A Visit to Competitive Computing

Ed. Note: This is the first in a series of posts about Vermont companies and their creative solutions to technical challenges. Look for Nate's next profile in a few weeks.

I've always suspected that there is a lot of technical innovation happening in Vermont that no one ever hears about. When Vermont companies get any sort of media attention, it is usually because of product they sell. Ice cream. Clothing. Snowboards. What you don't hear about is the technology and "information innovation" that went into making that company and keeping that company successful. As an Information Technology Director, and general all around geek, that's the kind of stuff I want to know. So I went looking for it.

Competitive Computing is a company that provides many IT solutions for Vermont companies.  They often shorten their name to C2, and if you visit their website, you're presented with many of the services that a consulting company provides, from server infrastructure to eCommerce and portal solutions.  And then your eye wanders to the bottom of the page where you see an image of a leaf followed by the statement "Green Computing."

Everything is going green these days. Green cars, green houses, green clothing. All of it is driven by the practice of making a product more environmentally friendly. It produces less waste. It uses less fuel. It uses fewer natural resources. It creates fewer toxins. Green has become intertwined in marketing today. People today want to save the planet and live a healthier lifestyle and they do it with their dollars. Which gets us back to "Green Computing."

One of the ways computers become green is to use less power. Less power used means less power produced, means less toxins released into the air making that power, and less resources used. Voila! Greener.

Think about how many computers are in use in any given company. Each employee has one on their desk. They're on during work hours and usually are set to go to sleep — low power mode — when not in use. But back in the server room, there can be 20 or more computers that are on all the time. Usually, each server has a separate power cord plugged into the wall. Let's not even get into the air conditioning units that have to run all the time to keep those computers from melting. (Once I monitored the temperature in a server room where the AC unit failed. It was easily 150 degrees farenheight.)

C2 answers this challenge by combining all those many servers into one computer. One box. One power cord plugged into the wall. The way they achieve this trick is by a technology called virtualization. To understand virtualization, let's step back a bit.

Every computer can be divided into two parts: hardware and software. The hardware, of course, is the physical chips and wires, hard drives and DVD players. The software is the compiled code that runs on those chips and wires. Software can also be divided into two parts: the operating system and applications. The operating system is a unified collection of programs that use the hardware, allow for user input via keyboads and mice, display output on screens, and generally make a computer usable. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X are all operating systems. The applications we use everyday like email, spreadsheets, and music players are dependent upon the operating system.

For years, every computer was a box of hardware that ran one operating system at a time. A new computer purchased at Best Buy ran Windows. That's it. Then software businesses like VMware discovered how to run multiple operating systems on one computer through a process called virtualization. Each operating system is virtualized, running in its own virtual bubble and tricked into thinking that it's the only operating system talking to the hardware. It might be one of 20 operating systems talking to the same hardware in the same computer. Each one of those operating systems may be performing a different task. One is a web server. One is an email server. See where this is going?

With virtualization, companies don't have to buy 20 computers to do 20 different essential things. They can buy one or two computers, run 20 different operating systems off of them, and save a lot of money. Enter Competitive Computing.

"One of the things I was asked when I interviewed was how much I knew about virtualization," Lucas Soler, head of virtualization for C2 told me, "and I was like, 'Oh yeah, I know virtual reality. With the goggles, right?'" After chuckling at the memory, he added, "I didn't know anything at all." That was a year and a half ago. While Soler wasn't hired for the virtualization lead then, he quickly worked his way into the position as he learned more about the technology.

Today C2 is the only VMware Authorized Consultant in Vermont and one of the few VMware Enterprise partners in New England. C2 is able to leverage not only VMware products but their intellectual property as well, their best practices,  and their staff to help them out. C2 works closely enough with VMware that when Diane Greene (President, CEO and Co-founder of VMware) came to speak at UVM, her alma mater, she made a special trip to talk with C2. "From what I'm told from the VMware folks, a visit like that is pretty unusual, so we were pretty excited about that."

Soler went on to demonstrate one of the projects he was working on, a virtual desktop. He gestured to a compact PC about the size of a typical thin client workstations. It costs $250.00. It has just enough of an operating system to connect to a central server where it finds a virtual operating system waiting. The user then logs in to that virtual server and uses it as effectively as any operating system that runs off a local computer. It makes backups easy. What's more, it can record snapshots — exact replicas of the computing system at any given date and time — allowing the user to go back to a known good state if they've deleted files they shouldn't have or if the installation of a program went dreadfully wrong. "We're one of the few VMware Consultants in New England with a fully functional virtual desktop solution from VMware running in our labs," said Soler.

"And this," he said, reaching for a laptop, "is the latest version of thin client. There's a lot of users for which a small thin client computer can replace their desktop computer, but some users want to move around. They want to go from building A to building B. This is the solution for that." It looked for all the world like a black, business laptop. "There's no hard drive in here," Soler went on. "No moving parts, it's very light. It's $750.00. It's got USB. It's got audio."

But it connects back to the server for all its computing horsepower. Which means the next time you spill coffee on your laptop, you don't lose everything. You switch out machines and you're back where you left off.... in minutes. Not hours or days. "That's the biggest benefit of this [virtual desktop]." In the near future, VMware will bring out a solution that will allow users to work offline. No network connection. Users can check in and check out the entire operating system as easily as borrowing a book.

And the financial benefits for leveraging virtual computing? Besides saving money on expensive hardware and power bills? Energy rebates. Through a partnership with Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, C2's Martin Thieret created a program with Efficiency Vermont so that businesses leveraging virtual technology in their computing environment get annual rebates.

But the beauty of this story lies in between the lines. Remember the job interview? One and a half years ago, Soler knew nothing about virtualization technology. Yet by working up through the company and being a fast and eager student, his ingenuity and perseverance allowed him to grow his career in record time. He also helped to make C2 one of the leaders in the industry on virtualization solutions. That's not something any company can offer its employees.

"What I like about it [virtualization] is that it's just so green...and being here in Vermont — it's just the perfect fit," Solar admits. "And that's what drives me.  It's helping customers realize value through solutions that reduce the total cost of ownership, and that are also green in nature."

Comments

[Cathy Resmer]

Yikes, 150 degrees!