Intel has been rethinking the rack and rather than converge all the parts of a server in a system it figures they should be disaggregated so all the compute is together, and all the shared storage is together and all the shared power and cooling is together, all the shared memory is together and everything is tied together with a high-speed optical network starting at 100 Gbps, fast enough that the elements don’t have to be cheek by jowl
This mix-and-match rack-scale vision, geared to the workload, includes both Xeons and Atoms with the Xeons in a different tray from the Atoms. This way the widgetry is easier to service and upgrade. Upgrading the processors can be done separate from the other components.
It’s also supposed to eliminate all unnecessary sheet metal as well as bottlenecks and cost in space and power while increasing density.
Monthly Archives: April 2013
HP’s Hybrid Cloud Solution Leverages OpenStack
“HP provides the industry’s most comprehensive hybrid cloud solution leveraging OpenStack across HP today extended its commitment to the OpenStack community with new and enhanced HP Converged Cloud offerings that enable enterprises to increase agility, speed innovation and lower costs,” said Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager, Converged Cloud, at HP as HP announced that it is integrating OpenStack technology to deliver enterprise-grade solutions across its private, public and hybrid cloud portfolio.
It’s Raining Money from the Cloud for Amazon
RW Baird & Co. is projecting $10 billion in revenue for Amazon Web Services by 2016. As Alex Williams of TechCrunch puts it, “The estimates reflect Wall Street’s growing confidence in cloud services and the need that analysts see in letting their customers know that a shift is underway that will lead to continued flat revenues or even losses for enterprise companies and systems integrators.”
RIP the old world and why cloud causes inevitable change
By Ian Moyse – Sales Director, www.workbooks.com
Eurocloud UK Board Member & Cloud Industry Forum Governance Board Member
“We change our behaviour when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change”. – Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend
The need for change and acceptance of the fact that your status quo for business may be no longer has never been truer. I have been speaking on the effect of the cloud (internet based service and supply) for the past eight years and in the past two have provided much comment on the visible effects we had and are seeing.
Before commenting on why IT supply chains have to adapt and why now is the time to take action I would like to draw context from other sectors and the customer experience they deliver that is causing …
Are we misjudging the cloud’s environmental impact?
A whitepaper from Melbourne’s Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) has cast doubt on traditional thinking regarding the energy consumption of cloud computing.
“Previous analysis and industry focus has missed the point,” blistered the Power of Wireless Cloud report to open its executive summary. “Access networks, not data centres, are the biggest threat to the sustainability of cloud services.”
As straight to the point as this is, what are the underlying reasons behind this summation?
According to the researchers, the wireless infrastructure is a more fundamental part of the cloudy ecosystem, with data centres just a part of a larger space. “Wireless cloud is a surging sector with implications that cannot be ignored,” the report notes.
This certainly raises an interesting point, and the statistics provided by CEET unsurprisingly bear this out.
Wireless access network technologies account for 90% of total wireless cloud energy consumption, with data centres only …
Spring cleaning and CRM: It’s time to organise your business
Excel is not a CRM!
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are a major player in helping manage a company’s interactions with current and prospective customers.
Using technology to organise, automate, and synchronise sales, marketing, customer service and technical support can seem daunting, which leads to many professionals using excel as a CRM system.
However daunting it may seem, the CRM software market is healthy and growing, which means your competitors are likely using a CRM system.
Analyst firm Forrester predicts the CRM software market will reach more than $15 billion by 2014, nearly double what it was in 2007. The CRM market totaled about $11 billion in 2012.
The reason for the growth? Companies are placing an emphasis on driving growth by attracting new customers and selling more to existing customers. Is your business keeping pace?
If your sales representatives are creating Excel spreadsheets that contain customer contacts and …
Cloud Expo New York: Basics of SSD Technology and Its Use in Cloud
Explore the basics of SSD technology and its application to cloud computing. Learn about common system interfaces from Sata to PCIe, sequential and random performance, latency, Quality of Service, and RAS features for cloud data center application.
In their session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Mark Jackson, Product Marketing Engineer at Intel, and Charles Anyimi, Applications Engineering Data Center Manager at Intel, will cover typical applications of data center SSD storage and review example solutions and ROI benefits.
Three Surprising Cloud Security Threats
Threats to cloud infrastructure are widely discussed, but much of the talk is based on assumptions — the cloud must be less secure — and fears — this is something new, so I don’t quite understand all the implications yet.
OK, we will say it: Security is an issue in the cloud … and in traditional managed hosting, in-house data centers, and desktop endpoints.
What’s important is to understand the specific security issues of each environment.
Alert Logic (Logicworks‘ security partner) recently released the latest “State of Cloud Security” report, which provides and in-depth view on the major issues impacting security in the cloud.
Creating Harmony When Cloud and On-Premise Worlds Collide
In recent years, IT departments have been confronted with the convergence of several highly disruptive trends that have fundamentally altered the enterprise IT landscape, particularly when it comes to how data and applications are managed. Mobility and the rise of BYOD (bring your own device), as well as the growth of social media and the electronic information it generates, have each proved transformative. But perhaps no shift has been more seismic than the adoption of cloud and SaaS-based applications led by CIOs who see the value proposition associated with outsourcing many complex IT operations.
However, integrating data across diverse SaaS applications with existing on-premise solutions has proved exceptionally challenging. To streamline this integration without slowing adoption, IT stakeholders are turning to cloud-based integration solutions that can curtail complexity and IT oversight while enabling organizations to better leverage their information capital to drive business objectives. Indeed, according to a recent report by analyst firm MarketsandMarkets, the global Cloud Brokerage Services (CSB) market is on track to grow from $1.57 billion in 2013 to $10.5 billion by 2018, a compound annual growth rate of more than 45% over the five year period.
Key to Solving New Data Challenges
A data dichotomy has changed the face of information management, bringing with it huge new data challenges for businesses to solve.
The dichotomy means that organizations, both large and small, not only need to manage all of their internal data to provide intelligence about their businesses, they need to manage the growing reams of increasingly external big data that enables them to discover new customers and drive new revenue.
What are the biggest challenges that businesses need to solve now when it comes to data and information management?