Next reports Reports.InformationWeek.com November 2013 $99 Multicloud Infrastructure & Application Management As services pile up, IT teams find themselves in a bind: How do we manage multiple vendors without wasting more money than we save by not owning and operating the infrastructure?

By Kurt Marko

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reports Multicloud Infrastructure & Application Management S 3 Author’s Bio ABOUT US 4 Executive Summary T 5 Cloudy With a Chance of Complexity InformationWeek Reports’ analysts arm business technology 5 Figure 1: Use of Services decision-makers with real-world perspective based on qualitative 6 Cloud Management: What’s Coming and quantitative research, business and technology assessment and 6 Figure 2: Future Degree of Cloud Use planning tools, and adoption best practices gleaned from N 7 Figure 3: Number of Cloud Providers in Use experience. 8 Figure 4: Integrating Cloud Applications 9 Herding Clouds OUR STAFF E 9 Figure 5: Methods for Automating & Lorna Garey , content director; [email protected] Orchestrating Workloads on PaaS and IaaS Heather Vallis , managing editor, research; [email protected]

T 10 Figure 6: Future Methods for Automating & Elizabeth Chodak , copy chief; [email protected] Orchestrating Workloads on PaaS and IaaS Tara DeFilippo , associate art director; [email protected] 10 Next Phase: Cloud Application Management 13 Recommendations Find all of our reports at reports.informationweek.com .

N 13 Figure 7: Use of IT Automation Tools 14 Steps to Take TABLE OF 15 Related Reports O C reports.informationweek.com November 2013 2 Previous Next

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Kurt Marko is an InformationWeek and Network Computing contributor and IT industry veteran, pursuing his passion for communications after a varied career that has spanned virtually the entire high-tech food chain from chips to systems. Upon graduating from Stanford University Kurt Marko with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering, Kurt spent several years as a semiconductor device InformationWeek Reports physicist, doing process design, modeling and testing. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a memory chip designer and CAD and simulation developer. Moving to Hewlett-Packard, Kurt started in the laser printer R&D lab doing electrophotogra - phy development, for which he earned a patent, but his love of computers eventually led him to join HP’s nascent technical IT group. He spent 15 years as an IT engineer and was a lead architect for several enterprisewide infrastructure projects at HP, including the Windows domain infra - structure, remote access service, Exchange e-mail infrastructure and managed Web services.

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Table of Contents reports Multicloud Infrastructure & Application Management

Enterprise cloud adoption has evolved to the point where hybrid public/private cloud designs and use of multiple providers is common. But heterogeneity begets management complexity: Y Who among us has mastered provisioning resources in different clouds; allocating the right resources to each application; assigning applications to the “best” cloud provider based on performance or reliability requirements, cost, scalability or whatever your metric; and automating

R management tasks using repeatable processes and standard configurations? Where there’s a pain point there’s a marketing op; in this case, for a new breed of cloud manage - ment platform. IT can choose among suites like CA Infrastructure Management or IBM Smart - Cloud Orchestrator and services, typically delivered in a SaaS model, including (now A Multi-Cloud Manager), HP CloudSystem, RightScale, ScaleXtreme and . Initially, multicloud products focused on infrastructure management — specifically, provision - ing cloud resources and deploying system images to the most appropriate target. However, the need goes deeper. Cloud users — enterprise IT, DevOps teams and application developers alike —

M need end-to-end application life cycle management. Again, the industry is responding. Many of the aforementioned cloud service management pioneers have expanded their feature lists to include more complete application management capabilities. They’re joined by next-gen cloud application life cycle and performance management systems from the likes of Cloudsoft, Elastic , Standing Cloud and even AWS itself via CloudFormation. These systems automate not M only provisioning but packaging, monitoring, load balancing, even auto scaling. In this report, we’ll examine the infrastructure and application management challenges of a EXECUTIVE multicloud environment, survey the technology landscape, and provide recommendations on how best to develop and implement a multicloud strategy by incorporating the right software U and IT processes. S reports.informationweek.com November 2013 4 Previous Next

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Cloudy With a Chance of Complexity

