UTILITY COMPUTING
Why isn't there an O/S for the data center?
The Challenge:
Escalating IT Costs. Multiplying Data Centers. Rising Power and Space Requirements. Increasing IT Complexity.
Companies today are buying smaller, less expensive, commodity-based systems to run their business applications. Simultaneously, applications are being created and delivered in smaller, discrete components and running in virtual servers to assist with business agility and server consolidation. While the commoditization and virtualization of IT is helping to lower capital costs, it actually increases data center complexity, which in turn drives up operational expenses. But none of these new technologies and capabilities address the ultimate goal of IT-to deliver a guaranteed level of application service-balancing infrastructure supply with user demand. This is the core value of utility computing.
Cassatt's concept of service level automation is the core enabler of utility computing-to deliver the quantity and quality of application service required by the consumer as efficiently and cost effectively as possible, limited only by total capacity available. This goal cannot be achieved exclusively through grid computing, virtualization, system management, provisioning, or IT automation.
The Solution:
Cassatt Active Response-The First Complete Management Service That Implements Utility Computing
The organizing principle of Cassatt Active Response is service level automation. The service delivery model incorporates all of the capabilities and basic requirements of utility computing. Cassatt implements service level automation through:
- Virtualization Control
- Goal-Driven Automation
- Utility Metering
- Vendor Neutrality
For Virtualization Control, Cassatt Active Response becomes the single control-point for multiple virtualization layers that are common in large data centers, radically simplifying their operations.
For Goal-Driven Automation, Cassatt Active Response provides automated reconciliation of user demand with IT infrastructure supply: i.e. the capability to deliver required application services based on user-defined and user-managed policies. Cassatt Active Response continuously monitors all application services to ensure they meet pre-defined service levels; if they are not meeting the required levels, Cassatt Active Response takes automatic corrective action.
For Utility Metering, Cassatt Active Response constantly measures granular resource consumption. Cassatt Active Response inventories assets, monitors services, and controls instances of hardware and applications. The resulting data can be used to audit, bill, verify compliance, and account for services provided.
For Vendor Neutrality, Cassatt believes that IT must maintain the right to choose the best solution without fear of vendor lock-in. Because the Cassatt Active Response architecture is independent of the computing infrastructure, it works with a broad range of hardware, software, system management, and provisioning systems without change, thus ensuring customers they can choose the best option for those components. Further, Cassatt Active Response does not need additional agents in the data center. This significantly reduces any disruption to the data center when introducing service level automation across IT.
The Business Value:
The move to utility computing will drive not only capital and operational cost savings, but also dramatic changes in how technology is managed, accounted for, and used to enable businesses to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The tangible business benefits of utility computing include:
- Increased cost transparency and asset efficiency
- Increased reliability and availability of business services
- Improved business agility and value generation
Cassatt customers begin the steps toward utility in as small or large an effort as they prefer. No matter the scope, the result is a dynamic, real-time infrastructure for key applications that provides the service levels that are required.
Go to the Cassatt Active Response product page for more details.
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