Tag Archives | Cloud Computing

Play to Win the Game with an Effective APM Strategy

By on January 17, 2012 in CA Technologies on APM

Former NFL Coach Herm Edwards delivers the best quote-worthy sounds bites – also known as “Hermisms” – in sports television. While most people recognize him for shouting, “You play to win the game!” during a New York Jets press conference, there are so many great quotes that it can be hard to find a favorite. Here are some of mine:

• In a speech to NFL rookies last summer, he advised players to steer clear of trouble off the field, explaining “Nothing good ever happens after midnight!”

• My all-time favorite is “When I say it’s Easter, start coloring your eggs!” This feels like the right place to admit I don’t always understand what Coach Edwards is trying to say, but this one makes me laugh every time. It also makes me want to run laps and do pushups.

What makes Coach Edwards so appealing is that his straight-talk advice, honest principles and passionate wisdom go well beyond the sports arena and guide us to achieve greatness in our personal and professional lives.

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Vigilance Around Testing Space and Time Constraints Is Key To Successful XaaS Deployments

By on January 12, 2012 in Service Provider Focus

Not that long ago, some colleagues and I were discussing the future of infrastructure management products in the cloud-based era we were quickly evolving into. The discussion revolved around how cloud-based services – what I am calling XaaS as in “anything as a service” – and how those things would function in a distributed, cloud-based environment.

What struck us as a predominantly failed assumption was that applications in use today in enterprise data centers – effectively local clouds of computing, storage and network – were not the same environment as an externalized version of those things. In particular, there is a certain amount of “space and time” between storage, computing and networking components in a network regardless of its deployment.

In an enterprise environment, specifically a single data center environment, the space and time (i.e. delay, jitter, loss) characteristics of those components is normally quite low. Given this current normal mode of operation, applications are designed to tolerate limited amounts of these things and will complain, malfunction and downright not work when those things are moved outside of the day-to-day limits. Even stretching an enterprise data center across different geographies still results in manageable values of those space/time characteristics because in general, enterprise IT operations has a very tight leash on these characteristics simply because they are either operated and managed by them directly, or they are outsourced/leased from a third party under stringent contractual terms.

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More on Mobility in 2012

By on January 11, 2012 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

Mobility is the talk of the town this week. Maybe it is the CES 2012 show happening now in Las Vegas, or maybe the time is just right to shine a spotlight on mobile technologies.

The latest data on mobility comes from IDC. According to a recent article in Network World, mobile technologies are among those that research firm IDC predicts will increase spending on network equipment.

IDC predicts that mobility, video and cloud will drive network revenue up by nearly 9%, the article says, which is significantly higher than the 3.8% the market experienced in 2011. Part of the forecasted 8.7% growth on network equipment spending in 2012 could also come from necessary refresh cycles on hardware, the article explained.

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CA Cloud Management Tech Lands in Lead, IDC reports

By on December 12, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

The overwhelming interest in cloud computing and cloud services is driving the need for another technology: cloud systems management. As with all new technologies, if you adopt it, the need for management will come. Aside from the butchering of that “Field of Dreams” quote, the fact is that IT management vendors need to gauge when and how much to invest in evolving their products to manage new technologies.

Recent market research from IDC seems to indicate that the efforts CA Technologies put into acquiring and developing cloud systems management technologies is paying off. The company landed in one of the top two spots for worldwide cloud systems management vendors, owning 14.7% of the market based on 2010 estimated revenues.

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Prognosticator Points to IT Service Quality as Priority in 2012

By on December 7, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

It’s that time of year again; the time when IT industry watchers make their best estimates of which technologies and trends will take off in the coming months. As 2011 comes to an end, 2012 promises more of the same in some respects, but one expert predicts IT professionals in the next calendar year will experience even more pressure to optimize IT services and guarantee high quality across cloud, virtual, hybrid and more environments.

Andi Mann, vice president of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies, authored a post for vmblog.com in which he details the 10 top technology trends he anticipates for 2012. Talk and subsequent adoption of cloud computing continues but more in a hybrid sense for next year. Mann expects to see the demise of stand-alone virtualization management products in enterprise IT shops, and a new life for mainframes as cloud platforms. And among the 10, one prediction should get the attention of IT professionals responsible to manage IT service quality and performance. Mann writes:

Service Quality Will Be IT’s Responsibility Again

As hybrid IT proliferates, business owners will (again) realize they do not want to manage technology; they just want it to work. In 2012, end users will increasingly expect IT to take responsibility for service quality, regardless of who is buying, selling or delivering that service. IT will need to eliminate the blind spots in hybrid IT, actively support an explosion of devices, deal with complex cross-boundary services, and find a way to deliver a 360-degree service assurance across all facets of end-user experience.

Read all of Andi Mann’s virtualization and cloud predictions in the vmblog.com post here.

