Todas las entradas hechas por Business Cloud News

Google, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, SQL, Windows

Google Cloud adds Microsoft support as Windows Server 2003 reaches EOL

Google made Windows Server support generally available this week

Google made Windows Server support generally available this week

Making good on commitments the cloud provider made in December last year Google has announced general availability of Windows Server on the Google Cloud Platform. The move comes the same week Windows Server 2003 reached its end of life.

“Making sure Google Cloud Platform is the best place to run your workloads is our top priority, so we’re happy that today Windows Server on Google Compute Engine graduates to General Availability, joining the growing list OSes we support. We’re also introducing several enhancements for Windows Server users,” the company said in a statement on its cloud blog.

“With its graduation to General Availability, Windows Server instances are now covered by the Compute Engine SLA. Windows Server users can now easily deploy a server running Active Directory or ASP.NET using the Cloud Launcher, and can securely extend their existing infrastructure into Google Cloud Platform using VPN.”

Google also said customers the purchase GCP support packages can get architectural and operational support for their Windows Server deployments on its cloud platform. And with Microsoft ceasing support for Windows Server 2003 Google is looking to lure in Microsoft developers by committing to support migration to more current Microsoft Server releases (2008, 2012).

In December last year the company announced it would begin offering Microsoft license mobility for the Google Cloud Platform, enabling existing Microsoft server application users to bring their own licenses and apps – SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange – from on-premise to the cloud, without incurring any additional fees.

As before the move to expand support for the Microsoft ecosystem is likely to come as welcome news to the .NET crowd, which is fairly sizeable. Microsoft commands a 32.8 per cent share of all public web server infrastructure according to W3Techs.

Africa, Dubai, IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Middle East, Mubadala, News & Analysis, UAE, Watson

IBM, Mubadala joint venture to bring Watson cloud to MENA

IBM is bringing Watson to the Middle East

IBM is bringing Watson to the Middle East

IBM is teaming up with Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Mubadala Development Company to create a joint venture based in Abu Dhabi that will deliver IBM’s cloud-based Watson service to customers in the Middle East and Northern Afirca (MENA) region.

The companies will set up the joint venture through Mubadala’s subsidiary, Injazat, which will be the sole provider of the Watson platform in the region.

The companies said the move will help create an ecosystem of MENA-based partners, software vendors and startups developing new solutions based on the cognitive compute platform.

“Bringing IBM Watson to the region represents the latest major milestone in the global adoption of cognitive computing,” said Mounir Barakat, executive director of ICT at Aerospace & Engineering Services, Mubadala.

“It also signals Mubadala’s commitment to bringing new technologies and spurring economic growth in the Middle East, another step towards developing the UAE as a hub for the region’s ICT sector,” Barakat said.

Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM Watson said Mubadala’s knowledge of the local corporate ecosystem will help the company expand its cognitive compute cloud service in the region.

IBM has enjoyed some Watson wins in financial services, healthcare and the utilities sectors, but the company has been fairly quiet on how much the division rakes in; over the past year the company made strides to expand the platform in the US, Africa and Japan, and recently made a number of strategic acquisitions in software automation in order to boost Watson’s appeal in customer engagement and health services.

GE, Industrial Internet of Things, Internet of Things, IoT, Jason C. Dies, News & Analysis, Pitney Bowes, Predix, Roger Pilc

GE, Pitney Bowes partner on industrial Internet of Things

GE and Pitney Bowes are partnering on industrial IoT

GE and Pitney Bowes are partnering on industrial IoT

GE is partnering with American ecommerce solutions provider Pitney Bowes to develop a custom asset performance management (APM) application that analyses the data Pitney Bowes generates from its production mailing and shipping machines to improve the efficiency of its equipment.

Pitney Bowes handles the automated mailing and shipping for clients like banks and retailers, and will work with GE to adapt its Predix software analytics platform to its mail handing and shipping environment.

The platform will allow Pitney Bowes to hoover up data generated from IoT sensors embedded into mail handling equipment and analyse the information to help improve operational efficiency and capacity planning, as well as proactively identify, diagnose and resolve asset service issues “before the client is even aware” of any problems.

