Cloud computing poses new challenges for management software

The "Digest" cloud is bringing revolutionary changes to the Web. This radical change poses great challenges for IT managers who are accustomed to observing, monitoring, and controlling their own networks and systems.

The cloud is bringing revolutionary changes to the Web. This radical change poses great challenges for IT managers who are accustomed to observing, monitoring, and controlling their own networks and systems.

Over the years, network and system management software has been evolving toward cloud computing, and it is more appropriate to take this next step than you can think of. But the industry needs to do more in some ways.

To understand the scale of the problem, let's first look at what cloud computing is. Cloud computing has many definitions, but its core definition is that cloud computing is something that has never been abstracted before. You don't have to have servers, software, programs, and storage dedicated to certain tasks, all of which are abstracted to users, even to IT administrators.

Don't worry about individual servers, the focus is on the services they provide, such as email or sales should have. Under cloud services, resources, such as servers, network devices, storage, and operating systems, are shared for these services. Automated software can set up and decompose resources as needed, such as configuring a virtual machine that uses an operating system and an appropriate program, and then revoking the virtual machine later. However, people who use this service do not know the resources that are being used below. These resources can be changed all the time.

Cloud computing has two big aspects, public and private. In a private cloud, the IT department builds its own cloud in its own data center. They set up this automation, they provide all the hardware and software to support this service, they provide this abstraction through virtualization and automation technology.

In a public cloud setting, an enterprise provides this service through an external company. The most typical public cloud is software as a service (SaaS). In this service, the software is hosted by an external company on an internet site. Customer companies typically access this service through a Web browser. Further cloud services are platform-services (PaaS). In this service, users can create applications to run on this platform. However, all software and hardware are managed by an external company. This application is bundled with the application platform provided. Another further application of the public cloud is the infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this service, the hardware and the operating system are still managed by the provider, but the application is entirely up to the customer.

As you can imagine, these developments are beyond the expectation of enterprise management software. The root of management software in the physical world provides the visibility of all the hardware and software of a network. Now, this visibility has been deliberately canceled.

The past is a preface.

However, cloud computing is not a fabrication. Management software vendors have not stalled in the past 10 years. Although management software has a lot to do with these changes, two key developments have helped manage software to prepare for the cloud.

Before the advent of cloud computing, there was a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Although this fashionable word is no longer fashionable, it presents an abstract resource concept. The key information is that servers, storage, software, and network components are not as important as the business-related services they provide. These services can be any application, such as e-mail, human resources applications, and customer service applications.

This is a major shift in the way the IT industry thinks. This shift takes some time to absorb. However, the main management platform needs to be adapted to support this concept, whether the platform is from the BMC, CA, HP, IBM or other companies. Management software to upgrade to support hardware and software, let IT administrators see those business services affected and how affected. You can also drill down on individual components, such as tracking servers that cause your e-mail to slow down. But the focus has changed.

The second key development is virtualization. The virtual machine abstracts the operating system from the hardware it allows. Once you complete this task, the physical location of the software is unimportant, and you have sown the seeds for cloud computing. Indeed, the private cloud has been called the next generation of virtualization. Once again, management software vendors have to deal with this new reality and have to adapt to monitoring and managing virtual machines.

Hewlett-Packard, in particular, saw this task in line with its own strength in the server, took the virtual machine configuration and the method of releasing the configuration. When cloud computing comes up, it is ideal for HP's platform, says Mark Shoemaker, executive plan director for cloud computing and BTO operating software. We don't have to waste our energy doing repetitive work.

Obstacles

However, there is some evidence that management software vendors are not doing a good job of managing server virtualization. The Enterprise Management Association published a survey of 151 IT professionals in February 2011. Jim Frey, the research director of the Enterprise Management Association, says that a number of amazing businesses either buy new tools or make their own tools to deal with server virtualization. In this survey, respondents can choose more than one answer. 50% of respondents said they were buying and deploying new management tools. 33% of respondents said they were making their own tools. By contrast, 54% of respondents said they wanted to upgrade their existing tools.

What they say is that they haven't solved the problem, Frey said.

' Indeed, despite the groundwork that has been laid in service management and virtualization, the history of traditional enterprise management platforms is both a blessing and a curse, ' said Jeff Kaplan, head of consulting firm Thinkstrategies. The experience brings with it the burden of not adapting quickly to cloud reality. They have always been bulky, very expensive, very complex and difficult to deploy and not easy to manage.

Of course, the same thing happens in every major technological shift, no matter what technology. Old firms are trying to bring their own user groups into the new paradigm, and many startups are apparently trying to solve the new class of problems from scratch.

Both old and new vendors have jobs to do, because what is going to happen is that most companies will take a mixed approach, some services are provided in-house, and some services are outsourced to outsourcing providers. Management software will have to handle both services in an intelligent and unified manner.

"I don't see any vendors doing this from the point of view of the concentration influx and exit cloud," said Jon Oltsik, a leading analyst and network World blogger.

CA Cloud Computing Business Department general manager Adam Famularo said the CA has taken a big step in this direction, especially in 2010, when it acquired 3Tera and its AppLogic software. This software helps IT administrators understand the health of an application, regardless of where the application is. In an intelligent cloud environment, it is not important that the application is in a private cloud or provided by an external provider. This policy should be consistent.

Frey of the Enterprise Management Association points out that private clouds are the easiest environment to manage because management software can reach all components directly. With SaaS, you have nothing more to do than test the availability and responsiveness of this service.

The most complex aspect, Frey says, is IaaS and PAAs. In these environments, you rarely know where your workload will be. An open question is, if you're going to do remote monitoring based on the toolkit, where do you put this agent in this huge cloud? No one has solved the problem yet.

Get Vendor Support

Manufacturers are doing something to solve all these problems.

The first thing is acquisitions. More successful management software vendors will buy young vendors who can solve specific cloud problems in innovative ways. As mentioned above, CA acquired 3Tera in 2010. But that's just part of a series of cloud-related acquisitions in the past few years, including a $350 million acquisition of nimsoft,2 billion to buy Arcot Bae and acquisitions of Oblicore, Cassatt, Hyperformix and 4Base technology companies. Then, in June 2011, the CA announced 330 million dollars to acquire interactive TKO. The company helps developers make applications for the cloud environment.

Other firms have also bought cloud-related companies, but not as many as CA acquisitions. IBM acquired the Intelliden and cast Iron Bae in 2010 to help its cloud management efforts. The BMC Software says it enhances its cloud management software by acquiring Coradiant, Gridapp Bae, Neptuny Software, and Phurnace software. Even Cisco took the initiative by acquiring a company associated with Cloud management, acquiring Linesider technology in 2010 and acquiring Newscale in 2011.

The second big point, Kaplan points out, is to build an ecosystem of relationships with cloud service providers. All major management software vendors that do not have a relationship with a cloud provider have to build management with a large cloud provider. These providers include Amazon. Amazon offers these services, however, and lacks a management component. This collaboration will provide better cloud visibility for the management platform.

Third, an ongoing effort is made to try to achieve standards for services provided by external companies. Mellon University launched a plan to develop a service management index in May 2010, trying to get a standard approach to contrasting cloud services. Members of the Cloud Commons will use this final index. Cloud Commons is a group supported by CAs.

Finally, the manufacturer also introduced the management that serves the product. Because management is just an application, management can also be placed in the cloud. This means you can use a cloud-based service to manage your cloud-based services.

The plight of the vendors who manage software reflects the plight of IT administrators. If they can stand at the height of cloud computing while they are in the cloud, if they can manage cloud computing, their survival prospects will be better.

(Responsible editor: admin)