HP has announced that it’s expanding its HP Converged Cloud portfolio with new solutions for VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, enabling clients to transform traditional virtualization deployments into private and hybrid cloud environments with less risk and complexity.
Combined with VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, HP CloudSystem doubles VM density, reduces network complexity, and provides added flexibility to support almost any workload, says HP.
Introduced in April, HP Converged Cloud extends the power of the cloud across infrastructure, data and applications. Based on a single architecture, HP Converged Cloud helps integrate many combinations of private, managed and public clouds, as well as traditional IT, providing workload portability as well as dynamic scaling.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Ways Cloud Computing Will Change by 2020
Think cloud computing is just the latest IT fad? Think again.
According to an article on ZDNet, by 2020 cloud is going to be a major – and permanent – part of the enterprise computing infrastructure.
Forrester predicts the global cloud computing market will grow from $35 billion in 2011 to around $150 billion by 2020 as it becomes key to many organizations’ IT infrastructures.
By 2020, a generational shift will have occurred in organizations. A new generation of CIOs will be in charge that have grown up using cloud-based tools, making them far more willing to adopt cloud on an enterprise scale.
The World of Cloud Computing and Online Storage
Cloud computing and cloud storage have revolutionized how we as businesses and individuals work. Think of how we used to work before the cloud entered our consciousness—we’d have to print documents, make copies, and deal with temperamental servers, as well as crashing computers. Sure, these things are still part of the bigger picture, yet doing our work and business online has made it less of a cumbersome experience and that much more user-friendly.
The Advantages of Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage
Think about the last time you actually sent someone a letter by regular mail. Was it years, or decades ago? Depending on your age, you may never have actually physically mailed a friend a letter before. As technology changes, so does the world around us—what we once considered science fiction has now become our reality. The good news is, however, this brave new world does offer some pretty cool advantages.
Cost is perhaps the biggest selling point for cloud computing. Businesses that use cloud computing and the best online storage methods almost always see a major decrease in cost, as cloud storage companies are able to charge significantly less than a company would pay not just to purchase, but to maintain and repair their servers. With a cloud storage company, you also get top of the line service and the best technology, again at a significantly lower cost than you’d be paying on your own.
With cloud computing and storage, we can also all seamlessly share our data with other businesses or clients or even friends across the world. Remember the days of overnighting fed-ex packages (and paying enormously painful international rates)? Those days are now thankfully gone, at least for the most part—with cloud computing and storage the ease in which we do business has greatly improved.
Travel and gas costs have significantly decreased as well, as the cloud allows us to work with others without having to travel “door to door” to accomplish our daily business. Businesses can now have clients and employees access related files from anywhere, simply through an organization’s cloud.
The Cloud Critics
Every advance in technology has its critics, and the cloud is certainly no exception. But the truth is, the cloud is actually a much safer alternative to more traditional methods of data storage.
Though hacking is often listed as the #1 concern of most considering cloud storage, what most people don’t realize is that your less at risk of being hacked with a cloud storage company than you are with your own backup methods. This is because most cloud storage companies have made security their top priority, and they’re equipped with more advanced security technology than most companies or individuals could even begin to afford on their own.
Systems inevitably crash; the advantage of cloud storage is that you’ll still have a backup of all your data. And unlike expensive hard drives, the cloud will not just one day conk out on you.
With cloud storage, your files can also be reconfigured automatically, complying with computer languages that are always changing, therefore allowing your information to be accessible for many years down the line.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The Cloud Service Broker
Next-generation cloud service management software will offer service brokering capabilities. A broker allows the federation of resources across heterogeneous Cloud Service Providers and thus plays an important role in avoiding vendor lock-in.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Jamie Marshall, the CTO of Prologue (France), will provide an overview of the architecture of an open source cloud service broker that would allow for the description, provision, deployment and management of any type or configuration of cloud services delivered by heterogeneous cloud service providers in accordance with a consumer’s SLA. He will end with a live demonstration showing how a federation of multiple OpenStack providers can be managed by CompatibleOne, an open source cloud service broker, in a multi-cloud environment.
