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

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:

How does Software Assurance impacts your current and future environment? When Software Assurance (SA) first came to be in the earlier part of the decade, it was all about upgrade rights -- Microsoft did away with upgrade licenses and moved to an annual maintenance system to increase the predictability of their revenue. Over the years, in order to coax customers to make the investment in SA, they layered on other incentives like proactive support offerings including Packaged Services and rights to licenses for cold backup servers in disaster recovery scenarios. Some of the benefits are more valuable to some than others, and they’re worthless unless you consume them.

More recently, IT Pros now have to consider how Microsoft ties SA to certain versions of products like Vista or Windows 7 Enterprise, certain product offerings like Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), and factors impacting the rights associated with certain products and the flexibility in which you deploy them. Desktop virtualization is one example -- SA is a requirement in certain scenarios, like if you want to use a standard PC rather than a thin client terminal to access a centrally hosted virtualized desktop.

How does virtualization play a role in your environment? Whether it's server, desktop, or application virtualization, they all play a role in your Microsoft licensing. One common oversight is, "I’m using VMware or Citrix instead, so there's really no impact on my Microsoft licenses." A lot of the policies are virtualization vendor agnostic -- meaning the Microsoft licensing requirements are the same regardless of the vendor used for virtualization. For instance, depending on the number of virtual machines running Windows Server on a VMware ESX server, you can save big money by purchasing Windows Server Enterprise or Datacenter licenses, which carry rights to run multiple Windows Server instances on a single server.

Are there clouds on your horizon? More and more companies are taking a harder look at the cost and complexity of running services like email themselves and looking at cloud-based alternatives from Google, IBM, and Microsoft to see if there's a fit. One of the tensions here is how your existing licensing investments play a role, should you decide to take advantage of Microsoft's online services, like Exchange Online. Again, whether or not you have SA on certain licenses impacts your cloud licensing options. For instance, customers with Enterprise Agreements can purchase certain cheaper subscription licenses. Another point that's worth noting is your spend on Online Services does not count for the accumulation of Software Assurance benefits, like Packaged Service offerings.

In order to find the best-fit strategy for your organization, you need to bridge the gap between IT sourcing and IT operations. Together, you can lay out your requirements and options, so those responsible for negotiating the agreement can better understand the positions they take in the negotiation process. The result? A strategy that saves money, meets the immediate and future needs of your company, and helps avoid unexpected charges down the road that could have been prevented with careful coordination upfront.

By Christopher Voce

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Red Hat And Citrix Ratchet Up Open Source Virtualization Relevancy

The 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.

This last move is part of a larger overall strategy to move the Xen community forward and redefine compatibility and interoperability. At present, Xen community members can distribute compatible Xen derivatives that leverage a common hypervisor engine, the guts of what makes a hypervisor capable of hosting virtual machines. But most of the higher level functions, like storage and security integration and management and automation infrastructure are not part of this standard engine. Thus, incompatibilities reign among the Xen distributions. Try migrating an Amazon Machine Image over to Sun xVM and then to Oracle VM to see what I mean. Or try discovering and managing VMs running atop Citrix XenServer with your Virtual Iron tools.
 
A higher level of compatibility is needed across Xen distributions for this hypervisor to gain market momentum and legitimately challenge VMware and Hyper-V. Citrix is hoping to cement the free XenServer as this higher level implementation. Or, in other words, as the “de facto standard distribution.”

Which brings me to our friends in North Carolina. Red Hat angered the Xen community last year when it announced that KVM would be its go-forward hypervisor. While the company said it would continue to distribute Xen, it clearly was orienting its engineering resources to empower the newcomer. And today we received first word about those efforts.

While the market wasn’t awaiting news of a new hypervisor with bated breath, there is reason to turn an ear in Red Hat’s direction. It’s not because the hypervisor will debut with functionality arguably matching VMware ESX and XenServer, or because it is claiming greater scalability than these peers, but mainly because of the foundation upon which KVM is based.

You see, Xen has the notion of two elements: a very thin hypervisor that looks at the scheduling of CPU and memory, and Domain 0, which is responsible for management, networking and resource utilization.

Complexity (and the incompatibilities mentioned above) comes from the implementation of the two layers, how you innovate, and where you place new features. As a result, when new features are needed in the Xen hypervisor layer, they have to be created anew, even if that capability existed in the base OS running in Domain 0.

KVM comes from the point of view that all hypervisor-specific capabilities should be in this layer. All the things you need that already exist in an OS or should naturally be in an OS, should be in Domain 0.