Cloud is quintessential disruptive technol - gains are translating to sales, with Gartner es - and critical applications, not test and dev ogy, making up one-third of what CNBC’s Jim timating the global public cloud services mar - environments. Cramer calls the “Holy Trinity of Tech ”: mobile, ket will grow more than 18% this year, to $131 The cloud hasn’t displaced internal IT, but social, cloud. Years of accumulated enterprise billion, with IaaS notching the fastest rate of it’s chipping away. Even our survey of (not ex - resistance , fueled by a combination of protec - expansion at over 42%. And this growth is fu - actly unconflicted) IT pros finds 16% admit - tionism, security and performance FUD, and eled by use of cloud for production systems ting that half or more of their IT services will immature management software, are finally crumbling. Our data shows that enterprise IT Figure 1 has overcome skepticism and is expanding Use of Cloud Computing Services use of public clouds while pursuing conver - What are your organization’s plans for cloud computing?

gence internally, too. 2013 2012 The latest InformationWeek State of Cloud We’re receiving services today from a cloud provider Computing Survey found that 40% of respon - 40% dents use cloud services, up seven points 33% since 2011, with an additional 13% planning We’re planning to use services from a cloud provider within the next 12 months 13% to do so by early next year. Only 20% of our re - 14% spondents have no plans to incorporate pub - We’re considering using services from a cloud provider lic cloud into their IT portfolios, down seven 27% points from 2011. Similarly, the Uptime Insti - 26% tute’s annual survey of 1,000 facil - We have no plans to use services from a cloud provider 20% ities operators found that 28% use public 27%

cloud services, with large companies twice as Base: 446 respondents in February 2013 and 511 in December 2011 R6490213/1 likely as smaller ones to be adopters. These Data: InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of business technology professionals at organizations with 50 or more employees reports.informationweek.com November 2013 5

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be delivered from the cloud in the next two Cloud Management: What’s Coming ware developed by the virtualization vendor, years. Furthermore, the vast majority, 79%, IT teams managing complex internal envi - whether VMware vCenter, System employ multiple cloud providers, with an in - ronments that by now are almost uniformly Center or Citrix XenServer. The exception: trepid 13% using six or more. While we lump virtualized typically use management soft - Large enterprises with equally large fleets of

into the mix software-as-a-service, used by half of our respondents, it’s clear that most Figure 2 organizations already have several infrastruc - FAST FACT Future Degree of Cloud Use ture- and platform-as-a-service products in Looking ahead 24 months, what percentage of your IT services do you predict will be delivered from the cloud? their IT portfolios. 2013 2012 40% The problem: knitting disparate services, 75% or more; “IT” is a four-letter word to us 5% of respondents use cloud with their own management , service 4% catalogs and technology stacks, into your ex - services, up seven points 50% to 74%; if it can be outsourced, we’re looking to do it since 2011. isting IT infrastructure and to one another. 11% It’s not an easy task, which is no doubt why 11% one-third of our respondents don’t even 25% to 49%; our core business isn’t IT and we’re happy to use outside services 18% bother trying. Forty-one percent take the la - 18% borious, costly, error-prone path of custom- 10% to 24%; some tasks are better done by others coding scripts or application stubs around 35% each vendor’s API, to bridge internal and ex - 29% ternal systems. While this is obviously a 1% to 9%; very limited usage 26% nightmare for application developers, don’t 32% underestimate the challenge for IT teams try - None, we hate the cloud ing to manage a hybrid infrastructure and 5% deploy applications across multiple clouds 6% while guaranteeing service levels. Base: 446 respondents in February 2013 and 511 in December 2011 R6490213/18 Data: InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of business technology professionals at organizations with 50 or more employees reports.informationweek.com November 2013 6 Previous Next

