Place your bets – what’s the next big thing for Capacity Management?

VMworld is in Las Vegas at the end of August and everyone is gearing up to attend one of the largest industry conferences of the year.  With it being in Las Vegas, we’ll see how the attendance fares with the economy.  Vegas is a big draw for conferences, but also a venue that a manager pushed for budget might just consider too much fun for his people.

One item I look forward to seeing is what may be new from the industry.  In 2010 it was “The Cloud” and 2011 may be the same as this space begins to mature.  Not strictly something ‘new’ but lots of new content around the topic as it matures.  It will be interesting to talk to delegates and see how many have ventured out past the Private Cloud in their enterprises.  Public cloud gets the headlines but my feel is that Private Cloud will be by far the more common implementation. 

With capacity management one of the concerns with Cloud infrastructures according to leading analysts, it will be useful to see how many vendors are focused in this area and how many startup companies attend.  One area to view in the vendor arena is Business Transaction Monitoring.   With any form of Cloud it’s hard to know where the business transaction is processed.  The need to determine the end to end response time becomes critical as you might not have sight of all the components as has traditionally been the case with in-house IT infrastructure.  We have always heard of this need for and promise of “End to End” transaction monitoring for years, but it’s never been effectively delivered.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing who is going to step forward with a new and innovative solution.

The VMworld party is always one part of the conference I always look forward to during the week.  VMware always put on something spectacular.  My favorite was the Las Vegas Speedway, since I drove race cars, legally, in my younger days.  Seeing Danica Patrick didn’t hurt the situation either. 

Aside from the party I’ll also be seeing what swag I can carry off from the vendor booths.  Last year my daughter helped out at VMWorld.  I had to buy her an extra suitcase to take all her freebies home.  All in a good cause however as she works in a kids’ daycare center and they loved it when she took the stuff in for them.

So, you know where I’m placing my money in answer to the question I kicked off with: Business Transaction Management to help manage your Cloud applications.  Where’s your money going?

Charles Johnson

Principal Consultant