Archivo mensual: mayo 2016

AI, Artificial intelligence, BlueMix, cognitive computing, IBM, News & Analysis, SK C&C, Watson

IBM teams up with SK C&C to teach Watson learns Korean

Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul, South Korea.SK C&C has continued Korea’s efforts to increase the usage and adoption of cloud computing within the region, announcing a new strategic alliance with IBM focused on the Watson cognitive computing platform.

As part of the agreement, IBM will train Watson to understand and comprehend Korean, and South Korea-based developers will create a number of localized API’s and services to increase adoption rates of such advanced cloud computing technologies in the region. Korean will be Watson’s eighth language, lining up with English, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Arabic.

“Watson remains at the forefront of cognitive computing: advanced systems that learn at scale, understand with meaning, reason with purpose and interact with humans in natural ways,” said David Kenny, GM for IBM Watson. “The South Korean marketplace is moving quickly to embrace the disruptive opportunities from next generation technology.

“Our strategic alliance with SK Holdings C&C will put cognitive services in the hands of more businesses and developers, allowing them to apply Watson within their organizations to help transform entire industries and professions.”

Korea has been making positive strides in recent months to increase the adoption rate of cloud computing within the country, announcing a number of initiatives in March. Adoption rates are reported to be as low as 6.4% within the country currently, which could be perceived as low considering the number of tech companies which has grown out of Korea, though the government is planning to increase this to 13% over the next twelve months. Over the same period, the government also plans to increase the number of Korean cloud companies from 353 to 500.

While this announcement focused on cloud computing as a broader technology set, the government also announced plans to invest 100 billion won (approximately $87.2 million) to foster the development of supercomputers. The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said it would invest 10 billion won annually for the next 10 years to boost the growth of artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet-of-Things technologies and other emerging industries through supercomputers. The ambition is to create a supercomputer with a data-processing speed of 1 petaflop (PF) in five years, eventually reaching 30 PF by 2025.

As part of the partnership between IBM and SK C&C, the telco will run Watson and Bluemix from its Pangyo Cloud Centre, to foster the growth of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence. More specifically SK C&C is hoping the introduction of the technologies will improve mobile device experience, as well as consumers’ call centre interactions. SK C&C will also become IBM’s preferred distributor for cognitive solutions in South Korea.

“This alliance highlights SK’s dedication to growing our artificial intelligence-based data services business, strengthening our Ai leadership position, as well as spurring innovation and Ai adoption across Korea,” said Park Jung-ho, CEO of SK Holdings C&C.

The partnership between IBM and SK C&C is one of a number of examples of IBM’s efforts to broaden the appeal to the international audience. SK C&C will assist in developing Watson’s advanced conversational capabilities in Korean, in the same way SoftBank is aiding for Japanese, Mubadala for Arabic and GBM in South America. Each of these companies, including SK C&C, are developing local communities of developers to build, explore and create new applications in their native languages. Korean language Watson services are expected to become available early next year.

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Docker Containers and #Microservices | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Docker

From the conception of Docker containers to the unfolding microservices revolution we see today, here is a brief history of what I like to call ‘containerology’.
In 2013, we were solidly in the monolithic application era. I had noticed that a growing amount of effort was going into deploying and configuring applications. As applications had grown in complexity and interdependency over the years, the effort to install and configure them was becoming significant. But the road did not end with a single deployment, no, the installation and configuration work was repeated over and over again, not only for each software release but for each and every environment that we promote applications to until finally being deposited into production, where this we repeat this exercise one last time.

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Ten Ways to Flash Forward By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Not to long ago I was honored to be included as a storage expert in the Dell ebook, «10 Ways to Flash Forward: Future-Ready Storage Insights from the Experts.» This publication provided insight into some of the most recent advances in enterprise storage and gave some excellent recomendations for your advance storage strategy. The full document is available for free download at http://marketing.dell.com/storage-ebook-toprank-Flash-Forward

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Understanding IoT | @ThingsExpo #IoT #IIoT #M2M #DigitalTransformation

There is an ever-growing explosion of new devices that are connected to the Internet using “cloud” solutions. This rapid growth is creating a massive new demand for efficient access to data. And it’s not just about connecting to that data anymore.
This new demand is bringing new issues and challenges and it is important for companies to scale for the coming growth. And with that scaling comes the need for greater security, gathering and data analysis, storage, connectivity and, of course, the need to find a platform (solution) that is capable of quickly and easily managing all of these complex necessities.

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[session] How the Cloud Fixes Bimodal IT By @TheEbizWizard | @CloudExpo #Cloud

As enterprises around the world struggle with their digital transformation efforts, many are finding that innovative digital teams are moving much faster than their hidebound IT organizations. Rather than struggling to convince traditional IT to get with the digital program, executives are taking advice from IT research firm Gartner, and encouraging existing IT to continue in their desultory ways.
However, many CIOs are realizing the dangers of following Gartner’s advice. The central challenge with bimodal IT is that it encourages IT management to shift their transformation efforts away from ‘slow’ IT to ‘fast’ digital efforts.

