Appliances, Bundles, and Compatibility
May 20th, 2008
The past…
For years we in IT have been procuring and installing software and building onsite solutions with our internal resources. We did this based on a series of vendor compatibility matrices - pouring over specifications for operating systems, databases, application and web servers, along with other associated software infrastructure, and following these in exacting detail in order to end up with a supportable solution. We’ve kept all those bits up to date to stay on a certified code stack. Of course at the end of the day what mattered was that the business application or functional utility built on top of all that infrastructure ran reliably and was supported by the vendor.
A Better way…
I believe there are better ways to manage this complexity and an important avenue for this is to rely directly on vendors who have the proven ability to deliver a complete stack of software for a chosen solution. This is why I am so excited by our deployment of open source software “appliances” and “community bundles”, such as the Ingres Icebreaker appliance. Open source software providers face the same interoperability challenge that legacy providers faced, but with two distinct advantages: (1) most OSS software is by the nature of its design more prone to being extended and (2) there are more resources via the community for adapting the solution to specific purposes. On top of this, when you add the concept of software “appliances” which are supported by a single vendor and are updated in production by that vendor you now are looking at a superior solution.
That is what we have done here at Ingres with our Business Intelligence and Content Management appliances and bundles. The work of determining the right versions and patch levels has been done. We are taking first call and supporting the appliance as a whole, and are offering single-stream updates to keep the stack updated. Internally we took this market offering, installed it, and used a plug-in for Salesforce.com data synchronization and produced our first data mart with analytics in a week. At a prior company, doing this same thing with legacy products took more than 10 times the effort. I will have more on this project in the coming weeks.
On the music front, this month has been very busy with several bands coming through the Bay Area. The most current event was Peter Moren of “peter, bjorn, and john” but for me, the highlights were the more nostalgic Collective Soul, B-52’s and Crowded House shows, all of which highlighted the strength of these enduring acts.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Hi Doug, I agree that it is great to see virtualized stacks and software appliances proliferating in the industry… companies can simplify IT as you said and that in turn helps them focus on their core business and be more productive. For technology companies that means more innovation which is a welcome trend.
And it’s not just companies who benefit — you will be pleased to know that I’ve “deployed” my home music library on a virtualized software appliance just because that’s so easy to back up and manage and I can move it onto any hardware I want anytime. Rock on!