Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Exploring business-IT alignment: A 20-year struggle culminating in the role and impact of business architecture

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.

We've assembled a distinguished panel in conjunction with the recent Open Group Conference in Austin, Texas, to explore the impact, role and opportunity for business architecture.

We'll examine how the definition of business architect has matured, and we'll see why it’s so important for this new role to flourish in today’s dynamic business and IT landscapes. We'll also see how certification and training are helping to shape the business architecture leaders of tomorrow.

Here to help better understand the essential impact of business architecture on business success is Harry Hendrickx, the Chief Technology Officer, CME Industry Unit, HP Enterprise Services and a Certified Global Enterprise Architect; Dave van Gelder, Global Architect in the Financial Services Strategic Business Unit at Capgemini; Mieke Mahakena, Label Leader for Architecture in the Training Portfolio at Capgemini Academy and also a Certified Architect; Peter Haviland, head of Architecture Services in the Americas for Ernst & Young, and Kevin Daley, Chief Architect in the Technology and Innovation Group at IBM Global Business Services.

The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. [Disclosure: The Open Group, HP and Capgemini are sponsors of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: We see that CEOs around the world really are seeking fundamental change from IT. They recognize that we're at an inflection point. Why then is the role of business architect so important now?
H
endrickx:
Over the past one or two decades, business-IT alignment has been number one on the CIO agenda, and apparently the organizations have increasing difficulty getting business-IT alignment resolved.
There are quite a few people pioneering in business-IT alignment, but apparently there was no urgency yet to recognize this role more specifically.

HP, in the past two years, interviewed CIOs worldwide, and they all indicated that they face quite large and complex transformation processes. They also recognize that business-IT alignment is one of key issues. We think that the business architect really can provide some resolution to get those processes in better shape and more successful.

Daley: At IBM, we have a CEO study and a CIO study that come out in alternating years. One of the things that started coming out loud and clear in 2010 was that managing complexity and building operating dexterity required a better understanding across the entire company.

We've started seeing a trend to move not just from business IT alignment, but to business and IT convergence. There's an understanding more and more that information technology, and technology in general, is a core part of the business model now. There's an understanding that now we have a situation where business and IT aren’t so much aligned, because of the fact that IT is part of business.

Where we did interviews and surveys and then compiled them for thousands of CEOs, we came up with three key elements. Amongst those was managing and taking advantage of complexity while building operating dexterity. That’s the key theme.

One of the problems that we're seeing from the CEOs is having for decades separated IT as if it was its own business unit, instead of part of the true sense of the business. It's been an interpretive science. To manage that complexity they needed a means by which to start with the design of where they're going and have have a business strategy.

To manage that complexity they needed a means by which to start with the design of where they're going and have have a business strategy.



How do they take that strategy and transform it into technology and into information management? They needed an ability to have a framework in which to have that substantive discussion between the people who were responsible, such as the CIO who is responsible for technology and the operations and the COOs, who are really about the execution of the overall picture.

What we've seen from our CEOs is a need to start being more integrated. There have been market pressures that they having to respond to. The big economic downturn was a big change for everyone, and they are trying to address it.

They're looking at means that they can start integrating more globally. They can start to increase their cost variability and start becoming more agile in how they operate their business. To do that they need a means by which they can more effectively communicate.

Driving understanding

S
o far, we've been seeing that business architecture is a perfect way to start driving an understanding. It's a place where both people who are used to seeing standard business models like revenue and capability are able to associate that to the different types of architectures and designs that we see coming out of the technology group.

It's giving them a common place to meet and jointly move forward with what they're trying to do in terms of managing the complexity, so they can be more agile and dexterous.

Gardner: What are the stakes here for business architecture and for organizations that can master this? How important is this now?

Haviland: It’s extremely important. What I see is that this is a discipline that’s just crying out for more people and more maturity. You almost need it to become pervasive throughout organizations now.

The most common story I encounter is simply that organizations spent a lot of time in the past creating their processes and then they spent a lot of time feeding technology solutions to those processes. In recent times, the pace of technology change has moved faster than that previous paradigm.

What you're looking at is at people saying, well, I am the business, there are all of these technology options out there. I cannot find a way forward and so how do I exploit those? That is where the business architecture profession is really being pushed to the front.

That said, there is a slight risk here that it may be considered too much in isolation. I mean, it is an architecture profession, it is a part of architecture, and the value of architecture is to provide that aligned view across the various domains that are important in terms of business, technology, information, security, and those types of elements.

When it comes back to what’s at stake for businesses that are investing in this particular area and for businesses that are trying to reconsider the way that they can operate themselves to support technology, they are moving ahead and they have competitive advantage. Businesses that aren’t doing that tend to be left behind, because the pace of change of technology is going to get faster.

Gardner: Does a business architect and architecture have to be at a high level to be successful? Where in the org chart do we typically see this role? Is it near the top? Does it matter?

van Gelder: It depends on the maturity of an organization. Within Capgemini nowadays, we talk about business technology. As Kevin said, business and technology are not separate. Technology is part of the total business.

When we started the Business Architecture Working Group in 2006, there was a lot of discussion about two words, business and architecture, and nobody knew exactly what we were talking about. Everybody had a different understanding of those words. In the last years what you have seen is that business architecture is looked at in a different way.

Currently in the Business Architecture Working Group, we see business architecture as something that brings the balance between all the other architectures in the company -- that’s IT architecture, financial architecture, money, people architecture, and a lot of other architectures.

If business architecture is bringing the balance between the different aspects of a company, then business architecture is something that should be handled in the top of the organization, because balance should be created between all the different aspects in the organization.

Gardner: What then is the fundamental problem that the business architect needs to solve?

Mahakena: It's more like making sure that, whatever transformation you're going to implement, you align all those different aspects. As Dave told us, there are a number of aspects in an organization that might need to change, and you can have all those different architectures for those aspects. But, if every aspect goes its own way in changing, then they will never be aligned. Business architecture is meant to align all of those aspects to make sure that you have a balanced, consistent, and coherent set of operations at the end.

Gardner: It sounds as if we're in agreement that this is a high level function, but what is it that people might stumble upon, if they direct this in a wrong direction? What is business architecture not good at?

