When we review our technology roadmaps, with their dark-blue in use and dark-orange not in plan bars, we often look most closely at those technologies that show a robust planning band in the middle, with the preference of course going to those technologies in the short-term implementation plans of network engineering managers. When it comes to the voice and video category in our Wave 9 Networking Study preview data, Unified Communications (UC) solutions is showing the best ongoing integration year-over-year as well as a robust planning band in the next year and a half. Twenty-five percent (25%) of respondents have UC solutions in their short-term plans, and 14% mark it as on the horizon for implementation.

This robust planning band shows 39% of respondents moving toward solutions primarily provided by Cisco and Microsoft, with Avaya a distant third in our preview data.

A sampling of narratives around project initiatives supports this projected growth:

• “We decided to move unified communications to Microsoft.”
• “We are putting a huge amount of bandwidth to cover unified communications.”
• “People comment, it’s like, they access their files much faster, being driven by the unified communications, when we go in and put in unified communications you have to put in new switches, gig switches, everyone gets a gig port, everyone notices. It’s many times better accessing their files.”
• “Unified communications may result in the need for more bandwidth at satellite offices.”
• “HP just has a better vision than Cisco does. The downside, they are late to the game with unified communications.”
• “Avaya has some cool stuff around unified communications.”

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High Profile Breaches and Mobile Devices are key spending drivers according to a report authored by Daniel Kennedy, former Wall Street Chief Information Security Officer and now Research Director for Information Security at TheInfoPro

NEW YORK, November 17, 2011 – TheInfoPro, a division of leading analyst and data company The 451 Group, recently released the findings from its bi-annual study of the Information Security market, where the source of the data is in-depth, one-on-one interviews with over 150 decision-makers in the Global 2000. Key findings include:

Information Security spend is strong with many diverse drivers:

• Directionally for 2012, Information Security Professionals are not planning a slowdown. Thirty-seven percent are planning an increase in spend, with 16% planning a decrease.
• Thirty-nine percent are spending more in 2011 vs. 2010, and only 15% are spending less – showing the resiliency of the market in challenging economic times.
• In the one-on-one interviews, decision-makers detailed compliance, mobile devices and preventing data loss as the drivers for spending increases.

Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) and Application-Aware Firewalls are products on the move:

• Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) resides in the top spot of TheInfoPro’s proprietary Information Security Technology Heat Index™, which gauges immediacy of planned implementation for 40 technologies, as the G2000 look to protect custodial and intellectual property data from leaking out of their environment. The traditional antivirus vendors, Symantec (SYMC) and Intel’s (INTC) McAfee, look to benefit with rollouts of both endpoint and network DLP on tap.
• Application-Aware Firewalls make a nice jump in the Heat Index, with Palo Alto and Check Point (CHKP) benefiting from the 28% of in-plan implementations. Palo Alto will be a vendor to watch as it is beginning to replace some of the major incumbent providers with its application-visibility-based approach.

The Information Security study was led by newly appointed Research Director Daniel Kennedy. “Information Security spending is very solid in 2011, and looks to remain that way for 2012. It is not difficult to see why, as significant data breaches in the last few years have never been far from the front page. In addition, environmental complexity continues to increase, including the effects of virtualization and cloud implementations, and consumer IT starts to drive enterprise IT requirements, especially in the mobile computing space,” cites Kennedy.

Prior to joining TheInfoPro, Kennedy was a Partner in the information security consultancy Praetorian Security, LLC, where he directed strategy on risk assessment and security certification. Before that, he was Global Head of Information Security for D.B. Zwirn & Co. (now Fortress Investment Group), as well as Vice President of Application Security and Development Manager at Pershing LLC, a division of the Bank of New York.

