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■SPECIAL REPORT: SERVERS
Kevin Reid, Sureskills
‘The server now becomes a
more dynamic asset that can
be moved around, backed up
and copied far more
quickly and vigorously
than in a traditional
hardware environment’
John Casey, Datapac
trying to develop products that are essentially the Unix platform. According to O’Donoghue,
very similar. “They are trying to hit a density the dominant player in the Intel environment
point, performance point and cost point so the would be VMware, with Microsoft chomping at
differentiators are very slim. Even the manage- its heels, along with Citrix and its Zen Server
ment products that wrap around them – HP portfolio. “Microsoft will become a bigger
and Dell licence the same technology from player eventually … maybe the functionality of
Altiris, so they’re not even able to differentiate its software is not as developed as VMware’s.
in that area. Therefore, a lot of it comes down For instance, one of the benefits of VMware
to their supply chains – how do they manufac- is live migration from one server to the other
ture? How do they provision? How do they and it can do that in a few seconds, whereas
deliver? And then of course, cost. The main with Microsoft’s products, it’s a couple of min-
players would be HP and Dell. There’s also utes. But it is very early days for Microsoft,”
IBM, but I think they’ve slipped back a bit he suggests.
recently.” Origina provides outsourcing services to its
Reid also believes outsourcing will play a key client base and O’Donoghue sees that trend
role in future server management paradigms. continuing, though he adds that it would
“I’m a strong believer in outsourcing manage- depend on how much of a pain point it is for
ment tasks or a lot of skills that are difficult to customers. “Virtualisation should limit the
maintain in small and medium organisations. amount of admin and overheads you have, but
Once you get into the larger companies, it’s depending on the environment, the customer
easier to cover the tech requirements. Most may wish for their staff to be more focused on
organisations should be looking at outsourcing projects rather than day-to-day administra-
specific skilled tasks where they are not going tion. We see it as a continuing trend in that
to be able to maintain the skill set or the space where they are either looking for data-
knowledge base.” hosting companies to manage their servers in
Rowan O’Donoghue, director of innovation data centres or smaller niche companies to
and development at Origina – formerly known provide the service remotely. And with that
as Unitech – says the main virtualisation they can remain focused on the true value to
player from his perspective would be IBM on the business’s bottom line,” he concludes.
52 Knowledge Ireland September 2008
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