Domain 0 for KVM is the official Linux kernel and thus it inherits all the hooks, capabilities and partner ecosystem built around the kernel. Security? Inherited. Scalability? Inherited. Compatibility with 1000s of third party applications? You get the idea. So this presumably will help KVM out-innovate its competition — Red Hat certainly hopes this will vault them into the position of leading open source alternative. Sound familiar?

However, as is usually the case, the devil will be found in the details. Red Hat will first release an embedded hypervisor which will have a stripped down Domain 0 of RHEL 5. It’s currently not known how much of that rich Linux partner ecosystem will find the hooks they need in that 64MB domain. Will what KVM inherits be what the embedded footprint takes away? We’ll find out in May.

By James Staten

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

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:

• Guide your greening efforts with solid data. Avoid guessing about what to green first by referencing concrete statistics on energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and cost per IT asset.
• Create realistic goals. Measuring IT's energy consumption will help you estimate the possible environmental and economic benefits of going green, ensuring your green-related goals are realistic.
• Quantify the benefits over time. Once you have implemented green upgrades to your IT assets, compare your new energy consumption to your baseline, highlighting both environmental and economic savings.

Finally, we all know that IT is perennially challenged to reduce cost and do more with less. When approaching green IT, do yourself and your business a favor by investing your time and capital wisely by first measuring your green IT baseline. Not only will this data offer a practical green IT starting point by exposing your most eco-taxing assets, but without it you cannot accurately quantify and report the benefits of your greening efforts to senior management.

Place this on your own Web site by cutting and pasting the following code into your HTML.

<iframe height="400" frameborder="0" width="540" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://www.forrester.com/green_it_embed"> </iframe>

Helpful? Copy, Paste, then Tweet it!
What's Your Green IT Baseline? Introducing Forrester's Online Green IT Baseline Calculator http://snipurl.com/c73mz-forr #ForrGreenIT

Make sure to let us know how the tool works for you: Is it useful? Has it helped frame your thinking about energy consumption and costs? Leave a comment and join the conversation.
By Doug Washburn
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What Cisco’s EnergyWise Technology Means To Green IT

To 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.

In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems.

So what does Cisco’s EnergyWise technology mean to the network’s role in Green IT? A few things:

-Position the network as foundational to Green IT. The “greening” of the network has typically focused on eco-friendly manufacturing practices and designing more energy efficient equipment. What’s unique about EnergyWise is that it goes one step further by positioning the network as a pillar of Green IT, in particular energy conservation. So in addition to buying more energy efficient networking equipment, IT pros also receive the tools to manage the energy consumption of any asset connected to the network.

-Encourage IT’s role as the Energy Czar. While the rampant growth in IT's energy use needs to be addressed, it pales in significance when compared with that consumed by office buildings and industrial facilities. This bodes well for energy management technologies, like EnergyWise, that help IT pros optimize energy use across buildings and facilities. To borrow a term coined by The Uptime Institute and McKinsey & Company, awareness and access to these types of technology might start to encourage IT’s role as the “energy czar” to reduce companywide energy consumption.

-Foster the Green IT 1.0 to 2.0 transition. Most Green IT projects fall into the Green IT 1.0 category – reducing the environmental impacts of IT itself (e.g. sourcing more energy efficient equipment, powering down PCs at night, e-waste recycling). But there is mounting interest for Green IT 2.0 – using IT as an enabler of greener business practices. Early examples of this include Nike's "Considered Index" desktop application, which empowers designers to make more eco-friendly decisions when designing shoes, and UPS's "package flow" software that eliminated left-hand turns from delivery routes, saving $8.4 million in fuel costs and 32,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2007. Forrester’s “The Rise Of The Green Enterprise: A Primer For IT Leadership's Involvement” discusses this in-depth. And Cisco’s EnergyWise is a great example of Green IT 2.0 technology that allows IT pros to extend their sphere of “greening” influence to the business, not just IT itself.

While this is all well and good, culture and budgetary ownership still stand in the way of a more energy efficient, network-enabled world. As Kenneth Brill, founder and executive director of the Uptime Institute explains in a recent Computerworld article on the topic of IT’s role in energy efficiency, "It's been a lot of talk but little action." And because most IT shops today are not responsible for paying their energy-related operating expenses, there has been little incentive to make the investment in time or capital to minimize energy consumption within or outside of IT.