About TheInfoPro Information Security Study
The Information Security study is completed biannually and is based on hour-long interviews with Information Security decision-makers at large enterprises in North America. The study focuses on large enterprises: technology roadmaps, vendor performance, forward-looking spending plans, top projects, pain points and organizational metrics. This most recent study had a particular focus on the impact of virtualization, cloud and mobile devices on an organization’s security efforts. A sampling of vendors covered in the Vendor Performance and Technology Roadmap components of the study include: Cisco (CSCO), Check Point (CHKP), Juniper Networks (JNPR), Rapid7, WhiteHat Security, Websense (WBSN), Sourcefire (FIRE), Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet (FTNT), Oracle (ORCL), Dell (DELL), EMC (EMC), Microsoft (MSFT), Blue Coat (BCSI), Trend Micro, Sophos, HP (HPQ) and FireEye. For additional information, or to order this report, please contact sales@theinfopro.com.

About TheInfoPro
TheInfoPro is a division of The 451 Group and a leading advisory and research firm that provides real-world perspectives on the customer and market dynamics of the information technology landscape. Using a unique research methodology that harnesses the collective knowledge and insights of leading IT organizations worldwide, TheInfoPro serves as a conduit between IT decision-makers, technology providers and institutional investors. To learn more, visit http://www.theinfopro.com or email sales@theinfopro.com.

About The 451 Group
The 451 Group is a leading technology-industry analyst and data company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company provides critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company – at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations – rely on The 451 Group’s insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making. The 451 Group is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, Washington DC, London, Boston, Seattle and Denver.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Lynn Schwartz
Newsmaker Group for The 451 Group
lschwartz@newsmakergroup.com
(973) 736-7118

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Originally published as a ThursdayTIP to the respondent network of TheInfoPro. Would you like to receive all of the ThursdayTIPs the minute they are released on a complimentary basis? Then join TheInfoPro’s respondent network.

By all accounts, VMware’s market position is as impregnable as Fort Knox. In TheInfoPro’s Wave 10 of its servers study, an overwhelming 91% of respondents weren’t even thinking about switching to a competitor, and only 3% were actively doing so. Spending plans for 2011 were equally robust, with 33% of respondents planning to spend more, 58% the same and only 9% planning to spend less than in 2010.

Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud, and in the case of virtualization it’s licensing. As a concern/pain point, licensing has grown nearly five-fold since the first half of 2010. As expressed by one respondent from a large enterprise in the industrial/manufacturing sector: “We may save the hardware costs, but there’s no flexibility in the software licensing. We’re not able to realize the actual cost savings.”

As VMware discovered recently, virtual machine licensing is a quagmire that is not as easy to navigate as it looks on the surface, resulting in its capitulation Aug. 3 and the introduction of a more realistic licensing model. The outstanding question is, how will this marketing fiasco affect server pros’ future plans, consideration of alternative suppliers and perception of VMware as a trustworthy strategic partner?

As another large-enterprise respondent in healthcare/pharmaceuticals put it, “They are trying to milk every penny they can out of us before Microsoft eats their lunch. The technology is great, but I don’t need most of it. Microsoft is catching up very quickly, and VMware knows it.”

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The primary reasons are:

1. the priority to roll out Windows 7, which many feel will be the last monolithic desktop upgrade;
2. understanding the increased infrastructure costs needed to support VDI, especially storage; and
3. increases in adoption of application virtualization.

These factors will potentially mitigate the need for a significant VDI rollout as companies look to adopt a blended approach that includes application virtualization and web services.  VMware (VMW) and Citrix (CTXS) are in a two-horse race for VDI; however, it is not shaping up to be a market as pervasive as that for server virtualization. The move to application virtualization benefits Citrix and its legacy terminal services business; however, VMware and Microsoft (MSFT) are the lead vendors for companies planning to implement the technology in 2011.

• As we end 2010, 77% of respondents have less than 5% of their desktops virtualized. While the numbers improve for 2011, 55% will have less than 10% virtualized, with 28% having between 11% and 20% virtualized.
• When looking at the averages of different types of desktops installed, companies anticipate 5% of their environment to be virtualized client images in 2011.
• Spending on VDI was not meaningful in 2010, with the bulk spending less than $100,000. The plans to increase spending in 2011 are based on a low comparable.
• Application virtualization is a technology that has been moving to the mainstream for some time, and now 57% of the sample have it in use, compared to 46% that are using VDI. Our research shows that the value/risk perception for application virtualization has improved in the past year relative to VDI, with more than 75% of the sample planning to use the technology by the end of 2011.

