news Clothing and homewares manufacturer Pacific Brands has revealed it switched out VMware’s market-dominating virtualisation platform over the past several years, installing Microsoft’s rival Hyper-V system instead as it sought to take more advantage of virtualisation in its operations.

According to the company’s technical services lead Brent England, the company’s virtualisation journey started in 2007. Pacific was initially using VMware’s ESX 3 platform to virtualise its central server infrastructure, which it eventually upgraded to version 3.5. The company kept on using the software for the next several years, but by the time 2010 rolled around, the situation had started getting a little uncomfortable. England says by that time, Pacific was experiencing a number of performance issues which were causing some of its staff running its business applications to complain.

Looking back, the executive says that a number of the problems were related to technical constraints inherent to VMware’s platform of the day. Pacific was using HP’s Enterprise Virtual Arrays platform for storage on the back end, but VMware’s software was having hiccups with respect to the multi-path drivers which Pacific needed to get the right performance from its storage system. At the time, England said, VMware’s support team was telling Pacific that the issues would be resolved with native drivers coming through the pipeline in the next version (4) of ESX, compared with the generic drivers available in version 3 of the platform.

“We had 24 hosts at one stage in ESX, and 20 LUNs … dual paths,” says England, referring to the logical unit number used to identify a logical unit for storage purposes. “There were closing in on 160 paths that were causing performance issues. 15 LUNs were all presented down the one I/O channel. A lot of the issues were in that we had to go in and set the path that we had.”

This situation might have been resolved by the new version of VMware. But other factors also complicated Pacific’s situation. Because the organisation operates on an outsourced IT basis with its service provider HP, the licensing situation around its use of VMware’s products was a little complex. The company’s previous VMware licences had been OEM licences, so the organisation wasn’t covered for the new version 4 of VMware’s platform.

At the time, as is fairly standard when it comes to enterprise deployments of software, HP didn’t want to immediately migrate to the new version of VMware’s platform when it was released, preferring to wait until VMware released version 4.1. But version 4.1, when it was released, would also have different hardware requirements from previous versions.

Because of these issues, Pacific looked around for alternatives, and found an obvious one in Microsoft’s Hyper-V platform, which has picked up some early wins in Australia.

While Hyper-V is known to have a more limited featureset compared to VMware’s platform, Pacific eventually came to the conclusion that there were certain aspects of version 4 of VMware ESX that the company would like to have, but which weren’t strictly necessary. This realisation, combined with the fact that Microsoft had recently unlocked a critical Hyper-V feature in the Service Pack 1 upgrade for Windows Server 2008 R2, tipped the company down the Microsoft path.

England notes that the company’s customer relationship management software, based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, had between three hundred and four hundred users, and with prior versions of Hyper-V, the company wouldn’t have been able to allocate the 16GB of memory the software required. But the new version solved these and other issues.

One of the positive aspects of the switch is that the company’s outsourcer, HP, was able to support the new Hyper-V environment pretty easily. “We Hyper-V we didn’t have to get any training done,” says England, noting that most of the required toolsets were already supported by HP, and that the company now had three to four staff managing the environment who hadn’t required extra training.

There were “a few hiccups” along the way during the migration, but those were sorted out pretty quickly. Now, Pacific’s running between 18 and 24 host servers, supporting about 140 virtual machines. And it’s planning to cut that number down further to about 10 hosts supporting about 200 virtual machines.

“Since we started this [project] we’ve deployed a lot of applications,” noted England, pointing out that Pacific has new JD Edwards and Hyperion financials installs, a new CRM system, a new SharePoint install and a new retail point of sale system. In addition, it has also shifted off IBM’s Lotus Notes system and onto Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange platform. Prior to the Hyper-V project, it had about 60 virtual machines.

The rollout has also had a positive impact on the relationships which England and his colleagues have with the rest of the business. Previously, the executive notes, he used to be regularly “called into a room” to talk about unvirtualising applications to help them perform better. Now there’s much more widespread satisfaction about the performance of the company’s applications.

Broadly, what Pacific Brands has implemented for its applications could be described as advanced virtualisation or even potentially ‘private cloud’, under a managed services agreement with HP. England says the company has looked at extending the company’s platform out to more ‘public cloud’-type scenarios, but hasn’t really dipped its toe in the water yet.

