latoga labs

Monday I was too busy with helping customers optimize their current data centers with virtualization to write about the (finally) announced Cisco Unified Computing System.  And I’m glad that I didn’t have the time, because now I can expand my original thoughts based on the rumors and reactions that IBM is in talks to buy Sun.  I’m not surprised that in the same week we see the server vendor marketplace expand we also see possible signs of it’s contraction; honestly it is about time someone buys Sun, it it isn’t done soon their future could parallel SGIs and they just fade away from existence.

First, Cisco

I have known about Cisco’s California Project Servers, now UCS, for a number of months now thanks to my role at VMware.  Since the moment that I first heard about them and later when I learned a bit more about the architecture, I could see how they could help change the data center as well as the hard struggle Cisco would have to do it.  One of the biggest use cases I see for UCS is with virtualized desktops.  With all the memory these systems will have in them, uses should be able to achieve higher density numbers for virtual desktops per core than with other servers.  Desktops typically are idle most of the time, the limiting factor on gaining higher consolidation density is memory, especially when you consider memory requirements for desktops will only increase over time possible eroding virtual desktop density numbers.

UCS’s promise of a centralized managed and clustered high density computing environment will enable data centers to consolidate physical space in their data center even further than could be accomplished with just virtualization.   Making this a reality will still require some changes in how data centers are run.  Primarily, not being afraid of running a server at higher than 30% or 50% utilization.  While you can’t run them all at 100% utilization as there is no place to failover, I still see many people running virtualized environments in much too conservative a fashion.  Let’s get server frugal, pinch that server penny to get all you can out it.

Cisco’s biggest challenge will be convincing customers to adopt these servers in large scale.  I don’t know if pricing has been disclosed yet, but considering that Cisco’s classic play book is to operate in key hardware markets where high margins can be maintained, I expect the cost per physical device to be higher than the competition.  Which might cause sticker shock for those who aren’t adjusting their thinking to cost per virtual machine from cost per physical server.  In addition, most of the big customers that Cisco will need to go after already have existing server vendor relationship in place.  And that server vendor relationship is with a vendor (i.e., the top three server vendors of IBM, HP, and Dell – see ZDnet’s Larry Dignan’s post) that sells more than just servers to a company.  Most of the large enterprises have pretty straightforward formulas for dealing with their strategic vendors, Cisco gets X-ish% of budget, HP gets Y-ish% of budget, and IBM gets Z-ish% of budget.  If a customers is going to increase Cisco’s percentage, where is it going to come from?  Another vendor?  At what risk to the rest of the operation?  Decisions like this are highly political in nature.  It will be interesting to see who decides to upset their politics.

Second, Sun

I have been wondering for the past year or more “who will end up buying Sun?”  Years ago I heard stories from high level Sun sales execs about how Sun’s upper management didn’t get that it’s not about the servers but about solutions.  Last year at Startup Camp in SF,  Johnathan Schwartz gave the kick off address.  After talking for 15 minutes about how people don’t know what Sun does, I was expecting him to wrap up his speech with a clear statement and direction for the company.  Nope, he left it hanging out there…as if he was saying “no one really understands what Sun’s goal in life is…including me.”

So, the real question of the day is “who is considering buying Sun?”  Many rumors that the IBM leak was just to drive up the price for the real bidder.  Some think it could be Dell, which would be a good way for dell to capture more market share but still keep it in the #3 spot.  Some think it should be Cisco, which would help Cisco catapult into 4th spot in the server market but hard to do considering all the money they just spent on the UCS development and launch (though some have been hypothesizing about the large amount of money Cisco borrowed a few months back, last time they did that was right before they bought WebEx…).  I find it interesting to think about Apple buying Sun, how much longer can Apple continue to grow without putting both feet in the business pool.  Apple wouldn’t want to do that on the desktop side since they would then have to start exposing future direction to business customers to allow them to plan for future changes (which ruins their big launch surprises) but doing this on the server side allows them to keep the Apple shock factor…though I don’t see the long term strategy there.

Either way, I think it will be inevitable for someone to buy Sun.  Investors want their money back.

Third, Data Centers

It is inevitable that partially alone, but definitively in combination these two announcements will impact the data center of the future.  The data center of future running on top of a virtualized data center operating system has to built out of standardized and common hardware building blocks. This means less hardware vendors and more innovation in the automation and services front.  Needless to say, the data center strategy discussion I will be having in the near future with one of my customers will be very interesting.  Partially because of the vendors that will be in the room and partially because of how the customer will be reacting to each of them based on these announcements.

