West Hartford CT - On January 25, 2012, IT executives and industry leaders gathered at Fleming’s Steakhouse in West Hartford for an evening of technology and fine wine. Attendees enjoyed presentations from leading technology experts Kelser Corporation, VMware, and Hewlett-Packard. The theme centered on moving business critical applications to a virtualized environment using VMware within HP’s 3PAR infrastructure.
In addition, attendees enjoyed a 5-course dinner paired with accompanying wines. Walking around the dining room, one could sense the dedicated attention from the crowd, trying hard to concentrate on what was being said as they consumed a meal fit for a king. Audience members interacted with the speakers providing insight from their individual experiences as well as asking questions.
Jonathan Stone, Technology Solutions Executive of Kelser Corporation, proclaimed that “Now is the time!” for the move. He related, “Virtualizing business critical applications can vastly improve Quality of Service, increase app efficiency, and speed up time to market. Application owners and IT operations folks can now move to the virtual space with confidence in each other.”
Jon opened with the definition of a Business Critical Application (BCA). Because a BCA varies within each company, rather than look at what the application does for a business, Stone looked at it from a fail perspective. If the BCA or Tier 1 application goes down, a major loss of business functionality or financial loss will be experienced, as well as the dreaded call from management. The myriad of reasons to virtualize were further explained.
VMware speaker Andy Powell spoke of the benefits of using VMware to virtualize those applications. According to Powell, VMware vSphere 5’s “Monster VM’s” can handle the most demanding business applications. Available features can provide the benefits of virtualization, with the added security, scalability, and function that can make application owners rest easy.
Sean Carroll from HP spoke on the benefits of 3PAR as a storage platform for the application virtualization. The thin technologies of 3PAR are uniquely positioned to offer wide striping, simplified management, and better business continuity as the ideal infrastructure for BCA virtualization.
All three presenters made a great cohesive case for virtualizing business critical applications. Following the presentations, everyone enjoyed the final dessert course amid discussions with their dining companions. Conversations focused on the transition of business critical applications, the advantages of robust infrastructure, new features of vSphere 5 and, of course, the exquisite food and wine from the evening.
For those interested in virtualizing business critical applications, please contact Jon Stone at (860) 610-2236 or jstone@kelsercorp.com
For more information on Kelser events, visit http://www.kelsercorp.com/posts/events