“We have looked multiple times at moving some of our email to Office 365,” he says, referring to Microsoft’s hosted email service. However, he notes the company is still committed to HP for some of the related infrastructure. HP seems keen to get Pacific into the giant new datacentre it’s building in Sydney, which would also be an option. And in a broader Microsoft sense, England says Pacific was also interested in looking at public cloud infrastructure such as Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. “I think we need to understand how we can take some of our applications there,” he says.

However, as a KPMG report released yesterday found about Australian views on the subject more broadly, England isn’t convinced “the tools are there yet” for cloud in total. For example, he mentions that Telstra wanted to build a private cloud infrastructure for Pacific, but said the telco was interested in providing a virtualisation layer, whereas what Pacific really wanted was to have its current virtualisation environment connected to another offering, so it could take advantage of another organisation’s vaster compute resources when it needed to.

For more on Pacific’s migration, see this story on ZDNet.com.au, or a similar story on iTNews.

opinion/analysis
Battles between competing platforms have a long history in the global technology sector. Windows versus Linux versus Apple. SAP versus Oracle. Salesforce.com versus Oracle. Microsoft versus Google versus IBM. And so on. For the longest time, VMware looks to have been on top of the still-young market for enterprise-grade virtualisation software globally. I would conservatively estimate that something close to … 100 percent of large Australian organisations are using the company’s software in one form or another.

But over the past several years, we’ve seen a number of major Australian organisations implement Hyper-V ahead of VMware. IND Direct, Coles, the NSW Department of Education and so on; the list keeps on growing, and now Microsoft can add a notch labelled ‘Pacific Brands’ to its belt.

I like this. I like this a great deal. Because, as much as VMware has done a fantastic job of making amazing products in this space, literally creating a whole new category of software in just a few years and revolutionising enterprise IT globally, it never hurts to have a little competition. In recent years the company had gotten a little big for its boots, with one local IT manager describing some of the terms around vSphere 5, for example, as gouging customers “beyond all semblance of what’s reasonable”.

This is the language typically applied to monopolists. What we see emerging now with Hyper-V in the global virtualisation market is a challenge to that monopoly. And I’m sure customers will benefit strongly from that development. And I’m equally sure VMware can afford to take a few knocks ;)

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Hyper-V wins huge Coles rollout
2. Massive Hyper-V deployment at NSW Education
3. McDonald’s swaps out IBM support for Unisys

news ING DIRECT Australia has deployed Bank in a Box, a private cloud infrastructure, in collaboration with systems integrator Dimension Data and backed by technical expertise from Cisco, NetApp and long-term partner, Microsoft. A case study published by Microsoft this month reveals the background to the technology deployment at ING DIRECT.

ING DIRECT Australia is the country’s fifth-largest mortgage lender with more than 1.5 million customers. The bank needed a cloud-enabled operating solution to reduce its development time-line and accelerate delivery of its new products and services, for a quicker delivery of innovative ideas – in short, for improved IT efficiency.

ING DIRECT’s earlier delivery model had limitations on how many concurrent projects and changes it could manage. The ING DIRECT team’s goal was to work towards providing a copy of the bank to anyone, at any time, for any purpose, at the lowest possible cost. This included the full set of the bank’s applications, services, configurations and 5.5 terabytes of data. Bank in a Box was the solution to achieve this goal – it was a fully integrated solution that would enable rapid provisioning of entire environments, speeding up time to market for new ideas.

Windows Server Hyper-V provided the foundational virtualisation platform that facilitated ING DIRECT’s transition to the cloud. The private cloud solution features datacentre infrastructure built on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus switching and NetApp storage with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtualisation technology.

The case study (available in Word format here) claims that the solution reduced the time and cost associated with environment provisioning, and that has reduced the testing backlog appreciably. Andrew Henderson, CIO, ING DIRECT Australia stated: “The solution enables us to streamline processes that previously took eight people three months with a very simple self-service model.” Henderson further stated that the staff could now provision copies of the bank faster than before; new ideas could also be tested faster – all this giving ING DIRECT a competitive edge, he claimed.

Ben Issa, Head of IT Strategy, ING DIRECT Australia observed: “Our idea for the solution was unique, uniting technology from across the market to give us the capability to innovate and differentiate faster and better.” Issa added that Windows Server with Hyper-V and System Center (which helped coordinate the provisioning processes) helped ING DIRECT transform the bank’s datacentre environment into an automated, self-service private cloud.

