in “Transforming Your Data Center One Project at a Time.” The following is a direct quote: “The emergence of the human network is raising individuals’ and organizations’ expectations about how technology, and their IT organizations, can support their objectives and evolving work styles. The data center IP network, as the platform that integrates, protects, and scales other IT resources, is central to the fulfillment of the human network’s promise. A process evolution from transactions to interactions is leading to the emergence of data centers built on network-based service-oriented infrastructures (SOI). SOI softens traditional server, storage, and network operation silos and allows well-integrated IT departments to treat their data centers as single functional units composed of interdependent, virtualized pools of storage, network, server, and application resources to better support applications and meet the challenges introduced by a more distributed interaction model across and between organizations.”
”Why is the network so integral to service-oriented infrastructure? According to IDC (Abner Germanow, “Why Is Networking Growing Faster Than the Rest of IT?” June 4, 2007), “Server virtualization, storage virtualization, and the federation of software applications, to name three examples, are all enabled by the network… As trends in computing evolve from consolidation back to scaling out and scaling up, the potential for the network to participate in the security, reliability, and management of that scale will rise.
”It’s not a bad vision, say industry analysts, and it is shared by server and storage manufacturers. Thanks to virtualization, the server’s role in the data center is increasingly being diminished. Virtual storage, virtual processors, and virtual memory, and maybe even virtual networks, are coming. The major server makers acknowledge that this is the future.
Cisco is saying that because everything converges on the network, network architecture will make the overarching decisions on resource allocation. In other words, the control plane is collapsed onto the network.
Here are some reference points. This announcement can be found at Data Center - Cisco Systems: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns708/networking_solutions_solution_segment_home.html
This announcement shows that Cisco is committed to a full virtualization strategy, which I wrote about in my blog post “Does Virtualization Equal ‘Bullet Proof’?”: http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/insights/2008/01/
Essentially, we are moving away from the era of computing just being an amalgamation of devices in the network. This has been a big break from the status quo for the last 50 years. Cisco’s move is a clever attempt to avoid being displaced and relegated to commodity status.
Other major vendors are following suit. For example, today Nortel released the announcement “Nortel Virtualization Solution Simplifies Network for Instant, Secure Launch of Unified Communications”: http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&oid=100239954&locale=en-US Nortel is trying to capture control of the virtual data center. Here is a quote from that release: “Nortel’s network virtualization solution enables enterprises and service providers to simplify their communications infrastructure by allowing resources to be made available in a collective manner and to be allocated as needed,” said Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President, Data Center Networks, IDC. “This maximizes the capabilities of their network, decreasing wasted resources. It also limits the equipment that needs to be deployed, delivering savings over the life of the solution. The integration with a server virtualization solution gives new options for end-to-end virtualization deployments.”
It will be interesting to see how all these initiatives play out. In later posts, I’ll cover how Microsoft, IBM, SUN, HP and others want to play in this space.
I have to apologize for not posting in the last few weeks, as I have been commuting back and forth from India. It is a very exciting place to work. My experiences there will be the focus for some Enterprise Insights in the future. Once I’m back from my next trip and recovered from another round of jet lag.
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(Rate This Article) Loading ...Dare to try something different?
Recently I was asked by two IT industry reporters I’ve known for a long time whether I would continue to evangelize the use of Linux for knowledge worker desktops. I answered yes. I also understand that the adoption of a Linux desktop is not perceived as trivial. We are all very fortunate today to have so much choice in our desktop operating systems. We can select from two shipping versions of Windows, multiple Linux distros (although I’d be failing in my job if I didn’t specifically mention SUSE Linux) and a resurgence of Apple Macintoshes running OS X. So rather than go into a pitch for Linux, let me instead offer a conversation on an alternative for your day to day office productivity.
We all know, or should, about Microsoft’s excellent Office suite. Office is available for Windows and OS X. Linux? Uh, that would be no. So let’s agree that Office is a fine offering and proceed to look at what I believe is a viable alternative for a high percentage of knowledge workers. The offering is an open source project called OpenOffice delivered by contributors to openoffice.org
Open Office includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation builder, a database, and HTML editor and a drawing program. What I find most important about OOO is the flexibility in file formats made available. As an advocate of the Open Document Format (ODF) I choose to default to this format. However, I work with folks from lots of different organizations and many of them have a large repository of Microsoft Office formatted documents. OOO reads and writes the standard Office formats natively. In fact, Microsoft has worked with Novell and other players in the open source community to develop translators to permit the translation of their new OpenXML formats to ODF.