Many things at once

Haviland: Business architecture is similar to other forms of architecture, in that it tends to try to do many things all at once. The idea of enterprise alignment is definitely the right outcome, but there is enough complexity there to blow steam out of your head for many, many years to come.

Certainly in our experience in implementing these types of functions in organizations, functions that constrain scope very well, also tend to communicate very well around what their status is, what their progress is against milestones, and what outcomes they've achieved, and they tend to articulate those outcomes in terms of real business value.

What business architecture is not very good at are broad-reaching types of goals that don’t have measurable outcomes.

Gardner: Anyone could stand up and call themselves a business architect, but what is The Open Group, in particular, doing about actually certifying and moving toward a standardization of some sort?

Hendrickx: The first question we get asked is, what's the difference between a business consultant and a business architect or a business analyst and a business architect? We also have enterprise architect and technology architects. Is there a reason for being for the business architect?

This is something we did a lot of research on at HP and we delineated the role of the business architect quite clearly from the business consulting and the business analyst aspect.

The business architect's role is distinct, because he combines the organizational strategy with the operations. He identifies the implications of this strategy, as well as that of the technology for the business operations. This is opposed to the business consultant, who is more outwardly looking to the commercial aspects of the organization and what that means for the structure. The business analyst is looking more at not the structure of the operation, but at the solution level.

When we look at the enterprise architect and the solution architect, the business architect focuses more on the complete implications of the strategy and technology trends on the operations, whereas the enterprise architect is more interested in the IT and the implications for the IT strategy and how IT should be deployed. The business architect is much more focused on the complete performance of the business operations.

So, the bottom line of these delineations of the past one-and-a-half years is that there is a reason for being for a business architect. It is a distinct role and it has a real solution for a problem.

Defining the profession

Mahakena: What we've been doing in the Business Forum, after we decided that business architecture has its own reason for existence, we described the business architecture profession -- what's the scope and what should be the outcome of business architecture. Now, we're working on the practice of business architecture by defining a framework, looking at methods, and defining approaches you can use to do business architecture.

Parallel to that, if you know what the profession is and what the practice is, you're able to create the business architecture certification, because those things help you define the required skills and experience a business architect needs. So, we are working on that in the Business Forum.

Daley: Let's look at business architecture from the concept that has existed, combining the thoughts of what Mieke and Harry have already talked about. When we work with clients, for those of us that are in consultancies, we see that there is normally something that’s similar to business architecture, but it's either a shadow organization inside a purely business unit that isn't technology focused, or it is things like the enterprise architects who are having to learn the business concepts around business architect anecdotally, so that they can be successful in their roles.

I'd suggest that we're seeing a need to make it more refined and more explicit, so that we're able to identify the people that fit for this. They have specific things, instead of having general things that we have today. For me, the certification helps provide that certainty as a hiring manager or as somebody who is looking to staff an organization.

It provides that kind of clarity of what they should be doing, giving them specific activities, specific things they do that create value for the company. It takes out of the behind the scenes action and pull something that's critical to success into the front with people who are specifically aligned and educated to do that.

Globalization is creating more and more complexity in the business models that organizations are trying to operate within.



Gardner: How does the globalization impact the importance of this role?

Haviland: Globalization is creating more and more complexity in the business models that organizations are trying to operate. Over the last couple of decades, with the science and engineering of IT, there has been enormous investment by companies to actually operate, maintain, and improve their IT in their current world.

In many cases, this IT work has outpaced the comparable business efforts inside those organizations, when they actually think about their business, their business models, and their business operating principles.

What we're actually seeing now is that the rigor, the engineering, and the effort that’s put into technical architecture and IT architecture is now being proposed on the business side, with many business management process improvement activities. These tend to be at quite a low level, however, when you compare them to business architecture initiatives at the enterprise level.

Scope and challenge

I
f those architecture initiatives are at the high levels that are needed, you start to consider the scope and challenges that come into play, when you start talking about globalization. So, with the increase in scope and the global way that people are operating across cultures, geographies, and languages, that requires this discipline, which does operate at that high level to start to organize the other areas, but perhaps at a lower level.

Hendrickx: There are two aspects that need to be paid more attention to with globalization and more complexity. First, the business architect is, or should be, equipped to look at the organization, not only within the boundaries of an organization, but also the ecosystem of organizations that will mold together and have to be connected to produce the value.

Since these are more formalized contracts or relationship with different organizations connected to each other, there is a dynamic that is hardly seen anymore, that is not transparent anymore. There clearly needs to be some more detailed insights and transparency for each organization, so that people understand what the impact of certain developments or events will be. This can't be done just by logic or just by watching carefully. This really needs some in-depth analysis for which the business architecture is built.

The second part of it is that the due to the complexity, the decision making process has become more complex and there will be more stakeholders involved in the different areas of decision making. The business architect has a clear task and challenge as well. By absorbing the strategy, technology trends, and the different developments and focusing on the applications for operations, he has the opportunity to discuss with the different stakeholders. He has the opportunity to get those stakeholders either mobilized or focused on specific decisions: the deliverables you will provide.

If you start talking to all those other areas in the business, then suddenly people have a completely other way of thinking. Sometimes they use the same words and don't understand each other.



Gardner: We certainly see a lot of important characteristics in this role: global, strategic high level, encompassing business understanding, as well as technology. Where do you go to find these kinds of people? Who tends to make a good business architect or is there no real pattern yet established as to who steps up to the plate to be able to manage this type of a job?

van Gelder: To all the complexity already mentioned, I'd want to add something else that we found in the Business Architecture Working Group, which is more research in the whole field. That's the problem of communication. How do people communicate with each other?

If you look in the IT world, most people come from an engineering background. It's hard enough to talk to each other and to be clear to each other about what's possible and how you should go or what you should go for. If you start talking to all those other areas in the business, then suddenly people have a completely other way of thinking. Sometimes they use the same words and don't understand each other.

It’s not easy to have these kinds of people that need very good communication skills next to all the complexity that you have to handle. On the other hand, you need an architect when it's complex. You don't need an architect when it's simple, because everybody can do it. But an architect is just a person. I say if I am a simple person, I can only handle simple things.

