Blog posts tagged with 'grp-ce'

There is an interesting debate going on over on the Google cloud computing group that also helps point out some of the appropriate use cases for cloud computing. The example used is a simple comparison of Amazon EC2 vs. purchasing a set of servers for development purposes ( I have added some additional costs and scenarios below ) This example also assumes the servers fit in existing space and either environment would be managed by existing staff.

 On the surface it's apparent that EC2 is significantly more expensive if the set up is utilized 24x7x365, even a 40 hour week yields a slightly higher cost. So where is all the savings ? What's all the hype about ? This simple example does point out that the Cloud is not always a more cost effective solution it really comes down to what is the particular use case and alternative costs. For example if there is no space available or the existing space has reached the power limits of the facility ( a more common occurrence ). That means that the likely scenario is finding a Colo facility to provide space power and bandwidth. Depending on location and bandwidth usage this could easily cost $8,000+ per year plus additional remote administration hardware and service fees, effectively increasing the annual cost of purchased equipment to near $ 14,000. Although this option is still less than Amazon if utilized 24x7x365, it now is significantly more than the cost of the 40 hour week at EC2 which may be reality for a development environment. And if you only need the setup for a month of dev or testing Amazon becomes a no brainier.. put on your credit card !
What both examples point out are the fact that there is single answer. In fact the right answer for many companies might be premise plus cloud. In order for this to work for a single workload however a seamless connection would be required, recognizing this has led to the Citrix Cloud Bridge based on our WANScaler acceleration technology. In fact, Citrix is in the unique position to be able to assemble the prerequisite technologies that make the C3 Citrix Cloud Center an optimized solution for many scenarios.

There are many other pro's, con's and hidden costs of each option, I am interested to hear what the community has considered regarding Cloud economics and/or other factors.

     
In my last post, I discussed the new look and feel for our Access Gateway user experience.   Most of the focus was about the consistency of user experience across Citrix Delivery Center.   Well, the WANScaler product team has done the same with the Accelerator client plug-in. The Accelerator desktop icon is pretty cool...



The real value of Accelerator is that it makes things go faster (hence the name, gotta love those creative marketing folks ).  

In my job, the biggest kick that I get with Accelerator is when I transfer files from my laptop to my V: drive on the network.   First pass on a big Powerpoint presentation download can take a couple of minutes across the world, but then after a few tweaks to the file, the upload  takes less than 10 seconds.  There is no way that I'll ever let someone take this away from me.  

The performance improvement is a result of Delta compression where only the changes are re-transmitted.  The running joke is that we'll improve this someday and call it Gamma compression.

The geek in me has fun opening the Accelerator Manager window and watching  the Performance page. The more light blue in the graph the better.  Here, it's making my home DSL line feel like I'm in the office on the LAN.

Accelerator integrates with the Access Gateway client so that you get the combined benefit of a fast and secure connection when you are remote.  Although, I run in this mode on our open wireless network when in the office as well. More on this some other time...

With the Accelerator icon running in my systray, I know that WANScaler and the Accelerator client plug-in are quietly working in the background to make my experience "LAN-like" everywhere I connect.

Go Fast!

Gordon  

 
 In my last post, I discussed the importance of user experience -> It's All About The User Experience (IAATHUX) 
Our Access Gateway team has come up with a new look and
feel that is nice and clean.   I think this is much more intuitive and consistent with the experience across Citrix Delivery Center.   Notice that they are using plugin terminology in anticipation of App Receiver.

The desktop icon has changed from the "two rubic's cubes connected by a red pipe" to the simple and easy to understand lock symbol.   The rationale here is that secure access is not just about remote access but should secure connections onsite and offsite.

The thing I like the most with Access Gateway is that with auto-reconnect, I can just live in secure connected mode all the time.  At Citrix, we run open wireless networks at most locations, so I can just put my laptop to sleep and start-up in any location (including at home) and be assured a secure connection without having to do anything.  I just see the secure lock icon in my systray and the auto reconnect happen as I transit networks. 
 
With the advantages of de-perimeterization,
I think more and more users will appreciate this model. Check out the Jericho Forum, for more on this model.

