In the world of cloud computing and virtualization, it’s interesting to me sometimes to watch where the money is going – in terms of investment dollars – to gauge what technology trends will be first and foremost.

I read with great interest a recent story about Bellevue, WA-based venture capital firm Ignition Partners. It invests in both early-stage and growth-stage companies in the U.S. and China, and it focuses on consumer tech, communications and wireless, and business software and infrastructure. Ignition is strong in cloud computing, having been involved in Citrix Systems’ acquisition of XenSource, for one. “This is the next generation of what we believe system software is doing,” said Brad Silverberg, a co-founding partner at Ignition, in the story. “It’s the next stage of the Internet. ”

As for virtualization, which enables cloud computing, Ignition partner Richard Fade, has a wide vision. He said: “Across the board, we think virtualization has the potential to remake the way servers are deployed and managed. We see a whole continuum of products evolving. Our job is to pick the ones that have significant shares.”

Aside from XenSource, Ignition Partners have invested in:

- Skytap, whose technology enables firms to manage virtual machines that can handle data storage, processing, and networking for complex tasks like software development and operations testing.

- InstallFree, which makes business software that solves compatibility and security problems when employees install Windows programs and upgrades on their desktops.

- Xeround, which has developed cloud computing and virtualization software for database applications, mostly in the telecom industry.

Looks like Ignition’s money long-term is on cloud computing and virtualization, and where the money goes, so does development. Promising things to think about in this recession.

Keeping up with new requirements and changes for networks can be a daunting task. But the process of network change and configuration management (NCCM), an organization-wide standardized method to implementing both self-motivated, internal change, such as upgrades and troubleshooting; as well as external change, such as government regulations on data, can greatly ease your burden (especially when you have to accomplish all this with no down time).

I read a very comprehensive story recently that laid out all the elements of NCCM, and I’d like to share them with you here.

NCCM Tools

There’s a variety of NCCM tools on the market. Some focus on one element of change and configuration management, such as monitoring or archiving, while others offer an overall solution. Most contain the following features:

• Mapping: Offers mapping of components, configurations and functions of the network and systems.
• Database (CMDB): A complete, searchable archive of every component configuration and all changes. This database tracks network usage, applications and service delivery, operating systems and more.
• Documentation: Offers ways to maintain configuration templates or a standardized approach to all network and systems changes.
• Monitoring: Offers the ability to monitor the network for the effects of change on performance, as well as for unplanned change. Monitoring can also help you comply with regulations, especially on components that have automatic configuration and self-healing mechanisms.
• Reporting: Databases and monitoring tools create user-friendly reports. It’s preferable to access them via Web interface and view them in multiple formats.
• Interoperability: Look for tools that work across network components and software platforms from multiple vendors to gather data.

The Importance of Policy

While NCCM tools are helpful, companies should create and enforce change and configuration management policies that are mandated. In other words, every IT technician should be required to check and update databases with every change and be aware of compliance regulations.

Be smart and create a change advisory board (CAB) to set internal change policy as well as track external regulatory updates. Make sure that members come from various parts of your IT ecosystem, as well as other business units that can provide input on business processes and services.

Resources You Can Use

Remember, you don’t have to face systematic change management tasks on your own. There are plenty of resources out there to guide and instruct you.

For IT managers that require managing changes across several networks, in 2009 the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) created the CMDB Federation Specification (CDMBf). Vendors following the specification will create tools to make it possible for organizations to integrate CMDB data across multiple products and tool sets.

Another important tool is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a globally recognized set of policies and procedures for managing IT systems and services. Think of ITIL as a library of industry best practices that offers standardized approaches to everything from cabling infrastructure to computer installation and service management.

You can use ITIL policies to more easily understand the relationships between the change and network performance.

I encourage you to read more about NCCM for practical tips and advice.

Press Release

San Jose 23 Sept, 2009 Monitis Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based enterprise-class IT systems monitoring platform, Monitis has added a number of enhancements to the user interface in its new release.

With the addition of a bottom toolbar (similar to that found in Facebook and MySpace), the dashboard has been made even easier for IT administrators and web business managers to use efficiently. For example, users can now change the view date of all the widgets with a single action, chat directly with experts at Monitis, and review the most up-to-date Monitis news and support information.

Monitis now allows the management of all external monitors from a single, central location. This central management system enables customers to edit network settings, monitor timeouts, change monitoring locations, schedule maintenance, and schedule and set up notification rules for all monitors from a single place. Users are also able to export a list of all current monitors with their names, types, and urls, and have the option to print this list or save it as a local file.

IT specialists had often requested a lighter, stripped-down Monitis version of the charts without flash. Flash often gets switched off by admins for security reasons, and IE-based browsers often provide a better overall experience without flash. Responding to those requests, that option is now available.