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legacy systems tend to standardize on a big The problem: Our data shows little interest in a central management console. But — and it’s data center management suite from the likes specialized cloud administration software. a big but — they’re by necessity purpose- of BMC, CA, Hewlett-Packard or IBM/Tivoli. Al - Most IaaS and PaaS users, particularly in small built for a particular product. For example, the though there’s a rich ecosystem of virtual ma - organizations lacking sophisticated infrastruc - admirably full-featured chine management point products, they’ve ture management suites, start managing Management Console lets IT create, launch primarily targeted capacity planning, work - cloud services and workload via dedicated and configure machine images (AMIs); create load optimization and asset tracking (read: VM online Web portals. Sure, vendors strive to and attach block storage volumes to compute sprawl). make these admin sites as complete as possi - (EC2) instances; monitor operational metrics; When it comes to these special-purpose ble, with all th e fe ature s on e wo uld expe ct of c reat e an d ma nag e us er a ccou nts, secu rity point products, only 3% of respondents to the Figure 3 InformationWeek Virtualization Management Survey use VM-specific software from vendors Number of Cloud Providers in Use Regardless of the number of different platforms and options, how many actual cloud providers do you use (e.g., like CiRBA, Dynamic Ops, Embotics or Insystek, , , Oracle, GoGrid)? compared with 50% choosing bundled tools 2013 2012 1 like vCenter, Microsoft Virtual Machine Man - 21% Cloud Security ager or XenCenter. Eleven percent augment 27% And Risk Survey traditional management software, presum - 2 to 5 ably things like Dell OpenManage, HP Insight 66% Of the 26% with no plans to use 64% public cloud services, 58% cite Control, IBM Systems Director or Microsoft security as the reason. Even 6 to 10 among those using or consider - System Center Configuration Manager, with 8% ing the cloud, it’s a worry: 52% VM- specific modules. 5% name security defects as the No. Clearly, there are plenty of point products to More than 10 1 concern. Here’s how to gain the 5% benefits of cloud and reduce risk. manage and monitor heterogeneous clouds, 4% optimize workload placement and apply cen - Base: 176 respondents in February 2013 and 166 in December 2011 at organizations using cloud services R6490213/4 Download tral security policies to virtualized workloads. Data: InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of business technology professionals at organizations with 50 or more employees reports.informationweek.com November 2013 7 Previous Next

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credentials (like access keys and passwords), groups and permissions; configure DNS set - Figure 4 tings; and much more, depending on the va - Integrating Cloud Applications riety of AWS services in use. How do you integrate your different cloud and SaaS applications? However, managing cloud resources quickly 2013 2012 becomes problematic once you add a second Custom coding directly to our internal system using each vendor’s API 41% and third service, an increasingly common 47% scenario, according to the RightScale State of Leverage an internal integration platform the Cloud Report [PDF] . Now, our expectation 11% is that the demographic is on the progressive 14% side; still, RightScale’s data shows enterprises Leverage a traditional VAN for data integration 11% embracing complexity: 77% of respondents 10% have a multicloud strategy, and 47% are plan - Leverage a cloud-based integration platform ning for hybrid clouds. In addition, 15% of 10% enterprises expect to use multiple public 9% clouds, and a similar number are planning for Other 3% multiple private clouds. 5% It’s shades of the future. If you have several Don’t integrate; users have separate accounts for each provider cloud vendors but your only answer is 33% vCenter, you may have a problem brewing, NA especially if you guarantee service levels for Don’t know 12% enterprise applications. Aside from their 27% single-service limitations, vendor-supplied Note: Multiple responses allowed R6490213/3 Base: 176 respondents in February 2013 and 166 in December 2011 at organizations using cloud services management portals focus on infrastructure Data: InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of business technology professionals at organizations with 50 or more employees resources, not the applications running reports.informationweek.com November 2013 8 Previous Next

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across different services. As the AWS example Figure 5 highlights, cloud admin sites are great for Methods for Automating and Orchestrating Workloads on PaaS and IaaS working with VM images, storage containers How are you automating and orchestrating workloads on cloud platforms (PaaS) and/or infrastructure (IaaS) today? and system configurations. Multitier applica - Custom code with vendor APIs tion setup and deployment, bundles of serv - 23% ices with dependencies or end-to-end per - Configuration management software formance monitoring? Not so much. 16% Essentially, captive cloud management por - Cloud management software tals focus on getting individual workloads 14% configured and running, not automatically Other provisioning and scaling multitier applica - 2% tions using multiple cloud services. We do not automate or orchestrate workloads Don’t worry; your peers face the same 37% problem. Looking at our cloud survey re - We are not currently using PaaS or IaaS 9% spondents, it’s clear the notion of compre - Don’t know hensive, heterogeneous cloud service man - 17% agement is in its infancy. Only 14% of those Note: Multiple responses allowed R6490213/16 Base: 155 respondents using or planning to use PaaS and/or IaaS using IaaS and/or PaaS use any cloud man - Data: InformationWeek 2013 State of Cloud Computing Survey of 446 business technology professionals at organizations agement software, a figure that creeps up to with 50 or more employees, February 2013 a still anemic 22% when looking out to 2015. Fully 37% of our respondents don’t auto - Herding Clouds perhaps a PaaS provider like Force.com, mate or orchestrate cloud workloads, while Multicloud is a logical extension of a hybrid or Windows Azure. The 23% hand code automation scripts using cloud comprising on-premises and public reasons for adopting a multicloud strategy are vendor APIs. cloud infrastructures. By multicloud, we mean varied: increased resilience and redundancy, IT can do better. two or more public infrastructure services and access to a wider variety of features, pricing reports.informationweek.com November 2013 9 Previous Next

