2005 - The year of Virtualization
 

Innovative VAR launches Power Shift

Tom Lewis, President of Innovative VAR, explains how this quarterly newsletter, Power Shift, evolved as a result of direct feedback from you! Power Shift has been created exclusively for Innovative Computing customers. It is dedicated to addressing technology issues to help you improve O.R.

Executive Summary - Virtualization

Some talk about "IT Optimization", others call it "IT Simplification" or "Consolidation". Whatever you call it, there is an important movement going on. In this first issue of Power Shift, you'll find out why Innovative VAR believes that it's really all about Virtualization! In fact, this subject is so important that it is being featured in an upcoming webinar - see the column to the right to register.

Systems Availability - Improve your Uptime!

You've probably heard Innovative Computing executives talk about high availability and the importance of data protection. Innovative VAR is taking traditional High Availability a step further by addressing ALL the components that affect access to your iSeries. Discover a custom, affordable option that bundles all the pieces you will need to implement a system availability plan and improve your iSeries uptime.

Share your story

We are constantly amazed by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of our customers. Do you have a story to share? Perhaps one that involves innovation or creativity? Send it to us! Have one with a humorous twist? Even better! Read about how you can share your experiences, successes and achievements through this newsletter.

Reader survey

Innovative VAR wants to make this quarterly Power Shift newsletter a good source of information for you and your colleagues. We'd like your help! Simply read what we've provided and then tell us how we can better serve your interests!

Why we created the Power Shift newsletter

Tom Lewis, President of Innovative VAR explains

As I talk with many of you in customer meetings or at ICE, I often hear this message; "We are overwhelmed by information about technology that can improve our O.R. but it is difficult to relate it to our company." With this in mind, I am pleased to introduce you to the first issue of Power Shift - a newsletter dedicated to highlighting key technology issues facing the trucking industry.

Innovative VAR is the only IBM Premier Business Partner recommended by Innovative Computing because we are the only solution integrator dedicated to working exclusively with their customers.  Every Innovative VAR customer is an Innovative Computing user!

In this and the upcoming issues, you will find a calendar of events, hosted by Innovative VAR. Included are webinars such as those you'll see in April. With your input and feedback, we can make this newsletter even more valuable to you. Please give us your comments!

Lastly, to our customers, we thank you for your business! Not familiar with Innovative VAR?  Visit us online at www.innovativevar.com!  We welcome the chance to talk with you about your IT environment and help you improve your O.R.!

Executive Summary - Virtualization

How virtualization can improve the profitability of your trucking company

If you read the material prepared by industry consultants related to "IT Optimization", "IT Simplification" and "IT Consolidation", you will find everything from short-term pragmatism to grandiose management theory. As we begin 2005, there have been major leaps in the opportunity for trucking organizations to take the lead through consolidation, integration and optimization. Behind all of this is something called virtualization.

Normally, IT Optimization must start at the bottom with physical consolidation and work up to the ultimate goals of optimizing your company. Let's look at those lower (gold) layers that are under the direct control of IT.

Physical server and storage consolidation can yield major efficiencies from relatively small investments. By taking advantage of the never-ending improvements in hardware price-performance you can always have more capacity. You'll also have more power in less physical space which will use less energy and allow you to lower your overall personnel costs.

Yet the real savings in support costs and the real returns in efficiency aren't realized until you build logical consolidation on top of the physical. This starts with consolidating and rationalizing the Operating Systems in use. A key step is breaking down the barriers between applications and data, so that any application can use any data that it needs to operate better; the ultimate stage is full storage virtualization - providing full any-to-any access.

Once the physical layers are complete there is the opportunity for consolidating and rationalizing some expensive and sometimes complex software resources like Data Base Management and "middleware". The savings in software costs can be significant, but the savings in support costs are usually even larger - not to mention huge potential returns in business effectiveness.

Having completed all the "gold" layers, the IT organization is able to provide full, responsive support to the rest of the enterprise as all parties cooperate in integrating and optimizing the key business processes.

So, why are we telling you all this now? Because in 2004, developments occurred that resulted in breakthroughs for some of the main stages in IT Optimization. These include:

Different Operating Systems represent one particularly tough barrier to physical consolidation. By introducing a virtualization engine on its Power Servers, IBM has eliminated that barrier. Now all of the main server operating systems can coexist within and share the same physical server. Now UNIX, Linux, OS/400 and Windows can run on the same i5 or p5 server - sharing the processors, main memory and disk storage as if they were one. This results in a massive simplification of the physical consolidation step. In the past you have migrated or converted applications which is quite labor intensive. Now you can let the technology make these previously incompatible platforms work together. This has occurred thanks to virtualization.

