A few weeks ago, Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast, leaving devastation in its wake. Thousands of people were without power, food, and water. It quickly became clear that Sandy’s aftermath would bring life on the East Coast to a standstill for days as the region began to rebuild.
Early estimates of the damage put the business loss associated with the storm as high as $30 billion. But Grudi Associates, The John M. Glover Agency, and many others weren’t a part of that group. Evolve IP’s redundant cloud platform allowed them to run their businesses remotely as the storm raged on.
For example, InformationWeek Cloud picked up the story of how we helped Apria Health Care stay functional during the storm so that they could continue to provide their vital health services to customers in the days after the storm. Thanks to Evolve IP, Apria was able to deliver essential products to each customer, the most important being the personal oxygen tank.
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Lean and Low in Las Vegas
Those of you who followed my blog for a while know that the idea of applying manufacturing best practices to cloud computing is a favorite topic of mine*. This week the topic popped up in a fireside chat (the popular term for keynotes delivered from a set of armchairs, often with no fire in sight) between Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogel and CEO Jeff Bezos at re:Invent, the first Amazon Web Services customer conference.
I won’t cover the conference here – many blogs and media sites already did – but in the chat Bezos made a number of interesting points on how principles of lean manufacturing are guiding Amazon’s overall endeavors and how cloud computing both supports and benefits from this approach. He discussed how – for developers- this approach turns the cost of infrastructure operations from an abstract overhead-like concept into a very visible direct cost they can directly influence. And how the cost of quality is always lower than the cost of non-quality, as fixing problems later – after it has shipped to the customer – is many times more expensive than doing things first time right. But also how cloud computing allows to continuously improve products and processes (similar to how factory workers at Toyota were empowered to stop the production line and jointly improve the process). He also stressed the importance of focusing on customers and their requirements (by continuously measuring and providing feedback loops) instead of focusing on competitors or winning.
Cloud Expo 2013 New York Registration Now Open
Recent IDC research shows that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $44.2 billion by 2013. And a recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years.
These two unstoppable enterprise IT trends, Cloud Computing and Big Data, will converge in New York City at 12th Cloud Expo – being held June 10-13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.
As at every Cloud Expo, we are offering in New York City a vast selection of technical and strategic breakout sessions, General Sessions, Industry Keynotes, our signature discussion «Power Panels» and a bustling Expo floor complete with two busy Demo Theaters so that as a delegate you can kick the tires of solutions and offerings, and discuss one-on-one with all the leading Cloud and Big Data players what they are offering and how to make use of it in your particular situation.
Understanding the Impact of Your Workload on Your Cloud Infrastructure
Enterprises are quickly realizing that their future success is dependent on their ability to adapt their business to the Cloud. That realization however comes with more questions and concerns about executing an effective cloud-based strategy. The explosion of the OpenStack community has made it possible for hosting providers and businesses to create or utilize Amazon-like public and private clouds, but it’s clear that the Cloud is not a one-size-fits-all solution. One prime factor that dictates the success of a cloud strategy is the particular workload an enterprise is tackling. From DevOps, to rapidly deploying dynamic and scalable websites, enterprises’ workload needs should dictate their cloud architecture.
The specific workloads have an impact on many elements of the cloud, particularly the architecture of the infrastructure. It becomes clear how integral infrastructure architecture is to meeting workload requirements as we examine specific workload use cases.
The first element to consider in the architecture of cloud infrastructure is computing power. The number and speed of compute nodes within a cloud configuration will dictate how quickly processes can be executed. This comes into play prominently when assessing a workload, as the computing power required to develop a web app pales in comparison to the compute power required to execute Big Data analysis. Large-scale data analysis projects require powerful compute capabilities. While this kind of project is completely within the purview of well-constructed cloud architectures, that architecture must be designed as such.
2013 Will Be Dominated by Mobile, Cloud Developments: IDC
one of the main movers of the IT world.
The IT industry’s transition to «The Third Platform,» built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking and Big Data analytics technologies, has dominated annual predictions from IDC over the course of the last several years.
For 2013, IDC predicts the transition to The Third Platform will gain momentum as the industry accelerates past the exploration phase and into full-blown, high-stakes competition, according to an article on BizTech2.com.
«The IT industry as a whole is moving toward the mobile / social / cloud / Big Data world of the Third Platform much more quickly than many realize: from 2013 through 2020, these technologies will drive around 90 percent of all the growth in the IT market,» said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC, according to the article. «Companies that are not putting 80 percent or more of their competitive energy into this new market will be trapped in the legacy portion of the market, growing even slower than global GDP.»
Cisco Buys Cariden
is used in capacity planning, designing and engineering networks. It’s paying about $141 million in cash and retention incentives.
Cariden, whose clients include Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, SingTel and Swisscom, specializes in optimizing traffic management and visibility on service provider networks.
The acquisition is seen as part of Cisco’s very necessary move into software-defined networking (SDN). This summer Cariden announced a blueprint for infrastructure SDN – the visibility and control of network resources.
Rackspace Enhances Service Offerings for Open Cloud Platform
Rackspace Hosting on Monday announced new features and enhanced service offerings for open cloud platform customers.
For more than ten years, Rackspace has served customers who are looking for a partner to help them reduce the complexities of building, deploying, optimizing, maintaining and troubleshooting complex web applications to serve their business needs. Rackspace is now offering that same Fanatical Support® to customers across its entire portfolio, including the company’s new open cloud platform, through Managed and Critical Application Services.
“Providing the highest level of service in the industry is central to our values as a company,” said Rackspace President Lew Moorman. “Cloud computing customers tell us they want good pricing and exceptional service, and offering one without the other simply won’t cut it in today’s environment.”
Cloud 2.0: The SaaS Opportunities
One of the most powerful as well as practical ways to demonstrate the trend of Cloud 2.0 and how it will re-invent IT areas like CRM, is to consider the SaaS opportunities this presents. Greenfield Applications First In summary this is best captured from the Canadian E-Health Cloud strategy.
Take Two Apps and Call Me in the Morning
I have been especially excited about the recent Canada Health Infoway Cloud strategy document, because I understand their importance in the overall “supply chain” of Canadian e-Health technologies like EHR – Electronic Healthcare Records, and what large scale challenges this particular sector faces.
This scale and these challenges has been very effectively discussed in this feature article from the Globe’s latest Report on Business supplement – Take Two Apps and Call Me in the Morning.
The article pulls no punches in any of the questions it asks about the issue as a whole, especially noting just how expensive it could be for Canada if they get e-Health wrong
Net Optics, Inc. to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Net Optics, Inc., the leading provider of Intelligent Network Access and Monitoring Architecture, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Net Optics is the leading provider of Intelligent Access and Monitoring Architecture solutions that deliver real-time IT visibility, monitoring and control since 1995. As a result, businesses achieve peak performance in network analytics and security. More than 7,500 enterprises, service providers and government organizations – including 85 percent of the Fortune 100 – trust Net Optics’ comprehensive smart access hardware and software solutions to plan, scale and future-proof their networks through an easy-to-use interface. Net Optics maintains a global presence through leading OEM partner and reseller networks.