IBM on Monday launched a new cloud marketplace that brings together IBM’s vast portfolio of cloud capabilities and new third-party services in a way that delivers a simple and easy experience for three key user groups within the enterprise – developers, IT managers and business leaders to learn, try, and buy software and services from IBM and its global partner ecosystem.
According to Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Software & Cloud Solutions, “IBM Cloud marketplace puts Big Data and Analytics, mobile, social, commerce, integration – the full power of IBM-as-a-Service and our ecosystem – at our clients’ fingertips to help them quickly deliver innovative services to their constituents.”

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In today’s application economy, enterprise organizations realize that it’s their applications that are the heart and soul of their business. If their application users have a bad experience, their revenue and reputation are at stake.
As public, private and hybrid cloud are becoming mainstream and applications are transitioning to these complex environments, IT has to effectively manage applications running on mobile devices to legacy mainframes and traditional multi-tier application servers and everywhere in the middle. Operational complexity due to running applications in the diverse and distributed environment makes it difficult for IT to have complete control over the environment. At the same time, tolerance for application downtime is decreasing, the cost of service slowdowns and interruptions is increasing, and the resources dedicated to manage the entire, complex, heterogeneous environment are flat at best if not shrinking. You don’t need a crystal ball to see that this is a recipe for disaster.

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A US judge has ruled that US-based providers must hand over customer emails even if they are stored in a location overseas.

The decision comes amidst a challenge from Microsoft with regard to an Ireland-based customer, claiming that as the US government does not have jurisdiction overseas the company should not be forced to disclose user data.

Yet Judge James C. Francis has dismissed this claim, further jeopardising the data security of US cloud providers.

Judge Francis explained the issue at stake. “Federal courts are without authority to issue warrants for the search and seizure of property outside the territorial limits of the United States,” he noted. “Therefore, Microsoft concludes, to the extent that the warrant here requires acquisition of information from Dublin, it is unauthorised and must be quashed.

He continued: “That analysis, while not inconsistent with the statutory language, is undermined by the structure of the SCA (Stored …

IBM on Monday launched a new cloud marketplace that brings together IBM’s vast portfolio of cloud capabilities and new third-party services in a way that delivers a simple and easy experience for three key user groups within the enterprise – developers, IT managers and business leaders to learn, try, and buy software and services from IBM and its global partner ecosystem.
According to Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Software & Cloud Solutions, “IBM Cloud marketplace puts Big Data and Analytics, mobile, social, commerce, integration – the full power of IBM-as-a-Service and our ecosystem – at our clients’ fingertips to help them quickly deliver innovative services to their constituents.”

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SYS-CON Events announced today that the International Association of Privacy Professionals will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is the largest and most comprehensive global information privacy community and resource, helping practitioners develop and advance their careers and organizations manage and protect their data. A non-for-profit association, the IAPP helps define, support and improve the privacy profession globally.

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Forgotten in the outcry over the NSA snooping on people’s online activities is that our favorite websites and online marketers do the same thing every day. However, profiling, tracking and third-party leaks will soon be tools of the past. Re2You is re-imagining how we use the Internet. This new cloud OS creates a dynamic, drag-and-drop interface for an entirely new and secure, privacy respecting Web experience—as well as cookie free new marketing opportunities.
A very simple idea actually, but broadly effecting every side of internet use, privacy, marketing, interface, the whole nine yards: Re2You’s software creates an abstraction layer that not only lets users drag and drop content from Web applications and online services, but also provides a wealth of secure data that is only made available with the user’s permission.

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My grandfather has a bumper sticker on his pickup truck that says “He who dies with the most toys, wins.” Since my world revolves more around API Management than collecting die-cast models of John Deere tractors, I have my own version of the saying – “He who has the most context wins.” Context has always been an important part of managing data or applications, but the proliferation of enterprise B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-consumer) mobile apps has significantly increased the need for context-based policy.

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My grandfather has a bumper sticker on his pickup truck that says “He who dies with the most toys, wins.” Since my world revolves more around API Management than collecting die-cast models of John Deere tractors, I have my own version of the saying – “He who has the most context wins.” Context has always been an important part of managing data or applications, but the proliferation of enterprise B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-consumer) mobile apps has significantly increased the need for context-based policy.

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Sandro Mazziotta, Senior Director of Product Management at Paris-based eNovance, attended the recent Red Hat Summit in San Francisco and answered a few of our questions about what’s going on with the company and with OpenStack.

Here’s the second part of our interview with him. The first part is also available at Cloud Computing Journal.

Roger: You mentioned there’ a fast-moving and growing market opportunity for mobile
on OpenStack, challenged by getting the right data in real-time to mobile
devices. What specific opportunities have you seen, and can you provide an
example of a project with the challenge of accessing the right data in
real time?

Sandro: The growth in mobile on OpenStack is being fueled by several major
industry trends such as the emergence of smartphones and smart devices
like tablets, the improved quality and performance of radio networks, the
emergence of new mobile use cases like gaming, Internet of Things and
social media and lastly, the maturity of cloud computing technology as a
suitable platform for business critical applications.

On this last point, in particular, what we’ve seen recently in the marketplace is OpenStack
differentiating itself as the platform of choice for network operators to
deploy Network Function Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure.