What you need are people who can structure. I can only work with things when I can structure it, when the complexity is fairly well-structured. I then have overview of all those complexities, and then I can start communicating with all the parties I have to communicate with.

No real training

At the moment, I don't see any real training or development of these kinds of people that you need. Most of them come with a lot of experience in a lot of fields, and because of that, they have the possibility to talk to all kinds of people and to bring the message.

Gardner: Mieke, at Capgemini Academy, you’ve obviously encouraged and encountered folks moving towards a business architect role. What are your thoughts on what it takes and where they tend to come from?

Mahakena: Let's have a look where they can come from. What you see is that this role of business architect can be a next step in one’s career. For example, a business analyst, who has been creating a lot of experience in all kinds of fields, and he could evolve to watch a business architect. This person needs to get away from the detail and move towards the strategy and a more holistic view.

Another example could be an enterprise architect who already has analytics skills and communication skills. But, enterprise architects are more or less focusing on IT, so they should move more towards the business part and towards strategy and operations.

One could be the business consultant who is now focusing on strategy, also should have those communication skills, and will be able to communicate with stakeholders in high positions in companies. Business consultants have a lot of industry knowledge. So they should need more knowledge about technology and perhaps improve their analytics skills and learn more to how to structure operations.

There are number of existing roles that already have a lot of skills required for business architecture. They just have to enhance skills and get new skills to do this new role.



So, there are number of existing roles that already have a lot of skills required for business architecture. They just have to enhance skills and get new skills to do this new role.

Gardner: We talked about how this is important because of the internal organizational shifts and the need for transformation. We’ve seen how globalization makes this more important, but I’d like to also look a little bit at some of the trends and technology.

We’ve seen a great deal of emphasis on cloud computing, hybrid computing, the role of mobile devices, wirelessly connected devices, sensors, and fabric of information which, of course, leads to massive data, and they need to then analyze that data.

This is just a handful of some of the major technology trends. Kevin Daley, it seems to me that managing these trends and these new capabilities for organizations also undergirds and supports this need. So how do you see the technology impetus for encouraging the role of business architect?

Daley: I'm seeing from my work in the field that we’ve got all these things that are converging. Certainly, you've got all these enabling technologies and things that are emerging that are making it easier to do technology types of things and speeding them up. So, as they start maturing and as organizations start consuming them, what we’re seeing is that there’s a lack of alignment.

Business relevancy

What this trend is really doing is making sure that you have something that is your controlling device that says what is the business relevancy? Are we measuring these peer-to-peer -- measuring something such as massive data and information fabrics compared to something like cloud computing, where you are dispersing the ability to access that more readily. It creates a problem in that you have to make sure that people are aligned on what they're trying to accomplish.

We're seeing that the technologies that are emerging are actually enabling business architecture in a fashion. It provides that unified vision, that holism, that you can start looking at combinations of these technologies, instead of having to look at them as we’ve had to in the past of siloed elements of technologies that have their own implications.

We're using business architecture as a means to provide the information back to the business analyst who is going to look and help. You can provide the business implications, but then you have to analyze what that implication means and make decisions for how much of that you’re willing to accept within your organization.

In the notions around how I investigate risk, how I look at what is going to improve market, and what is the capacity of what I can do, there's a disconnect that business for which architecture is helping provide the filler for to get to the people that are doing these corporate strategies and corporate analysis at a level. That allows them to virtualize the concept of the technology, consume what it means and what that relates to for a business or in terms of its operation and strategy and the technology itself.

We’re seeing this become the means by which you can have that universal understanding that these are the implications, and that those implications can now be layered, so that you can look at them in combination instead of having to deal with each technology trend as if it's a standalone piece.

When you adopt technology, it obviously has a level of maturity it has to reach, but it also has a level of complexity.



We're seeing this as a means by which to provide some clarity around what any adoption would be. When you adopt technology, it obviously has a level of maturity it has to reach, but it also has a level of complexity. It's being able to start taking advantage of more than just one technology trend at the same time and being able to realistically deliver that into their business model.

What I have been seeing is that the technologies are driving the need for business architecture, because they need that framework to make sure that they are talking apples to apples and that they are meaning the same thing, so that we get out of the interpretation that we have had in the past and get into something that’s very tactical and very tactile, and that you can structure and align in the same way, so you understand what the full ramifications are.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.

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VMworld Case Study: City of Pittsburgh's IT success and the beneficial synergy between virtualized servers and desktops

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

O
ur next VMworld case study interview focuses on the City of Pittsburgh’s Information Systems organization and how they’ve deeply embraced virtualization at the server level and now increasingly at the desktop level. We’ll see how critical city services in Pittsburgh are being supported using VMware View 4.6 and the new View 5.0 version and how the beneficial synergy between virtualized servers and desktops is shaping up.

This story comes as part of a special BriefingsDirect podcast series from the VMworld 2011 Conference in Las Vegas the week of August 29. The series explores the latest in cloud computing and virtualization infrastructure developments.

Here to share his story on bringing VDI to his employees is Alex Musicante, the System Security Architect in the City Information Systems department in Pittsburgh. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. [Disclosure: VMware is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: Your environment is almost 100 percent virtualized on the server side. First, why is there such a holistic embrace, and how has that provided the confidence for you to move now aggressively into the desktop virtualization space as well?

Musicante: The City of Pittsburgh decided to embrace virtualization five years or so ago, and we did this in a development environment with VMware. The confidence was not there for the server virtualization, and we decided it's a good place to offer development to our internal engineers.

From there, we kept building and building, and we decided to put our first production system on there. Without a problem, everything started going. What virtualization had to offer for us was higher availability, higher reliability.

When we were remote, we had full console access. We were able to offer higher reliability on our development than our production. That was what led us to go to production. It's very difficult in this day and age with budgets and all that. We're now doing more with less. In order to be able to accommodate that and be able to handle the increased workload with fewer people, it has been embracing server virtualization, and virtualization in general.

In server virtualization we currently have 16 hosts, 98 percent virtual. There are about 250 or so virtual machines (VMs) between two data centers; and we are using VMware Site Recovery Manager to replicate or to bring up the replicated site in the event of a disaster or any planned maintenance that we need to perform at one data center versus the other.

