Building a private cloud was a high priority for a number of organizations in 2014. This priority carried over into 2015 because it is hard to execute. For many organizations, it has carried over again into 2016. Of course, the definition of a private cloud has changed in that time, too. Some organizations are happy …
Alastair Cooke is an independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and datacenter technologies. Alastair spent eight years delivering training for HP and VMware as well as providing implementation services for their technologies. Alastair is able to create a storied communication that helps partners and customers understand complex technologies. Alastair is known in the VMware community for contributions to the vBrownBag podcast and for the AutoLab, which automates the deployment of a nested vSphere training lab.
In-Kernel vs. VSA: The Phony War of Hyperconverged Marketing
Working on the edges of marketing is interesting. As a technical person, I sometimes find that marketing people do strange things. I find it particularly funny when marketing departments from competing vendors have public arguments that are irrelevant to their customers. I see that going on now between some of the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) vendors. These …
Continue reading “In-Kernel vs. VSA: The Phony War of Hyperconverged Marketing”
Successful Cloud Is Not Commodity
There seems to be a trend of providers abandoning the commodity public cloud market. We saw HP exit its Helion Public Cloud, and more recently, Verizon shut down one of its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products. At the same time, we see Amazon and Microsoft heavily committed to public cloud and making a lot of …
BYOD Enables Almost-Unmanaged Desktop
Desktop management started out simple. Install a few applications and join to Active Directory. A few lines of login script and the computer was ready for use. Like anything else, desktop management has become more complex over time. Add constant updating of the operating system and applications as well as the need for an up-to-date …
Future Forgettable Infrastructure
We often talk about utility computing in the cloud, but it can be on-premises too. I like to think of utility from the point of view of the consumer. By concentrating on what the customer experience looks like, we get to avoid pedantic discussions of what is a commodity and what is a cloud. Electricity supply is the usual …
Do You Own or Rent Your Home?
I’m always searching for different ways to communicate concepts. Ten years of delivering training will do that to you. Often a relatable metaphor can be very useful. We understand new concepts far more readily in terms of existing concepts. One metaphor that struck me recently addresses the difference between an enterprise IT solution and a cloud …