tag:blogs.intel.com,2008:/it//1 2008-05-14T16:44:25Z Talk with Intel's IT Leaders Movable Type Enterprise 1.53 communities.intel.com:ce41f2289305096c5ca7937bbf27063a36255f62 2008-05-12T18:22:48Z 2008-05-12T17:52:13Z

Come join us! The success of a security program is measured by an event that doesn't happen, so how do you know if you were successful? Matt Rosenquist, Intel’s Information Security Strategist will do a three-part series on Blog Talk Radio discussing the difficulties of measuring a security program. Segment 1: May 20th at 10:30 AM (Pacific): The Problem of Measuring Security Part 1 of 3 Segment 2: May 29th at 10:30 AM (Pacific): Return on Security Investment - Intel Cast Study Part 2 of 3 Segment 3: June 4th at 10:30 AM (Pacific): Future State of Security Measurement Part 3 of 3 Our Blog Talk Radio segments are interactive and we will be taking live calls from listeners (Call-in Number: (347) 326-9831) and live chat over the Web. What are your questions for Matt around security metrics?

Ilene Aginsky http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FIlene communities.intel.com:71d169004936aed37d4ae601d7c3914ce6617001 2008-05-08T16:48:44Z 2008-05-06T16:24:50Z

Matthew Rosenquist http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FMatthew%20Rosenquist communities.intel.com:d84b5e9bf64e2068283057ab00770bb02aba6423 2008-05-02T10:05:32Z 2008-05-02T09:32:18Z

Wouldn't it be great if we could buy an application and not have to worry about whether it was designed to run on Windows XP, Windows Vista, MAC OS X or some flavor of linux? How about when you buy a personal computer you don't have to make a decison on whether it should come with Windows XP, Windows Vista, MAC OS X (don't you wish that was a choice today) or some flavor of linux - or nothing and you figure it out later? What if every computer you bought came with a smal, highly efficient operating system that basically only acted similar to a virtual machine hypervisor, managing the allocation of resources to virtual machines (or applications). And by the way it was built into the "platform" supplied by the chip vendor and OEM's only aggregated components and added value where it counts - tools to better manage the virtual enviornments, as a peer process not as a "host" operating system. This is the world that I would like to see evolve over the next couple of years (okay maybe 5). Applications are compiled with the operating system extensions (purchased from today or tomorrow's operating system vendors) and sold as one package that runs on top of the thin/efficient operating system mentioned above. This way we as the consumers can worry about selecting applications and functionality and get out of the business of worrying about which operating system to buy - or worrying about which operating sytem the application will run on. We just buy the application!!! What a concept!!! A nice extension to this would be to allow the ability to still have a more traditional "container" of applications for secure, managed interaction between applications and for providing a policy managed environment. But the applications should still be the same apps I buy to run independently - So how about an install option - standalone or in a "container" or ??? Now that would be cool.

Tom Mant http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2Ftamant communities.intel.com:d961feb44b69064039a93d7a497b175c010d4adf 2008-05-01T10:32:25Z 2008-05-01T10:03:07Z

Tim Casey http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FTim%20Casey communities.intel.com:d996b605c7c3e2e7d780f40bae4eeaab42c3169a 2008-04-28T09:44:49Z 2008-04-28T09:27:39Z

I'd like to introduce myself--my name is Ilene Aginsky and I'm the new site community manager for the IT@Intel zone on Open Port, Intel's online IT community site. I started out in IT about two years ago and got very interested in the green aspect of IT. We have had quite a few discussions out here in the community on green versus efficient Greening Data Centers or Make 'em Efficient? and I'm not as concerned by what it is called but rather what we must do to ensure we don't damage the environment. The issues are not simple and require a balancing act. It is important to look at the picture holistically, from cradle to grave. For example, Intel IT will be refreshing approximately 20,000 servers this year with new servers that will consume less energy and reduce our carbon footprint. This begs the question: what happens to the old equipment and what are we doing to prevent it from ending up in a landfill? I asked my colleague Robert who is the Secure Data Control Program Manager for IT and he told me that all end-of-life (EOL) servers at Intel follow the same process. We make sure that we secure all the data by removing and sanitizing the hard drives. Once the data has been sanitized there are three possible paths: Resale - we prioritize re-sale Donations - some organizations need servers, even without disks Scrap - anything deemed worthless to resale or donations is sent to scrap vendors for material reuse and recycling What does your organization do with old equipment?