Gardner: I’d like to hear more about your desktop virtualization strategy, but let's learn a little bit more about the scope and scale of your mission-critical set of services.

Musicante: The City of Pittsburgh’s City Information Systems Department, which I work for, has about 3,000 users that they support. That ranges from all public safety -- Police, Fire, EMS, and Building Inspection -- to the branches of government -- the Mayor’s Office, the City Council, and Controller’s Office as well as other important departments like the Finance Department, Personnel, Human Resources, and Parks and Recreation. That's who we're supporting, and each and every one of them has their own little caveats of technology that they need.

Gardner: You’re also of course concerned about security, performance, disaster recovery, which you’ve already mentioned. How has virtualization helped you not just in cutting cost, but in making these more hardened, more resilient services?

Musicante: In terms of hardening and security, when we took our virtualization approach, we started out by saying that we were going to physical-to-virtual (P2V) and migrate a lot of these machines. As we proceeded and matured in that environment, we decided that we were going to build fresh and build new.

So when we did our server virtualization, we looked at virtualization in general. It became an opportunity for us to evaluate how we were going to harden things, how we were going to secure things, and since now we don’t have to support that many physical servers, we can expand on our current capacity, and hardware.

We’re able to separate things, where servers that were multi-functional servers, database server, file server, web server, all in one, now get to be three different servers, and only allow communications to the specific application and supports what they need.

Storage came about and offered a lot more flexibility and a lot of benefit to the City of Pittsburgh, but it was not without hassle.



Gardner: Any issues around storage? Has that been something that you’ve been able to wreak some efficiencies out as well?

Musicante: Storage was very interesting for the City of Pittsburgh. They were coming from an environment where everything was on direct-attached storage (DAS), and going to a storage area network (SAN) environment, which they had. They had an array with an HP 6000, but they were only using 500 gigabytes at the time. So storage transition was huge in terms of reliability, but as well as cost at the same time.

It was an unexpected thing from the city’s perspective, as they were not in the market for an array where everything is central. It was all individual and unique to each host and physical server. So storage came about and offered a lot more flexibility and a lot of benefit to the City of Pittsburgh, but it was not without hassle.

Gardner: So you’ve gone through that process -- 98 percent is very impressive on your server, and your infrastructure. What prompted you to now take the additional step to use VMware View and move into desktop virtualization?

Musicante: The City of Pittsburgh moved into desktop virtualization with very similar characteristics as we looked at the server virtualization as how can we offer higher reliability and higher support, give us more management from a central standpoint back at our remote offices, and offer them to the clients and given them the same if not a better level service for additional benefits from administrative.

Security provisioning

There were a bunch of reasons, and those are like pushing out software updates without downtime for the users. They just log off and get a new one. It was security provisioning software, keeping all the storage and everything is back in our data center, so nothing leaves the facility.

Those were motivating factors as well as keeping administrative cost down. That was the push, and it actually took off. It took some time, but it's being embraced more than I ever would have thought it would have been.

Gardner: Let's learn a little bit more about the nature of your distribution requirements. Obviously, you have City Hall. You’ve got some centralization. You’ve got police headquarters and fire headquarters, but you’ve also got a lot of distributed sites around the city. So let us better understand your distribution requirements when you’re going to desktop virtualization?

Musicante: There are 175 remote facilities, and they range from connectivity of facilities that are on dark fiber, with 100, 200, 300, 500 users, to these individual remote offices that are located in the park facility, and they have one or two employees that are coming across the DSL line.

One of the major complaints was the problem with connectivity where people are on DSL. They would load the roaming profile or pull documents or upload files and they would see this huge lag where it took them upwards of 30 minutes to start their day off. They're now able to go into View, sign-in, and they're in. So we pretty much recovered 30 extra minutes for some of these employees on a daily basis.

Currently, we're in a mixed mode. We have two environments which we're trying to expedite to move off of.



Gardner: How are you leveraging the PCoIP bandwidth improvements for the WAN?

Musicante: Very well. With each version it's definitely gotten better. Still from a management side we do maintain an IPSec tunnel to all of our facilities.

So PC-over-IP has been what we’ve been using for our remote facilities, even back in the 3.0 days. When 4.1 PC-over-IP came out, 4.5, 4.6, it's been progressively getting better and has higher availability with more response. When 4.6, matured, they gave us the View Security Server, and even now with 5, it has increased and lowered the actual requirements necessary for traffic. So some of our facilities are not feeling the same same pain that they were prior to.

Gardner: As you’ve been making this transition, it would be good to understand better how you’ve adopted version 5. To what degree are you using version 5 for View on your desktop virtualization installations?

Musicante: Currently, we're in a mixed mode. We have two environments which we're trying to expedite to move off of, but we currently have a 4.6 environment and a 5.0 environment. Right now with our 5.0 environment we are embracing Persona Management for some of our EMS employees.

Gardner: That’s another one of those ancillary benefits that people don’t always appreciate but it’s pretty important.

Everything is identical

Musicante: Absolutely. It wasn’t something that we were expecting, but at the same time, when we go back with 20/20 hindsight, we reevaluated and said that that makes sense. Everything is now identical. We use non-persistent machine. So every time they log in, it's a brand-new machine and it’s configured identically the way we want it. The only factor that’s different for each user is their profile.

Gardner: You know how to resolve them, it’s not starting from scratch.

Musicante: Absolutely not starting from scratch. That’s also one of the beautiful benefits. As we move and as we mature with the product and as the product matures itself, we seem to be taking a very parallel progression between the two -- the City of Pittsburgh and VMware View. Persona Management right now has been doing wonders for that.

Those departments that have migrated over and wanted to take this “experiment” of Persona Management have been pleasantly surprised. Definitely, that’s also a point to bring up. When you hear problems from people, when end-users complain, there’s always something that they target. It was networking at one point. Then it moved on to virtualization and everyone said it was the promised virtualization, whether it was or wasn’t.

With View, it actually stands alone. It an outlier. Our users call and they say, "I would like to be on View. I would like to be on that system." For an end-user come back to us and request that blows our mind. We appreciate it. It means we’ve done something right. And it also has to be attributed back to VMware. They’ve done something right.

