Date: March 28, 2011
Guest: Steve Kaplan (@roidude) - "By the Bell" blog (http://bythebell.com)
Overview: This week we talk with Steve Kaplan, VP of DataCenter/Virtualization practice at INX.
If you've never met or spoken with Steve Kaplan, here he is at VMware Partner Exchange 2011 talking about the challenges and opportunities with Virtual Desktop (VDI) deployments.
In the news, Brian and Aaron had a ton on their plate as things are changing very rapidly in the Cloud space from some of the major Public Cloud vendors:
[Netflix took an outage & AWS is beefing up their offerings]
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20046707-17.html
- That’s about 24 Swedish Fish for Aaron
- Has NetFlix surpassed Reddit as the AWS poster child?
- We needed to re-architect, which allowed us to question everything, including whether to keep building out our own data center solution
- Letting Amazon focus on data center infrastructure allows our engineers to focus on building and improving our business.
[Dedicated AWS VPC Compute Instances]
http://www.rationalsurvivability.com/blog/?p=2969
http://cloudsecurity.trendmicro.com/dedicated-servers-vs-the-new-amazon-ec2-dedicated-instance/
- Is this a way to make public cloud “less scary” because you most enterprises still don’t play well with others?
- Are you isolating for security or for predictable performance?
[Is Microsoft by-passing Hyper-V and server virtualization in favor of an application virtualization and DevOps approach?]
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/032311-microsoft-virtualization.html?page=1
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-readies-its-first-server-application-virtualization-beta/8995
- Prooduct is called App-V
- Microsoft's over-arching goal is to put more focus on the application, rather than the virtual machine, which Greschler calls the "tablecloth," while the applications are the meal on top of it. Server application virtualization can even technically be used on physical servers that don't have a hypervisor installed, but it isn't likely many customers would do
- Desktop Management “in the cloud”, no on site servers needed
- Is this a fight against VDI?
[Will Microsoft become the SMB Cloud Offering of Choice?]
http://appdev.cbronline.com/news/smbs-to-pay-for-cloud-services-to-increase-within-three-years-microsoft-280311
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223363/four_in_10_small_businesses_planning_cloud_computing_says_microsoft.html
- Natural evolution of many SMB shops since many already have Microsoft in house"As cloud computing becomes more ubiquitous and SMEs' existing IT becomes outdated, adoption will grow rapidly. Hosting service providers should consider the appropriate sales, delivery and support models to target larger SME customers that are more likely to pay for cloud services."
- Will Microsoft offer this as a resale product to partners and SP’s or will they take it in house and turn from a product company into a software and services company (ala IBM)
[Outsourcing and Professional Services based on Open Standards and Orchestration]
http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/integration/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229400195&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All
- This is a major shift for IBM Global Services compared to when Aaron was there
- Will IBM start to lead with services (especially migration services) and deemphasize products like CloudBurst?
In the interview with Steve Kaplan, we covered a variety of topics, including:
- What are you up to these days? New book; business is busy; where are you speaking publicly
- Steve’s Background
- VDI then and now
- Shifting technology religions
- techy to ROI-guy (business-centric)
- What’s driving customer transformations?
- Is it “a journey”,
- Is it “green patches of small groups that transform the bigger company”
- What’s important to the CIO’s you’re talking to today?
- How do you view the changing role of the VAR in the changing world of Cloud Computing (SP or Public) and Private Cloud stacks?
- What’s interesting and challenging to you these days? What’s peaking your interests?
[UPDATE:] In the weeks since this podcast, James Urquhart (@jamesurquhart) wrote an insightful blog on CNET's "Wisdom of Clouds" about the challenges facing the Channel as the technology and markets evolve.
