RSSYou don't deliver applications in a vacuum. Applications and the infrastructure that supports them are dynamic systems that change over time. Unrelated system using the same network, servers, and storage can adversely impact application performance. With virtualization, the risk of one virtual server impacting another is quite real. Our End to End Application Performance Management (APM) Tech Center delivers best practices, emerging trends, new products and strategies to help you delivery applications effectively.
News and Analysis
Cloud Application Management Complexity A Growing Challenge
IT organizations are already using cloud in highly sophisticated ways in spite of the added level of complexity it introduces in managing applications. That was one of the surprise findings from Enterprise Management Associates' "Radar for Application Performance Management for Cloud Services: Q1 2012," according to the report's author, Julie Craig, research director, application management, at EMA.
IBM Green Hat To Cut Development Costs
IBM wants to take a big bite out of software development costs with the acquisition of Green Hat, a provider of software quality and testing solutions for the cloud and other environments. The two companies say software defects cost the United States almost $60 billion annually, and testing accounts for more than half of overall development costs and upward of a third of testing teams' time. When the deal is complete, Green Hat will join IBM's Rational Software business and will be offered through IBM Global Business Services' Application Management Services (AMS), which provides strategy, design, implementation, testing and managed services for application virtualization.
More Stories
Blogs
BufferBloat And The Collapse Of The Internet
April 21, 2011 7:00 AM
Posted by David Greenfield
It seems that every few years there's yet another prognosticator that the Internet is about to collapse. Once it was the stellar growth in bandwidth demand driven by the phenomenal increase in Internet-connected devices. At other times, it was the lack of Net neutrality (see this video). Still other times, it was sinister attacks on BGP or the fact that we've run out of IPv4 addresses.
See all blogs by David Greenfield
Welcome To The WAN Optimization Shell Game
April 11, 2011 9:30 AM
Posted by David Greenfield
In the early days of Ethernet switch vendors, IT organizations would routinely hear vendors profess to deliver better line rate performance at 20 percent less than the market leader. The catch, because there was always a catch in this industry, was that performance was only achievable in specific circumstances. Turn on port monitoring or enable encryption and Ethernet switch performance would skid to a halt. A similar story may be brewing in the WAN optimization space. While vendors, such as Blue Coat, Riverbed, and Silverpeak, rush to tell us about how they can achieve incredible performance improvement, turning an OC-3 into an OC-12, other limiting factors may prevent end users from actually seeing those numbers.
See all blogs by David Greenfield
The Importance Of Correcting Packet Loss In VDI
March 30, 2011 11:13 AM
Posted by David Greenfield
Recently, on the LinkedIN WAN optimization professionals group, I participated in a conversation around whether virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is ready for the WAN. Face it, delivering responsive VDI over the WAN is going to be a challenge. One of the interesting points that came up was the importance of correcting for packet loss when considering WAN optimizers.
See all blogs by David Greenfield
What WAN Optimizers Can Learn From Firewalls
March 11, 2011 10:28 AM
Posted by David Greenfield
Listening to the give and take about WAN optimizers made me remember another battle between networking giants. It was nearly 10 years ago, during the early days of firewalls, when it seemed Marcus Ranum, then with Network FlightRecorder, would go head-to-head with Check Point's Gil Schwed on a weekly basis. Ranum was among the early creators of the application proxy and was vociferous about the value of delivering a firewall that terminated and inspected every session before passing the contents onto the destination. It was very effective, very secure and yet ultimately eclipsed by competing approaches.
See all blogs by David Greenfield
Cloud Connect Is All About Automation
March 08, 2011 8:29 AM
Posted by Mike Fratto
Automation. That is the theme I continue to come back to while at Cloud Connect. I think organizations are going to be getting the most benefit from automation in the near term, and automation is one of the many steps on the road to private cloud computing. Automation, when done right, can save you and your staff loads of work and can ensure that deployments go more smoothly. I sat down with representatives from VMWare, Gale Technologies, HP, TransLattice and Cloud.com, and got the lowdown on automation and private cloud.
See all blogs by Mike Fratto
The First IPv6 WAN Optimizer: Speed At What Price?
February 16, 2011 1:57 PM
Posted by David Greenfield
Last week, Blue Coat upgraded its MACH5 to become the industry's first IPv6-compatible WAN optimizer. WAN optimizers have long supported tunneled IPv6 over IPv4, but the MACH5 is the first WAN optimization appliance to accelerate native IPv6--and then some. The MACH5 is actually a very sophisticated IPv6 application layer gateway (ALG), providing IPv6 connectivity, security and optimization in a single device. Yet it's precisely its sophistication that raises questions around device scalability and price.
See all blogs by David Greenfield
Best of the Web
VXLAN termination on physical devices
VXLAN is an Experimental IETF draft of protocols to enable the creation of a large overlay, multi-tenant network.
ONF Deadly Serious About OpenFlow-Based SDNs
: OpenFlow is poised to reach over-hyped status, yet there are practical, useful reasons for keeping an eye on Openflow. The biggest cloud players are involved and driving the feature creation.
Practical Introduction to Applied OpenFlow
Get a primer on the Openflow protocol and what it can do for networking.
On Resilience of Spit-Architecture Networks
This research papers investigates the practical issues in split-architecture networks and the placement of the controllers, such as Openflow controllers, in the network.