Furthermore, the solution eliminated the need to build physical servers that required testing. Developers found it an efficient solution since Microsoft technologies were integrated into the private cloud.

The case study states that after successful pilot testing, ING DIRECT brought in Dimension Data to deliver the solution. Issa remarks that currently ING DIRECT uses the cloud based solution to meet different needs – from providing customer service representatives access to bank applications for training purposes to giving developers a full version of the bank at induction. Customer related or operational issues are easier to solve and the bank can redirect its skilled people and funds towards innovation.

ING DIRECT credited the close integration and collaborative relationship between Microsoft, Cisco, NetApp and Dimension Data in realizing the final vision of Bank in a Box. ING DIRECT is looking at deploying the solution globally this year in three of the bank’s locations.

opinion/analysis
There are two things which came to mind after reading this case study. The first was that virtualisation technology has truly come of age. To think that a bank could replicate its entire banking platform in a new instance for development purposes is remarkable. It will be fascinating to see what other uses of advanced virtualisation we see over the coming few years, and how the technology itself evolves.

Secondly, as with another major deployment with Coles revealed by Microsoft last week, it is fascinating to see that it is predominantly Microsoft infrastructure platforms being used here — not those from rival suppliers such as VMware. I have no doubt that this kind of rollout could also have been done with VMware — and I’m sure ING DIRECT, like virtually every major organisation in Australia, is also a heavy user of VMware. But it does show the extent to which corporate Australia is starting to use Hyper-V more and more at the moment.

Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Hyper-V wins huge Coles rollout
2. Massive Hyper-V deployment at NSW Education
3. Brisbane taps Azure as Microsoft pushes cloud

news Microsoft has revealed that a virtualisation solution built on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise with Hyper-V technology has been implemented by retail giant Coles, at each of its 741 supermarkets, to tackle an aging, in-store fleet of server hardware.

Additionally, the company utilized Microsoft System Center solutions to centrally manage and orchestrate the geographically-dispersed infrastructure. The information was revealed in an extensive case study which Microsoft published on the rollout yesterday.

Almost a century since it was founded in 1914, Coles has more than 110,000 employees on its payroll, working in the entity’s numerous retail stores, grocery supermarkets, fuel and convenience stores, liquor stores, and several distribution centers. The IT department at Coles manages operations from a central location handling both back-office administrative operations, and more than 12 million customer transactions every week. Field support is provided by technology partners to keep in-store servers and other endpoint devices running efficiently.

In 2000, according to Microsoft, Coles adopted server virtualisation, choosing VMware, the only viable solution available then. However since VMware was still in its infancy, the company used it in its corporate offices, and implemented the Windows Server 2003 operating system at its supermarket locations with one application server and one point-of-sale server at each store, for a total of 1,500 physical servers.

The arrangement took its toll on productivity and revenue, and by 2009, it became increasingly difficult for the IT department to ensure seamless running of store operations, in the face of critical server outages because of hardware failure. It thus became imperative for Coles to locate a server virtualisation solution for its stores, especially since it had a successful virtualised server environment in their corporate headquarters.

Ken Harmsworth, GM Infrastructure Services and Operations at Coles, said in Microsoft’s case study that the critical requirement was to offer ‘quick disaster recovery,’ so that in the event of a failure, stores would be ‘back up and running in a matter of minutes.’ Under these circumstances, Coles decided to deploy Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise with Hyper-V technology after evaluating the competition.

The IT team at Coles can now quickly respond to changing business needs, recover data from servers in seconds, and control costs, without interrupting service to store personnel and customers. Coles worked with Australia–based Dilignet, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to design the solution architecture for each Coles’ store.

Features that have come in handy are Cluster Shared Volumes in the Windows Server 2008 R2 which Coles uses in its failover clusters, and which enables virtual machines to access the same virtual hard disk files; and Dynamic Memory, an enhancement to Hyper-V by which the company can pool memory on a host machine and dynamically distribute it to other virtual machines in the cluster in order to make efficient use of all available physical memory.