Cloud and Change Management
Change management is important for any Technology initiative and since many Cloud services focus on rapid deployments, this area is sometimes forgotten. The move to Cloud has not only technology implications but also business implications. Business processes and operations can be encapsulated as services and delivered expeditiously. Change management for the Cloud should look into the strategic, technology and development changes and related impacts. If you need new tires for your car do you just go and buy the first set of tires you see or do you check specifications, compatibility, price etc to determine how this change will impact your vehicle. This may appear to be common sense but in the excitement of moving to the Cloud it is easy to get carried away and not think about all aspects of change management.
Cloud Computing: Rackspace Buys E-Mail Start-Up for Cloud
Rackspace is going to acquire a two-year-old Y Combinator e-mail start-up called Mailgun.
Terms were not disclosed but, aside from Y’s seeding, it looks like the fledgling only raised $1.1 million last year.
Mailgun provides a web service for integrating e-mail inboxes into apps like Twilio lets developers build voice and SMS in their apps.
It says it enables functionality like private user mailboxes, photo uploads from cell phones, e-mail-driven comments and discussion groups.
Rackspace says the deal will let it offer cloud-based e-mail services in applications and web sites.
Freshbooks Takes SMB Accounting Mobile with new iPhone, iPad App
FreshBooks today launched a new mobile accounting app designed to fit the lifestyle of today’s small businesses owners, giving them the freedom to run their business anytime, anywhere.
Following their recent re-positioning as cloud accounting, the free mobile app further demonstrates the FreshBooks commitment to being in the corner of service-based businesses. The mobile app strengthens existing features like expense management, P&L reporting and online payment integration to help make the lives of small business owners easier.
The new FreshBooks iPhone app works anywhere, whether you’re tracking time from the coffee shop, logging expenses from the airport lounge or sending an invoice right from the client’s office. Simple and intuitive, FreshBooks makes it easy to have an at-a-glance view of your business.
“The FreshBooks iPhone app was created so that small business owners could have even more flexibility with their FreshBooks account and access it from wherever their work takes them,” said Mike McDerment, FreshBooks co-founder and CEO. “We know that people go into business to pursue their passion and serve their customers, not to learn accounting. That’s the difference with FreshBooks cloud accounting: it’s simple, accessible everywhere, and saves small businesses time on their billing.”
The FreshBooks iOS app has all the key features of the web version of FreshBooks, including the streamlined ability to send professional-looking invoices, get paid online with Paypal and attach expenses directly to invoices. Invite staff or sub-contractors to projects to log hours as you work and generate invoices from timesheets to enjoy seamless collaboration. FreshBooks is designed to support businesses of all types: lawyers, marketing and IT professionals, plumbers, interior decorators, even an architect–anyone who creates value for their clients by applying their time and expertise.
Download the free iPhone app to create a new free account.
The Human Factor in Cloud’s Next Big Thing
Where will the cloud computing model of service-based virtualized computing resources for data storage and processing grow next? This is arguably the biggest question facing technology analysts today – and if we knew the answer we could all probably sleep a little more soundly.
Before we can answer this question, perhaps we need to break it down and determine what exactly we are really trying to clarify.
Migrating E-Commerce Applications to the Cloud
The e-commerce industry is experiencing a sudden spurt in their sales in India and thus we can see an explosion in the e-commerce business in near future. The e-retail industry in India is expected to touch USD 70 billion revenue by 2020. It’s a huge market and certainly would be a game changer in the way the IT industry is perceived in India. Indian IT industry would no longer be just a back office for outsourced software development work for US companies. This would certainly be a big push for MNCs such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft to re-think about their existing business strategies around India. Probably the technology centers they have in India would be given business targets and would not be treated just as cost-lowering technology centers.
