A Blog by Andrew Rothfield Re-Think, Re-New, Re-Invest in IT

At the gym this morning, we had a lively conversation about applications and virtualization.  The other person, a software rep from Lawson, told me he was often asked if his application was VMware compliant.  My customers seem to have many questions on what can be virtualized and what cannot.  I recently read an article about this subject.  The question what applications cannot be virtualized, not want can.

Here is a set of criterion that might help:

1. Applications that install and rely on a system-level driver, i.e. an application that installs a print driver or a USB device driver. Some applications may allow for the drivers to be installed independent of the other components of the application. As a work around for this scenario, the driver portion of this application could be installed locally on the client system, allowing the other components of the application to be virtualized.

2. Applications that install boot-time services.

3. Applications that use COM+.

4. MAPI virtualization

5. COM DLL surrogate virtualization, i.e. DLL’s that run in Dllhost.exe.

6. Applications with licensing enforcement tied to machine, e.g. the license is tied to the system’s MAC address.

That is about it.  I hope this will help you. 

Someone once asked me how you eat and elephant, I answered, one bite at a time.  The same is true when you start to re-think your datacenter and how you will go forward into the future of IT.

I am no genius but, it does look like the network is the computer.  (I think Steve Balmer from MS kind of missed it when he say the future is the PC.)  It also doesn't take a genius to see the amazing opportunity coming over the next three years when the three billionth person joins the network.

Scale is required to reach this vast audience.  You can succeed by first re-thinking how a competitive advantage can be had through IT.

A Forrester Research  report last fall found that half the businesses surveyed said they are currently "virtualizing" their computer servers; two-thirds said they will start using server-virtualization technologies by the end of 2007.

First you need the recipe to cook the elephant - we can help.  

Recently a venture capitalist looking at investments for the enterprise data center space stated, it is clear that there are multiple contestants in the fight to control this market over the next few years. The question facing CIOs today is - how will you  shape your next enterprise data center?

The paradigm shift from single server per application to virtual machines has far reaching effects upon all aspects of data center management from cost control to data management.  It is far more than the deployment of blade servers and v12n (virtualization) software.  

Ten years ago, IT was a perfect place to slash budgets.  Today, technology is ubiquitous, and few, if any enterprises can continue without getting maximum value out of every dollar spent in IT.  That is why the decisions made today for the emerging data center of tomorrow are so important.  

As a customer, I would take three steps:

First, re-think which applications will be mission critical, business critical and are key to driving revenue.  As a rule of thumb, these applications are between 10% and 50% of the applications that are currently driving revenue.

Second, a plan should be develop to re-define the physical data center.  In some cases, this could mean a new data center, in other, it could mean updating the current data center to meet your needs for the long term. 

Third, a plan should be developed to re-invest based upon current and future business drivers, operating costs and projected capital cost over a three to five year period.

Nearly all of the CIOs that I have spoken to over the past year have a v12n project underway or plan to have one. The benefits of v12n are well-known.

You need a plan.  You need people who will assess the applications, the business drivers and your budget to get you from today to the future.  You can learn from what others are doing to lessen the business impact and variable costs around IT. 

We are here to help.