The industry reflects, looks ahead

Anthony McMahon, vice president, enterprise storage and servers, Hewlett-Packard Asia-Pacific and Japan

	Anthony McMahon, Hewlett-Packard
	Asia-Pacific customers are increasingly concerned about the environment. They are implementing power-saving policies, investing in energy efficient IT equipment and recycling and reusing old IT equipment and components.

Q. What do you remember as the biggest industry news for 2007?
McMahon: Like HP predicted in last year's ZDNet Technology Outlook, in 2007 our customers focused on energy efficiency and green technology as they moved to next-generation data center environment where high-cost IT islands are transformed into low-cost pooled IT assets to minimize costs and accelerate business growth.

This is not just an environmentally or socially driven concern, it makes economic sense too. According to HP's internal research, approximately 60 percent to 70 percent of data center expenses come from cooling costs. Green technology reduces power and cooling costs, minimizes carbon footprint and makes the most of IT investment. It improves overall efficiency of data center by controlling power consumption and thermal output.

Name three hot technologies to watch in 2008.
We are seeing our customers embrace business technology, not just IT anymore. They are opting for broad transformation projects designed to deliver business benefits such as improved corporate environmental responsibility, greater customer retention and faster introduction of new products and services.

The first area to watch is energy-efficient infrastructure. Asia-Pacific customers are increasingly concerned about the environment. They are implementing power-saving policies, investing in energy efficient IT equipment and recycling and reusing old IT equipment and components. In addition, rising energy costs, at a time when power consumption is also increasing means that energy outlays now consume a larger and larger portion of companies' IT budgets.

HP is addressing the energy efficiency challenge, holistically, with solutions that optimize energy use from the "chip to the chiller", across the entire data center.

Moving ahead in 2008

 

 

1.	Socializing goes big in 2008
2.	The urge to merge in 2008
3.	New chips on the block
4.	Web threats dominate security landscape
5.	Battle for the mobile platform space in 2008
6.	The industry reflects, looks ahead

Looking back on 2007

 

 

1.	Looking back at 2007 with envy
2.	Predictions that went right and wrong
3.	2007's movers and shakers

The second is virtualization 2.0. With Virtualization 2.0, it is far more than just utilization and consolidation opportunities from increased use of virtualized servers. In 2008, we will see the focus on two areas: virtual and logical servers, storage management and provisioning coupled with new customer usage models for desktops and mobile devices. This will allow users to reduce costs, increase flexibility and security. Simultaneously, to maximize benefits, customers are increasingly adopting software management tools to manage physical and virtual servers.

The third is "blade everything". Asia-Pacific customers are demanding for more efficient data centers with benefits including flexibility, ease of use of IT systems, and better utilization of server, storage and data center floor space. Blade servers deliver virtualization, management and energy efficient computing capabilities that are critical to building efficient next-generation data centers.

Software as a service (SaaS) for IT management will also be an important area to watch. There's nothing new about IT departments being asked to do more with less, but what will be new in 2008 is increased demand for IT Management via SaaS as a means of addressing this issue. SaaS offers customers flexible options to get up and running quickly and easily with key IT management software solutions.

As vendors such as HP continue to roll out products and solutions that mitigate market resistance based on availability and privacy concerns, more and more IT shops will turn to SaaS in areas such as project and portfolio management, application monitoring, functional and performance testing and service management.

What is the biggest myth about virtualization, and why?
The truth is that virtualization delivers practical benefits to IT environments. It can reduce customer's IT costs through consolidation and make environments more flexible by creating server and storage pools that can be assigned easily to meet business priorities. Yet, virtualization also creates its own challenges. More virtual machines do not mean better utilization or control or lowering of costs.

The winning play is around taming the increasing management complexity. If left unaddressed, this can lead to virtual machine sprawl--uncontrolled flexibility that defeats the primary objectives of virtualization. As companies deploy server and storage virtualization, they need to adopt management and automation tools that seamlessly manage both the physical and virtual worlds.

Name up to three security trends that IT heads should look out for in 2008.
Online fraud, viruses, malware attacks and phishing scams. The list of security threats continues to increase driving Asia-Pacific businesses to make security protection a top priority. As threats become more sophisticated and more diverse, 2008 is likely to see more companies developing a comprehensive security strategy rather than implementing an uncoordinated collection of precautions to protect multiple points of vulnerability.

 Great Eastern Life Assurance 

Hitachi Data Systems  

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