Archivo mensual: mayo 2015

Enterprise IT, IDC, Internet of Things, Interviews, IoT, Phil Carnelley

Phil Carnelley, research director at IDC on cloud, big data, Internet of Things

Philip Carnelley shares his views on the big disrupters in IT

Philip Carnelley shares his views on the big disrupters in IT

As we approach Cloud World Forum in London this June BCN had the opportunity to catch up with one of the conference speakers, Philip Carnelley, software research director at IDC Europe to discuss his views on the most disruptive trends in IT today.

What do you see as the most disruptive trend in enterprise IT today?

This is a tricky one but I think it’s got to be the Internet of Things – extending the edge of the network, we’re expecting a dramatic rise in internet-connected cars, buildings, homes, sensors for health and industrial equipment, wearables and more.

IDC expects some 28 billion IoT devices to be operational by 2020. Amongst other things, this will change the way a lot of companies operate, changing from device providers to service providers, and allowing device manufacturers to directly sell to, and service, their end customers in the way they didn’t before.

What do you think is lacking in the cloud sector today?

There are 2 things. First, many organizations still have concerns about security, privacy and compliance in a cloud-centric world. The industry needs to make sure that organizations understand that these needs can be met by today’s solutions.

Second, while most people buy into the cloud vision, it’s often not easy to get to there from where they are today. The industry must make it easy as possible, with simple solutions that don’t require fleets of highly trained people to understand and implement.

Are you seeing more enterprises look to non-relational database tech for transactional uses?

Absolutely. We’re seeing a definite rise in the use of NoSQL databases, as IT and DB architects become much more ready to choose databases on a use-base basis rather than just going for the default choice. A good example is the use of Basho Riak at the National Health Service.

Is cloud changing the way mobile apps and services are developed in enterprises?

Yes, there is a change towards creating mobile apps and services that draw on ‘mobile back-end-as-a-service’ technologies for their creation and operation

Why do you think it’s important to attend Cloud World Forum?

Because cloud is the fundamental platform for what IDC calls the 3rd Platform of Computing. We are in the middle of a complete paradigm shift to cloud-centric computing – with the associated technologies of mobile, social and big data – which is driving profound changes in business processes and even business models (think Uber, AirBnB, Netflix). Any company that wants to remain competitive in this new era needs to embrace these technologies, to learn more about them, in the way it develops and runs its operations for B2E, B2B and B2C processes.

Cloud Foundry, Dell, News & Analysis, Open Source, PaaS, Pivotal

Dell partners with Pivotal on Cloud Foundry

Dell Services will resell Pivotal CF and advise customers on implementation, app development and migration to different cloud platforms

Dell Services will resell Pivotal CF and advise customers on implementation, app development and migration to different cloud platforms

Dell Services announced a partnership with Pivotal this week that will see the company include Pivotal CF in its digital services portfolio.

The deal will see Dell Services resell Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry distribution as well as advise clients on application development, integration and multi-cloud migration using both Pivotal’s and open source Cloud Foundry.

The companies said the move will help customers enable a DevOps culture within their organisations and speed up application deployment.

“Digital transformation is driving enterprises to develop and deploy applications in an agile manner thereby creating the need for a new generation of application platforms,” Raman Sapra, executive director and global head, Dell Digital Business Services.

“Our collaboration with Pivotal expands our digital services portfolio to include development of next-generation, enterprise-class solutions using a leading platform like Pivotal Cloud Foundry to help customers unlock the power of innovation and fast track their digital transformation journey,” Sapra said.

Scott Aronson, senior vice president, worldwide field operations at Pivotal said: “Pivotal Cloud Foundry is emerging as a fundamental enabler of digital transformation as companies are under increased pressure to leverage software to differentiate their business models. Our partnership with Dell Services, a leading and trusted global services provider, will help our customers accelerate their digital transformation journey.”

Database, ERP, Kaz Nishihata, News & Analysis, SAP, Steve Nola

NTT Data, DiData partner on SAP cloud migration

NTT Data and Dimension Data are helping enterprises move their SAP software into the cloud

NTT Data and Dimension Data are helping enterprises move their SAP software into the cloud

NTT Data and Dimension Data announced a partnership this week that will see the two firms jointly offer cloud migration services for SAP application users.

As part of the deal Dimension Data will host SAP Cloud and SAP HANA instances in 16 of its cloud datacentres globally, with NTT Data offering up its implementation, migration and application management services.

The companies said the partnership will enable them to offer clients complete SAP lifecycle management for workloads, which they said are increasingly being shifted into the cloud (even bulkier ERP workloads).

“Many of our clients tell us that they’re ready for the next chapter in cloud, which is moving production applications to a consumption based infrastructure. Until recently, clients found that self-service provisioning is complete, while self-service management of applications in the cloud remains challenging,” explained Steve Nola, Dimension Data’s group executive – ITaaS.

“That’s why Dimension Data is providing software and hands-on attention that will provide our enterprises with the confidence to move their SAP licenses to the Dimension Data cloud,” Nola said.

Kaz Nishihata, executive vice president, global business, NTT DATA said: “NTT DATA will manage the implementation of SAP with fully customized configurations, leverage well-established and automated cloud migration processes, and manage the ongoing services using our proprietary tools to improve service quality and manage costs. Combined with Dimension Data’s robust cloud platform, we can offer clients the mission-critical service levels required for today’s SAP environments.”

To its credit SAP has worked to make more recent versions of its software both more modular and more cloud-friendly in terms of architecture, but moving SAP applications into the cloud isn’t a particularly easy job given the bulkiness of their suites – and enterprises seem ready to take cues from service providers on how to get the job done.