Many IT managers and sysadmins asked for plain-text e-mail alerts, simply because they use phones and other mobile devices that don’t support full html format. This is now available too. The subject and body of the e-mail alerts have been simplified, the test name appears in the subject line, and there’s more information about the location of the failure.

About Monitis Performance Monitor

Monitis Performance Monitor is an industry leading comprehensive, affordable, scalable, fault and performance management platform.  Monitis Performance Monitor monitors, collects and analyzes information from websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices providing users with a comprehensive view of their system health.  Open sourced Monitis plug-in with powerful API’s allow the users to extend Monitis powerful monitoring and management capabilities.  Users can be assured of always on reliable service as Monitis Performance Monitor is deployed across the world providing resilient service.

About Monitis

Monitis is a leading provider of affordable performance monitoring and management solution. More than 50,000 customers spanning small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and education institutions have chosen Monitis to reduce system downtime, improve IT administrator productivity, and reduce operational expenditure.  Monitis is radically changing system monitoring and management landscape by providing easy to use, affordable, flexible (deployment configurations include: shared, internal cloud and external cloud), and simple to manage SaaS performance monitoring and management solution. For more information, please visit http://www.monitis.com

On-demand workers have been around for over a decade but not many are aware to use this potential workforce fully. The concept of Crowdsourcing has recently gained momentum and its evolution has been traced for this decade.

It started with Wikipedia that began the revolution and the term Crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe. Guru and Elance made sophisticated electronic marketplaces from this concept and Amazon designed computing platform named Mechanical Turk. Kermit Pattison has been writing extensively about it, John Winsor’s company using creative ways to work with it and over 50 companies providing services to bring it in everyday use for the business person.

Free Crowdsourcing has been the main attraction where free work is accomplished if it’s entertaining, emotionally fulfilling or leads to recognition. Most managers do not use these on-demand workers when it is about paying them to get the desired result. This paid Crowdsourcing would have to learn from E-Commerce that now has a sophisticated shopping mechanism. Now we don’t send anyone to buy a book for us, instead we go to the website and order with our credit card and it is delivered in a few days.

The main reasons for this trust in this shopping mechanism are:

1. Huge on-demand selection with reviews and details available
2. Saves Time and effort, no logistics
3. Results are satisfactory
4. Best price since we can shop from where we bear the lowest cost
5. Confidence on the safety of our information

Crowdsourcing would also have to meet similar criteria to become mainstream like E-Commerce. The main hurdles to clear would be:

1. Crowd responsiveness – getting work done quickly irrespective of its nature
2. Ease of use and no wastage of time in instructing how to do the work
3. Result satisfaction
4. Low cost
5. Security and privacy
6. Resistance to inefficient markets

Some companies have become mainstream business utilities such as CastingWords, Elance, Smartsheet and 99Desings. They have different work nature but the concept is the same, Crowdsourcing. The Smartsheet team has made a detailed report about paid Crowdsourcing and a webinar was arranged with well known people on 17^th November to discuss it. The panel included Jeff Howe from Wired Magazine, John Winsor the Executive Director at Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, Lukas Biewald the founder of CrowdFlower, Eckart Walther the GM of LiveWork, SVP and LiveOps and Brent Frei the founder and chairman of Smartsheet. The moderator for the event was Marshall Kirkpatrick. The report had original research on paid Crowdsourcing including

• Six hurdles to paid Crowdsourcing
• Five predictions including revenue exceeding $ 1 Billion in five years
• Sweet spot attributes along with factors
• 50 vendors with rankings
• Facts and figures about prices and payments

Smarsheet has been the source of completing tasks at affordable rates through capable on-demand workforce. The services offered by them are used by thousands of companies for several of their office operations.

Zend Technologies, in one of the latest example of developers flocking to the cloud, has created an open source API for fashioning PHP apps that float on multiple clouds. It’s called the Simple API for Cloud Application Services, and Zend’s idea is to provide a single programming tool for file storage, a database for documents, simple queue, and other application services.

Zend says it won’t be exclusive, either, and will offer apps by Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft and others. In fact, Zend’s co-founding contributors include Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace and two other cloud outfits, Nirvanix and GoGrid.

“This project allows developers to get all of the scalability and high-availability and other advantages of the cloud while maintaining portability,” Zend’s project manager Wil Sinclair, said in the recent article.

Bravo to Zend and other cloud app developers who are helping to lead and create an unbiased cloud revolution. Read more about multiple clouds computing here.

Skittish about Web2.0 social networks like Facebook and Twitter running as business apps at your company?

Of course, it’s understandable that you might. After all, chances are your company has policies that forbid employees wasting time on the web doing things like updating their Facebook homepages and shouting out to friends via 140 characters.

But, when you consider the return on information (ROI) of these tools, you may change your mind. After all, Web2.0 tools increase knowledge-sharing efficiencies, and isn’t that something every company wants these days?