Gardner: Now that you’ve gotten your feet wet, and then some, with 5.0, what are some of the other salient benefits?

So every time they log in, it's a brand-new machine and it’s configured identically the way we want it.



Musicante: That’s going to give us extra 5 percent. There is always that server virtualization where you’d only get that 95 percent, although we got past that. There’s that 5 percent that you couldn’t for or you wouldn’t for whatever reason. That’s the same market for the desktop virtualization and 5 percent was for high graphic intensive people. We're able to now start to achieve that and we're looking to try to achieve that.

We've not gone through some of the advanced 3D accelerated graphic things that are now out with 5. We are in the process of testing, but it’s currently in our test labs within our department. It’s also in terms of deriving the benefit. We have all of our infrastructure. We're going to with a more green approach. So we're going with zero client. They're currently Dell FX 100s. So they may take one tenth of the power, but there is very little there.

I know that VMware View 5.0 3D acceleration is going to be there and is going to help out, but those people are going to be using the repurposed machines, taking their machine, putting a stripped down version of 7 and use it from there. So we're trying to achieve that, but it’s multiple facets.

Gardner: When we think about your adoption pattern around virtualization, you took your time, learned through your development environment, walked in, made some progress and then really ramped up on adoption for your server side. You’ve followed a similar pattern now with desktops.

What’s next? Is there an additional synergy between a private cloud implementation, where you can get even better synergy efficiency? Tell me what you think about this fear and moving towards even higher plane of efficiency and productivity on that overall delivery from a central data center environment?

Going toward the cloud

Musicante: It’s really unclear where we're going to go. As far as cloud and where the cloud is taking the City of Pittsburgh and where the City of Pittsburgh is going with cloud, City of Pittsburgh currently is in the process of taking that last two percent of our system that isn’t virtualized, which is Exchange, and we are currently in the process of going towards the cloud. So it’s actually going to be going to Google Apps for government for mail.

As far as cloud within ourselves, the City of Pittsburgh is using its resources that we’ve regained or recouped from all of our consolidation purposes, especially with the government processes and mentality of doing more with less. There is a lot of fellow government agencies that we're now going to be partnering with to provide them infrastructure as a service.

That’s where some of the other product lines come in like vCloud Director, to be able to allow them to still manage their infrastructure to use our resources, and we can now ourselves be a cloud provider, which I have been marketing as Cloud9 because there are nine entities including the City of Pittsburgh -- nine entities that we are going to consolidate.

Gardner: I'm impressed with the fact that you’ve been able to move through this progression, recoup those savings, and then apply it to the innovation that get you yet more productivity and savings that you can further apply. That’s commendable. Any words of advice for folks that are perhaps not as far along as you’ve been on this progression? What 20/20 hindsight and words of wisdom might you supply them?

Musicante: With server virtualization, everyone is involved in it, and that is the easy part. Desktop virtualization, is where we got hit hard and the lessons that will be learned is that end-user’s matter. Every step of the way, you need their input. It’s not just an administrative decision saying this is the right thing. You need to be good at psychology to convince your users that this is what they want, and getting them to the point of seeing that this is the best approach or getting their input.

The only thing that I could say is to involve your users. Get them in the proof of concept from the beginning.



That really makes all the difference in the world. You’ll have the same end result and you’ll get to the same target, to the same place, but you need their input. It was not the same with server virtualization. That was for the administrators. They owned it. It was their territory. These desktops that you're taking from the users, yes, they’ll have a better reliability, better up-time, better everything, and better end-user experience, but they feel that that’s theirs, and rightly so.

The only thing that I could say is to involve your users. Get them in the proof of concept from the beginning. Get their input, what they need, what they want, how they want to access it, and with that it’ll no doubt be a sure success.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

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VMware unveils new cloud, virtualization products designed to build growing synergy between cloud and VDI benefits

Looking to drive another nail in the coffin of the desktop PC, VMware Inc. has announced several new products at VMworld to advance cloud computing and virtualization.

A global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, VWware unveiled several new products and cloud-based services today at the Las Vegas convention, all aimed to “help organizations break free from device-centric legacy desktop models and accelerate their journey to a new way to work in the post-PC era.”

The key announcement was the upcoming release of VMware View 5, and enhancements to VMware Horizon. [Disclosure: VMware is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Available in a few weeks, VMware View 5 promises to simplify IT manageability and control, while providing a high fidelity desktop virtualization experience. Users can expect to realize protocol enhancements that will provide as much as 75 percent bandwidth improvement over LAN and WAN connections; advanced support of 3D graphics; scalable unified communications integration for voice and video media services; and virtual desktop personalization with integrated persona management.

“As our customers begin to embrace this shift to the post-PC era, we offer a simple way to deliver a better Windows-based desktop-as-a-service that empowers organizations to do more with what they already have,” says Christopher Young, vice president and general manager of end-user computing at VMware. “At the same time, we are investing in expertise and delivering the open products needed to accelerate the journey to a new way to work beyond the Windows desktop. This combination of empowered users and flexible IT as a service, enables a new working style that leads to a more connected enterprise.”

VMware’s vision is to deliver a more user-centric, IT-as-a-service experience for the connected enterprise. In this new model, enterprises leverage hybrid cloud resources, while maintaining a managed, secure environment, and providing new ways for employees to collaborate across applications and data from any device, where and when a user needs it.

As our customers begin to embrace this shift to the post-PC era, we offer a simple way to deliver a better Windows-based desktop-as-a-service that empowers organizations to do more with what they already have.



Enhancements to VMware Horizon extend the benefits of cloud-based application management to virtualized Windows applications and connected mobile workspaces.

During the opening keynote address yesterday at VMworld, VMware CEO Paul Martiz said that IDC research now shows that more servers running on virtual than physical server environments. What's more, a new server virtual machine is created every 6 seconds, more than the pace of live births in US, said Maritz.

Maritz also alluding to the post-relational database (RDB) era, which follows fast on the post-PC era. He said that the new requirements and architectures of the cloud and mobile trend lines mean that data stuck in RDBs won't bee able to keep up. A new layer is needed, and he pointed to VMware's Cloud Foundry, with open source licensing, as the new best option. Furthermore, Foundry's open framework will be portable across most clouds, he said.