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arbitrage, hedging against vendor lock-in and Figure 6 geographic diversity and diffusion — some Future Methods for Automating and Orchestrating Workloads on PaaS and IaaS ser vices just offer better features, pricing and How do you expect to be automating and orchestrating workloads on cloud platforms (PaaS) and/or infrastructure performance in certain regions. But without a (IaaS) in 24 months? Custom code with vendor APIs management platform that can work across 32% services, the notion of building applications Cloud management software spanning multiple clouds is a pipe dream, and 22% the task of moving them between clouds is Configuration management software painfully laborious and inefficient. 21% A good example of multicloud in action is Other social gaming company Zynga, whose 2% e xplosive growth and equally rapid decline in We do not automate or orchestrate workloads 20% users exemplifies the need many startups have for dynamically scalable cloud infrastruc - Don’t know 28% ture that mixes and matches a combination Note: Multiple responses allowed R6490213/17 on-premises and public services. As Zynga’s Base: 155 respondents using or planning to use PaaS and/or IaaS Data: InformationWeek 2013 State of Cloud Computing Survey of 446 business technology professionals at organizations then-CTO of infrastructure engineering, Allan with 50 or more employees, February 2013 Leinwand, revealed when he made many of the details behind its zCloud system public at end of the story. Once a game hits a more pre - of Zynga’s success,” said Leinwand. “It’s also Interop 2011 , planning data center capacity dictable level, Zynga brings it in-house, onto an architecture that might work for more con - for that kind of unpredictability is a slippery what it calls zCloud — servers it runs using a ventional businesses, in certain situations.” exercise. That’s why Zynga instead launches private cloud architecture similar to what There’s a reason he hedged that advice: games using Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure-as- Amazon deploys. Automation is imperative to this vision. “On a a-service, so it pays only for the capacity it “This ability to invoke and coordinate both given day, if we need to, we can deploy a uses and is ready for spikes. But that’s not the private and public clouds is ‘the hidden jewel’ thousand servers,” said Leinwand. And that’s reports.informationweek.com November 2013 10 Previous Next

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where cloud management vendor RightScale a slightly different set of service configura - (witness the red hot DevOps movement) and came in. In this case study , Jayme Cox, Zynga’s tions and labels. look for end-to-end cloud management fea - manager of cloud computing, detailed how This interoperability comes to us courtesy of ture sets. the company could manage an entire published APIs and OpenStack. For an exam - A common need for complex applications is FarmVille farm containing thousands of ple of what it takes to automate a cloud stack the ability to create reusable configurations, servers with “a small team” of sysadmins. and the type of information developers templates describing different types, VM RightScale and other multicloud manage - require, check out AWS’s formal technology images, storage instances and associated ap - ment products like Cloudsoft, Dell Multi- partner program , which provides access to plications and services like load balancers, fire - Cloud Manager, HP CloudSystem, IBM Smart - software training and tech support — it’s a walls and DNS settings, including any Like This Report? Cloud Orchestrator, ScaleXtreme, Scalr and regular developer relations operation. interdependencies, that can be quickly Standing Cloud do for cloud services what en - This level of management is good. But it’s deployed as a bundle. The goal is to make spin - Rate It! terprise management suites like HP Server not the end game. ning up a LAMP stack or complex JBoss (now Something we could do better? Let us know. Automation, IBM Systems Director and WildFly) application a single-click operation. Microsoft System Center do for heteroge - Next Phase: Cloud Application AWS was perhaps the first to address this Rate neous on-premises environments with a mix Management need with its CloudFormation, but again, it’s of Windows and servers and various The problem with just managing cloud tied to Amazon’s own cloud services. Fortu - storage systems. Multicloud products, often infrastructure is that those VMs and storage nately, many of the multicloud management delivered out of the cloud themselves as SaaS, pools are just resources for actual applica - systems we’ve mentioned, as well as the likes put all your resources — compute, storage tions. Those applications may well have sev - of ElasticBox and FluidOps eCloudManager, and networking, from different services — eral tiers using multiple VMs and storage now provide similar capabilities across multi - within a single management console. Most types, whether block, object, Hadoop or a con - ple cloud providers. Some, like ScaleXtreme, also abstract cloud resources into logical ventional relational . The wall be - provide graphical workflow editors to facili - buckets, say, extra-large servers with four or tween infrastructure- and application-focused tate designing and managing repeatable more cores, 16 GB or greater RAM and 1 TB of products is coming down, as IT and app de - processes for deploying and scaling multitier object storage, since each cloud typically has velopers increasingly work collaboratively cloud applications. These configurations can reports.informationweek.com November 2013 11 Previous Next