“Our partnership with GE will help accelerate Pitney Bowes’ pace of innovation in combining physical and digital solutions to enable commerce. It is an important step in a series of activities we are pursuing across Pitney Bowes as part of our technology strategy,” said said Roger Pilc, chief innovation officer of Pitney Bowes. “By adding this next generation of data analytics and digital solutions to our hardware products, we will be able to drive more valuable solutions and business outcomes for our clients.”

Jason C. Dies, president of Document Messaging Technologies at Pitney Bowes said: “We see this initiative as potentially transformative to our Production Mail business . ”By gathering digital data from production mail machines, Pitney Bowes can drive compelling business outcomes for our clients.”

Both companies have already partnered with one another elsewhere in the IoT ecosystem. Pitney Bowes and GE are members of the Industrial Internet Consortium, a membership group of telcos, research institutes and technology manufacturers formed last year and focused on developing interoperability standards and common architectures to bridge smart devices, machines, mobile devices and the data they create.

The move comes barely a week after GE ramped up its IoT commitments with NTT Docomo. The two companies agreed to combine GE Digital Energy’s MDS Orbit Platform, a wireless router for industrial equipment, and Docomo’s embedded communication module, which will provide remote access and monitoring capabilities, for industrial IoT applications.

Crowdstrike, Funding, Google, News & Analysis, Rackspace

Security as a service firm Crowdstrike bags $100 from Google, Rackspace

CrowdStrike secured $100m in funding this week from Rackspace, Google among others

CrowdStrike secured $100m in funding this week from Rackspace, Google among others

Security SaaS provider CrowdStrike completed a $100m round of funding led by Google and Rackspace this week, which the company said would be used to bolster its international expansion.

The funding round, in which Accel and Warburg Pincus also participated, brings the total investment secured by the firm to $156m.

CrowdStrike offers a range of threat intelligence, endpoint protections and cybersecurity services including a cloud-based software offering and a security operations centre -as-a-service.

The company, of which Rackspace is a customer, claims to have trebled billings revenue and employees year on year.

“It’s extremely gratifying to bring in a high-caliber investor like Google Capital which shares our passion for innovation and sees the opportunity to completely transform the security industry,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

“As we continue to experience hyper-growth, this capital injection will help us firmly establish our SaaS-based endpoint protection platform as the leading solution to address today’s sophisticated attacks and will allow CrowdStrike to further accelerate our domestic and international expansion.”

The cloud-based security services market is growing along with enterprise adoption of cloud services in part because they can be deployed more quickly and flexibly than on-premise solutions, and because the architectures tend to be quite complimentary. Large cloud providers also see value in funding them because security services are quite capitally and operationally expensive – they require huge investments in code, infrastructure, monitoring and support staff – which means it’s challenging for these large IaaS providers to offer these services themselves. According to MarketsandMarkets the cloud security market is forecast to grow nearly 16 per cent CAGR from $4.2bn in 2014 to $8.7bn in 2019.

Datacentre, Digital Realty, M&A, News & Analysis, Telx

Digital Realty to double datacentre footprint with Telx acquisition

Digital Realty is acquiring Telx to bolster its US datacentre footprint

Digital Realty is acquiring Telx to bolster its US datacentre footprint

Digital Realty is to acquire cloud and colocation solutions specialist Telx for $1.9bn in a move the company said would double its datacentre footprint in the US.

Telx is a direct competitor of Equinix and offers a combination of interconnection, cloud and colocation services to enterprises and IT service providers and as of March this year the company managed 1.3 million square feet in 20 facilities across the US – 11 of which are already being leased from Digital Realty.

“This transformative transaction is consistent with our strategy of sourcing strategic and complementary assets to strengthen and diversify Digital Realty’s datacentre portfolio and expand our product mix and presence in the attractive colocation and interconnection space,” said William Stein, Digital Realty’s chief executive officer.

“Telx’s well-established colocation and interconnection businesses provide access to two rapidly-growing segments with long-standing customer relationships in top-tier metropolitan areas such as New York and Silicon Valley.”