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[session] Regaining Control of Storage Performance By @SecurityFirstCo | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Cloud Object Storage is effectively infinitely scalable and boasts the lowest total costs. But cloud SLAs and T&Cs are traditionally optimized for huge customers like Netflix, so applications demanding better confidentiality or higher availability typically can’t reap the benefits of public cloud storage.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Don Martin, CTO of Security First Corp, will provide an overview of innovative technologies available today – secret sharing and information dispersal algorithms – that enable multiple, redundant cloud storage locations to be efficiently harnessed for the most sensitive and most demanding storage applications.

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[session] Best Practices in Operating Hybrid Infrastructure By @RackNgo | @CloudExpo #Cloud

The pace of innovation, vendor lock-in, production sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and managing risk… In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Dan Choquette, Founder of RackN, will discuss how CIOs are challenged finding the balance of finding the right tools, technology and operational model that serves the business the best.
He will discuss how clouds, open source software and infrastructure solutions have benefits but also drawbacks and how workload and operational portability between vendors and platforms give control back to the users and drives innovation.

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Ford invests $182.2 million in cloud-based software company Pivotal

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/VanderWolf-Images)

With a view to improve its software development capabilities and fast track innovations to customers, Ford has invested $182.2 million in cloud-based software company Pivotal. The automaker is working towards becoming an auto and a mobility company. Along with a focus on its core automotive business, Ford is looking to boost its Ford Smart Mobility initiative by pursuing leadership in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience, and data and analytics.

Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO, said: “Expanding our business to be both an auto and mobility company requires leading-edge software expertise to deliver outstanding customer experiences. Our investment in Pivotal will help strengthen our ability to deliver these customer experiences at the speed of Silicon Valley, including continually expanding FordPass – our digital, physical and personal mobility experience platform.”

Ford has collaborated with Pivotal on the development of FordPass that provides new customer services, like remote access to vehicles through a smartphone app, and mobility solutions, such as parking and car sharing. Now, Ford plans to integrate Pivotal’s advanced software development methodologies and technology across the IT, product development, and research and advanced engineering teams. Ford’s on-demand Dynamic Shuttle pilot program will feature Pivotal’s next-generation cloud platform and analytics capabilities.

What are your thoughts on Ford’s investment in Pivotal? Let us know in the comments.

Enterprise IT, News & Analysis, S/4 HANA, SAP

SAP cloud offering lacks clarity – user group survey

SAP sailingThe UK & Ireland SAP User Group has released findings from a survey which state only 58% of current SAP users are considering or using its cloud offerings, and 60% said the company were not good enough at communicating the benefits of their products.

The findings showed only 39% were using or planning to use SAP Cloud for Customer and only 23% planned to use S/4 HANA enterprise cloud edition. Just over a third confirmed they were currently or planning to use SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform (HCP), though 32% said they didn’t know what was, and 10% said they believed the company did an effective job of outlining the benefits and use case of the product itself. Overall, 60% of the user group said the company was not good enough at communicating benefits of the cloud suite to the users themselves.

“Over the last 18 months, we have seen more of our members looking to move elements of their SAP estate to the cloud. However, as the survey results show, users still face challenges when it comes adopting SAP’s cloud offerings,” said Paul Cooper, vice-chairman of the UK & Ireland SAP User Group. “For organisations that have heavily invested in on-premise applications in the past, there still needs to be an attractive business case for them to move to the cloud.

“If users are to fully realise the benefits of SAP cloud offerings, they need to understand the company’s roadmap and strategy. For instance, the survey highlighted that just over half (52%) of respondents were unsure that S/4HANA would make them more readily consider using cloud services from SAP in the future.”

While cloud computing as a concept could be perceived as penetrating the mainstream market, it is worth remembering there is a substantial proportion of organizations that are not in a position to make the transition currently. 58% of respondents said they were concerned the strong focus on cloud computing from SAP could result in installed on premise products being left being left behind, and the users of such products missing out on product updates.

Another area which may worry SAP is that of acquisitions, as 44% of respondents highlighted they were not sure as to where SuccessFactors, Ariba, Fieldglass and Concur would fit into future strategies of the business. Concur Technologies was acquired for $8.3 billion, Ariba for $4.3 billion, SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion and Fieldglass for $1.1 billion (estimated).

“SAP is committed to helping deliver business value to all its customers and we welcome the feedback from the UKI User Group,” said Kevin Kimber, Head of Cloud at SAP UK&I. “At SAP, all our solutions can be tailored to our customers’ individual needs – whether that involves on premise, cloud or hybrid models. By offering this flexibility we can support our customers on their individual cloud journey which varies across industry and user.

“We’re encouraged by the results of the survey that show that the majority of SAP users are either already using or planning to adopt our cloud offerings. We believe SAP provides the most complete end to end holistic cloud portfolio and we continue to strive to enhance our offerings through strategic acquisitions and sustained investment with the goal of providing best of breed cloud solutions. We’re committed to engaging in an active dialogue with our customers and the wider ecosystem to share our vision and roadmap for cloud solutions and will continue to promote this message publicly.”

SAP reported its quarterly earnings last month, in which it was highlighted cloud subscriptions and support revenues grew 33% year-on-year to €678 million, and new cloud bookings grew at 23% over the quarter to €145 million. The cloud business, as well as software support revenues, accounted for 69% of the quarter’s total revenues.

The cloud business unit within SAP has been prioritized as the growth engine, though it might be considering a worrying sign for SAP executives that the cloud offerings themselves are not being communicated to their current customer bases who are reportedly confused about the company’s future direction.