Beauty in Simplicity

You may have seen in the press today that we’ve added an Enterprise Content Management Appliance to the Icebreaker family. For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with our appliances I thought I’d take to my blog today to explain them to you.

There’s an obesity epidemic in the modern data center. General purpose operating systems have become so bloated with features that often times the system, network and security administrators need to work in concert to install, configure and secure new operating system deployments. Software applications have been overstuffed with esoteric features used by a small percentage of their user base, if at all, and the cost of this bloating and complexity is paid not only in increased license fees, but also in the high cost of deploying, configuring, securing and maintaining these applications. It’s time to get back to basics, trim these technologies down to the bare essentials, and simplify deployment, configuration, maintenance and security. The Actian Icebreaker family of Software Appliances are designed to do just that.

So, what is a Software Appliance? A software appliance is a pre-integrated set of technologies, installed, deployed, configured and maintained as a unit, providing an IT service or solving a business problem. Each layer within the software appliance is trimmed to the bare necessities, and tightly integrated with the adjacent layers. If we take as an example the operating system layer in the software appliance, it will open only those ports required by the applications above it, will be preconfigured with the only the essential user accounts and will start only those demons and services required to support the solution. It is estimated that use of software appliances can reduce the size, cost and complexity of the solution by as much as 70% while at the same time significantly increasing security. The Icebreaker applainces are designed for flexibility and can be deployed on the bare metal, in a virtual machine or in a compute cloud and provide significant improvements in hardware utilization, flexibility, simplicity and efficiency.

The Icebreaker Software Appliances provide many tangible benefits for IT, ranging from simplicity, security and simplified and flexible deployment to improvements in efficiency and cost savings.

Simplicity: Stripping the layers in the appliance down to the bare essentials greatly simplifies the solution; in addition, the software appliance providers take responsibility for the integration of the various components within the appliance, removing the guess work as to what versions and patch levels of the technology stacks are required. The setup process for the Software Appliance installs and configures the complete set of technologies as a single unit, and maintenance is provided for the entire solution, not for the discreet technologies within the Software Appliance.

Security: One of the benefits of stripping the components within the Software Appliance down to just the necessary functionality is that there’s less risk of exposure to security vulnerabilities and the task of securing the environment is greatly simplified. Removing extraneous components, removes the security risks associated with those components. The Software Appliance opens only the ports required by the solution, creates only the necessary accounts and only starts the services and demons required by the applications within the Software Appliance.

Flexibility: Software Appliances are designed from the ground up to take advantage of the latest advances in hardware and while many Software Appliance providers can deliver their solutions preinstalled and configured on a particular hardware configuration, the typical Software Appliance consumer would rather deploy it on a hardware platform of their choosing. Flavors of the Software Appliance are optimized for deployment on the bare metal, within a virtual machine or within a compute cloud.

Efficiency: Recent advances in hardware technologies have significantly increased the computing power available to IT, but the CPU needs of applications hasn’t increased at the same pace, resulting in CPU utilization rates dropping to an all time low. The combination of Software Appliances and Virtualization Technologies enables IT to increase their CPU utilization rates, by deploying multiple Software Appliances on a single server.

Cost Savings: Since they are supplied as a unit, Software Appliances greatly reduce the cost of installing, configuring, deploying and maintaining these solutions. The Icebreaker Appliances have no upfront license fees, instead the consumer can choose to pay for a support subscription.

Software Appliances Vs Software Stacks

The popularity of the LAMP stack makes it obvious that there’s an enormous appetite for integrated technology solutions. Where the LAMP stack disappointed was that the task of keeping track of release and patch levels was onerous and in many cases was offloaded to companies such as SpikeSource. The Icebreaker Software Appliances remove that requirement, and the maintenance stream includes maintenance for all of the components within the solution, pre-tested and certified in our labs.

Summary

The Actian Icebreaker Family of Appliances are designed to reduce the cost and complexity of deploying software solutions. The Software Appliances take a holistic approach to delivering, deploying, managing and maintaining the solution. The technologies are seamlessly integrated and are delivered, deployed, managed and maintained as a unit. I truly believe that there is real beauty in the simplicity of the appliances; take for example the single click/schedulable backup of the appliance, or the single click updates. Furthermore, Actian is the single source of support for the entire solution incorporated in the Icebreaker Software Appliances, and we will work with the various component providers, behind the scenes, to quickly resolve customer reported issues.

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Emma McGrattan

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