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Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast, recovery efforts are proceeding more swiftly than officials on the scene originally anticipated. As the recovery takes shape, Forrester has assembled some practical lessons that businesses can take from the disaster.
Following the highly publicized losses of backup tapes containing sensitive information about firms' customers, many organizations are examining their own policies and technology options for protecting data when it moves outside their corporate walls -- such as backup tapes or tapes of customer information sent to business partners. Firms have three primary options for encrypting data before it goes out the door on tapes: 1) Turn on database encryption; 2) turn on tape backup encryption; or 3) install a storage encryption appliance.
Pressures to decrease cost, increase reliability, and comply with local regulations conspire to make it harder than ever for IT to deliver business services efficiently. We are fast approaching the stage of IT's evolution at which innovation must translate into overall process improvements, as it did in the mainframe world 20 years ago. This quest for process improvement is the root cause of a universal interest in best practices and in frameworks such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and control objectives for information and related technology (COBIT).
The management of application performance remains one of the most pressing issues facing IT managers today. Contrasting these problems with the experiences of other industries that employ extensive automation and process control reveals critical failures in the way we manage applications.
Enterprise infrastructure management products are entering an era of major change. Innovations in change and configuration management promise a more efficient way to manage infrastructures, and Microsoft and Mercury are starting to show real muscle.
Forrester surveyed 798 technology decision-makers at US small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) and 1,402 IT decision-makers at North American enterprises to understand the state of IT security. Seventy-one percent of SMBs will invest in additional security technologies by the end of 2005. Viruses, worms, spyware, and spam are SMBs' top IT security concerns.
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Dear Friends,
Here in the northern hemisphere, September 22 has just passed us by -- the autumnal equinox, the end of summer. And you know what that means: If your IT budgeting season hasn't already started, be prepared to do battle for dollars next week.
So, let's set aside a moment or two to think enviously of our colleagues in Australia, Argentina, and South Africa, for whom spring is just beginning, and then get to work. There's a great deal to do before we close the books on 2005: We have applications to upgrade, servers to buy, environments to secure, and Windows Vista upgrade strategies to formulate. I'm hoping today's mix of best practices and emerging technologies will help. As always, I look forward to your feedback.
And on a more serious note, for those of you who are helping the US' Gulf Coast recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Forrester's resource page is here. Please let me know if there's anything else that Forrester can do to help. I'm going to presume to speak for all readers of the Computing Systems First Look and say that our thoughts and our best wishes are with you.
Stay safe,
Laura Koetzle
Vice President, Research Director
laurakoetzle@forrester.com
Compute grid technology looks like a great way to save on compute costs and get better business results -- but there's no universal killer application for grid. To figure out which applications might benefit from compute grid strategies, firms must work through a list of software architecture attributes, system architecture, and other criteria. Firms can work with custom applications or try to adapt an ISV's application, but it's easier to take advantage of the growing vertical industry ISV support for compute grid in manufacturing and financial services. Meanwhile, IT infrastructure applications like analysis, reporting, and application servers are starting to get compute grid features.
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Given all the issues and possibilities associated with putting applications on a compute grid, firms have to search application by application to determine what is compatible, financially appealing, and appropriate for a compute grid. Because the technologies for compute grid are getting easier and more flexible, the variety of applications that are appropriate is growing. The three most attractive scenarios, roughly in decreasing order of difficulty, are:
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Build or adapt a custom application. This approach gives firms complete control -- and responsibility -- for implementing the application on a compute grid. Firms with programmers comfortable with coding typical component software for distributed environments will do fine with this approach in most business environments.
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Adapt an ISV application, with the ISV's help. Some firms discover that an ISV application has a grid-compatible section within it, as Hewitt Associates did with its mainframe-based Sefas Automated Document Factory. Hewitt worked with Sefas to offload the PDF rendering of personalized benefits PDFs to an x86-based compute grid. The end result was faster throughput at lower cost -- and ISV support for the modification.
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Find an ISV application that is enabled for distributed or compute grid environments. Genworth Financial needed to add capacity and speed up insurance analysis using industry-specific applications, including Tillinghast Software Solutions' MoSes application for insurance financial projections. Genworth implemented DataSynapse's GridServer product, in part because Tillinghast and DataSynapse have engineered the products to work together.
Brad Day's "Drivers For Server Consolidation" series
Triggers For Refreshing Servers
Understanding Server Refresh Cycles
Server refresh cycles vary widely based on the IT philosophy, operating system (OS), application workload mix, and server hardware of the user company. The industry standard is that Windows/Intel (Wintel) server refreshes typically run every two to four years, while Unix server refreshes typically run every three to five years. To optimize refresh cycles within these time frames, firms need to understand the technology drivers that encourage server refresh.
Using Virtualization For Server Consolidation
A Checklist Of Virtualization Drivers And Deployment Scenarios
The primary reasons for using virtualization technology -- often referred to as system partitioning -- as a core underpinning in server consolidation projects are based on three drivers: 1) greater flexibility in use of systems architecture resources; 2) improved application isolation and availability; and 3) the ability to meet the changing requirements for systems resources and capacities. Within Unix computing environments, Forrester estimates that approximately 30% of all Unix server platforms are being deployed as part of a server consolidation project. The variety of infrastructure scenarios benefited by using virtualization are varied, depending on the server platform type, choice of operating systems environment, and the applications' mix and characteristics.
Where The Costs Occur In Server Consolidation
The cost-saving opportunities of a server consolidation project come from running fewer servers, collapsing multiple OS and application instances, and reducing IT support and operational costs. However, as part of the cost-consideration equation, initiating a server consolidation will also incur costs. It is important to understand the potential additional costs in server consolidation before assessing the estimated cost-savings outcome.
The State Of The Corporate PC: 2005 -- Simon Yates
CSI: Cyberspace -- Michael Gavin
The Evolution Of Infrastructure Management -- Jean-Pierre Garbani
The State Of IT Infrastructure Adoption -- Frank E. Gillett
We hope to see you all at our Executive Strategy Forum in Boston on November 15-16, where we will cover "IT's Strategic Role In Driving Global Competitiveness."
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