What do the CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo New York, ...| By Dustin Amrhein | Article Rating: |
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| August 10, 2011 09:00 AM EDT | Reads: |
3,528 |
When it comes to IBM Workload Deployer, I have no illusions regarding the veracity of our competitors. They are out there, and they are constantly on the attack. Their dubious claims aside, I know this because I still get asked quite frequently to explain the benefits of IBM Workload Deployer versus some other general purpose cloud provisioning and management solution. So, while I have done that many times in various forums, I figured it was time to yet again address this question.
When comparing IBM Workload Deployer to the other available solutions, I honestly feel comfortable saying we have no direct competition. I know you believe me to be biased, and rightly so, but let me explain why I think the competition is much more perception than reality. To do this, I want to focus on the patterns-based approach that IBM Workload Deployer takes to cloud provisioning and management.

Let's start with virtual system patterns in IBM Workload Deployer. Virtual system patterns allow you to build and deploy completely configured and integrated middleware environments as a single unit. These patterns build on top of our special IBM Hypervisor Edition images that bottle up the installation and quite a bit of the configuration of the underlying middleware products. Further, when using virtual system patterns, IBM Workload Deployer manages and automates the orchestration of the integration tasks that need to happen to setup a meaningful middleware environment. For instance, when deploying WebSphere Application Server you do not need to do anything on your end to deploy a clustered, highly available environment. When deploying WebSphere Process Server in this manner, you do not need to take any administrative actions to produce a golden topology. You just deploy patterns and the images, patterns, and appliance take care of the rest. Of course, you can add your own customizations and tweaks in the pattern, but we take care of the common administrative actions that would otherwise require your care.
I am not sure of a better way to say it, so I will be blunt: When deploying products delivered in IBM Hypervisor Edition form, no other solution compares to the virtual system pattern capability offered by IBM Workload Deployer. It is not even close. Can you provision products like WebSphere Application Server or WebSphere Portal using other cloud provisioning tools? Sure, but you should be aware that you will be writing and maintaining your own installation, configuration, and integration scripts. It is also likely that you will end up developing a custom interface through which deployers request your services (something not necessary when using the rich IBM Workload Deployer UI). All of this takes time, resource, and money. More importantly, this is not differentiating work and distracts from the real end goal: serving up applications. IBM Workload Deployer can deliver this operational capability right out of the box, and it can do so in a way that costs less than custom developed and maintained solutions.
When considering IBM Workload Deployer versus the competition, it is also important to consider the new virtual application pattern capability delivered in version 3.0. The virtual application pattern capability is a testament to IBM's thought leadership in, and commitment to cloud computing for middleware application environments. Virtual application patterns take a bold step forward in raising the level of abstraction beyond the middleware environment and up to the most important resource in enterprise environments: the application. With a virtual application pattern, you simply provide your application and specify both functional and non-functional requirements for that application. When ready, you deploy that pattern, and IBM Workload Deployer sets up the necessary middleware infrastructure and deploys the provided application. Moreover, the appliance will monitor and autonomically manage the environment (i.e. scale it up and down) based on the policies you specify. Quite simply, this is a deployment and management capability our competition cannot match.
There is more to consider than just patterns though. The appliance makes it really simple to apply maintenance and upgrades to environments running in your cloud. It can autonomically manage your deployed environments (through policies in virtual application patterns and the Intelligent Management Pack for virtual system patterns), and it effectively abstracts the underlying infrastructure of your cloud environment. This abstraction is the reason IBM Workload Deployer can deploy your environments to PowerVM, zVM, and VMware environments. It also makes it easy to deploy the same environment to multiple different underlying platforms, thus accommodating typical platform changes that happen as an application moves from development to production. The best part of all is that the deployer's experience is the same regardless of the underlying infrastructure since the appliance hides any platform idiosyncrasies.
The bottom line is that the appliance is purpose built to deploy and manage middleware and middleware application environments in a cloud, and as such, delivers immense out-of-the-box and ongoing value in this context. I should also point out that the design of the appliance acknowledges its purposeful nature. The CLI and REST API interfaces allow you to integrate the appliance into the operations of those general purpose provisioning solutions. In this way, IBM Workload Deployer acts as a middleware accelerator for your cloud computing efforts. This means that if you do have a general purpose solution, IBM Workload Deployer can still provide considerable value and let you avoid developing a considerable subsystem dedicated to deployment and management of middleware in the cloud. We believe in this type of integration, and have in fact built it into our own IBM solutions.
There is certainly more to IBM Workload Deployer and its differentiating value, but I think the above is a good start. When it comes down to creating clouds focused on middleware platforms and middleware applications, nothing stacks up to IBM Workload Deployer.
Published August 10, 2011 Reads 3,528
Copyright © 2011 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Dustin Amrhein
Dustin Amrhein joined IBM as a member of the development team for WebSphere Application Server. While in that position, he worked on the development of Web services infrastructure and Web services programming models. In his current role, Dustin is a technical specialist for cloud, mobile, and data grid technology in IBM's WebSphere portfolio. He blogs at http://dustinamrhein.ulitzer.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/damrhein.
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The cloud has many benefits, but when it comes to application development, how does the cloud help enterprises and development teams create custom software and applications that end users actually care about? Using real world examples from Adobe, Herff Jones and Navy Federal Credit Union, this session will highlight the advantages cloud computing provides for quickly developing custom software and applications with compelling user experiences.
In their general session at the 10th International ...
Nearly every enterprise is evaluating cloud computing solutions either today or in the near term. Many have already made the leap, and many more are getting close to putting that first toe in the water. But there are key considerations that should be made, questions to be asked, and designs to consider before you can feel secure with your provider.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, David Gulick, Product Manager, Hosting Product Management at Savvis, will help give you food f...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is t...
SYS-CON Events announced today that Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology, is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions for Embedded Systems, E...
SYS-CON Events announced today that ScaleMP, a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
ScaleMP is the leader in virtualization for high-end computing, providing maximum performance and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). The innovative Versatile SMP (vSMP) architecture aggregates multiple independent systems into a sin...
Come learn real-world examples where cloud and mobile are changing the way business works and the impact they're having on efficiency and productivity.
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Enterprise IT organizations want to deploy a virtualized data center fabric that will provide the foundation for agile private cloud computing. Getting there does not have to be difficult, but it does require a new approach to data center infrastructure design – an approach that is non-disruptive, vendor-agnostic, and very adaptable to changing business requirements.
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With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
How can businesses harness the power of APIs to reach new customers and markets?
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A brief history of the API
How to use APIs to make money, save money, build brand
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