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Docker, Markus Flierl, News & Analysis, Open Source, Oracle

Oracle latest legacy firm to support Docker

Oracle is adding support for Docker to Solaris

Oracle is adding support for Docker to Solaris

Oracle said this week that it would bring Docker support to Solaris, becoming the latest legacy software vendor to add support for the open source Linux container technology.

While Solaris has had support for Linux containers in the form of ‘Solaris Zones’ (Oracle’s virtual machine technology) for nearly a decade, the move will see Oracle enable Docker to be deployed within those ‘Zones’ (VMs).

The company also said it plans to make some of its software – Oracle WebLogic Server was the only one specifically mentioned – available for deployment and testing as full Docker images on Solaris.

“Today’s announcement really gives developers the best of both worlds – access to Oracle Solaris’ enterprise class security, resource isolation and superior analytics with the ability to easily create containers in dev/test, production and cloud environments,” said Markus Flierl, vice president, Oracle Solaris Core Technology.

“Integrating Docker into Oracle Solaris will make that even easier and will help customers benefit from highly integrated compute on premises and in the cloud,” Flierl said.

Laurent Lachal, senior analyst, infrastructure solutions at Ovum said the move is a win-win for those planning to move to more cloud-native technologies like OpenStack and Linux containers but still depend heavily on different components of the Oracle stack.

Oracle is the latest legacy software vendor to open up to Docker.

Late last year Windows announced it would support the container technology in Windows Server 2016, around the same time IBM announced it would provide a Docker-based container service through Bluemix, the company’s platform as a service offering.

Given how embedded Oracle is in large organisations the move could see Docker gain more traction in the traditional large enterprise, potentially a big win for the young open source container project.

Ark Data Centres, BT, Datacentre, Neil Lock, News & Analysis

BT, Ark expand ‘cloud of clouds’ in the UK

BT is redoubling its 'cloud of clouds' efforts

BT is redoubling its ‘cloud of clouds’ efforts

BT is bolstering its partnership with Ark Data Centres to expand its ‘cloud of clouds’ initiative and its reach in the public sector, healthcare and financial services.

Launched in April this year, the ‘cloud of clouds’ service is much like Equinix’s cloud interconnection service, linking its own datacentres and cloud services with its own and others through its own fibre network.

The companies said BT will leverage two of Ark’s new UK datacentres to offer its infrastructure as a service platform, BT Compute, as well as its financial services and healthcare-focused managed cloud platforms.

Ark said the datacentres are amongst the most energy efficient out there, with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.2 compared to an industry average of 1.7 according to the Uptime Institute.

Neil Lock, vice president, BT Compute, BT Global Services said: “Organisations in all industries are embracing the need for greater innovation through digital strategies that rely on cloud services.  This is especially true for public sector bodies faced with the complex challenge of transforming services sustainably with increasingly tight budgets.”

“By adding two new data centres to our BT Compute portfolio that comply with the latest government security guidelines, we believe that we have the ideal platform on which to innovate. We already deliver some great cloud services to our government, finance and pharma sector customers. Our latest investment builds on this strength to help us realise our cloud of clouds vision for large organisations.”

The datacentres additions will help bolster the company’s cloud scale in its home market. BT claims its ‘cloud of clouds’ is already being deployed form about 20 facilities globally and a further 30 third-party datacentres operated by other cloud providers.

Enterprise IT, Envoy Digital, hybris, manage virtualisation, News & Analysis, Office, Private Cloud, Rackspace, Robin Worthington, shoes

Office enlists private cloud for global expansion

Office is in the middle of a significant global expansion

Office is in the middle of a significant global expansion

Shoe retailer Office is using a private cloud and managed virtualisation services to handle spikes in online ordering ahead of one of its busiest periods.

Office has over 150 stores across Europe and the US and began rolling out its international e-commerce site earlier this year in a bid to expand its presence globally.

The company enlisted e-commerce specialist Envoy Digital to help with its broader digitisation efforts. It is using Rackspace’s private cloud platform to host the e-commerce site, which is built using the hybris platform, and VMware-based managed virtualisation in combination with load balancers to manage and distribute workloads and traffic.

