Amazon Web Services used re:Invent, its very first customer and partner conference this week in Vegas, to announce the coming of a cloud data warehouse service called Redshift meant to undercut and disrupt the pricey “old guard” brands of Oracle, IBM, Teradata, EMC Greenplum and HP.
Redshift literally represents a shift in Amazon’s targeting.
It’s going up-market looking for customers among the big corporates that have supposedly overcome their doubts about running mission-critical apps in the public cloud and are now down to figuring out which ones to move first and how quickly.
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Service Concepts 101
The use of the term ‘Service’ is somewhat overloaded. Everyone will have heard or used the terms Business Services, IT Services, Software Services, and now Cloud Services, and yet often there is much confusion and misunderstanding in their use.As my colleague David Sprott suggested in a CBDI Journal Report, “Everything is a Service” . In that report David suggested that the idea that “everything is a service” could be developed to clarify the taxonomy for Cloud Services and Services in the form of a Unified Service Model that would deliver convergence of business and IT perspectives.Consequently, I have penned a research note available on Everware-CBDI site , that provides a concept model that explores the basic concepts of Service and Service-Orientation taking into account this broad perspective including Business Service, IT Services, Software Services, Cloud Services and even Human Services.
BitYota Start-Up Launches Data-Warehouse-as-a-Service
Another one of Andreessen Horowitz’s seemingly endless supply of gold-tinged start-ups whose future is supposed to be theirs to lose has come out of start-up hiding to proclaim the existence of its newfangled SaaS-style data-warehouse-as-a-service for Big Data analytics running initially on Amazon.
It’s called BitYota – a name derived from the combination of the smallest element of computer storage and the yotta, the biggest number, or 1024 – and besides Andreessen Horowitz BitYota’s $12 million in seed and Series A funding comes from Globespan Capital, the Social+Capital Partnership, Dawn Capital, Crosslink Capital, Morado Ventures and individual investors like Yahoo founder Jerry Yang; Yahoo board member and former eBay COO, angel investor Maynard Webb; investor and financial writer Graham Summers; and MapReduce BitYota-like start-up ClearStory Data founder and Marc Andreessen buddy Sharmila Mulligan, who’s evidently spreading her bets on Big Data analytics.
SYS-CON.tv: Cloud and Big Data – What’s Working, What’s New?
Which of the recent big acquisitions within the Cloud and/or Big Data space have most grabbed your attention as a sign of things to come? In this Lunchtime Power Panel at the 11th International Cloud Expo, chaired by Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Treb Ryan, Chief Strategy Officer, Cloud Business Unit, at Dimension Data; Brian Patrick Donaghy, CEO of Appcore; Rags Srinivasan, Director of Product Management at Symantec’s Storage and Availability Management Group; John “Jay” Jarrell, President and CEO of Objectivity; Aaron Hollobaugh, VP of Marketing & Communications at Hostway Corporation; and Praveen Kankariya, Founder and CEO of Impetus Technologies discussed this topic and more.
I’m An Opera-phile. How About You?
I switched over to the Opera browser the other day on my main work computer. The Oslo-based Opera Software has only been able to grab about 2% of the browser market, but at least this number has remained fairly steady for almost a decade. It may gain momentum in the mobile space as the company focuses on it and as smartphones continue to proliferate.
I switched because I consider IE to be disease-laden, Firefox to be a memory hog, and hey, Google Chrome has been acting funky on me recently. Things crash, Flash keeps needing to be installed, etc. Opera also seems to give me a clearer view, something my old eyes appreciate.
This led me to wonder about browser market share. I remember a few years back, before Chrome, when Firefox was steadily eating about 1 percentage point per month of marketshare from IE. What’s been going on lately?
I found some stats put together by the Refsnes gang, three Norwegian siblings who’ve been tracking browser market share for the past decade. This family’s company W3 Schools offers oodles of online instruction, and is not without controversy. However, it looks to me as if its browser stats are solid.
