30
Sat, Nov
0 New Articles

Is Controlling Costs of Your Virtualized and Cloud Environments Getting You Down?

Analysis of News Events
Typography
  • Smaller Small Medium Big Bigger
  • Default Helvetica Segoe Georgia Times

New online tools for virtualization platforms can give you a more granular view of usage and expenses.

 

Despite the recession's gradual abatement, pressures to reduce IT costs continue and IT managers are looking for ways to free up money for the new investments that have been put off for the past year or more. While virtualization and cloud computing hold the promise of increased efficiencies, they introduce a level of complexity that makes tracking costs more difficult.

 

Getting a handle on IT costs can be challenging, and the problem is exacerbated when moving to the cloud. How do you measure the cost and value of cloud-based computing? Wouldn't it be nice if a single, unified solution were available for managing cost and value across multiple cloud services, vendors, and platforms?

Managing IT Costs

Digital Fuel Technologies, a company with a SaaS-based IT financial management solution, offers a suite it calls IT Cost Management solutions, including IT Cloud Cost Management. It recently announced it has extended this solution to encompass cloud and virtual environments enabled by VMware and its vSphere virtual infrastructure platform. Digital Fuel is a pioneer in the field of IT cost and financial management and offers out-of-the-box solutions to measure the cost of cloud computing. IT organizations using Digital Fuel's solutions can track the total cost of operation (lesser than total cost of ownership), unit cost, and performance of services in order to help optimize the business value of cloud and virtual environments.

 

VMware's virtual infrastructure platform, called vSphere, supports a Web service API that Digital Fuel has recently made use of to map cloud and virtual VMware entities and collect performance and usage data. Digital Fuel then combines those results with its application capabilities and cost information to give IT organizations a better understanding of what an application costs or what an IT service costs running on top of a virtual environment. The calculations are based on resource utilization.

Managing the Cloud Environment

IT executives looking for more control over the cost and business value of their cloud and virtual infrastructures will welcome the Digital Fuel tie-in to the vSphere platform. IT managers and CIOs can not only obtain total cost of operation and unit cost from the Digital Fuel IT Cloud Cost Management solution but also help the entire IT department manage its service-level agreements (SLAs) of virtual and cloud environments. This means accurately billing and charging based on usage, making use of underutilized resources, and identifying resource bottlenecks.

 

"VMware is revolutionizing enterprise computing by supporting virtualized solutions for nearly any IT need, from server and desktop virtualization to business continuity and resource consolidation," says Yisrael Dancziger, president and CEO of Digital Fuel. "This progress creates opportunities for impressive gains from understanding and measuring the cost and value of cloud-based computing," Dancziger says.

Mapping the Virtualization Topology

While IT Cloud Cost Management is a SaaS solution, and therefore easy to implement and access, it is hard to imagine how it can discover a user's VMware topology, map virtual data centers, or compute resources and associated virtual machines—but that is what it's designed to do and apparently does so with aplomb. It uses what is known as the Digital Fuel VMware Connector to document the topology and then collect performance data, including CPU, memory, network, and disk space usage. Having collected all that information, the Digital Fuel solution combines it with application capabilities and cost information, presumably supplied by the user, giving the IT department a collection of reports that it can use to measure unit cost, reveal total cost of ownership, and even drill down into various components. It displays underutilized resources that may be free and helps reduce or eliminate bottlenecks that can contribute to application or service outages, according to the company.

 

If a department is interested in consolidation and virtualization initiatives to trim costs, Digital Fuel's utilization reports will provide a firm basis for proceeding forward—or not. The reports identify underutilized host and cluster resources so the user can migrate virtual machines to different hosts to help reduce costs. VMware has a tool to do that, and a number of third-party solutions in the IBM world do that as well. In the meantime, Digital Fuel's platform detects the migration changes automatically and continues collecting the data without interruption.

What-If Scenarios

IT Cloud Cost Management has modules for cost allocation, budgeting, SLA management, and billing and charge-back options, but what's even more impressive is the "what-if  analyzer" that models costs of IT services, including cloud-based cost drivers. The analyzer gives the IT manager the tools to better plan and optimize based on different available options, whether they be technology or business scenarios. The solution even provides a means of meeting tax and regulatory compliance mandates in an auditable and justifiable manner based on usage, the company says. It offers a full range of reports, dashboards, benchmarks, templates, and cost models for optimizing and controlling cloud-based IT environments.

 

IT costs need to be trimmed, but the low-hanging fruit has been harvested long ago. Needless to say, services usually cannot be scaled back, and the mandate as often as not is to increase them. While the solution is to identify waste in the IT budget—or areas that don't deliver value to the business—it's difficult to do that if you can't accurately track costs. In an IT environment, it becomes challenging because the cost of any service is more than the initial cost of the hardware and software but also includes maintaining backups, offering service-desk support, and providing redundant server capacity for such things as production or high availability.

 

While government organizations like to cut costs a like amount across all departments, that's probably not the wisest way to reduce costs in a business. Some services have more value to the business than others; the problem is determining which ones have the most value. Certain tasks are mission-critical, and other key functions must continue without disruption. How do you identify those areas that are not as strategic and wouldn't be missed if they were cut? The solution, according to Digital Fuel, is to obtain detailed visibility over IT costs so as to control and predict them, make well-informed decisions about tradeoffs between costs and business needs, and ensure that costs are allocated properly in order to meet regulatory and tax requirements.