“The fact that more than half of Telx’s 20 facilities are run out of Digital Realty properties further highlights the strategic fit as well as the potential incremental revenue opportunities we expect to be able to pursue as one company on a global basis.  This transaction advances our objective of ensuring that Digital Realty’s suite of products and services is able to best serve our customers’ current and future datacentre needs,” Stein added.

Chris Downie, chief executive officer of Telx said: “The combination of Telx’s colocation and interconnection capabilities with Digital Realty’s expansive wholesale platform provides greater flexibility and optionality for our customers and creates a global solutions provider covering wholesale customer applications and smaller performance-oriented deployments in select high-growth urban submarkets across the US.”

The transaction is due to close later this year.

cloud spend, IDC, Infrastructure as a Service, Michal Vesely, News & Analysis

EMEA cloud infrastructure spending swells 16% in Q1 2015

Spending on cloud as a proportion of overall IT expenditure is growing at healthy rates

Spending on cloud as a proportion of overall IT expenditure is growing at healthy rates

Cloud-related IT infrastructure spending in the EMEA region grew 16 per cent year on year to reach $1.01bn in the first quarter of this year, representing just under 20 per cent of the overall IT infrastructure spend according to analyst house IDC.

Spending on IT infrastructure (servers, disk storage, and Ethernet switches) for public cloud accounts for about 8 per cent and private cloud 11 per cent of the overall spend; the firm previously estimated that growth in spending on public cloud would outpace private cloud spending by nearly 10 percentage points (25 and 16 per cent, respectively).

Michal Vesely, research analyst, european infrastructure at IDC said much of the expenditure in Western Europe was fuelled mainly by public cloud and large-scale datacentre installations.

“Private cloud expenditure, especially on premises, on the other hand, is more directly connected to regular IT investments by enterprises,” he explained. “Private cloud spending saw a slower pace as users assess their storage, as well as integrated and hyperconverged systems, strategies. Once decisions are made, we expect another major push in the forthcoming period.”

The firm also said unstable macroeconomic conditions in Southern and Western Europe haven’t adversely impacted spending trends , although on-premise deployments seem to be growing at a slower rate – in part due to an increased shift to cloud. According to the analyst house this shift is in full swing. In April the firm forecast that cloud will make up nearly half of all IT infrastructure spending in four years.

Amazon, AWS, Iberdrola Renewables, Jerry Hunter

AWS, Iberdrola partner to power cloud with renewables

AWS and Iberdrola are building a massive wind farm in North Carolina

AWS and Iberdrola are building a massive wind farm in North Carolina

Amazon has announced another clean energy project in the US, this time with Iberdrola Renewables. The companies are partnering to develop a “utility-scale” wind farm in North Carolina to supply both current and future AWS datacentres.

The companies said the wind farm is expected to generate 670,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind energy annually, roughly enough energy to power 61,000 homes, starting in December 2016.

“This agreement, and those previously in place, puts AWS on track to surpass our goal of 40 per cent renewable energy globally by the end of 2016,” said Jerry Hunter, vice president of infrastructure at Amazon Web Services.

“We’re far from being done. We’ll continue pursuing projects that deliver clean energy to the various energy grids that serve AWS datacentres, we’ll continue working with our power providers to increase their renewable energy quotient, and we’ll continue to strongly encourage our partners in government to extend the tax incentives that make it more viable for renewable projects to get off the ground,” Hunter said.

The move is another sign Amazon is keen to position itself among a slew of other cloud service providers that have gone conspicuously green – Apple, SAP, and Google for instance.

In April this year Amazon said about a quarter of the energy its datacentres consume come from renewable energy sources. Last month Amazon teamed up with Community Energy to commit to building and operating an 80 megawatt (MW) solar farm in Virginia, which the companies said would be the largest solar farm in the state.

Ericsson, Networks, News & Analysis, NFV, research and development, SDN, Valter D’Avino

Ericsson sets up cloud lab in Germany

Ericsson is boosting R&D in cloud

Ericsson is boosting R&D in cloud

Ericsson has set up a lab that will see it work with operators and enterprises to demo, test and verify cloud-based services. The move comes just two months after the networking vendor set up a similar lab in Italy.

The company said the lab will focus on helping customers develop cloud migration, governance, security and data integrity competencies. It plans to offer access to in-house cloud technology experts as well as its growing portfolio of cloud technology.

