What if...

English: Michael Dell speaking at Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What if Michael Dell was right?

 

The biggest tech companies are struggling in a crisis that seems not to have a end.

Cisco, HP, even Microsoft have announced layouts and reduction of employee. We can say this is a common issue for a moment of crisis, companies need to rise up ROI and cost reduction is a key factor. It’s also undoubted that laying off personnel is the easiest way to reduce costs.

But is this crisis just a matter of costs and ROI? or there are deeper reasons that are hitting those companies?

The economical crisis is just one of the many problems some tech companies are experiencing, from my point of view the main reason for the crisis is not just financial, but lays in a deeper problem: technology innovation and identity.

In the last years we saw a dramatic change in users behaviour and technologies, some new kids traced the route while the old giants struggles to follow.

Problem number one here, they become follower and not leader, and when you’re a big guy following is hard because you can’t hide nor run.

The company that invested in technologies, creating consensus and making things happen like apple or google traced a hard path to follow, they mark their identities to new and cool paradigma. Samsung was quick and efficient to jump on the train and using the same tools of innovation and “coolness” of the products conquer a market.

HP and Cisco on the contrary haven’t been able, till now, to redesign their identity into something different. Old products, old technologies, old communication…. If we’re take a look at what is happening in HP and Cisco right now we see cost reduction but we cannot see a real plan, a strategy a vision.

Dell forced his company to take a direction, hope will be successful because his courage has been amazing. He wanted to give a multi year vision and a clear position. we’ll see if time will give him the success he deserve. But to do this he was forced to take a decision, make Dell private again so to choose a direction and follow it even if the stock market is looking for different things at the moment.

What is the path for HP and Cisco?

The technology market has changed, it is changing. the Box and Hardware selling that has made the fortune of the two companies is reaching it’s limit, We so not change core switch every year unless there is a real technological change, and server and storage are not so different that the ones of 5 years ago…

While Cisco and HP looks for an identity Microsoft seems to have found again its will to succeed planning a transition that could change the face of the company. Again this is a technological and identity point. Cloud, Service and multiplatforms seems to be the new Microsoft mantra and we could expect that big “M” developer tools (that made the fortune of Microsoft OS) will soon be able to accomplish the new vision that the new energetic CEO is giving to the company.

 

Related articles

 

• After Going Private, Dell Isn’t Looking Back
• Michael Dell lays out his plan
• Michael Dell: Cloud infrastructure is the roads, bridges and highways of the 21st century
• Dell bets on its end-to-end datacentre infrastructure strategy
• Dell opens Internet of Things Lab
• EMC, HP Deal Could Still Happen, Says Source; Cisco, Oracle into the Mix
• Opinion: EMC-HP merger rumors a microcosm of an industry in crisis
• What if…

 

What if...

English: Michael Dell speaking at Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What if Michael Dell was right?

 

The biggest tech companies are struggling in a crisis that seems not to have a end.

Cisco, HP, even Microsoft have announced layouts and reduction of employee. We can say this is a common issue for a moment of crisis, companies need to rise up ROI and cost reduction is a key factor. It’s also undoubted that laying off personnel is the easiest way to reduce costs.

But is this crisis just a matter of costs and ROI? or there are deeper reasons that are hitting those companies?

The economical crisis is just one of the many problems some tech companies are experiencing, from my point of view the main reason for the crisis is not just financial, but lays in a deeper problem: technology innovation and identity.

In the last years we saw a dramatic change in users behaviour and technologies, some new kids traced the route while the old giants struggles to follow.

Problem number one here, they become follower and not leader, and when you’re a big guy following is hard because you can’t hide nor run.

The company that invested in technologies, creating consensus and making things happen like apple or google traced a hard path to follow, they mark their identities to new and cool paradigma. Samsung was quick and efficient to jump on the train and using the same tools of innovation and “coolness” of the products conquer a market.

HP and Cisco on the contrary haven’t been able, till now, to redesign their identity into something different. Old products, old technologies, old communication…. If we’re take a look at what is happening in HP and Cisco right now we see cost reduction but we cannot see a real plan, a strategy a vision.

