Before you get any further, let me reiterate – these are totally unscientific and the sample size is rather small as it was taken from two sessions at the conference focusing on SDN and application services. The good news is that the results pretty much mirror every other survey and research with respect to devops, cloud, and SDN.
One of my favorite questions is to determine whether cloud is being adopted because it makes sense or because it’s a mandate from on high. As expected, the majority (62%) of respondents indicated the adoption of cloud in their organization was… a company mandate.
Why should enterprises move data and applications into the cloud? The discussion on cloud strategy is still to this day focused on cost-reduction, primarily featuring economies achieved in infrastructure, platform and even applications. Certainly no one is going to argue that this is all worth thinking about; every business needs to be aware of cost reduction opportunities.
However a complete cloud strategy for an enterprise needs to be a whole lot more comprehensive than that. Enterprises, big and smaller, need to stretch their minds to take in the business opportunities that emerge from a cloud way of working, opportunities that are difficult or impossible to achieve in an environment of discrete platforms and applications.
WatchGuard has announced its first UTM (Unified Threat Management) solution for Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform. With organisations worldwide pouring vast amounts of sensitive data, applications and services into the cloud, secure data access is paramount. With WatchGuard’s XTM security appliances, these companies are now able to ensure secure cloud access while leveraging WatchGuard’s comprehensive and multi-layered defence across network, email, web and content security.
“Windows Azure’s cloud scalability, speed, and economics make it a compelling option for our customers that want to take advantage of the cloud while continuing to use their on-premises infrastructure,” said David Aiken, Group Product Marketing Manager, Windows Azure, Microsoft. “These customers require secure data access from on-premises networks to the cloud, and WatchGuard’s unified threat management platform helps extend on-premises datacentres to the cloud while assuring secure access.”
Continued growth of global Parallels Automation deployments is providing valuable insights into the cloud applications, and more specifically, the APS-enabled cloud applications that are gaining traction with service providers and with SMBs. Below are a few key trends:
Cloud portfolios differ greatlybetween service providers and are shaped by key variables including core services offered, market segment served, and the individual cloud strategy of the provider. The APS catalog is growing both in diversity of cloud categories supported, and diversity of ISVs supporting each category. This continued growth is helping service providers to really tailor their offering to address unique market demands, and to compete with other providers in the regions they serve.
Email is the common denominator for just about all service provider cloud portfolios. As would be expected, we see strong and consistent numbers for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365. Open-Xchange and Mail2World are gaining strong traction with providers offering a white-label, low-cost email services that can also be bundled with core–or other cloud–services. Email security and archiving services continue to be a popular and natural add-on for business-class email.
Microsoft Lyncisgaining wide adoption with service providers in all global regions, and is delivering strong and consistent growth rates in both instances and end-user seats. Deployed in fall 2012, the Microsoft Lync APS package is a proving to be a winner for service providers who have the right channels and sales engagement models. Microsoft’s Lync 2013 Hosting Pack, released this past May, is further accelerating provider deployments.
Web presence continues to be an in-demand cloud category, particularly in maturing markets such as Latin America and Asia. For Parallels Automation partners self-hosting their web presence solution, success is supported by website builders and marketing tools such as Parallels Web Presence Builder. Growth in providers outsourcing their web presence solutions is supported by APS-enabled ISVs such as Hostopia and ePages.
Business applications are varied with strong global and region-specific growth. Vidyo, Deskera and Hightail (formally Yousendit) are just a few of the business application providers to join the APS community this past year. While many of these APS packages serve a global market, others, such as Moysklad, a Russian-language CRM application, target specific regions and are showing strong growth with that focus. Business applications are absolutely leading APS cloud category growth, even outperforming Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research expectations.
To dig deeper into these trends and understand how they apply to your market, contact your Parallels account lead to schedule a market review, or contact me directly at srowan@parallels.com.
Cloud computing offers compelling benefits for IT and the business to gain on-demand access to IT resources for new application development as well as for running existing applications. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is a secure, dedicated infrastructure-as-a-service hybrid cloud owned and hosted by VMware, built on the trusted foundation of VMware vSphere. The service supports existing applications and new application development, giving you a common platform for seamlessly extending your existing data center to the cloud while leveraging the same tools and processes you use today.
SYS-CON Events announced today that VentureBeat has been named “Association Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
VentureBeat covers disruptive technology and explains why it matters in our lives. We’re the leading publication for news and perspective on the most innovative technologies, and we also bring the community together several times per year through our own executive-level conferences.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, Nov. 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.
Disaggregation of the fundamental server elements of processing/memory/storage/networking means that these individual elements can be cycled/upgraded at their natural replacement frequency providing large CapEx savings.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Bob Quinn, VP and chief technologist in the Corporate Strategy Office of LSI Corporation, will show how pooling of these disaggregated resources in a rack can enable Software Defined Infrastructures to optimally allocate the resources dynamically as workloads change across various applications and services providing significant OpEx savings.
I recently wrote an article for Wired, which discussed the importance of thinking about security at every stage of your application lifecycle. This is especially important as we enter the new era of open enterprise IT. The explosive growth of mobile computing has shifted the enterprise perimeter and traditional access control mechanisms are no longer sufficient. This is even more relevant when thinking about the Internet of Things (IoT) and its rapidly evolving ecosystem.
George Reese of Dell recently published an article that discusses the Tesla Model S REST API. This API enables some remote control features on the car and is primarily used by Tesla’s available smartphone apps. Great stuff, showing how mobile meets IOT meets API. The problem is that the focus of the article is all on its potential security vulnerabilities. Where the Tesla developers should be lauded for driving this type of innovation, they are instead scolded for addressing security poorly.
One of the notable presenters at this week’s Cloud World Forum in Brazil was from telco giant Telefónica.
This Spain-based powerhouse has extensive interests across Latin America as well as North America and Europe, and owns everything from undersea cables up to managed services. And as with every other telco on this planet, they’re heavily into Cloud Computing.
Nothing unusual so far. But toward the end of this fellow’s talk, someone asked whether Telefónica was going to either partner with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or compete with them. Seeing as the larger company was all-in with their Cloud bet, I expected the answer would be to compete with the IaaS leader.
After all, telcos from Verizon to Alcatel are in the trenches battling Bezos and Company. But to my surprise, he answered that they would prefer to run their SaaS apps on Amazon, while at …
Zetta.net has announced that the tribal nonprofit organization Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) is using Zetta DataProtect for NetApp to provide 3-in-1 offsite backup cloud backup and disaster recovery (DR) for critical data housed in its NetApp Filers. CITC selected Zetta.net’s 3-in-1 backup, disaster recovery and archiving solution to avoid the costly investment of an additional NetApp Filer, third party software, and WAN traffic accelerator – saving $75,000 as a result.
With a largely Microsoft Windows-based environment that uses VMware for its 50 virtual machine infrastructure and NetApp storage, CITC had increasing concerns about the possible damage a natural disaster might present. A recent storm that caused a three-day power outage in the area was a serious reminder that its valuable data may be at risk.