Data center reform: Operating system is no longer an obstacle

Gartner has announced that the development of new technologies will bring changes to the data center. Gartner's "Breakthrough Technologies" list of developments includes the latest technologies in unified communications and virtualization.

Automation technology may continue to reduce the data center workforce, but unified communications technologies make it faster and easier for legacy IT staff to communicate, Gartner said.

This week, consulting firm Gartner held an annual data center conference here, announcing a top 10 "breakthrough technology" impacting the data center. The top-ranked technologies include Unified Communications, Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, and IT Operations Process Automation tools.

These groundbreaking technologies, released this week, are almost in line with the list released last month by Orlando-based Gartner analysts at their company's IT seminars. This list will be Gartner's 2008 strategic year for the top ten reference standards.

The following eight technologies are listed in both lists, albeit in a different order: Unified Communications (UC), SaaS and other web platform technologies, virtualization technologies, legacy data management technologies, mashups and composite applications Technology, "social software," green IT, and server-based computing architecture.

Technologies unique to the data center list include configuration management databases and automation tools. In the meantime, earlier rankings included a statement that business process management (BPM) and "Real World Web" Gartner used to describe a network that's accessible everywhere from a mobile device.

Unified communications primarily involves IP telephony, e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing. Gartner analyst CarlClauch said at the meeting that so far only 20% of corporate users have begun using IP telephony. But he also predicted that over the next three years, the vast majority of companies will use IP telephony.

Claunch added that Unified Communications will no longer be limited to P2P communication tools. Video technology and sensor data and analytics applications will also be part of a company's unified communications.

Data center staff will also see dramatic changes in virtualization, including the ability to consolidate several smaller servers into larger servers, Claunch said.

While virtualization is currently primarily used to run multiple operating systems on a single hardware platform, according to Claunch, the new virtualization capabilities allow users to make a single operating system appear to have many 32 processors At the same time running. "Right now we have only half the technology," he said.

Claunch's assessment of the potential capabilities of virtualization technology follows David Salbego, manager of Unix and operations services at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois.

"I think it will have more power than it has today," said Salbego, referring to virtualization technology. "You suddenly realize that the operating system is no longer a barrier to managing your business."

Chris Orzen, an engineer at Anixter International, a distributor of communications products in Glenview, Ill., Said he heard Claunch's prediction that unified communications will continue to expand in scope, saying he hinted at having more cables in between. For all the "condensation" required by the technology, many companies will need to reduce their cables to "a single trunk fiber," Orzen said.