SAP is delivering break-through innovation combined with fantastic user experience powered by the market-leading in-memory technology, SAP HANA.
In his General Session at 15th Cloud Expo, Thorsten Leiduck, VP ISVs & Digital Commerce, SAP, discussed how SAP and partners provide cloud and hybrid cloud solutions as well as real-time Big Data offerings that help companies of all sizes and industries run better. SAP launched an application challenge to award the most innovative SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud platforms applications. Out of many contenders, the best applications have been selected by members of the SAP Community Network via crowd-voting. At this exciting session SAP recognized the winners and finalists for their great accomplishment and showed the winning applications live on stage.
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Integrate Service Virtualization, API Testing By @Parasoft | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Enable continuous testing and expand test coverage and traceability by integrating API testing, service virtualization, and test environment management.
We’re excited to announce Parasoft’s latest release: a consolidated platform uniting API testing, service virtualization, and test environment management. The new release is designed to help organizations “shift left” the testing effort and accelerate the SDLC to meet the growing time-to-market pressure for software applications.
The ability to rapidly develop and continuously execute end-to-end tests-even in complex or frequently-evolving environments-is essential to accelerating application delivery while minimizing business risks. That’s why Parasoft allows users to create a simulated test environment in less than a minute, then immediately start defining and executing tests against the appropriate test environment configurations.
An ‘Internet of Things’ Case Study By @YFain | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
From a software development perspective IoT is about programming “things,” about connecting them with each other or integrating them with existing applications.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Yakov Fain, co-founder of Farata Systems and SuranceBay, will show you how small IoT-enabled devices from multiple manufacturers can be integrated into the workflow of an enterprise application. This is a practical demo of building a framework and components in HTML/Java/Mobile technologies to serve as a platform that can integrate new devices as they become available on the market.
Collaborate in the Cloud | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Employee collaboration and access to communication tools are essential for workplace productivity. Organizations are increasing their use of Microsoft Office 365, a subscription-based service that provides hosted versions of familiar Microsoft applications. Most businesses choose Exchange Online as the first app in Office 365 they adopt.
IT’s Third Platform By @PlexxiInc [#SDN #BigData]
With the blurring of technology lines, the rise of competitive companies, and a shift in buying models all before us, it would appear we are at the cusp of ushering in the next era in IT—the Third Platform Era. But as with the other transitions, it is not the technology or the vendors that trigger a change in buying patterns. There must be fundamental shifts in buying behavior driven by business objectives.
The IT industry at large is in the midst of a massive rewrite of key business applications in response to two technology trends: the proliferation of data (read: Big Data) and the need for additional performance and scale. In many regards, the first begets the second. As data becomes more available—via traditional datacenters, and both public and private cloud environments—applications look to use that data, which means the applications themselves have to go through an evolution to account for the scale and performance required.
25% vSOM Discount Ends December 31st!
Did you know VMware’s offering a 25% vSOM discount? That’s right, VMware has been providing a 25% discount to upgrade to vSOM from naked vSphere since Labor Day weekend. The standard upgrade price is $825 MSRP, but the promo price drops it down to $620 MSRP. That’s over a $200 savings per CPU. There are some serious savings to be had here so I wanted to quickly bring you up to speed so you could assess the solution and see if it makes sense for your organization.
25% vSOM discount ENDS ON DECEMBER 31!
So what is vSOM? It’s a bundle of vSphere and vRealize Operations (formally known as vCOPS). When reviewing monitoring and management toolsets with a broad stroke, it’s easy to say they’re nice to have but not absolutely necessary. Yet if you dive deeper, there are many features and functions that make the investment worthwhile in the long-term growth and planning of your virtualization environment.
vRealize Operations enables IT to not just see immediate issues, but also potential future problems which can have a dramatic impact on reducing unplanned outages. With Predictive Analytics and Smart Alerts, it proactively identifies and remedies system issues, while dynamic thresholds automatically adapt to environments to provide fewer and more specific alerts resulting in a 30 percent DECREASE in time to diagnose and resolve performance issues. That’s three hours of your day you get back allowing you to work on improving and emerging your environment rather than troubleshooting constant alert noises and notifications.
The old saying, it’s better to be safe than sorry, speaks volumes in a virtual environment and especially in over-provisioning. Research has shown that 9 out of 10 virtual machines are over-provisioned. While this may not seem like a bad thing on the surface, it leads to diminishing efficiency and optimization within the virtual infrastructure and, more importantly, increased infrastructure costs. Having the ability to manage your VMs more closely and effectively with vRealize Operations (vCOPS), you can finely tune each VM, allocating the resources that are really necessary and as a result save up to 30% in potential hardware costs. This solution provides a holistic overview of your virtualized environment and provides deep insight into the health of your infrastructure which would otherwise be invisible. Capacity planning is another key feature of the vRealize Operations toolset allowing you to model future resource needs and alert on constraints before those constraints result in unexpected system downtime.
Years ago many wondered what the ROI was for ESX? It was nice to be able to put several VMs on one server, but was it needed? When we moved from physical to virtual it was a big step, an unknown “pie in the sky” concept that made sense on paper, but would it work and would it be a worthy investment? Well now we know that moving to a VM environment made sense, and for some it was easy to manage. However, this inevitably led to the issue of resource and VM sprawl and a lack of visibility to overall infrastructure health. vRealize Operations is a comprehensive tool which can provide predictive analytics, capacity planning, and performance and health management. Hence, it is very much a “have to have” vs. a “nice to have.”
