Archive for Mark Thiele

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) can make people nervous. SLAs typically provide some level of performance guarantee and therefore offer a type of insurance against unexpected events. However, unlike life insurance where actuary tables offer fairly predictable life expectancy behaviors when applied to large pools of policy holders, the world of cloud infrastructure doesn’t have a…

Organizations typically conduct a lot of research on cloud providers and enabling technologies before making the decision to embark on their first cloud project. However, sometimes this extensive research and vendor selection effort gets confused with the actual project planning required for success of that initial cloud project. After the decision is made to move…

This is a great question, and one that many of us in IT tend to minimize when adopting new and more efficient technologies. Sometimes the simple cost savings calculations distract us: “If I can put twenty VM’s on one server and save $60K in overall cost of ownership compared to my previous environment, then I’m…

It seems like an odd question “who owns your cloud”, but bear with me, I promise to put you to sleep in short order. What do I mean by “Own”? Owning the Cloud strategy means that you have a responsible party ensuring that your cloud implementation plans are matched to existing business need. Owning your…

You’ve decided to create your first private cloud. This can be both an exciting and complex endeavor. Since you’re asking about hardware and software, let’s assume you’ve already evaluated the business drivers and uses cases: Your use case(s) are not a fit for public cloud. You have internal staff capable of managing and supporting your…

The hero culture is alive and well in IT. They’re sometimes known as the “Firefighters”. These are the heroes who come in at all hours of the day and night to put water on the latest IT fire.  In many organizations a “good” fire fighter is admired and appreciated more than a good developer or…

Although we’re still in the early stages of cloud adoption, it is already having a profound effect on the IT organization and how it approaches doing business. To effectively utilize cloud capabilities, you need to adapt your human and software processes for the new paradigm of “just-in-time-IT”. If you can deliver a new application or…

Cloud Control, crowd control, what’s the difference? Well, one involves managing the effective utilization of your cloud based IT resources, and the other, well, has to do with controlling a crowd. Without adequate tools at your disposal, both could get unruly or even downright nasty. With Cloud Control, the issue really is being able to…

There was an announcement by IBM earlier this week regarding updates to their Tivoli product portfolio. This update seems on the surface to offer current IBM customers with a nice new tool box of tactically focused capabilities to improve management of their virtual environments. Although there admittedly is little detail in these type press releases,…

At ServiceMesh, we talk with a broad range of Global 2000 organizations that are developing and implementing enterprise cloud strategies. We’ve decided to compile a list of frequently asked questions and post brief answers in a new blog series. Feel free to send us your own questions and we’ll answer them! (Send email to knowledgecenter@servicemesh.com).…