Some would say that cloud has passed the peak of inflated expectations.   After that stage in the development of a new technology or trend the tough work begins.  We in the Cisco’s Cloud and Systems Management Group have done just that in releasing Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud Version 3.1.  In the past four weeks I have presented this cloud self-service and orchestration platform to well over 30 existing customers and others interested in what all the noise is.  The response has made me extremely proud of our team.

One:  Our UI is so intuitive that you don’t need a manual.  The Cisco Cloud Portal delivers a uniquely intuitive experience for the roles of cloud administrator, organization technical administrator, and end user.  Private cloud can be as easy as Amazon Web Services.

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Tags: Cisco Cloud Portal, cloud, Cloud Management, intelligent automation, Intelligent Automation for Cloud, orchestration, private cloud, unified management

Just the other morning, my 3.5 year old daughter said “Daddy, can you make me a waffle?” And like any self-respecting parent, I of course responded with “Poof. You’re a waffle.”

It reminded me of something we frequently hear from customers: they effectively ask us to “make my data center a cloud.”  Now we could wave our arms and say “Poof. It’s a cloud.” But it’s not that easy.  Despite what some cloudwashers may say, virtualizing your data center does not mean you have a cloud – and self-service provisioning of VMs is not cloud computing.  Real clouds require much more.

Fortunately, we have solutions to help our customers deploy real clouds – with market-leading compute, network, and management products in our Unified Data Center portfolio as well as our cloud enablement services.  In fact, today we introduced yet another innovation in our Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio with Cisco UCS Central.

I’m pleased to also announce the latest release of our cloud management software solution today: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud version 3.1.  This release introduces several exciting new features, and I’ve highlighted a few of these new product capabilities below.

Virtual Data Centers – In simple infrastructure-as-a-service use cases, virtual machines and other resources may be provisioned from a shared pool of resources on-demand.  In more advanced infrastructure-as-a-service use cases, virtual data centers (VDCs) can be established to provide project teams or departments with a dedicated resource pool of compute, storage, and network capacity for their own organization. I’ve written in the past about this concept of a virtual data center and this is what Cisco IT deployed for our own internal private cloud.

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Tags: CIAC, cisco IAC, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, Cisco UCS, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Management, IaaS, intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud, Unified Data Center

Whether it’s ordering a last-minute Halloween costume from the comfort of your couch or being able to IM with colleagues on your flight to see family and friends this holiday season, we can all admit that “on-demand” access is an every day necessity.  In much the same way, today’s business users expect on-demand access to IT resources.  And as those customer demands increase, more pressure is placed on IT infrastructure.

Everyone – from consumers to business users, from IT departments in large enterprises to service providers – are grappling with both the opportunity and challenge of managing the evolution of IT.  It’s hard to let go of the past and the old ways of managing our data – whether that’s putting aside the family scrapbook for a digital library or adopting new management solutions to replace legacy systems in your data center. So, what’s the trick? Find a solution that allows you to easily and seamlessly transition to this new operating model.  Almost sounds too good to be true – but it’s real.

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Tags: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, cloud, Cloud Management, CTEX, Curacao technology exchange, data center, intelligent automation, orchestration, unified management, Vblock, VCE

My users are happy:  Having clearly identified and targeted my end users (did I focus on  business application owners, trusted business IT folks, IT solutions team, or my administrators?), I can see that the adoption of the cloud automation is growing.  This does not mean they are able to do everything they want in my first cloud deployment, but it means they are getting value out of it and I can see the anticipated number of physical and virtual servers provisioned.  I also see deprovisioning occurring.  After a few months I might still see three times to the provisioning going on as deprovisioning. I also have other teams beyond the first deployment angling for their turn.

IT Operations / the Cloud Command Center are cautiously monitoring the people, processes and technology:  Let’s face it, getting into production was intense and we had to make tradeoffs.  We did not get everything we wanted in the first deployment.  We cut the tape and users jumped in the cloud pool.  We got lots of feedback.  We tweaked one or two things; we got even more feedback.  We breathed a sigh of relief.  We looked forward to chapter two and built long lists of what we wanted.  We adjusted our roadmap.  We reviewed the success, learnings and failures with our management.  We identified and quantified the ROI.  We realized that we had lots of work to do.  Our Data Center operational processes were so spread out among our staff.  We had to think very clearly about managing the change from routine to strategic and how our workforce needed to transition to new roles.

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Tags: intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud

It’s close to 11 p.m. on the last day of the quarter in a large corporation. IT gets an urgent request to postpone a closing of the books process because there’s a large order stuck in the CRM system.

This means that the order won’t hit the books and be recorded as a booking.  The customer won’t get her order, the salesperson won’t get paid, and finance will show a missing number.

This generates an urgent call to the team that manages the workload automation platform: Hold the closing workflow!  Stop the presses!

The admins have to get to their console to find the job and pause it.  Not a huge deal, except there are thousands of jobs to be run and hundreds of business people calling on a regular basis, at all kind of hours.

Some customers have created help desks for their workload automation teams or they may even off-shore the call center to serve these kinds of requests.

No more.  Introducing self-service for workload automation.

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Tags: data center, intelligent automation, job scheduling, orchestration, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler, unified management, workload automation