Dear Mr CIO, how is the year ahead planning program going so far? I know, sorry, it’s a tough one. The deployment and integration of devices, mobile connectivity points, virtual cloud-based desktop services, security, Big Data, tablets, mini-tablets and micro-mini-tablets (don’t worry, we made that last one up) all present a multiplicity of challenges.
The hyper-efficient CIO should look back on 2012 first and take stock of recent developments as the most prudent means of planning for 2013. Commonly agreed wisdom suggests that migration plans from XP to Windows 7 have now been put in place and (by and large) also been put into motion in most reasonably sized firms.
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Skytap Offers Ready-to-Go Cloudera Hadoop
Skytap, the cloud platform that offers virtual lab automation as a service, now has pre-configured Cloudera Hadoop (CDH4) templates in its library that can be used to spin up and manage physical or virtual clusters of up to 50 Hadoop nodes.
With complexity removed, the company claims a 10-node system should take no more than 10 minutes to deploy. In Cloudera system one node is always dedicated to Cloudera Manager.
The templates eliminate the time required to manually download, install, configure and network all of the required software and hardware components together.
Making Sense of CES’s “Internet of Things” Trend
This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was all about connected living with concrete examples of how an “Internet of Things” can transform our homes.
Despite promises of a “smarter home” as far back as the 1933 World’s Fair, we’re finally seeing an inflection point in its evolution, thanks to cloud and mobile computing. Many of the demonstrations at CES illustrate that with cloud, we have a platform we didn’t have in the past – and it’s a breakthrough.
Cloud is the platform to host the applications and the mobile platform connects the devices. With a cloud, televisions, computers and mobile devices can better connect to smart meters, lights, appliances, plugs and sensors within the home as well as with outside services.
Dell Could Reportedly Go for $13.50-$14 a Share
Depending on who you listen to, Dell, once the world’s largest PC vendor
fallen on hard times, could have a deal to go private through a leveraged
management buy-out in place in the next six weeks (The Wall Street
Journal) or in the next week or two (CNBC).
On the other hand, Toni Sacconaghi, the ace Sanford Bernstein analyst,
thinks the whole exercise will come to naught because of the sheer size of
the ~$22 billion-$25 billion deal, one of the biggest LBOs of all time.
Besides the size of the deal, he says, “you have a pretty risky environment
in the sense that the PC marketplace is going through a lot of change right
now.”
The last word out of CNBC Tuesday was that Dell could be taken out for
$13.50-$14 a share, not the premium that most of the Street seems to be
anticipating. The Wall Street Journal waded in later agreeing.
Silver Lake Partners is apparently the key private equity house Dell has been
negotiating with for the last two or three months. The other name that has
come up is TPG Capital.
The two might team to buy $2 billion in equity in Dell. Sacconaghi think it
would take $4 billion.
There’s reportedly no formalized bidding group yet. A sovereign wealth or
pension fund could get involved. The Wall Street Journal says JP Morgan
Chase is managing “the deal process” apparently as an advisor.
According to CNBC the $15 billion debt financing is oversubscribed.
Reuters says at least four major banks have been lined up by Silver Lake:
Credit Suisse, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays and the Royal Bank
of Canada.
Because of Michael Dell’s nearly 16% ownership position in the firm,
worth maybe $3.6 billion, he’s assumed to be in. Because of that conflict of
interest stockholders have no guarantee of getting the best price. He may be
kicking in additional financing perhaps from his multibillion-dollar personal
investment fund.
Is Cloud Storage Ready for Liftoff?
by Lorita Ba Every now and then, we at TwinStrata like to take a pulse of the industry. While we have conversations every day with prospective and current customers, partners and industry analysts, it’s good to pop up from those conversations to see what the
Symform Closes Strategic Investment
Symform, the distributed cloud backup and storage service, has topped up its
$11 million B round with the $3 million strategic investment it was waiting
for.
The money is coming from Second Century Ventures (SCV), the venture
capital fund of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the largest trade
association in America.
Don’t Stick Your Head in the Sand, Create a Proactive Security Strategy
The lack of a proactive security strategy is much like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. It is a matter of when, not if attacks will happen. As enterprise systems are exposed to substantial risk from data loss, theft, or manipulation, a proactive unified approach deployed and managed from the cloud can provide a better balance of data leakage prevention, protection of IP assets, maintenance of compliance standards versus cost/resource responsibility.
In business, data is currency. It is the oil that keeps the commercial engine in motion and databases are the digital banks that store and retrieve this valuable information. And, according to IDC, data is doubling every two years. But as the overall amount of data grows, so does the amount of sensitive and regulated data. All this data stored by enterprises requires high levels of security. Presently (again, according to IDC) only about a quarter of that data is being properly protected now. Like all currency, data must be protected.
Enterprise Mobility, Cloud Computing, BYOD and Unified Communication
Analysis and insight on the famous four buzzwords in the IT world… Enterprise Mobility, Cloud Computing, BYOD and Unified Communication; how they complement, assist and disrupt each other; and the potential impact of the underlying forces in action on their future….
Cloud computing is providing organizations with low-cost applications and storage, making it easier to manage the growing amount of information. Increased adoption of cloud-based systems (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS and everything else) in the enterprise will pave a way for a faster pace of adoption and acceptance of the cloud-based back end for mobile devices. With increased use of smartphones, tablets in enterprise (BlackBerry, Nexus, Surface, etc.), increased acceptance of BYOD, more and more business information and data will be moved outside the firewall. The trend will fuel the use of cloud infrastructure for mobile applications, and platform and infrastructure including storage. It’s a no-brainer. Private mobile cloud, private mobile app stores, standalone enterprise class mobile app stores, etc., will start taking shape. The mobile app and platform ecosystem will evolve.The growth will, however, also depend on the ability of SaaS and PaaS vendors to facelift their applications and platforms for the mobile devices.
The IT Talent Shift: Preparing Your Enterprise IT Talent for the Cloud
One of the cloud’s biggest draws is the capability to virtualize computing resources, allowing it to be consumed with the click of a mouse. But behind that simple click is an enormous infrastructure challenge that has recently been cited as a major cause for slower enterprise adoption. Enterprises can better prepare for this shift and take full advantage of future computing benefits. Between architecture design and migration planning, the road can be long, so what do you do with your talent?
In this General Session at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Lisa Larson, VP of Enterprise Technical Sales for Rackspace, shows how you can best prepare your IT talent for this seismic shift in computing.
Cloud Management and Code Switching
Code-switching is a linguistics term that refers to the act of switching between two or more languages in a single conversation. It’s like starting off the conversation with a greeting in one language, switching to English for most of it, but using elements of the other language throughout the conversation. When our girls were learning English this happened quite frequently, with a sentence often beginning with «осторожный» (careful) and continuing on with an explanation of why some action was dangerous and ending with «ладно» (okay)?
Code-switching generally occurs in a sentence where it grammatically aligns. Thus the use of interjections and stand-alone phrases in one language to get the attention of a child make perfect sense.