Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The SDN (R)evolution

Software-Defined Networking has the potential to revolutionize the networking world.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta, will discuss the SDN and network virtualization landscape and how this new technology can enable a whole new way of operating your network. He will also discuss a pragmatic and evolutionary approach to adopting SDN technologies in your environment.
Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta.

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IDC supports EU stance on cloud computing

The International Data Center (IDC) has come out in support of the European Union’s stance on cloud computing in a new report from the analyst house – albeit one published on the EU’s behalf.

Back in September, EU digital agenda vice president Neelie Kroes set out her strategy to make the EU the ‘e-EU’ in a report entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, which summarised that the cloud could provide a €160bn injection to the European GDP by 2020, and a net gain of 2.5m jobs. 

But the IDC, in their analysis, goes a step further. In a study conducted by IDC on behalf of the EU, removing the barriers to cloud adoption through sustainable policy would bring up to €250bn GDP growth by the end of the decade.

The IDC model is straightforward enough. If the EU doesn’t intervene and introduce relevant policies …

Cloud: I Like Renting a Piece of Cyberspace

I read a story by one respected writer who said that “cloud computing” will equal “computing” within five years. A day later, I saw a story by another respected writer who said that cloudwashing and a lack of standards means that most enterprises don’t yet even had a cloud-computing strategy, let alone deployment.

These statements can’t both be true; I think neither of them are.

Then there’s a recent survey commissioned by Citrix in which 51% of respondents in the US thought that bad weather could disrupt cloud computing. I suppose that’s literally true, if a bad storm keeps people from coming to work.

More hopeful – and more accurate, I think – are survey results released from The Future of Cloud, a group backed by venture capitalist Michael Skok, which find that 82% of enteprises are using SaaS and 75% say they’ll be building apps via PaaS within five years.

That software-as-a-service number may still be driven by a lot of email and/or collaboration rather than more complex application, but it shows that enterprise IT managers are savvy about cloud computing, or at least think they’re savvy in using the term.

The perceived lack of standards comes from the VMware vs. The World competition, with the separate open-source stacks competition within that. I don’t see this as an impediment, as there’s been a lack of standards – aka competing platforms – in this industry since its inception. The ostensible concern is a concern about vendor lock-in, and the lack of interoperability among the cloud stacks.

Pro tip: said interoperability will never happen, and concern about this is just a stalling tactic. Cloud computing is still new and most enterprise shops will proceed cautiously, if not show outright defiance against it.

The cloudwashing issue doesn’t bother me as much as it does some people, although I know I would be terribly annoyed by it if I worked for a company that smashes into Oracle and other big-iron vendors every day. I will be proven wrong on this if, ultimately, innovation is killed off by old wine in new bottles.

I also saw a tweet the other day by someone who questioned how many cloud analysts/pundits/etc. have fired up cloud instances on their own. I have.

I’m involved in a few projects in which cloud is present, one as a simple thin-client user, one instance (so to speak) of PaaS, and two others where we’re working to stage our stuff via IaaS. It’s damned difficult work, but something that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. I like renting pieces of cyberspace rather than scrounging for the capital to buy it.

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6Connect Launches Cloud-Based Network Automation Suite for Next-Gen IP Networks

6connect, Inc. today announced at Interop in New York City, their new automated, cloud control suite architected from the ground-up for a new era of IPv6 migration, rampant device and IP address proliferation, and widespread adoption of virtualization and cloud computing.

Delivered locally or through the cloud, the 6connect ProVision™ Suite offers Service Providers and Enterprises a future-ready, unified SaaS platform for provisioning and managing networks in today’s integrated IPv4 and IPv6 world. ProVision provides dramatic time and cost efficiencies over old spreadsheet-dependent and costly appliance solutions for IPAM, DNS, DHCP and asset management. The Service Provider Edition also incorporates peering management and SWIP automation.

“With the number of connected devices and virtual machines growing exponentially and regional internet registries for Europe and Asia already out of IPv4 space, network architectures are undergoing fundamental change,” said Bill Bien, CEO of 6connect.  “Legacy DDI and automation solutions are no longer efficient. We’ve designed ProVision as a disruptive, next-generation platform for automated management control of complex IP address zones, virtual machines, mobile devices, and all types of corporate assets.”