Cheers,

Gordon

I've had a great opportunity to travel the world this year and meet with a wide range of our customers and partners. I've been struck with the number of CIO's, IT Managers and Admin's who are consistent in their frustrations and questions around finding a better way to manage desktops. In one meeting with the IT team of a Japanese company with more than 100,000 employees, the CIO summarized this well with his comment, "We can't go on with the current desktop model as we need to reduce the overall cost of IT while continuing to deliver innovation to our businesses". I hear something similar to this in customers large and small across geographies and industries. This is a classic headache looking for aspirin IT challenge. The next part of the conversation generally turns into something like: "We know we have a problem, but how do we work our way out of this mess?".

VDI, What is all the fuss?

The cost and complexity of the current default model of: purchase personal computer's/laptop's, install standard operating environment, deploy with user, then patch/fix/secure & repeat is hitting the breaking point. Maybe this is just the edge of the pendulum swing between mainframe/dumb terminal to networked PC, but it's clear that there is a big "headache" today. Desktop Virtualization represents a new way forward that can be radically simpler than the current managed desktop model. The benefits of desktop virtualization are now within the reach of every organization. Customers deploying XenDesktop are seeing total cost of ownership per desktop reducing 10%-40% annually, time to value is pretty much instantaneous and information security is significantly increased.

After a recent customer event I had one IT manager ask me, "so for my 5,000 desktops I can use just one image of XP and manage 1 copy rather than 5,000? Wow, my management challenge just disappeared". With ah-ha moments like this, you can see why more and more organizations are making the move to centralized delivered desktops. The current economic headwind that businesses are facing is creating an opportunity for every company to take a look at current models and make large scale changes to emerge from this downturn in a stronger position. With this in mind here are a few principles and key points when considering Desktop Virtualization.

1) One size DOESN'T fit all

As we worked with customers to define and develop XenDesktop, we attacked the biggest pain point first -> the cost of delivering and managing desktops inside the company on the local area network. We partnered with a number of our hardware partners to build a new class of end user device called a Desktop Appliance - meeting a base level of capabilities to ensure a great user experience and options to increase capabilities over time. The Desktop Appliance combined with XenDesktop becomes the primary device for Office Workers and delivers a user experience better than a desktop PC.

Desktop virtualization can provide a user customized desktop for Office Workers; however it is an over-kill for task workers and does not address the needs of mobile workers. Task Workers include call center agents, retail clerks and shop floor workers, generally accessing a set of specific applications. A shared server based desktops (delivered by XenApp) combined with a traditional Thin Client device is the most secure and cost effective way to deliver applications to this group of users - 20 million task workers operate in this model every day. When you consider that a shared server can accommodate the needs to 300-400 users vs 30-50 virtual desktop users per server for VDI, the cost comparison is fairly straightforward. Mobile workers include sales execs, service personnel and executives who carry a laptop and need their applications with them on the road, both on and off the network. Application virtualization is the best solution for cutting down the cost of managing applications for mobile worker laptops. Citrix has a long history supporting mobile workers and now we have the only product, XenApp, that acts as a single application hub that can deliver line of business applications hosted from the data center and productivity applications like Microsoft Office streamed to run locally on the users laptop for offline use in locations like airplanes and at customer offices.

2) IAATHUX - It's All About the User Experience

I'm a virtual desktop (XenDesktop) user and it really is a fresh, personal & fast experience every time I log-in. My XenDesktop starts up faster than I can get a cup of coffee and absolutely screams when I launch and use applications throughout the day -> apps and data live close together on servers in the data center. Knowing there is no spinning hard drive or humming fans makes me feel good about reducing power and air conditioning in our offices. With anytime, secure remote access, I can work from home with my customized desktop when needed and not make unnecessary off-hours trips to the office. I have accessed my virtual desktop from all locations, broadband, our small regional sales offices, offshore during my international trips. With the EasyCall feature of XenDesktop set to make calls from the office, or the users cellphone or home telephone, I can be productive with voice and data access from anywhere - and see significant savings in my cellphone & telephone bills.

3) The Desktop: Just Another Datacenter Workload?