Martitz also announced vSphere Essentials, data center appliance in a box, aimed at SMBs.

Maritz painted a vision of post-PC and post-RDB worlds, with cloud and mobile as key drivers. VMware clearly has it's sights set on being the de facto standard infrastructure -- the picks and shovels -- that enable this new architecture.

Other product announcements

B
ut there are plenty of other product announcements coming from VMware today as well. Here is a run-down on other releases or enhancements:
  • Leveraging the application virtualization capabilities of VMware ThinApp, VMware Horizon Application Manager will now offer a centralized console to help organizations manage access, deployment and updates to virtual Windows applications regardless of the type of device or the underlying operating system. These new capabilities will be available in beta by the end of the year.
  • Based on the VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) technology previewed earlier this year, VMware Horizon Mobile will offer new features that establish and securely manage an employee’s connected mobile workspace in isolation from their personal mobile environment. This will enable an employee to choose a single Android device for both personal and work use.
  • Future releases of VMware Horizon will marry the management of existing Windows applications via application virtualization and publishing technologies from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware, with the management of mobile and cloud-based applications. In addition, VMware Horizon will enable the secure delivery of cloud-based, personal and enterprise data resources.
VMware also previewed two new end-user computing technologies – code named Projects AppBlast and Octopus – that advance the company’s vision for enabling universal application and data delivery:
  • Project AppBlast will provide the universal delivery of any application -- including Windows-based applications -- to any device supporting HTML5. This will enable instant remote access to applications.
  • Project Octopus will leverage data sync technology from VMware Zimbra and Mozy to enable enterprise-grade collaboration and information/data sharing. Project Octopus will also offer easy integration with VMware Horizon, VMware View and Project AppBlast to create a secure enterprise cloud service.

    VMware Horizon Mobile will offer new features that establish and securely manage an employee’s connected mobile workspace in isolation from their personal mobile environment.


And as discussed above, available in the coming weeks, VMware View 5 is a family of products, including:
  • VMware View 5, Enterprise Edition: includes VMware vSphere 5 for desktops, VMware vCenter Server 5 and VMware View Manager 5, a flexible desktop management server enabling IT administrators to quickly provision and tightly control user access. VMware View 5 Enterprise Edition is priced at $150 per concurrent connection.
  • VMware View 5, Premier Edition: includes VMware vSphere 5 for desktops, VMware vCenter Server 5, VMware View Manager 5, View Client with Local Mode, VMware ThinApp 4.6, VMware View Composer and VMware vShield Endpoint to enable integration of offline capabilities, image management optimization, application virtualization and centralized anti-virus protection with virtual desktop delivery and management. VMwareView 5 Premier Edition is priced at $250 per concurrent connection.
Fastest thin client

In other VMworld news, Wyse Technology is introducing its fastest thin clients ever, the Wyse Z90D7 and Z90DW, are now shipping.

Wyse also introduced two new Linux-based members of its Z class family – the Wyse Z50S and Wyse Z50D. The Wyse Z50 is the high performance thin client family based on Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise. It is the industry’s only enterprise-quality Linux operating system, which Wyse execs say combines the security, flexibility, and market-leading usability of SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, with Wyse’s thin computing optimizations in management and user experience.

The heart of the Wyse Z class thin clients is a new engine, where all the major system elements – CPU cores, vector engines, and a unified video decoder for HD decoding tasks – live on the same piece of silicon. This design concept eliminates one of the fundamental constraints that limit performance.

These units also include the first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity in a thin client, which enables the newest peripherals and speeds up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0. Customers benefit from having more display options than ever before including DisplayPort and DVI.

HP has delivered a big presence at VMworld, including early show announcements in virtualization support infrastructure. But HP has also announced enhancements to its HP FlexNetwork architecture.

HP FlexNetwork is part of the HP VirtualSystem suite, and enables organizations to flatten their networks from 3-tier to 2- or 1-tier. This should aid with performance, increase throughput, and lower network latency.

HP officials say the new FlexNetwork products deliver a reduction of up to 50 percent of the cost, and 85 percent of the complexity of 3-tier architectures.



HP officials say the new FlexNetwork products deliver a reduction of up to 50 percent of the cost, and 85 percent of the complexity of 3-tier architectures. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

This should come as good news for organizations that have multi-tier systems architectures, and are struggling to implement a cloud computing environment with ease and simplicity.

“Organizations with a proprietary multi-tier network infrastructure create lock in that drives up cost and management complexity. As a result, implementing new applications and services is difficult and slow, reducing overall productivity,” an HP spokesman says.

HP has taken a number of steps to increase the delivery of applications and services through virtualization with the new enhancements to HP FlexNetwork. These include server connectivity, switching, management, and security.

In making the announcement, HP officials were quick to discuss the changes that virtualization makes to data center traffic patterns, and how the enhancements to FlexNetwork are addressing that.

Server traffic

“According to Gartner research, by 2014, network planners should expect more than 80 percent of traffic in the data center’s local-area network (LAN) to be between servers,” the HP spokesperson says. “However, to improve business agility, enterprises rely on virtual machine mobility, which can burst data rates up to 9 gigabits per second and significantly slow data transfer between servers.”

HP’s product response is HP FlexFabric solution for the data center, which includes HP Virtual Connect, and the HP 5800 and HP 12500 series switches. The company is aiming to eliminate unnecessary network layers and costly bottlenecks with a 1-tier network fabric approach. It provides wire-once direct connections to thousands of virtual, physical and storage components.

HP also announced the release – or pending release – of:
  • The new HP 5830 top-of-rack switch series, which delivers high-density server access connectivity, as well as flexible application and storage deployment. Powered by the HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF), the HP 5830 top-of-rack 48 port switch is available now starting at $11,990.
  • HP Virtual Connect as first wire-once technology that simplifies the job of implementing a cloud computing environment by eliminating 95 percent of network cables and reducing cost by up to 65 percent.

    Introduced in 2007, Virtual Connect recently passed the 5-million-port milestone and accounts for 16.2 percent of all 10Gb ports shipped worldwide, according to company officials. New Virtual Connect v3.3 firmware upgrade provides customers with greater flexibility and capacity – and can support more than a thousand VLANs per server (eight times more than the previous version). It also holds promise for six times greater network capacity per server network interface card (NIC). Virtual Connect v3.30 firmware will be available for download in September 2011.