Last year Colt and Virtustream struck a very similar partnership, the two companies now working together to migrate enterprises to SAP’s cloud platform and SAP HANA, with the former providing the service management and cloud infrastructure and the latter providing SAP-optimised microvirtualisation and cloud management tools.

Brendan Hannigan, IBM, managed security service, News & Analysis, Software as a service

IBM claims strong traction with cybersecurity cloud network

IBM says its recently announced cybersecurity cloud service is gaining traction

IBM says its recently announced cybersecurity cloud service is gaining traction

IBM said over 1,000 organisations have now joined its recently announced cloud-based cybersecurity service, dubbed X-Force Exchange.

The service includes hundreds of terabytes of raw aggregated threat intelligence data and those that sign up to the service can upload their own data, so the more people join the more robust the service gets.

The initial data dump is based on over 25 billion web pages and images collected from a network of over 270 million endpoints, and includes data from over 15 billion monitored security events daily. But the company said participants have created more than 300 new collections of threat data since its launch.

“Cybercrime has become the equivalent of a pandemic — no company or country can battle it alone,” said Brendan Hannigan, general manager, IBM Security.

“We have to take a collective and collaborative approach across the public and private sectors to defend against cybercrime. Sharing and innovating around threat data is central to battling highly organized cybercriminals; the industry can no longer afford to keep this critical resource locked up in proprietary databases. With X-Force Exchange, IBM has opened access to our extensive threat data to advance collaboration and help public and private enterprises safeguard themselves,” Hannigan said.

Security isn’t a new area for IBM but offering real-time cyberthreat detection is, a move that has also put it in direct competition with a wide range of managed security service providers that have been playing in this space for years. Nevertheless, the company has a lot of clients so there’s a huge opportunity for the firm to harvest all of that data – particularly as it creates new partnerships with networking incumbents (like Cisco with VersaStack).

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WebRTC Summit Silicon Valley ‘Call for Papers’ Now Open | @WebRTCSummit [#WebRTC]

The WebRTC Summit 2015 Silicon Valley, to be held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, announces that its Call for Papers is now open.
Topics include all aspects of improving IT delivery by eliminating waste through automated business models leveraging cloud technologies. WebRTC Summit is co-located with 17th International Cloud Expo, @ThingsExpo, Big Data Expo, and DevOps Summit.
WebRTC is the future of browser-to-browser communications, and continues to make inroads into the traditional, difficult, plug-in web communications world.

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Training the next generation cloud workforce: AWS announces Educate program

(c)iStock.com/skynesher

Today’s schoolchildren are tomorrow’s workforce. Yet even though plenty of schools are migrating to mobile devices and cloud technologies, it’s imperative to ensure the workforce of tomorrow is prepared to utilise the technologies they’ll be facing.

That’s what Amazon Web Services (AWS) is affirming. The cloud provider has announced AWS Educate, a program that helps educators and students use “real-world cloud technology” in the classroom.

The program, which has separate channels for educational institutions, educators and students, gives various collateral: AWS credits ($200 of credits per educator at member institutions, $75 at non-member institutions, $100 and $35 per student respectively); AWS training; curated content and collaboration tools.

Cloud computing, as regular readers of this publication will note, remains one of the most important skill sets in IT, a point that Amazon notes in its press information – “there is a growing demand for developers, information technology professional, and forward-thinking business leaders with demonstrated knowledge of cloud computing.” Anyone who signs up to the Educate program will get a variety of resources, including webinars on best practices, instructional videos and customer case studies.

Teresa Carlson, vice president worldwide public sector at AWS, said: “For years, the AWS educational grants program has put cloud technology in the hands of educators and students, giving them the ability to put big ideas into action. Based on the feedback and success of our grant recipients and the global need for cloud-skilled workers, we developed AWS Educate to help even more students learn cloud technology first-hand in the classroom.”

Amazon is not the only cloud provider to offer resources for education; IBM has its Cloud Academy, for example, while Microsoft has extensive Azure facilities for educators. Yet it’s an important topic, one which CloudTech has previously examined. An article from 2013 by Patrick Fogarty, faculty advisor of instructional technology at Xaverian High School, New York, noted the importance of “creating a learning environment that isn’t limited by the building’s walls.”

Find out more about AWS Educate here.

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Information Storage with ISS SuperCore and Ceph | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

The time is ripe for high speed resilient software defined storage solutions with unlimited scalability. ISS has been working with the leading open source projects and developed a commercial high performance solution that is able to grow forever without performance limitations.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Alex Gorbachev, President of Intelligent Systems Services Inc., will share foundation principles of Ceph architecture, as well as the design to deliver this storage to traditional SAN storage consumers.

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The Next Paradigm Shift By @ABridgwater | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

Major product cycle changes tend to come around roughly every five years or so. The technology industry is fond of labeling these movements as paradigm shifts, but we’ve all heard too many of those things referenced, so let’s not go there.
Looking back over the last decade and the emergence of touch, our appetite for richer controls is never long satisfied. As soon as one finger touch arrived we wanted two-finger touch. Pinch and zoom wasn’t far behind and multi-user touch soon followed.

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New Ways to Deploy Applications By @JacobMoshenko | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

The last decade was about virtual machines, but the next one is about containers. Containers enable a service to run on any host at any time. Traditional tools are starting to show cracks because they were not designed for this level of application portability. Now is the time to look at new ways to deploy and manage applications at scale.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Jake Moshenko, Product Manager at CoreOS, will examine how CoreOS + Quay.io fit into the development lifecycle from pushing git changes all the way through to running in production. Attendees will understand how different components work together to solve the problems to manage applications at scale.

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