To learn more or get our Real Time Update, contact us here for more information.

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• Larger vendors are leading in choice for infrastructure upgrades, points to potential M&A targets
• Forty percent (40%) of organizations are increasing security budgets in 2010
• Sixty percent (60%) of organizations already utilizing cloud-based infrastructure services or intending to do so in the next two years.

New York – February 23, 2010 – TheInfoPro, an independent research company for the IT industry, today released the results of its Information Security Study, which showed that 40 percent (40%) of enterprises are planning to increase their 2010 security budgets. After a year of restricted spending and delayed projects, major infrastructure upgrade initiatives are finally happening for security IT departments. The study shows that enterprises are favoring the safety of one-stop, all-inclusive vendors, and consequently, the data shows Cisco rising as a formidable security provider.

Potential M&A Targets
As organizations embark on a comprehensive infrastructure refresh, Cisco is now leading in vendor selection for SSL VPN, network access control (NAC) and firewalls. Inside the perimeter, however, pure-play security companies still reign supreme, which could potentially point to them as suitable M&A targets in the coming months for the likes of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other larger vendors.

“Check Point, McAfee and other similar providers would probably be the largest deals in the acquisition pipeline, each a leader in their respective, mainstream technologies, and each with a loyal customer base,” said Ivan Ruzic, CEO of TheInfoPro. “Smaller deals would most likely happen first, meaning that Blue Coat, WebSense and ArcSight could be to a larger organization what 3Com’s TippingPoint technology meant to HP.”

Key Security Concerns for Cloud
The study results, which are based on interviews with 259 organizations within the Fortune 1000 (F1000) and midsize (MSEs) market throughout North America, showed that 60 percent of organizations are already utilizing cloud-based infrastructure services or intending to do so in the next two years. Due to this growth, the largest area of concern for enterprises is how to deal with sensitive data being placed in not only an external cloud environment but also concern for data that is placed within clouds internal to their respective organizations. Nearly three out of four respondents (72%) cited being very concerned or extremely concerned about security in a cloud environment.

“Even with data pointing to a spending rebound, security professionals say they will spend cautiously and scrutinize each priority after many routine infrastructure updates were delayed,” said Bill Trussell, TheInfoPro’s Managing Director of Security Research. “Emerging trends in virtualization and cloud are driving much attention toward addressing data loss more aggressively.”

Enterprises Gear Spending Toward Protecting Data
For 2010, enterprise security professionals indicate that Symantec, McAfee, Microsoft and Cisco will be among the most likely beneficiaries of higher spending. McAfee has eclipsed Symantec as the most frequently cited provider of exciting security products, while Check Point returned to the list after being absent for more than a year.

TheInfoPro’s Technology Heat Index™ is widely regarded as effective measure of user “demand” for a technology, and from a vendor’s perspective, a good indicator of the relative size of the market opportunity. TheInfoPro’s Information Security Technology Heat Index cites event log management as the No. 1 priority in information security IT spending, with data loss prevention (DLP) and NAC ranking next, respectively.

DLP tops the IT projects list as well as the exciting technology solutions list. Security professionals have identified that both Symantec and McAfee are likely to be the preferred DLP vendors. Cisco and Microsoft still lead for NAC. LogLogic and Microsoft are top choices as vendors for event log management. For the first time in two years, NAC has fallen to the third spot, demonstrating that the technology has moved toward more mainstream adoption.

NOTE: Specific vendor data or full report downloads are available by contacting Ashley Pierce at apierce@theinfopro.com.

About TheInfoPro’s Security Study
TheInfoPro’s Information Security Study was conducted between September and December 2009 and takes an in-depth look into key trends occurring across all areas of the information security landscape, within disciplines such as network security, security management and infrastructure security. The study is completed biannually through one-on-one, hourlong interviews with 259 key security decision-makers, including directors of information security, global security managers and infrastructure team managers, within Fortune 1000 and midsize enterprise organizations. The interview results are collected in comprehensive research reports that provide continuous business intelligence within key areas such as technology roadmaps, spending plans and vendor performance ratings.

