"Most cloud environments - public, private, or hybrid - run on virtualized infrastructure that share CPU, memory and storage between applications," noted Bryan Semple, Chief Marketing Officer at VKernel in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. "These shared resource environments behave a lot like mainframes and hence require the same level of capacity planning," concluded Semple.

Cloud Computing Journal: A very general question first, about Cloud Computing itself: Surely we've heard all of this before in various forms and guises - grid computing / utility computing, etc.? What is different this time - why is everyone so convinced it will now work?

Bryan Semple: First, software as a service models like SalesForce.COM got end users comfortable with the fact that serious applications could be delivered over the web. Second, VMware and other hypervisors detached applications from the underlying hardware. This enables application mobility and the ability to run an application anywhere and made the economics of remote hosting work. No longer was the "old" model of a single application per server required. Service providers could run multiple applications on a single server and deliver a "service" without regard to the underlying hardware.

Cloud Computing Journal: What are the three main factors driving companies toward the Cloud?

Semple: Cloud infrastructure providers offer an ideal platform for organizations. Gone are the delays associated with internal procurement of hardware, waiting for multiple IT teams to coordinate, and potential complex approval processes. Infrastructure cloud providers can nearly instantly provision new compute resources at a fixed and understandable cost, and deliver that service in a highly reliable and available fashion without the need for technical resources.

Cloud Computing Journal: And what are the three main barriers preventing some companies from moving some of the on-premise computing to the Cloud?

Semple: First, there are some technical hurdles. Not all applications can be run in the cloud providers' environments. Second, not all applications are able to be run over a WAN. Finally, security and availability concerns still linger for many enterprises.

Cloud Computing Journal: How does your own company's offering/s assist CIOs and organizations/companies?

Semple: Most cloud environments - public, private, or hybrid - run on virtualized infrastructure that share CPU, memory and storage between applications. These shared resource environments behave a lot like mainframes and hence require the same level of capacity planning. VKernel is the world's leader in capacity planning solutions for virtualized environments.

Cloud Computing Journal: Are there other players in the Cloud ecosystem offering the same - or is your company unique? Why?

Semple:It is never a good sign to be in a market of one!

Yes, the virtualization management market is alive and well. Our biggest competitor is VMware vCenter Operations. vCenter Operations is a marketing bundle of the Integrien acquisition combined with VMware Capacity IQ. VKernel is a single integrated application with over 700 customers. VKernel has deep functionality in capacity management, which is critical for medium to larger enterprises.

Cloud Computing Journal: We hear talk of a Cloud Revolution and also of a Cloud "evolution" - either way, what kind of time span are we talking about, do you think. In other words, for how long is Cloud Computing going to exert its pull on the minds, hearts, and budgets of all involved in modern-day Enterprise IT?

Semple: Virtualization is the engine that enables cloud computing. It is also the engine that makes on-premise data centers more efficient. It levels the playing field. Why move critical applications to the cloud where theoretically there should be no cost benefits?

Where the cloud completely takes off is with new types of applications or improvements on older applications that just reduce on-premise hardware requirements. SF.COM is a good example of this. But also Google Documents, YouTube, etc. A customer, for example, may decide to forgo an SAP upgrade and decide instead to move everything to NetSuite. QuickBooks gets substituted for an online package. But move SAP to the cloud, just to get to the cloud? Possibly, but there are other technical hurdles that could make this difficult.

The cloud will enable more types of applications instead of a wholesale replacement of customer data centers.

Cloud Computing Journal: Let's know focus on virtualization. How long have you offered virtualization software and services, and what are the unique advantages that your customers receive?

Semple: We have offered virtualization software and services for three years. Customers use our solutions to ensure performance of their virtual environments and to reduce costs. Why?

Virtual environments use shared resources. Because CPU, memory and storage is shared, virtual machines must have access to sufficient capacity and also not contend with each other for the same resource. Contention causes performance problems. Overprovisioning resources increases costs. The key is to provide enough CPU, memory, and storage to prevent capacity bottlenecks and performance issues, but not so much capacity that virtualization costs spiral out of control.

Cloud Computing Journal: Why do companies choose to virtualize their resources, and why do they do it specifically with you?

Semple: By the time companies come to us, they have already virtualized a portion of their environment. They have somewhere between 50 and 15,000 virtual machines. What is common between them is they realize they are unable to manage the capacity of their virtual environment with simple monitoring tools. A more sophisticated approach is needed. VKernel provides a sophisticated capacity analytics engine that mines data from vCenter to determine capacity bottlenecks that are impacting performance, predict future bottlenecks before they occur, and to right size the environment to reclaim overallocated CPU, memory, and storage. VKernel's ease of implementation, sophisticated analytics and rapid ROI provides a winning combination for customers.

Cloud Computing Journal: What resources do your customers typically virtualize? Do some virtualize storage only, for example?

Semple: Our customers typically virtualize their servers. SANs, by definition, are virtualized. We typically see our customers run VMware connected to a SAN.

Cloud Computing Journal: What sort of learning curve is there for IT management after they start virtualizing their resources?

Semple: The biggest learning curve is getting their heads around the capacity model.  Before virtualization, an IT manager deployed an application onto a server with specific CPU, memory and storage based on application sizing requirements. Once deployed, the application stayed on that server until a hardware refresh or until the application needed more horsepower.

Because the application and OS were installed onto the server hardware, moving the application was difficult. Hence, most IT managers overprovisioned to make sure they would not have to move it. Plus, some applications just didn't need the CPU or memory of the least powerful servers.

Virtualization changes this. Virtual machines and their applications can move between hosts. VMs share resources enabling higher utilization of CPU, memory and storage but also introduce capacity planning challenges.

VKernel assists IT managers with the capacity planning challenges they face with virtualization. VKernel helps remove the steep learning curve of attempting to manually perform capacity planning and replaces it with sophisticated analytics that provide actionable information for a virtualization administrator.

Cloud Computing Journal: To what degree do you think of virtualization as a "first step" toward the Cloud vs. a self-contained solution that meets customer needs?

Semple: Virtualization is the underlying technology for infrastructure clouds. A virtualized environment is a private cloud of resources that can be easily deployed.

Cloud Computing Journal: What can Cloud Expo attendees expect to see from you in New York?

Semple: Attendee's will walk away from our booth with an understanding of how to successfully manage capacity in virtual environments. We will put their minds at ease that there are solutions that can handle this complex problem.