In April 2011, after a successful pilot phase, Coles began rolling out the solution with Hyper-V to individual supermarket locations. By October 2011, the company had implemented the virtualisation solution in 300 stores. Deployment efforts at the remaining supermarket locations are expected to continue throughout 2012. By using Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology, whenever faced with hardware failure, the IT team is able to fix servers without store personnel even noticing (according to Microsoft’s case study), thus using their time to respond to changing business needs.

Ken Harmsworth, General Manager, Infrastructure Services and Operations at Coles says “By using Hyper-V and System Center solutions, we can easily spin up a new virtual machine on existing hardware from a central location without worrying about devoting costly resources to deploying a physical server.”

opinion/analysis
Wow. The virtualisation market has been completely dominated by VMWare for a number of years now, and while the company’s solution is technically excellent — causing a virtual overnight revolution in the way we think about enterprise IT — that dominance has also led to some unfavourable conditions being imposed on VMWare customers from time to time. You know, the sort of terms which monopolists are usually fond of. Compulsorily bundling a web browser with an operating system is a good example ;)

But now, for Microsoft, the shoe is on the other foot, and the company is now a strong challenger in the virtualisation space. It’s great to see some strong competition in this area and a challenger holding the industry giant to account. As Hyper-V and Microsoft’s complementary server offerings develop further, it will be fascinating to see how the virtualisation market changes. VMWare definitely now has something to worry about — and that can only mean good news for customers :)

Image credit: Microsoft. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

Related posts:

1. Massive Hyper-V deployment at NSW Education
2. ING DIRECT rolls out Microsoft cloud deployment
3. Pacific swaps out VMware for Hyper-V

news National broadband provider iiNet announced this week that its newest business product Business Cloud would enable small and medium businesses (SMBs) to develop privately hosted IT infrastructure. Business Cloud aims to spare customers the bother and expense of setting up and maintaining their own IT installations.

iiNet Business Cloud has been established in partnership with leading vendors such as IBM, Juniper and VMware. Businesses can utilise the platform to build and deploy their entire infrastructure in the cloud for a fee starting from $29 a month.

Greg Bader, CEO of iiNet Business said that virtualised computing was often perceived as ‘too hard’ by SMBs, despite it being used by large businesses for many years. “Business Cloud follows from our launch of Business Voice. Put simply, it gives the small guys the same tools of the trade normally reserved for the big enterprise players. Removing barriers to entry and offering total flexibility, these products reflect the needs of operating a small business in today’s challenging environment,” said Bader in a statement.

Bader said that Business Cloud would help companies shift their focus from continuous maintenance and regular upgrades to managing their business. He added that customers felt it important to store their business data in Australian datacentres to ease concerns about data sovereignty and management.

Vice President and Managing Director of VMware Australia and New Zealand, Duncan Bennet spoke about partnering with iiNet: “Powered by our leading cloud computing technology, iiNet customers will utilise Business Cloud to increase IT agility through increased consolidation, task automation and simplified management.”

Features of iiNet Business Cloud include:

• Directly accessing the Business Cloud catalogue and virtual data centres through a user-friendly self-service web portal enables customers to use an operating system of their choice, clone or create virtual machines, and remotely access consoles.
• Business Cloud’s catalogues, virtual appliances, templates and thousands of virtual applications (vApps) can be swiftly accessed and deployed on preconfigured media or machines.
• A variety of enterprise class security features provides a secure virtual environment for businesses to fence their vApps.
• Customers will have access to Business Cloud’s Application Programming Interface.
• Data will be hosted in data centres based in Australia with support from iiNet’s local technical support team.

opinion/analysis
It’s good that iiNet is getting into the cloud computing market; it’s yet another example of the sort of value-added service which Australia’s major ISPs will need to focus on to maintain growth levels. In addition, iiNet, like Telstra and Optus, has an advantage over other cloud computing players; integrating its network infrastructure with its cloud infrastructure should drive performance gains for customers.

However, I remain somewhat cynical about the whole exercise. Bader’s not a chief executive type; for a long time he’s been iiNet’s chief technology officer, and I see a CEO role as primarily a sales role in this context. Similarly, iiNet’s not a company which has typically focused on selling services to businesses in the past; it’s primarily marketed its services at consumers.

