Broadband Developments

Now that Hyper-V is officially shipping you can expect to see a series of new developments in the data center virtualization market. Microsoft appears to be leveraging Hyper-V and virtualization to extend the reach of Server 2008 versus launching it as a head to head offering versus ESX.

Microsoft clearly wants to play to its incumbent strengths in the data center as a way to put increasing pressure on VMware. By releasing a low cost product that bundles, Microsoft has positioned themselves as an incumbent disruptor:

Hyper-V is a late arrival to the party and is taking a different approach to garner recognition. First off, Hyper-V, for all intents and purposes, is a free virtualization solution; it is included with several editions of Windows Server 2008 and is deployed using WS08’s roles wizard. That bundling, ease of installation and initial “no cost” ideology will make Hyper-V a hard technology to ignore. What’s more, those looking to bring virtualization into their enterprises will be forced to take a long hard look at an upgrade path that includes Windows Server 2008.

- Frank Ohlhorst, eWeek June 26, 2008

It isn’t that different than how Cisco has been treating Riverbed lately, using the gorilla factor (aggressive, competitive product pricing bundled in with a breadth of offerings and relationships) to apply pressure to a smaller foe with more specialized products within fewer categories. It’s a commonly used marketing strategy that forces competitors -out of necessity- to innovate more and make less in order to land the same customers.

Now that Microsoft has played its first hand I think it’s clear that both VMware and Citrix are going to be looking to differentiate more aggressively. That should mean less talk about the general benefits of virtualization (Microsoft will be doing that on perhaps a larger scale with Hyper-V) and more about the business case for unique features and perhaps even focusing on more specialized sub-categories.

You can expect both to start talking about roadmaps that will keep them ahead of Microsoft and the strategic importance of their ecosystems, capabilities and specialized data center requirements. I think the existing virtualization-lite dynamic that has played itself out since VMsafe’s awe-inspiring launch at VMworld Cannes, now needs to mature into full-blown virtualization within the data center.

That doesn’t mean complete virtualization of the data center, but rather quickly extending from the hypervisor VLAN beach head into deployments that make the business case for virtualization even stronger. With Citrix it may mean more focus on desktops versus virtual servers.

For VMware that makes virtualization security, VMotion and any potential capability roadblocks now strategic to success. Months ago features were tactical. With Hyper-V some will now be strategic.

As Microsoft uses its position to pressure VMware in the same way that large product portfolio players squeeze one category specialists, VMware will now need to accelerate execution on strategic features and move inland from the hypervisor VLAN beach head to win and defend critical data center infrastructure.

VMware may become even more aggressive on the roadmap front, and articulate an even more powerful vision for its marketplace. The coming VMworld could be the best ever from the standpoint of attendance, buzz and innovation.

The difference between success and failure is often a matter of momentum, focus, aggression and execution. VMware has done very well so far; the question now is how effectively they can get their partners, prospects and customers to take the next step while Microsoft prepares its next moves.

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Disclosure: I’m the VP Marketing for Blue Lane Technologies, a winner of the 2007 InfoWorld Technology of the Year for security, Best of Interop 2007 in security and the AO 100 Top Private Company award for 2006 and 2007. Blue Lane is also a 2007 Best of VMworld Finalist in data protection. I’ve been a marketing executive at Juniper Networks, Redline Networks, IntruVert Networks and ShoreTel. I’ve been an Always On blogger/columnist since 2004. My recently launched personal blog is: www.archimedius.net . My blog also appears at www.broaddev.com, John Furrier’s new 24 hour blogzine. These are all my opinions, and do not represent the opinions of employers, spouses, kids, etc. They also do not represent any stock recommendations of any kind.

Check out this viral video. Add a friends name and bang .they are running for president… here is my new release. The problem with me running for president is that I actually inhaled many times with witnesses

At least that’s what some people are thinking.

Who will the anti-culture have to bash now? Can the Linux community rally a faceless Microsoft? Will they focus on Ballmer now? What about the Apple-ites? Can the Apple-Messiah Steve Jobs seize this opportunity?

