Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Virtual Strategy Magazine Podcast

Virtual Strategy Magazine just published a podcast with Jerry Valentine from Grange Insurance and me.  Its worth a listen.

Jerry talks about what went into the decision to choose PERFMAN and what some of the challenges are in moving to a virtualized environment.

Grange Insurance Delpoys PERFMAN for Virtualization Lifecycle Management

The $1 billion insurance provider uses PERFMAN to monitor and manage both their physical and virtual environments.  You can read more here

So, what is important about this release and why should you care?  Well, a number of things.

  1. It demonstrates that PERFMAN is used in very large data centers.
  2. It shows the usage of PERFMAN to manage both the physical and virtual infrastructure, as well as the transition from physical to virtual.
  3. It reiterates the PERFMAN claim of ease-of-use and deployment. 

The second bullet brings up an interesting topic.  Who can do this well?  Well, the answer is not necessarily easy, but in a future blog post, I will attempt to define the different players and their strengths in this lifecycle.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Gartner is paying attention to social media. Are you?

I just realized how much of my time is spent on Twitter, blogs, YouTube, etc.  It is amazing to see how the marketing of technology is maturing and adapting to the new media.

And, now is a perfect time for you to get involved.  More on that later. 

One could argue, and I have, that Gartner is nowhere near the bleeding edge of technology.  In fact, a common, albeit misinformed perception of Gartner, is that they can predict the past with 80% accuracy.  But, the reality is that most of their clients are very large multi-national organizations that fall into the late majority category, to steal a page from Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm".

So, to see Gartner with a very active Twitter account and to see an entire channel from Gartner on YouTube can only mean one thing.  Social media is crossing the chasm and its not just for consumer products.

Ignore this trend at your own risk.  In fact, I heard through the grapevine that one open source company was having a hard time getting activity in their "community" and their forums were dead.  But, their software is used by thousands of companies.  How is that possible?  Well, it turns out that the dialogue was all on Twitter. 

And, with the lovely state of the economy, budgets are being slashed all over the place.  Many companies are cutting back on their marketing spend.  (Many are moving money into digital advertising like Google Adwords because the results are measurable).  Social media is FREE.  It only costs time and energy.  But, being a regular contributor to the world of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc can pay huge dividends.

However, it must be a full-time job to be done correctly.  You need to have a strategic plan on how to attack the social media space.  Without, you are just noise.

Here are some links to my pages:

Monday, October 20, 2008

Michael Cote from RedMonk debriefs on PERFMAN

We recently briefed Michael Cote (Ko-Tay) from RedMonk on the PERFMAN product suite and his latest podcast talks favorably about our solution, especially as it relates to virtualization lifecycle management and managing capacity in a virtualized environment.

The podcast is a weekly de-brief and PERFMAN is discussed starting at 8:05 in the mp3.  Take a listen. (Link to MP3)

Thursday, October 16, 2008

A short update

I have not blogged a lot lately, my apologies.  I have been wrapped up in a number of work and personal things that have taken my attention away from this.  Not to fear, the personal things are all good things.  Lots of little family trips enjoying the wram October weather and my nights are filled with the Fightin' Phils ! ! !   Go Phillies!  Off to the World Series for the first time since my senior year in college.

In addition, I am working on a new personal site that will consolidate this blog and my reef blog, along with important news and personal photos related to this blog and my personal life.  One of the challenges is moving ALL of these posts over.  Its a manual process, but well worth it.

The new site will be ready in a couple of weeks, I hope.  It is based on the open source CMS, Joomla.  I am a big fan of Joomla and will be moving PERFMAN's corporate site to Joomla as well.  The personal site is really just a test for the corporate site.

Well, I am down in Baltimore for PERFMAN's quarterly Sales Operations Review. 

Of course, you can always follow me on Twitter. (look at the top right of the page to see the feed).

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Google's share price still not right...

 

I twittered yesterday about the sudden drop of Google's share price imagefrom 400.00 to 329.  Nasdaq announced a routing problem and restored the price to 405.00, but take a look at what Yahoo has it listed as...  I hope people don't think that's legit!  Or, maybe I should short sell it!!!