    Network planners should expect more than 80 percent of traffic in the data center’s local-area network (LAN) to be between servers.


  • HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC 5.1) is the industry’s first single pane-of-glass network management platform. It manages both virtual and physical environments across heterogenous networks; and it automatically discovers VMs and switches, and identifies their relationship to the physical network, enabling clients to simplify administration and gain control of their assets. HP Intelligent Management Center 5.1 is expected to be available fall 2011 with a list price of $6,995.
  • HP TippingPoint and VMware are co-developing next-generation security solutions. The aim is to deliver pervasive security in the cloud with unified management and automated scanning for identifying and blocking potential threats. HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), with Controller+Firewall solution, is available starting at $40,000.
(BriefingsDirect contributor David Weldon added research and reporting to this post.)

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Monday, August 29, 2011

From VMworld, cosmetics giant Revlon harnesses the power of private cloud to produce impressive savings and cost avoidance

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

Today’s consensus is no longer around an "if" for cloud computing, but the "when" and what types of cloud models are best suited for any particular company. The present challenge then is about the proper transitions to leveraging cloud for improved IT and for far better business results.

This week at VMworld, as part of the main keynote address Monday, one company and its design and implementation of a private cloud rose above the rest. Revlon and its CIO were in the spotlight for such impressive returns on their cloud. In just two years, Revlon has benefited by nearly $70 million from savings due to cost avoidance and reductions.

This story comes as part of a special BriefingsDirect podcast series from the VMworld 2011 Conference in Las Vegas the week of August 29. The series explores the latest in cloud computing and virtualization infrastructure developments.

Here to tell us about how private cloud such savings emerged and to describe one of the most efficient enterprise private cloud implementations in the world is David Giambruno, Senior Vice President and CIO at Revlon. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. [Disclosure: VMware is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: Is there a reason for doing private cloud holistically, completely, rather than piecemeal? What’s the benefit for doing it that way?

Giambruno: From a technology standpoint, we look at ourselves as doing oneness. We pick one way and we get very good at. We own that technology, so we can command it. It’s really about the density of our skill sets and our capability around that order to execute for the business.

When you look at that, it drives a degree of simplicity of execution, because at the end of the day, what we're really focused on is delivering IT capability back to the business faster, cheaper, better. That’s essentially what our cloud was planned to do and has delivered.

Gardner: And this is no small undertaking. It's over 530 applications, 15,000 automated moves a month. Give us a sense of what you’ve done with this singular approach to full competency at this particular data center and your approach to private cloud?

Giambruno: It’s not a data center. It’s the globe. That’s important for everyone to understand. Revlon’s cloud covers all of Revlon’s presences globally. It’s not just a single data center. We have a core data center and then we have little data centers around the world that everything replicates between and things move between.

Entire ecosystem

We’ve built this entire ecosystem to deliver our applications. We started this about five years ago with this whole idea of oneness. We re-ITed the planet. We have one DNS and DHCP structure. We have one global directory. We have one SAN globally. We have one desktop image. We have one server image. That simplicity allowed us to use the cloud as a competitive advantage.

We've saved or avoided $70 million in last two years. If you go by a simple timeline, the first 18 months was laying that oneness foundation. We did that in 18 months. The second 18 months was the virtualization of the servers, the network, and the storage systems globally.

At the end of the 18 months, we were done. That was the first three years. We’ve been running this way for the last two years. We're not in the "I think" mode. We're looking now at how we continually extend the capability of our cloud.

Gardner: Our listeners might be familiar with Revlon, your brand, but tell us more about the scope of your operations and the extent to which IT is supporting your business.

Giambruno: Revlon is a global cosmetics, hair color, beauty tools, fragrance, skincare, anti-perspirant/deodorants, and beauty care company. The vision of Revlon is to deliver glamor, excitement, and innovation through high-quality products at affordable prices.

We didn’t spend any additional money, other than our normal capital refresh. The thing that we did was change the way we're spending our money



We are arguably one of the strongest consumer franchises in the world. Our brand is incredibly powerful. We've got offices around the world. Our global headquarters are in New York. Our flagship manufacturing facility is in Oxford, North Carolina, and our consumers are women around the world. Our products are sold in more than 100 countries.

So we are big, as far as our reach and our capability. Essentially, our cloud delivers roughly 95 percent of all Revlon IT services around the world. We've got a couple of systems that aren’t in there yet. They will be shortly, but for all intents and purposes, we operate everything off of our cloud.

Gardner: Let’s go back to how you got to this point and how you're able to enjoy such significant savings. You have a comprehensive virtualized approach of servers, network, applications, and services. Why is that important?

Giambruno: Again, it’s that density of skill sets. Through this whole implementation, we only used about 10 percent professional services. We didn’t spend any additional money, other than our normal capital refresh. The thing that we did was change the way we're spending our money.

We took that leap to do things differently, because at the end of the day -- I always say this just to keep my and my team’s frame of reference -- we make cosmetics and personal care products. We have lots of brands, but it’s the idea of simplicity.

Faster, better, cheaper

We're not a revenue-generating piece of Revlon. How we can add value back to the business is by doing things faster, better, cheaper? If we're not spending that money, we're avoiding spending money, or giving money back, that means it can go into new product development. It can go into R&D. It can go into marketing. All activities focused on driving profitable growth.

Getting technology to facilitate the business and do things faster and more effectively is really important. To me, it’s the most material thing we’ve done - if you look at your projects. We’ve increased the number of projects we complete every year by 300 percent. When you talk about the business alignment, getting what they want done faster, cheaper, better, to me, that’s it.

Gardner: And you're talking about spanning the cycle from full development to implementation. What’s the role that the cloud has played in terms of increasing the ease in which you move from development to operations?

Giambruno: I have a couple of buckets. We have reliability. Currently, our cloud has been operating at north of six nines uptime, which has allowed me to take resources out of operations, put them into projects and working with the business.

