Monthly Archives: August 2012
Cloud Computing and the Olympics
The London Olympics are not using the Cloud. Cloud seems a good match for the Olympics for provisioning a scalable and on demand architecture quickly, and then taking it down after the event. That is precisely what the technology supports. The integration and deployment of the infrastructure for the Olympics is a big program with hundreds of servers due to the various events and related technology needed to support them. This can cause technologists to take a more conservative path to manage risks and stick to utilizing existing technologies.
An event like the Olympics does put a strain on the network bandwidth. To compound this issue, there is heavy use of twitter and test messages. A lot of this was anticipated and hence some media and entertainment organizations that report on the events are using Cloud based conferencing capabilities to share information and utilize the on demand, easy provisioning aspects of the Cloud. Some Cloud providers are providing data and applications during the time when there will be increased demand for bandwidth and to ensure business continuity for organizations. There are many organizations where workers are logging in remotely to avoid the traffic and rush and Cloud supports these aspects. Such remote access applications have been quite popular due to the substantial benefits they offer.
Big Data Knows You Had Leftover Chicken for Dinner Last Night
There are no shortage of bold, sometimes inane, headlines related to Big Data.
In just the past 15 minutes, I ran across these two unrelated articles on my #bigdata Twitter feed.
Big Data Knows What You’re Doing Right Now
Wow! Twitter can tell you when you are going to get sick.
One of my favorite things about Big Data are the ridiculous blog headlines you can craft, simply by playing off the newness and lack of understanding around what Big Data is.
Take the first article for example. Time Magazine posits that aggregators are collecting a boatload of sensitive information about each and every one of us. Every time we accept a privacy policy or log in to Facebook or play an iPad app, a shadowy organization learns something new about us as individuals, powered of course by big data.
Sounds scary right?
Cloud Computing: Rackspace Kicks Off the OpenStack Cloud Roll-Out
Despite its reported immaturity, Rackspace has gone production with the Essex version of OpenStack, making it the first large-scale public cloud deployment of the fabled open source platform.
It’s positioning Open Cloud as freeing users from vendor lock-in, a taunt directed at Amazon, Google and Microsoft whose customers it expects to run off.
Other OpenStack clouds should follow quickly, say, from HP, Dell and Intel, and since they’ll be look-a-likes users able to flit from one to another.
To get the roll-out started Rackspace is offering public, private and hybrid hosting solutions and says there’s unlimited availability of Cloud Databases and both Linux and Windows Cloud Servers on OpenStack.
Some mojo called RackConnect will integrate public and private clouds.
Lenovo and EMC Now Strategic Partners
In a rare outreach Lenovo has teamed up with EMC, which will get another entry into the vast Chinese market through its new partner.
The pair is going to form an SMB-focused storage joint venture.
They’ve also got a server technology development program to extend Lenovo’s nascent capabilities in the x86 server segment. The servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time. It could threaten HP.
What Does the New EMC and Lenovo Partnership Mean?
The past several weeks have been busy with various merger, acquisitions and collaborating activity in the IT and data storage world. Summer time often brings new relationships and even summer marriages. The most recent is EMC and Lenovo announcing a new partnership that includes OEM sourcing of technology, market expansion and other initiatives. Hmm, does anybody remember who EMCs former desktop and server partner was, or who put Lenovo out for adoption several years ago?
Here is the press release from EMC and Lenovo that you can read yourself vs. me simply paraphrasing it:
Gartner Hype Cycle: Sales turn CRM to the Cloud for quick relief
Sales VPs for years have been test-driving SaaS-based CRM systems, piloting them with sales teams to see if using them leads to higher sales and greater customer retention. Marketing VPs and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) also continue to pilot SaaS-based web analytics and marketing automation applications.
What’s been missing from these pilots is the ability to bring CRM, marketing automation, sales management and web analytics systems into existing enterprise IT architectures just as fast. This is changing quickly. CRM vendors have been quick to respond to the challenge, offering Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs), integration adapters, connectors and from larger vendors, integrated bus architectures.
What the Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2012 Means
CRM’s real value is in unifying an entire enterprise based on its ability to sell, serve and retain customers better than before. Gartner shows this is a high priority for its CRM clients by underscoring which …
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Managing Big Data
“Impetus is a software services company, and we’re focused on Big Data practice. What we are doing for enterprise organizations is helping them create Big Data architectures and helping them come up with solutions for their very critical business challenges,” explained Anand Raman, VP of Business Development at Impetus, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11-14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Mobile Demand Driving Growth in the Cloud
“Increasing mobile demand will drive a lot of the growth in cloud,” stated James Strayer, VP of Product Management and Marketing at Racemi, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “But,” Strayer continued, “there are still people running Windows NT 4 out there and there are probably even old IBM System/360s out there in production still.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Just having the enterprise data is good. Extracting meaningful information out of this data is priceless. Agree or disagree?
James Strayer: Agree. I am often amazed at how many businesses don’t even have the data yet, so getting it is a great first step. But the value is limited unless you can build useful information and models from it.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Reducing Cost & Complexity of Cloud Migrations
Analyst research shows that the change, cost, and complexity associated with cloud migrations continue to be key challenges for cloud computing adoption.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Adiascar Cisneros is Director of Operations at Racemi, will help attendees understand the cost and complexity associated with specific migration strategies and how they can effectively manage these issues, enabling them to migrate to the cloud with minimal cost and risk.