Big Daddy Don Garlits & the Cloud: Capable Vs. Functional
I know what you’re thinking, yet another car analogy, but bear with me, I think you’ll like it…eventually 
When I was a kid, like around 11 or 12, during the summers I would ride my bike into town to go to the municipal pool to hang out with my friends and basically have fun. On my way to the pool I used to ride past a garage and body shop in my neighborhood and sometimes I would stop to look around. One day I found it had a back lot where there were a bunch of cars parked amongst the weeds, broken concrete and gravel. I don’t remember thinking about why the cars were there except that maybe they were in various states of repair (or disrepair as the case may be…lots of rust, not a lot of intact glass) or that they were just forgotten about and left to slowly disintegrate and return to nature.
Back then I do remember that I was seriously on the path toward full-on car craziness as I was just starting to dream of driving, feeling the wind in my hair (yeah, it was that long ago) and enjoying the freedom I imagined it would bring. I was a huge fan of “Car Toons” which was sort of the Mad Magazine of cars and basically lusted after hot rods, dragsters and sports cars. I was endlessly scribbling car doodles on my note books and in the margins of text books. I thought of myself as a cross between Big Daddy Don Garlits and a sports car designer. In fact, I used to spend hours drawing what I thought was the perfect car and would give the design to my dad who, back then, was a car designer for the Ford Motor Company. I have no idea what ever happened to those designs but I imagine they were conspicuously put in his briefcase at home and dumped in the trash at work.
Anyway, among the various shells of once bright and gleaming cars in that back lot, almost hidden amongst the weeds was a candy-apple red Ford Pantera or, more accurately; the De Tomaso Pantera that was designed and built in Italy and powered by a Ford engine (and eventually imported to the US to be sold in Lincoln/Mercury dealerships). The car sat on half-filled radial tires (relatively new to the US) and still sparkled as if it just came off the showroom floor…haa ha, or so my feverish car-obsessed, pre-teen brain thought it sparkled. It was sleek, low to the ground and looked as if it were going 100 miles an hour just sitting there. It was a supercar before the word was coined and I was deeply, madly and completely in love with it.
Of course, at 12 years old the only thing I could really do was dream of driving the car—I was, after all, 4 years away from even having a driver’s license—but I distinctly remember how vivid those daydreams were, how utterly real and “possible” they seemed.
Fast forward to now and to the customers I consult with about their desires for a building a cloud infrastructure within their environments. They are doing exactly what I did almost 40 years ago in that back lot; they are looking at shiny new ways of doing things: being faster, highly flexible, elastic, personal, serviceable—more innovative—and fully imagining how it would feel to run those amazingly effective infrastructures…but…like I was back then, they are just as unable to operate those new things as I was unable to drive that Pantera. Even if I could afford to buy it, I had no knowledge or experience that would enable me to effectively (or legally) drive it. That is the difference between being Functional and Capable.
The Pantera was certainly capable but *in relation to me* was not anywhere near being functional. The essence and nature of the car never changed but my ability to effectively harness its power and direct it toward some beneficial outcome was zero; therefore the car was non-functional as far as I was concerned. The same way a cloud infrastructure—fully built out with well architected components, tested and running—would be non-functional to customers who did not know how to operate that type of infrastructure.
In short; cloud capable versus cloud functional.
The way that a cloud infrastructure should be operated is based on the idea of delivering IT services and not the traditional ideas of servers and storage and networks being individually built, configured and connected by people doing physical stuff. Cloud infrastructures are automated and orchestrated to deliver specific functionality aggregated into specific services; fast and efficiently, without the need for people doing “stuff.” In fact, people doing stuff is too slow and just gets in the way and if you don’t change the operations of the systems to reflect that, you end up with a very capable yet non-functional system.
Literally, you have to transform how you operate the system—from a traditional to a cloud infrastructure—in lock-step with how that system is materially changed or it will be very much the same sort of difference between me riding my bicycle into town at 12 years old and me driving a candy-apple red Pantera. It’s just dreaming until the required knowledge and experience is obtained…none of which is easy or quick…but tell that to a 12 year old lost in his imagination staring at sparkling red freedom and adventure…