Announcing @SOASoftwareInc to Exhibit at @CloudExpo [#Cloud #API]

SYS-CON Events announced today that SOA Software, an API management leader, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
SOA Software is a leading provider of API Management and SOA Governance products that equip business to deliver APIs and SOA together to drive their company to meet its business strategy quickly and effectively. SOA Software’s technology helps businesses to accelerate their digital channels with APIs, drive partner adoption, monetize their assets, and achieve agility and operational excellence across their applications and datacenters. Some of the world’s largest companies including Bank of America, Pfizer, and Verizon use SOA Software products. SOA Software is also recognized as a “Leader” by Gartner in Application Services Governance MQ and as a leader by other analyst firms.

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Why Wearables Need More Heart | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]

The hype around the wearable tech industry has steered many consumers straight to Amazon in search of a fitness gadget that will tell them how healthy or unhealthy they act on a regular basis. Some feel they can’t become healthier unless they are tracking their progress every step of the way. But as we begin to see through the hype, the wearable tech industry seems to be way behind in one important area – actually making us healthier.
The one thing that all fitness trackers have in common is statistics. Tracking steps, calories, sleep patterns, and everything in between, wearable tech devices claim to paint a better picture of a consumer’s health by zoning in on a few key metrics. While these statistics do provide helpful information about how much a person moves and how many calories are burned, they provide little information regarding actual physical health improvement.

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Enterprise Cloud Migration By @Verizon | @CloudExpo [#Cloud #BigData]

Once the decision has been made to move part or all of a workload to the cloud, a methodology for selecting that workload needs to be established. How do you move to the cloud? What does the discovery, assessment and planning look like? What workloads make sense? Which cloud model makes sense for each workload? What are the considerations for how to select the right cloud model? And how does that fit in with the overall IT tranformation?
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, John Hatem, head of Verizon’s Cloud Strategy Professional Services group, will explore five ways to move to the cloud.

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AppZero Partners with SerenITaaS

AppZero, provider of the automated tool to “up-level” server applications to a new operating system or the cloud, has announced that Ontario-based SerenITaaS has joined the AppZero Partner Program as a Gold Partner. A cloud integration leader with offices in Sydney, Australia, as well as Markham, Ontario, SerenITaaS specializes in integrating cloud technology into existing IT infrastructure. The company is a cloud partner with Microsoft focusing on Office 365 implementations and migrations.

With Windows Server 2003 end of life is approaching, AppZero and SerenITaaS are working together to help customers address the technical challenges of migrating applications to a newer operating system (2008, 2012 or 2012 /R2) or to the cloud. AppZero makes the move to and from the cloud fast and flexible, extracting and moving server applications in minutes so they can run natively on any version of the operating system, machine or cloud, including managed clouds.

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Announcing @IBM and Tencent Cloud Partner [#Cloud]

IBM and Tencent Cloud signed a business cooperation memorandum to collaborate on providing public cloud with Software-as-a-Service solutions for industries. Both parties agreed to focus on emerging small and medium enterprises in the smarter cities and smarter healthcare industries as well as other fields. This will enable these industries to utilize mobile, cloud computing and big data tools to transform internal processes and operations, thus achieving cloud transformation in the era of mobility. As part of this milestone collaboration, Tencent Cloud and IBM will jointly promote industry innovation and gain from each company’s resources and global capacity to benefit enterprise customers.
Tencent Holdings Limited is a provider of comprehensive Internet services in China. Tencent Cloud is a strategic platform of Tencent with profound acumen in cloud computing based on its powerful infrastructure as well as many years’ experience in the massive Internet services business. Tencent cloud provides enterprises and developers access to a complete cloud solution with cloud service, cloud data and cloud operations.

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Meet @SimpleECM November 4-6 at @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

SimpleECM is the only platform to offer a powerful combination of enterprise content management (ECM) services, capture solutions, and third-party business services providing simplified integrations and workflow development for solution providers. SimpleECM is opening the market to businesses of all sizes by reinventing the delivery of ECM services. Our APIs make the development of ECM services simple with the use of familiar technologies for a frictionless integration directly into web applications. The simple integration framework lets customers select and easily customize only the services they need, to deliver solutions quickly and easily. Our flexible usage-based pricing model means that you only pay for the services that you use.

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Announcing @CloudExpo “Power Panel” By @GigaomResearch [#Cloud #IoT]

The major cloud platforms defy a simple, side-by-side analysis. Each of the major IaaS public-cloud platforms offers their own unique strengths and functionality. Options for on-site private cloud are diverse as well, and must be designed and deployed while taking existing legacy architecture and infrastructure into account. Then the reality is that most enterprises are embarking on a hybrid cloud strategy and programs.
In this Power Panel at 15th Cloud Expo, moderated by Ashar Baig, Research Director, Cloud, at Gigaom Research, panelists will discuss how enterprises should develop their processes for choosing the cloud option that truly fits what they need.