”By developing these cloud solutions in cooperation with our customers, we will provide them the opportunity to speed up the deployment of cloud technology,” said Valter D’Avino, Ericsson’s head of Western & Central Europe.

“This means we will more quickly experience the benefits of cloud, such as shorter time to market for new services within Internet of Things for example, and a more agile IT infrastructure.”

The move comes just a couple of months after Ericsson set up a similar lab in Rome, Italy, focused on stimulating development of multi-vendor SDN and NFV solutions that primarily address the needs of telcos.

The recently announced lab is part of a much broader shift into the enterprise ICT world and outside its traditional customer base.

Alcatel-Lucent, China Mobile, Datacentre, News & Analysis, SDN, Software Defined Networking, Sunil Khandekar, Telco Cloud

China Mobile revamps private cloud with Nuage SDN

China Mobile, Alcatel Lucent and their respective subsidiaries are working together on SDN in many contexts

China Mobile, Alcatel Lucent and their respective subsidiaries are working together on SDN in many contexts

China Mobile’s IT subsidiary Suzhou Software Technology Company has baked Nuage Networks’ software-defined networking technology into its private cloud architecture to enable federation across multiple China Mobile subsidiaries. The move comes the same week both parent companies – China Mobile and Alcatel Lucent – demoed a virtualised radio access network (RAN), a core network component.

The company deployed Nuage’s Virtualised Services Platform (VSP) and Virtual Services Assurance Platform (VSAP) for its internal private cloud platform in a bid to improve the scalability and flexibility of its infrastructure, and enable infrastructure federation between the company’s various subsidiaries.

Each subsidiary is allocated its own virtual private cloud with its own segmented chunk of the network, but enabling infrastructure federation between them means underutilised assets can be deployed in other parts of the company as needed.

“China Mobile is taking a visionary approach in designing and building its new DevOps private cloud architecture,” said Nuage networks chief executive officer Sunil Khandekar.

“By combining open source software with Nuage Networks VSP, China Mobile is replacing and surpassing its previous legacy architecture in terms of power, sophistication and choice. It will change the way China Mobile operates internally and, ultimately, the cloud services they can provide to customers,” Khandekar said.

The move comes the same week China Mobile and Alcatel Lucent trialled what the companies claimed to be the industry’s first virtualised RAN, which for an operator with over 800 million subscribers has the potential to deliver significant new efficiencies across its datacentres if deployed at scale.

Azure, Channel, Managed services, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Rackspace, Scott Guthrie, Taylor Rhodes

Rackspace to offer support for, resell Microsoft Azure

Rackspace is set to offer support for Azure customers and resell Microsoft's public and private cloud technology

Rackspace is set to offer support for Azure customers and resell Microsoft’s public and private cloud technology

In another move aimed at shifting its business towards managed (cloud) services Rackspace this week announced it will extend its ‘fanatical support’ services to Microsoft Azure public and private cloud infrastructure.

Rackspace said customers will be able to buy either bundled Azure infrastructure with support, or just support services. The offerings will be available first in the US, with plans for an international rollout “through early 2016.”

“Our strategy at Rackspace has always been to provide the world’s best expertise and service for industry-leading technologies — including a broad selection of Microsoft products,” said Taylor Rhodes, chief executive at Rackspace.

“We’re pleased to expand our relationship with Microsoft and the options we provide for our customers by offering Fanatical Support for Azure. By adding support for Azure to our portfolio, we can now serve customers who want public, private and hybrid cloud environments built on the Microsoft Azure Stack,” Rhodes said.

Rackspace already offers a range of Microsoft-based managed services and support but the latest move will see the company double down on the service component for the newly re-architected Azure Stack, including Microsoft’s own public cloud.

The move is also yet another step in Rackspace’s broader transformation from a pure-play hosting and cloud provider towards a managed services and managed cloud company.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group said: “Fanatical Support for Azure and Azure Stack adds Rackspace’s industry-leading support to Microsoft’s deep experience with the hybrid cloud, creating a win-win for customers. With this relationship, our mutual customers will have even more options for migrating their diverse IT workloads to the cloud.”