The years between 2002 and 2012 show a shocking downfall of Internet Explorer from 86% to 16%. Does this tell you all you need to know about Microsoft’s performance over the past decade?
Meanwhile, Firefox had an immediate 16% share when it emerged from Mozilla’s shadows in 2005. It rose to almost 48% in mid-2009 (compared to IE at 39%). Even at that time, Chrome (introduced late in 2008) had garnered 7% of the market.
Today, Chrome holds 45% of the market, Firefox has 32%, and IE the afore-mentioned 16%. Safari (which is my iPad browser) toodles along at about 4%.
For now, I’m proud to a “2 per center” who likes Opera. I have no idea what any of this marketshare means, other than it presents challenges for website developers who need their stuff to look good in any window, so to speak. I’m curious, though, why people use the browser they use. Tweet me with your opinion.
How Will Technology Impact Your Business in 2020?
Human-like technology. The potential downfall of the data center. Hyper-personalization of data. These are some of the responses IT leaders gave to us when we asked, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”
In 2020, tech experts say, computers could learn from experience, much like the human brain. The end of the data center as we know it might arrive. And technology will know the most important things about us to help us become more productive.
In our new ebook, Business Technology 2020, the experts — who represent organizations such as Intel, IBM, Frost and Sullivan, Aberdeen, ATLANTIC-ACM and Current Analysis and more — also cover topics that include the cloud, health care, cognitive computing and the role of the CIO, giving a holistic preview of how technology will impact your business in and leading up to 2020.
Cloud Computing: AWS Slashes S3 Prices 25%
To keep its cloud at the fore, Amazon Web Services has dropped the price of its S3 storage by roughly 25% across-the-board.
The new prices take effect December 1 in all regions.
By Amazon’s count that’s its 23rd price cut since 2006, “largely in the absence of any competitive pressure to do so.”
Amazon and Google have both cut prices on infrastructure services recently and, according to ReadWrite, are locked in a price war along with Microsoft.
AWS chief Andy Jassy puts the move down to demand begetting lower prices by virtue of economies of scale on the infrastructure. Anyway, it suits Amazon high-volume low-cost model and, according to the company, represents a challenge to traditional vendors who don’t understand the cloud business and are busy selling cloudwash.
Improving Software Services
HP has broadened its BSM solutions to deliver better end-to-end visibility into IT applications and services by exploiting powerful, real-time and historical analytics.
As organizations have adopted virtualization and cloud technologies, the complexity to effectively monitor trouble across these systems has skyrocketed. And, with the rise of shared services, IT no longer knows or controls all the technologies supporting their businesses.
“IT organizations are looking for new ways to deliver predictable service levels,” said Ajei Gopal, senior vice president and general manager, Hybrid and Cloud Products, Software at HP. “The new HP Business Service Management software delivers end-to-end operational intelligence to help IT make better decisions and improve service levels in complex, dynamic IT environments.”
Beyond Intrusion Detection: Eight Best Practices for Cloud SIEM Deployment
Too often overlooked, SIEM (security information event management) needs to be a integral part of any enterprises security best practices. It facilitates a holistic view of an IT landscape and allows a company to be more proactive with its security initiatives.
First and foremost, SIEM (and to a certain extent log management) is about visibility. Who is doing what and when on your network. It is as much about understanding the holistic landscape of your infrastructure as it is protecting proprietary assets. Without it, it’s akin to coaching the Big Game without any idea who is the opponent; or for that matter if you even have a starting left guard.
SYS-CON.tv: The Cloud Computing State of the Union
What are the technical benefits of building a business on the cloud? If that cloud is open, are the benefits fewer or are they more plentiful? In this CTO Power Panel at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan discussed these and a host of other questions with Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software; Dan Graves, Cloud CTO at Symantec; Gordon Haff, Cloud Evangelist at Red Hat; Wayne Ariola, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Parasoft; Alok Rishi, Chief Technologist at Coraid; and Dr. John Bates, EVP and CTO at Progress Software