The Issue:

Major tectonic shifts in the way enterprises work with and provision their
core applications are forcing changes in the way the enterprise has to think about
securing them.

One shift is the continuing opening of the enterprise, with the gradual
federation and interpenetration of IT systems between an enterprise and its
partners, customers, and suppliers. The figurative walls of the data center are
being filled with doors, windows, and access ducts, and now serve more as a
framework for structuring the flow of information than as a barrier to it.
Another shift is the rise of service-oriented architectures (SOAs).

Enterprises are looking to SOA to provide an integration method for their
applications, a development methodology and framework, and an overall
architecture and philosophy for deploying new functionality. As enterprise
applications gain services interfaces, and sometimes are actually atomized and
turned into constellations of loosely-coupled services, each service creates on the
network a new set of access points; perhaps tens or hundreds of times as many as
there were before. Things that used to happen within an application, on a single
server, become network traffic among servers and even among data centers.
Some formerly internal functions even become invocations across the Internet of
software-as-a-service (SaaS) packages, or services in partner or supplier data
centers. Moreover, components in a SOA can scale independently of each other:
new instances of an application running on a Java application server might be
created to handle peak loads, and then destroyed as the load subsides.

Read this Issue Paper:

Clients:New Suit of Armor: Securing the Data Center

The Issue:

The history of computing shows several major architectural changes, most
of which were quite clear and easy to discern (or is that just 20-20 hindsight?).
Today it seems a lot harder to discern what the next computing architecture will
be, but in fact the trends are all pointing in the same direction.

Looking back we see that mainframe computing was partially eclipsed by
client-server computing and then n-tier web architectures. Partially eclipsed,
because no part of computing history ever disappears. Any sufficiently large
computing organization is a bit like a museum: you will find different stages of
history preserved on the pragmatic basis of “if it isn’t broken, why fix it”.
Mainframes still abound, client-server is king and n-tier web is growing in leaps
and bounds. So what is the next-generation computing architecture?

Puzzlingly, if you look at the data center today, it almost seems like we are
trying to re-create the mainframe from distributed components - on-demand
computing, provisioning and orchestration, scheduling and coordination - all
these activities seem to be attempts to build a data-center-scale mainframe. But
at the same time, computing within the data center could not be more
distributed. Far from consolidating computing onto bigger and bigger CPUs, we
seem to be moving to plug-and-play blade servers.

Sun announced that it will ship a hypervisor, xVM, and a management product, xVM Ops Center, aimed specifically at heterogeneous virtualized infrastructure. xVM combines a stripped-down version of Solaris with the Xen open-source hypervisor to provide a somewhat light-weight virtualization infrastructure that can use core Sun/Solaris technologies for storage virtualization and for avoiding hardware-based service interruptions.

The Issue:

The shift to a data-center centric model for enterprise computing
continues to increase the importance of the reliability, scalability and
management of the underlying network infrastructure. Consolidation of sites
and resources demands major changes in WAN architecture and backup
strategies. New technologies such as virtualization, storage virtualization, Web
services and clustering will dramatically affect information processing and so also
network requirements, leading not only to increasing demands for bandwidth,
but also to fundamental changes in the way data flows across enterprise
networks. New end-user applications such as voice and video create contention
issues for available bandwidth. Enterprise organizations must plan for these
changes, and must concentrate on obtaining and delivering network services
capable of meeting these changing requirements.

Organizations are, at the same time, focusing on data-center management
and operations, attempting to cut costs, improving efficiency, automating
repetitive tasks, and better aligning IT spending with business needs and demand
for services. More than three-quarters of enterprise IT executives interviewed for
Nemertes’ “New Data Center” benchmark take a holistic view of the data center
as part of a broader shift in IT culture to “IT as a service.” This translates to data
centers as business-service delivery centers, with critical requirements for
performance and availability.

Read this Issue Paper:

Clients: Network Services and the New Data Center 

SLAs for hosted, managed and co-located data center services

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 1/30/07

Almost 10% of participants in Nemertes’ data center research cited outsourcing data center facilities as one of their most important funded initiatives.

Over the last five years, the cost of building data centers has increased quite dramatically, mainly because of the increased power and cooling demands of dense platforms such as blade servers. So naturally, many businesses have decided that data centers are too complex and too costly to own, even if they are necessary to have.

Considerations for locating a data center

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 1/2/07

Real estate mavens will endlessly repeat the three criteria for a property: location, location, location. Data centers are real estate, too, so what are the three most important criteria for the data center?

Location is the most important consideration for a new data center, as with any piece of real estate. But, what makes a good location for a home does not make a good location for a data center.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By John E. Burke, Network World, 12/19/06

Could RAM be moved off server blades?

No, POV is not some hot new data-center technology that you haven't picked up on yet. It's a completely non-technical term that you might remember from freshman composition: POV means "point of view," the perspective from which a story is told. Just as in fiction, the point of view from which an IT story is told can have a dramatic impact on what it means and how we respond.

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 06/27/06

When companies budget for new applications, do they have a line item for “cooling the servers”? Not often, to say the least.

Even in the recent past, we could live with a clear separation between facilities management and IT. If IT had a requirement, facilities could most often deliver. That is no longer the case, necessarily.

Today’s IT growth places extreme demands on the physical infrastructure - the data center facilities. A simple capacity projection based on floor space is no longer enough, or even possible: facilities managers must take into consideration power density, circuit availability, cooling requirements, and yes, floor space (and what about availability?). When computing reaches extreme densities we find companies applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to model the airflow and temperature gradients in the data center.

By Melanie Turek, Senior Vice President, Nemertes Research Inc.

May 19, 2006

News that Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), is opening new data centers in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas, building a new data center in the Chicago area, and expanding in the New York area, supports a growing trend: IT executives are struggling to support their own data center needs thanks to increased power and cooling demands, and are often faced with the need to build entirely new, costly centers as a result. Equinix plans to invest about $165 million to build out the first phase of the new Chicago center—an indication of just how much money can be involved in creating a modern-day data center, and of the growing appeal of co-location.

When we asked participants in Nemertes’ latest benchmark, “The New Data Center,” to list their top data center challenges, they highlighted power capacity (64%), server and storage growth (57%), and cooling (57%). All three relate to growth, and the corresponding capacity constraints that challenge IT executives. Facing a strategic choice between “sprawl” (the “white box” model in which companies deploy more and more commodity servers) and “dense” (in which companies deploy dense blade servers or dense 1U servers), most companies are choosing “dense.”

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Data centers have been around—well, essentially forever, or at least since the dawn of computing. But just because they’ve been around forever doesn’t
mean they’ve endured unchanged. In fact, we’re smack in the middle of a radical shift in data‐center architecture, design and operations.

How collaborative tools can help data center managers

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 03/28/06

Our vision of the next-generation data center may be that of a highly integrated and automated environment, but Nemertes’ research shows that most companies are not even close to that vision.

Ways to deal with patching issues on mission-critical servers

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 03/14/06

One surprising finding from Nemertes’ recent security research is that, the more critical a server, the longer it takes to get patched.

ITIL’s IT service catalog

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 03/07/06

IT operations are increasingly “blessed” with a wealth of metrics concerning the supply of IT services. Dashboards and key performance indicators offer many IT shops a unique view into the cost of operations, the “hot” areas of growth and potential areas for savings and efficiency improvements.

Why energy efficiency in data centers is financially sound

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 02/28/06

Data centers are the biggest consumers of utility power in most large companies. Power needs range from 1 kilowatt per rack to more than 25 kilowatts per rack for dense blade servers.

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 02/14/06

Most companies today are caught in the crosswinds of two significant trends: consolidation and centralization of IT systems, vs. distribution and de-centralization of employees.

Pinning down a definition of ‘data center’

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 02/07/06

What is a data center? Do two servers in a closet count as a data center?

Terminology affects perception, so defining our terms carefully helps organize our thoughts.

Consolidation is needed to keep up with growth, not just cut costs

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 01/31/06

The undisputable trend across data centers is consolidation. Whether we look at servers or storage, or even the physical data center itself, consolidation is the top priority within most data centers.

Virtualization can actually increase complexity

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 01/24/06

Virtual-machine technology gained visibility in 2005 as companies consolidated servers and deployed shared resources to reduce spending on new servers.

Evaluating outsourcing for data centers

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 01/17/06

Should you outsource your data center? Data center outsourcing is a topic that generates almost religious levels of conviction - on both sides of the argument.

* Tips for managing data centers both preventively and reactively

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 01/03/06

Network operations centers focus on reactive management of problems. By continuously monitoring the environment, generating alerts and tracking trouble tickets, operations staff can fix problems as they occur.

* You can segment and still remain flexible

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 01/10/06

Fast-propagating attacks like worms or viruses can quickly bring a data center to its knees. But protecting the data center from such threats is not as simple as erecting a perimeter around the company’s systems.

* Converge network and security operations centers to focus on the business

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 12/20/05

Network operations and security operations share a single goal: maintaining business availability and protecting business information.

* Integrating management of data center facilities with information systems

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 11/15/05

Convergence has had a significant impact on enterprise networks and data centers, with voice and video and data frequently carried on the same IP network.

* Taking virtualization from one end to another

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 10/25/05

The infrastructure virtualization trend in many industries today involves a bottom-up approach.

Research analyst Andreas Antonopoulos identifies best-of-breed tools for the next-generation data center.

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Andreas Antonopoulos, Network World, 10/24/05

By now we're all well versed on the attributes of the "new data center," characterized by service-oriented applications running over a virtualized service-oriented infrastructure. This next-generation data center brings the benefits of agility, lower operational costs, better utilization and rapid application deployment.

* An analogy illustrates automation’s worth to the data center

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 10/11/05

Information-technology complexity is often cited as a major concern for IT executives.

* Data center management is all about information stewardship

By Johna Till Johnson, Network World, 09/27/05

In an increasingly global business world characterized by real-time, always-on communications and a dramatic upswing in human mobility, companies are being asked to respond almost instantly to their customers, competitors, and the market at large - and to do so based on real-time, accurate data.

* Backing up data when it’s scattered among thousands of desktops

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 09/06/05

Few businesses would be reckless enough not to have comprehensive and regular backups of the data in their data centers and servers.

* Identity management can have uses beyond security

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 08/30/05

Identity management and the associated identity servers and protocols are becoming increasingly important components of corporate information-security strategies.

* A utility model requires distinct "tiers" of service

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 08/16/05

On the road to a flexible data center, there are four major steps: consolidation, standardization, virtualization and utility (see "Four steps to utility").