That’s resulted in speed. If you want a server, if there is a demand for new application or testing something, our cycle time for getting a server up is anywhere from 15-20 minutes and there isn’t the associated cost. For us, a server is just a file. If you want one, great, here you go.

One of the greatest things that we monitor is our ratio of physical to logical servers. When we started this, our server ratio was 1:7. We are now 1:34.



And we manage capacity on the top line. So we essentially move that infrastructure barrier and cost. We’ve disconnected it. One of the greatest things that we monitor is our ratio of physical to logical servers. When we started this, when we first went live three-and-a-half or four years ago, our server ratio was 1:7. We are now 1:34. That’s essentially a 500 percent increase in capacity without the cost.

That makes a material difference in the business not having to pay for things. The speed at which we can nail up applications and the accuracy at which we can do it has made a material difference in our ability to deliver projects to the business.

Gardner: In addition to improving this cycle for development flexibility and resources, you've also devoted significant improvements to disaster recovery (DR). Tell me a little bit about why the private cloud has helped you in DR.

Giambruno: One of the things that we’ve learned very quickly was rate of change. When you're on a cloud, every time someone hits a keystroke on a keyboard, that’s a change in your cloud. Our rate of change is anywhere between 20-30 terabytes a week.

We made a conscious decision as we don’t tier anything in DR; we literally copy everything. There are two pieces of things. I'm most impressed with what my team has done.

Cheaper storage

One is if you take that rate of change and attach it to storage growth, you're roughly at $27 million a year. Through a series of technologies that we employ, we turn that $27 million into $400,000 of storage that we actually have to pay for. So, our shareholders get that benefit, because I don’t think anybody else’s shareholders would have that interest in place.

The second thing is that it does allow us to copy everything. Roughly a month ago, we lost our factory in Venezuela to a fire. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but from the time someone made a phone call, two hours and 40 minutes later -- and roughly two hours of the time of finding people, because it was a Sunday afternoon -- we moved the country of Venezuela up into our DR side, had everything running, and we're giving the users virtual desktops so they could keep working. That’s the power.

Gardner: Peace of mind and trust.

Giambruno: And it’s not fake. We’ve done it. Globally, we are minus-15 minutes replication in their stuff. That’s a little longer or little shorter depending where it is and time of the day, but it goes back to the simplicity. We just copy everything so we don’t have to worry about it.

Gardner: All right. Let’s see metrics-wise what this gets for you in data reduction. What sort of volumes have you been able to improve?

We keep finding ways to squeak more out, because, again, the less money we can use, the better for the business.



Giambruno: We’ve run about 96 percent data reduction for everything from compression and de-duplication. As we’ve gone through this, we've also learned that with different storage protocols, block versus CIFS, you get better compression. Running at NFS you pick up 15 percent utilization over block.

Everybody has different business cases for why they need either, but we keep finding ways to squeak more out, because, again, the less money we can use, the better for the business. The more efficient and effective we are, the better for the business, and the less they have to spend on this.

Conversely, we keep leveraging those capabilities in extending our cloud. So we can sling a Windows 7 desktop to an iPad, or we're enabling our cloud so people can use resources wherever they are, regardless of the device. That just makes their lives easier and their ability to do business better, so we can support people growing the company.

Gardner: It’s really impressive to me, David that the more value that you derive from you architecture and approach, the more it contributes to other things. For example, what you’ve described is great for DR, but you’re also reducing your racks, restructuring your server licensing, and also getting to improve asset utilization. So it’s sort of a snowball, but in a virtuous way.

The asset is never cold

Giambruno: It’s interesting because in our DR site we run our test and dev. So the asset is never cold. We're actually using the virtual servers while they are not being used for DR to run all our tests and dev. It just contributes to the uptime. The data is already there.

We reuse assets all the time, and as we go forward, we have plans to go active-active. So now end-of-life servers that are coming out for maintenance, we just throw them in DR, because they can just stay there forever. It doesn’t matter to us if one dies a year. So what? It’s really that ability to keep using those assets to extend capabilities.

Gardner: How about the stack? Can you describe some of your products and what they’ve done for you? Are you venturing to some new areas around either management or governance to try to continue to tweak this to get more bang for the buck?

Giambruno: The bang for the buck for us is that we're working really hard on essentially creating an internal marketplace, like the Apple marketplace or the Android marketplace.

We’ve got desktop virtualization, but we see huge value to the business in creating this internal marketplace. We know a user. We know their devices. We know the applications they're supposed to be using. Depending on the device that they connect, we can format the application they are using and its view to that device to deliver them in context.

To some degree, it’s like going from a LAN to a trusted WAN, where we know the device that’s registered to you. We know you as a user so we can deliver very securely your information, and that information never leaves my data center. So you are only ever viewing the information they are working with.

When that device comes out, our cloud will understand context. We'll be able to deliver that application in the context of the person.



Gardner: You're also now creating an application marketplace. How does that benefit from your cloud infrastructure?

Giambruno: Our cloud can send them anything. The applications are already running on the cloud. Essentially, when that device comes out, our cloud will understand context. We'll be able to deliver that application in the context of the person. You've got a highly secure environment. We're not moving data anywhere. We’ve got control of the device. We understand who the person is, and so we can deliver in context what they are supposed to have access to, regardless of where they are.

If you have an iPad or anything like that, you have an icon on the front. You’ll have a Revlon marketplace. You open that up, and there will be a list of applications that you have access to that are already authorized for you to have access to, and we will start sending you those applications.

Gardner: What’s your advice for folks getting started?

Giambruno: I tend to live by "isms" to make very clear pictures, because I had to move own organization through them. Two things: trust or verify, which maps into the second, which is just try. They are very symbiotic.

Trust and verify that you’re delivering the capabilities that the business needs and that you know they need.



As you look at this, just try, and as you go through that, trust and verify that you’re delivering the capabilities that the business needs and that you know they need. As you go along that path, you can build trust and confidence in yourself and your capabilities, your team can build trust and confidence, and you can show that to your business units.

That's like that snowball that you get rolling. Once everybody realizes that it can be done, it’s more of a human experience thing than it is the technology. The technology works, and we’ve been doing this for a couple of years. I couldn’t imagine operating any other way any longer until the next big geometry train comes, but that’s probably another 10 or 15 years.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

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