A VMware vCenter Operations 5.0 Infrastructure Navigator Video is available at the link below:

Video Tutorial: VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

VMware vCenter Infrastructure Navigator is an application awareness plug-in to vCenter Server, and provides continuous dependency mapping of applications. Infrastructure Navigator offers application context to the virtual infrastructure administrators to monitor and manage the virtual infrastructure inventory objects and actions. Administrators can use Infrastructure Navigator to understand the impact of the change on the virtual environment in their application infrastructure. Infrastructure Navigator helps virtual infrastructure administrators perform the following tasks:

• Make accurate first-level triage to help either eliminate the problem or associate the problem with the virtual infrastructure when business service users report problems.
• Assess change impact, manage, and communicate virtual infrastructure issues for critical applications.
• Understand the application and business impact of changes to the virtual infrastructure on applications.

For further information on VMware vCenter Operations 5.0 follow the link below.

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0 now available

Hilton Brisbane Briefing - October 12

The briefings were held at the Hilton Brisbane on October 12 and Hilton Sydney on November 18.

Management Mastery Seminar Invitation

Presented to Service Desk Team Leader Ben Wells by Gerald Strautins,
General Manager of Strategic Business Services for ASG Group

Projects firm Sinclair Knight Merz completed a successful consolidation of its service desk operations for five business units spread across 40 offices in seven regions throughout the world. Key deliverables include improved processes, improved customer satisfaction and a marked increase in the first level call resolution rate which has risen from 45 per cent to 75 per cent.

The annual itSMFA Industry Awards for excellence in IT Service Management are presented to those organisations who have achieved extraordinary success from innovative and effective IT practices. The Awards have evolved over the years in response to new developments in IT Service Management as well as Australian and International Standards to reflect the growing appreciation of the critical role IT Service Management plays as a vital source of value creation for the business.

VMware Virtualization and Cloud Management solutions fundamentally simplify how IT is managed, accelerating IT service delivery, transforming operational efficiency, automatically assuring compliance and reducing business risks. Griffin IT has built a VMware Virtualization Management practice focused on providing solutions in Australia for IT Operations Management.

VMware vSphere® has helped thousands of companies transform their datacenters, simplifying many core systems management functions, such as resource allocation and load balancing, by building them into the virtualization platform. VMware’s management strategy is to further simplify IT by integrating performance, capacity and configuration management and applying analytics to help customers achieve the degree of automation required to operate a cloud environment.

“IT management is being turned on its head as enterprises expand their virtual infrastructures to achieve improved efficiencies and responsiveness,” said Ramin Sayar, vice president product strategy, enterprise management, VMware. “Increasingly, our customers are realizing that a management model designed for yesterday’s IT systems is making it difficult to keep up with the demands of today’s business environment. We believe VMware vCenter™ Operations will help our customers modernize their operations and take the next step in the journey toward a more simplified, agile approach to IT.”

vCenter Operations will be tightly integrated with VMware vSphere, understand its advanced infrastructure management functionality and be able to collect data from its underlying physical components (servers, storage, network) as well as other management tools within the enterprise. It will then analyze the millions of data points these systems produce in real-time to get to the information that matters and visually present it in a simple, actionable way through dashboards. This means infrastructure and operations teams will have the intelligence they need to make fast, informed operational decisions.

IT as a Service is the transformation of IT to a more business-centric approach, focusing on outcomes such as operational efficiency, competitiveness and rapid response. This means IT shifts from producing IT services to optimizing production and consumption of those services in ways consistent with business requirements. This changes the role of IT from a cost center to a center of strategic value.

VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz and CTO and Senior Vice President of Research and Development Steve Herrod outlined VMware’s vision for IT as a Service on Tuesday, August 31 during the VMworld General Session keynote presentation, available at:

VMworld 2010 Europe General Session

On the Transform ICT stand from the left are Peter Kendall (Griffin IT), Mike Reardon (eInfo Solutions) and Bruce Monk (Delta Software).

Cloud computing is a theme for the conference. Of particular interest was the panel discussion, “Governing the Cloud” where Tim Hartman from VMWare and the other panelists gave their views on the advantages and challenges cloud computing will provide.

Transform ICT prepared the brief below for the itSMF conference. It outlines how Transform ICT see cloud computing expanding the role of IT Service Management professionals.

Transform ICT Conference Brief (PDF - 696KB)

The VCE coalition provides solutions across server, network and storage for customers which are currently virtualising infrastructure and transitioning toward building private cloud data centers. A white paper from the VCE Coalition below gives in depth look at some of the capabilities being provided.

Griffin IT, a VMware partner will be transitioning to VMware systems to support our customers for the following products from July 1, 2010

• EMC Ionix Service Manager (also formerly known as Infra) will become VMware Service Manager.
• EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager (also formerly known as nLayers Application Discovery Manager) will become VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager.

VCE Coalition White Paper (PDF - 1.3MB)

EMC IT Case Study Presentation (PDF - 1.6MB)

EMC World 2010 Web Site

Learn how EMC IT is overcoming the fundamental differences involved with the Private Cloud:

• IT is built differently (pooled architectures, service catalogs)
• IT is run differently (low-touch, zero-touch mode)
• IT is consumed differently (variable consumption, multiple providers)

Join Jon Peirce, EMC Vice President of IT Infrastructure and Services in the video presentation below:

EMC IT Virtualisation Journey Blog