Forrester Blogs › Business Technology › Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Facing Microsoft Licensing Decisions? Bridge The Gap Between Operations And Sourcing

Posted by Christopher Voce on February 26, 2009

  • 266 Recommendations

Voce
Whether or not to sign or renew an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft is a sticky question that many organizations face. For many companies out there, their spend on Microsoft licensing can be a significant portion of a company's IT budget, whether it be Enterprise Agreements or Select License agreements. Some of you may be directly responsible for the negotiation of the agreement, but many more of you work with your sourcing professionals who negotiate the agreements with Microsoft or resellers. The increasing complexity around Microsoft licensing decisions require more heads at the table. For Infrastructure and Operations pros, your voice is critical in the decision process. Certainly, your current state of Microsoft products and your future rollouts over the life of the agreement (and beyond) play a role, but there are other factors to consider. Some of the other key questions you’ll face include:

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Red Hat And Citrix Ratchet Up Open Source Virtualization Relevancy

Posted by James Staten on February 23, 2009

  • 206 Recommendations

James StatenThe open source hypervisor landscape got a lot more interesting today after the latest announcements from Red Hat and Citrix. Both were shots across the bow of VMware’s juggernaut, but Red Hat’s volley may have overshot and struck Xen.org in the stern.

Citrix, the flag bearer for Xen.org, recently announced that two significant hypervisor features would be made available in the free version of its Xen distribution, XenServer – live migration and multi-node management. Neither of these capabilities are provided in the free version of VMware ESX and live migration won’t be available in Microsoft Hyper-V until Windows Server 2008 R2. Citrix is also busily placing calls to the major Linux distributors hoping to sign them up to commitments to replace the free Xen.org hypervisor with the free XenServer.

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What's Your Green IT Baseline? Introducing Forrester’s Online Green IT Baseline Calculator

Posted by Doug Washburn on February 19, 2009

Dougwashburn You've heard it once and you'll hear it again: You can't manage what you can't measure. This adage is relevant to any IT project — especially if you're getting serious about green IT. Forrester advises that before investing a single dollar, measure your green IT baseline — an annual estimate of the energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and financial costs of operating your IT within and outside of the data center.

With that in mind, I would like to introduce Forrester's online green IT baseline calculator — an intuitive, online tool to help IT professionals calculate their green IT baseline.

The tool walks you through the key green IT baseline assumptions, including the number of IT assets, energy draw, and hours of up-time. For additional accuracy, you can customize your price and CO2 emissions per kilowatt. The tool will then automatically calculate your green IT baseline for your review. From there, you can email the results to yourself for future reference (and you can also help guide our research agenda).

Why should you calculate your green IT baseline? My complimentary  green IT podcast and report "Is Green IT Your Emperor With No Clothes?" offer answers and much more. Here's a start:

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What Cisco’s EnergyWise Technology Means To Green IT

Posted by Doug Washburn on February 17, 2009

  • 235 Recommendations

DougwashburnTo date, IT pros have given very little attention to the “greening” of the network. Why? Three words: follow the money. According to recent Forrester research, the top motivation for pursing Green IT is to “reduce the energy-related costs of operating IT.” And when compared to other IT energy-drawing assets – like servers, data center cooling or PCs – the energy consumption of the network falls at the bottom of the list, meaning that the ROI to reduce energy use is less compelling.

But the launch of Cisco’s EnergyWise technology is likely to raise the “greening” status of the network. EnergyWise is a free software upgrade to Cisco’s entire line of Catalyst switching gear. The technology allows customers to monitor, manage and ultimately reduce energy consumption of anything “connected” to the network. As Cisco describes, EnergyWise will evolve over three phases, adding new functionality with each iteration:

In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.

In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.

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Five Reasons To Consider PC Power Management

Posted by Doug Washburn on February 12, 2009

  • 228 Recommendations

DougwashburnThe rolodex of Green IT projects available to IT leadership is seemingly endless. But at some point, prioritization is necessary, and IT professionals tend to gravitate to those projects that produce an acceptable financial return with the path of least resistance. And in recent interactions with Forrester clients, it's becoming clear that PC power management -- the act of powering down PCs when not in use (e.g. nights, weekends) -- is one of those projects IT leadership are willing to act on.

Do I agree? In short yes. And here’s why: PC power management can reduce costs, cheaply and effectively, while at the same time help justify more strategic IT investments and improve your green "credentials." Let me elaborate:

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Blue Coat: Creating An Economic Advantage For Users In 2009?

Posted by Chris Silva on February 9, 2009

  • 199 Recommendations

Last week, Blue Coat gathered analysts in New York City for its Application Delivery Network Briefing Event to showcase its newest offerings, some of which are not yet released, and give the analyst community an update on where things stand following the company’s acquisition of Packeteer, completed in June of 2008.


Long story short? The vendors’ roadmaps have merged and it seems Blue Coat is doing a solid job of integrating the visibility and deep traffic inspection messages of the PacketShaper products with its caching, optimization, and security messages. Prior to the Packeteer acquisition, while Blue Coat offered a solid secure gateway and caching story, the true level of traffic visibility and optimization it could provide was limited.


Interesting for IT Operations and Security Professionals, the two product lines remain separate, though branding will merge in the second half of 2009. This could create either a dilemma or an opportunity for Blue Coat in the current economy when companies are being forced to show faster ROI with less investment upfront. The PacketShaper/ProxySG product split means that an organization can adopt one element of the solution at a time, dialing up investment as need dictates.

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