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London police using Big Data to tackle small crime

Small criminals are predictable, at least that’s what London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) are hoping. New software, developed by Accenture, pulls large amounts of data in-use by the police service and puts it through an advanced analytics engine to predict when criminals are likely to strike.

By analysing five years’ worth of data, it is hoped that an accurate prediction of when / if a criminal will re-offend can be made. The data was gathered over a four year period of monitoring gang members across 32 boroughs, and was subsequently compared to criminal acts conducted in the fifth year to see whether the software was accurate.

The engine itself looks at aspects of an individual’s record, including; geography, past offenses, and associations. The advanced software will even keep an eye on social media for inflammatory comments such as taunts of other gang members, or the organising of a crime itself.

Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch is requesting more information to be made public.

Accenture highlights the fact that police forces up and down the country are seeing funding cuts, and therefore experiencing problems with limited resources. The ability to effectively allocate such precious resources is important, and big data analysis helps to save on cost whilst ensuring the vital public service is unaffected.

In terms of public reception, this could be seen as invasive after Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations about mass surveillance. The public is more likely to be acceptant if the potential benefits are clear, but privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch is requesting more information to be made public about the initiative.

Although this is said to be the first time Accenture’s analytics have been used in the UK, the firm’s software has been used for similar reasons in Spain, and in Singapore where the company tested software which monitors the video feeds of crowds, traffic, and other events to alert the authorities to potential risks.

“It is clear that harnessing and analysing vast data sets may simplify the work of the police,” said European human rights group Statewatch earlier this year

“However, this in itself is not a justification for their use. There are all sorts of powers that could be given to law enforcement agencies, but which are not, due to the need to protect individual rights and the rule of law – effectiveness should never be the only yardstick by which law enforcement powers are assessed.

“The ends of crime detection, prevention and reduction cannot in themselves justify the means of indiscriminate data-gathering and processing.”

Should police be using data analytics to predict future offences? Let us know in the comments.

IBM inks partnership deal with Tencent for Chinese cloud opportunities

Picture credit: iStockPhoto

It’s official: IBM is going partnership mad. A couple of months after announcing a huge mobility collaboration with Apple, and only a week after inking a deal with Twitter for enterprise social analytics, Big Blue has announced a deal with Chinese Internet provider Tencent for cloud software.

The goal is to enable Chinese industries to provide public cloud with software as a service (SaaS), to utilise mobile, cloud computing and big data tools. It also gives IBM an interesting business angle in China.

“The industry dimension makes this especially appealing for businesses,” said Nancy Thomas, managing partner with IBM business consulting services in China. “IBM and Tencent’s shared vision is not only to bring the scale and cost benefits of cloud computing to enterprises in China, but to add differentiating value by serving the particular needs of specific industries.

“That is the key to unlocking the transformative power of cloud computing.”

China remains a very interesting market for cloud vendors to penetrate. CenturyLink, best known as a telco but weighing its options in the cloud space, offers a managed hosting facility in China, launched last month.

Similar to IBM CenturyLink is partnering up, this time going with Neusoft. Amazon Web Services launched a Chinese region in December last year, patterning with various local providers including ChinaNetCenter and SINNET.

A report released last year on the state of cloud computing in China found that “systematic” weaknesses in Chinese infrastructure were key to the region not fulfilling its potential as a cloud IT power. Amazon, CenturyLink and IBM among others have started partnering up and moving over – which can only be good news for Chinese IT.

Salesforce opens first UK data centre, more European expansion planned

Picture credit: Salesforce

It was first announced at the Salesforce1 World Tour back in May, but now Salesforce has finally launched its first UK data centre, with France and Germany on the hit list for the future.

“It sends a signal to the market about the seriousness and the strategic nature of this market to us,” commented Salesforce chief operating officer George Hu at the time. The announcement also sends out a signal about Salesforce’s strategy; the UK data centre will be fully powered by renewable energy, as well as the proposed French and German centres, supporting the firm’s sustainability goals.

“The opening of Salesforce’s first European data centre underscores our commitment to customers and partners in the UK,” said Andrew Lawson, Salesforce SVP for UK and Ireland.

“The new data centre will support the unprecedented growth we’ve seen in the region and further accelerates the adoption of cloud, social and mobile technologies, empowering UK companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way.”

The big cloud vendors are moving towards European expansion. It’s the same path being taken by IBM. Back in July Big Blue announced a UK data centre from SoftLayer, with France and Germany also in the firm’s sights. Amazon Web Services also announced a new region in Germany last week.

Salesforce is going one step further to woo UK based customers, opening up an entire London base at the Heron Tower, near Liverpool Street.

The cloudy firm had aimed to call it the Salesforce Tower, but the proposal was nixed for now by the City of London Corporation. As Salesforce only rents six of the Tower’s 46 floors, opponents argue this isn’t a sufficient investment to warrant a whole name change.