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Managing IT Complexity through Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Tom Petrocelli, Amalgam Insights Contributing Analyst

(Note: This blog is an excerpt from Tom Petrocelli’s current report: Infrastructure as Code: Managing Hybrid Infrastructure at Scale)

Key Stakeholders: CIO, Sysops, System Admins, Network Admins, Storage Admins, IT Operations Managers

Why It Matters: New software architectures continue to add complexity to it infrastructure management. At the same time, organizations expect IT to deploy applications faster. New tools are needed for IT operations to perform in this environment.

Top Takeaways: Infrastructure as Code, or IaC, offers a path to faster and less error prone management of new software infrastructure at enterprise scale. IaC abstracts the myriad of ways IT professionals interact with systems into a simple, plain text, code file.

Infrastructure as Code

Today, IT is continuing to virtualize infrastructure even more with container clusters. Containers often fulfill the same role as a server, even though they do not require an entire stack including an operating system. Like a server, they are a unit of computing that houses services that comprise an application. Unlike a server, containers often contain a single purpose service called a microservice. Microservices architectures lead to a large number of containers, within virtual servers, running on physical or cloud servers. For large enterprises, this new model expands the number of virtual, physical, and cloud devices under management, adding complexity to the infrastructure.

Managing tens of thousands of heterogeneous nodes, where only a few thousand, fairly homogeneous ones existed before, represents a massive challenge to IT. This is further compounded by the presence of (often more than one) cloud services alongside on-premises servers. To add to the challenge, new development methodologies have increased pace of modern software development which constantly alters the IT infrastructure.

To cope with this greatly enlarged management burden, IT managers and professionals are increasingly turning to Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC is part management technique and part toolset. The philosophy behind IaC is to write code that defines the desired state of the infrastructure. While this could be carried out using shell scripts or homegrown programs, increasingly IT practitioners are turning to purpose-built tools that allow for infrastructure to be defined as a program (i.e. code) and then executed by automation servers, often with the help of local commands and agents on the physical and virtual servers or service calls of cloud services.

Key Infrastructure as Code Functions and Challenges
While provisioning, configuration, and code deployment may be the most common functions of IaC, it is hardly limited to such a small set of capabilities. IaC can accomplish most of what sysops, network administrators, and other IT operations professionals have to do by hand, via shell scripts, or through management consoles through the following capabilities.

While there are some clear advantages to DevOps, there are also some issues with the approach. Some of the problems are technical but many are social or managerial. A mixture of IT silo politics and skill deficits may lead to a toxic DevOps team environment that no amount of technology can overcome. However, problems associated with IaC itself are relatively straightforward and can be managed with training, support, and planning. Some of the standout issues for IaC include:

Key IaC Vendors

There are a number of vendors offering products in the IaC space. While they all offer the basic functions of provisioning, updating, and configuration, many have a number of other features as well. No product offers the full list of these features, so it is important to choose a vendor based on the automation priorities of the organization.


*Participated in Amalgam’s research process

Conclusion

As enterprise IT infrastructure has evolved from a simple, single mainframe to the highly distributed, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, microservices architecture, managing a datacenter has become terribly complex. Along the way, the tools available to sysops and admins have likewise evolved into entire management platforms, the so-called single pane of glass.

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Skillsoft Perspectives 2018 – A Vision For The Future of Corporate Learning

Key Stakeholders: CHRO, Chief Learning Officers, Talent Acquisition Directors and Managers, Learning & Development Directors, Training Managers, Corporate Education Managers, LMS Managers

On April 11th – 13th, Amalgam Insights attended Skillsoft Perspectives as both analysts Hyoun Park and W. Todd Maddox, Ph.D. looked at the latest advances in Skillsoft’s platforms, key narratives from Skillsoft’s customers and partners, and opportunities for pushing the future of corporate learning. Amalgam spoke with key executives and customers while attending keynote sessions and even presenting as well. Continue reading Skillsoft Perspectives 2018 – A Vision For The Future of Corporate Learning

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Cloudera Analyst Conference Makes The Case for Analytic & AI Insights at Scale

On April 9th and 10th, Amalgam Insights attended the fifth Cloudera’s Industry Analyst and Influencer Conference (which I’ll self-servingly refer to as the Analyst Conference since I attended as an industry analyst) in Santa Monica. Cloudera sought to make the case that it was evolving beyond the market offerings that it is currently best known for as a Hadoop distribution and commercial data lake in becoming a machine learning and analytics platform. In doing so, Cloudera was extremely self-aware of its need to progress beyond the role of multi-petabyte storage at scale to a machine learning solution.
Cloudera’s Challenges in Enterprise Machine Learning 

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The Enterprise Technology Management Association Focuses on Making Tech Affordable

From April 2-4, 2018, the Enterprise Technology Management Association (ETMA, previously known as TEMIA) met in Nashville. This meeting brought together over 40 vendor organizations focused on various aspects of technology management including network, telecom, mobility, software, cloud infrastructure, utilities, and the Internet of Things. ETMA’s members are mainly focused on telecom expense management, managed mobility services, and related technologies.
What is ETMA?