About TheInfoPro
TheInfoPro is a leading advisory and research firm that provides real-world perspectives on the customer and market dynamics of the information technology landscape by using a unique research methodology that harnesses the collective knowledge and insights of leading IT organizations worldwide. Through a combination of expert advice, actionable analysis and our extensive network of IT professionals, TheInfoPro serves as a conduit between IT decision-makers, technology providers and institutional investors. Founded in 2002 by alumni of Gartner, Giga, EMC and Bell Labs, TheInfoPro is headquartered in New York City. To learn more, visit www.theinfopro.com or email info@theinfopro.com.
info@theinfopro.com.

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Virtualization is a pretty hot topic in enterprise IT these days. It’s safe to say that everyone has some sort of virtualization project going on. according to a survey by TheInfoPro more than half of new servers in 2009 will be virtualized compared to 30% in 2008.

In some way, virtualization is a VMware world. Everyone from SAN to server to network vendors has some kind of tie in to VMware. VMware runs on over one-third of Cisco’s Unified Computing System units that have been deployed to date. Enterprise management platforms such as HP Insight are being extended to include deep support for VMware that simplifies and expedites the management of hordes of virtual machines. This is important because it keeps operations flowing smoothly and allows you to use a similar process to manage virtual servers as you did when managing physical servers. Everyone knows that process already and it will decrease the burden of migration and help achieve a faster ROI.

Far and away the most popular hypervisors are those made by VMware. The primary draw is the ubiquity of VMware. With the vCloud initiative you could build your own dynamic data center running VMware’s vSphere and vCenter and then automatically scale up and down using external Cloud providers. There are over 1,000 Cloud service providers that are “VMware Virtualized” plus countless others that have adopted VMware’s vCloud API.

There are two viable alternatives to VMware: Microsoft and Xen. That same TheInfoPro survey reported that 24% of the new virtual servers are Microsft Hyper-V. Thirty percent (30%) chose “other”, which in all likelihood means Xen or the free Citrix XenServer. All three have their strengths and weaknesses and certain applications may be better for one than the other. VMware and Microsoft don’t play well together. Xen plays well with either.

Sarrel’s Short List

Server virtualization revolves around the hypervisor, the software that sits on top of the hardware (either directly as “bare-metal” or on top of an OS), partitions the hardware into multiple virtual machines, and manages interactions between hardware and virtual machines. There are currently three main choices for a server hypervisor: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware (ESX and vSphere), and Xen (an open source hypervisor supported by Citrix).

Here’s the skinny on choosing a hypervisor:
1. VMware should be at the top of everyone’s list because they’ve been doing virtualization for more than 10 years. No one doubts VMware’s ability to deliver a reliable hypervisor and extensible management tools. Developing a hypervisor with excellent performance, reliability, scalability, and manageability doesn’t happen overnight, and these are critical features for an enterprise computing environment.

2. Microsoft is a relatively new comer with Hyper-V and based on the success of SharePoint, I believe that anything Microsoft gives away with their server software has an excellent chance of being implemented. Like most Microsoft products, Hyper-V isn’t the best and will probably never be the best, but it is bundled and pre-installed so why not enable it and give it a shot?

3. Xen is an excellent choice for budget conscious shops that have implemented Linux servers. There is always a trade-off between cost and power/utility. During these times of economic hardship, companies are more willing than ever to make that trade. Also, if you rely heavily on Citrix for your server infrastructure, then their support for Xen should be an important purchasing consideration.

4. If your goal is to have dozens or hundreds of virtualized servers residing in multiple physical locations and forming both internal private and external public clouds, then your only real choice right now is VMware vSphere due to its scalability and manageability. VMware currently owns the high end enterprise virtualization market.

The Nitty Gritty

Microsoft Hyper-V – Microsoft provides a limited version Hyper-V free of charge plus there are various flavors that come with the various forms of Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V starts with support for up to 8 CPUs and 1 TB RAM in the host machine and goes up from there. Microsoft focuses on using virtual machines to increase application and server availability, therefore an important feature is live migration, or the ability to move running virtual machines from one Hyper-V physical host to another without disruption of service. If you are a Microsoft shop, then it may make some sense to get your virtualization feet wet with Hyper-V because you’ve already got it.