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Top 10 Reasons to Register for Service Assurance at CA World 2011

By on September 29, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

Here’s why it will be worth your while to spend some time in the Service Assurance Focus Area at CA World 2011. 1. Get Agile, Fast: CA World 2011 is all about “IT at the Speed of Business.” For IT professionals focused on managing sophisticated infrastructure and applications, Service Assurance is the answer to a [...]

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The Mouse is in the House

By on August 16, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

The WatchMouse acquisition has closed, and we’re excited to welcome WatchMouse employees and customers to the CA Technologies family.

Together with WatchMouse, we are taking our industry-leading, full-featured Application Performance Management (APM) solution to new heights, now giving you comprehensive and flexible options to manage the end-to-end performance of your cloud, mobile and traditional Web applications in a 100% SaaS-based (software-as-a-service) solution.

Things move quickly here at CA Technologies (hence our tagline Agility Made Possible™). We have rebranded the WatchMouse solution as CA Application Performance Management Cloud Monitor (CA APM Cloud Monitor) and you can learn more at ca.com/apmcloudmonitor.

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Data Key to Cloud Move

By on August 8, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

Professional football training camps are in full-swing here in the U.S., (thank [insert your preferred deity here]!) which means coaches and general managers a busy shaping their teams based on a range of numbers and performance evaluations. Once the season gets under way, they’ll have to tinker with rosters as injuries occur or player performance falters.

IT organizations must go through a similar process as they determine which applications stay in the data center and which go to the cloud when filling out their cloud application roster. Having good insight into application performance is central to such a move, both before and after. First, using a system such as a CA Application Performance Management (APM), IT organizations can get a baseline for how applications are currently performing in the existing environment. By establishing the baseline, IT can easily determine if the cloud-version of the application is performing up to or better than expectations and root out issues that may impact users.

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Lack of Security, Skills Vex Potential Cloud Adopters

By on June 17, 2011 in Service Assurance

Enterprise IT executives realize the cost savings, efficient IT operations and faster time to market benefits that cloud computing promises won’t come without some worries, chief among them security and skills.

InformationWeek and CA Technologies recently hosted a series of events dubbed “Assuring Control and Agility in the Cloud: Capitalizing on the New Normal.” At these events, IT executives were invited to discuss their opinions and experiences with emerging technologies. In Boston, the discussion around cloud computing covered data from an InformationWeek study as well as details on CA Technologies Service Assurance approach to providing performance and availability of IT services from the back office through to the cloud.

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Cloud Monitoring Set to Take Off

By on June 15, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

As with most technologies, monitoring and management tools follow a surge in adoption. For 2011, cloud services adopters will be increasing their use of cloud monitoring products to ensure cloud services and applications in the cloud perform as expected.

According to data included in the InformationWeek Analytics State of Cloud Computing Survey of business technology professionals, 30% of more than 600 respondents today receive services from a cloud provider. Another 37% are either planning to use services or considering the use of services from a cloud provider. One-third of those polled in October 2010 have no plans to use cloud services versus nearly one-half who said the same in a previous survey of some 547 respondents conducted by InformationWeek in February 2009. When looking ahead, 90% of respondents in the October 2010 survey predict at least some of their IT services will be delivered from the cloud.

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Private Cloud Feels Right in the Short Term

By on June 13, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

Yesterday I had the benefit of speaking at an event and meeting with a number of customers. The topic, of course, was the cloud and some of the considerations associated with cloud implementation. I say, “Of course,” because cloud is a hot topic these days and on everyone’s mind.

Because I’m a part of the Service Assurance Customer Solutions Unit at CA Technologies, my lens on the topic was focused on the transaction and linking applications, services and transactions to the business and the underlying IT infrastructure.

Some great discussion followed the presentation with a lot of common concerns expressed by the audience. We talked about the notion of hybrid environments in which the business won’t likely put all the eggs in one basket but rather will actually deploy any number of sourcing models simultaneously from on-premise, co-location, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). Beyond the ability to manage service-level agreements (SLA) and assure a high level of service delivery in these environments, security and compliance were the two other topics that really got a lot of attention at the event.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward and Looking Up (to the Clouds)

By on June 9, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert

I had the opportunity to participate in an InformationWeek Executive Roundtable, co-sponsored by CA Technologies, earlier this week in Detroit focused on “Assuring Control while Maintaining Cloud Agility: Capitalizing on the New Normal.” It’s the second in a series of events across North America (see this schedule of the remaining events).

Our host was Brian Gillooly, editor-in-chief of events for the InformationWeek Business Technology Network, who has spent more than two decades reporting and interpreting the developments across the technology landscape. In addition to some data that Brian shared from a recent InformationWeek Analytics study on cloud adoption and my insight into what CA Technologies is hearing and seeing from its customers and prospects, we had a lively conversation with a diverse range of Motor City IT professionals, primarily ones from the auto, healthcare and IT professional services industries.

Toward the end, Brian said something (actually a single word) that triggered a stream of consciousness that I had been collecting, but it wasn’t present for me to formulate a coherent comment. The word was “retrospective.”

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