What IBM has to say about virtualization and cloud computing

I'm attending a private IBM analyst event up in Somers, NY.  I thought you'd like a summary of the discussion I've been hearing.

Virtualization — Helene Armitage

Helene Armitage spent a while laying out the agenda and made a few interesting comments about what IBM is trying to do.

• IBM is focused on expanding its messaging about virtualization. Since the company offers a complete portfolio virtualization products, the company is going to speak more about end-to-end virtualization rather than just speaking about virtual servers.
• IBM intends to speak about storage virtualization more and how important it is in a virtualized environment.
• IBM sees server virtualization as a stepping stone to a cloud computing environment and will start speaking about it that way.
• IBM believes that management of a virtualized data center, that may also include components of cloud computing, should be a major area it discusses as well.

Systems Software: Overview, Trends & Directions — Amit Dave

• IBM is watching the transformation of IT departments from a silo to be more like a business unit.
• IBM can help by simplifying operations and the use of its products
• Risk Management and Information Integration have increased in importance over the past five years for CFOs.
• In the past, organizations faced:
  • dedicated physical systems
  • Storage and switches
  • Rigid configuration
  • Organizational and IT Silos
  • Long lead times
  • Little commonality
  • Complex and expensive data centers
  • In the end, they focused on Repair and Rebuild.

• Going forward, organizations will face:
  • Integrated systems
  • Virtualization pools of resources
  • Ready-to-use appliances
  • Ready-to-use integrated solutions
  • Modular, energy efficient infrastructure
  • Cloud utility model and self service
  • Organizations will be able to focus on Re-image and Re-deploy”

IBM is calling this “Smarter Computing” This means designing, tuning and managing their IT infrastructure in a new way.

Virtualization Overview - Ian Robinson

This presentation disappointed me. I was expecting a broad discussion of IBM's virtualization portfolio. This, after all, is one of the three suppliers that offers products in each and every category in my model of virtualization.

The presentation focused on virtual servers, the management of these servers and the fact that IBM has products for all of their many product lines that support virtualization.

IBM's product portfolio is far better than this presentation let on. I agree with Ian when he said that the virtualization capabilities of IBM's Power systems today are where VMware would like to achieve at some point.

Systems Management overview: Tivoli and Systems Director - Paul Casterlin

Paul delivered a really interesting, rather complex, discussion of what management tools should do (reduce training costs, create a secure environment, make everything easy to use, take care of system health, and allow organizations to do more in less time)

He focused on where things are today and where IBM intends to take them over time. It was a very clear, very focused and quite understandable summary of what IBM is doing.

Virtualization into Cloud - Andy Wachs

Andy ran rapidly through what IBM is doing today in the areas of virtual servers and how those capabilities will help IBM customers project workloads into the cloud when they are ready. I was impressed with the thought IBM has given to this area and expect to see some very interesting products and services in the near and medium future.

KVM and integration with Systems Director / Tivoli ISM - Michael Day

Michael spent time speaking about how KVM is a more optimal approach to hypervisors because it is built with the expectation that the microprocessor does more of the work than previous generations of X86 hypervisor. He made the point that the environment would run more optimally and would, in the end, offer a lower cost of ownership.

It was an interesting presentation, but I think that IBM needs to raise the discussion up a level. The question of why people care about virtualized environments at all needs to be addressed as well.