Tarry Singh
| Speaker Details | ||
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| Name | Tarry Singh |
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| Title | Principal Analyst/CEO | |
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A Dutch citizen, Tarry Singh is a virtualization veteran, enthusiast and speaks occasionally about virtualization world-wide. He is a virtualization consultant for AtosOrigin, a large french IT Consultancy/Outsourcing firm, where he will be starting as of 1 feb 2008. Tarry is a thought leader and a respected member of the community. Previous positions include Manager Middleware Applications, Applications Manager, Sr. Oracle DBA, Independent/freelance Database Consultant. He is also a Expert member at Primary Global Research group. A very active member in the community, he writes frequently for Jupitermedia Corp., Corporate Executive Board (IT toolbox). Here he shares his insights into virtualization and the emerging trends that will affect the business community and the global economy as a whole. Tarry's interests include Oracle, Linux, Java, Google, Virtualization (Storage, Networking, OS), Clustering and Load Balancing. He also runs a blog TarryBlogging where he talks passionately about Virtualization, Storage, Emerging Trends, Globalization, Global Warming and Financial Market developments to name a few.
Interview
Which companies should take a look at virtualisation?
Any company which is looking to consolidate and enhance its productivity must take a hard look at virtualization. Virtualization offers more than just consolidation, there are a lot of areas where a company can improve its productivity such as ITIL, Change Management, Time-to-market etc. Virtualization is a multi-edged weapon every vendor and client must have in its arsenal to compete in this flat global market.
Are these companies ready for the shift to virtualisation? That is indeed the million euro question, companies have to dig deep into their infrastructure and prepare for this shift because whether they are ready for it or not, the shift is ready for them! Virtualisation is said to make both finance and IT departments happy. Is that really the case? The honest answer is yes and no. My talk will exactly address the collisive nature of these two domains and why the convergence is inevitable. The CFO is definitely going to be happy about the ROI and reduced TCO (and eventually the manageable TCA). IT departments have long been on the island of " hierarchical departmentalization". Technologically they may be ready, I mean you can do a very quick P2V and you have all your enterprise on the Virtual Infrastructure, but the problem lies within this domain itself. They must not just be ready for the Infrastructure change but also for the culture change. Isn't there a risk of over-virtualisation and a flurry of virtual servers appearing nearly overnight, each of them needing maintenance? Very true, believe it or not, many clients are stuck today because they thought they had moved away from "hierarchical departmentalization" but have landed on the tree of "virtualized compartmentalization". Developers were happy to create all those VMs and now are unwilling to let anyone "come in their territory". If you do not deploy virtualization taking Security, Auditing, Life Cycle Management, Change Management, Chargeback and I would even propose "Internalized VaaS", as a default option, you will end up with an unmanageable scenario. So you need to virtualize but go slow and steady, but do get started!
There was virtualisation on the mainframe long time ago. Is this the pendulum swinging back to heavy servers, or is virtualisation
spreading to every computer?
We saw "time sharing" back in the sixties on the mainframes, that was the world that was heavily tilted to the "centralized computing", then we saw the birth of the PCs and x86 market, that brought "distributed computing" to the masses. The heavy under-utilization led to the birth of VMware and we saw a revival of the "old world" with a new mission. Although it seems like we may go back to the mainframes, but we will have to figure out a hybrid platform instead of the extremities (highly distributed or heavily central).
What's in your view the biggest advantage of virtualisation?
The biggest advantage, in my opinion, of Virtualization is that it in beginning to act as the "true cleanser". IT domains have far been misunderstood as tools but in fact they are processes that need to be developed. Virtualization will help businesses develop or optimize ailing processes. And there virtualization will play a major role. That is why I keep saying that a real innovation is coming and we have to thank virtualization for it.
There are so many companies proposing virtualisation products and services? What should an IT manager pay attention to when choosing a solution?
The virtualization market is indeed very confusing for the customers. And all those prognosis of who will acquire who, doesn't make the decision-making any easier. My advice to the IT managers is to look for the following: Interoperability: So they can easily connect/migrate to other platforms, should the need arise. Portability and Flexibility: So they can makes sure that the VMs can easily move across domains to provide agility to their businesses, Security, DRP. Ask around and most important is to identify the "first virtualizable entities" within your enterprize. Do the internal and external walkabouts, assess your internal situation and ask external parties about how they did it. A final advice is to ask yourself NOT "Why should I virtualize" but asking : "Why aren't we virtualizing yet?"