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Evolving Solutions Recommends Virtualization
Server virtualization as a way of coping with CRM computing demands.
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
All that CRM and ERP software eating into your server space? Try virtualization.
Evolving Solutions, which describes itself as a "data on demand and server consolidation expert," has issued a press release this morning describing server virtualization and "how it paves the way for autonomic computing."
The invaluable Wikipedia informs us that "autonomic computing," started by IBM in 2001, is the effort to create self-managing computer systems to "overcome their rapidly growing complexity and to enable their further growth."
In other words, computer networks are actually becoming so complex that their very complexity is a limiting factor. Add in mobile computing -- employees checking in from the field on their laptops -- and the server overload is increased.
IT would love server environments capable of doing things like processing weekly payroll, end of month commissions and end of year accounting while running all the ERP, CRM and e-mail systems at the same time. Jaime Gmach, president of Evolving Solutions, suggests that virtualization is how to accomplish this.
He notes that "tapping into under-utilized servers that rarely surpass ten percent utilization rate, will allow [companies] to access additional processing power."
The basic idea is simple: Server virtualization is overloaded servers finding idle servers and borrowing the capacity they need to run things like CRM, ERP, what have you. "Then, without human prompting, these virtualized servers return the capacity when it is no longer needed," Gmach says. He calls the process "a complete leap into autonomic computing," or capacity on demand.
In a 2002 interview in CRM magazine Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology and strategy for IBM's server group, said "what autonomic computing can do is have a big value of capabilities when dealing with customer service. When dealing with the Web, the systems should not go down. When dealing with customer data and security, don't get hacked. To customer interfacing applications such as CRM, autonomic capabilities will bring great benefits."
Gmach gives three steps to "virtualizing" an organization's IT environment and driving it towards autonomic computing:
Step 1 - Assess & Validate. Conduct an environmental assessment to define each department's server processing needs. Resource/environmental auditing agents can poll all servers to identify current totals of CPU, memory, adaptors, and file/system capacity and total used and unallocated disk space.
Step 2 – Rationalize and Critique. Critique the current server environment to identify and consolidate processing-compatible applications to single servers, or virtualize existing multi-server environment to share processing attributes from a common pool.
Step 3 – Increase ROI on Current IT Infrastructure. Tap into an existing hardware pool and reduce the need to purchase additional servers in order to increase on-demand processing capacity.
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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
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