But there is a bright spot. First, recent Forrester data reveals that, while less than 10% of IT organizations pay for their electricity costs, 63% have responsibility for managing and reducing energy costs. And second, IT budgets are aligning to this. Recent data from Forrester’s “Making I&O Investments To Save The Business” shows that “reducing facilities costs” is the top category where IT pros are revising spending as a result of the current recessionary climate.

By Doug Washburn

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Five Reasons To Consider PC Power Management

The 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:

1. Save money -- and lots of it. The top motivation for pursuing greener IT is to "reduce the energy-related operating expenses of IT." And PC power management can do this very effectively. By powering down PCs during periods of inactivity, Energy Star estimates that firms can save $25 to $75 per PC per year. Take AT&T as a real-world example. By powering down their 300,000 PCs during non-working hours, AT&T expects to save more than 135m kilowatt hours of electricity --  assume an average U.S. price per kilowatt of $.095, savings top $12.8m per year.


2. Reduce costs without capital expenditure. While more energy-efficient equipment and computing architectures (e.g. Energy Star-rated PCs and monitors, thin clients) are a surefire way to reduce energy costs and environmental impact they require capital investment. So if you're seeking effective cost-saving tactics with zero to little investment, get familiar with PC power management. There are a variety of tools to assist in implementing power management organization wide. Many of these tools are free while some are license fee based, but include added features, such as reporting or advanced provisioning and power management settings.


3. Address your most energy-consuming environment. What consumes more energy: your data center, or the IT assets outside of your data center? According to a recent Forrester survey, IT professionals report that more electricity is used outside the data center by a margin of 10%. While every organization is different, recognize that your energy reduction efforts in the PC environment might offer a larger payoff than in the data center.


4. Justify investments in client management suite technology. One of the biggest challenges IT ops professionals face is managing an increasingly distributed and heterogeneous client environment. Client management suite technology can help by automating software distribution, patches, and general systems management. And some vendors -- such as 1E, BigFix, LANDesk, and ScriptLogic -- are even starting to offer PC power management capabilities. So if you're struggling to justify budget, reallocate the dollars saved from PC power management to improving the ROI on client management suite investments.


5. Demonstrate your commitment greener business practices. While the primary motivation for Green IT is financial, the second most popular driver is to "doing the right thing for the environment." And curbing the energy consumption of your PC environment in turn cuts emissions related to global climate change. To paraphrase the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, the average desktop PC wastes half of the energy it consumes and by turning on energy-saving features you can reduce your CO2 emissions by nearly half a ton.

As a final thought: PC power management should be on every IT professional's checklist of low-hanging fruit to reduce costs -- regardless of whether or not IT owns the electricity bill. As a first step, define and optimize your approach to PC power management to estimate potential savings, then determine if your client management suite or PC outsourcer can offer power management functionality. My report "How Much Money Are Your Idle PCs Wasting?" and teleconference "Saving Money While Greening Your IT With PC Power Management" walks you through this in detail.

Free PC Power Management Webinar: As an additional resource, I'd like to call out the IT Power Management Summit -- a free webinar hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The intent is to get IT professionals educated on the benefits of PC power management, but most importantly overcome implementation obstacles. There are a number of excellent presenters, including yours truly. I strongly suggest attending to help you move from PC power management awareness to action:

IT Power Management Summit

March 30, 2009, from 12:00-2:00pm EST

Click here to register

By Doug Washburn

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

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. That said, we’d like to see a converged appliance, though the processing power such a box would require, not to mention OS rationalization across at least three product-based operating systems would be complex at best. We’ll have to see how it all plays out.

For Security and Risk Professionals, being able to create alliances with the IT OPS folks may allow exiting Blue Coat proxy customers expand their deployments beyond web content filtering and caching. The fact that the Mach 5 wan optimization features are built into ProxySG’s base OS means that both Security and OPS may be able to leverage the same hardware in these economic times. For companies just now looking at web proxy and wan op solutions, Blue Coat may have serendipitously timed the market just right.

We’re looking to the future to see whether Blue Coat moves more aggressively to offer virtual products aimed at networking infrastructure vendors that are looking to virtualize more services on fewer pieces of hardware – no word on this yet. Such a strategy, paired with a cloud-based offering, where companies can pay by the drink, especially for optimization services, would truly differentiate Blue Coat, who has seen its product line - already working to gain traction around the idea of an application delivery network, as a departure from pure WAN optimization, in the wake of other players in the market such as F5, Cisco and Citrix - gain competition from the recent Riverbed-Mazu acquisition.

By Chris Silva and John Kindervag

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