Cloud is not a commodity. And no matter what you call it, computing doesn’t come out of the sky. It comes from physical hardware inside brick and mortar facilities connected by hundreds of miles of networking cable. And no two clouds are built the same way.
SoftLayer gives you the highest performing cloud infrastructure available. One platform that takes data centers around the world that are full of the widest range of cloud computing options, and then integrates and automates everything.
Join SoftLayer on June 9 at 16th Cloud Expo to learn about IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer platform, explore several of the API endpoints available with SoftLayer, and how to get your application deployed in an agile way.
Monthly Archives: March 2015
WCaaS – [Who Cares?] as a Service By @SoftLayer | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
In the midst of the widespread popularity and adoption of cloud computing, it seems like everything is being offered “as a Service” these days: Infrastructure? Check. Platform? You bet. Software? Absolutely. Toaster? It’s only a matter of time. With service providers positioning vastly differing offerings under a generic “cloud” umbrella, it’s all too easy to get confused about what’s actually being offered.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Kevin Hazard, Director of Digital Content for SoftLayer, an IBM Company, will break down the most commonly used industry buzzwords and discuss what each “aaS” is good for. No BS(aas).
Infrastructure as Code By @SoftLayer | @CloudExpo [#SDDC #Cloud]
Getting started is often the hardest part of any project, and converting your data center into a Git Repository is no different.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Christopher Gallo, Developer Advocate for SoftLayer, an IBM Company, will discuss some of the more popular configuration management suites, with some practical examples showing off the power of SaltStack. Hopefully, by the end of this presentation, you’ll be ready to stop deploying changes manually and enter the magical world of software-defined data centers.
Introducing ‘Internet of Things’ Bootcamp at @ThingsExpo New York [#IoT]
SYS-CON Events announced today the IoT Bootcamp – Jumpstart Your IoT Strategy, being held June 9–10, 2015, in conjunction with 16th Cloud Expo and Internet of @ThingsExpo at the Javits Center in New York City. This is your chance to jumpstart your IoT strategy.
Combined with real-world scenarios and use cases, the IoT Bootcamp is not just based on presentations but includes hands-on demos and walkthroughs. We will introduce you to a variety of Do-It-Yourself IoT platforms including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Spark and Intel Edison. You will also get an overview of cloud technologies such as Amazon Kinesis, Azure Event Hubs, Google Cloud Pub/Sub that play an important role in IoT architecture. The immersive two-day workshop will provide you with everything you wanted to know about Internet of Things.
Cloud is Stacking Up Nicely
The stack is the hack, Jack. That’s my takeaway from several events I attended over the past few weeks in Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia.
I listened to and participated in discussions about everything from large datacenter management (think Facebook Open Compute) to enterprise-level cyberfraud (at a seminar in Manila attended by the US State Dept. and Philippine National Police) to the world of entrepreneurial startups, app deployment, and mobility (in a series of meetups and talks in both the US and Asia.)
All had something to do with some sort of stack – IT is interconnected, globally, as never before. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of decent connectivity across the globe has joined billions of people into one large, mobile, data-driven stack of information and entertainment.
All aspects of all this will be present in force at our upcoming Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo at the Javits Center in New York June 9-11. The event, as has been its practice recently, will also feature the WebRTC Summit (chaired by Acision’s Peter Dunkley) and DevOps Summit (chaired by CA’s Andi Mann).
This time out, there is also the IoT Bootcamp (taught by Janakiram MSV, who conducted a fabulous Cloud Bootcamp at Cloud Expo last November in Santa Clara), and for the first time, the DevOps Certification Foundation Track (taught by Alan Shimel of the DevOps Institute.)
But back to the stack—or stacks. There are many ways to view the current era. One way is to look at SMAC—social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud computing:
93% of marketers now use social media for business (according to AdWeek)
In the US, 89% of adults 18-29 are regular social media users. No surprise, but two-thirds of adults in the 30-64 age group are also active, as well as 43% of those age 65 and over (according to AdWeek).
Mobile access has now reached a median of 100MB per person in the US, and an amazing 361MB per person in Asia (according to Sandvine).
Mobile will represent more than 50% of all Internet traffic by the end of next year (according to Cisco).
Analytics are driving a Big Data era that’s going to put the world into the Zettabyte Age (a zettabyte is one million petabytes) by the end of next year (according to Cisco).
Big Data is dovetailing with the emerging Internet of Things, which will see 82% annual growth rates in the machine-to-machine (M2M) market alone this year and beyond (according to Cisco).
The IoT has almost 5 billion “things” deployed today, and will grow to 20 billion in 2020 (according to Gartner).
Analytics are seen as forming a market greater than $40 billion by 2018 (according to IDC).