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then be instantiated on any supported cloud sharing them among different users, while ferent forms — Perl scripts, manifests, platform, which, in ScaleXtreme’s case, in - developers just want to build and deploy ap - code — that encompass all the details cludes AWS, HP Cloud, Google, Microsoft plications using the available cloud services. necessary to get a complex application cus - Azure, Rackspace, Savvis and Terremark, or According to Srivatsav, meeting these diver - tomized, integrated with dependent services even pinned to a specific provider. That’s gent needs requires creating service abstrac - and deployed. handy if a configuration includes a particular tions in the management layer that insulate Furthermore, many cloud management and feature, say a CDN-like Amazon CloudFront, developers from the underlying infrastructure orchestration products allow for allow for that isn’t available on other platforms. Since details. Thus, ElasticBox exposes just the ser - sharing code bundles in an App Store-like cloud templates can be automatically de - vices offered by each supported provider marketplace. And since these workflows, ployed, they are a powerful tool for scaling ap - (currently AWS, RackSpace and other public boxes, orchestration recipes — or whatever plications with highly variable workloads. OpenStack providers, and VMware, using an you want to call them — work across clouds, One company at the forefront of the shift on-premises ). No need for IT applications can be quickly and repeatably from infrastructure- to application-focused to get into the messy details of how to instan - deployed to different cloud services. That cloud management is ElasticBox, a startup tiate or connect to a particular service; it han - eliminates lock-in and enables cloud pricing that just emerged from stealth mode by dles all those messy details. arbitrage — two huge benefits. announcing $3.4 million in seed VC funding . That’s a big change from the usual practice, Another powerful feature of multicloud CEO Ravi Srivatsav sees three constituencies says Srivatsav, where every cloud developer management software is also fraught with for his product, each with different needs: IT, must worry about these configuration details. unintended consequences: auto-scaling. DevOps and developers. By using standardized service definitions and Indeed, it’s one of the features Zynga finds so IT is understandably most interested in raw configurations, what the company calls compelling about RightScale, as the company cloud infrastructure: providing resources, “boxes,” DevOps architects can build ready- uses alerts, essentially predefined scaling trig - setting usage policies and controls, monitor - made component libraries for all developers. gers, to eliminate manual intervention when ing and potentially charging back for usage. But boxes are more than just server and ap - traffic spikes. DevOps focuses on defining the environment, plication configurations; they may also in - As the name implies, auto-scaling changes building a service catalog and blueprints, and clude orchestration scripts, which can take dif - the amount of cloud capacity, typically appli - reports.informationweek.com November 2013 12 Previous Next

