The session I presented further confirmed:

• There is interest in moving towards more of an integrated computing approach, but most end-users are still absorbing how and why they would transition from their current infrastructure deployment model and what their options are.
• Many end-users are still very concerned about vendor lock-in, hardware lifecycle, and cost.
• The transition from DIY (Do It Yourself) to integrated computing is a long term strategy that vendors have the opportunity to accelerate during hardware refresh cycles.
• The integrated computing options are not well understood. Many end-users were surprised to see the list of 9 different vendors with integrated computing products.

As a response to this elevated market interest and transition to integrated computing platforms, ESG published our latest Market Landscape Report: Virtual Computing Infrastructures: The Movement Toward Integrated Computing: The Foundations for Cloud.

The report is available to premium subscribers at the ESG website.

IT is at a tipping point as more organizations consider investing in this new consumption model. This report helps to identify:

• The key benefits and driving factors of virtual computing infrastructures
• The primary challenges and concerns surrounding virtual computing infrastructures
• Tips for IT to use to help decide when to make a shift to a virtual computing infrastructure
• Approaches for  making an educated investment that fulfills short-term growth requirements and accommodates long-term IT strategies
• Potential vendor solutions

• Executive sponsorship
• Long term forward IT thinking (Note: this is difficult to find since most CIOs get bonuses on a yearly basis and not for long-term cloud strategies)
• Self assessment and discovery to identify successful opportunities
• A skill set mix that breaks down the barriers between IT disciplines and flattens the IT organization
• Application experience to truly understand the application, its impact on IT infrastructure, and more importantly, its impact on the business
• Economic and financial analysis that involves the CFO and key stakeholders in the business
• Legal and contract knowledge to negotiate and help transform the business to alternative consumption models
• And perhaps most importantly, transparency. From an end-user’s perspective, the transition to any internal, external, hybrid, public cloud strategy should be completely invisible and transparent.

There is not a single solution that is going to solve your cloud computing initiative. Rather, it is a set of services, education, and training that will shift IT into the next era of computing.

I can’t even begin to fathom how much productivity time is lost or abandoned altogether simply due to how long it takes a system to “fire up.” I get that I may want to warm up my car on a cold morning, but the majority of times I like to get in it, buckle up, turn the key, and go. We don’t have to “fire up” our smart phones–they just work and provide instant access to calling and applications. It baffles me when I watch how long it takes some people to boot their systems or simply just not turn it on at all  because of how long it takes to log on. The scary part is that IT is going to get more and more pressure from its users. I shudder to think how much productivity would be gained in any company if all endpoint devices instantly turned on and provided instant productivity. I suspect the impact would be dramatic.

I believe this is one of the many reasons we are starting to see such an insurgence of smartphone and tablet usage inside companies – they work – instantly! Laptops and desktops need to do the same. My informal survey of MAC users clearly validates the fact that one of the best benefits of the MAC is its ability instantly turn on, which alone is worth the price of admission. I’m positive someone can show me a Windows machine that does the same, but the majority of Windows users I see have to “fire up” their system.

Solid-state drives can help, but feel like more of a band-aid than a true solution. I think desktop virtualization has some very interesting technology that can help solve the “fire up” use case and may be reason enough to give it a hard look and factor into the investment.

Users are naturally going to migrate to the path of least resistance and we are already seeing this with the usage of smartphones and tablets as mentioned above, but is IT ready to support the proliferation of these devices? Have they considered the impact to the way they currently deploy and maintain applications? Have they thought through security challenges? I suspect in 2012 this will be a hot item for business to address.  We are already seeing some leaders in IT stand out ahead of the curve, but for the most part, we are just getting started on a major transformation in the way we design, develop, deploy, maintain, consume, and pay for applications. This is very exciting and a tremendous opportunity for IT technology innovators!

The company has moved everything except for some core networking gear to the service provider. He chose a local provider because of proximity to headquarters (the facility is 5 mins up the street), and the fact that the provider can also provide  geographical separation with multiple data centers for his critical applications.

I also asked about IaaS. I knew the service provider offered IaaS and was interested in how he may think about utilizing the service. Since the company is very application development-focused, he sees a great opportunity to leverage the service provider’s IaaS. Today he has the capacity to fulfill requests, but likes the option of being able to “rent” virtual machines and return them when he is finished. He already experimented once when an internal request came in for a VM with an enormous memory size and they needed to run a test. He contacted the service provider and within hours they had a VM they could work on to perform the test.

I liked his approach. Move existing systems as is and then start to look at IaaS. I think regional service providers have some good opportunities ahead to work with companies like this one to develop regional and industry specific expertise to help IT departments like this one focus on the priorities that accelerate the business.

At a high level, the research identified these trends and opportunities:

• Forecast for greater use of SaaS/Cloud
• Remote/mobile user support increasing
• Desktop virtualization deployments expected
• WAN optimization important

Specific to desktop virtualization, ESG discovered that 25% of respondents currently leverage a desktop virtualization solution and an additional 42% plan to in the next 12 to 24 months, while 31% report no plans.