Then there’s cloud computing, which is reaching some level of maturity even as it still commands only about 8% of the world’s $2.1 trillion in IT expenditures (according to several sources). Even at that, cloud now commands well over $100 billion in hardware services alone, and has the vibrant software ecosystem that will be on display at Cloud Expo.
SMAC is of course just one way to look at the overall picture. The open-source world has given us OpenStack and Apache CloudStack, which continue to drive a lot of conversations if not enormous revenue just yet. The venerable LAMP stack and its many derivatives has quietly become a de facto way to build serious websites and connect them to serious back ends. The idea of stacking all this IT across compute resources, connectivity, and the software the drives it is taking hold.
I’ve grown fond of telling people that I’m glad the dot-com crash occurred more than a decade ago, because had I been able to retire then (and oh how close so many of us came to doing so) I would have missed today, the greatest era of innovation and creativity in the history of computing.
Things are stacking up for this to be a great year.
.@OmniTI Announces DevOps Customer Successes | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
OmniTI has expanded its services to help customers automate their processes to deliver high quality applications to market faster.
Consistent with its focus on IT agility and quality, OmniTI operates under DevOps principles, exploring the flow of value through the IT delivery process, identifying opportunities to eliminate waste, realign misaligned incentives, and open bottlenecks. OmniTI takes a unique, value-centric approach by plotting each opportunity in an effort-payoff quadrant, then working with customers to focus on initiatives with high payoff and low effort – using its deep bench of operational, development and database deployment and management knowledge to keep downward pressure on effort.
Microsoft and Ford’s New Cloud Based Partnership
Microsoft and Ford have worked together in the past to bring us Sync: a revolutionary technology that shifted a long standing reliance on hardware-based in-dash content and brought in an era of being able to access a portable device for entertainment. The original Sync system was way before the age of the cloud, and it was basically used to access music on iPod devices and take calls through Bluetooth.
Sync was the first software-based system, meaning it could be upgraded and features could be added later on. Other companies tried to follow suit, and the second generation Sync MyFord Touch system fell short of expectations. For the newest version of Sync, Sync 3, Ford teamed up with QNX. Many saw this as Ford ditching Microsoft, but they recently announced that they are working together on the Ford Service Delivery Network powered my Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.
This network is not going to rely just on Wi-Fi, and will include a built-in modem that can connect with the cloud and smartphone applications. This leverages the existing MyFord and MyLincoln smartphone apps.
Though Ford was the first to introduce this innovative technology with the original Sync, a lack of embedded connections in its cars has meant that Ford is already being left in the dust by automakers like Tesla who take advantage of over-the-air update capability. The new embedded modems will allow the new system to do exactly this.
The new capabilities of this Delivery Network will be in select vehicles by the end of the year, and will begin to be implemented in most vehicles by the end of next year. There is not yet a pricing structure, but the price of it is not subscription based and will be included in the price of the vehicle. However, additional features and new services that will be added in the future will most likely be a pay as you use or pay as you go sort of model.
The post Microsoft and Ford’s New Cloud Based Partnership appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Windows Server 2003 Migration By @AppZero_Inc | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
It’s spring in the Northeast, and this week we’re launching a new blog post series, “Everything You Want to Know about Windows Server 2003 Migration.” Why a series of posts on WS2003? Even as summer and EOS is just months away, our “State of Readiness for Windows Server 2003 End of Support” survey reveals the shocking truth: most of you haven’t done anything about remediation yet, and most will not complete your upgrades before the deadline.
Cloud Has a Down-and-Dirty Lining By @BlueBox | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
What’s inside the cloud? Hard work. Cloud operators know the world inside the datacenter is gritty. Vendor marketing speak and cloudwashing quickly melt in the heat of SLAs, uptime guarantees, and users who want it now.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Hernan Alvarez, Chief Product Officer at Blue Box Group, will deliver an unvarnished look inside the world of cloud operators, from the perspective of someone who lives it. Attendees get a front-row look into the toolkits and processes that enable cloud operators to stand up and manage private clouds end to end. Bring your questions and learn how the cloud’s down-and-dirty lining gets the job done for demanding devs and users.
The New Economics of Cloud By @ActiveState | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Cloud computing is changing the way we look at IT costs, according to industry experts on a recent Cloud Luminary Fireside Chat panel discussion.
Enterprise IT, traditionally viewed as a cost center, now plays a central role in the delivery of software-driven goods and services. Therefore, companies need to understand their cloud utilization and resulting costs in order to ensure profitability on their business offerings.
Led by Bernard Golden, this fireside chat offers valuable insights on how organizations can get a better handle on their use of cloud computing.