VMware ESX – This is the most widely implemented hypervisor today (most virtualization professionals cut their teeth on some version of ESX). The current version supports up to 64 logical processing cores, 256 virtual CPUs and up to 1 TB RAM per host and will run a broad range of guest operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and NetWare. Virtual machines can boot from local or shared SAN storage. VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a clustered file system that allows multiple ESX hosts to access a single virtual volume concurrently, paving the way for shared storage via Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, or NAS.

VMware vSphere 4 – More than a hypervisor, vSphere 4 is a data center Cloud computing platform built on VMware ESX. There was a lot of buzz earlier this year when vSphere shipped because it promises to control internal and external virtualized Cloud environments by automating management and dynamically allocating resources to migrate live virtual machines across physical machines to minimize service interruption. For example, an application could automatically scale up and down using both internal and external virtual Cloud resources. An important consideration is there are huge numbers of API’s and third party add-ons, so industry support is strong and getting stronger for vSphere. sources.

Xen – The Xen hypervisor is an open source alternative which provides efficient and secure virtualization of x86, x86_64, IA64, ARM, and other CPU architectures. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and various versions of the BSD operating systems. It was developed in conjunction with engineers at over 50 data center solution vendors, including AMD, Cisco, Dell, Fujistu, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, Samsung, SGI, Sun, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

Xen has a reputation for being lean and mean; high performance and not many management features like others mentioned in this article. You can add the Xen Cloud Platform to gain sophisticated management features similar to those found in VMware vSphere and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Keys to a Successful Implementation

Develop a clear business case in favor of virtualization that demonstrates an ROI and a reduced TCO. Start by assessing your current physical server environment. Where previously you scaled up by adding more physical servers, reduce costs by consolidating them into multiple virtual servers running on a single physical server. This not only reduces the resources needed today, but you can reap future rewards of more efficient scaling using a virtual platform. There’s also the potential of decreasing the cost of your business continuity program because, unlike physical machines, virtual machines can be pushed from one location to another.

Beware of potential licensing and support implications, however. It’s possible that a particular application’s licensing policy changes when run on a virtual server so look before you leap. Also, verify that the application is supported on your virtual platform and that tech support has the know-how to help if needed.

Allocate time and resources towards planning this wide-sweeping change in your enterprise architecture. Virtual servers are different from physical servers so policies, procedures, and concepts will have to adapt. It should go without saying to make sure there are backups and archives of physical systems. Try to get a handle on how much hardware is required for each virtual server and then make sure you allocate properly. Especially keep an eye out for “virtual sprawl”, or the sometimes magical ability of virtual environments to expand out of control until they are unmanageable. Finally, understand how the timing of this project affects other IT initiatives and make sure that all other projects include virtualization support.

Make migration as smooth as possible for end users. The best outcome would be if no one even noticed that you’ve gone virtual. In order to do this, monitor performance and availability of pilot and initial deployments. Upgrade hardware as needed to meet performance and availability goals.

Benefits of Virtualization

Virtualization can reduce costs related to underutilized physical servers. Many enterprises purchase servers with the plan that use will grow to fit the resources―if our application uses five percent (5%) of resources today then we’ll be good for a few years as it grows to 50%. But this means that you’re paying for tomorrow’s resources today and we know technology resources get cheaper over time so this excess capacity is basically wasted. Running a number of virtual machines on a single physical machine allows IT departments to use that extra capacity.

Running multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine also consolidates the physical server footprint in the data center. And fewer physical servers means less rack space, energy consumed and heat produced, plus the accompanying reduction in administration costs.

Virtualization provides a great deal of flexibility by divorcing the OS and applications from the server hardware. You can add or remove resources from the virtual machine without shutting down the physical server and disassembling it. Remember the agony of the last time an application was jeopardized by failing hardware? In a virtualized environment the application’s virtual machine could simply be pushed to different hardware. This flexibility facilitates more efficient scaling of server environments as business needs grow.

