Pertino, the start-up that figures its software-defined WANs can reinvent cloud-era networking for the masses, has raised $20 million in B series funding led by new investor Jafco Ventures with existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners kicking in.
The new round brings Pertino’s total VC take to $28.85 million and may take it through to break-even.
The company means to use the new money to execute against its SDN cloud platform vision and build out its go-to-market strategy.
Pertino’s widgetry has been in limited availability since its launch last month. Jafco thinks Pertino, which is focused on SMBs, is delivering a disruptive technology in a practical and consumable way to an underserved global market.
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The Accessibility of the Cloud
“Cloud made Big Data what it is today,” stated Scott Morrison, CTO at Layer 7 Technologies, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Cloud gave us the massively scalable infrastructure necessary to practically do Big Data,” Morrison continued, “as well as the engineering mindset that made it a front-of-mind solution for organizations that may not have considered it before.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Scott Morrison: It’s about both, but one or the other may be the driving motivator depending on the organization.
Selling Solutions to Future Generations of Enterprise IT
Younger enterprise IT employees understand how easy it is to consume services from the cloud. They are becoming instrumental in helping corporations find better solution alternatives than currently available.
Enterprise IT‘s focus is moving from software development to data analytics, so it is not surprising that attention is also being paid to help them address these needs. The exhibit hall at the recent Strata conference (run by O‘Reilly Media) was packed with start-up companies demonstrating innovative data analytics solutions. One of the challenges in implementing analytics is customers‘ lack of skills. A common theme among start-up solutions was overcoming that skills barrier. Some of these solutions were designed to help users get started with simple BigData initiatives and then progress to solving more complicated problems.
Krish Krishnan from Sixth Sense presented on the first day of Strata and made an interesting comment on one of his slides: «The Gen Z and Millennial Generation of buyers will not be swayed by traditional engagement models of selling products and services.» Having worked with large enterprise vendors, I have seen many sales deals closed based on relationships between vendor account teams and enterprise IT buyers that often take years to cultivate. Customers take a long time to develop solution requirements in the form of Requests for Proposal (RFP) and then mandate proofs of concepts from vendors before they make a buying decision. While Krish identified these buyers as just Gen Z and the future, I think anyone past generation Y are ready for a new model.
The Future of Programming?
It is often the case that when you look at things a certain way, they become filtered over time, and you see what you expected to see. This happens to everyone, and while a wonderful adaptation to help handle all of the various inputs in our lives, has caused just about everyone to jump to conclusions because they think they know what they see. Neville Chamberlain did that. He (and his advisors) was certain that Hitler would keep the peace after he was given what the German people wanted. He saw Hitler as the same as other European leaders, and that was definitely not what Hitler was. There is no definitive proof that things would have gone differently had the allied powers put their foot down on Czechoslovakia. But the Munich accords, and the statement quoted above, definitively did put an end to Chamberlain’s career.
The Emerging IT Stack – Infographic
The IT stacks we saw and worked with until recently are almost things of the past now. This change, of course, can be mainly attributed to the Internet evolution and the way IT is being leveraged these days especially with the blurring of lines between personal and work-related IT use. The role and expectations from IT have vastly changed in an increasingly shorter amount of time than in previous years. The epiphenomenon of these expectations is the emergence of technologies like cloud computing, mobility, Big Data and social collaboration. This has had a dramatic and direct impact on how we look at the IT stack today and in the near future, what we plan to achieve with IT, how we are going to achieve them, and what skills or acumen we should be developing in order to succeed.
Of course, there won’t just be a single IT Stack per se (no one-size-fits-all), but we need a basic framework that will set the direction for future options. Future IT stacks that stem from the proposed one below won’t be driven by technology alone, but by the very nature of the applications and workloads they are created for; and equally, by the end user’s aspiration for newer experiences.
Unlocking the Promise of Open Cloud Computing
«Just as standards and open source revolutionized the Web and Linux, they will also have a tremendous impact on cloud computing,» said Robert LeBlanc, IBM SVP of Software, as IBM – one of the world’s largest private cloud vendors with more than 5,000 private cloud customers in 2012 – this week announced that its cloud services and software will be based on an open cloud architecture, including OpenStack.
Industry Standards Drive Cloud Adoption
With a focus on developing affordable solutions that drive innovation for our customers’ missions, I believe that the development of cloud standards can have a positive impact on cloud adoption. The more than 370 members of the cross-domain Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) are providing customer-focused business and mission requirements that help drive the adoption and usefulness of cloud standards, especially in the areas of security, interoperability and data portability. The public and private sectors are making important contributions and we need to continue the progress industry and government have made in the development of standards.
In thinking about the way standards positively impact cloud adoption, three main themes arise.
Unlocking the Promise of Open Cloud Computing
«Just as standards and open source revolutionized the Web and Linux, they will also have a tremendous impact on cloud computing,» said Robert LeBlanc, IBM SVP of Software, as IBM – one of the world’s largest private cloud vendors with more than 5,000 private cloud customers in 2012 – this week announced that its cloud services and software will be based on an open cloud architecture, including OpenStack.
Cloud Expo New York: Delivering Digital Marketing on the Cloud
With the evolution of the Internet, organizations found new avenues to reach consumers in the virtual world. With the ubiquitous reach of cloud technologies, not only has rich media reached consumers in every corner of the globe, the very focus of marketing is shifting from product-centric to consumer-centric.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Ajit Sagar, Associate VP, Digital Transformation Practice at Infosys Limited, will focus on the application of cloud and Big Data to the business of digital marketing. He will cover the shifting trends in digital marketing supported by the cloud, the products that enable marketing applications on the cloud, omni-channel marketing through the cloud, and what it takes to deliver end-to-end marketing solutions on cloud-based infrastructures, exemplified through real-world case studies.
The Open Source Cloud
“Open source cloud is enabling a vast developer community that is today building applications to solve the points of integration in this growing area,” stated Bennett Bauer, Director of Cloud Marketing at DreamHost, in the exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Pure, built-in-the-cloud applications that resolve the social, mobile, analytics lifecycle through the cloud,” Bauer continued, “and applications that are not hamstrung by trying to integrate traditional corporate data and custom functionality are proliferating.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Bennett Bauer: It’s about both, even in these early days. Shifting workloads gradually over to the cloud, starting from the easiest to the hardest to move, can start the money and time savings immediately. For a few years now we’ve seen development projects, analytics, basic SaaS applications, and ready storage in the cloud served up as needed. The value proposition is already proven: let’s not hold expensive assets that take way too long to provision when you only need them for peak project work, analysis, and maybe seasonal spikes. Throw on top of this the increasing number of software applications written to be cloud friendly, shared among a great many users, available instantly, and eliminating the need to hold expensive licenses, and the value grows exponentially. In summary, we see prices dropping rapidly, and we likewise see ease of use and application scenarios improving. It is the latter, if anything, that will increase the time savings factor and drive adoption.