Swiss innovators dizmo Inc. launches its ground-breaking software, which turns any digital surface into an immersive platform. The dizmo platform seamlessly connects digital and physical objects in the home and at the workplace.

Dizmo breaks down traditional boundaries between device, operating systems, apps and software, transforming the way users work, play and live. It supports orchestration and collaboration in an unparalleled way enabling any data to instantaneously be accessed on any surface, anywhere and made interactive.

Dizmo brings fantasies as seen in Sci-fi movies such as Iron Man and Minority Report, as well as in Corning’s video ‘A day made of glass’ to reality, revolutionising traditional methods of interacting with digital content and objects.

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Depending on whom you listen to, the private cloud is either dead or on the cusp of a major market breakthrough. Some tech pundits argue this technology has already been replaced by more efficient public cloud offerings and businesses just need time to catch up, while others claim there’s a bright future for private solutions.
Research supports the latter – according to IDC, spending on hosted private cloud services should hit $24 billion by 2016. Why? Because there’s real value in this model. Here’s a look at five compelling advantages of the private cloud.
It’s Not On-Premises (Necessarily)
As noted by a recent Business 2 Community article, there’s a critical misconception about the private cloud still making the rounds even after years of corporate adoption: that it must be on-premises. At first glance, the idea makes sense – public clouds are always hosted off-site because they cater to multiple tenants, while private alternatives come with security of locally deployed servers.

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IBM and SAP announced a major strategic agreement that integrates Big Blue’s datacenter capabilities with Big Hasso’s ongoing HANA cloud-based database initiative.
IBM is investing $1.2 billion to build 15 new datacesnters as part of its SoftLayer acquisition and expansion, and will also use its existing IBM Cloud servers to support the new agreement with SAP.
The announcement was made jointly in Armonk, NY and Walldorf, Germany. IBM is described by SAP as a “premier strategic provider” of cloud infrastructure services in the agreement, and the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will now be available through IBM’s cloud.

«We look forward to extending one of the longest and most successful partnerships in the IT industry,» said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. «The demand for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA in the cloud is tremendous and this global agreement with IBM heralds a new era of cloud collaboration.”

For her part, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty said, «This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud. It builds on our two companies’ long history of bringing innovation to business.”

Rometty also noted the modern age of enterprise IT, saying “our secure, open, hybrid enterprise cloud platform will enable SAP clients to support new ways to work in an era shaped by Big Data, mobile and social.»

Take that, Larry
Coming in the wake of recent criticisms of SAP by Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, but presumably not related to Ellison’s remarks, the agreement will focus on “(delivering) SAP business solutions on the IBM Cloud,” according to an official statement. The agreement also closely follows IBM’s agreement to develop apps for Apple, if nothing else showing that the folks in Armonk are apparently seeking to be flexible in this 21st century, cloud-philic world.

“SAP brings the power of realtime through in-memory computing capabilities of SAP HANA combined with the ability to run mission-critical business applications, like SAP Business Suite, in a cloud environment. IBM brings enterprise depth and the open architecture of IBM Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer–enabling customers to securely manage SAP workloads from trial to production on a consistent infrastructure, with transparency and control over where data resides.”

In a separate, exclusive interview with Cloud Computing Journal, IBM General Manager of Cloud Services Jim Comfort (pictured) told us that the two companies have already made several customers aware of the agreement and are working with them. He noted that many of IBM’s enterprise customers are also SAP customers.

The agreement thus takes effect immediately, and is offered worldwide. Comfort said this “strategic announcement expands what we’ve been doing (for customers), at scale.” he also mentioned that many IBM and SAP customers are multi-national enterprises, so will benefit from a global approach. “This key attribute of being worldwide also means that we’re providing consistent services around the globe,” he noted. “Our strategy is to build a global platform.”

IBM has also been focusing a lot of resources on its Bluemix PaaS in recent months. Although the new strategic agreement doesn’t specifically involve Bluemix for all customers, Comfort noted that “there may be linkage” in some cases, and the two companies are prepared to handle it.

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The impact of DevOps in the cloud era is potentially profound. DevOps helps businesses deliver new features continuously, reduce cycle time and achieve sustained innovation by applying agile and lean principles to assist all stakeholders in an organization that develop, operate, or benefit from the business’ lifecycle.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Prashanth Chandrasekar, General Manager at Rackspace, will exam whether / how companies can work with external DevOps specialists to achieve «DevOps elasticity» and DevOps expertise at scale while internally focusing on writing code / development.

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I just recently wrote a blog about BOTs causing unwanted traffic on our servers. Right after I wrote this blog I was notified about yet another “interesting” and unusual load behavior on our download page which is used by customers to download latest product versions and updates.
If you see such a load behavior you typically assume that you just released a new product version or maybe an update to our agents and many people are downloading it like crazy. Unfortunately that was not the case. The spike in traffic was caused by an implementation issue between our authentication service and our download role-check logic. It resulted in a browser of one of our customers to go into an endless redirect loop between these different authentications and download pages, which caused several thousand HTTP Requests per minute.

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At the recent US Open Tennis in New York City the infrastructure was hosted on IBM’s Cloud. Cloud is an ideal solution for such events since a scalable and on-demand architecture can be provisioned quickly, and then it can be taken down after the event as needed. During such events there is an overload on networks with people posting lots of messages on social media and tweets. Mobile technology is in full «swing» with people posting on phones, tablets and other devices. The IT infrastructure may need to scale to an estimated 40 times or more its regular size during such events. The United States Tennis Association connects people to the tournament through its web site and mobile apps, live streaming video, match information and videos that are on the Cloud. The US Open has mobile apps available for download for iPhone, iPad and Android devices that are very popular and provide great information about the tournament. For example, the iPad application provides access to data, statistics and content with specific interactive features.

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Throughout the development cycle of new features and functions for any network platform (or probably most other products not targeted at the mass market consumer) this one question will always come up: should we protect the user of our product from doing this? And “this” is always something that would allow the user of the product to really mess things up if not done right. As a product management organization you almost have to take a philosophical stand when it comes to these questions.

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SAP is delivering break-through innovation combined with fantastic user experience powered by the market-leading in-memory technology, SAP HANA.
In his General Session at 15th Cloud Expo, Thorsten Leiduck, VP ISVs & Digital Commerce, SAP, will discuss how SAP and partners provide cloud and hybrid cloud solutions as well as real-time Big Data offerings that help companies of all sizes and industries run better. SAP launched an application challenge to award the most innovative SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud platforms applications. Out of many contenders, the best applications have been selected by members of the SAP Community Network via crowd-voting. Join this exciting session as SAP recognizes the winners and finalists for their great accomplishment and see the winning applications live on stage.

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Data efficiency – the combination of technologies including data deduplication, compression, zero elimination and thin provisioning – transformed the backup storage appliance market in well under a decade. Why has it taken so long for the same changes to occur in the primary storage appliance market? The answer can be found by looking back at the early evolution of the backup appliance market, and understanding why EMC’s Data Domain continues to hold a commanding lead in that market today.
The term “data efficiency” encompasses a variety of different technologies that enable the most effective use of space on a storage device by both reducing wasted space and eliminating redundant information. These technologies include thin provisioning, which is now commonplace in primary storage, as well as less extensively deployed features such as compression and deduplication.

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Cloud Musings, a GovCloud Network Property, is proud and honored to announce that we will now be serving over 3 Million Dell Community online daily viewers. Our content will focus on Cloud Computing for Business and will continue to provide independent and vendor neutral information on how business, government and non-profit organizations can better leverage the global and parallel nature of cloud computing.

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