ZDNet published results from a survey that showed 74% of IT workers are using at least 3 machines to do their day-to-day jobs. What’s really scary is that this doesn’t include servers that they are working on or PC’s that they are fixing. What’s going on is that testers need multiple test environments for various scenarios, developers need custom work environments and IT pro’s need to work in isolated environments or be able to manage many operating systems. This needs have evolved over time and the infrastructure required has grown organically until it gets to the point that there’s a huge environment that resides outside of the normal management systems.
That’s pretty scary. If a developer loses a piece of their working environment it can set back an expensive and time critical project by several days. If a tester can’t access their systems for whatever reason then an already under pressure team (testers are always under time pressures) is forced to work through the night to try catch up. If an administrator can’t work then the entire business is affected because the IT foundation that all businesses are built on cannot be managed. That’s what’s potentially happening in all businesses where this growth has occurred.
What starts out as a temporary working environment, a lab server, a test box, quickly becomes a critical asset to the business. It’s quickly followed by other machines, whether they are virtual machines running on a PC or a collection of recycled machines sitting in a corner. The tester’s end up with racks full of PC’s without support contracts or maintenance that are crucial to the timely delivery of software to customers. The developers are working on machines that IT is unaware of and aren’t backed up. That means the company’s asset, the code, isn’t backed up. The virtual machines don’t have anti-virus and aren’t being patched for security vulnerabilities. As I heard repeatedly in a meeting last night, developers hate domains and management. And administrators are just as likely to do something like this. They have access to old PC’s and servers that they’ll always find a use for. “Need a new lightweight box to do some lab work? Sure, we just replaced a machine and freed up a 7 year old box that can do the job”. The unfortunate thing is that lab box soon becomes a production box that plays a role in business operations and it isn’t supported by the vendor anymore (with no spare parts available), it isn’t backed up, it isn’t protected against malware and the normal company policies don’t get applied.
So we’re looking an uncontrolled growth of virtual machines, PC’s and servers all storing company data, all uncontrolled and all unmanaged. I don’t blame the tester, developer or IT pro. Certainly not; they’re trying to do their best to get a job done. They need a working environment. What we need to do is ensure that we give them the tools that meet their needs, are flexible (that’s why they’ve gone outside the norms in the first place), that responds rapidly to needs and that satisfies the business requirements of being compliant with policies and regulatory demands. What’s more, you recycled all those old machines for a reason – you wanted to ensure your business operated on manufacturer supported hardware and reduced your electrical bills/carbon footprint.
There is a solution – that’s what we in the IT business should be all about! C Infinity’s private cloud is a flexible, scalable, secure and reliable system that allows you to build a solution suited to your needs. We can deploy servers and services, whether they are physical or virtual to meet your requirements. We’ll share our expertise to deploy those systems according to your needs and manage the servers. Maybe you want to be self-sufficient? Our management systems can even be extended into your network so that your testers and developers can deploy machines via a simple web interface. Don’t worry about virtual machine sprawl and increasing bills – we can pre-agree a quota that will be enforced.
Let’s take an example. BloggsCo is a software development company with teams spread across the world. They need to be able to work together as a unit. Software developers collaborate. Testers need to access newly compiled builds to run through their procedures. Systems administrators need to deploy machines to manage the infrastructure.
Not a problem for C Infinity. We can deploy a virtualisation solution with a management system. This includes a library with pre-built template machines. Any authorised person can deploy new virtual machines when they are needed. So when a tester needs a new Windows Server 2008 R2 machine or a developer needs a new Linux server they’re only a few clicks away. An operating system deployment solution for new builds can be built in. It will allow either you or us to build new templates or customised machines quickly and with minimal mouse wear and tear. The key here is management and control. That’s what C Infinity is all about: sprawl is controlled using quotas, centralised anti-virus and patch management maintains security levels and monitoring (where appropriate) ensures that everything is running as it should.
Here’s the really cool bit. How do you access these systems when they’re in a remote or centralised data centre? Well, the mechanisms are varied depending on the circumstances. What we can say is that you can access these systems from anywhere and they’ll be usable, perform and act like they were sitting under your desk. The fact that they are always remotely accessed achieves few things:
- It doesn’t matter where you work, you will be sharing the same systems at near LAN speeds with all of your co-workers. Developers in Ireland, USA and India can all work as one team. Testers can immediately get new systems to test them. Administrators can work on just one centralised system.
- Mobile computing becomes a reality. We know the pressures of trying to develop a product and sell it. A senior engineer or developer is not only developing the product but they’re also asked to travel and sell it. With a traditional internal deployment travel means all other work must stop. With C Infinity’s private cloud, travel means you can work from anywhere as long as you have Internet connectivity.
So whether your workers are spread across the world, you want to encourage home working, you want a more formal working environment for IT or you seek to outsource this to a flexible and scalable infrastructure with a focus on management, then C Infinity’s private cloud can meet your needs.
Please contact us if any of this sounds interesting to you.
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