In addition, I don’t believe the small to medium business market is really interested in the type of cloud computing which iiNet is offering here; or at least not yet. SMBs aren’t interested in this type of Infrastructure as a Service offering. What they are actually primarily after is Software as a Service: Platforms like NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Google Apps and so on that take care of all the details for them for one flat monthly charge. They rarely want to administer too much themselves. It’s primarily large enterprises at this point who are interested in the sort of IaaS product which iiNet is selling here; and there are probably better options than iiNet out there for IaaS services for this kind of larger organisation. Can iiNet do IaaS better than Fujitsu or CSC? Doubtful.

Having said all that, I think in the medium to long term, SMBs might be interested in this kind of offer; especially as the NBN rolls out. if iiNet can hang on until that point and develop its offering, it may well be well-positioned for the cloud opportunity.

Image credit: Fred Fokkelman, royalty free. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

Related posts:

1. iiNet enters mobile market … but you’ll need your own phone
2. Aussie cloud computing market has no ‘leader’: Ovum
3. Granularity enters APRA’s cloud computing stance

opinion This week, many prominent figures, political and commercial, gathered in that most august of locations, Australia’s Parliament House, to launch what was lauded as a landmark report into the development of the nascent cloud computing industry in this nation.

The proceedings were opened by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the Honourable Kim Carr, who exhorted Australia to be more than a “branch office” for cloud computing, but to aspire to something more. In this vein, Carr gravely informed onlookers, he had instructed his department to examine the cloud matter further.

Also attending was Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, whose calm and collected demeanour added a note of bipartisan support to the grand proceedings.

The commercial sector was represented by a cluster of eminent chief executives, flocking together in a tight cohort: Fujitsu’s cheery Mike Foster; VMware’s jovial Duncan Bennet, reserved Macquarie Telecom leader David Tudehope and Matthew Madden, the general manager of little-known cloud player InfoPlex. And I also received a lengthy statement on the matter from the Australian Information Industry Association.

Capping off the event was Nicholas Gruen of Government 2.0 fame, who, along with his colleague Simon Molloy, presented a lengthy report into Australia’s cloud computing landscape and its potential for future development for fun and profit.

Now, as a prominent Australian technology journalist myself, I was forwarded many documents and statements from this majestic event attended by many titled dignitaries. I was invited to attend the ceremony, at which I was assured I would find many press opportunities and lofty personalities with whom I would find it fruitful to commune, over nibbles and in congenial surrounds.

And yet, I still have no real idea what the whole purpose of the whole shebang was.

I read through the speech at the event presented by Minister Carr, which I found contained many important adjectives and verbs. However, I do not believe the speech committed the good Senator or the government in general to any particular course of action. Perhaps Carr was filibustering?

I read through the report (PDF) presented by Gruen’s organisation, Lateral Economics, which I enjoyed greatly with a cup of tea. However, as the report did not go into any particular detail about the nation’s current cloud computing players (not even mentioning Optus or CSC, and barely mentioning Telstra), and sort of only politely seemed to request government assistance in the area, I’m not quite sure what it was about. Perhaps it merits further investigation?

I read through a very impressive media release issued by OzHub (PDF), which appears to be a gathering of Fujitsu, VMware, Macquarie Telecom and InfoPlex, which contained many resplendent statements about improving consumer and business confidence in the cloud. But at the end I wasn’t quite sure what OzHub was aiming to achieve. Perhaps it’s another industry association?

Speaking of industry associations, I also read through a statement on the launch by the venerable Suzanne Campbell, chief executive of the AIIA. “This is about systemic change: there is no one issue that will create the desired outcomes,” argued Campbell. “Australia needs to take action on a number of fronts.” I couldn’t agree more. But what were the real issues? I didn’t know.

I had a similar experience when I was sent another media release this week by another high-ranking Australian IT organisation, Data#3.

The release informed me that in order to serve its customers, the eminent Data#3 had invested in its own Australian cloud infrastructure. I’m not quite sure what sorts of products or services the company will offer using the infrastructure, nor am I sure of any of the details of how it has been built. Nor could I tell you what sorts of customers will be using it.

But I walked away with the impression that Data#3 is a superb company which is definitely doing something in cloud computing. The company’s cloud computing strategy, I am sure, is most imposing — a strong, confident, bold march forward into the future. One that will help us all achieve our visions — whatever those might be.

