To Migrate or not to Migrate, that is the Question…

As companies face the economic downturn, they are being asked to trim their IT budgets — essentially, do more with less. Meanwhile, IT folks are also being asked to make sure their companies remain competitive with the best server performance running best of breed IT solutions that operate in extremely efficient data centers as well as ensuring every IT dollar spent is showing an RIO within 12 months or less. That raises the question: “Can migrating applications from a RISC architecture to an Intel architecture save a company money and allow them to remain competitive?” In many cases the answer is “YES!”

I have been an Intel Enterprise Technical Specialist supporting many of the large financial customers in the NYC area. My customers have a mix of all sorts of platforms, from commodity X86 servers to large RISC servers and from Midrange to Mainframe systems. Customers perform tests to measure Performance, Performance per Watt and Performance per Dollar. The outcomes will determine the architecture that is best suited for their applications. Customers have also relied on industry benchmarks such as CPU2006, SPECint, SPECfp, SPECpower_ssj2008, and SPECjbb2005 whose results can be found at www.spec.org.

I have seen many custom and commercial applications that used to run on other architectures which have been ported and are now running on commodity Intel architectures. Why? The Intel Xeon 5500 Series microprocessor (codename Nehalem) is delivering increased performance, power efficiency, and overall lower cost needed to meet the IT requirements for their need. For example, in the financial sector several applications exist, such as Market Data Feed Handlers, High-Frequency Automated Trading, Risk Analytics, Monte Carlo (compute farms) which require high performance servers to gain a competitive advantage and increase revenues for the firm.

As an example, one of my customers migrated several of their company’s in-house developed applications that were running on legacy RISC servers. Migrating applications to Intel servers was a straight forward process since many of them were written in Java and were fairly easy to port. Other applications that were written in C/C++ could be migrated using Intel software tools, (i.e. Intel C/C++ compiler, Thread Checker, Thread Profile and Vtune) to make the job were extremely helpful in migrating their applications to the Intel architecture. For example, using Intel servers for their Risk Analytic application provided increased compute performance over their legacy RISC servers which helped complete their Risk Analytic runs much faster with fewer servers leading to an overall lower TCO.

Using Intel Xeon 7400 & 5500 Series has not only provided increased overall performance but has decreased the number of servers through server consolidation in the data center which also requires less energy.  This has helped prevent the data center from reaching the capacity of power and cooling. For some of my customers, using Intel Xeon 7400 & 5500 servers has extended the lifespan of their data center, saving millions of dollars not having to build new data centers due to its increased power efficiency while reducing overall operational costs.

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Open Kernel Labs Introduces OK:Android

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Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs), provider of virtualization software for mobile phones and broadband internet devices, today introduced OK:Android, an off-the-shelf paravirtualized version of the Android smartphone platform.

Using Secure HyperCell Technology, OK:Android enables Android to be used as a guest operating system running in a secure hypercell on top of the OKL4 microvisor, the OK Labs mobile phone virtualization platform. OK:Android gives handset manufacturers (OEMs) a short path to developing and delivering new designs with Android. The combination of OK:Android and OKL4 also extends new levels of security and robustness to the increasingly popular smartphone OS from Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

To date, Android-based handsets have been delivered by Taiwan-based HTC, with additional designs announced by Motorola, Samsung and other handset OEMs. Although Google and the OHA have been successful in engaging device suppliers and building a developer community, semiconductor suppliers, mobile OEMs and mobile network operators (MNOs) still face the significant challenges involved in porting and hosting Android on current chipsets and on new mobile hardware. By providing a flexible framework for Android integration with specific handset hardware and a straightforward way to reuse legacy software in new Android devices, OK:Android helps reduce time to market for a new wave of Android devices.

Since its introduction in 2008, Android has enjoyed a rapidly-growing market presence and bullish prospects for new deployments. One million Android-based handsets have shipped in 2008 as indicated by HTC; and research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics projects nine times that number in 2009. “Virtualization technology is being evaluated by many handset OEMs today, primarily for its significant time-to-market benefits for new phone designs,” noted Andreas Constantinou, lead analyst at VisionMobile. OK Labs virtualization technology already ships in over 300 million mobile handsets, including Android-based devices where OKL4 runs on the baseband processor. With OK:Android and the OKL4 microvisor, OK Labs can further accelerate Android adoption for new designs.

The impact of OK:Android starts by helping OEMs bring designs to market faster, and further extends its impact by incorporating a range of benefits across the emerging Android ecosystem. In particular, OK:Android enables OEMs, MNOs and ISVs to:

• Offer new options for creating and prototyping Android-based devices and applications with embedded virtualization.
• Create more secure and robust mobile devices, applications and services with Android and OKL4.
• Run Android together with other mobile OSes and/or deploy multiple instances of Android on a single device.
• Consolidate hardware (e.g., base band and application CPU cores) for more aggressive price-points for Android-based handsets.
• Create new Android-based devices enabled for mobile-to-enterprise virtualization (M2E). M2E is a set of joint solutions developed by Citrix Systems, Inc. and OK Labs for delivering enterprise applications to mobile devices.

OK:Android and OKL4 are available immediately from OK Labs and its global channel partners.

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EMC To Buy Configuresoft

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EMC today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Configuresoft, a provider of server configuration, change and compliance management software. The transaction is expected to close in June, subject to customary closing conditions and is not expected to have a material impact to revenue or EPS for the full 2009 fiscal year.

The announcement builds upon an already successful OEM relationship with Configuresoft. EMC entered this OEM agreement in mid-2008 and the resulting products of EMC Server Configuration Manager and EMC Configuration Analytics Manager are currently helping customers quickly adopt virtualization, dramatically cut costs, monitor policy and security compliance, and ensure governance, risk and compliance (GRC) across their infrastructures.

Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) and Configuration Intelligent Analytics (CIA) — which will continue to be known as EMC Server Configuration Manager and Configuration Analytics Manager based upon the OEM agreement — help companies achieve and maintain continuous operational, regulatory, and security compliance across their data centers. The solutions are able to quickly detect, prioritize and correct configuration compliance issues and help companies implement an automated, continuous enterprise compliance posture. Rich analytics offer customers a powerful dashboard for viewing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and provide visibility across network and server domains.

Taking this one step further, by offering powerful integrations with EMC’s network change and configuration management and service management solutions — as well the company’s automated root-cause analysis and application dependency mapping software — customers gain total visibility and control across their physical and virtual IT infrastructure.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Virtualizationdotcom/~3/5r9W_EV5MlU/