Even with all the economic woes and recession depression, at least the shock waves from these two announcements will keep the server technology market interesting for the rest of the year.   I can’t wait to see how this all shakes out over the next few weeks…

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If you haven’t seen them, here is a short list of interesting articles I have read on the Cisco announcement:

• Cisco seeks for data center what Apple created with iPhone — a new market that stops the madness
• The good and bad of Cisco’s UCS servers
• Scoble’s video interview on UCS architecture

Favorite quote from the Cisco buzz:  “Cisco and Intel are joined at the chip.”

And a second set of interesting articles about the Sun purchase announcment:

• IBM’s potential purchase of Sun: Here’s why it makes sense
• IBM buying Sun Microsystems makes no sense, it’s a red herring
• Why Cisco, Not IBM, Should Buy Sun
  

I have been hearing rumblings lately that IBM has stopped direct sales of the Transitive Solaris SPARC Binary Translator solution the purchased late last year. (see IBM Virtualizes Sun Out of Market).  This is a rather curious move.  While it sounds like it was the OEM division of IBM that drove the acquisition of Transitive (IBM OEM’d the product), it is strange that people who want to spend money on the solution are being turned away.

I tried to find which product within IBM’s vast portfolio of products included the Transitive solution, but I wasn’t able to.  I’m assuming that their own OEM’s version is still available to customers, but I’m also assuming that it’s not a straight OEM but embedded in some larger solution and thus has a higher price point that the Transitive stand-alone solution.

I was really expecting IBM to leverage this aquisition to help put a stake in Sun’s heart.  Maybe they are being a bit more stealthy in their attack and are going to leverage the binary translation technology to go after more than just Sun…time will tell.

Until then, customers who wanted to leverage Transitive to quickly get rid of their SPARC servers will have to take the long road.

A few days ago IBM Announced Plans to Acquire Transitive.  I wrote about Transitive’s Solaris Application virtualization technology recently, it is a wonderful way for companies to maintain their investment in Solaris based applications while minimizing their dependency (risk) upon Sun.

IBM’s purchase of Transitive is a brilliant strategic way to further minimize a competitor in the market while not forcing a painful forklift upgrade upon the customer base.  “Sure, we’ll sell you new IBM X86 based hardware, and then we’ll simply continue to run all your Solaris apps within the Transitive virtaulized wrapper.  Upgrade those applications at your leisure when (and if) it makes sense.”

Virtualization continues to be a game changer in more ways than originally expected.

Since my last post about last week’s acquisition spree, I have talked to a number of people on the topic of the Sun buying MySQL. While I haven’t been running into Sun much lately in my enterprise sales forays it was largely because I have been dealing with SOA based development solutions, an area where Sun doesn’t have a strong solution (even though I had partnering conversations with them at one point to help strengthen their offering). After talking to some people who have been tracking Sun more closely lately as well a few Sun Executives and CIOs, I have seen a different picture.

Sun has been working on this acquisition for well over a year. It fills a very nice hole that they had in their solution stack…the database. No IT Executive I have talked to would seriously consider replacing their Oracle or DB2 with MySQL, but they would consider moving 100’s or even 1000’s of edge databases over to MySQL. This gives Sun a leg up in their enterprise sales and “solution” providing. It also helps to round out their Open Source solution stack (the OpenSolaris/MySQL 1-2).

Additionally, I understand that Sun will hold MySQL as a separate entity and let it run as such. With the inevitable inclusion of a few Sun Execs and Sales connections, this should help ease concerns that the web2.0 companies who run their business on MySQL were having. It still remains to be seen if some of the performance enhancements that the user community has been begging for will be addressed or not.

I just happened to surf over to the Sun website today and ran across Proejct Blackbox. a quote from the website: “Project Blackbox is a prototype of the world’s first virtualized data center–built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies.”

I didn’t spend more than 10 seconds thinking about this before I thought…that doesn’t make sense. The whole concept of a ‘portable’ data center for quick capacity addition make sense. Take a shipping container, insert a cooling system, power system (with one huge plug!), and 1U servers and presto…instant portable mini-data center.

The problem…why in the world would you paint the thing black? (I’ll get to the logos in a bit)

Let me see if I remember back to my high school physics courses….black absorbs light, white reflects it….got it. Big steel container with hot computers running inside of it. The container is designed to just be dropped off in the parking lot next to your data center…most likely in the direct sun. Let’s paint it black so it get even hotter and paint a big Sun Log on it so everyone knows what it is (psst: guys…ever wonder why most of your customer’s data centers don’t have big signs out front that says “XYZ Corp. Data Center”?)

This seems to be a great example of Marketing taking over a technology project and making bad decisions based on the need to add value (note: I have worked in marketing, and have great friends who are marketing wizards…). Let’s hope that common and business sense takes over for Sun on this project before this prototype goes into production.