IT Consolidation – Red Hat Services Speak

by Thomas Crowe (Red Hat)

A key component to a successful migration is a “migration mission statement.” The migration mission statement’s purpose is to summarize the key parts of a migration into a succinct, simply-communicated format that results in a clearly defined migration goal that is easily measurable for success. A sample migration mission statement could be:

Migrate the Acme Order Processing java application from the current proprietary IBM hardware running AIX and WebSphere into a cloud infrastructure running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Application Server; in order to provide better TCO and ROI, as well as provide increased scalability and reliability. The migration should be performed during non-peak hours, have minimal downtime requirements, and provide for rollback if necessary.

Generally speaking, there are several factors that go into planning and executing a successful migration project. But by answering the following questions, a significant amount of the information necessary for a successful migration can be gathered.

What?
The most basic question to initially ask is simply, “What is being migrated?” This simple question sets the stage for gathering the additional information that is required. Is the migration moving all services from one server to another? Maybe it is migrating an application from one application server to another, or migrating storage from one array to another. Each of these scenarios are going to have unique data-gathering requirements that need to be understood in order to successfully plan and ultimately execute a successful migration.

Continue reading “Determining your ‘migration mission statement’…and why it’s important”

by Guy Martin (Red Hat)

Open Source is not only a business model for Red Hat; it’s ingrained into the DNA of the company. Because of this, Red Hatters can generally count on their co-workers understanding both the fundamentals of open source, as well as the ethos and methodologies that go with it. However, within Red Hat Services, the consulting teams often get customer questions around these topics, or hear from employees of our customers who relay things they’ve heard regarding adoption of open source within their enterprise.

So, with apologies to David Letterman, I’d like to share the Top 10 Signs Your Enterprise Doesn’t ‘Get’ Open Source. While this is meant to be a somewhat humorous look at the topic, I also think it’s an informative way to talk about improving an enterprise’s effective use of open source technologies and methodologies. I’ll break down the list not by rank order, but by three areas that customers typically encounter when dealing with open source: Consumption, Collaboration, and Creation. I’ll also put in a few thoughts about how to address each of these from an improvement perspective.

Continue reading “Top 10 Signs Your Enterprise Doesn’t ‘Get’ Open Source”