IT organizations that want to build private cloud services face tremendous challenges. The technologies are immature, but they are the easiest hurdle. Processes and funding models must change. Organizational cultures need to be rewritten, even though politics stand in the way. Service orientation requires tight alignment with the business. Measuring success means measuring business results.
How should leadership drive cultural, political and organizational change in IT to deliver private cloud services?
How should operational processes change to support a private cloud service?
How should IT use technologies to build a private cloud service?
Archivo mensual: noviembre 2012
Cloud and big data – a fusion of two innovative IT trends
As market awareness and adoption increases, so customer confidence and clarity is growing and companies are better able to evaluate the benefits and challenges that big data presents their individual organisations.
It’s not surprising to see that big data is the top IT spending priority in Gartner’s recent global forecast. These figures correlate with Cisco’s recent CloudWatch survey, which found that Big Data will be an important aspect of IT strategy and is set to increase in importance over the next 12 months.
Big data priorities
Two priorities emerge ahead of others – accessing data in real time and accessing data from multiple devices. It is no exaggeration to say that organisations of all shapes and sizes are experiencing a data explosion and that the IT department is in the eye of this data storm. Real time access to data is not only seen as a critical success …
Cloud Computing: GreenButton Uses Multiple Clouds for Big Compute
The inspiration for GreenButton was the devilishly complicated battle scene in the 2003 movie “The Lord of the Rings” that its founder Scott Houston pulled together in two weeks for director Peter Jackson against all odds. It was accomplished in record time with thousands of servers and little sleep.
Fade to today. The GreenButton start-up claims its newfangled Cloud Fabric is the first server solution to let users – both the enterprise and service providers – deploy, manage and run compute-intensive applications in either private or public clouds or, for that matter, in multiple multi-tenant clouds.
It’s talking about what it calls “Big Compute,” basically deploying as much supplementary processing power as the cloud can provide. Thousands of cores spun up in 20-30 minutes at a fraction of the usual cost.
Cloud Computing: GreenButton Uses Multiple Clouds for Big Compute
The inspiration for GreenButton was the devilishly complicated battle scene in the 2003 movie “The Lord of the Rings” that its founder Scott Houston pulled together in two weeks for director Peter Jackson against all odds. It was accomplished in record time with thousands of servers and little sleep.
Fade to today. The GreenButton start-up claims its newfangled Cloud Fabric is the first server solution to let users – both the enterprise and service providers – deploy, manage and run compute-intensive applications in either private or public clouds or, for that matter, in multiple multi-tenant clouds.
It’s talking about what it calls “Big Compute,” basically deploying as much supplementary processing power as the cloud can provide. Thousands of cores spun up in 20-30 minutes at a fraction of the usual cost.
Get Past the Confusion Surrounding Hybrid Cloud Computing
In the already overhyped cloud computing market, hybrid cloud computing is emerging as the next big thing. To get past the hype, IT leaders should assess how hybrid cloud computing fits into their road maps, and determine which of its many forms makes sense (and which don’t) for their enterprises.
AWS Offers Windows Server 2012
In an exercise in vendor neutrality – well, kinda – it’s not exactly altruistic – Amazon Web Services is now offering a bunch of pre-built virtual instances of the Windows Server 2012 operating system, the server version of Windows 8, so Windows users can hew to Microsoft’s upgrade roadmap and still adopt Amazon’s cloud all at the same time.
The addition, which includes SQL Server, was announced this week by Amazon’s Windows team leader Tom Rizzo, a recent refugee from Redmond.
Amazon already supports Windows Server 2003 R2, 2008 and 2008 R2 but Server 2012 can be used with Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk automatic application provisioning and deployment service as well as EC2.
Rackspace Launches UK Startup Programme to Fuel New British Businesses
Rackspace the open cloud company, announced plans to launch its Rackspace Startup Programme in 2013 to provide cloud computing resources to new businesses driving growth in the UK economy. With a global track record of partnering with premiere startup accelerators and incubators in the USA and Australia, the firm now broadens its focus to include the EMEA region aiming to help power thousands of UK startups to success.
“Since launching in the US two years ago, we’ve helped over 850 startups through the programme. We’ve also worked with over 100 programme partners, including some of the top accelerators, universities, co-working spaces and VCs, and we are thrilled to launch the UK startup programme,” said Taylor Rhodes, Managing Director, International at Rackspace.
Given the cloud model’s inherent flexibility and elasticity, the fact that it requires minimal capital expenditure up front, and its unmatched ability to scale, it’s an essential differentiator for many fast growth businesses. In 2009, nearly 250,000 VAT registered businesses started in the UK*. This highlights the vast number of startups that could potentially benefit from cloud services, if they aren’t already.
Starting as a ten man entrepreneurial venture itself back in 1998, Rackspace recognises the need to provide fledgling businesses harbouring great potential the enabling technologies for growth and commercial success. The Rackspace Startup Programme therefore exists to provide low cost cloud hosting and support services to startup incubators who have identified cloud computing as a more efficient route to IT service delivery.
