Dana Gardner

HP on Monday took direct aim at the ever-increasing costs of data centers and managing an explosion of data by announcing a new generation of automated and efficient hardware. The new generation of ProLiant servers includes better internal management, powerful automation features, and improved energy conservation. The ProLiant Gen8 servers are part HP's Converged Infrastructure strategy, and represent the first step in the company's Project Voyager, a two-year, $300-million effort to redefine the economics of the data center. At the heart of the new generation of servers is ProActive Insight architecture, which includes integrated lifecycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration, automated energy optimization, and proactive service and support. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.] Data has become a differentiator in business, and with an ever-... (more)

Clustrix Delivers Software-Only Kit to Demo Shard-less MySQL Scaling

There's a lot to like about MySQL databases if you're a start-up, until success comes knocking a bit too fast. When big data demand soars then MySQL can sour on making the transactions needed on time. Sharding the application and data resources has been about the only answer, other than to painfully and expensively cut and run to another data base like NoSQL. This was the problem facing Massive Media when its social networking site Twoo rapidly grew to four million users in six months. By using the Clustrix distributed relational database system, Massive Media gained high scale-out... (more)

Metadata-Driven Data Virtualization and Improved Orchestration

The latest BriefingsDirect discussion targets the need to make sense of the deluge and complexity of the data and information that is swirling in and around modern enterprises. Most large organizations today are able to identify, classify, and exploit only a small portion of the total data and information within their systems and processes. Perhaps half of those enterprises actually have a strategy for improving on this dismal fact. But business leaders are now recognizing that managing and exploiting information is a core business competency that will increasingly determine thei... (more)

Architecture and Change: The Proper End Is Fitness for Purpose

This guest post comes courtesy of Leonard Fehskens, Vice President of Skills and Capabilities at The Open Group. The enterprise transformation theme of The Open Group’s San Francisco conference reminded me of the common assertion that architecture is about change, and the implication that enterprise architecture is thus about enterprise transformation. We have to be careful that we don’t make change an end in itself. We have to remember that change is a means to the end of getting something we want that is different from what we have. In the enterprise context, that something ha... (more)

HP Provides More Picks and Shovels to Cloud Miners

In two separate recent announcements, HP has affirmed its goal of being the neutral supplier of choice for all things cloud. Last week, HP delivered HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) Content Pack 10, bringing with the ability to better manage cloud instances across the enterprise-public cloud continuum, including deep discovery of virtualized workloads' performance inside of Amazon and VMware vCloud clouds. Then this week, HP on Tuesday further thrust its global market-leading LoadRunner performance testing suite -- via partners -- into development clouds, known a... (more)