Since the preservation of documents over time is one of the most critical elements for business users, there has always been some reluctance to try a non-Microsoft suite. I think the MS products are excellent, but Open Office does have one advantage. It’s open source and therefore has no license cost at all. You may have users (ok I’m sure you do) who could be fully functional immediately with Open Office and continue to use all their existing documents that may exist in Microsoft or other proprietary formats.
So here’s my challenge to you. Don’t believe me. Try it yourself. You can download a free copy of Open Office for Windows, or Linux at www.openoffice.org. If you are a Macintosh OS X user, there is a Mac version but it requires you install the X11 windowing environment. If you want to maintain the real Mac look and feel, instead download NeoOffice from www.neooffice.org. Open Office provides a viable alternative to other Office suites, with a very familiar look and feel and could save you and your company money.
Until next time, peace.
Ross
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(Rate This Article) Loading ...Industry Committee study on Science and Technology is underway
Last month I blogged about why it is important to participate in the study by parliament’s Industry Committee on science and technology. I also provided a link to my own submission (OpenDocument, PDF, HTML). Michael Geist has reported that the Canadian Association of Broadcasters has also included copyright proposals in its submission.
The study is already underway, with meetings being held on April 10 and April 17. Read the rest of this entry »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(Rate This Article) Loading ...Software Patents and Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) (Part 1)
I was invited to speak at the IT360 conference on Software Patents and Open Source, which I did in the afternoon of April 9. While my slides are online, I believe it is worth discussing the presentation here for the benefit of those who did not attend.
I offered a few bullets as a summary.
- What is a patent, contrast with other PCT : most people are not clear about the different types of intangible exclusive rights such as Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, and the various related acts, so I summarize them.
- Should software be patentable? : It is important to ask this question, including having an overview of the history in various countries and the different levels of exclusive rights offered to software.
- Software patent issues specific to FLOSS : While it is important to differentiate software from other subject matter, we also need to ask just how different FLOSS is from non-FLOSS when it comes to patents.
- How realistic are different types of threats? : People in the FLOSS sector presume that Microsoft is the greatest threat to FLOSS as they do the most sabre rattling, and I suggest this is not appropriate.
- Policy proposals : I knew there would be people from government there, so I offer some proposals
- Discussion
Read the rest of this entry »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(3 votes, average: 1 out of 10) Loading ...Fake Facebook login phishing passwords
Yesterday, one of my facebook friends sent an email to all his friends with the subject of “Funniest video EVER - A monkey smoking a cigarette!”. In the message was a link to a .info site. When I clicked there I was sent to a page that looked like I hadn’t logged into facebook yet, asking me to login. Being the “trusting” person I am I looked at the URL and noticed it said login-facebook.info and not facebook.com. This was clearly a site trying to confuse me into typing my real facebook username and password into the forms so that they could then log in as me and do nasty things.
Read the rest of this entry »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...President and CEO of Hydro Ottawa responds to questions about sale of Telecom Ottawa
I wrote about the sale of Telecom Ottawa in my article An ideal future communications infrastructure, how do we get there, and what is stopping us!. At the same time I wrote a letter to my city councillor and Ottawa’s Mayor Larry OBrien asking for details on the sale.
Attached below is my letter, and the reply we (my councilor, the mayor, and myself) received from Rosemarie T. Leclair, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. (Republished with permission). I will add my own commentary in future articles, but am curious what other people think about the response.
Read the rest of this entry »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(25 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...More Bell Canada misinformation and misdirection in attempt to justify questionably lawful throttling
In a Network World article by Dave Webb, Bell Canada’s chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic attempts to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing peoples confusion between issues around the last mile natural monopoly and Net Neutrality. I increasingly believe that if people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
(5 votes, average: 9.6 out of 10) Loading ...And then there was two: Bell Canada seeks to wipe out ISP competitors
This seems to be the week when core Internet issues are being discussed. While much of it is under the phrase “Network Neutrality”, that term is confusing enough that opponents are able to distract policy makers and citizens. This is why my article on Saturday focused on separating the competitive access issues from the Net Neutrality issues, and my earlier article discussed An ideal future communications infrastructure, how do we get there, and what is stopping us!.
The last few days saw Charlie Angus raise this issue during question period, and an article from CBC talking about Bell Canada going to court to seek to wipe out all ISP competitors. That is, except the cable companies who manage a separate connection to the customer premises.