Seven Cost-Saving Tips

The company offers seven tips for optimizing IT costs that may be summarized as follows:

  1. Consider removing applications that have high support-of-license costs but low business criticality or usage.
  2. Identify candidates for virtualization that would result in higher cost savings but low risk.
  3. Identify candidates for consolidation (such as servers and desktops with a high cost per CPU that are approaching end of life), compare various storage costs, and compare service-level requirements to actual utilization.
  4. Defer upgrades by identifying servers and applications with both low costs and low business criticality, look for excess capacity, and run "what-if" scenarios to compare the cost of replacing servers and storage systems against upgrading.
  5. Evaluate refreshing system hardware based on the cost and benefits of a refresh, including utilization patterns and business criticality, and look for cost drivers such as power, cooling, and facilities usage.
  6. Identify end-of-life application candidates by looking at high cost versus lower usage and business criticality. Look for lower-cost alternatives such as SaaS-based solutions and outsourcing.
  7. Reduce service levels as applications fall off in use, and reduce hardware to applications that have excess capacity. Rank applications in terms of criticality to the business and migrate less important ones to lower support levels.

 

Lowering IT costs will continue to be a challenge throughout this year and beyond, and the issue will become even more difficult as virtualization and cloud computing increase IT complexity. Specific tools exist, however, that can provide the visibility needed to allocate hardware, software, and services to reflect their level of importance to the business.

 

Chris Smith

Chris Smith was the Senior News Editor at MC Press Online from 2007 to 2012 and was responsible for the news content on the company's Web site. Chris has been writing about the IBM midrange industry since 1992 when he signed on with Duke Communications as West Coast Editor of News 3X/400. With a bachelor's from the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in English and minored in Journalism, and a master's in Journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Chris later studied computer programming and AS/400 operations at Long Beach City College. An award-winning writer with two Maggie Awards, four business books, and a collection of poetry to his credit, Chris began his newspaper career as a reporter in northern California, later worked as night city editor for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and went on to edit a national cable television trade magazine. He was Communications Manager for McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, Calif., before it merged with Boeing, and oversaw implementation of the company's first IBM desktop publishing system there. An editor for MC Press Online since 2007, Chris has authored some 300 articles on a broad range of topics surrounding the IBM midrange platform that have appeared in the company's eight industry-leading newsletters. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS

LATEST COMMENTS

Support MC Press Online

$

Book Reviews

Resource Center

  • SB Profound WC 5536 Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application. You can find Part 1 here. In Part 2 of our free Node.js Webinar Series, Brian May teaches you the different tooling options available for writing code, debugging, and using Git for version control. Brian will briefly discuss the different tools available, and demonstrate his preferred setup for Node development on IBM i or any platform. Attend this webinar to learn:

  • SB Profound WP 5539More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT Generic IBM announced the E1080 servers using the latest Power10 processor in September 2021. The most powerful processor from IBM to date, Power10 is designed to handle the demands of doing business in today’s high-tech atmosphere, including running cloud applications, supporting big data, and managing AI workloads. But what does Power10 mean for your data center? In this recorded webinar, IBMers Dan Sundt and Dylan Boday join IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington for a discussion on why Power10 technology is the right strategic investment if you run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. In this action-packed hour, Tom will share trends from the IBM i and AIX user communities while Dan and Dylan dive into the tech specs for key hardware, including:

  • Magic MarkTRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now!  Request Now.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericForms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericIT security is a top priority for businesses around the world, but most IBM i pros don’t know where to begin—and most cybersecurity experts don’t know IBM i. In this session, Robin Tatam explores the business impact of lax IBM i security, the top vulnerabilities putting IBM i at risk, and the steps you can take to protect your organization. If you’re looking to avoid unexpected downtime or corrupted data, you don’t want to miss this session.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericCan you trust all of your users all of the time? A typical end user receives 16 malicious emails each month, but only 17 percent of these phishing campaigns are reported to IT. Once an attack is underway, most organizations won’t discover the breach until six months later. A staggering amount of damage can occur in that time. Despite these risks, 93 percent of organizations are leaving their IBM i systems vulnerable to cybercrime. In this on-demand webinar, IBM i security experts Robin Tatam and Sandi Moore will reveal:

  • FORTRA Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAManaging messages on your IBM i can be more than a full-time job if you have to do it manually. Messages need a response and resources must be monitored—often over multiple systems and across platforms. How can you be sure you won’t miss important system events? Automate your message center with the Robot Message Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAThe thought of printing, distributing, and storing iSeries reports manually may reduce you to tears. Paper and labor costs associated with report generation can spiral out of control. Mountains of paper threaten to swamp your files. Robot automates report bursting, distribution, bundling, and archiving, and offers secure, selective online report viewing. Manage your reports with the Robot Report Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAFor over 30 years, Robot has been a leader in systems management for IBM i. With batch job creation and scheduling at its core, the Robot Job Scheduling Solution reduces the opportunity for human error and helps you maintain service levels, automating even the biggest, most complex runbooks. Manage your job schedule with the Robot Job Scheduling Solution. Key features include:

  • LANSA Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.

  • LANSAWhen it comes to creating your business applications, there are hundreds of coding platforms and programming languages to choose from. These options range from very complex traditional programming languages to Low-Code platforms where sometimes no traditional coding experience is needed. Download our whitepaper, The Power of Writing Code in a Low-Code Solution, and:

  • LANSASupply Chain is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. From raw materials for manufacturing to food supply chains, the journey from source to production to delivery to consumers is marred with inefficiencies, manual processes, shortages, recalls, counterfeits, and scandals. In this webinar, we discuss how:

  • The MC Resource Centers bring you the widest selection of white papers, trial software, and on-demand webcasts for you to choose from. >> Review the list of White Papers, Trial Software or On-Demand Webcast at the MC Press Resource Center. >> Add the items to yru Cart and complet he checkout process and submit

  • Profound Logic Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application.

  • SB Profound WC 5536Join us for this hour-long webcast that will explore:

  • Fortra IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: