Novell News
Is There a Cure for SaaS-sprawl?
Last September, Chris Hoff wrote of his concerns about SaaSprawl, setting off a lengthy and lively discussion.
At the core of Hoff’s concern was the tendency for enterprises to “edge toward Cloud adoption by cherry picking applications for externalization using SaaS as the platforms.”
The net result of this cherry picking is an IT administration nightmare as SaaS vendor relationships proliferate creating a jungle of multiple usernames & passwords, multiple identity silos, and a plethora of divergent administrative tools.
On top of it all, with Gartner showing that SaaS adoption is growing, and predicting that it will continue to do so into the foreseeable future, the situation is just going to get worse.
Of course, the problem isn’t so much that organizations will seek software services from multiple sources – this is, after all, a major benefit of the SaaS model in the first place.
No, the real problem is posed by the need to manage security and identity across numerous SaaS instances, each with its own peculiar way of doing so.
An ideal solution to this problem then would allow organizations to engage whatever software services they wished while at the same time allowing these organizations to apply their internal identity and security management systems in the same way to each instance.
Interestingly enough, Novell recently conducted a survey of its customers and discovered that 43% of them would be more inclined to consider and purchase an SaaS offering if it included just such a solution.
IT leaders are not going to rein in SaaS sprawl by exercising greater control over the purchasing decisions of people who are getting pressure from the C-suite to increase efficiency by outsourcing elements of their infrastructure. Sure, the headaches are all on the side of the SaaS consumer, but it is not necessarily the case that that’s where the cure should be implemented.
On the contrary, doesn’t it make more sense to attack the problem from the side of the SaaS provider by giving them the ability to work with the client’s existing security architecture? Wouldn’t that alleviate the client’s pain while making the vendor that much more appealing?
What’s your cure for SaaS sprawl?
Attending BrainShare? Register now for unique and exciting System z sessions!!
Are you attending BrainShare SLC 2010? Don´t miss the opportunity to follow some really unique session about System z. Enroll these sessions today via the session scheduler at https://www.novellbrainshare.com/slc2010/scheduler/search.do and learn from customers and experts what is so special about SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z!
Tuesday 9am-1pm, Thursday 9am-1pm, Room 255B
ELS206: SPECIAL Hands-on Workshop – Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM System z (Classroom set-up – You don´t need to bring/use your own Laptop!)
Trainer: Richard Lewis, IBM
Happy Birthday SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z! 10 Years on the Mainframe – and counting! Come take advantage of this unique opportunity at BrainShare. Richard Lewis, a master expert and pioneer for Linux on the mainframe, will teach you how to install and configure SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z in a z/VM virtual machine. After this intensive hands-on experience, you will be equipped with the skills and the confidence required to install Linux for System z by yourself. You should have minimum basic Linux knowledge. LIMITED NUMBER OF SEATS AVAILABLE!
Monday 11:30am-12:45pm, Room 150 D/E
ELS208: German Pension Fund Goes Linux: Legacy Application Migration to z/Linux with Minimal Risk
Speakers: Falk-Oliver Bischoff , Head of IT Department, Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Fund), Florian Delonge, Business Development Director EMEA, Clerity Solutions, Inc. , Olaf Senger, IBM
THIS CUSTOMER SUCCESS WILL ALSO BE FEATURED DURING THE KEYNOTE!
In this session, you will gain detailed insight into why and how German Pension Fund (Deutsche Rentenversicherung) migrated a monolithic mainframe application consisting of 3.5 million lines of code and 2,500 CICS COBOL programs and the required transaction environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z. In addition to reducing software costs through the use of open source software, German Pension Fund can now rely on a consolidated system based on a modern, flexible and reliable operating system, which will also be used as the host system for content management and archiving systems. One of the main reasons for the move to Linux was that it can be used on multiple or different hardware platforms with minimal adaptations. And the biggest advantage of the IBM System z10 environment for German Pension Fund—besides its legendary reliability and intelligent resource usage—clearly is that all application components run on a single machine, which means that administration effort and access times between z/OS and Linux are minimal.
Wednesday 4pm-5:15pm, Room 251 F
ELS310 – What’s New with Linux on System z
Speakers: Richard Lewis (IBM, I/T Executive), Ihno Krumreich (Novell, Project Manager System z)
This session will give a detailed report on the functionalities found in newer kernel versions as they relate to Linux on System z. Areas included are advanced virtualization, storage support, RAS, security, as well as usability and serviceability. This session will also give some insight into the IBM Linux on System z development process itself. Last, but not least, attendees get an overview of features, functionalities and tools specific to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z.
Novell goes to OSBC
If your plans next week include the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, be sure to sit in for the Novell roundtable on software appliances. Scheduled for Thursday, March 18, 9:45 to 10:15 a.m, the roundtable is led by Novell’s Carlos Montero-Luque and brings together executives from GroundWork Open Source, Ingres, IBM and SAP. These industry experts will discuss how trends, such as cloud computing, are driving the explosive demand for software appliances, how appliances are transforming the software delivery paradigm and why open source is the key enabler of this growing market.
Guest blog: Are identity management systems really compliance management systems?
by Bob Bentley
During the economic downturn, while organizations were cutting expenses wherever they could, compliance-related spending actually grew. This continued growth in spending reflects the simple fact that public companies required to hold customer data, which includes just about everybody, have very strong regulatory incentives to make sure that security and governance as to who’s got access to what sensitive resources is well controlled and managed.
These ongoing regulatory pressures have brought about a major shift in the identity and access management market. Specifically, organizations are investing in these solutions today not for purposes of automation and cost reduction, as was the case in the past, but in order to maintain and manage to ever-higher compliance standards.
Compliance has been a mounting concern ever since the days of Enron and related financial fiascos. It became clear that the real issue behind these events was that people weren’t really being governed very well. To put it simply, people had access to, and were able to make decisions and take action with, very sensitive IT systems when they really shouldn’t have.
What followed in the wake of these scandals were a host of regulatory movements all around the world – in the US, Europe, Japan, etc. – where there were all kinds of new government rules and regulations telling corporations very clearly, “You need to govern the access that people have to make sure that it’s appropriate and not excessive, that people aren’t accumulating rights as they go from one job to another within the same organization, and that when people leave the organization that their access rights to these very sensitive tools that are used everyday are quickly terminated.”
At the same time, the message came down that you, as an organization, have to be able to protect any customer information that you may be holding. For example, if you are a credit card company, you probably have a lot of information about people that is very sensitive and could be used in a damaging way if it got out. Therefore, according to these government edicts, you had to have adequate controls in place to prevent people from hacking in to your systems from the outside as well as to prevent insiders with elevated privileges from getting access to and misusing sensitive data.
One result of this regulatory evolution is that demands placed on identity and access management systems have changed. Indeed, it would be fair to say that these systems are becoming in effect “compliance systems.” Specifically, this means that they are expected, among other things, to increase the visibility and the availability of information for decision makers and stakeholders with regards to who has access to what in their organization.
Indeed, to meet the demands of these clients, identity systems are evolving to not only determine the level of compliance across the enterprise, but also to be able to enforce compliance on a relatively real-time basis. The ultimate ideal is to have identity systems, such as those that we have developed, which are policy-driven and able to prevent bad things from happening in the first place, or detect things, such as the creation of an unauthorized user in my accounts payable system, and reverse them in real-time.
To put it another way, in order to determine compliance any good identity management solution will give you good visibility into the current state of things – Who has access to what right now? What was that like a month ago or a year ago? Who did what with the resources they were granted? – but a state-of-the-art system will allow you to maintain real-time control and actually manage to compliance on an ongoing basis.
Do you see compliance management as the key function of identity management today?
Is there a balance for users and IT in the world of social tools?
If you are an employee, an IT administrator or a CIO, you are probably either using social media tools, are looking to get control of their use or are worried about their impact. So, you are probably wondering what a perfect world would look like when it comes to your enterprise social environment.
Join Wendy Steinle, Novell Director of Solutions and Product Marketing for End-User Computing, in this next video installment to learn more about how users, enterprise IT admins and CIOs can all find happiness in the continually evolving world of social collaboration tools.
Case Study Article with EFiS: Consolidation Makes Cents Implementing an IBM System z10 Enterprise Linux Server EFiS EDI Finance Service AG
Customer: EFiS EDI Finance Service AG
Headquarters: Dreieich, Germany
Business: Outsourced application provider for banking, financial institutions and corporations
Challenge: Reducing costs, providing better security, increasing computing performance, improving disaster recovery and keeping green
Solution: Consolidating other Linux OS-based servers to a faster IBM Enterprise Linux Server and using its existing IBM System z9 Business Class machine as a disaster-recovery box
Hardware: IBM System z10 Enterprise Linux Server and a System z9 Business Class server
Software: Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z
Read the article at: http://bit.ly/bu9nZI
What do skydiving, an office and a night club have to do with each other?
To find out you’re just going to have to come to Novell BrainShare in Salt Lake City on March 22 – 25. In the meantime, you can watch this video montage of some behind the scenes footage being compiled for the big event to get a sense of the fun to come.
Take a Trip Down Memory Lane – 10 Year Anniversary Timeline for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z
From the moment we introduced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for the mainframe more than ten years ago, our commitment to helping you optimize on IBM System z has never wavered. Together, with our valued partner IBM, we’ve developed more Linux-for-mainframe innovations than any other provider, delivering the simplest, most cost-effective alternative server consolidation platform to x86 platforms available today. So, as the only distributor that’s been delivering an enterprise-class and fully supported Linux operating system since the very start of Linux on the mainframe, we can safely say that if history often repeats itself, the future looks even brighter.
View the timeline today at: http://bit.ly/a8dW44
BrainShare Special Hands-on Workshop: Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z on IBM System z
ELS206 Special Workshop
Hands-on Workshop: Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM System z Happy Birthday SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z! 10 Years on the Mainframe – and counting.
Room 255B
Tuesday 9am-1pm
Thursday 9am-1pm
Come take advantage from this unique opportunity at BrainShare. Richard Lewis (IBM), a master expert and pioneer for Linux on the mainframe, will teach you how to install and configure SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z in a z/VM virtual machine. After this intensive hands-on experience, you will be equipped with the skills and the confidence required to install Linux for System z by yourself.
Join us and win a “birthday surprise”.
Limited number of seats!
Sign up for BrainShare or this session today at: http://www.novell.com/brainshare<
The Incredible Value of Technology Events
You know my friends, I’ve been hearing from some folks that the idea of technical events that people actually go to is well past its best before date.
I confess I’ve been disenchanted by some events from time to time, but I still believe that there’s real value in these things. Allow me a few thoughts on why that is. I’ll share some of the comments I’ve heard and then provide my perspective and since I’m the guy behind the keyboard I get to do that.
One view is that the Internet changes everything, including the value of going to this kind of event. I have to disagree. Certainly some vendors do excellent Web sites with lots of information and if your whole goal was to collect brochures, the Web is clearly a better choice. But maybe you’ll notice that some Web sites are nearly unnavigable and it’s easier to use a search engine than to navigate the site directly. What happens when you have questions about a product or service? Too often I find that this is true, and the Web site is ineffective at getting me what I need so I get to spend hours searching tips and forums trying to find a simple answer. Being at a show gives an opportunity to speak to vendor or partner representatives and get useful answers without having to wade through a ton of dreck.
Some people think that learning on your own time using tools that run in your browser are ideal. Not awful, but gets boring really fast. Events often have classes, tutorials and other presentations where you can actually learn something new. And since you’re there, you get to pay attention instead of trying to do fifty seven other things while watching a webcast. When you have a question, you ask it. And a real person answers you. Then something very cool often happens. Someone else adds to your question, or offers a different perspective or takes the conversation in a new direction. I’ve been a public speaker for over thirty years and I promise you that the most fun for me is when the audience stops being listeners and become engagers. Think about your own experiences and I think you’ll agree that the interactivity makes live attendance much more powerful than some simplex remote talking head.
I’ve read that social interaction is highly overrated. Events often have places where attendees get together to eat, have a beverage or get some needed work done. When you look up from the laptop or the smartphone, you might actually have a conversation with someone you’ve never met. It’s called socializing and we humans for the most part seem to enjoy the whole thing. Often there are places where attendees go after hours to unwind. More social time. A good idea I think. Looking at FaceBook, Twitter and the entire social network space confirms that we enjoy interacting with others, and doing so live is pretty darn good.
