Although a lot has been talked about becoming a social business, adoption is not universal in enterprises.
I have attended IBM’s Lotusphere conference many times, but this year was a different experience. The long-familiar yellow Lotus branded signs were missing as the conference was renamed “IBM Connect.” The move away from Lotus branding was expected after IBM’s recent repositioning of Lotus products, along with some new acquisitions under the umbrella of IBM Collaboration Solutions.
The change also reflects IBM’s overall direction away from selling products to customers to focusing on business outcomes. The three main themes of the Connect 2013 conference were Social Business, Smarter Commerce and Smarter Workforce. These new focus areas are designed to enable IBM to expand into new markets while enrolling new clients.
Monthly Archives: February 2013
CRaSH for Mule, an Introduction
This blog is the formal introduction to the CRaSH console for Mule on which I’ve been working for the past month or so. I’ve decided to interview myself about it because, hey, if I don’t do it, who will?
It is a shell that is running embedded in Mule and that gives command-line access to a variety of Mule internal moving parts. It’s built thanks to the excellent CRaSH project, a toolkit built by Julien Viet and sponsored by eXo Platform, which allows the easy creation of embedded shells.
Well, it’s easy to find it out. Let’s connect to CRaSH for Mule and ask for help:
Don’t Deploy Your Cloud Application Without Reading This | Part 1
Public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, cloud bursting, cloud storming, elastic compute, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, the list of terms goes on and on ad-nauseam. Like it or not, cloud computing has taken hold as an important design consideration in companies ranging from small startups to large established enterprises. The concepts and technologies behind cloud computing have been around for quite a long time now so why is it taking so long for so many companies to move their applications and realize the benefits that cloud computing offers?
Getting beyond the ridiculous fear of the unknown, security concerns are a major inhibitor to cloud adoption but between private cloud and a slew of security technologies and methods that should only impact a small portion of applications. The real problem, in my opinion, is that nobody wants to fail and suffer damage to their personal and/or corporate brands. I’ve seen so many companies make a poor transition to cloud computing and it impacts their revenue and customer retention.
Apigee Mixes Big Data & Broad Data Analytics
Big Data analytics doesn’t go far enough according to Anant Jhingran, who was the brains behind IBM’s cunningly clever Watson computer as CTO of IBM’s lab in Silicon Valley.
“The information an enterprise typically collects – point of sales, procurement, even web site data – is not enough anymore,” he says. “In the new world of apps and APIs, the real value of data – the interaction with customers – has moved one or two tiers away from the enterprise and the more you know about the data in your app ecosystem, your ‘broad’ data, the better you’ll understand your business.”
This thinking has been distilled in Apigee Insights, the latest product from the increasingly promising Apigee, where Jhingran is now product chief.
Apigee Insights is supposed to leverage Big Data in a new way so a computer can draw sophisticated conclusions from weak unstructured data and produce business insights beyond what is currently possible.
Adopting a Customer Orientation in Cloud Conversations
by, Vidya Ravichandran, Founder and President, GlowTouch Technologies
The promise of cloud computing has been plastered on every industry and technology outlet imaginable. The word “cloud” itself is overused and often applied in disparate, and even contradictory, contexts. As technology professionals and service providers, it’s our job – our responsibility really – to filter through the marketing jargon, the sales fluff, and the rampant hype to fundamentally examine what the cloud, namely cloud-based infrastructure, can offer our business (and more importantly, our clients!).
It’s no secret that cloud technology has shifted the way many hosters approach their infrastructure planning challenges. Mounting pressure to “do more with less” and a fiercely competitive environment has forced the whole industry to become more savvy and resourceful.
A “rent-as-you-go” infrastructure is certainly appealing in today’s rapidly changing world. Cloud-based infrastructure allows hosting providers to leverage flexible, secure environments while keeping staffing lean and CapEx down. Plus, they provide improved speed-to-market, wide accessibility, redundancy, and syndication capabilities that traditional datacenters may not be able to offer.
However, while back-end infrastructure configurations produce legitimate concerns for service providers (costs, maintenance, support, etc.), the front-end customer experience must remain top of mind. Today’s market increasingly demands “always on” service and hyper-responsive support. Thus, it’s the obligation of service providers to explore infrastructure configurations that allow them to expand in new directions quickly while delivering superior value and service to their customers. The notion of hybrid and diversified cloud infrastructure has emerged as a recent and potentially viable consideration for service providers looking to exploit the cloud to their customer’s advantage.
What factors should you consider when evaluating your organization’s current and future infrastructure plans? How can hosting providers effectively service and maintain their infrastructure to deliver high-quality services to their clients? How will a purely cloud-based infrastructure impact your customers’ user experience? How can I find a partner to help me implement, upgrade and manage my changing infrastructure?
These are just a few of the questions that service providers must thoroughly examine in order to determine how to best configure their infrastructure in a way that lets them quickly and effectively respond to evolving customer demands.
Development Testing for Agile Environments
The Coverity Development Testing Platform enables developers to test early and often so they can assure code quality at each development sprint. By finding and addressing the most critical issues early, defects are cheaper and faster to fix. In addition, seamless integration with existing Agile development methodologies and tools helps maximize development productivity.
High Street and Main Street 2013: Business Failure or Rejuvination?