Server virtualization is primarily focused on the wringing efficiency from under-utilized servers. Virtualizing desktops, on the other hand, is more an end-to-end solution including servers, networks and client devices. Defining the desktop as Operating System + Applications + User Profiles is useful to highlight the key components. The dynamic assembly of these components and delivery as a service are critical to realize the cost advantages of desktop virtualization and improved user experience.

4) App Virtualization: Key to Succesful VDI

In much the same way that having a single copy of the operating system to be delivered to all users, application virtualization can deliver a single image of each application across a broad range of users. XenApp delivers applications on a hosted or streamed basis to virtual desktops (in addition to physical desktops). Keeping individual copies of applications for each user and maintaining these across users just doesn't make sense and destroys the cost benefits of desktop virtualization. Managing each application separately from the desktop image is the only way to make the virtual desktop projects cost effective.

5) Storage, storage and more storage - Why Storage is a Critical Factor

The first versions of early virtual desktop infrastructure seemed designed to increase IT's spend on back end storage. Virtualizing applications and managing them separately, as explained above, not only helps in cutting down the cost of desktop and application management but also becomes one of the key factors in reducing the storage requirements of the desktop images. In addition, this virtual desktop image along with applications should be dynamically assembled and provisioned into a virtual desktop on-demand at the time when a user logs on. XenDesktop has been architected to optimize storage requirements by dynamically assembling users' desktop at the time when they logon. The only unique storage required for each user is their profile and application data. This approach has unlocked the business case for Desktop Virtualization using any hypervisor - XenServer, Hyper-V or ESX.

6) Real distance, real networks

With the move to centralized data centers and more virtual workforces, the distance between users and their desktops and applications is increasing. Hence, the delivery of the virtual desktop is equally important regardless of where the end user is. Citrix has a long history with delivery applications over networks ranging from current high speed 1Gb networks with lots of bandwidth and low latency to the skinniest of networks with high latency and failure rates. Our larger customers operate with 10's of thousands of users operating across public and private networks built with wired and wireless network infrastructure from different network infrastructure vendors including Cisco, Juniper, Nortel and others. Since application and networking professionals have lots of hands on experience with Citrix traffic on their networks, we decided to have the same proven virtual delivery protocol, Citrix ICA, in both XenApp and XenDesktop.

7) Client Hypervisor - Fact vs. Fiction

Based on the strategy above, all task workers and office workers should have their desktops centrally hosted in the datacenter, enabling them to securely access their desktop from anywhere. For mobile workers, who need to work offline, I expect more innovation to come where IT can virtualize and stream full desktop images to laptops. Citrix is helping to make this a reality by working closely with the Xen.org, Xen Client Initiative (XCI) to create a fast and free embedded hypervisor for laptops, PC's and PDAs. XCI is an exciting and fast-moving initiative driven by all the biggest names in microprocessors, BIOS, PCs and laptop hardware. Because when it comes to client hypervisors, trying to build something proprietary and closed simply won't cut it. Anything that doesn't have broad, open and compatible implementation across the industry is likely to fail. An embedded client hypervisor will, of course, provide a foundation to deliver local virtual desktops. However, a client side hypervisor alone is not enough for IT to have a complete solution. At Citrix, we're working on a complete solution that integrates a client side hypervisor, application and desktop streaming, application and desktop hosting, and end user profile and context management - this complete solution will ensure that the mobile users can quickly get their personalized desktop and their applications available to them offline and IT can centrally manage the lifecycle of the desktop at lowest possible cost.

In our experience to date with XenDesktop in the market, I've been pleasantly surprised at both the level of interest and speed at which our customers are deploying virtual desktops. It seems that the headache with current desktop management crosses industries, geographies and customer size and that many of these organizations are reaching for the aspirin or already starting to breath a sigh of relief with their virtual desktops.

If you are interested in a third party evaluation of XenDesktop, check out this InfoWorld test by Paul Venezia:  http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/16/38TC-citrix-xendesktop_2.html

Gordon Payne,
Senior Vice President
Delivery Systems Division

And what a release it is. When we started this journey several years ago, the goal of the XenServer team was to create the industry's most comprehensive and open, bare metal virtualization solution on the planet. By nearly every measure, the XenServer 5 release meets or exceeds this objective. It's an entirely new approach to virtualization that makes the first-generation solutions look a bit complex, expensive and kludgy by contrast... kind of like comparing one of those 6-lb cell phones from the 1980s with a sleek new 3G iPhone.