In fact, 9 out of 10 operators have selected OpenStack as the target
technology for deploying NFV. The ratio is so high because open source is
key for their overall strategy and ability to retain control of their
networks. No operators would leave the destiny of their private cloud
infrastructure it if was not based on open source software.

Roger: And your company?

Sandro: At eNovance, we’re involved in several projects helping to launch large
scale OpenStack deployments that enable various NFV use cases. All of
these cases are quite complex and always require fine tuning of the
OpenStack code on a continuous basis.

As an example, when a customer
requires a particular feature that is not yet available in OpenStack, we
contribute it first upstream so that it will be supported by all
distribution vendors in the coming release. This is the way OpenStack was
envisioned to be ­ continuously integrated, continuously deployed.

Roger: You mention that OpenStack is the only open-source cloud management
stack to deploy Big Data apps in the cloud. What makes it so? What are its
advantages compared to other open-source platforms, and compared to some
of the proprietary ways of going about this?

Sandro: Big Datas is a unique use case because it’s so costly to move data, and
you have to decide early to deploy in a public or private environment.
This is a difficult decision, notably for enterprises when they build new
applications or transform legacy applications.

Openstack is the only open source platform that gives you the freedom to
1) either rely on public service provider or 2) to deploy on premise in a
private cloud. Mobile and Big Data applications are by design better
suited to be developed in a cloud architecture to benefit notably from
elasticity, and distribution features offered by cloud model.

Roger: Why do you think this is true?

Sandro: For efficiency purpose, these applications need to store and retrieve data
where the application is deployed. Until now, developers of these mobile
applications were lacking easy to use data services in OpenStack. However,
with the two latest release ­ Havana and Icehouse ­ and most notably with
the introduction of Trove (SQL and NoSQL Database as a Service) and
Sahara, formally known as Savanna, a hadoop implementation in Openstack,
the OpenStack community is quickly starting to address these challenges.

While these new data services are not specific to Openstack and are
available for all cloud computing platforms (AWS, Google, Azure, etc.),
Openstack is the only open source alternative on the market today, and we
believe the most viable framework to meet their current and future needs.

read more

Sandro Mazziotta, Senior Director of Product Management at Paris-based eNovance, attended the recent Red Hat Summit in San Francisco and answered a few of our questions about what’s going on with the company and with OpenStack.

Here’s the second part of our interview with him. The first part is also available at Cloud Computing Journal.

Roger: You mentioned there’ a fast-moving and growing market opportunity for mobile
on OpenStack, challenged by getting the right data in real-time to mobile
devices. What specific opportunities have you seen, and can you provide an
example of a project with the challenge of accessing the right data in
real time?

Sandro: The growth in mobile on OpenStack is being fueled by several major
industry trends such as the emergence of smartphones and smart devices
like tablets, the improved quality and performance of radio networks, the
emergence of new mobile use cases like gaming, Internet of Things and
social media and lastly, the maturity of cloud computing technology as a
suitable platform for business critical applications.

On this last point, in particular, what we’ve seen recently in the marketplace is OpenStack
differentiating itself as the platform of choice for network operators to
deploy Network Function Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure.

In fact, 9 out of 10 operators have selected OpenStack as the target
technology for deploying NFV. The ratio is so high because open source is
key for their overall strategy and ability to retain control of their
networks. No operators would leave the destiny of their private cloud
infrastructure it if was not based on open source software.

Roger: And your company?

Sandro: At eNovance, we’re involved in several projects helping to launch large
scale OpenStack deployments that enable various NFV use cases. All of
these cases are quite complex and always require fine tuning of the
OpenStack code on a continuous basis.

As an example, when a customer
requires a particular feature that is not yet available in OpenStack, we
contribute it first upstream so that it will be supported by all
distribution vendors in the coming release. This is the way OpenStack was
envisioned to be ­ continuously integrated, continuously deployed.

Roger: You mention that OpenStack is the only open-source cloud management
stack to deploy Big Data apps in the cloud. What makes it so? What are its
advantages compared to other open-source platforms, and compared to some
of the proprietary ways of going about this?

Sandro: Big Datas is a unique use case because it’s so costly to move data, and
you have to decide early to deploy in a public or private environment.
This is a difficult decision, notably for enterprises when they build new
applications or transform legacy applications.

Openstack is the only open source platform that gives you the freedom to
1) either rely on public service provider or 2) to deploy on premise in a
private cloud. Mobile and Big Data applications are by design better
suited to be developed in a cloud architecture to benefit notably from
elasticity, and distribution features offered by cloud model.

Roger: Why do you think this is true?

Sandro: For efficiency purpose, these applications need to store and retrieve data
where the application is deployed. Until now, developers of these mobile
applications were lacking easy to use data services in OpenStack. However,
with the two latest release ­ Havana and Icehouse ­ and most notably with
the introduction of Trove (SQL and NoSQL Database as a Service) and
Sahara, formally known as Savanna, a hadoop implementation in Openstack,
the OpenStack community is quickly starting to address these challenges.

While these new data services are not specific to Openstack and are
available for all cloud computing platforms (AWS, Google, Azure, etc.),
Openstack is the only open source alternative on the market today, and we
believe the most viable framework to meet their current and future needs.

read more