After I had read all of this information, a certain quandary settled into my consciousness. What did it all mean, I wondered. Was there some overriding message which I was supposed to take from these events? Something about cloud computing? Something about Canberra? Something, perhaps, about the nature of the great game which corporations play with governments for favourable outcomes?

Was there something concrete to be learned?

Or could it be the case, that just like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, all of the players in this week’s drama were merely wandering around in a world beyond their control, unsure of their ultimate role but determined to make it clear that they were doing something? Was it just “a PR company gone mad”?

Surely not.

Related posts:

1. Does Australia need a cloud computing visionary?
2. REA Group: Another complex cloud case study
3. Can Australia lead global cloud market?

Those of us who run VMware environments might remember the user furore (including from Australian customers) which the virtualisation giant created a few weeks back when it made a number of changes to its licensing structure. Well, kudos to the company — it listened.

Writes VMware vice preside of product managament Bogomil Balkansky on one of the company’s blogs overnight:

“We have been watching the commentaries on the blogs very carefully, and we have been listening in the customer conversations very intently. We got a ton of feedback that probed the impact of the new licensing model on every possible use case and scenario, and equally important, reflected our customers’ intense passion for VMware.

We are a company built on customer goodwill and we take customer feedback to heart. Our primary objective is to do right by our customers, and we are announcing three changes to the vSphere 5 licensing model that address the three most recurring areas of customer feedback.”

Responding on the blog of the AuTechHeads user group, Sydney-based IT manager Matt Marlor welcomes the changes, noting he’s happy with moves in general. Essentially VMware has decided to substantially raise the vRAM entitlements per vSphere edition, while capping the amount of vRAM counted per virtual machine, and calculate a 12 month average of vRAM consumed rather than using its previous ‘high watermark’ approach.

vRAM, for those not familiar with the concept, is the amount of RAM a VMware virtual machine needs to function. VMware calculates the amount of vSphere licenses customers use by summing up the total amount of vRAM in all of their powered-on virtual machines, and dividing that amount by the entitlement amount for the particular version of vSphere the customer is running.

However, Marlor’s not completely happy with the new policy.

“Now just to be clear, while I’m quite happy with the changes for my part, you’re still going to face some who are unhappy – particularly those who are reliant on the old vSphere 4 limits to RAM. I can appreciate their viewpoint too; taking an entitlement for Standard from 256GB RAM per host to 32GB vRAM is a bit steep. Unfortunately, I don’t think that everyone can feasibly win with the licensing model changes, and you will nonetheless have some unhappy customers.

I’ve said before that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the vRAM model, and I stand by that. You’ve increased the limits to be more fair to customers, and that’s certainly to your credit. I for one am happy with the changes. But is it enough to mollify the customers you’ve angered? Will you lose a lot of smaller customers at the Standard and Essentials end of the scale?”

Only time will tell. The good thing, though, is that VMware is actively listening to its customers right now — and that can only be a good thing.

Image credit: VMware

Related posts:

1. Welcome to VMware. It’s your monopolist speaking.
2. Virtualised desktops gain Aussie traction
3. AGIMO starts blogging as Govt 2.0 response released

blog It’s no secret that not everyone is a huge fan of VMware’s flash new licensing structure, with all of those extra clauses it contains, and now the backlash is beginning to hit Australia. Writes Sydney-based IT manager Matt Marlor at AuTechHeads:

“VMware, I know you like money. I know you’ve made a lot of it over the years. I’m sure your parent company, EMC, is thrilled at your financial performance and market capitalisation. I know if I owned your company, I’d be pretty happy. Virtualisation is a hot topic, and seems set to continue that way.

…

But VMware, we need to talk. You’ve made a really bad misstep, and I want to talk you through it.

You see, your announcement of vRAM licensing in vSphere 5 has really aggravated a lot of people – myself included. We don’t feel that your definition of “fair” actually includes customers anymore. Like I said, I don’t mind giving you money – and plenty of others feel that way too. But we do object to being gouged beyond all semblance of what’s reasonable.”

To be honest, the changes VMware have been making remind me a great deal of the way we used to think about Oracle, before a great deal of competition arrived throughout the past decade. Almost a monopoly over its market? Check. Software licensing per core? Check. Intense vendor lock-in with proprietary technologies that makes it impossible to switch to another vendor? Check.