Ilene Aginsky http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FIlene communities.intel.com:3b533abf32fa956058033110a677f99530ae41aa 2008-04-24T10:58:16Z 2008-04-24T10:42:12Z

As this is my first blog on this forum, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Bill Sunderland and I have been working at Intel for 12 years primarily working on Server Hardware Engineering and the last three years of which I have focused my efforts on Program Managing the Virtualization Engineering release for Intel IT. I have recently published a WP demonstrating the methodology used as described below. Intel IT planned, engineered, and has begun deploying a virtualized business-computing production environment at several data centers, a rollout that will continue through 2008. Our initiative has already confirmed anticipated virtualization benefits such as faster, more automated deployment. We are initially consolidating older servers running applications that are not mission-critical; we see opportunities to achieve 16:1 consolidation ratios. Click here to read the WP: Implementing Virtualization in a Global Business-Computing Environment I would be interested in hearing your experiences and/or questions regarding virtualizing IT environments!

Bill Sunderland http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FBillSunderland communities.intel.com:cfc119d635a3cfe0dcf44b2f60cf014e5fa1f21c 2008-04-23T07:59:45Z 2008-04-23T07:54:00Z

Catherine Spence http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FCatherine%20Spence communities.intel.com:1d7d99cdd26c2729dd282e60b11ea7b13e00f9b4 2008-04-22T17:39:46Z 2008-04-22T16:19:40Z

The relative positioning of 2 and 4-socket servers for server virtualization has been an open question for a long time - a question that has stumped the most astute of IT professionals time and again. In fact it might not be an exaggeration to say that this open question is almost in the same class as the famous Riemann's hypothesis that has remained unsolved for over a century! (If you accept that premise, then there's some real estate on the moon that I'd like to bring to your attention as well). Although advocates for either class of servers have been emphatic in their respective positions, compelling data-points supporting their positions have been few and far between. To remedy this sorry state of affairs, an Intel IT team conducted in-depth tests and analysis using current quad-core processor based 2 and 4-socket servers in a virtualized environment. This effort culminated in a comprehensive framework for comparing server platforms for virtualization. This comparative framework encompasses the majority of common deployment scenarios and usage models and answers - once and for all - the long unanswered question "which server is more appropriate for my virtualization project?" The whitepaper detailing the findings can be found here Comparing Two- and Four-Socket Platforms for Server Virtualization. If time is short, click on the icon below for a short video overview.

Sudip Chahal http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FSudip%20Chahal communities.intel.com:a7531c6d26844cee2fa94b5ffcb3ba111eb4a17e 2008-04-22T14:36:16Z 2008-04-22T08:11:27Z

My daughter recently brought home from school a photocopy of the lyrics of Jack Johnson’s “The 3 R’s” (from the Curious George soundtrack), which encourage us to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. This struck me as relevant in some of the recent discussions I have been having about Greenwashing in the Data Center. A fair amount of our data center strategy deals with driving down costs. We’re trying to spend less money to deliver the same or better results. Along the way, we find opportunities to be green. While I would love to have more meetings that start out with the question of “what can we do to help the environment?” rather than “what can we do to cut costs?”, we do talk about both. This is somewhat similar to consumer-oriented eco-efforts, encouraging people to save the world while saving money: unplug electronic devices when they're not being used, replace your appliances with more energy-efficient ones, etc. I don't know of many people or organizations who wouldn't like to spend less money, and when we can help the environment at the same time it's win-win. Which brings me back to the song lyrics. Our cost-cutting measures tend to be related to at least two of the three “R’s” – reducing what we consume, many times by reusing what we already have. I’ll spend my next few posts exploring this a bit further, giving some specific examples of our cost-savings initiatives that ultimately contribute to a greener data center and IT infrastructure. Happy Earth Day...