“When working with any cloud provider, it’s critical that they can ensure only a minimal amount of our time is spent overseeing the IT infrastructure so that it operates smoothly,” said Robin Worthington, multichannel director, Office. “This allows us to focus on what we’re best at – helping customers find the right shoes.”

The company said it wanted to migrate its international platform to the cloud and improve the reliability of its multichannel infrastructure in advance of the summer season, which is one of the busiest for the shoe retailer.

AllSeen Alliance, Internet of Things, IoT, Liat Ben-Zur, News & Analysis, Open Interconnect Consortium, Philips

Philips throws weight behind AllSeen in IoT standards push

Philips is backing the AllSeen Alliance

Philips is backing the AllSeen Alliance

One of the largest Internet of Things (IoT) solution providers, Philips, announced this week that it would support the AllJoyn standards initiative.

AllJoyn, an open source software connectivity and services framework for IoT devices, is being coordinated by the AllSeen Alliance, a 170-member organisation focused on developing cross-sector IoT standards.

Its members include Electrolux, Haier, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Qeo, Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Sharp, and Sony.

Philips is one of the world’s largest IoT vendors, offering a range of services around healthcare linking medical devices and sensors to a cloud-based platform that can be used to analyse and generate medical advice from the data they generate.

“Healthcare will change substantially in the coming years, with a growing role for health self-management. Addressing the needs of personal health requires a new perspective and innovative technologies like the AllJoyn software framework,” said Liat Ben-Zur, senior vice president and head of digital technology at Philips.

“Philips also values the potential of collaborative partnerships to advance markets and improve consumer experiences forever. We look forward to working with the other members of the AllSeen Alliance to advance connectivity and digitalization in the personal health area based on AllJoyn as part of a truly connected world,” Ben-Zur said.

The company is a big player in the healthcare space and the move may give a massive boost to AllSeen, which is rivaled by the Intel-backed Open Interconnect Consoritum – a cross-industry consortium pushing IoTivity, its answer to AllJoyn.

Philip DesAutels, senior director IoT for the AllSeen Alliance said: “With a global leader with expertise connecting technology between home and healthcare, we’re in a position to advance AllJoyn as the software leveraged by all healthcare solutions.”

Appointment, Box, Cloud Storage, DropBox, News & Analysis

Dropbox sets the enterprise in its sights with new hires

Dropbox is boosting its investment in personnel to add enterprise users

Dropbox is boosting its investment in personnel to add enterprise users

Cloud storage provider Dropbox is doubling down on the enterprise, hiring experts in traditional small and medium size IT channel and direct sales and product design to help gain traction with businesses.

Just over a week ago the company hired Thomas Hansen, who most recently served as worldwide vice president of small and medium business at Microsoft where he led SME sales globally, to the newly created role of global vice president of sales & channel.

“We’re scaling at an extraordinary pace, and Thomas’ insights will help us accelerate Dropbox adoption even further,” said Dennis Woodside, Dropbox’s chief operating officer. “We have a huge opportunity ahead of us, and we’re building an incredible team to go after it.”

And just this week the company also hired Todd Jackson, Dropbox’s first vice president of product. Jackson hails from Twitter, where he most recently served as director of product management and led the company’s content and discovery teams. He has also held fairly senior product design positions at both Facebook and Google.

Jackson is replacing Ilya Fushman, Dropbox’s former head of product who left for Index Ventures two months ago.

With the new hires Dropbox is looking to bolster its position in the enterprise, the quickest way to gaining seats, against rivals like Box, which heavily targets niche verticals and large traditional organisations as well as startups and smaller firms. Dropbox claims to have over 100,000 business using its platform while Box maintain it has closer to 44,000 organisations as customers.

Christopher O’Connor, developers, IBM, Internet of Things, Jone Rasmussen, News & Analysis

IBM targets IoT with developerWorks

IBM is targeting IoT developers with developerWorks

IBM is targeting IoT developers with developerWorks

As part of the recently announced developerWorks initiative IBM is creating a community, developerWorks Recipes, aimed specifically at developers creating Internet of Things (IoT) services.

The developerWorks Recipes community will offer participating developers access to IBM’s Bluemix platform as well as tutorials and technical guides on how to develop and deploy IoT services like connected car, healthcare device or industrial machine monitoring and diagnostic services.