The ProVision Suite comes with RESTful APIs that integrate through connector apps with existing business software, such as CRM, ERP and BPM.  It provides easy access to portals and templates that provide better control and faster access to fully automated tools.

6connect’s cloud-based provisioning software is already used by leading service providers and enterprises around the world. With the launch of ProVision, 6connect now provides a single, integrated and vendor neutral platform for network discovery, planning, provisioning and management of IP resources and devices.

“6connect has helped us become much more efficient,” said Alex Latzko, Senior Architect, Lightower Fiber Networks. “We no longer use multiple incompatible systems, it’s unified now.”

With the Internet running out of IPv4 space, service providers and enterprise network operators need to manage the remaining inventory more closely than ever before, while they migrate to IPv6. 6connect makes managing these changes easy, scalable, and secure. With ProVision Suite, RIR (regional internet registry) and LIR (local internet registry) resource allocations are also integrated with the platform.


Making the Move to the Cloud: Best Practices and Advice

CIOs face bigger IT challenges today than they did just 5 years ago as tightening regulations and shrinking budgets up the ante. Compounding the pressure, data is exploding in size and diversity, business is more mobile, and social media is pervasive. For these reasons, some organizations are opting for cloud computing to reduce risk, streamline information management, and rein in costs.
Answering the questions on every CIO’s mind, “Best Practices for Cloud-Based Information Governance” explores the latest ideas on evaluating cloud deployment: public or private clouds, data location and privacy, data ownership and access, and cloud technology ownership, to name a few.

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Utilizing Cloud to Stay Focused on What Matters

Both small startups and large organizations have the same choice to make: focus on what is important or spend time toiling with the ancillary details. No matter the size of your team, you still have to solve the same problems: code, testing, infrastructure, monitoring, availability and performance. But the time has never been better than now to let someone else solve those problems while you focus on what’s most important to your business, your customers.
More and more companies are embracing SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions for their toolchains; they are cloudifying their business. The quality and availability of these solutions has come to a point where you can rely on them within your production systems, allowing you to keep your internal resources focused on your business.

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MaaS – The Solution to Design, Map, Integrate and Publish Open Data

Open Data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at the most, to the requirement for attributes and sharealikes (Open Software Service Definition – OSSD). As a consequence, Open Data should create value and might have a positive impact in many different areas such as government (tax money expenditure), health (medical research, hospital acceptance by pathology), quality of life (air breathed in our city, pollution) or might influence public decisions like investments, public economy and expenditure. We are talking about services, so open data are services needed to connect the community with the public bodies. However, the required open data should be part of a design and then integrated, mapped, updated and published in a form, which is easy to use. MaaS is the Open Data driver and enables Open Data portability into the Cloud.

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StreetCred: Big Data Finds Fugitives

Traffic citations are critical for funding police departments, courts, and municipalities. Unpaid citations or missed court appearances result in warrants and additional fees, but finding or arresting fugitives and collecting unpaid fines is difficult as well as time and manpower intensive. As a result, the process often stops there. In Texas alone, there is almost $1 billion in outstanding warrants, with $300 million in Houston and $100 million in Dallas.
StreetCred Software is a Big Data solution designed by two Texas police officers, one a technology industry veteran who later joined the force to cut down on that backlog by collecting and analyzing all available information to optimize and manage the entire warrant lifecycle. When tested over a year within a Texas police department, StreetCred helped warrant officers increase their successful contacts by more than threefold while decreasing costs per contact by nearly three quarters.

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OpenNebula – the Open Source Management Platform for Enterprise Clouds

Compared with other open source cloud management platforms, OpenNebula comes with all the ingredients needed to build and manage Enterprise Clouds and support production workloads.
Single Install and Upgrade Process: OpenNebula comprises all key functionalities for enterprise cloud computing, storage and networking in a single install, and ensures its long term stability and performance through a single integrated patching and upgrade process.
Stable and Proven: OpenNebula is rigorously tested through an internal quality assurance process and by a large community with scalability, reliability and performance tested on many massive scalable production deployments.

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