Do people want to see Microsoft suffer without Bill Gates? They don’t realize they have Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Microsoft to thank. We can all admit that without Windows, business and the internet would not be what it is today. Sure, people love to bash the delayed releases, then criticize Windows when updates and patches roll out. Well Linux people here’s your chance.

It’s the Ying and the Yang. Linux wouldn’t even exist without the “enemy”. You can laugh at the blue screens and the amount of patching that goes on. In my work at a hosting company that hosts thousands of systems, it has been a rarity that I hear or have even seen a blue screen. Also, not once during this time has a Windows system been hacked. Compare that to at least once a week some critical Linux system gets hacked, usually by “kiddie scripts” but sometimes by some weak passwords. Plus everything is a one-off, marred by special libraries and releases of this and that.

I know Linux has an incredible amount of flexibility and power. I know there’s many things that work better, simpler, faster on a Linux server. Believe me, I use it because I have to. I also know however that I can do many many of those same things on a Windows system. If I have something I need to deliver to a customer, I’m building a Windows system. I want them to be satisfied that I am delivering an enterprise-grade product backed with support, scalability and stability. I can’t consciously deliver a hobby system that requires them to hire me or someone else again to support it and fix things all the time. Heck, even Dell is profiting extra from selling this “free” operating system.

And yes, a well-timed release of a Microsoft email from Bill Gates complaining about Windows XP came out this week. What’s wrong with trying to get something right?

Don’t get me wrong. I started out in this business in the Unix world, particularly with Solaris. The Unix-world transformed with the rise of Linux. I was in that camp. I’m in the business of getting things done however and tinkering with a hobby OS, as good as people may be doing that is not delivering. Sun Solaris was easily the best operating system at the time and Linux killed it and IRIX as well.

Linux will never win on the desktop. Let’s look at some of the reasons why.
* Linux supports all kinds of hardware - Except of course what I need installed. Try installing a wireless card, webcam or digital camera. It’s basically the hardware lottery whether your stuff is supported or not.
* Linux sects - Ubuntu vs. Fedora - Gnome vs. KDE - BSD vs. the world!
* Try running some games on Linux, not emulators, we’re talking native games. I have worked with so many closet Windows-using Linux gurus, it’s not even funny.
* Trying to be like Windows - How many open source alternatives do we have to look at out there? Open-this Star-that. Someone out there is determined to copy Exchange.
* False sense of equality - Boohoo Silverlight doesn’t work on Linux. So what.
* Windows Fever - The delusional belief that Linux will take over the desktop at some point. What’s the percentage now? Look at what has happened with the Vista launch, Microsoft actually has people clamoring for Windows XP. Even when the Vista wave went wrong, they won. Personally, I live Vista. There are some things that are slow, but there are many features I would miss if I went back to Windows XP. Yeah, Linux is free, but if it’s unusable to the average person, forget about it.
* Linux elitism - I guess people want to actually use their systems and not spend hours and weeks getting it to work, maybe. That makes them idiots to the Linuxites and that’s not very embracing.
* The Linux jihad - Flame away, people that share my opinion openly will certainly hear it from the Linux faithful. I can hear your blood vessels popping. Truth is we all admire your faith in it, so please don’t hold back. Part of being legitimate is the fact you have to take some of this. I have been hearing about it about Windows for years, so consider this a badge of honor.

Hey since Bill Gates is now retired maybe he can be brought out of retirement by Red Hat or something.

Will any of this matter as web-based applications continue to grow?

VMware has enjoyed having the virtualization market to itself, with only peripheral competition from Citrix and others. As I’ve talked about virtualization and security it also seemed like the only story in town was VMware; Microsoft has been silent and Citrix has taken a more passive stance.

With Microsoft’s blog on Hyper-V posted June 25, it appears that they’re now ready to start putting the squeeze on VMware by announcing their intentions to go into areas underserved by VMware, including eventually entering the data center. The impact of their announced intentions is a signal to VMware’s customers and prospects that Microsoft is on the way.

