The storage industry is going through a big paradigm shift caused by drastic changes in how we generate and consume data. As a result, we also have to drastically change how we store data: the market needs massive, online storage pools that can be accessed from anywhere and anytime. Object Storage has emerged as a solution to meet the changing needs of the market and it is currently a hot topic as it creates opportunities for new revenue streams.
In this three-part blog series, I will explore how storage has changed – creating a need for new methodologies – and why object storage is the prevalent platform for scale-out storage infrastructures.
To understand how storage has changed, let’s take a look at how data has evolved over the past three decades, paying special attention to data generation and consumption.
There’s been a lot of discussion on the Internet about the definition of Platform-as-a-Service. Here’s just a few very active Twitter discussions to illustrate the level of activity and passion over the topic:
This is just a few of the hundreds of tweets returned when I queried «Paas» and «definition». The interesting thing is that the sheer breadth of the discussion makes it very difficult to nail down exactly what it is.
Gartner Group’s method of responding to the madness was to develop their own taxonomy of PaaS, which seems to have been very helpful for them in organizing their research, but, in contrast to many other things Gartner has led on defining, their PaaS taxonomy has not really caught on with the cloud community. The Gartner taxonomy breaks things out based upon the primary functionality of the platform, such as application development, business process management and event processing. However, this dichotomy actually impairs their ability to abstractly define the essential characteristics of a PaaS.
NuoDB announced on Wednesday that it has closed a new round of investment. In addition to existing investors, Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, world leader in 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, has made an investment in the company.
Also participating in the round are NuoDB’s existing investors including Morgenthaler Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Longworth Venture Partners. This latest round is $14.2 million, bringing the total investment in NuoDB to $26.2 million.
Introducing the concept of the Service Factory as a Service (SFaaS ), a ground breaking advance over conventional solution and service delivery practices which can deliver transformation to and realization of an agile business architecture without major up-front investment.
The service factory concept has been in vogue for some time. As long ago as July 1989 the Harvard Business Review published a seminal article by Chase and Garvin titled The Service Factory[i]. They argued that «The factory of the future is not a place where computers, robots, and flexible machines do the drudge work . . . the next generation, then, will compete by bundling services with products, anticipating and responding to a truly comprehensive range of customer needs.»
Enterprise Cloud Analytics and Business Intelligence enables organizations to leverage the Cloud and provide end to end data aggregation and analysis capabilities. The objective is to develop Analytics on the Cloud to support Business Intelligence and Analysis capabilities. Effective strategic and operational business decisions can be made based on the search, analysis, drill down and visualization of data in real-time to get actionable information for making effective business decisions. In addition predictive analysis can be very useful to predict trends and patterns.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Ajay Budhraja, CTO at the Department of Justice, will discuss enterprise cloud analytics and business intelligence management, solutions, best practices, challenges, trends and specific examples. He will go over the development of a road map, architecture and a data-driven strategy for cloud analytics and business intelligence at the enterprise level for public, private and hybrid solutions. He will also cover approaches to making data accessible through analytic capabilities and the governance, methodology, architecture, security, privacy aspects.
Document Capture Technologies has launched a fax service that allows documents to be sent from a computer, tablet or smartphone with an Internet connection. SimpleScan now turns a smart phone or desktop scanner into a virtual fax machine that transmits digitized documents to any fax number.
“Eliminate the time, cost and hassle of faxing documents on the go,” said Karl Etzel, COO, Document Capture Technologies. “The inclusion of fax in SimpleScan Connect’s suite of document management services is one more way we enable small business productivity and efficiency, especially for those who send faxes infrequently.”
For decades, on-premises installations meant application developers and systems administrators had access to this pre-boot sequence, whether it was for easing asset management, helping to recover from failure, or fine tuning systems for performance. The move to the cloud meant losing access to this important level of control, as cloud providers only offer administrative credentials to a server only once the operating system has loaded.
“Our virtual machines look and feel more like the bare metal, all instances include dedicated CPU cores, dedicated RAM and now BIOS-level access just like the physical servers that IT admins are used to, except they get all of the advantages of cloud computing from the price/performance leader,” said ProfitBricks Co-founder, CEO, and CTO Achim Weiss. “We want to give our customers as much control of their virtual data center as they would have in a traditional on-premises data center, but without the hassle of the capital expenditures and never-ending hardware maintenance. With this new feature we’re making cloud computing an even more attractive alternative for the enterprise.”
SecureAuth provides 2-Factor Access Control to all industries, extending to mobile, cloud, web, and network resources. 2FaaS accepts any identity and authenticates via SMS, Telephony, and E-mail One-time Passwords (OTPs), and our patent-pending, low-friction Device Fingerprinting to ensure secure access to web and mobile applications.
Nominations for participating vendors will be accepted through Twitter at @ThingsExpo. The «Open Cloud Shoot-Out at @ThingsExpo New York,» in which leading cloud providers are expected to participate, will be held live on stage at the event. The Shootout will provide the vendors with an opportunity to demonstrate the features and capabilities of their products, with a particular focus on interoperability, scalability, security, and reliability in terms of development, deployment, and management.
AlephCloud has developed proprietary technology that enables secure collaboration without the need for a trusted third party. This “zero knowledge” model makes sure only authorized parties are privy to the information exchanged and stored, while nobody else has visibility, not even AlephCloud. We provide federated data privacy and policy controls that attach directly to the data to protect it while also ensuring ease of use and the flexibility for businesses to utilize a wide range of cloud service providers.