Nimble Storage, one of the darlings of the new storage breed – darling if for no other reason than it’s managed to collect $98 million from the VC crowd since it started in 2008 – that’s pretty darling – has been waving around the plans for a new Microsoft private cloud that’s pre-configured, turnkey and certified as a scalable on-premise infrastructure platform.
The Microsoft reference architecture involves a Nimble SmartStack for Windows Server and System Center running on Cisco’s UCS servers. It’s supposed to be good for 75 virtual machines created by Microsoft’s Hyper-V in a highly available environment.
Monthly Archives: June 2013
Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Architecture and Engineering
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Tony Shan, who was one of the key drivers inside IBM for the cloud reference architecture, and also helped coin “Cloud Engineering,” will discuss lots of valuable best practices and lessons learned in designing cloud architecture and applying cloud engineering disciplines in real-world projects as case studies.
It was Shan who created the first version of the term Cloud Engineering in Wikipedia. Some of the works are shared in his blog – cloudonomic.blogspot.com.
IaaS and PaaS service revenues go up and up, beat $2bn in first quarter
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) service revenues surpassed $2bn in the first quarter of 2013, according to the Synergy Research Group.
This number is up 56% from last year’s figure, providing yet more evidence of the increasing numbers in cloud computing.
And it will come as no surprise as to which company is leading the way in revenues. Amazon’s overall share of the market, according to the research, stands at a whopping 27% – this was exactly the same number for the whole of last year.
Synergy calls Amazon “in a league of its own”, and it’s hard to disagree based on the research. Salesforce.com, Microsoft, IBM and Google comprise the top five, but they appear mere drops in the ocean compared to the dominance of AWS:
So 2013’s results still show a clear market share for Amazon. But that …
Rethinking Enterprise Networks: Transformative Approach to Fuel the Cloud
It’s clear that cloud computing has transformed the enterprise IT landscape, from the computing infrastructure layer up through enterprise software, as companies move to leverage more efficient and cost-effective service-delivery models and bring new cloud-based products and services to the market. Perhaps less known is the innovation taking place at the network level and how leading companies are transforming their Wide Area Networks (WAN) to more quickly and efficiently fuel their move to the cloud.
Moving to the cloud requires network managers and IT shops to implement scalable solutions that ensure the reliability and performance of cloud-based applications across their extended enterprise. Cloud computing drives the need for more reliability across the WAN and ever-increasing amounts of highly available, secure and reliable bandwidth across all users, locations and geographies. However, many enterprises are constrained by their existing network infrastructure, both from a cost and performance perspective. They can’t cost-effectively scale their networks; and latency, jitter and packet loss impact performance and reliability in the cloud.
Employees Accessing the Cloud
For many organizations, cloud computing has become an integral part of their everyday business. Many companies are relying on cloud applications for fundamental operations such as CRM and email and are looking to increase utilization of the cloud for other functions. For others, adoption of the cloud along with internal communication about proper protocols for usage has perhaps been slower to evolve or implement.
As recently highlighted in this article in Forbes, it’s been widely observed that employees are experiencing the benefits of cloud computing at home and are often times transferring this personal use into the workplace. Popular applications employees are using both places include Gmail, Skype and Dropbox.
ITprenuers to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that ITprenuers, the leading content and instructor provider for IT best practices training and workshops, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
ITpreneurs offers innovative competence development programs for IT best practices to support the educational needs of IT professionals. With expertise in key domains including Cloud Computing, ITSM, IT Governance, Information Security, Process Improvement, and Project Management, ITpreneurs provides guidance on disparate frameworks and integrated solutions.
Open Data Centers to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Open Data Centers, LLC, a carrier-neutral data center operator in New Jersey and New York City, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Open Data Centers is located in Piscataway, New Jersey in a very high power density area. Located 16 miles south of New York City, the facility offers enterprises, service providers and carriers 8,500 feet of high-quality, cost-effective services in an ideal location for carrier Points of Presence (PoPs), low latency alternatives for colocation of financial services applications, and location for cloud services.
Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud
Sequestration burst out of obscurity and entered our household vocabulary in 2013. It got our attention because the impact of it is $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts from the Federal budget over the next ten years. About $85B of these cuts will occur by September of 2013 – and these cuts are being disproportionately applied: Once you exempt the sacred programs, what’s less sacred (like Federal I.T. spending) is going to get hit hard. Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels expects that the Federal budget cuts will shave at least $12B out of 2013 U.S. tech spending (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237240/The_sequester_will_hurt_t…).
Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud
Sequestration burst out of obscurity and entered our household vocabulary in 2013. It got our attention because the impact of it is $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts from the Federal budget over the next ten years. About $85B of these cuts will occur by September of 2013 – and these cuts are being disproportionately applied: Once you exempt the sacred programs, what’s less sacred (like Federal I.T. spending) is going to get hit hard. Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels expects that the Federal budget cuts will shave at least $12B out of 2013 U.S. tech spending (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237240/The_sequester_will_hurt_t…).
Standards for Integrating and Managing the Cloud
“Both cost and trust are much further along than before, but there are still many components that can and need to be optimized for SMBs to truly adopt the cloud,” said Vikas Aggarwal, founder & CEO of Zyrion Inc., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “There needs to be integration and manageability at the service level and not just the infrastructure level,” Aggarwal explained.
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Vikas Aggarwal: Agree. Though saving time is all about money anyway – saving money in optimizing compute resources as well as faster time-to-market, faster delivery, and better revenues.