Sharing files and databases between incompatible platforms has also represented a formidable barrier requiring "manual" conversion. Now, all the previously incompatible platforms can access the data via the virtualization engine. This gives you an immediate virtualized storage environment that removes the physical barriers. This allows your scarce and expensive support resources to concentrate on the value-producing integration of data across applications.

These are the reasons we say that the i5 and p5 are virtual dream solutions for IT optimization projects. IT optimization through virtualization can have a tremendous, positive impact on the profitability of your trucking company. Because of the importance of this topic, we will continue to address it, in every issue of our quarterly newsletter, Power Shift.

 
... on how i5 and virtualization could affect your IT Optimization strategy

... for a Webinar that covers this topic and gives the chance to ask questions.

Systems Availability - iSeries Uptime and Data Protection

System Availability is our practice of addressing all the factors that affect your iSeries uptime. You work hard to maximize the availability of your systems to your company and end users. The highest availability possible is always the goal. However, capital budget, available staff, and facilities have prevented you from implementing a traditional High Availability solution and may have limited your options for disaster recovery to off site tape storage.

The cost of the extra hardware and software required to support these solutions has recently fallen dramatically, and there is a record rate of new customers adopting and implementing new availability technologies. Yet, there are many who simply still cannot afford to proceed.

Often, the rising cost of the skills required to implement and maintain these solutions makes them unaffordable. Many of our customer facilities cannot afford additional staff, and their plate is already full of new application and services requirements. Even with approved budget, there is the challenge of finding the facilities and actual skills to run an expanded infrastructure. Sometimes, it is just the time it would take to pull it all together and work through the planning required to propose the solutions and gain approval.

So what do you do if you can’t afford one of these pieces - the talent, hardware, software, or a hot site? Many of Innovative’s trucking companies can do nothing. They must work through planned and unplanned outages the best that they can and hope for the day when they can make the investment in the higher availability of their systems. As the availability of your systems becomes more critical every year, you must look toward new solutions, new partnerships to provide the availability your facility and users require.

Innovative VAR is breaking down the barriers to finally having the System Availability your company and staff need. Innovative VAR has done this for other Innovative companies, and we can do it for you too!

The Remedy:
Innovative VAR has combined the key components of system availability to offer you a custom and flexible solution that addresses your specific pain points. Whether you want a complete System Availability solution with a second system off-site or just need the skills to make it happen, we can tailor our services to match your needs. We can help you build the project plan and work to help you gain approval.

You may have had a difficult time finding people to hire with the types of skills needed or perhaps you simply have no budget available for adding personnel. By bundling the elements of hardware, software, implementation support, and on-going technical support, we make the price more competitive. This also shifts the workload to us so you can focus on providing excellent service to your customers.

Your New Options:
Our relationship with Innovative Computing and their customers gives us the unique opportunity to customize our approach for your company. We can create the custom solutions you need – solutions that no one else can offer. Here are some services we offer as components to maximize the availability of your Innovative environment.

	Self-Managed High Availability HA infrastructure planning and implementation services to install on your systems, at your facilities managed by YOUR IT team.
	High Availability Systems Monitoring For existing customers with HA already installed - remote management of HA by OUR Availability Team.
	Managed High Availability Services HA infrastructure planning, implementation, and management services to provide a remote target system managed by OUR Availability Team, at our hot site. This is HA and Disaster Recovery!
	Backup and Recovery Services HA infrastructure planning, implementation, and management services to provide off-site protection of data and real-time replication management by OUR Availability Team geared for disaster recovery.
	iSeries Remote Management iSeries administration and upgrades managed by OUR Availability Team, remotely or on-site. No HA required.

In the coming issues of this newsletter, we will go into more detail about each of these services. Perhaps one or more of these services can help your company! In this edition, we’ll focus on our latest service, Managed High Availability Services.

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Managed High Availability Services
In this first issue of Power Shift, we’d like to introduce you to Managed High Availability Services. This bundle of services makes available iSeries hardware to support replication to a remote hot site. The High Availability software resides on a target system at our location, allowing us 24x7x365 access to monitor the software and status of all hardware and communication links. With

Managed High Availability Services, you get total data protection and failover without having the infrastructure and management responsibilities of a replicated environment. You are free to focus on support of applications and running your trucking company. Check out the features column here to learn more. 

... on how Managed HA Services could create value for you.

... for a Webinar that covers this topic and gives the chance to ask questions.

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