Travis Broughton http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2Ftravis.broughton communities.intel.com:3337914a1df3b92274cbf33ac442d2b86f4e3d5b 2008-04-11T09:54:36Z 2008-04-11T09:41:25Z

Doug Garday continues his podcast series with part II, which continues the discussion around a heat recovery system to reduce the total cost of ownership. In this podcast, Doug plugs in numbers that show potential energy cost savings. Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/5079/roi-of-data-center-heat-recovery To listen to Part I go to What if you invested a dollar and it returned 10?. View the full brief at Data Center Heat Recovery Helps Intel Create Green Facility.

Laurie Buczek http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FLaurie%20Buczek communities.intel.com:7493d6035135c4639123ff47b6d8a7bf583b7ad8 2008-04-04T10:57:58Z 2008-04-04T08:50:46Z

Hello community, Since this is my first blog on this site so I thought it would be nice to introduce myself. My name is Brian McCann and I'm an Automation Engineer at Intel that focuses on platforms support. In short this means I'm in the trenches everyday supporting Intel's manufacturing environment. This blog is going to be focused on sharing my tools and best practices when managing a server environment, it is not going to be a sales and marketing blog...sorry to disappoint. My interests are hardware and software...in fact I'm a little biased toward Microsoft since I've supported Microsoft environments for some time now. If you want to find out a little more about me feel free to visit my other blog where I focus most of those blogs on Active Directory. Hopefully you'll like what you see here and come back for more. Today I wanted to share with you a tool that will help simplify the management of your servers...especially if you have a lot of servers to manage like I do. Its name is VisionApp Remote Desktop and it is a great freeware program to manage Windows servers. I've always disliked the built-in MMC snap-in Remote Desktops. It is a very simple tool that is only good for managing about ten servers. Like you, I manage way more than ten servers. This tool has the following benefits to help you manage those remote desktop sessions: Sort Servers Alphabetically (This made me so angry that I couldn't do this with Microsoft's Remote Desktop MMC. When you have to manage a lot of servers it is a pain when you add new ones that follow a naming convention that now fall out of order) Create folders to help sort different types of servers (I created folders for my Production, Integration, Development and Virtual servers. This has made it extremely easy to find what I'm looking for.) Tabbed Remote Desktops (Tabs are huge right now and this tool takes full advantage of them. I can now open several different types of servers from different folders and access them via the tabs on the top.) Hopefully this tool relieves some of the stress you have when managing your environment. I have plenty of tools and best practices stored up so let me know what you think about them. Also if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Brian W. McCann http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FBrianMcCann communities.intel.com:15c79e61951a7dcf954e4be76ef276d08ec7b38a 2008-04-01T10:04:41Z 2008-04-01T09:32:11Z

If you invested one dollar and it returned 10 dollars, you'd think that was an excellent return wouldn't you? So what if you could get this same 10X return on energy? An industrial heat pump system called Heat Recovery where an additional 100 kW of power used returns 1 megawatt of heat energy. This return or ratio of energy in vs energy out is called Coefficient Of Performance (COP). A resistance heater uses 1kW of power to produce 1kW of heat, providing a COP of 1. Residential Heat Pumps are efficient but very dependent on ambient weather conditions and produce less usable heat when outside conditions are colder. So how about a system that works at a COP of 10 regardless of weather conditions outside? I hope you have seen our discussion on whether the data center is green or efficient Greening Data Centers or Make 'em Efficient? but either way you slice it the data center consumes energy. How can we reuse that energy for other purposes? Check out Part 1 of a two-part podcast (look for this next week) that describes how we have designed a system to capture the heat coming off all the equipment in the data center and recycle it to heat offices and warm water for cafeterias and other domestic water purposes. Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/5053/data-centers-recycle-excess-heat Check out the brief for more details Data Center Heat Recovery Helps Intel Create Green Facility. Update: Part II of the podcast series is now available Part II: What if you invested a dollar and it returned 10? This is where I get into discussing the numbers and the total cost of ownership.