“IBM has long been a leader in offering innovative tools for developers to create the applications of our future.  Now, IBM is expanding that focus so anyone – from the software novice to the experienced hardware engineer – can easily and quickly access materials providing guidance in the creation, management and connection of IoT devices to each other and the cloud,” said Christopher O’Connor, general manager, offerings, Internet of Things at IBM.

“With developerWorks Recipes, IBM provides easy access to new analytics and operational insight capabilities that tap into the vast data from many connected devices, home appliances or cars,” O’Connor said.

IBM just launched developerWorks last week, a cloud-based platform that provides access to Bluemix and emerging IBM tech and expertise in the form of blogs, informational videos and other multimedia, as well as the opportunity to collaborate with specialists.

Jone Rasmussen, general manager of IoT developer tool startup Bitreactive said the platform has the potential to help companies that want to develop new services quickly at a time when device development and vendor activity is expanding rapidly and standards scarcely available.

“Developers just can’t be experts on each new ‘thing’ that gets added to the IoT,” Rasmussen said. “To control costs of IoT projects, developers need easy, repeatable ways to quickly extract data from devices.”

How are developers using cloud to develop IoT services? Click here to download the whitepaper created by BCN and IBM to find out.

Bytemobile, Citrix, Mark Templeton

Citrix CEO out, activist investors in, and more divestitures in the offing

Citrix's restructuring is in full swing

Citrix’s restructuring is in full swing

Citrix saw a big shakeup this week as it announced longtime president and chief executive Mark Templeton would retire and board member Asiff Hirji (of HP) step down, at the same time appointing Elliott Management’s head of activist investments Jesse Cohn to its board of directors. The company will also divest its struggling mobile traffic management division, ByteMobile.

Templeton served nearly two decades leading Citrix, and said that he will continue to serve as acting president and chief executive until a successor has been found. The company has enlisted Heidrick & Struggles to help identify potential candidates.

“I’ve announced today that I’ve asked the board to begin a search for a successor, but I do expect that to take some time,” Templeton said in a call with analysts this week.

“And in the meantime, I am passionately and intensively leading this change and working in partnership with the best executive team ever with I think more clarity than ever around getting to our core, leveraging assets that are on board. Making them work better together and yielding that value in the marketplace through our partners where we’ve got plenty of innovation and excitement ahead over the next six months.”

This week also saw the company report marginal revenue growth of 1.9 per cent year-on-year for Q2 2015, up from $782m in 2014 to $797m in 2015.

Much of the past year, since it initiated ambitious restructuring plans, has been about simplifying Citrix’s growing portfolio and bringing more focus on its core strengths in enterprise app delivery and data.

That said, Elliott Management – which has a 7 per cent stake in Citrix – has made no secret of its desire to see the company spin off any non-core assets, slim down the product portfolio and cut costs dramatically to yield higher rates of growth (it also actively encouraged the breakup of the EMC Federation for the same reason).

“In early 2014, Citrix again made a series of promises to address the operational and share price underperformance. Despite the fact that these promises were nearly identical to the promises made in 2010, many investors and analysts hoped that this time Citrix was finally going to remedy the serious deficiencies in its cost structure. However, operating expenses have continued to outpace revenue growth, and both profit margins and profit dollars have declined over the last 12 months,” Cohn wrote in an open letter to Citrix leadership in June.

“It is perhaps because Citrix’s promises have uniformly been followed by increased costs and greater product breadth that the research community maintains a skeptical approach to Citrix and continues to call for organizational change.”

“We believe CloudBridge, CloudPlatform and ByteMobile are non-core, are underperforming and are distractions to the management team.”

Citrix already said this week it’s planning to divest its mobile network traffic management arm, ByteMobile, and – if Elliot Management’s influence grows, which is likely  – could announce more divestitures and accelerated restructuring efforts in the coming months.

Alibaba, Aliyun, AWS, Daniel Zhang, Datacentre, Equinix, Google, IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Intel, Meeras, News & Analysis, PCCW, Singtel

Alibaba takes aim at AWS, Google, Microsoft, pours $1bn into global cloud rollout

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba announced plans this week to plough $1bn into its cloud computing division, Aliyun, in a bid to expand the company’s presence and establish new datacentres internationally. The move may give it the scale it needs to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon and Google.