Before I get into all the reasons you have to check out XenServer, I want to personally thank our fantastic team at Citrix who put in endless hours getting this release to market, as well as the hundreds of incredible customers who have discovered a better way to do virtualization and are passionate about helping us make it better with every release. Since the acquisition of XenSource by Citrix, we have grown the capabilities of the XenServer organization and have combined several existing Citrix groups into a tremendous new organization with some of the most talented engineers in the world. I am also pleased to report that every person who came to Citrix as part of the XenSource acquisition is still at Citrix and diligently working on fantastic new innovations. Citrix employs all of the original Xen inventors, so we continue to maintain a technical and leadership advantage when it comes to releasing new products. (As you know from watching all the recent top level departures from that other virtualization company in recent weeks, keeping top talent is no easy task). Software companies are based on people and a core few make all the difference. Tribal knowledge and expertise is very difficult to replace.

XenServer 5 is built on the Xen open source hypervisor, the industry's best, next generation bare metal hypervisor. We are pleased to have a robust community of over 50 major organizations that contribute to the innovation and continued development of this key technology, including all of the biggest names in server and microprocessor design. This incredibly powerful model ensures that the features in today's shipping version of Xen are already optimized to take advantage of next-generation capabilities in chips and servers that won't ship until next year, an advantage that will only increase over time. Xen has been available for many years and can be found in everything from supercomputers to cell phones. Xen is also the building block to most of the world's cloud computing vendors, including Amazon. The technology is robust, innovative, and freely available.

At Citrix, we take a snapshot of the open source Xen "engine" and build a great "automobile" around it called XenServer. With XenServer 5, this "automobile" contains a complete virtualization infrastructure with comprehensive management capabilities. We have designed this latest product to not only meet the competition in key areas, but exceed them in many dimensions. We've always said that the community development of Xen, along with the innovations and open ecosystem around XenServer, would eventually allow us to leapfrog a closed and proprietary first generation architecture. I am pleased to say that XenServer 5 accomplishes exactly that along so many dimensions.

When I talk with customers about XenServer and Citrix, they use words like innovative, open, partner-driven, and value. These characteristics have helped us double revenue every quarter, enter into strategic agreements with the largest server vendors in the world, and most recently, starting to win major enterprise deployments against a very entrenched competitor. Recent data shows that we are gaining market share even before the general release of XenServer 5. With our major OEMs, ISVs and channel partners trained and ready to deliver, it's going to be one heck of a year.

So, what's so great about XenServer 5? To begin with, it's amazingly easy to use, has unparalleled performance, is highly available, and has all the management bells and whistles an enterprise could envision. We've even taken things one-step further and enabled the product to provision both physical and virtual servers in a snap, saving up to 80% on storage costs over other solutions.

Here are some of the things that I am particularly excited about in this release:

Availability - We've added incredible new high availability and disaster recovery capabilities to this release. The new HA function allows for automated placement and restart of VMs in the event of a system failure. In addition, we've partnered with Marathon, giving us a seamless upgrade to the industry's best fault tolerance ("best of show winner at VMworld"), whereby applications can remain completely online and "compute through" any failure. No other server virtualization technology offers this level of availability and fault tolerance.

Performance - XenServer has the best performance of any product on the market, and this release builds on that by providing better Windows performance and enhanced memory management for improved performance of resource intensive workloads like Exchange and our own XenApp.

XenCenter Management - We've made many, many improvements to XenCenter, our easy-to-use management system. We've added a super cool Web 2.0 style search tool, performance monitoring, alerting and the new XenConvert utility for easy P2V and V2V conversions.

Storage Management Enhancements - This is an area I am particularly excited about. We've partnered with storage vendors to leverage native storage array capabilities by XenServer. This integration eliminates CPU-intensive storage operations to be performed by the host server and enables maximum use of array-based storage capabilities. We don't treat feature-rich storage arrays as just a dumb set of disks and load the host CPU with expensive storage operations as our competition does. In a word, we've done storage right.

