One of the questions that becomes apparent when thinking about the advent of cloud computing in the enterprise is how IT organizations will go about holistically managing everything inside and outside the cloud. After all, not all the on-premise software being used today is going to magically transfer itself to a service in the cloud. That means that as far as anybody can see into the future, IT organizations will need visibility across any number of clouds that are being used to supplement their internal IT operations.
Worse yet, the advent of virtualization is redefining the way we think of managing applications across dynamic sets of virtual machines that essentially mask the underlying physical servers. That means that not only do IT organizations need a way to manage assets in the cloud, they also need tools that manage both virtual and physical servers.
One company that is creating a new approach to IT management that reflects all these concerns is Hyperic based in San Francisco. The fundamental concept behind the Hyperic approach is that no assumptions can be made concerning what platforms and applications will need to be managed. To that end, Hyperic has created an agent framework that can easily extended to not only any given application or system, but also any service that has an open application programming interface.
That means that by leveraging the Hyperic framework to manage any number of IT assets in a way that maintains maximum flexibility for the IT organization. And has demands to support new technologies that drive innovative business models continue to grow rapidly, it's pretty clear that IT organizations need a new approach to systems management. That approach is ultimately up to the individual IT organization but what's intriguing about the Hyperic approach is that it points they way to rethinking how we approach systems management.
Trying to restrict the number of products and technologies that make up an enterprise is usually a losing proposition because invariable competitors embrace new technology to change the business landscape. At the same time, struggling to support an infinite number of products that come with their own management systems is nothing short of corporate suicide. The ultimate systems management challenge facing everyone today is how to inject enough flexibility into a structured approach to systems management that limits the downside effects of the chaotic nature of enterprise computing today.
Of course, many an IT organization has tried to answer this challenge by rolling their own set of management tools so it's nice to see somebody in the vendor community trying to step up to the problem. And who knows, tools like these may even enable IT organization to build their own set of cloud services as opposed to seeing every thing outsourced simply because a third-party service simply has a better set of tools.
Whatever ultimately happens, limiting the productivity gains to be derived from new technologies and computing models simply because we don't have the tools we need to manage them effectively is a paradox that we can no longer afford.