This officially puts VMware on notice that any delays in penetrating data centers with virtualization will increase the prospects of Microsoft competition: possibly including lower margins and longer sales cycles. Microsoft has a formidable presence. They won’t have to have a better product. If they deliver a more secure approach to virtualization it could also spell trouble for VMware, as that is currently a very significant barrier to the full benefit of virtualization.

Virtualization-lite, or the adoption of hypervisor VLANs with restricted movement and flexibility, will not be enough to hold back Microsoft. VMware will need to get VMsafe members to step up and deliver elegant hypervisor visibility and enforcement. If they can heighten the VMware business case by unleashing the full power of virtualization in the data center they will have a substantial head start; and that could be Microsoft’s Achilles heel.

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Disclosure: I’m the VP Marketing for Blue Lane Technologies, a winner of the 2007 InfoWorld Technology of the Year for security, Best of Interop 2007 in security and the AO 100 Top Private Company award for 2006 and 2007. Blue Lane is also a 2007 Best of VMworld Finalist in data protection. I’ve been a marketing executive at Juniper Networks, Redline Networks, IntruVert Networks and ShoreTel. I’ve been an Always On blogger/columnist since 2004. My recently launched personal blog is: www.archimedius.net . My blog also appears at www.broaddev.com, John Furrier’s new 24 hour blogzine. These are all my opinions, and do not represent the opinions of employers, spouses, kids, etc. They also do not represent any stock recommendations of any kind.

At the UC Summit 2008 I sat down with Eric Swift to discuss Microsoft’s Unified Communications Story. He talks about what is UC, trends, drives in adoption, and Microsoft’s secret sauce on UC.

On another post I had his answer to my question on “How will Microsoft Compete with Google in the Enterprise?” - click here to see that interview

Here is my conversation with Eric Swift.

Cnet has an interview with Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s senior vice president of technology in charge of broadband and consumer services. It’s an in depth interview worth reading, but what I find interesting is his one line answer on Unified Communications.

Verizon’s track record in broadband is not so good although their EVDO service is good (still technically fast dial up).

So when you talk about new voice services, are you talking about offering unified communications in the home?
Wegleitner: Yes, we can offer a unified communication experience in the home today with point solutions. And we have run way left for more sophisticated and converged services.

When will we see these services?
Wegleitner: We can already provide the ability to forward calls. But the find-me and follow-me services haven’t caught on as rapidly as we thought. Sometimes the first time an application comes out of the shoot, it doesn’t catch. But then later, it does. I don’t think we’ve created enough selection or a compelling-enough template to drive mass-market adoption of some of these services yet. But that will come. I don’t think we’re talking more than a couple of years away

Other notable question and answers from Cnet’s Marguerite Reardon

Q: As you know, Comcast got caught slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. As a network provider yourself, do you think it’s necessary to manage your customers’ traffic?
Wegleitner: I think we can come up with scenarios where network management would be necessary. While there might be plenty of bandwidth out there, you can’t really guarantee that you can get an error-free transmission of, say, a video file that will be guaranteed at a specific point in time. That is why you might need rational network management.

But is it acceptable to identify and slow down specific types of traffic like BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer applications?
Wegleitner: Well, it’s sort of a glass-half-full situation. Degrading traffic for one application enables another to work better. But we have to allow people who use the peer-to-peer applications for lawful and legitimate purposes to do so.

Verizon is working with several peer-to-peer companies to find ways to use the technology to distribute content more efficiently. How can the P2P protocol benefit service providers like Verizon?
Wegleitner: Peer-to-peer is a distribution enabler. But often when people talk about P2P, it gets lumped into a category with things that are bad, mainly because it takes up so much capacity on the network. But whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, there is underlying technology for P2P that can be used to everyone’s advantage to get content like video, which everyone is asking for, distributed in the most efficient way.

Update: Karl at DSLReports has a post covering this -always good opinion from Karl’s comment section.

Mitch a a blogger at MitchGarvis.com writes a blog post talking about how his hosting provider recently enabled Unified Communications.  Mitch tells his story about his experience.

Mitch goes on to say..  Microsoft has been talking about Unified Messaging for a couple of years now, and I have been interested in it since the outset but because I do not always have the infrastructure (or the time) to do a lot of the things I would like to do, this (among myriad others) has fallen by the wayside.