Dell forced his company to take a direction, hope will be successful because his courage has been amazing. He wanted to give a multi year vision and a clear position. we’ll see if time will give him the success he deserve. But to do this he was forced to take a decision, make Dell private again so to choose a direction and follow it even if the stock market is looking for different things at the moment.

What is the path for HP and Cisco?

The technology market has changed, it is changing. the Box and Hardware selling that has made the fortune of the two companies is reaching it’s limit, We so not change core switch every year unless there is a real technological change, and server and storage are not so different that the ones of 5 years ago…

While Cisco and HP looks for an identity Microsoft seems to have found again its will to succeed planning a transition that could change the face of the company. Again this is a technological and identity point. Cloud, Service and multiplatforms seems to be the new Microsoft mantra and we could expect that big “M” developer tools (that made the fortune of Microsoft OS) will soon be able to accomplish the new vision that the new energetic CEO is giving to the company.

 

Related articles

 

• After Going Private, Dell Isn’t Looking Back
• Michael Dell lays out his plan
• Michael Dell: Cloud infrastructure is the roads, bridges and highways of the 21st century
• Dell bets on its end-to-end datacentre infrastructure strategy
• Dell opens Internet of Things Lab
• EMC, HP Deal Could Still Happen, Says Source; Cisco, Oracle into the Mix
• Opinion: EMC-HP merger rumors a microcosm of an industry in crisis
• What if…

 

RightScale Releases 2014 State of the Cloud Report

RightScale Releases 2014 State of the Cloud Report (via MarketWired)

SOURCE: RightScale April 02, 2014 09:56 ET Public Cloud Adoption Nears 90 Percent on the Journey to Hybrid Cloud SANTA BARBARA, CA–(Marketwired – Apr 2, 2014) – RightScale® Inc., a demonstrated leader in enterprise cloud portfolio management, today…

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Security in a Virtual World

Virtualization of the data center is provoking fundamental questions about the proper place for network security services. Will they simply disappear into the One True Cloud, dutifully following applications as they vMotion about the computing ether? Will they remain as a set of modular appliances physically separate from the server computing blob? Should everything be virtualized because it can be?