It should come as no surprise that desktop virtualization is gaining momentum in ROBOs. The question that arises is how do the additional 42% plan to adopt desktop virtualization solutions in the next 12-24 months. Market players focused on desktop virtualization solutions should consider specific solutions, product offerings, and go to market campaigns to specifically address this significant market opportunity.

• Microsoft produced a few chuckles with some competitive fun: http://www.vm-limited.com/
• VMware continues to innovate at a rapid pace–maybe too rapid. Specifically when I look at its core vSphere platform, I see some amazing forethought and impressive technological advances, but I’m not 100% convinced its customers are ready to adopt them at the pace with which they have embraced its core platform–where the primary focus is on consolidation and cost containment. I do like how VMware has cranked up the volume on disaster recovery and disaster avoidance. This is a perfect example of how it can advance its customer base and start to fire up the service provider/ hosting community. The IT vendor community should take note and start aligning its messaging with VMware while highlighting any unique advantages. Zerto, a newcomer to the industry,  is a good example of this, and as a result, walked away with Best Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery product and Best of Show presented by searchservervirtualization.com.
• WOW! VMware, led by the showmanship of Vittorio Viarengo, did a fantastic job sharing its end-user computing strategy. It wasn’t that long ago that VMware had a product named VMware VDI and I stood scratching my head wondering where they were headed with it. This week I was impressed, as were the many attendees I spoke with. Centered on Horizon Application Manager, VMware is tuning in where I believe the biggest pain in IT lies–with consumerization leaving IT faced with the proliferation of endpoint devices and no clear strategy to embrace new endpoint devices and, equally important, securely deliver applications to them. VMware made some great VMware View product advancements as well as articulating a compelling vision for the future of application delivery and endpoint device adoption. Now it’s time to execute!
• Storage–remember back 5-6 years ago when storage was all the buzz and VMware was trying to rapidly build its alliance program. VMware’s focus on storage has significantly bumped up–both with its own innovation and with what I observed on the show floor. Watch out for companies like Coraid that are well aligned with the VMware freight train and set to disrupt the market , but you should speak with my ESG colleague Mark Peters who can provide better insight than I across the entire storage ecosystem and quiz him on some of the latest doings with VMware.
• I’m a strong believer that the IT consumption model is changing–not only with cloud computing, but in the way IT procures and operates IT infrastructure. A good example of this is the success a company like VCE is having in VDI environments, which was further validated with its VMware View announcement this week. Any IT department focused on overall economics driven by improving its operational model get the benefits of a turnkey solution. The ones still focused on spinning disks, CPU core count, memory banks, etc., will take some time to make the leap, but watch for it to happen driven by IT simplification, IT economics measured at the application level, and the trend to shift towards more IT automation and less bit-twiddling.
• Management–and I don’t mean data center orchestration and building service catalogues. The current footprint of server virtualization has been laid using back of the napkin economics. The next wave of success and economic gain is not nearly as cut and dried. IT will need visibility from the application to the data, intelligence that drives manual tasks to automates response, predictive modeling, and reporting driven by intelligent tools aimed at exponentially improving the economic benefits of server virtualization. VMware is of course very focused here, as are companies like VMturbo who took the time to run me through its solutions.
• Security–I’ll defer here to my ESG colleague Jon Oltsik who posted the following blog entry:  vShield, Cloud Computing, and the Security Industry.
• Networking–VMware shared some progress with VXLAN that will be interesting to watch. See Jon Oltsik’s blog, VMware VXLAN: Cloud Network Segmentation Over Layer 2.5.

It’s very exciting to be part of a major IT industry event like VMworld and watch VMware continue to do an amazing job building a community of end-users that are driven to advance IT into uncharted waters.

It is relatively clear from the subtext of Oracle’s messaging, “Application-Driven Virtualization,” that the company does not want to be viewed as your vanilla hypervisor or even a “horizontal” virtualization platform.  Oracle’s mission is to enable virtualization for mission-critical application environments  (One could easily alter that phrase slightly to “mission critical Oracle applications.”). Oracle isn’t  interested in helping customers just achieve physical server consolidation/higher CPU utilization rates or move virtual machines around for better availability, your standard virtualization benefits. Oracle’s goal is to deliver those benefits and drive application (and all core components: databases, web servers, firewalls, etc.) more efficient provisioning, performance, upgrades, change management, and availability in ERP, CRM, HCM, SCM, and all of the other three-letter acronym applications.  The strategy is not surprising given that Oracle’s heritage, but it also may be very timely.  According to ESG’s Server Virtualization Maturity Model, many organizations have yet to include mission-critical applications in their virtualization deployments. ESG research indicates that application support on virtualized platforms, performance, security, IT organizational alignment, and IT skill sets remain top barriers to adoption.

As far as specifics go, Brian did rave about the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder which enables users to create a series of linked/connected application components running in virtual machines.  Each virtual machine is created using a template which also includes information about the connection to the other application components. If anything happens to one or all of the components, the virtual machine(s) can be recreated with a few simple clicks within Virtual Machine Manager or the Virtual Machine Manager plug-in to Oracle Enterprise Manager.  Provisioning redundant or test and development environments or rebuilding an application component is now plausible within minutes and without many operational headache.

We will provide additional analysis later, but give Oracle credit for segmenting the virtualization market (just as ESG did) and recognizing where the next opportunity is.