Many businesses are still figuring out how and where to run their tech operations. Should they continue to use their own servers to run databases and key business software? Should they move that software to shared public cloud data centers? Should they mix and match?
Turbonomic, formerly known as VMTurbo, says the latest version of its software can tell them to do what is best. It monitors software as it’s running and automatically assigns additional computer processors and memory as needed. Or, if all that automation makes IT nervous, the software can send recommendations to the human operators and let them trigger the allocations, or override them.
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Bill Veghte, the company’s executive chairman says that’s great for IT people, but the software also helps non-techies on staff—the people who pay for computing services.
“If you’re in procurement and spending a few million dollars on public cloud, you might get a 140,000-line bill from that provider,” he said. Turbonomic traces which items should be allocated to which business units within the company to make sense of all that detail.
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Brad Smuland, chief technology officer for Minneapolis-based Merrill Corp., is sold. His company stores and manages sensitive documents for companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions or filing IPOs.
The company runs 5,000 of its own servers but it was difficult to see if some were being underutilized—not good because that is wasteful—or were close to maxing out—not good because it affects performance.
Turbonomic’s software was able to shift work around the data center to free up capacity and add servers in the cloud as needed. “I could do more without having to spend more,” Smuland said. “Within six months I’ve already saved more than I spent on the service.”
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Earlier versions of Turbonomic software already worked with Amazon (AMZN) Web Services and Microsoft (MSFT) Azure public clouds, but a new version has a better view into what is actually running in those clouds, the company said. The older version had little detail on what services were running where. The update shows which resources within those clouds are being used, along with associated costs, according to the company.
Given that so many businesses are wrestling with this problem of how to best run their software, Turbonomic targets a hot market. Other competitors include companies like Datadog, RightScale, and products from older companies like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).