By Throop Wilder
Thu, June 04, 2009 — Network World — Virtualization of the data center is provoking fundamental questions about the proper place for network security services. Will they simply disappear into the One True Cloud, dutifully following applications as they vMotion about the computing ether? Will they remain as a set of modular appliances physically separate from the server computing blob? Should everything be virtualized because it can be?
ABC: An Introduction to Virtualization
Server Virtualization: Top Five Security Concerns
Based on experience with large enterprises, we recommend that the network security infrastructure remain physically separate from the virtualized server/app blob. This separation allows you to maintain strong “trust boundaries” and high performance/low latency, without the loss of flexibility and adaptability of virtualized application infrastructures.
Large data centers have primarily safeguarded their servers with a well-protected perimeter and minimal internal protections. As zonal protection schemes were introduced to mitigate the unfettered spread of worms and intrusions, the natural boundaries became the divisions between the classic three tiers of Web infrastructures: Web, application and data layers.
More recently enterprises have further segmented these trust zones by service, business unit and other political criteria, yet this infrastructure does not lend itself to change. As three-tier architectures become vastly more flexible due to virtualization projects, the security infrastructure must develop its own flexibilty so it is never the bottleneck. Furthermore, it must also maintain the real-time guarantees of high throughput, high connection per second rates and low latency.
The good news is that this is precisely what forward-thinking architects and operations teams are designing and building right now. Best of all, some of these teams are discovering that, for once, security and performance optimization appear to benefit from the same strategy. Here’s how.
There are two core principles in new security architecture designs. The first principle is to virtualize within the three layers, not across them, which forces inter-zone traffic to pass through physically separate security equipment.
The second principle is to use equipment that consolidates multiple security services that can be invoked in any combination depending on the type of boundary crossing, while maintaining performance, latency and connection rates. You can refer to this separate layer of security resources as the “second cloud.”
The concept of virtualizing within layers (such as Web, application and database layers) vs. across layers can be depicted as follows. For example, Web servers and application servers are considered to pose risks of different levels.
In Figure 1, VMs of different risk levels are on the same servers and boundary transitions between zones happen entirely inside one or more servers. In Figure 2, all Web VMs run on one physical set of servers while the application VMs run on a separate set. Boundary transitions in this model happen outside of each group of servers.
From a purely operational point of view, the mixed-layer scenario in Figure 1 lends itself to major human error. In this case, a network team hands a set of virtual LANs (VLAN) corresponding to both zones to the server team, which must correctly connect the right VLAN to the right VM. One error, and a VM ends up on the wrong VLAN and a trust boundary has been breached. With the architecture in Figure 2, the only VLAN that needs handing off to the Web layer is the one appropriate for that layer.
From an architectural point of view, inter-VM traffic in Figure 1 also requires the addition of security VMs to manage zone boundary transitions. Every server that runs a mix of services will require the addition of the same set of security VMs, leading to VM sprawl. The separate layers depicted in Figure 2 allow for consolidated security equipment to be placed between the layers only once. In addition, this architecture preserves separation of duties between application teams and network security teams, allowing each to perform their respective duties with fewer dependencies on the other.
Finally, a fundamental advantage of the model in Figure 2 is that there is no potential “Heisenberg effect” in which the addition of security VMs impinges on the processing capacity of the servers. The result is vastly improved security performance.
Scalable designs
The architectures depicted in Figures 1 and 2 are simplifications that don’t represent the real complexity of multiple service boundaries. Figure 3 more closely depicts the cross-boundary problem in a real world environment in which the type of information being accessed dictates different security policies.
In Figure 3, three application services may each represent different risk classes and therefore require a different combination of security services depending on which boundaries are traversed. For example, one could imagine a VM in Service 3 (Contracts) requiring access to a VM in Service 1, which stores personally identifiable information (PII) – and is therefore governed by PCI requirements.
The security for this cross-boundary transition would require multiple services (such as firewall, intrusion prevention and application firewall) chained together in a particular order. As another example, a Web server accessing the knowledgebase (KB) in Service 2 might only need lightweight firewall access control. The ability to perform per-transition servicing is critical for making security – cloud flexibility match that of the application cloud. More specifically, Figure 4 illustrates this concept.
This architecture relies on the emergence of a new generation of high performance security equipment (depicted as the green oval) which is able to consolidate and deliver multiple security services from a common platform that enables service selection decisions. Sound familiar? It is the same value proposition delivered by application-services virtualization, but applied to security services.
Most importantly, this equipment can deliver the correct sequence or “chain” of services with the performance and latency guarantees so critical to the overall end-to-end user experience, while preserving a much simpler architecture and retaining the trust boundaries required for a secure infrastructure.
As engineers begin to experiment with various network security architectures, they will find that the tier/zone-based implementation is a desirable place to start. Not only does it yield excellent performance and flexibility, but it works within the confines of slower-changing organizational/political boundaries. It also lets server infrastructures morph along multiple axes without compromising the highest standards of security.
Wilder is vice president of corporate strategy at Crossbeam Systems.
http://www.cio.com/article/494231/Security_in_a_Virtual_World?page=3&taxonomyId=1448

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• UNS Spotlight on VM-ready Security Solutions with VSG (blogs.cisco.com)
• How virtualization is shaking up security practices (infoworld.com)
• Shift to Virtualized Environments is Shaking Up Security Practices (pcworld.com)
• VSG: Vive la difference! A Tutorial for HP (blogs.cisco.com)
• Gartner: New security demands arising for virtualization, cloud computing (infoworld.com)
• vSphere VLANs – 802.1Q VLAN Tagging (chriswhitingsblog.wordpress.com)
• Best of Times, Worst of Times: Is Virtualization in the Data Center a Problem or an Opportunity? (blogs.cisco.com)