Matt Sarrel is executive director of Sarrel Group, a technology product test lab, editorial services, and consulting practice specializing in gathering and leveraging competitive intelligence. He has over 20 years of experience in IT and focuses on high-speed, large scale networking, information security, and enterprise storage. E-mail: matt@sarrelgroup.com. Twitter: @msarrel.

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As Microsoft rolls out its Windows Azure and SQL Azure public cloud services in January 2010, the first implementers will likely include those building greenfield Web 2.0-type apps as well those who develop and test software looking for capacity on demand. But for cloud computing to take hold in the enterprise for business-critical applications, Microsoft knows it must extend Windows Azure to integrate securely and seamlessly with internally hosted systems.

Hence, the next phase of Windows Azure will enable enterprises to build private and enable hybrid clouds with a new set of deliverables that will evolve throughout 2010 and likely into the following years.

The allure of cloud services is that they provide infrastructure on demand and remove the capital and administrative requirements of running internal systems. Yet the vast majority of CIOs say they simply can’t put certain types of applications and data into the current incarnation of cloud services.

“It’s going to be a tough sell,” says John Merchant, assistant vice president at The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., a large insurance company. “As a Fortune 500 company with highly regulated data and a very conservative outlook, it’s going to be difficult for any insurance company or any financial institution of any size to migrate any data to the cloud.”

On a panel in November at Interop New York addressing the top cloud engineers at Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft, Rico Singleton, deputy CIO for the State of New York, asked: “Can you give me a private cloud that can provide all the benefits that you provide now on my private network closed to the outside, and still be able to give me similar ROI?” The answer by top cloud engineers at Microsoft, Amazon and Google was a resounding: “Not yet.”

The melding of internally hosted systems with public and private cloud services is what many believe will drive enterprise cloud computing in the years to come. Indeed, a survey of 500 C-level IT executives by Kelton Research commissioned by Avanade Inc. found a 300 percent spike over the past nine months in plans to either test or start deploying cloud services.

Yet 95 percent of executives ultimately plan on a hybrid approach, which blends public and private clouds, according to the recently released study. “A hybrid model gets people comfortable in the shorter term,” says Tyson Hartman, CTO of Avanade, a subsidiary of Accenture that deploys Microsoft-based solutions.

A United Cloud
It appears that Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Server and Tools President Bob Muglia and both their teams are well aware that enterprises will expect their cloud infrastructures to fully support the need for private and hybrid clouds.

“With Windows Azure, Windows Server and System Center, there’s one coherent model of managing this infrastructure as a service across Microsoft’s public cloud to private cloud to clouds of our partners who host,” Ozzie said in his keynote address at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC09). Of course now it appears Ozzie’s roll with Azure may be diminished moving forward as reported.

At PDC09, Ozzie and Muglia explained how Redmond will enable hybrid and private clouds and outlined a new roadmap of deliverables. First is Project Sydney, technology that will connect services running in data centers with Windows Azure. Due to go into beta in early 2010, Project Sydney will include an IPV6- and IPSec-based connectivity agent that will utilize Windows Identity Foundation — code-named “Geneva” — Microsoft’s claims-based federated identity-management framework.

Another key deliverable that will support hybrid cloud capabilities is AppFabric, an application server extension to Windows Server and the Windows Azure cloud platform. AppFabric will be based on the app server preview released last year called Project Dublin and combined with the in-memory data caching server technology Microsoft has previewed for some time, called Project Velocity. With the two now melded, Microsoft released the first beta of AppFabric for Windows Server 2008 R2 at PDC09.

At some point in 2010, Microsoft will release a community technology preview (CTP) of AppFabric for Windows Azure with plans for commercial release by year’s end.

Both will share a common service bus, security model and developer experience for software running apps in this hybrid cloud model. “AppFabric will extend the environment that you’re very familiar with, with IIS, and provide you with a platform for building scale-out, highly available, middle-tier services,” Muglia said in his keynote address at PDC09. As reported, Microsoft sees AppFabric as the next layer in its stack.

The service bus and access-control components will support distributed and federated apps, while also enabling services that extend beyond enterprise boundaries. The AppFabric Access Control allows secure authentication via RESTful Web services that federate among different identity providers.