Guest Post by Pontus Noren, director and co-founder, Cloudreach.
Since Woolworths stores disappeared from the physical high streets and main street in January 2009, the bricks and mortar retailers have been falling apart. More than 27,000 people were out of work when its 800 stores closed, consigning a century of trading to the history books. An alarming amount of traditional big names have sunk since: already this year we have seen Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster Video enter administration or bankruptcy.
It is upsetting to see these names disappear from view, but do not believe the headlines. The high street is not dying, it is changing.
Most recently, Blockbuster Video encountered trouble because people were ditching the traditional movie rental model in exchange for internet streaming services. Blockbuster’s model involved leaving the comfort of your sofa, walking to a video rental store, then scouring the shelves for something you wanted to watch. You’d even face a fine if it was not returned on time. In contrast, the likes of LOVEFiLM and NETFLIX charge a monthly subscription fee and allow members to browse extensive video libraries online before streaming an unlimited amount of content.
Being successful in business is all about changing the game – overlooking what is out there and offering something new. This shift in the key players of the movie rental market has been facilitated by cloud computing technology. The emergence of cloud makes it much easier for businesses to grow rapidly, as you only pay for the server space you use with the likes of Amazon Web Services.
That ability to quickly scale up and down contrasts the traditional IT model, where businesses purchase physical servers and maintain them in-house.
When technology changes, it can have a radical effect on an industry, altering the way in which things are delivered and consumed. However, the level of spend in the economy stays the same so although these shops are closing, the economy shouldn’t suffer at all. The general public will always have a certain amount of money to spend – they just spend it in different ways depending on trends and what’s available, for example spending three pounds on a coffee from Costa rather than a DVD from HMV. That has been reflected in the phoenix Woolworths business. Shop Direct acquired the brand, and its new Woolworths website now offers half a million products. This new trading status reflects the change that has taken place: where people once browsed shelves of goods in shops, they now browse the web for a bargain. People are voting with their virtual feet and it is obvious that everything is heading online.
Not only is online more convenient, and often cheaper, but people can also have richer interactions with brands online, and can benefit from items tailored to their individual specifications – something that it is difficult for high street retailers to do well. The term Web 3.0 is being coined at the moment – with streaming and personalisation coming to the fore more so than ever before.
Web 3.0 and cloud have the potential to form a strong partnership. This force has already transformed the greetings card industry, with the likes of Funky Pigeon and Moonpig using the power of cloud to produce and deliver completely personalised greetings cards. Traditional market leader Clintons Cards closed half of its stores after entering administration in December, having taken a big hit from the success of its online competitors. Online retailing has advanced from being able to offer cheaper products to ones that are also completely tailored to customers’ wishes.
The bricks and mortar high street of the future will be filled with outlets, boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops, which all inspire physical interactions – service-based offerings will be prevalent. However, the most successful businesses will have a solid online strategy supported by cloud technology to deliver a personalised, richer experience for the customer and scalable operations to meet demand. For example, retailers should look at the likes of grab-and-go food outlet Eat, which plans store portfolio growth using cloud.
The cloud changes everything. Retailers must make the most of the tools and technologies at their disposal or they risk falling behind their competitors – or worse, risk being the next big name to hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Pontus Noren is director and co-founder, Cloudreach.
We Want to Feature Your Company and SMB Customers in a Mini-Case Study
Have Parallels products helped you solve a problem for one of your SMB customers? If so, we’d like to highlight your company and your customer in a case study. Check out some of our existing case studies to get an idea of the type of exposure that your company and your SMB customers will receive, including being highlighted on our website, social media, and at our events like Parallels Summit.
Our case studies are professionally written, and Parallels covers all associated costs. All that we ask is that you participate in a short telephone interview with our writer and introduce us to your SMB client that you would like to highlight. You and your customer will receive full review and approval rights, and you will also have the right to utilize the case study for your purposes, however you may choose (your website, eNewsletter, events, etc.)
If you’d like to participate and have us develop a case study for you, contact Scott Fallon, Sr. Director of Partner Marketing.
Mezeo Software Quietly Racks up Contracts
Box, Dropbox, Citrix’ ShareFile and whatever other consumer file storing-and-sharing point solutions are selling these days, however successfully, are threatened by next-generation cloud-scale middleware developments focused on unstructured data that can promise the enterprise IT department at least some semblance of the real security it’s currently looking for.
One of those developments comes from a five-year-old Texas company called Mezeo Software that’s effectively been in stealth mode for a long time and is quietly racking up contracts with a fistful of big Asian and European telecoms to supply customized cloud-based files, sync and sharing widgetry to their hoards of consumers.
Mezeo Software Quietly Racks up Contracts
Box, Dropbox, Citrix’ ShareFile and whatever other consumer file storing-and-sharing point solutions are selling these days, however successfully, are threatened by next-generation cloud-scale middleware developments focused on unstructured data that can promise the enterprise IT department at least some semblance of the real security it’s currently looking for.
One of those developments comes from a five-year-old Texas company called Mezeo Software that’s effectively been in stealth mode for a long time and is quietly racking up contracts with a fistful of big Asian and European telecoms to supply customized cloud-based files, sync and sharing widgetry to their hoards of consumers.