While XenServer 5 can certainly stand on its own as a great server virtualization product, at Citrix, we've taken the game to the next level. XenServer is a fundamental component to the Citrix Delivery Center product family, enabling integrated application delivery from the datacenter to the desktop. The dynamic capability of XenServer provides the foundation for turning the static data center into a flexible and agile "delivery center". In addition to XenServer, Citrix Delivery Center contains XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler and the upcoming Workflow Studio tool for orchestrating it all together and making it easy to integrate our solutions with products you already have in your environment. The products are all designed to complement each other and we will continue to innovate around the integration of these products, always providing the best application delivery solution in the market. When it comes to application delivery, Citrix has it covered, and XenServer is a basic building block in the solution.

Finally, with the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, some have suggested that Citrix and Microsoft are now competing head-to-head in the server virtualization space. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that Citrix (and XenSource before the acquisition) have been collaborating with Microsoft for years to ensure that XenServer and Hyper-V are complementary solutions. The first thing you need to understand is that XenServer is a bare metal (Operating System agnostic) virtualization product while Hyper-V is a built-in part of the Windows Server operating system. We believe there are two types of users: those who want to perform virtualization as a bare metal extension of their hardware running multiple types of OS guests, and those who want to consume it as part of the operating system. Together, Citrix and Microsoft meet both of these market needs in a way that is flexible and interoperable - giving customers the best of both worlds

XenServer will always be bare metal, will always have great performance and leading-edge features, and will always be open. Additionally, we will take advantage of Hyper-V deployments in the future by delivering advanced XenServer capabilities on top of the Hyper-V installed base. This is a playbook Citrix and Microsoft have run successfully for years. Our philosophy at Citrix is all about customer choice and market coverage - it's a customer-first strategy we believe in and are excited about bringing to the rapidly-evolving server virtualization market.

XenServer is here and ready to deliver. Before you lock yourselves in to a proprietary system, I encourage you to try XenServer. If you're anything like the growing list of CIOs and IT managers who fill my in-basket each week, you're going to love what you see. But hey, I know I'm a bit biased. Why don't you download a copy today and try it out for yourself. I'd love to hear what you think!

Peter Levine

Executive SVP & GM, Virtualization & Management  Division

Learn more at  http://www.xenserver5.com/

A somewhat frequent conversation I seem to have with new acquaintance's not familiar with our industry often turns to a discussion of   " what does Citrix do ? " After a brief elevator pitch on fast app delivery, centralization, security, and minimizing the need to install apps, etc, there is typically a point that they can relate to in their own situation. It may be a failed hard drive, a desire to work from different devices or locations, or the frustration of waiting for IT to come fix their PC. You can tell when the light bulb goes on and they start to envision being able to utilize the benefits of what Citrix ( and our community ) could provide for themselves or their company. 

If the discussion goes further a common question comes up that goes something like " If it's so great , why doesn't every company do this ? " sometimes followed by, why is Citrix only a $ 1.5 Billion company ? why not a lot more ?    

These are some of the objections I have heard  along the way as to why more companies don't adopt Citrix, or the concept of App Delivery on a broader more strategic scale. What is the top objection you hear about ( beyond initial cost ) ?  

Top objection or barrier to Citrix implementations	Choose
Awareness of what is possible and valuing the benefits
Problems with a past implementation
User experience concerns
Application compatibility and/or ISV support
Risk of change from the status quo

Others ?

Welcome to my blog!  

I've been at Citrix for about 6 months now and my team and I have been hard at work to bring you the revamped Citrix Community  site.   I'm calling this version of the site "Citrix Community 2.0" to emphasize the fact that it's a new version of the site and that the site incorporates many of the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 technologies that you see written  or filmed about so often in the media.  I tend to think that a lot of Web 2.0 is overhyped (are there really this many Web 2.0 companies??), but I found this definition that I really like "Web 2.0 is linking people...people sharing, trading, and collaborating" If you have 4 minutes, I really suggest checking out the video - plus it's got a great soundtrack. 

The whole purpose of updating our site is to really allow people with an interest in virtualization and application delivery to share and learn ideas.  In fact, you'll see our tagline is "Discover, Connect, Participate".  The new site allows you to all of that and more! 