I read that some government agencies—among the first to ban Web2.0 tools years ago—are now using them and benefiting greatly. The CIA, for instance, in 2005, launched Intellipedia wiki – a collaborative information-sharing wiki built with several levels of security. Its most top-secret network has nearly 60,000 users and 45,000 wiki pages. “We may never know just how vital Intellipedia is to global security,” according to a recent article on the ROI of Web2.0.

The Marines, too, are in the game, with their own Facebook page and internal social network tools.

It’s clear to me that if even government agencies – home to so much sensitive information – are embracing social networking and other Web2.0 tools these days, they must have figured out that the return on information is worth the risk. Have you considered the ROI of Web2.0, and how is it working for you?

As an IT manager, have you been given the task of monitoring employee web browsing activities? This is a very scary and daunting topic for lots of folks (Nobody likes to be monitored, and who has time to do the watching?). But if you use the right tools, it doesn’t have to be so painful.

The simplest way is by monitoring your firewall or router log files, but this requires time, and if you don’t have it, how are you going to catch potential abuse?

But there are products out there that can take a good chunk of the workload off of you.

Some software does the monitoring and provides the reporting.

Others are more sophisticated. For instance, some analyze behavior patterns, create models and then look for departures from those patterns. Others actually take action to prevent abuse, for instance, by filtering emails for obscene content and then alerting supervisors.

Using modeling-based software to screen employee web usage is much more efficient and far less intrusive on employees.

For more information on specific products that can help you monitor employee web activities the smart way, read this article.

Look over your shoulder Microsoft! I read recently that research firm IDC in July conducted a poll of 262 corporate executives and found that almost 20% said that their organizations used Google Docs widely. That represents an increase from only about 6% who said so in October 2007. That’s impressive.

The study foresaw that Google Docs can expect further growth, too. More than one-quarter polled said they were either already using Google Docs or expected to be doing so in the coming year.

Google Apps Premium is Google’s paid suite of online applications for businesses – including Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Gmail.

Still, in the poll, 97% said they were also using one or more versions of Microsoft Office at their companies.

While it looks like Google has a long way to go before it catches up with Microsoft Office, the study shows, too, that end-users continue to embrace virtual computing. Interesting to note. You can read more about IDC’s survey here.

I read an interesting particle on Cloud hosting on Utilizer, and I thought it worth passing on a few of author Jim Liddle’s best practices on putting applications on the Cloud. For one, it’s important to make sure your Cloud allows you to use it for spikes or overfill – because not all permit this kind of activity. Another caveat to Cloud computing: ensure your data transfer is internal to the provider network – rather than external. Here are some other words of wisdom on the Cloud environment:

- Know the performance requirements of your app before jumping on the Cloud. If you have low latency requirements, for example, if you’re trying to run a binary exchange, then the Cloud may not be the best environment to achieve this. On the other hand, if you’re trying to run an ERP or some other such system in the cloud then the latency may be good enough.

- Understand the state limitations of any Cloud platform. For example, when an application is brought down and then back up, all local changes will be wiped, and you start with a blank slate. Some, like Amazon, offer EC2 persistent storage.

- Take care you avoid breaching data storage regulations. Laws vary, depending on the country or continent.

- Be aware of providers’ dependencies to avoid or minimize outage issues. Always check any dependencies when using a Cloud service; if provider “x” is dependent on the Cloud “y,” and “y” goes down, you’ll have issues”.

- When considering a Cloud platform, determine whether migrating to others is feasible; if not, pick a provider for the long-haul. This is an issue because, with current cloud computing platforms, there is no standardization of the APIs and platform technologies that underpin the services provided.

- Check Cloud security! Sensitive data should be encrypted, of course, and consider a secure ID mechanism for authentication and authorization for services. As with normal enterprise infrastructures only open the ports needed, and consider installing host-based intrusion detection systems.

Read more here about the dos and dont’s of Cloud computing!

With the increasing reliance on consolidated data centers, virtualization, and cloud computing, network management has become less concerned with the connections between individual network nodes and more concerned with overall application performance management. Network managers must manage not just network infrastructure, but also the performance of network applications.

CA Inc.’s acquisition of NetQoS Inc., a vendor of network and application performance tool, for $200 million clearly anticipates this trend.

Abner Germanow, IDC research director, says the CA aims to give enterprises a more holistic view of the network, something that traditionally hasn’t been handled by network management tools. A network manager’s toolset looks rather like a carpenter’s toolbox, Germanow says, with different tools for different users. NetQoS completes CA’s already respectable toolbox, he says, by adding more functionality such as the ability to manage WAN connections. This will make CA’s view of the network more application-centric, he says.

CA’s Wily family of application performance management tools has a solid reputation in the field. Unfortunately, CA’s products provide more data-oriented views of performance rather than application-oriented views. To best understand the performance of distributed and outsourced resources, such as cloud services, an organization requires both data-oriented and application-oriented views.