Doug Garday http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FDoug%20Garday communities.intel.com:1cf4ef809f7866418b4a9126cc538bb94404c4da 2008-04-01T08:18:27Z 2008-04-01T08:02:18Z

Just finished my green belt project analyzing how effective web analytics is in identifying applications no longer required by IT (and should be archived) . the project went well I had some interesting data to show for it and it def drove a decision. I'd have to say that LSS gave me some new tools to use. The templates we use internally are ok but If I was outside I'd probably stop by http://lssacademy.com/downloads/ and check out their C&E and FMEA. Some advice to others looking to start a GB project I'd like to mention a couple of general things I learned from setting up and running mine: Don't boil the ocean - Improve an existing process as your green belt project. Use Six Sigma tools to measure process output and identify where failures impact results (FMEA, C&E, etc). Apply Lean Thinking to a step that has a lot of failure. Measure improvement using Six Sigma tools (remesure your failure rate / speed / or what every you has as the cause of your failure).

George Clement http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FGeorgeClement communities.intel.com:0ed2dd35571071e65bb99720f37ae352ba12042d 2008-03-28T14:35:16Z 2008-03-28T14:25:57Z

According to Dictionary.com “one size fits all” is an adjective that means “acceptable or used for a wide variety of purposes or circumstances; appealing or suitable to a variety of tastes.” In IT, we have used this approach for how we deliver client systems to users. We pick a few key hardware platforms and create OS builds that meet security requirements and contain a base level of software applications. Users take delivery of new systems and then customize from there with various configuration settings and specific software needed for their jobs. The “one size fits all” model has worked pretty well over the years. It has been a highly successful way for IT to mass produce systems and support users in a standard way. The world is changing. The number of available choices in hardware platforms is significantly increasing, ranging from desktops to portables to blade client to smart phones. Users are becoming increasingly aware of the choices and want to participate in the decision over what devices are best suited to their work style. In some cases, they want to use different devices simultaneously (for example, a smartphone and a laptop). In terms of software applications, new computing models are emerging to respond to the complexity. IT does not want to create new applications for each kind of device introduced in the environment. A major challenge will be to consolidate backend infrastructure and provide a common user experience across the spectrum of client hardware platforms, not to mention all of the issues related to security and IT governance. We must embrace these challenges because the days of “one size fits all” client hardware are numbered.

Catherine Spence http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FCatherine%20Spence communities.intel.com:99a2690313d111783e4b75eddd9f038c2528d445 2008-03-19T08:17:40Z 2008-03-18T15:33:10Z

Up to this point I have covered Application inventory as a cost savings initiative followed by a discussion of Application inventory starts with a definition, and finally Application inventory, what do you capture? Following the natural progression of: Why inventory Boundaries of what to capture What to capture How to capture The "How to capture" is not a simple task completed in a week or two. For a company our size this task is still ongoing after fourteen months. And our progress shows us that we will need at least till the end of year to approach some semblance of sustainability. By sustainability I mean that the information, process and people will be in place to keep the data in a fresh state so that true data-based decisions can be made at near real-time. Every day the clarity of our inventory gets sharper and sharper as we identify and pull in the data owners. The quality of the information becomes more focused as more of the profile is filled out. There are internal systems that are starting to rely on the data we have captured. That data is being transformed into true business information which has value and can be used to make the right decisions at the right time. At times, it still feels like an uphill battle. Each day we stand side-by-side with those who see the value and push on the back of our partners as we slowly progress up the hill. Now knowing the definition and what data we want to capture we could have progressed in a multitude of ways: Distributed work-load, individual owners Focused work-load, our team owning (interviewing) Centralized gathering (combination of above, driving people to a single location) We chose to adopt the creation of a simple to use, centrally located (Intranet Application), that stored the data we needed. As mentioned in the past, we did our analysis by looking at applications on our enterprise that already contained the types of data we were interested in. What we discovered was that none of them had the flexibility to store the additional information nor the development resources to alter their systems. This pushed us to obtain permission to build a new application. At this point you may be saying, "You built an application to reduce the number of applications?" Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing. It would have been too easy to drop a spreadsheet out there and start gathering information. Short-term this would have cost the least and potentially would have allowed us to get part of the way there. The issue is the long-term sustainability and trust that comes from a solution like that. We would have security concerns, updating collision as well as the reduced ability to share the data easily with other applications. Yes, we built a new application, using two people, in four weeks. Since implementation started we have supported weekly releases while expanding the data being captured, the usability for customers (and consumers) as well as enabling the removal of the majority of those other systems with parallel capabilities. We have great internal hosting solutions and have been operating non-stop since December 2006. Our goal is still to do the right thing and properly manage our inventory through reduction. We were instrumental in providing the information and process needed to remove over 500 applications (and associated hardware) from our environment since we started our process. In my next entry I will talk about some future enhancements to get us through the next year and the further reduction in application inventory we are charged with. Perhaps its time to start looking at how our original analysis for "Low Hanging Fruit" was successful and now we find ourselves making hard decisions in order to continue refining our inventory. Have you had similar issues at your company? Do you currently have this challenge before you? I'm curious to hear some of those challenges and potential solutions.

