Mark Collier, COO of the OpenStack Foundation, has recorded a message for all of the global user groups celebrating OpenStack’s third birthday during July 2013.
Monthly Archives: July 2013
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Using APIs for Better Business Partnerships
There’s no denying the opportunities that Open APIs and Business to Developer initiatives offer today, but for many businesses APIs are going to be a huge driver of business partner programs. Successful B2B API programs introduce a completely new set of requirements that go far beyond the capabilities of most API Management platforms. This presentation will discuss how a B2B API program can help drive your business, what the challenges are, and how to make sure you succeed.
In his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, discusses how a B2B API program can help drive your business, what the challenges are, and how to make sure you succeed.
Cloud service providers: Opportunity or threat?
It’s important to examine the current ‘state of play’ for cloud delivered solutions based on a couple of key dimensions; what is being deployed in the cloud and who is providing the IT service from the cloud.
The image conjured up by the term “cloud” is that of companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft delivering large-scale computing infrastructure that eliminate the need for on-premises IT equipment and software. Since these cloud providers build their own infrastructure rather than buying from product manufacturers, it could be argued they are shrinking the market share.
The Opportunity is Larger than the Threat
However, there are other categories of service providers that balance, more than offset the reduced spend and create an opportunity:
Consumer SaaS providers aggregate consumer-spend into centralised shared enterprise infrastructure. Consumer applications that traditionally consumed end user equipment are moving to the cloud triggering a need for enterprise infrastructure. While …
NSW state government in Australia mobilises cloud services pilots
Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, Public Sector Technology
The New South Wales state government in Australia is taking visionary but practical steps towards cloud services adoption via a program of pilot projects. The projects recognize the need to treat cloud services as an emerging trend to be investigated and evaluated hands-on. It is a practical organizational learning exercise, not an ideological quest or a whole-of-government “grand plan”.
Cloud services adoption is best driven at an agency-by-agency level with a focus on the promotion of early adoption, the realisation of business benefits, and the rapid propagation of lessons learned and successful solutions across agencies as confidence is gained.
Governments need to get hands-on with cloud services
Government adoption of cloud services is nascent but growing. Cloud services require a change in mindset about how to approach the sourcing and management of ICT capabilities and how to apply them to drive business transformation …
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Network to the Cloud
“We are continuously expanding and we recently announced a new data center in Copenhagen, and our eighth data center in Frankfurt, so we now have 34 data centers,” stated Jelle Frank van der Zwet, Global Marketing Manager for Interxion, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, 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.
Big Security for Small Businesses
In the world of information security, small businesses and the security needs of small businesses are often overlooked, particularly in the realm of application security. When looking at the investment required to build a robust application security program, it really doesn’t make sense financially. For example, an “enterprise” scanning tool, combined with the required hosting infrastructure, salary for a security specialist, and for the sake of argument, tack on static analysis, the total cost will easily exceed $120,000/year, which is decidedly cost prohibitive for a lot of smaller companies. This presents a significant problem due to the fact that as an attacker, well, hacking the little guys is easy. Simply put, when it comes to handling attacks and incidents, small companies are at a significant disadvantage as they frequently lack a dedicated security team, let alone one security specialist. So what’s the best way to maintain a secure infrastructure without breaking the bank?
USDA Plows New Ground, Becomes Cloud Service Provider
Technology sure does make strange bedfellows.
The federal government’s newest cloud service provider is one that may elicit surprise. It’s the same agency that oversees farm policy and food safety – the US Department of Agriculture.
The USDA has been certified to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platforms as a Service (PaaS) under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, a rigorous security-approval program overseen by the General Services Administration. The USDA now offers FedRAMP-certified cloud services to other federal agencies, as well as to state and local government, via its National Information Technology Center.
It’s the latest example of an emerging cloud model, called shared clouds, in which one government agency gets the most from its data center resources by making them available to other agencies, according to an article on Forbes.com. The USDA offers virtualized desktops and servers, storage, networking, databases, and content management as cloud services.
IPO-Eying Ping Raises $44 Million F Round
Ping Identity, the 11-year-old Denver company that provides secure cloud-ified single sign-on to half of the Fortune 100 and reportedly has its eye on going public next year, has raised a $44 million F round led by private equity house W Capital Partners, brought in to help with the IPO through its new board seat, and DFJ Growth, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson fund.
The money, which is more than Ping’s estimated $43 million in sales last year, is also coming from existing backers General Catalyst Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Avista Partners, Triangle Peak Partners, SAP Ventures and Appian Ventures. Besides the $29 million in equity financing there’s $15 million in debt financing complements of Silicon Valley Bank.
Tableau Takes to the Cloud
Tableau Software Thursday made its first product announcement since going public in May, wheeling out new cloud-based business intelligence widgetry called Tableau Online, a hosted version of its conventionally distributed Tableau Server.
The company, which trades under the coveted ticker symbol DATA, thinks its new Software-as-a-Service is highly disruptive both technologically and economically since it “drastically” changes both the price point and the delivery scheme usually associated with the kind of complex and sophisticated software it’s peddling. Of course, there’s an increasing number of comers in this space too.