The AppFabric Service Bus lets administrators and developers choose how apps communicate, taking into consideration firewalls, network address translation, dynamic IP and different identity management platforms.

There’s much more to come, says Yousef Khalidi, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, in an interview (see Q&A). “Stay tuned,” Khalidi says. “We have a lot of IP involved here, but the dates and the like we haven’t discussed yet.” It is also worth noting that Microsoft is not necessarily talking up its plans to deliver private clouds per se.

Hybrid Hyperbole?
While hybrid clouds promise to address many of the concerns among skeptics, time will tell whether Microsoft and its rivals can actually address these concerns. “We’re debating whether a model like this with the right policy constraints can get the enterprise to a place where it’s cloud-like and eventually migrating toward a cloud environment,” said Alistair Croll, principal analyst at Bitcurrent, speaking during a panel discussion on hybrid clouds at Interop New York.

Still, some wonder whether that will make sense over the long term. “I think there’s value in private clouds and value in public clouds, but they are very separate things,” says Anders Lofgren, chief research officer at TheInfoPro, an IT research firm. “I think the hybrid cloud complicates something that’s already really complex.”

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HP, which has been aggressive in enticing Sun customers, is partnering with operating systems makers Microsoft, Novell and Red Hat in its efforts. The partnerships are part of HP’s overall Sun Complete Care program, a collection of products, services, support and financial incentives designed to lure customers worried about Sun’s future over to HP. Over the past year, about 350 Sun customers have made the move, according to HP.

Hewlett-Packard is calling in Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell to help it cherry-pick customers from Sun Microsystems.

HP officials said Dec. 15 that the operating system vendors are bringing service offerings, incentives and training programs designed to make it easier for Sun customers to migrate to HP.

The partnerships are the latest steps by HP to grab customers from Sun, which has been struggling for years and currently is the target of a buyout by Oracle. The uncertainty surrounding Oracle’s proposed $7.4 billion acquisition—the companies currently are awaiting the OK from European regulators to go through with the deal, and some Sun customers are unsure of the future of Sun’s hardware once it gets absorbed by Oracle—is making HP an even more attractive alternative, according to officials there.

Bob Gill, managing director of server research for TheInfoPro, said that Sun customers seem to fall into two different camps. Half of them are happy about the Oracle relationship, believing that the software giant will give their SPARC/Solaris deployments the support they need.

“The other half are aghast,” worried that the investments they’ve made in their environments are on the way out, Gill said in an interview.

HP introduced its Sun Complete Care program on July 16, the same day that Sun shareholders voted to approve the Oracle acquisition. The program is a collection of products, services, support plans and financial incentives designed to make it easier for Sun customers to migrate to HP’s ProLiant, BladeSystem or Itanium-based Integrity servers.

Those servers can run a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or HP’s own HP-UX 11i Unix OS. They also can run Sun’s Solaris operating system.

Over the 12 months that ended Oct. 31, more than 350 Sun customers have shifted to HP, thanks in large part of the Complete Care program, according to company officials.

The Complete Care program includes everything from proof-of-concepts to initial assessments and application migration services. Through the new partnerships, HP can now offer Sun customers a 50 percent discount on SUSE Linux Enterprise Fundamentals on-demand training, up to 25 percent off Red Hat Global training, and support from Microsoft’s Migration Competency Center in France, which offers assessment and proof-of-concept services for Sun customers.

HP is not the only OEM looking to lure away Sun customers. IBM in November sharply cut memory prices on their Power servers, trying to give customers of both Sun and HP another reason to make the jump to Big Blue. IBM officials not only spoke about the uncertainty surrounding Sun’s future, but also the delays that have haunted Intel’s high-end Itanium chip, which is primarily found in HP’s Integrity servers.

Sun saw significant growth in the 1990s as the Internet came into play, but its fortunes turned after the dot-com bust earlier this decade.

However, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been vocal about his intentions of not only keeping Sun’s hardware business—including Sun’s SPARC processor—but increasing investments in it. Ellison has taken to tweaking IBM about the upcoming competition a combined Oracle and Sun will pose to Big Blue.