So, let's get down to the details.  What is new about the site? 

The Citrix Community site is a new multi-media, launching pad to reach your favorite Citrix communities.  It is the location to discover what is hot around application delivery and virtualization; connect with Citrix product teams, customers and industry pundits; and participate through sharing of opinions, thoughts and knowledge in blogs, forums and code sharing.   

New capabilities include better description and easier navigation to Citrix communities, ties to our extended communities in the industry (Hello Citrix CTPs!), enhanced multi-media/video support and real time blog feeds from across the blogosphere, all on a completely redesigned look and feel. In addition, we have made it easier for Citrites (that's what we call ourselves) and non-Citrites (that would be you!) to participate and create content.  Check out our Video Tip Factory if you don't believe me. 

Of course, one of the key communities is the Citrix Developer Network, which has undergone quite a dramatic change itself... 

The Citrix Developer Network is the place for open, unfiltered, straight talk on Citrix products.  The goal of the Citrix Developer Network is to provide access to technical information for all aspects of our community, from Network Architects to IT Professionals, to Data Center Architects to Developers.   

Based on your requests, forum posts and support calls, we have expanded the products covered, while simplifying access to the information.  We now have specific Developer Networks for XenApp, XenDesktop, NetScaler,  XenServer and one of our newest (and coolest) products, Workflow Studio.  Interested in multiple products?  Never fear, due to tagging technology, blogs, discussion and content relevant to multiple products will be available wherever relevant (example, server virtualization is key to both XenServer and XenDesktop). 

New capabilities available in per-product flavors include RSS feeds for our forums (I know, duh - this should have been there long ago), best practices pages, multi-media centers, wiki articles, code snippets and SDK examples. 

Last but not least, the Citrix Blogs platform has some simple to use, yet powerful enhancements, including "window shade" views of blogs to allow you to see more content in less real estate and the simplification of our group blogs to ensure you can find the content you are looking for. 

Today's launch of the revamped Citrix Community site is the first phase of multiple updates occurring in the next few months.  It is the result of a lot of hard work from the team, but also from the community.  Many of the changes and planned changes come directly from you, our community.  We are not done yet and I hope you aren't either. 

Please provide us feedback in the forms of responses to this blog, emails, or better yet post a video. 

Thanks for taking the time to check out the new Citrix Community site... and I have one last request... 

Discover, Connect, Participate

John

 A few of us were having a brainstorm session recently regarding the ICA client, mobility and device support, inevitably the discussion led to the topic of competing priorities, limited resources, and business cases. Al Granville ( sometimes affectionately referred to as the " suit " in the blogosphere ) is the Product Manager for the ICA client and has the enviable position of driving what features and functions get included ( and which ones don't ). Nowadays you can't talk about mobility without the topic of support for the iPhone and where that fits versus all the other priorities. If you also want Citrix iPhone support please place your vote and tell us your use case here. Typically this analysis means doing a market analysis, talking to customers and developing a business case comparing all the alternatives and determining the ROI. During this discussion however, Al made the profound statement that maybe in this situation the business case simply needs to say  ...   it's the iPhone.. Stupid !  

This brings up a really interesting point that IT also seems to be dealing with lately, that is what is the value of new and "cool " and do you spend resources to enable these technologies. It could be the iPhone or it could be Web 2.0 collaboration tools or desktop video conferencing, whatever. Sometimes it's straight forward to put an ROI and business case together, however quantifying the value of "cool" is subjective at best. Apple as the best example has done a superb job proving that elegant design, user experience, and "cool " is a profitable business model. This certainly has proven to be the case in the consumer world, but it's also evident that this is impacting the business IT world as well, at least from the perspective of user expectations. I am interested to know if this phenomena is also impacting IT's decision process for implementing new projects.  

