Virtualisation is a technology driver towards Data Centre consolidation, private cloud and enterprise-grade public cloud.  This trend is changing data centres and has significant implications for the Data Centre infrastructure.  This is manifest in relation to security, bringing both challenge and opportunity.

BYOD is causing many organisations to look again at VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) as a way of simplifying the management of desktops but also to be able to deliver applications and services to tablets and other devices. Historically VDI was handicapped by the performance of the infrastructure as the way it works is to effectively create an instance of the remote device in the data centre and then communicates screen information to and from the user device. The challenges were in the performance of the network between the user and the data centre, the fact that the storage was remote to the application on a disk and the performance of the network in the data centre. Add into that any security controls that were required and it became a bit of a suboptimal solution.

That time just after Christmas once the dust has settled and you start to take stock of the year ahead can be one of quiet confidence or utter panic. Have I over spent? Do I have enough money to pay for holidays and all the other things that are rapidly approaching? How do I reduce my household spending and how do I stay in control?

This time of year for me brings the whole aspect of power to the fore, not a desire to run the country but electricity. It was this time last year that a cable failed locally and we lost electricity for 40 hours. We do have a gas fire but no other cooking capabilities and the challenges of seeing teenagers without games consoles or internet access was a revelation. We all ended up doing a jigsaw by candle light which brought back memories of childhood in the early 70’s and the associated power cuts.

I spent last week in Silicon Valley which inevitably involves over 10 hours of being squeezed into a pretty uncomfortable airline seat. The compensation is that it is a good chance to catch up with old friends as the Sunday flights are known as the network express where you will struggle to avoid sitting with a competitor. Also it is a chance to catch up on some films as trying to work with the previously mentioned competition sitting so close is very difficult. Usually the flight can deliver three movies and a comedy TV show before you get the host of repetitive announcements in the last hour of a flight which makes watching anything impossible. The recent flight was in to a head wind which meant I waded through four films and a documentary.

.An old and wise sales man once said to me that it is much easier to sell things that people can count. For many years I pondered on this and recently I realised that it actually means that people understand the need for things they can count. For example, if you need more storage you buy some more disks, if your computing is slowing buy more and bigger servers. The contribution of the network is basically limited to what you need to plug your servers into and so does not always equate to more equipment.