Facebook

Will Facebook-style features increase value and accuracy in CMDBs?

The value of a configuration management database (CMDB) is proportionally dependent on the level of involvement from the IT staff using the tool. Two of the biggest challenges of a successful CMDB implementation are propagating the configuration items and keeping the thing up to date.

If data center managers could get employees to spend as much time updating server configurations as they do updating their Facebook status, the accuracy and immediacy of the tool would be a huge boon.

This is the concept behind Novell’s myCMDB, a software layer interfacing between the CMDB and the users that purports to bring social networking aspects to CMDB data use. Today Novell announced the rebranded myCMDB, from Novell’s acquisition of Managed Objects in October 2008.

The tool is designed for companies that have homegrown CMDBs, built by users on MySQL or Sybase, but will also work on CMDB offerings from HP, BMC and IBM. According to Peter O’Neill, Research Vice President at Forrester, around half of the existing CMDBs in production are homegrown, and “limited in their reporting and visibility outside of the team that created it.”

Web 2.0, you know: Wikipedia, Facebook, del.icio.us and us!
During my conversation with Siki Giunta, former CEO of managed objects and Richard Whitehead, director of marketing for data center solutions with Novell, they spent a lot of our briefing comparing the product to Facebook and Wikipedia.

“Incorporating Web 2.0 in the myCMDB design allows a CMDB to propagate faster, drives more adoption and improves the quality of the data,” Giunta said. “Wikipedia is a huge database, contributed by the end user, federated by news sources. A CMDB is created by people, federated by HelpDesk. Why do people go to Wikipedia? They feel that they can contribute.”

Giunta said myCMDB uses inboxes, RSS feeds, and the atmosphere and look and feel of Facebook. It also features “Google-like” search, and for social bookmarking, myCMDB took a page from del.icio.us. “When you’re navigating this data, it’s easy to lose your place.”

Are these just marketing buzzwords, or are there real “Web 2.0” attributes to this product?

“Sure, there are functional comparisons to be made,” said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk. “The emphasis on including people’s profiles and activity streams is the most relevant. They’re also trying to pull the community and sharing aspects you’d expect to see in consumer apps. These collaborative IT management features, like being able to share different reports or views in myCMDB, are pulled from the Web 2.0 world.”

O’Neill agreed. “The release does provide CMDB insight and reporting in a very modern mode (“Web 2.0” being the metaphor for that) – much more than any other provider,” he said. “This new style is being increasingly adopted, and preferred in businesses. One of the reasons for the adoption of software-as-a-service solutions is their modern user interface.”

But the question remains, is an updated Facebook-like user interface (UI) enough to encourage employees to spend more time on the CMDB, thereby utilizing it more and also keeping it up to date and useful?

“Definitely. The IT management space has a chronic case of terrible UI syndrome. I often consider a fresh, well done UI that matches current trends in UI and usability a self standing feature on its own,” Coté said. “While myCMDB has a nice looking UI, the thing that will make the difference with it is getting users to interact with the system and build up the ‘content’ in it.”

Giunta said this may be the only way to get the next generation of IT administrators to interact with systems management tools in the future. “In the IT operations side, if you keep maintaining old consoles, all the kids will go to work on the application side of the house and we’ll end up with only old people in the data centers,” she said.

Gartner lists 10 most disruptive technologies of 2009

Gartner, Inc. analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2009 during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held in Orlando through October 16.

Some of the technologies listed were the obvious, like virtualization and cloud computing, and Gartner predicts that servers will evolve beyond the blade server stage that exists today.

Gartner’s definition of a strategic technology is one that could have a significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. The analysts looked at factors like high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major financial investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

Gartner’s the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 include:

Virtualization. In addition to server virtualization, virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly as a way to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication). This can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information.

Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing providers deliver computing capabilities “as a service” to external companies and the services are delivered in a highly scalable and elastic fashion using Internet technologies and techniques.

Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.

Servers — Beyond Blades. Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs.

The organization tracks the various resource types, for example, memory, separately and replenishes only the type that is needed, so companies don’t have to pay for all resource types to upgrade capacity. It also simplifies the inventory of systems, eliminating the need to track and purchase various sizes and configurations. The result will be higher utilization because of lessened “waste” of resources that are in the wrong configuration or that come along with the needed processors and memory in a fixed bundle.

Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles.

The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

Enterprise Mashups.Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their models for delivering and managing applications.

Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational potential it may offer their enterprises.

Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs software to accomplish its function.

Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking (Facebook), social collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.

Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent due to increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry.

Organizations must build careful, detailed plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate administrative team convergence.

Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance. BI is directed toward business managers and workers who are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.

Green IT. Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Organizations should consider regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.

A few of these technologies were also on Gartner’s list for 2008, including Green IT, Unified Communications, WOA, Mashup and Social Software. Other technologies Gartner expected to be significant for businesses in 2008 were Business Process Modeling, Metadata Management, Virtualization 2.0, Computing Fabric, and Real World Web.

Facebook relying on Intel Xeon processors in Data Center build-out

The social networking website Facebook is building out its data center infrastructure using Intel Corp. processor-based systems and plans to deploy thousands of Intel Xeon processor-based servers over the next year to help accommodate its rapid growth, the two companies announced last week.

Intel will also collaborate with Facebook to determine the best configurations for its server and software using Intel processors, taking into account energy efficiency and performance.

Over the past several months, Facebook tested and benchmarked a number of server platforms and scenario, and ultimately selected the Intel Xeon 5400 series quad-core processors for its round of new deployments that begin in July.

When Facebook was contacted for more information on the systems and processors it has tested, why it chose Intel over AMD and other questions about data center infrastructure plans, it refused comment.

That said, Intel’s press statement had the following quote from Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook; “Intel has demonstrated that the performance of their systems can help Facebook scale our infrastructure and continue to deliver the best experience to users around the world.”

“When you are responsible for providing a fast, high-quality experience to more than 90 million people worldwide, every ounce of efficiency matters,” Heiliger said in the statement.

Also, since Facebook’s applications are mostly built on open source technologies, the companies stated that some of the insights from this collaboration may be contributed back to the open source community, benefiting other companies that use open source technologies.