When you attend a technical event, you get to meet people with similar or different interests, learn from others, share your knowledge, expand your personal network, have some fun, enjoy some time away from the desk or cube and when you come back, you bring knowledge, new skills and new perspectives to help you do your job better and make a difference to your place of work. Sounds like a win-win to me.
I’m doing five sessions at BrainShare this month, March 21 – 25 in Salt Lake City, Utah. I look forward to seeing you there. Come find me and say hi.
And if you won’t be in SLC, you’ll be missed. Until next time, peace.
Field Memo: Updated Collaboration Customer Slides
Slides: FY2010 Collaboration Customer Deck
These slides bring together the whole collaboration story for 2010. Contains:
- Collaboration Trends and Challenges
- The 3 solution capabilities: Personal and Team Productivity, Collaboration Data Management, NetWare Server Consolidation on Linux
- A couple of slides on each product within each of the 3 capabilities
- A script in the notes of each slide!
Your Time Investment: (46 slides)
Localized: No
Good Selling,
The End-User Computing Enablement TeamPartners, visit our Wiki where you can find everything you need to be enabled on selling End-User Computing Solutions!
EUC Enablement Resources:
Enablement Wiki
PartnerNet Community
PartnerNet Enablement Central
SalesTalk Endpoint Mgmt
SalesTalk Collaboration
Should enterprise IT worry about the security of online collaboration tools?
IDC estimates that 54 percent of people are using social tools for business more than twice a week. If enterprise IT doesn’t know what’s being used or what information is being shared, they may have good reason to be worried.
Novell has been working on Novell Pulse, a solution that embraces the need for social and collaborative engagement and balances it with the security and compliance requirements of the enterprise. Want to know more about what’s driving the use of social tools and why many enterprise IT security people are so worried about them? Then check out this new video.
Tenzing orchestrates its cloud computing platform
In our latest podcast, Mike Robinson, senior product marketing manager at Novell, interviews Kelly Beardmore, CTO of Tenzing, about how PlateSpin Orchestrate has given Tenzing a single workload management tool to natively manage Windows, Linux and VMware environments, enabling the company to create a cloud computing platform to reach a new market.
As a managed hosting company, Tenzing manages the complex business requirements of hundreds of different clients. Many of its clients have both Microsoft Windows and Linux environments and require virtualization technologies that work seamlessly on both platforms. Tenzing needed a single data center management solution that was flexible enough to natively manage all industry-leading hypervisors, including VMware, Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V. After evaluating a number of workload management solutions, Tenzing chose PlateSpin Orchestrate to power its new cloud computing platform.
SUSE Studio picked as a Codie Award Finalist
SUSE Studio, our free, web-based appliance-build tool has been nominated as a finalist for the 2010 Codie Awards in the category of “Best Software Development Tool.” Since its launch in July of 2009 as part of the SUSE Appliance Program, SUSE Studio has been incredibly popular, with more than 275,000 appliances built and almost 65,000 registered users worldwide.
CODiE Awards, is an annual program of the Software Industry and Information Association (SIIA) that recognizes the software and information industry’s most newsworthy products and services. 2010 winners will be announced on May 25.
Running and Managing Virtual Appliances
Panel Discussion Podcast with Live Q&A
March 10, 2010 — 07:00 Pacific / 10:00 Eastern / 16:00 Central European
Virtual appliances can make life a whole lot easier for IT managers, whether in traditional production IT or cloud settings.
Join a panel of experts from Novell, GroundWork Open Source, and RedMonk, who will discuss:
- Benefits of using virtual appliances vs traditional deployments
- Most popular types of virtual appliances
- Trends in virtualization adoption
- How to monitor and manage virtual appliances
- Performance tuning virtual appliances
- Migrating virtual appliances to and from the cloud
SEP announces a SUSE-powered software appliance
SEP Software and SEP AG Weyarn recently announced the availability of a cross-platform data backup and recovery solution. SEP sesam Backup Appliance (SEP SBA) is a backup software appliance built as part of the SUSE Appliance Program. SEP SBA runs in physical environments or on any virtual environment from VMware server, vSphere4, ESX, ESXi, Xen and HyperV.