As a company that likes to refer to information technology as the “fifth business utility”, Rackspace views cloud computing as a means of democratising access to powerful IT resources at every tier of the business spectrum. As such, the Rackspace Startup Programme has been engineered from the outset to give incubators an unrivalled opportunity to drive startup firms towards development, expansion and commercial success.
“Cloud computing services are built around the principles of not only flexibility and scalability, but automation and self-service too as we serve customers’ needs from our local datacentres with additional service layers all backed up by our world-renowned Fanatical Support,” said Rhodes. “Bringing the power of our continuously available cloud services to the dynamic world of startup business is, to be quite honest, really exciting. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
Rackspace unveiled its Startup Programme at a ‘Boost Your Start-Up’ networking event held in the heart of London’s Tech City on 20th November 2012. The event featured a panel discussion with some of the most prominent thought leaders in this space, moderated by Robert Scoble, the world’s pre-eminent blogger and evangelist on technology and start-ups. Moving forwards, Rackspace expects to work with high profile accelerators including DreamStake and Springboard, to ensure that businesses across the UK have access to its Startup Programme.
“With a multiplicity of extremely sensitive and highly fluid business factors to juggle, startups need an IT backbone built around maximum levels of elasticity, control and automation. We welcome Rackspace’s commitment to providing this through their cloud offering. The scalability in a pay-as-you-go model is essential for fast-growing businesses and will be a key business enabler for startups now and in the future,” said Sean Kane, Co-Founder, Springboard
Rackspace is also offering one start-up team the chance to win a trip to San Antonio, Texas, plus a 1-on-1 mentoring session with founder and Chairman, Graham Weston, while they’re there. Entrants must submit a pitch video for a start-up idea centred around cloud computing by December 14th for a chance to win. The winners will also receive £3,000.
Watch for Pitfalls from On-Premise Software
In a tough economic climate everyone is looking for ways to cut costs without sacrificing performance. More and more small and mid-size businesses are realizing the benefits of business management software. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and other business management tools are prohibitively expensive to develop in-house and there’s simply no need when you can find great solutions in the marketplace; however, buying a product straight off-the-shelf can prove to be a false economy.
Your first headache when implementing any new software or service is going to be integration. Do you have a dedicated IT department with time to roll out new software? Many packages have a steep learning curve and installation can be more problematic than expected. There will also be ongoing overhead involved in keeping the software up to date.
Cloud Service Deal Stats Show Rapid Growth, Tripling Since 2010
Our friends at Cloudreach asked today if we had seen the Information Services Group’s recent report that said global IT services deals with a Cloud computing element have tripled since 2010 The report, which looks at more than 24,000 contract records, shows the number of IT deals featuring Cloud have doubled from nine per cent in 2010 to 27 per cent in 2012.It also suggests that private Cloud does not fully realise Cloud’s promise, whereas public Cloud offers great economies of scale.
Pontus Noren, director and co-founder of Cloudreach, a Google Apps and Amazon Web Services reseller, also commented, “This report demonstrates how Cloud computing is living up to the hype – it is one of the only areas in IT that is rapidly growing. Cloud’s continual growth can only be good for the global economy because it allows them to concentrate on core business activities, leaving behind traditional IT set-ups that involve purchasing and managing equipment, which can prove expensive and time consuming.
“I see future growth being unstoppable for Cloud computing. I have heard suggestions that in five years time, 50 per cent of emails will be cloud-based, whereas today that figure is just two per cent. A twenty five fold increase in five years is just explosive.
“It is also encouraging to see that public Cloud is preferred over private, as it offers a much more scalable and flexible solution.Largely unlimited data storage and universal access makes public Cloud an ideal option for many businesses, such as those with offices at more than one location, a mobile workforce, limited IT resources or rapidly evolving IT requirements. Firms can increase or decrease capacity as they need, and only pay for what they use.”
UK Survey: Public Cloud Not Considered Safe Enough by 87 Per Cent of Businesses
City Lifeline, the central London colocation data centre, has found that private Cloud is the more popular choice for businesses, with 63 per cent choosing private over public. Although the results, which come from an on-stand survey carried out at this year’s IP Expo, also demonstrated a growing understanding of Cloud in general (only 4 per cent of businesses claimed not to understand it), 87 per cent felt that private was safer than public.
Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline said, “With technology, security risks should always be considered, but they do not need to become obstacles. Our aim at this year’s IP Expo was to increase understanding of Cloud among businesses, so they can make the most of all it affords. Both public and private Cloud have merits, but security should not be a concern with either if you are working with a reputable provider”.
Although acceptance of the Cloud as a concept continues to increase, the Federal Cloud Computing Survey recently found that security was one of the top challenges facing businesses when they consider the Cloud. However, City Lifeline found that privacy and security issues surrounding the Cloud in general are quickly becoming a thing of the past, with only 37 per cent of respondents letting this stand in their way. 41 per cent of businesses believe there are no obstacles at all, so why is there such a discrepancy around public over private?