What criteria does your IT organization use for evaluating new projects ?	Choose
Business requirements, ROI, and compliance only
The above plus,  Executive mandates
The above plus,  User productivity and desires ( like iPhone support )
The above plus,  Does the new IT technology provide a competitive advantage

 
There is a lot of hype and reality in the world of Cloud computing today. On the hype side there are numerous data points; VC investments, M&A, data centers under construction,  new conferences and events. Adding fuel to the fire is extensive press, analyst and blog coverage ( like this ) plus books like Nickolas Carr's book " The Big Switch ".  It definitely feels like we are in the Hype cycle. On the other hand there are now many examples of reality as well. SaaS offerings like Salesforce.com and many HR applications plus web site Hosting have established themselves as a legitimate part of the IT portfolio of many corporations large and small. 

 Will traditional corporate IT really move dramatically to the cloud as Carr predicts?  I think a lot of the answer comes down to control and customization .... or lack of it. SaaS Clould offerings can work great if the application offered aligns with the business requirement without significant customization or integration. If IT is comfortable without the hands-on control they may even manage and support the project because it's good example of doing more with less. However in most cases there are too many custom requirements and perhaps regulatory controls that make premise based solutions the norm and leave SaaS offerings relegated to specific point solutions. As business requirements continue to grow, premised based solutions grow accordingly  and sometimes disproportionately when centralizing into limited data centers.  A resulting problem that most IT shops now face is a lack of space and/or power. Once the local premise is at capacity a typical next step is to move some or even all the equipment to a dedicated Co-location facility. For many companies this is more of an incremental step because they have already centralized their Application Delivery Infrastructure and may already be using Co-Lo's for back up and Disaster Recovery operations. The definition of "premise" gets blurry, but IT remains in control. The facility is likely owned and operated by a service provider, but everything inside the " cage " is owned and operated remotely by corporate IT.       

For companies that have taken this step of moving some or all of their infrastructure to the "Cage"  the transition seems to have worked well. Co-Lo Data Centers typically have great bandwidth, power, and room to grow. Plus the high cost of specialized facilities are spread across many Co-Lo tenants often lowering the cost compared to providing company managed dedicated Data Centers. IT is remotely managing the infrastructure with perhaps some on site assistance or occasional trips to the Co-Lo. As long as the App Delivery Infrastructure is robust users don't know or care were the servers are, management is happy because it reduces Real Estate dependencies and  facility upgrades like added power, AC and generators. So, if IT is satisfied remotely managing their infrastructure ( except the trips to the cage... ) new applications get implemented, security is enforced , new users provisioned, etc, do they really care about the hardware the server images and storage is running on as long as it stays up with predictable performance ?  I suspect many IT Pros would give up the responsibility, time and burden of acquiring, deploying, cabling, and configuring servers and storage ( and trips to the Cage.. ). As long as they could still architect the solution they need, deploy server images, reboot images, network servers together and generally administer the functions they need to deliver apps and store data, there is a good chance they don't view the underlying hardware as something they really need to own and manage, just like the datacenter real estate.         
 
Perhaps the movement to the Cloud for companies that have already moved to the Cage will not be such a disruptive event. As long as there are Cloud providers that can provide the underlying infrastructure including servers, storage and networking with SLA's, Security, and the appropriate level of administrative control. And if IT can still customize and "control" at the level they need to, they will likely be compelled to make the next transition to the Cloud.  The benefits of Virtualization for rapid deployment and flexibility plus the intrinsic cost benefits of muti-tenancy will win-over converts that are faced with demanding time to deployment challenges and capital cost constraints ( isn't that most of IT ? ). These Cloud service provider offerings will need to overcome some of the SLA challenges that have faced the early adopters like Web 2.0 startups on EC2, plus address security, sustainability and redundancy fears, but these are all curable issues. This will take some time and there are likely scenario's of hybrid models of premise plus Cloud solutions, but the writing is on the wall .. the Cage is just a step to the Cloud.    

As you may have seen in previous blog discussions some of us are very keen on the idea of a device that goes beyond the existing smartphone limitations of small screens and keyboards. The ability to connect to XenApp - XenDesktop from a phone and view it ( & use it ) on a large screen is now possible. This video demos the Nirvana Phone concept with an iMate 6150 and a Redfly from Celio. We are not at Nirvana yet, but these devices make it visible we are getting closer.

Do you ever go on trips and wish you could leave your laptop home?	Choose
All the time
Occasionally
Wishfull thinking ..

Let us know of other candidates for the Nirvana Phone, and what you think is still missing.