If you’re looking for more information on vRealize, I would suggest downloading this whitepaper.
Now is the time to take advantage of a good deal on a great product! As always, GreenPages can help. If you would like to learn more, get a demo or make the purchase, fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!
By Rob O’Shaughnessy, Director of Software Sales & Renewals
Anything Microsoft can do, Google can too: 1TB of storage for new Chromebook customers
Picture credit: iStockPhoto
Google has announced one terabyte of free Drive storage to every customer who buys a Chromebook, rated at around $240 (£153).
The move is the latest in a long, long series of price cuts, bluffs and double bluffs from the main cloud infrastructure players to make users part with their cash.
Describing it as “a bonus for the holiday season” Alex Vogenthaler, Google Drive group product manager, wrote in a blog post: “That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive.
“With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you’ll do this holiday season,” he added.
It is a holiday offer only – any claims must be redeemed before January 1. But let’s go through the most recent acts of this play.
Microsoft has been the clear aggressor in this market, offering unlimited OneDrive cloud storage to its Office 365 user base last month. In June, it opened up a free terabyte to those same customers. Yet if users prefer to use Dropbox from their Office accounts they can do, after the two firms announced an alliance earlier this month.
Compare and contrast with standalone storage provider Bitcasa, which ditched its $10 a month unlimited plan. This publication mused on the matter and concluded that in the face of such huge competition, Bitcasa may be right in putting up its guard and offering a niche, although as one commenter pointed out, raising question marks about its ethics in the process. Meanwhile, Box is still pushing on with its unlimited storage plans for business users, unveiled back in July.
So who’s right? Well, it’s probably AWS. If in doubt, say AWS. The firm has a huge lead in the cloud infrastructure market, according to the latest figures from Synergy Research. A recent Storagebod column from The Register also made this point, explaining: “It seems to me that if the traditional storage vendors really want to compete with the cloud vendors, they need to change their sales model completely.”
Microsoft has marked out a foothold in second place, yet its most recent outage last week had Synergy Research chief analyst John Dinsdale telling CloudTech Redmond’s response was “an awful lot less than stellar.” Points off for that, although the commenter community was indecisive, with remarks ranging from “terrible” to “much ado about nothing.”
As cloud storage has become a less valuable commodity, the larger vendors are looking to provide one size fits all solutions. This threat to the traditional cloud storage providers is noted – take collaboration tool Box Notes as a perfect example of expanding the empire.
The reality though is if you’re sold on one particular office product, then storage is hardly going to seal the deal. With this festive feast, Google is simply keeping up appearances.
Enterprise cloud adoption goes up – and the bets are on SDN and NFV to make the most of it
Picture credit: iStockPhoto
The IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study has found the number of firms who have at least a portion of their computing infrastructure in the cloud continues to go up – but it’s the technology underneath this adoption which is the most interesting.
The latest research, which polled 1672 respondents and aimed to measure cloud computing trends among technology decision makers, found over a third (38%) were “comfortable” hosting in the cloud given the state of current cloud offerings, and 56% were still weighing up their options.
As cloud usage goes up, backlog theoretically goes down, and so this study proves. 69% of respondents have at least something in the cloud, up from 61% the year before and 57% in 2012. In comparison, only 18% say they plan to deploy within the next 12 months, down from 24% in 2013.
The signs only point up. 63% of respondents say cloud computing increases IT agility, while IT innovation (61%) and employee collaboration (56%) were also highly cited.
Yet the more interesting facet of this report is through emerging technologies. 61% of those polled admitted their organisations were looking at investing in software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) to get the most agility out of their cloud investments.
Network bandwidth delivery speed was also a key boon for cloud adoption, according to 49% of respondents. IT complexity eased for 55% of those polled, but interestingly, cloud has little to no effect on the overall IT headcount. 17% of respondents said it was increasing, 20% decreasing, and 52% said it had no impact.
Three quarters (74%) said they were either very or somewhat confident in the security of their information assets in the cloud, yet a lot of external cloud projects end up winging their way back to IT. The issues raised were lack of skillset within departments and security concerns (59%).
Nevertheless, the study shows interesting if not surprising progress for enterprise cloud. A report released earlier this month from CipherCloud and Gigaom found that while most enterprises are in the cloud, they’re reluctant about using it to develop enterprise applications.
Announcing @Windstream Named “Silver Sponsor” of @CloudExpo 2015 NY
SYS-CON Events announced today that Windstream, a leading provider of advanced network and cloud communications, has been named “Silver Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9–11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.
Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN), a FORTUNE 500 and S&P 500 company, is a leading provider of advanced network communications, including cloud computing and managed services, to businesses nationwide. The company also offers broadband, phone and digital TV services to consumers primarily in rural areas.
Announcing @VZCloud Marketplace Is Open |@CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Verizon Enterprise Solutions is simplifying the cloud-purchasing experience for its clients, with the launch of Verizon Cloud Marketplace, a key foundational component of the company’s robust ecosystem of enterprise-class technologies. The online storefront will initially feature pre-built cloud-based services from AppDynamics, Hitachi Data Systems, Juniper Networks, PfSense and Tervela.
Available globally to enterprises using Verizon Cloud, Verizon Cloud Marketplace provides a one-stop shop for software-based cloud resources that are certified to operate in Verizon’s cloud environments. Designed to free clients’ IT staff from the time and effort required to configure, deploy and fine-tune applications, Verizon Cloud Marketplace helps enterprises speed innovation cycles with easy, predictable deployments of new cloud-based services and applications to enable operational transformation initiatives and optimize the digital experience.