PTC 2015 Focuses on Submarine Cables and SDNs By @JohnSavageau | @CloudExpo [#SDN]

In an informal survey of words used during seminars and discussions, two main themes are emerging at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s 2015 annual conference. The first, as expected, is development of more submarine cable capacity both within the Pacific, as well as to end points in ANZ, Asia, and North America. The second, software defined networking (SDN), as envisioned could quickly begin to re-engineer the gateway and carrier hotel interconnection business.

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Bangkok Bank Deploys @Akamai’s Web Solutions | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

Akamai Technologies has announced that Bangkok Bank is using Akamai’s Web Performance Solutions to deliver high quality user experiences for its growing customer base across all geographies.
Ian Guy Gillard, Executive Vice President, Bangkok Bank Public Company Limited, said, «Akamai’s ability to provide a fast, secure and quality web experience has directly supported our plans to expand our business internationally, ensuring we provide all our customers with seamless and secure access to our banking services wherever they are.»

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The Migration to Cloud Computing By @JohnSavageau | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

A couple years ago I attended several «fast pitch» competitions and events for entrepreneurs in Southern California, all designed to give startups a chance to «pitch» their ideas in about 60 seconds to a panel of representatives from the local investment community. Similar to television’s «Shark Tank,» most of the ideas pitches were harshly critiqued, with the real intent of assisting participating entrepreneurs in developing a better story for approaching investors and markets.

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How to Make a Business Case for Secure EFSS By @TLOTL | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

When properly implemented and managed, secure enterprise file sync-and-share (EFSS) applications can improve project management and empower your workforce. Unfortunately, making the business case for secure EFSS isn’t always easy – especially when users and management aren’t aware of the risks existing applications pose.
Don’t get discouraged, though! The arguments in favor of change are strong. If you’re pushing your organization to eliminate public cloud use from the workplace, the following blueprint can help you set up a convincing business case.

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DocOps Approach Breaks Rules | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]

Mobile, the cloud and data have upended traditional ways of doing business. Agile, continuous delivery and DevOps have stepped in to hasten product development, but one crucial process still hasn’t caught up. Continuous content delivery is the missing limb of the success ecosystem. Currently workers spend countless, non-value add hours working in independent silos, hunting for versions, manually pushing documents between platforms, all while trying to manage the continuous update and flow of multilingual content.

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DevOps Award Goes to @LogicMonitor | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]

LogicMonitor was recognized as the winner of the 2015 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards for ‘Best DevOps and Cloud Management’. TechTarget’s Data Center Media Group present the award to recognize the top cloud and data center products and technologies that are positively impacting IT Operations Departments by helping them to run with efficiency and insight.

In the award, TechTarget editors said, “It’s refreshing to hear about a monitoring suite that installs easily and is comprehensive, yet customizable. Add [LogicMonitor’s] great support and a cost-effective hosted software-as-a-service model, and you’ve got a Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards winner for best DevOps and cloud management tool.’
In response to LogicMonitor’s nomination for the award, LogicMonitor customers and TechTarget readers demonstrated a groundswell of support. One stated that LogicMonitor is ‘fantastically powerful, and yet, surprisingly easy to setup and maintain.’ Another said LogicMonitor is ‘so easy and monitors everything in our infrastructure at a great price.’

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Why Agile Works in the Real World By @Datical | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]

We’ve all heard or read about the reasons Agile is good from the business or project management perspectives, but when it really comes down to it, how much do those reasons actually move the needle for the people on the front lines who are trying to implement Agile?

As the Agile team becomes more efficient and successful, they begin to wonder how they can extend these benefits beyond the development team. I suspect that the success of Agile teams was one of the reasons for the birth of the DevOps movement, as development teams began to wonder about whether they could extend Agile towards concepts like continuous delivery or deployment, and began to pull in their IT Operations brethren.
In organizations that are successfully practicing Agile or DevOps, the DBA team is starting to think through how they will support all of this increased release velocity. Historically suspicious of automation, and for good reason, the DBA team is starting to acknowledge that the manual processes and script writing they’ve depended upon will hamper their ability to keep up with development and operations. They’re beginning to wonder if there’s a better way for them – a way in which they can safely and reliably support the increased velocity from Agile workflows without losing control…

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Locking Down Data with @Vormetric’s Derek @Tumulak | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

«Vormetric is a data security company. We secure information at rest and our customers are some of the largest organizations in the world. The threats that are coming around today are either from state-sponsored activities and organized crime, and the intent is to steal information,» explained Derek Tumulak, Vice President of Product Management at Vormetric, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at Cloud Expo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

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‘Cloud Foundry Deployment’ By @Altoros | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]

In his session at DevOps Summit, Andrei Yurkevich, CTO at Altoros, provided an overview of all the benefits and opportunities, as well as drawbacks of deploying Cloud Foundry PaaS with Juju and compared it to BOSH. Discover the features that overlap, and understand what Juju Charm is, what it is not, where you use one or the other or where you use both BOSH and Juju Charms together.
Andrei Yurkevich is Cloud Foundry protagonist and CTO at Altoros. Under his supervision, the Altoros engineering team has grown from zero to more than 250 specialists across seven global locations. Currently, he is responsible for technology alliances in Platform-as-a-Service, Big Data, and Cloud Automation.

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SAP financial figures offer few surprises, expects cloud transformation by 2018

(c)iStock.com/vertigo3D

SAP has released its latest financial figures, and it’s to be expected; cloud subscriptions up, software subscriptions down, overall numbers ticking over, and a pledge that cloud profits will exceed software license revenues by 2018.

The company has again shifted its long term goals, with a 2017 operating profit target now of €6.3bn to €7bn, from a previous total of €7.7bn – and it’s all due to the company’s aggressive shift towards cloud.

The full year figures weren’t anything to write home about, but it’s all going in the right direction. Non-IFRS operating profit stood at €5.64bn for 2014, an uptick of 3% on the year before, while total revenue stood at €17.58bn, an increase of 4%.

The meatiest figures however were in the software and support sections. Cloud subscriptions and support went up 45% year on year to €1.1bn, while traditional software numbers were down 3%, to €4.4bn.

This is committed business that will drive strong cloud growth in the future

“We had exceptional growth in our cloud business and have significantly lifted the total of cloud backlog and non-IFRS deferred cloud revenue to more than €3 billion,” commented Luka Mucic, SAP chief financial officer. “This is committed business that will drive strong cloud growth in the future.

“We expect cloud subscriptions to exceed software license revenue in 2018,” he added. “At that time SAP expects to reach a scale in its cloud business that will clear the way for accelerated operating profit expansion.”

Back in October this publication mused that SAP was doing a little better financially than its two main competitors in the race to the cloud; namely Oracle and IBM, not to mention the likes of Salesforce breathing down its neck. SAP’s recent acquisitions, including software firm Concur Technologies, as well as its ambition to move towards an agile startup mentality, shows this.

The German tech giant gained almost 8,000 employees over the course of the year, doubling down on their commitment to increasing its workforce despite fears over job cuts last year. Yet the shift to the right on operating profit predictions shows there’s still a lot of work to do.

You can read the full financial statement here.