“The SUSE Appliance Program enables SEP and other ISVs to quickly configure and customize software and virtual appliances,” said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of Business and Product Management at Novell. “By leveraging the SUSE Appliance Program, SEP is giving its customers confidence that the SEP sesam Backup Appliance is a fully-supported backup and recovery solution.”
GroundWork on SUSE-powered virtual appliances
In the fifth installment of our Novell partner podcast series, Liz Padula, senior marketing manager, speaks with David Dennis, senior director of marketing and business development at GroundWork Open Source, a provider of commercial open source system and network management software.
With the SUSE Appliance Program from Novell, GroundWork was able to develop its Enterprise Quickstart as a SUSE-powered virtual appliance. Targeted to monitor up to 100 devices, with a price of $59, the new appliance combines GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Quickstart with a fully supported version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell.
Prior to joining the SUSE Appliance Program, GroundWork had built virtual appliances using time-consuming manual processes and sought a more efficient approach. By using SUSE Studio to customize the SUSE Linux Enterprise operating system, GroundWork reduced the the download size of the Enterprise Quickstart virtual appliance by several hundred megabytes, resulting in a 74 percent smaller appliance.
Building a Partner Ecosystem: Simplicity is Key
Software and hardware vendors alike have attributed much of their success to the strength and breadth of their partner ecosystems. Take Microsoft and IBM for example – each has vibrant partner networks which offer options for many types of ISVs to support their platforms. So how have these vendors done it? By making it really easy for ISV partners to join their program.
We’ve tried to achieve this level of simplicity in our partnership with VMware. One of the key goals of this partnership is to make it easier for ISVs to get on board. With Unified Certification, ISV applications tested and certified on SUSE Linux Enterprise within a virtual machine can be automatically certified to run in a VMware virtualized environment with no modifications. Novell is the first OS vendor to offer such program with a third party hypervisor vendor like VMware.
This offering also dovetails nicely into our VMware Ready status – a certification offered by VMware that ensures optimal performance for virtual appliances built through the SUSE Appliance Program and deployed within the VMware virtualized environment.
Any experiences partnering with either of these companies you’d like to share? Or any feedback you’d like to share on how to make it better?
Giving customers flexibility and choice
Paul Rubens over at ServerWatch wrote an interesting article on a recent Red Hat webinar designed to to discourage customers from migrating to 3rd party supported Red Hat distributions. Novell has just such a program with our SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Subscription with Expanded Support initiative.
According to Paul’s article, third-party branded support was described as “High risk” or “Pay and pray.”
Our customers would agree that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support subscription is not a high risk support option. And, according to a Lighthouse Research survey, they also agree we provide the best Linux support in the world.
Having options like SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support and Oracle Unbreakable Linux support provides customers with flexibility and choice for supporting their Linux environments. Isn’t that the spirit of open source?
Three Reasons Why I’m Bullish About Software Appliances
As a marketer of emerging technology, I am always looking where the business is, where the market is, and most importantly whether the timing of our business is spot on for our customers. There are all sorts of ways to measure this, however a a couple of indicators have recently painted a picture of growth for software appliances, so I wanted to share them with you.
IDC recently issued its Third Annual Software Appliance End-User Survey which offers a ’state of the union’ of software appliance adoption. The survey confirms that appliances adoption is on the upswing. This matches up nicely with the rapidly growing number of requests we have been fielding from industry giants on the same subject just within the last month.
According to the survey the terms “software appliances” and/or “virtual appliances” are now well known by most survey respondents – indicating that these terms are increasingly becoming part of the IT vernacular. The survey also noted that software appliance adoption is growing within companies. One out of every four (25%) of the 307 respondents in this survey say that they now are either evaluating or using software appliances – not too bad considering we’ve been weathering a down economy in which many ISVs might not be willing to invest time and money in educating the market on appliances.
Finally, I’d like to mention another positive indicator – the software industry press. This past summer we launched the appliance program and spent a lot of our time explaining what a software appliance is to the press. During briefings related to the SUSE Appliance Toolkit launch in January, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that I no longer need to start each interview with the definition of a software appliance! Progress indeed!
So…what do you think? What are you seeing out there in the market? Anyone using appliances now?
B e s t v i e w e d w i t h    |