John E. Simpson http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FJohn%20Simpson communities.intel.com:036e6027297e6a4ab08454e400a3204bd3f05c2f 2008-03-11T14:19:14Z 2008-03-11T13:57:56Z

Some general thoughts and ramblings on application streaming - where it is better than web applications and where it might not be. Application streaming is an interesting technology - you can create a client rich application with sophisticated graphics and processing and yet have a high degree of security and the benefits of server side manageability. In my mind this is the best of two worlds. On the one hand you can leverage the full strength of the latest processors and graphics cabilities and on the other you can manage security and upgrades quickly and efficiently. The application doesn't go through an install process on the client so you eliminate some of the problems associated with different people installing the same application differently. The installation can be "isolated" to protect against conflicts (in some cases this provides backwards compatibility) which also raises some challanges, although this also provides some "challenges" for the integration of mulitple applications on the same device. Upgrades are simple and guaranteed - since you only upgrade the server and anyone using that application gets the update at next use, true for security patches as well. For those that are using the applications offline (which you can do, try that with a web app) they will get the update the next time they connect to the network. Streaming (some products anyway) provides a means for license management, so perhaps you don't need to own as many licenses as you thought by tracking concurrent usage and preventing over subscribing. This is can be important for some expensive purchased applications. Streaming applications are also not subject to the multitude of exploits that are written to attach web browsers and web applications. I believe that for corporate applications they are safer and easier to protect. That alone may be reason enough to justify moving in this direction. One area where web based applications COULD be better is if they are written to work on multiple platforms with multiple browsers (such as Windows and OS X). However in practice this seems to be seldom done, most apps are still written for one environment or the other and it's more of chance that the application works in the other environments. This could be a big plus if developers would truly develop for the heterogenous world we live in. Another is that with client rich applications there is often more database traffic being routed over the network between the client and the server infrastructure whereas in a web application the database traffic can be kept between the application server and the database server. This puts the onus on the application developer to take this into account when architecting their application. It can be done efficiently but it does raise that "old" argument and problem. So perhaps it is time to look at how we develop applications and rather than swinging the pendelum back to all client rich applications, maybe we should be looking at a better balance of applications leveraging the best technology for the requirements. Just a thought

Tom Mant http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2Ftamant communities.intel.com:7fcdaa5e8f5e5811eac5651d08bcc81b2db5b2ab 2008-03-10T13:54:12Z 2008-03-10T13:49:10Z

Tomas Mcinerney http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FTomas%20Mcinerney communities.intel.com:d8869482734f9ced10730839558f23a4d24f56b4 2008-03-10T11:03:32Z 2008-02-05T16:06:03Z

I won't go into a long dissertation, but I would like to hear what the masses are thinking about Green or Efficient efforts for the Data Center landscape. As you all know Green is taking off -- our world is becoming concerned with the legacy we'll leave for our children and their children. I admire that because it identifies how we're a caring nation in the U.S. as well as a compassionate world. But I believe we're mixing the messages down at the lower levels; In my opinion, "Green" means giving something back to mother earth. It means offsetting your carbon impact by planting trees (as I learned from one of the earlier companies I worked for ), or it means buying energy from alternative means such as wind power -- the direction Intel and other companies are moving towards. Those are green efforts from my point of view. However "Efficiency," is defined by Encarta's North America dictionary as this.. "The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort." Those are two different directions as I see them, and companies running programs to enable more efficient Data Centers must understand how to correctly identify their approach. So, what does everyone else thing about Green vs. Efficient? Share your opinion Greening Data Centers or Make 'em Efficient?

Brently Davis http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FBrently%20Davis communities.intel.com:1cc9240976b7a697974f95afa1fa8acf4baed0aa 2008-03-07T09:58:33Z 2008-03-07T09:35:50Z

I've got profiles everywhere these days, and not just on the internet, but on the intranet as well. I'm sure we've all got a variety of external faces, whether on Yahoo*, MSN Spaces*, Facebook*, myspace.com*, LinkedIn*, or the myriad of other social networking sites out there. But what about on the corporate intranet? It can get just as complicated there, especially if you are trying to find someone who knows something about something that no one in your organization knows anything about! We're starting to see social networking tools for the enterprise show up in evaluations, and I really do hope we implement something within the company - there's incredible value in knowing that I could search for organization development and find a person who is in another division that did an OD project last year that's exactly what I'm trying to do now. But we're not quite there. Right now I've got a pseudo-profile on my internal blog, another on our internal wiki, another on our document collaboration environment, another that's part of my email signature line, and I'm sure there's yet another floating around somewhere. If someone wanted to know what I've been up to for the last 12 years at Intel, they would have to look around in three or four different places to get the full story, or just ask me for a copy of my resume. Part of that is my fault - I just need to pick one place to keep updated and point everything else to it, but the problem there is that now I'm sending people to sites that might not be their PREFERRED location for social networking. As an external example, let's say you've got a personal blog on wordpress.org, but you've also got a myspace account and another on MSN Spaces. All three have blog functionality, which do you pick? Do you post to all three at the same time, or do you point people to one or the other? What if one of your friends prefers MSN Spaces, but you keep sending them to wordpress.org to read your blog? It's profile overload! Not only do you have profile/personal info in 10 different places, but you're trying to communicate redundantly based on other people's preferences. Stop the madness! I'm now to the point where I'm shutting down my profiles on sites that are just secondary or tertiary, and if people want to know who I am and what I'm wearing, they will go to the one site that has it all, because realistically, whichever site you choose will have another competitor in 6 months that everyone will flock to and add 500 friends they've never actually met before. In my mind, I'm seeing a group huddled together moving in unison from one corner of the room to the next as the latest social media site pops up. Will it settle any time soon? I doubt it. There are many competitors that are getting into niche areas and offering more for your money (which in most cases is free). It's a challenge outside and a challenge inside. At least within the company you can create a "mandate" that says here is the site to create your profile and it's what the company is going to use. Maybe some day everyone on the planet will have an ID number and their own website. I want to be 0100100001000101010000010101010001001000.com. Websites and locations mentioned in this blog are trademarks and properties of their respective companies.

Heath Buckmaster http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FHeath%20Buckmaster communities.intel.com:754538b86225ec77d02e09ef38506ad373d0399f 2008-03-03T13:17:31Z 2008-03-03T13:15:11Z

Alan Ross http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FAlan%20Ross communities.intel.com:40a224baa870dccd4801856639ab4ad9026cd390 2008-02-28T07:54:54Z 2008-02-28T07:42:31Z

A recent article in Information Week discusses how Credit Suisse has been very successful implementing virtualization in the data center and how they view the desktop as the next area of opportunity. By virtualizing desktops and bringing them into the data center, Credit Suisse hopes gain the ability to quickly re-provision desktops in response to changing user needs. But at what cost? Depending on how many users Credit Suisse has, this means moving the processing from thousands of independent computing elements into the data center. Out in the enterprise, power and cooling is abundant and there is no issue with rack space. Perhaps they have ample space in their data centers. What about user experience? There is something to be said about moving the processing as local to the user as possible. Some applications lend themselves to be hosted centrally and accessed via a browser or portal interface. Other applications including multimedia, unified communications and complex user interfaces are better served at the endpoint device to enable the best responsiveness and/or mobility. Virtualization is a great technology and it definitely creates new possibilities in terms of OS and application portability. This might be the right solution for Credit Suisse, given their user needs, sets of applications and data center configurations. Who can blame them for wanting to build on their past success. However, there is a bigger picture to consider the correct balance of computing models for particular usage models.

Catherine Spence http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FCatherine%20Spence communities.intel.com:0c76664b780e9541c1612d075bfaf5133cb62c76 2008-02-26T10:41:39Z 2008-02-26T10:34:50Z

A Proof-of-Concept (POC) conducted by Intel IT evaluated OS and application streaming in call center and manufacturing environments. The four-part study included performance, usability, IT support and cost. The POC successfully identified streaming as a novel, feasible technology in the tested scenarios. The biggest benefits were related to locking down the client, improving security and eliminating service calls. Challenges were encountered related to the learning curve and software maturity of application packaging and troubleshooting. A technical brief is available for downloading: Software On Demand: OS/Application Streaming Client Study

Catherine Spence http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FCatherine%20Spence communities.intel.com:dbf9d7c9bfff2139a367503179169d43be92d777 2008-02-21T14:28:19Z 2008-02-21T13:07:58Z

Up to this point I have covered Application inventory as a cost savings initiative followed by a discussion of Application inventory starts with a definition. In our specific implementation, we started with a base set of attributes. Some of those were very obvious while others were necessary for managing some of our base enterprise capabilities. Items that were only captured in a 1:1 (one-to-one) relationship to any single specific application were: Name Description Importance (a tiered level detailing the impact to our company) Status (or state of the implementation) Type (of application) Manufacturer (if purchased) Version Owning Group User Count We also had some 1:M (one-to-many) related attributes which we cataloged in order to further build out the metadata for each instance. Contact Cost (develop, host, support, license) Link (to external data) Support Technology This was sufficient information for us to move along and begin consolidating data. As we engaged more and more teams and discovered localized stores of this data, our metamodel expanded to include a few more elements. Some of these also included associated increase in our own inventory tool capability. As this capability was implemented we were able to start turning off applications through consolidation (one of our key goals). Additional Items (one-to-one) Product Line (for ease of grouping and management) Hosting Platform User Description Cross-Site Consumption Customer Located External (to Intel) Data Classifications (for information security and control) Disaster Recovery Details End of Life Tracking (legal and recovery data) Additional Items (one-to-many) Alias (alternate naming; the key to our success) Capability Component/Module Customer Country/Region Interface (consumption and providing) Network Ports/Protocol Product Testing (results, for future enterprise releases) Many of them are specific to how we do business inside our company, however, you might find value in some of our learning's. As I mentioned we discovered pockets of data and some little (and big) applications utilizing some of this data. It has become increasingly easy to implement an additional module that relates and consumes the data from the larger metamodel. From an architecture stand-point, we need to be careful not to develop this into a "jack-of-all-trades" application that does everything for everyone. Up to this point we still only capture data (and functionality) that is related to the Application through direct relationship. As an example, we associate the application to what network port/protocol it uses, but not necessarily the network that is can pass across. We will capture the hosting platform name but not the specifics of that host. Instead we rely on interrelated systems to draw the larger picture of the whole enterprise. Are we done? Not even close. As noted in our Intel Information Technology 2007 Performance Report (page 12), this application and the associated capabilities we are developing is having a big impact. During 2007 we were instrumental in the end-of-life of over 450 applications. The metadata we capture and maintain have helped to identity instances of duplicity as well as opportunities where support and consumption have dropped to the point we can turn off the application. In my next entry I will talk about how we were able to use two people resources and build an application in four weeks to solve this problem. Also how that solution has been running non-stop, for fifteen months with no downtime or impact to customers while increasing capability and usability while doing releases on average of every two weeks. Future posts will talk about some future enhancements to get us through the next year and the further reduction in application inventory we are charged with. Have you had similar issues at your company? Do you currently have this challenge before you? I'm curious to hear some of those challenges and potential solutions.

