When I think of virtualization and replication of workloads, I sometimes think of Dolly. No, not the country singer. I mean the other Dolly — the domestic sheep that became the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell. Why? Because without a smart approach to intelligent workload management, IT staff and solutions providers may need to be cloned as well just to manage these workloads. Here’s the challenge… and the solution.

Virtualization offers remarkable scalability. And with cloud computing, scalability becomes on-demand and virtually limitless. But that flexibility comes at a price.

For example, say members of the sales team need to share documents, so they independently create a file-sharing site in the cloud. This type of sprawl then continues week after week, spreading across an organization. Suddenly, IT realizes it’s lost control.

Big Challenges

Beyond the obvious security issues, how does IT regain control over the environment while providing the flexibility that cloud computing promises and users so desperately crave? Obviously, companies aren’t going to be able to add IT administrators at the rate they can add VMs. Not in this (or any other) economy. Unless you can clone your budget, then automation and policy-based management become essential.

Policy-based management coupled with automation can reduce operational costs. That’s a given. But it also enables better management of an organization’s information assets. In this way, IT can streamline deployment, provisioning, change management and patching across its physical, virtual and cloud environments. IT can also automate workload tracking to reclaim virtualized resources when a workload is no longer actively used. Conversely, during peak use, workloads can be automatically replicated and deployed in parallel.

Ask the Experts

IDC shares this view. According IDC analysts, “Policy-driven automated workload provisioning and migration capabilities are needed to support efficient, large-scale workload optimization. Organizations that want to make the most effective use possible of their resources need to define standardized workload configurations and use policy-driven automation tools to assign, migrate, and deactivate workloads as needed.” You can find a whitepaper on the topic and deeper analysis here.

As you begin considering your own intelligent workload management implementation or implementations for your customers, be sure to do your research. Look for robust, automated management capabilities that improve IT efficiency and effectiveness.

I’m excited to see so many companies taking such an active role in the intelligent workload management market. And as this market continues to develop, I see many unique opportunities for companies like Novell as well as channel partners. Policy-based, identity-aware solutions are enabling organizations to manage the entire workload lifecycle—from building and securing to managing and measuring—while ensuring their environments are performance-optimized and integrated and manageable—without cloning IT staff.

In next month’s blog, I’ll look at what’s required to monitor, measure and report on intelligent workloads.

Dan Dufault is global director of partner marketing at Novell. Guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship program. Read all of Dufault’s guest blogs here.


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