Inventing Complexity

Recently, a number of marketing campaigns have seemed to be inventing complexity to try to give products the appearance of having some sort of competitive advantage. The invented complexity involves real-world items that many folks just do not use, or even care about, in order to make products look like something different. We have spoken about in-kernel vs. VSA in …

Container as a Service?

Every day, IT professionals live and breathe applications, yet our focus for operational tools is a single container, virtual machine, database, etc. How do these items map to the application in use? Even the monolithic-looking applications of yesterday were actually made up of services. Those services will be reborn as microservices within the applications of …

Microsoft — The Renaissance Continues

Microsoft’s turnaround over the two years since Satya Nadella became CEO has been nothing short of phenomenal. During the Ballmer years, Microsoft had become increasingly sidelined and irrelevant, focused on aggressive and negative marketing techniques. Anybody remember the painful Microsoft Mythbusters video featuring then–Microsoft executive David Greschler and Hyper-V product manager Edwin Yuen? Not that you can find it anymore; …

Getting to Green: Monitoring Your Cloud

Recently, we upgraded our cloud environment. This raises the question, “What is wrong with the environment after an upgrade?” As tools improve, we get new warnings, messages, and analytics. This often leads to a decision to ensure that after the upgrade, all monitoring, alerts, and other diagnostics show green across the board. Is this required, desirable, and …

In Cloud, Cost Is Everything

The use of the cloud is not governed by technology so much as it is governed by cost: the cost of on-premises management, support, expertise, and environment vs. the cost of cloud services and outsourced expertise, management, etc. The cost differential must be high enough in the short term to allow it to become valid …

On ITOA

IT operations analytics (ITOA) is the new language that incorporates analytics as a part of IT operations. This is a requirement for today’s environments, as even small labs generate terabytes of data a day: terabytes of logs from applications, network sensors, security devices and products, automation tools, and more. The list of possible streams of …