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In its Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix is integrating its StorageLink Site Recovery feature, which gives users greater disaster recovery capabilities for their Hyper-V-based virtual data centers. Users can test out disaster recovery scenarios and manage their DR services through a single console.

Citrix Systems is adding disaster recovery capabilities to its data center virtualization platform for Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology.

Citrix’s new Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V includes Citrix StorageLink Site Recovery, a set of tools that enable users to set up, test and manage disaster recovery capabilities through a single console, which company officials said will become increasingly important as more enterprises move mission-critical data center applications into virtualized environments.

The disaster recovery capability, announced Dec. 15, includes new features that enable customers to test various disaster recovery scenarios, and users can integrate the services into their existing systems management software, according to Citrix.

The StorageLink Site Recovery capability will be available in Express and full-featured Platinum editions of Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V, the company said.

The Express Edition, which will be available for download Dec. 23, will enable customers to recover an unlimited number of Hyper-V virtual machines on up to two host servers at no additional charge. For enterprises that need coverage for more than two physical machines, they can upgrade to the Platinum Edition, which is available immediately.

The new disaster recovery capability is another example of the partnership between Citrix and Microsoft in the server and desktop virtualization spaces, according to Lou Shipley, vice president and general manager of virtualization management for the data center and cloud division at Citrix.

“We will continue this partnership to extend our StorageLink Site Recovery solution to include additional business continuity services,” Shipley said in a statement.

VMware is the leader in data center virtualization, but according to a survey by market research firm TheInfoPro, businesses are willing to look at alternatives, in particular Citrix and Microsoft offerings.

According to TheInfoPro, about 75 percent of businesses surveyed said they are currently using VMware. However, about two-thirds said they have tested other hypervisors, and of those, 27 percent said they plan to use an alternative product, while another 20 percent said they may use one.

Only 2 percent of VMware customers said they plan to switch to another virtualization platform, while 9 percent were considering it.

According to Bob Gill, managing director of server research for TheInfoPro, what the numbers show is that while VMware users are happy with their products, they are more than willing to look at alternatives and to create a heterogeneous virtualization environment, with more than one provider.

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According to a recent Fortune 1000 end-user survey conducted by TheInfoPro research firm, users are increasingly considering alternatives, or additions, to VMware.

In the TheInfoPro survey, just over 75% of the respondents were using VMware today. However, nearly two-thirds of the companies have tested a hypervisor other than VMware, with Microsoft and Citrix cited most often, followed by Red Hat. Of those who have tested a VMware alternative, 27% plan to use the alternative, while an additional 20% say they “may” use the alternative.

On the other hand, when VMware users were asked if they would switch to an alternative, only 2% cited firm plans and an additional 9% were considering it. Bob Gill, TheInfoPro’s managing director of server and virtualization research, concludes that “The analysis reveals that VMware users aren’t switching away from VMware, but [many] are embracing competing technologies in heterogeneous deployments.”

One possible scenario is that VMware will retain its hegemony in production environments, while vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft make inroads through deployments in development and testing scenarios.

In comparing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various virtual server platform alternatives, one often-overlooked area is storage – not third-party storage optimized for virtual environments but, rather, the native storage tools that come from the virtualization vendors themselves.

Could storage be the hammer that enables vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft to put a dent in VMware? Well, it’s only part of the overall puzzle, but it’s an increasingly important one as server/storage administrators rapidly grow their virtual environments, winding up with virtual server “sprawl” and the associated storage challenges.

I recently read a Solution Profile (white paper) written by the Taneja Group that takes an in-depth look at Citrix’s StorageLink, which is part of Citrix Essentials. Taneja analysts contrast two approaches to storage in the context of virtual servers: those that attempt to replicate, and those that integrate with, the enterprise storage infrastructure. The former approach is referred to as ‘monolithic,’ and the latter is referred to as an ‘assimilated’ approach (characterized by Citrix StorageLink).

If you’re grappling with the storage issues in your virtualization environment, and/or considering virtual server alternatives, check out the Taneja Group’s “Multiplying Virtualization Value by the Full Power of Enterprise Storage with Citrix StorageLink.”

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