Let’s face it, people: Everyone knew the day would come where VMware’s control of the virtualisation software market grew a little too strong and the company grew a little too greedy. Let’s hope the development pace picks up quickly enough so that some decent alternatives start nipping at its heels. And no, Microsoft Hyper-V — you’re not there yet. Come back when you’re off your training wheels ;)

Image credit: VMware

Related posts:

1. Oh dear: Alan Jones, Chika, Steve Waugh and VMWare?
2. VMware’s licensing response: Is it enough?
3. VMware’s Harapin takes APJ role

opinion Right now chief information officers and IT managers right around Australia are facing a difficult decision regarding one of the most critical but also trouble-plagued segments of their IT infrastructure — their desktop fleets.

There are a number of forces coming into play here.

Perhaps the simplest of these is the traditional operating system generational change that we’re all used to by now. With the release of Windows 7 in late 2009, Microsoft has finally delivered a worthy successor to its ageing but still dominant Windows XP platform; and organisations right around Australia are eyeing off this long-awaited upgrade with relish.

However, the case for simply upgrading a bunch of legacy PCs to new hardware running Windows 7 is not as easy a decision as one might have assumed even two years ago. Today the whole paradigm of the desktop PC itself is under siege from a number of angles.

As Australian organisations start to reach the 100 percent server virtualisation mark (and Australia is one of the keenest adopters of this technology in the world), IT workers are looking around for other parts of their IT infrastructure to virtualise, and desktops are a logical next step.

Only this week, NSW electricity utility TransGrid emarked on a 50 user desktop virtualisation project, and it’s not alone. The National Broadband Network Company, the Department of Defence, the Department of Health and Ageing, and the City of Cockburn in Western Australia are all going down this virtualised desktop path.

These organisations are not playing around with thin clients. They are deadly serious about implementing the technology to drive real outcomes in their business. In the age-old centralise/decentralise IT paradigm debate, centralisation is in vogue.

However, there’s also more to the story.

PCs are highly adaptive tools which can be used for many different purposes. But if you’re only after a set of discrete use cases — such as entering data into a CRM platform and checking your email — many organisations are realising that a more specialised unit like an iPad may in fact be a better option.

Australian organisations like Brickworks are already close to ditching the desktop PC or laptop altogether for many staff, with sales staff increasingly equipped with iPads instead. “You can fully expect that as laptops come up for renewal, [the thinking will be] why would you buy a laptop if you could manage it with an iPad?” Brickworks business support manager Baden Bradbury said last month.

But wait, there’s more.

Desktop virtualisation is all well and good, but it’s still a ‘fat’ solution to a problem which can increasingly be solved through a ‘thin’ mechanism instead. With companies like Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and even Oracle making strong plays to provide software as a service through a web browser instead of via a desktop deployment, there is often very little reason why many staff members can’t do most of their work in a web browser.

I don’t expect Google’s pure cloud laptops running Chrome OS to take off in Australia, but what I do expect to see is organisations increasingly providing most of their corporate applications to their staff through a web browser or a virtualised application environment from a vendor like Citrix, and the employees themselves increasingly accessing those applications through their own personal PC, rather than a company-provided one.

Indeed, we’re already seeing this trend take force at innovative, technology-friendly companies like Suncorp, which has actually decided not to refresh its corporate desktop fleet. “People should use the device they feel the most productive in,” Suncorp CIO Jeff Smith told the Australian in late March. And we couldn’t agree more.

So what does this all add up to?

For small Australian organisations, the choice is becoming increasingly clear: Outsource as much as is safe to the cloud, facilitate your employees using the equipment they like best, and you’ll cut capital costs out of the business, as well as making yourself popular with your staff.

For medium and large organisations, however, putting together an internal business case around the future of a company’s desktop fleet is going to be a really tough ask in the short to medium term. This is a technology area which is in a constant state of flux at the moment, and few will be brave enough to predict precisely what will happen next.

After all, let’s not forget that the iPad only launched in Australia just over 12 months ago. It is basically impossible to say right now what the next 12 months will bring.

But one thing is clear. The days where Australian organisations would simply shell out hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for a new batch of desktop PCs every three to five years are now over. We are in a new and more complex world now. And that’s not a bad thing.