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#ThoughtLeaderThursday – SMB Group


As part of Amalgam Insights’ research process, we also keep track of the wide array of analysts, consultants, and thought leaders who are most relevant across our practice areas. Beyond the most well-known firms, such as the likes of Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, there are a wide array of bespoke and custom firms that conduct world-class work. To help provide context on how Amalgam Insights looks at our peers, partners, and competitors and to help technology buyers make better decisions, Amalgam profiles a firm or thought leader each Thursday to provide guidance on those who we think of as influential and innovative thought leaders.

This week, we profile SMB Group, a team of industry analysts focused on the technology adoption and management challenges in small and medium businesses.
Continue reading #ThoughtLeaderThursday – SMB Group

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Will Starbucks Make A $40 Million Training Mistake? The Psychology and Brain Science of Effective Racial Bias Prevention Training

(Editor’s Note: Todd Maddox, Ph.D. has over 200 published articles, 10,000 citings, and $10 million in external research funding in his 25+ years in cognitive psychology. Maddox is available for interviews on this topic at info@amalgaminsights.com)

By now, I am sure you have heard about the incident at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, where two black men were arrested for waiting for a third man inside the store without purchasing any items. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson issued an immediate apology calling the arrests “reprehensible.” He’s gone further, meeting with the two men in person and apologizing, as well as saying that all U.S. Starbucks will be closed on May 29 for racial-bias education for its employees.
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GraalVM is a Multi-Language Compiler Technology to Watch

Tom Petrocelli, Amalgam Insights Contributing Analyst

Oracle Labs has recently (April 17, 2018) announced the 1.0 release of GraalVM. GraalVM is an open source language virtual machine(VM), much like the Java VM or Node.js virtual machine. What makes GraalVM interesting, is that it can execute code written in a variety of languages including Java (and Java VM based languages such as Scala, Groovy, or Kotlin), R, JavaScript, along with Ruby, R, and Python. This is a departure from mainstream VM designs. It is much more common to have separate and specific VMs for languages such as PHP or Python. In some cases, a language will byte compile to a different virtual machine, for instance Clojure compiling to the run on the Java VM. Those languages are purpose built to run on a specific VM. GraalVM, on the other hand, runs code written in languages originally built for their own VM.

This approach offers advantages over the traditional approach of one language, one VM. For example, any program that is compiled for GraalVM can share libraries with other programs that is likewise compiled. Developers can write in different languages but still maintain interoperability and code reuse across them all. This also allows developers to continue to use code written in “older languages” while migrating to a new one. Similarly, it allows the continued used of majority language, such as Java, while leveraging languages that are built for specific purposes, such as R. Another advantage of GraalVM is ubiquity. One VM for multiple needs means fewer VMs to provision and update across IT servers and containers. That can be a serious time saver and makes maintaining large and complex systems a bit easier.
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IBM Provides a Vision for the Augmented Future at IBM Think

At IBM Think in March of 2018, IBM aggregated all of its conferences into a megaconference held in Las Vegas and targeted and providing a large venue for IBM’s strongest thought leadership themes and public facing announcements. Amalgam notes that this conference was very successful at showing IBM’s long-term vision and perspective, but that this first-year conference had some logistical challenges that prevented attendees from capturing the full depth and breadth of IBM’s progress over the past year.

At this event, two key themes emerged: IBM’s role in creating the next generation of technologies, including AI, Blockchain, and quantum computing and also IBM Research, which was front and center to a greater extent than in past years where IBM Research scientists were often relegated to a small portion of the expo and the occasional session. At this event, IBM Research director and Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Arvind Krishna and his colleagues played a much stronger role than in previous years, which was helpful in providing IBM observers and customers with a clearer view of IBM’s intentions regarding the future of IBM.

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Amalgam’s 5 Tiers of Technology Value


In Amalgam’s recent Analyst Insight, “Domo Hajimemashite At Domopalooza 2018, Domo Solves Its Case of Mistaken Identity”, Amalgam introduced a figure showing the 5 Tiers of Technology Value. This pyramid, based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, demonstrates how technology provides value that can be documented, calculated, and used to build business cases.

5 Tiers of Technology Value

Amalgam 5 Tiers Of Technology Value
Amalgam 5 Tiers Of Technology Value

To better understand these five tiers, Amalgam provides this guidance to companies seeking a better understanding of how IT investments are justified, as well as the pros and cons associated with each tier.
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#ThoughtLeaderThursday – Hurwitz and Associates

ThoughtLeaderThursday - Hurwitz
ThoughtLeaderThursday – Hurwitz

As part of Amalgam Insights’ research process, we also keep track of the wide array of analysts, consultants, and thought leaders who are most relevant across our practice areas. Beyond the most well-known firms, such as the likes of Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, there are a wide array of bespoke and custom firms that conduct world-class work. To help provide context on how Amalgam Insights looks at our peers, partners, and competitors and to help technology buyers make better decisions, Amalgam profiles a firm or thought leader each Thursday to provide guidance on those who we think of as influential and innovative thought leaders.

This week, we profile Hurwitz and Associates, a team of industry analysts focused on articulating the practical value of innovation and emerging technologies.
Continue reading #ThoughtLeaderThursday – Hurwitz and Associates