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cation server instances, but conceivably stor - Figure 7 age volumes or other resources too in Use of IT Automation Tools response to changing workloads. RightScale’s Are you currently using tools, such as Microsoft System Center, Puppet Labs or Opscode Chef, to automate IT workflow or processes? implementation uses workload triggers. For 1 example, if the workload on a set of applica - Yes; fully deployed tion servers exceeds 80% or drops below 15%, 15% the system will automatically deploy or No, and no plans decommission server instances. Yet if not carefully configured, with limits on the total 45% number of running instances and some asym - metry in your triggers to avoid “flapping” (to use network terminology), you could be in 40% trouble. Without controls in place to prevent No, but a project is under way launching and shutting down servers several times an hour in periods of highly erratic demand, auto-scaling can leave you with Data: InformationWeek 2013 Virtualization Management Survey of 320 business technology professionals R5961112/11 at organizations with 50 or more employees, September 2012 sticker shock as your 20 EC2 instances spike to 50 and back down to 20 a dozen times a day, easily doubling or tripling your bill. over application performance and reliability and orchestration products are still a niche. Srivatsav says ElasticBox has the ability to and infrastructure cost to an algorithm. Too Only 15% of respondents to our virtualization Like This Report? predictively auto-scale application instances, bad Wall Street’s high-frequency traders don’t management survey have deployed software essentially creating its own triggers based on display the same caution. like Puppet or Chef to automate IT workflows Share it! historical demand and other analytic data, but and processes. In the name of efficiency (and Like TTweetweet it hasn’t enabled the feature since customers Recommendations your sysadmin’s sanity) we encourage the Share are rightly leery of ceding that much control Let’s not sugarcoat it: Sophisticated admin remaining 85% to begin developing a cloud reports.informationweek.com November 2013 13 Previous Next

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infrastructure and application automation virtualization platform, vCenter and vCloud process automation strategy and use it to plan. Maybe it incorporates a multicloud- Director have become the management narrow the list of multicloud software as capable product, maybe you just add some suites of choice for private clouds. Products your public cloud usage expands beyond a orchestration software to existing manage - like Hotlink enable managing heterogeneous single IaaS provider. ment consoles. That’s a case-by-case decision. environments, including AWS and CloudStack, >> Prioritize those products that can ab - But we guarantee your infrastructure isn’t get - from within vCenter. Alternatively, some IaaS stract entire multitier applications, not just ting any simpler, and headaches will only vendors, like , support the vCenter server instances and storage pools, into de - increase without some software assist. API from within the management software, ployable and automatable resources. Yes, automation software still meets resist - meaning customers can manage both on- >> For those already using hybrid clouds, ance from obdurate admins who just don’t premises and cloud-hosted resources from a look at commercial cross-platform orchestra - trust it. We need to get over our distrust of common console. tion products like those mentioned in this re - automation used judiciously. “The biggest If you have the business case, money and port. Most will support the major cloud plat - problem we have is convincing old-school skills, consolidating cloud management under forms (VMware, AWS, OpenStack), so pay administrators and engineers to go into new a single admin console that provides repeat - particular attention to supported environ - technology, increase density and automated able configuration templates and manage - ments if using Hyper-V, Xen, Parallels or other performance monitoring and management,” ment processes is a no-brainer. . says one survey respondent, adding that tra - Finally, the cloud is all about streamlining ditionalists still hold to the view that “ ‘Real’ Steps to Take application delivery, so cloud management admins will shut down and migrate VMs >> Operationally, investigate the capabilities can’t be a unilateral IT responsibility. Bring themselves and not just let software do it for already available in existing VM management application developers, DevOps teams (if them.” That’s clearly not tenable long term. software, typically vCenter or System Center, available), even application owners/sponsors If you have a basic design using VMware, and start automating routine deployment into the strategy and evaluation process. Hyper-V or OpenStack and a single public tasks with scripts and small programs using cloud service, you have some breathing room. the published APIs. With VMware still the de facto enterprise >> Develop a cloud management and reports.informationweek.com November 2013 14 Previous

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M Research: 2013 Virtualization Management Survey: The next steps in going virtual up and down the stack, from network to desktop: Automation and finally taking security seriously. The two go together, because if you’re going to trust production systems to run without human intervention — a must for delivering IT services on demand — you’d Newsletter better be darn sure attackers can’t gain control. Want to stay current on all new InformationWeek Reports ? PLUS: Find signature reports, such as the InformationWeek Salary Survey, InformationWeek Subscribe to our weekly 500 and the annual State of Security report; full issues; and much more. newsletter and never miss a beat.

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