Image credit: Bruno Cordioli, Creative Commons

Related posts:

1. NBN Co to use Citrix desktop virtualisation
2. At least two web browsers for every
   Australian desktop: It should be mandatory
3. Defence fires first shot in mammoth desktop revamp

The National Broadband Network Company this morning revealed it would deploy Citrix-based desktop and application virtualisation to help provide services to its burgeoning workforce – including third-parties which need access to its systems.

The company currently only has a few hundred staff, but it has been bulking on headcount constantly over the past 18 months, and it is also engaging with a large number of contracting companies as it builds out its national fibre rollout.

Citrix said in a statement this morning that its XenDesktop solution would initially be deployed within NBN Co’s internal IT and network element management teams. “As the organisation continues to grow at an exponential rate, XenDesktop will also be used to rapidly respond to requirements that are still evolving” the statement added.

NBN Co will also uses the FlexCast technology included as part of XenDesktop, which Citrix said will allow the organisation to provide “a range of different application and desktop delivery models” under the one licence – allowing NBN Co the ability to tailor desktop and app delivery to its users bsed on their individual needs – for example, office staff, mobile workers, temporary employees or contractors might have quite different needs.

“NBN Co will be implementing Citrix XenDesktop 5, which also features Citrix’s 64 bit platform XenApp 6 and the Citrix XenClient technology,” Citrix said. NBN Co will receive three years of Citrix support under the deal, with a dedicated account manager, and will employ Citrix Consulting Services to install the technology.

NBN Co end user technology architect Robert Davies said the scalability and ability to centralise control of data inherent to Citrix’s solution was key to the decision.

“We were impressed with Citrix’s ability to integrate into our existing datacentre and desktop systems, as speed to market is an important factor for a young organisation. We have chosen the combination of Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop to give us the flexibility to support all our application provisioning use cases for both internal users and third party users.” Davies said.

The news will come as a blow to virtualisation competitor VMware, which has been strongly pushing the case for Australian organisations to implement desktop virtualisation, putting together a specialist crack team in mid-2010 to tackle the opportunity of migrating legacy ‘fat client’ PCs to the new lighter model.

So far there have only been a handful of known large virtual desktop implementations in Australia, with organisations like the City of Cockburn in Western Australia conducting a rollout of 200 desktops last year based on VMware View and the Federal Department of Health and Ageing also revealing plans for a rollout – although it has not stated which vendor’s solution it plans to use.

Image credit: Ariel da Silva Parreira, royalty free

Related posts:

1. Fujitsu wins NBN Co desktop deal
2. Australia’s desktop PC paradigm is under siege
3. Defence fires first shot in mammoth desktop revamp

The long-time managing director of VMware Australia and New Zealand has been promoted to an Asia-Pacific and Japan role, with his replacement to be Duncan Bennet, the former leader of Sun Microsystems in Australia.

“Today VMware announced the appointment of Paul Harapin as vice president, business development & cloud for the company’s Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region,” VMware said in a statement this morning, confirming a report in the Financial Review. “He takes up the newly-created post after serving as vice president and managing director of VMware Australia and New Zealand, which he joined in April 2005.”

Harapin (pictured) will still report to VMware’s Asia-Pacific & Japan chief Andrew Dutton.

The move marks the end of an era for VMWare Australia. Harapin is extremely well-known in the local technology sector, having taken VMWare locally from a division with just four people, to a large regional basis of some 220 people, according to Harapin’s LinkedIn profile.

“We have driven a virtualisation market share almost double any other region globally and with over 9000 customers built up in this 5 year period, and over 1,000 partners,” the profile states.

Harapin’s replacement, Bennet, was for a short time the managing director of ill-fated hardware and software giant Sun Microsystems throughout 2008, but he resigned in early 2009 after less than a year and after Sun Australia took a giant revenue hit of about $100 million – which Bennet said at the time was the result of revenue spiking the previous year through a large deal with Telstra.

Bennet joined the company at the same time as another senior industry executive, Steve Coad, who took on the role of director of enterprise sales. Bennet was appointed as director of sales (commercial & SMB) at VMware in March 2010. The executive’s new role is general manager of Australia and New Zealand – and he won’t report to Harapin, instead also working under APJ chief Dutton.

Image credit: VMware

Related posts:

1. Friday Five: VMware’s Paul Harapin
2. Cisco’s Williamson takes APAC role
3. Integral Energy CIO takes Urban Utilities role