Which market has already demonstrated multibillion-dollar revenues (forecast to grow to more than $7.5 billion by 2016), will have a 1.3 billion-strong mobile workforce reliant on it, continues to push the envelope on business model flexibility and innovation, leads the charge on cloud adoption and has a major impact on the way in which companies conduct business with their employees, customers, partners and suppliers? Would you be surprised if I were to say conferencing and collaboration (C&C)?
How many of us were using Web-based conferencing before the term “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) was even coined? C&C providers were doing multiprotocol mashups with public switched telephone network (PSTN) audio, T.120 data and H.323 video before the concept of a Web services mashup even existed. They were also doing billing on behalf of (BoBo) for resellers more than 10 years ago. Today, this market continues to evolve in many areas, including advanced IP audio codecs and noise-canceling techniques, seamless Web control, telepresence, social networking, unified communications and virtual meeting collaboration tools such as virtual, interactive whiteboards. It has also been a market that has exhibited the greatest innovation in pricing, bundling schemes and distribution and partner strategies. For those of us providing billing and compensation for the leaders in this market, we would say, “Yes, tell us something we don’t already know.” For outsiders, all of this comes as somewhat of a surprise even as they cannot imagine a work environment that does not heavily rely on this always-there service.
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Convergence & Interoperability Will Define Next-Gen Cloud Architectures
Our more interconnected planet is accelerating the adoption and convergence of next-generation architectures, in the form of cloud, mobile and instrumented physical assets. Organizations that can effectively balance optimization and innovation, will be in a position to leverage new systems of engagement, out maneuver their peers and achieve desired outcomes.
In this 12th Cloud Expo Opening Keynote, Dr. Daniel Sabbah, CTO and General Manager, Next Generation Platform, at IBM Corp, detailed the critical architectural considerations and success factors organizations must internalize to successfully implement, optimize and innovate using next generation architectures.
Oracle & NetSuite Join Clouds to Chase SMBs
The third of the three “startling” alliances that Larry Ellison predicted would happen this week has come to pass.
Failing organic growth Oracle has tied up with Larry’s “other” company, sometime competitor NetSuite, one of the first SaaS companies, predating even salesforce.com by a year thanks to Larry’s nickel.
NetSuite’s specialty is selling cloud-ified ERP to SMBs. By the end of the year, the widgetry will be integrated with Oracle’s human capital management (HCM) software used to manage employees in a combination clearly aimed at Oracle’s new nemesis Workday, started by the folks driven out of PeopleSoft when Oracle bought the place out from under them.
Deloitte Consulting LLP also has a piece of the action. It’s going to start a practice to help customers deploy the widgetry.
The Cloud: The Most Disruptive Approach to DR/BC
Floods, fires, tornados, earthquakes, pandemics, riots, and hurricanes are just a small sample of the potential disasters that threaten businesses almost daily. Throughout my career, I have been responsible for preparing, managing, and rebuilding major communications infrastructure and the businesses they support before, during, and after disasters. Sometimes this was due to devastating natural disasters but most were the more common disasters that visit us every day like burst pipes, public transportation strikes and the extended loss of utilities to one or more locations.
Naturally, businesses are all building good Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance (DR/BC) plans for that inevitable bad day – or are they? According to the Small Business Alliance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), between 25 and 40 percent of businesses never reopen after a major disaster. With all the cloud-based technology available, this statistic is astonishing and entirely avoidable.
Impetus Reiterates Its Leadership in the Cloud Computing / Big Data Space
Impetus Technologies, a Big Data thought leader and software services and solutions company, recently participated in the Cloud Expo in New York as speakers and exhibitor. The expo remains a major platform of interaction for C-level executives involved in cloud computing, Big Data, and data analysis.
Pankaj Mittal, CTO, Impetus, reiterated the company’s thought leadership in the cloud domain by exchanging views with eminent speakers in a power panel discussion. Mittal shared the stage with senior leaders from Appcore, Dell, IBM, and SOA, brainstorming with them on the topic, ‘Has Cloud Computing Changed IT for the Better?’ The panel addressed the issues and challenges surrounding cloud computing, focusing on the future of cloud.
CoreSite Selects FieldView’s DCIM Solution
“Data center providers like CoreSite need better tools and automation to support their customers,” said Bill Wosilius, Senior Vice President, Corporate Operations, CoreSite, as the company announced its selection of FieldView Solutions as a component in a technology transformation project.
“Data center infrastructure management is our livelihood, and a world-class customer experience is essential to our growth,” Wosilius continued. “Being able to support our customers more efficiently and effectively is a differentiator that enables us to create added value. That’s why our approach to our technology transformation project was to select best-in-class technologies like FieldView and further strengthen our integration.”
Understanding Red Hat’s ManageIQ Acquisition
Cloud Operations Management tools have different functions, starting from monitoring and management to automation of processes through both a virtual and cloud infrastructure. The tools in CloudForums can handle the monitoring, automation and measuring aspects in virtual as well as cloud based infrastructures but at a higher level, managing all these operations is basically about lifecycle management of the service. That involves workload management, transparency of costs and the proper retirement of resources when they have served out their purpose.
Understating the vitality of these functions, Red Hat bought ManageIQ so that these capabilities could be rapidly brought under the CloudForums umbrella. It is interesting to know that Red Hat now supports the ManageIQ EVM products that were already in the market prior to this ManageIQ – Red Hat CloudForums 2.0 merger.
Azure to Support Engine Yard
Microsoft and Engine Yard, the Platform-as-a-Service, announced a strategic alliance Wednesday to deliver a commercial-grade open source-based platform on top of Windows Azure’s on-demand infrastructure.
Engine Yard Cloud will be available in the Azure Marketplace beginning July 31.
It’s supposed to suit everyone from the smallest start-up to the largest enterprise. Developers who use open source languages and frameworks will be able to take advantage of the widgetry to create and deploy modern web and mobile apps more easily.
Engine Yard said it is delivering on its multi-cloud vision by bringing its automation and orchestration, as well as its expertise in open source cloud application development frameworks, to Azure. It’s set to come with an enhanced and modern user interface and advances in its new cluster model supporting applications, databases and load balancers for faster provisioning, configuration and deployment.
v2.1 of Couchbase’s NoSQL Document DB Released
«With Couchbase Server 2.1, our multi-threaded persistence engine provides customers dramatic disk read and write performance, allowing them to extend the scope and scale of their applications,» said Yaseen Rahim, Sr. VP Products at Couchbase, as the NoSQL database leader today announced the general availability of the latest release of its NoSQL document-oriented database.
«We continue to invest in strengthening and optimizing the core architecture of Couchbase Server,» Rahim continued, «further differentiating us as the NoSQL solution that delivers reliability at scale for customers and users.»
Do CEOs Care About Cloud?
Cloud computing ownership is traditionally seen as the province of CIO or CTO, and where those roles don’t exist in an organization, the VP or even Director/Manager of IT oversees cloud implementation.
However, with more business units accessing cloud platforms for a variety of purposes, the range of required buy-in has similarly increased: the CFO is now a primary consideration in the way a business integrates with the cloud, as do marketing, sales, as well as other business unit heads within the organization.
But the CEO isn’t concerned about the technical aspects of what cloud delivers in the way that it is germane for even marketing and sales to understand how cloud process work at least on a fundamental level. Those groups utilizing Salesforce or different automation platforms need some technical ability to sync systems or specialize the platform.