The company currently operates five datacentre in China and Hong Kong, and earlier this year set up a datacentre in Silicon Valley aimed at local startups and Chinese multinational corporations.

The $1bn in additional investment will go towards setting up new cloud datacentres in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and in various countries across Europe.

“Aliyun has become a world-class cloud computing service platform that is the market leader in China, bearing the fruits of our investment over the past six years. As the physical and digital are becoming increasingly integrated, Aliyun will serve as an essential engine in this new economy,” said Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group.

“This additional US$ 1 billion investment is just the beginning; our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities, and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure. We want to enable businesses to connect directly with consumers and drive productivity using data. Ultimately, our goal is to help businesses successfully transition from an era of information technology to data technology,” Zhang said.

The company said it also plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships through its recently announced Marketplace Alliance Program, a move that sees it partnering with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

The investment if anything confirms Alibaba’s intent to grow well beyond Asia and displace other large public cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Google, which already boast significant global scale.

Asia Pacific, Cyber CSF, Datacentre, Indonesia, M&A, News & Analysis, NTT Com

NTT Com buys Cyber CSF to boost Indonesian datacentre presence

NTT Com's newest datacentre in Jakarta, Indonesia

NTT Com’s newest datacentre in Jakarta, Indonesia

NTT Communications announced it has reached an agreement to acquire PT. Cyber CSF, one of Indonesia’s largest datacentre and cloud service providers, for an undisclosed sum.

Headquartered in Jakarta, Cyber CSF was founded in 2012 and with 2,800 racks in 7,700 square metres claims to be the country’s largest datacentre operator. NTT Com plans to rename Cyber CSF as NTT Indonesia Nexcenter.

The company’s carrier-neutral facility links up to 32 domestic and overseas fibre operators and will also help NTT Com add another point of presence for its Arcstar VPN service, which it plans to do in October this year.

NTT said it wants to position itself in front of what the company sees as an impending boom in the regional cloud market.

Indonesia is one of the world’s largest countries and according to IDC the Indonesian ICT market is expected to average about 10 per cent annual growth through 2017, exceeding growth rates in most other Southeast Asian countries.

Additionally, the company expects new legislation in the region to influence more financial services companies to outsource their datacentre operations and move more of their systems to the cloud.

The company has in recent months looked to bolster its datacentre presence globally. In April this year the company’s American subsidiary completed a merger with Verio (after acquiring it 15 years ago), and in March bought a majority stake in one of Germany’s largest datacentre operators, e-shelter.

Bill Hilf, Cloud Foundry, Docker, Helion, HP, Linux containers, News & Analysis, OpenStack, Stackato, Xavier Poisson

HP to buy Stackato to boost hybrid cloud strategy

HP is buying Stackato to boost support for Linux containers

HP is buying Stackato to boost support for Linux containers

HP is to acquire ActiveState’s Stackato business for an undisclosed sum, which the company said would give a boost to its hybrid cloud strategy.

Like HP Helion Development Platform, Stackato’s platform as a service is built on Cloud Foundry and offers robust support for Docker, which is gaining the lion’s share of attention in the Linux container world. It offers deployments on a range of cloud infrastructure including AWS, VMware, OpenStack, HP Cloud and KVM.

HP said the move would strengthen its hybrid cloud strategy, which largely puts application catalogues, workload automation, Cloud Foundry and OpenStack front and centre.

“The Stackato PaaS solution strengthens the HP Helion portfolio and reinforces HP’s commitment to delivering customers open source solutions that help accelerate their transition to hybrid clouds,” said Bill Hilf, Senior Vice President, product and service management, HP Cloud. “The acquisition reinforces HP’s focus on driving Cloud Foundry as the open standard cloud native application platform.”

After the acquisition closes, which is expected to occur sometime in Q4 this year, HP will integrate Stackato into the Helion Development Platform.

The strong support for Linux containers will help HP build on its hybrid cloud strategy. Containers are useful in part because they are extremely portable and can run on pretty much any infrastructure, a useful feature when it comes to lifting and shifting workloads and application components in heterogeneous infrastructure environments. In an interview with BCN earlier this month Xavier Poisson, vice president of HP Helion in EMEA said Linux containers are increasingly at the core of cloud-native app development – so anything that can boost the company’s support of containers could make it more competitive.