Cloud-management wares multiply

LAS VEGAS -- When IT services are delivered via the cloud, compute and storage resources may be off-network or shared across multiple components, but enterprise IT managers still need to control resource allocation and monitor application performance and availability.

Slideshow: Cool new products unveiled at Interop

That’s why a handful of vendors this week at Interop Las Vegas plan to debut new and upgraded products designed to help monitor application performance and IT service delivery in cloud computing environments. Companies such as eTelemetry, NetIQ, ScienceLogic and Univa UD realize enterprise IT managers are considering cloud services this year. And industry watchers expect interest in cloud and associated technologies to continue to grow.

“Cloud computing represents a significant shift in the way IT operates today and shows no signs of being a passing fad. The efficiency, scalability, and cost savings it brings make cloud computing something that businesses must consider, especially with 2009 set to be another slow year for the economy,” according to a recent Forrester Research report.

Vendors such as eTelemetry have added capabilities to accommodate the trend toward cloud computing. Recently eTelemetry equipped its Metron appliance (see a screen shot of Metron 2.1 here) to be able to monitor and document which cloud services were in use by which departments, groups and end users. The Cloud Service Accounting (CSA) feature in Metron adds to the appliance’s capabilities, which include passively monitoring network traffic to associate patterns in the traffic with individuals.

According to eTelemetry, Metron’s CSA reports summarize total Internet bandwidth uses by cloud service and non-cloud service sites, and the bandwidth tiering capabilities can be used to provide cloud services sites with bandwidth priority. The appliance can also provide departmental chargeback reporting to associate dollars with bandwidth, and it allows IT managers to generate reports on bandwidth usage and cost via the device.

“Metron can prioritize the traffic so the cloud compute traffic gets a higher priority than the other traffic for both internal and external clouds,” says Ermis Sfakiyanudis, president and CEO of eTelemetry. “Cloud computing is something we are hearing more and more from customers. They have invested a lot of time and money in outsourcing and they want to be sure to use it effectively. Internally, they need to be certain they have adequate resources for cloud.”

Available now, Metron 2.1 starts at about $15,000.

For its part, NetIQ announced its AppManager for VMware 7.6 with support for VMware vSphere 4, which the vendor says can now support “more than three times the number of virtual machines.” Such capabilities will help enterprise IT managers looking to create internal and external clouds in their data centers, the vendor says, by enabling them to improve the ratio of guests to hosts in their environment.

“The trends we are seeing within our customer base indicate that many VMware adopters are ready to push the limits of their infrastructure to achieve the cost benefits that virtualization technology provides,” said Criss Scruggs, senior product marketing manager at NetIQ, in a press release.