My own mail domain is actually managed by an online hosting provider that has recently enabled Unified Communications… and the other day they sent me an e-mail telling me that I could now set up my voice mail to forward to their server.

The cool features I got to play with last night:

• Voice Mail from my Inbox: I left myself a voice mail (at 1:30am there aren’t too many other people to talk to… even the puppies were asleep).  Within seconds I received an e-mail not only telling me I had a voice message… but it allowed me to play it right from my Inbox.
• Listen to my e-mail: I called in an after entering my secure code I was able to not only listen to my voice mail, but could navigate my Inbox and have the pleasant female voice read my e-mails to me.  I could then reply and go on to the next one.  Really cool!
• Hear my calendar: I saw a video last year that was a take-off of The Devil Wears Prada (a movie I have not seen but I am assured the characters are spot on).  In it the Administrative Assistant uses all sorts of features that look like magic, including talking to her Calendar and telling it that she will bee ten minutes late for a meeting (the pleasant female voice then assures her that ’she’ would notify all meeting attendees).  I always thought it was cool, but did not realize how easy it was to do…   I did not actually reschedule meetings, but I did get to hear how busy my day would be today.
• All the normal Voice Mail options…: Of course I was able to change my pin, record my name, change my OGM (I opted to use the pleasant female voice rather than my own).  These are all features we expect to be able to do with voice mail… but with Exchange?

Up to this point VMware has had the virtualization market to itself, with only peripheral competition from Citrix and others. As I’ve talked about virtualization and security it seemed that the only story in town has been VMware; Microsoft has been silent and Citrix has been distant to say the least.

With Microsoft’s blog on Hyper-V posted June 25, it appears that they’re ready to start putting the squeeze on VMware by going into areas underserved by VMware, including eventually entering the data center.

This officially puts VMware on notice that any delays in penetrating data centers with virtualization will introduce the prospects of Microsoft-inspired lower margins and longer sales cycles. Microsoft has a formidable presence. They won’t have to have a better product. If they deliver a more secure approach to virtualization it could spell trouble for VMware, as that is currently a very significant barrier to the full benefit of virtualization.

Virtualization-lite, or the adoption of hypervisor VLANs with restricted movement and flexibility, will not be enough to hold back Microsoft. VMware will need to get VMsafe members to step up and deliver elegant hypervisor visibility and enforcement. If they can heighten the VMware business case by unleashing the full power of virtualization in the data center they will have a substantial head start; and that could be Microsoft’s Achilles heel.

===================================

Disclosure: I’m the VP Marketing for Blue Lane Technologies, a winner of the 2007 InfoWorld Technology of the Year for security, Best of Interop 2007 in security and the AO 100 Top Private Company award for 2006 and 2007. Blue Lane is also a 2007 Best of VMworld Finalist in data protection. I’ve been a marketing executive at Juniper Networks, Redline Networks, IntruVert Networks and ShoreTel. I’ve been an Always On blogger/columnist since 2004. My recently launched personal blog is: www.archimedius.net . My blog also appears at www.broaddev.com, John Furrier’s new 24 hour blogzine. These are all my opinions, and do not represent the opinions of employers, spouses, kids, etc. They also do not represent any stock recommendations of any kind.

Microsoft has their heads in the clouds or do they? Today many conversations around cloud this and cloud that.  Many of my recent blogs at Archimedius have talked about cloud computing from a macroeconomic perspective, with anecdotes about small towns mixed in with lessons from world economic history. Now let’s talk about why ever company with an IT operations department hasn’t yet flown into the clouds to save money and enhance agility.

A farm made up of racks and stacks of hypervisors is incredibly cost efficient, and can allow servers to be brought up and down on short notice in order to scale to meet user demand. That kind of flexibility is a powerful IT operations enabler, especially for businesses with significant user load spikes.

Without virtualization (or cloud computing) organizations have to overprovision servers to support peak; they even keep unused servers running simply to ensure system availability for potential peak usage. That consumes plenty of extra electricity and has caused crowding and data center expansion for many enterprises, which also means extra real estate expense.