John E. Simpson http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FJohn%20Simpson communities.intel.com:bb7a3051b106405f8d7f55fe98a36f7ab72ee0bd 2008-02-14T07:02:58Z 2008-02-14T06:51:57Z

It seems counter-intuitive to think that applications streamed over the network could run faster than the same applications installed locally. If the circumstances are right, it could happen! Here is a Systems Manufacturing example. We ran a series of key tasks across a variety of configurations to collect performance metrics. Our script opened a work order in our ERP system, created packaging labels using a bar code generation program, looked up label part numbers for our product bill of materials and ran work order activity reports in three custom web-based applications. Our baseline was a Pentium 4 desktop system (3.0 GHz). Our trial system was a Celeron 215 desktop system (1.33 GHz). Both had 1 GB RAM. The baseline system had applications installed locally on its hard drive. Applications and the OS were delivered to the trial system via streaming. Throughput time of our script on baseline system was 6 minutes 15 seconds. The same script executed on the trial system for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Two things come to mind to explain the difference. First, our script contained a good mix of local and remote processing to maximize our trial processor. Second, the nature of the computing model provides explanation. Applications are broken up into execution blocks so we only need to load and execute the portion of the application that we need. Further, since virtualization was used in conjunction with the application streaming, the virtual software layer makes things like registry settings easier and faster to access.

Catherine Spence http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FCatherine%20Spence communities.intel.com:078b3f1edd91ddd5e246625af8c02f196cbcf70f 2008-02-13T13:19:07Z 2008-02-13T13:11:24Z

Every software project I have worked on always started with some form of conflict and complicated interactions. This usually resolved itself through the use of a definition regarding roles and responsibilities. That definition kept people on the same page and helped everyone to understand who was doing what. Now depending on when you happened to look at my job title over the last 13 years, you may have seen one of the following: Software Engineer Application Developer Enterprise Application Developer Software Developer This means only that I moved from one department to another, however, the physical tasks I employed were the same. My output may have had a different installer/wrapper/output, however, it was the same. I designed, developed, tested and deployed an application into our environment. When it was time to define the characteristic (metadata) of an application, we needed to start with definitions. Not only what an "Application" is but what "Software" is and how (if) it differs from each other and from an "Operating System". This is vitally important because no matter who you talk to, they will have a difference of opinion in this area. Let me give you an example that we are currently dealing with. We are implementing a CMDB (Change Management Database) for our Service and Support organization. As our application data is pumped into that solution we had to decide whether it is an application or software. The CMDB definitions basically stated that software was the core items used to build a hosting platform whereas an application is the code hosted on that platform. A very specific definition for their very specific implementation. Our definition was much more simple. If it's coded, if you develop it, it is a software application simply referred to as an "Application". This can be developed internally or purchased. An application is not an operating system. That means that everything running on our environment, that is loaded on top of an operating system, is an application and needs to be inventories. That also means if it is a web-based solution, with software code, hosted within a web-hosting solution, however, it is still an application. We did draw a very discreet line in that we did not want to inventory certain things. Those are items that are "configured" inside of other applications. Item such as: Web sites without dynamic content, hosted within a dynamic web solution such as Microsoft Sharepoint or created with Microsoft Frontpage or another WYSIWYG client. Templates configured for an application. Fileshare Hosting Platforms (configuration of hardware and application software) To put forth some simple rules, that people can evaluate their "Application" before attempting to add it for evaluation, we came up wtih some simple rules. It has to meet all of these with a yes response. Installed on Intel (or contracted) hardware? Initially used by more than one person (or application) at Intel? Does this have (or has it ever had) a development/support team? Does this have (or has it ever had) a development/release process? This minimizes the possibility that we inventory applications that are sitting in a box, not installed on the environment. It also means that items we paid for, installed, licensed and such, are included. Whether on a server or on a client, we need to know about them so that we can work towards the simplification of our inventory. Next I will cover how we have gone about gathering this data. Some approaches work well while others don't. Additionally, before you start gathering data you must have a solid review, maintenance and data quality processes in place or the data will be of no use for future analysis. Have you undergone a similiar process? Are you struggling with doing this inside your company? Have questions? Let us know.

John E. Simpson http%3A%2F%2Fcommunities.intel.com%2Fopenport%2Fpeople%2FJohn%20Simpson