If server farms were interconnected around the world in a massive cloud, servers could chase cheap power and only consume electricity when needed. That would be a massive boost in server efficiency and reduction in energy consumption, as articulated in Follow the Moon (or whatever).

Yet despite the opportunities to go cloud there are still technical hurdles; and one of those hurdles is virtualization security. Sharing processing power among many organizations, applications, etc would require a new level of security enforcement well beyond the systems in use today to protect physical servers. Most were created to protect known, static servers, and deployed at an outer perimeter. Very few are capable of looking at traffic inside a hypervisor and protecting virtual servers (VMs) from each other. Many use older deep packet inspection engines to scan traffic for growing lists of attack signatures, which is very compute intensive, which means sizable hypervisor resources being tied up in security tasks.

Because these solutions are compute intensive enterprises would have to create elaborate hairpins between hypervisors, agents and multiple hardware security appliances in order to properly protect the hypervisor layer.

As a result, most enterprises that have virtualized portions of their production data centers have implemented what I’ve called virtualization-lite. There is very little flexibility and cost savings with virtualization-lite relative to virtualization and cloud computing, but it’s the most common response to the protection of VMs by older network security equipment.

Virtualization security is therefore one of the factors restricting the benefits of data center virtualization, and would be an even a larger impediment to cloud computing; the benefits of clouds depend on higher levels of flexibility and server motion.

The established network security and virtualization players need to tackle this issue in order to drive the wider adoption of virtualization and cloud computing. They need to deliver deeper and more robust hypervisor inspection and traffic management capabilities, without having to resort to hypervisor hogging and movement restrictions driven by multiple, specialized security agents or elaborate appliance hairpins.

There is no question that the major players will eventually deliver on the promise of an elegant, comprehensive virtsec solution. Technologies have come to market to address the unique requirements of VM security and hypervisor layer enforcement. The key is their rate of adoption into mainstream virtualization projects. According to security expert Mike Rothman that adoption will take years. Yet the virtualization, security and cloud computing players could reap massive gains as a result of cloud computing. They could establish leadership and considerable revenue momentum as the world’s data centers are re-architected.

Yet the market will have to walk before servers can fly.

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Disclosure: I’m the VP Marketing for Blue Lane Technologies, a winner of the 2007 InfoWorld Technology of the Year for security, Best of Interop 2007 in security and the AO 100 Top Private Company award for 2006 and 2007. Blue Lane is also a 2007 Best of VMworld Finalist in data protection. I’ve been a marketing executive at Juniper Networks, Redline Networks, IntruVert Networks and ShoreTel. I’ve been an Always On blogger/columnist since 2004. My recently launched personal blog is: www.archimedius.net . My blog also appears at www.broaddev.com, John Furrier’s new 24 hour blogzine. These are all my opinions, and do not represent the opinions of employers, spouses, kids, etc. They also do not represent any stock recommendations of any kind.

Microsoft ops guys have a blog at this address and they are announcing that now Microsoft.com web site is powered by Hyper-V.

They say on their blog.. One of our more challenging systems from a server subsystem utilization perspective is www.microsoft.com. The site handles 15,000 requests per second, 1.2 billion page views per month, and 280M worldwide unique users per month as well as supporting ~5000 content contributors from within the company. This site has close to 300GB of content consisting of some seven million individual files on each server. Due to this scale and the variety of applications hosted, the site heavily exercises all of the major subsystems - memory, CPU, network, and file I/O – on each server. Based on the load characteristics and the fact that this site is a testing ground for early adoption of Microsoft technology, we expected the production load of www.microsoft.com to provide a great test for Hyper-V.

To me this is great marketing unlike Microsoft lame attempt into head faking the market with what’s that service … Live Mess or Live Mesh. Live Mesh was being touted as the next best thing but the word was it was vapor. And like that vapor it was - story gone.

I blogged about Hyper-V yesterday and so did Alex. Now they come out and showcase their best site that has the most pressure on it. That’s what I call bring out the ’steak’.

Great conversations on Techmeme

http://www.techmeme.com/080626/p60#a080626p60