Keith Mayer and myself kick off our new multi-part series today on how you can build your hybrid cloud environment with Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 and Windows Azure by laying down a quick overview of what we can expect for the series as well as diving into the new features found in Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Foundation.
Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 and get the best virtualization platform and private cloud management solution on the market.
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Seagate Kinetic Open Storage Platform: a Promising Distributed Hardware Infrastructure
Seagate Technology hopes to redefine cloud storage infrastructure with the unveiling of its internally developed Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform. A potential leap forward in scale-out storage architectures, the innovative storage platform promises to simplify data management and improve performance and scalability while lowering total cost of ownership of typical cloud infrastructures.
“With the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform, our internal R&D teams have designed an unique, first-of-its-kind storage architecture to enable cheaper, more scalable object storage solutions that free up IT professionals from having to invest in hardware and software they don’t need—while empowering them with the most innovative storage technology available,” said Rocky Pimentel, Seagate executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. “This technology optimizes storage solutions for a new era of cloud storage systems, while drastically reducing overall costs.”
The platform leverages Seagate’s expertise in hardware and software storage systems to integrate a new key/value API – which will be open sourced – and Ethernet connected with Seagate hard drive technology. Designed for rapid implementation and deployment in any cloud storage software stack, this technology can be deployed across a portfolio of storage devices enabling system builders and software developers to design new solutions that will deliver against a full array of cloud data center use cases.
Redefining hardware and software capabilities, the platform enables cloud service providers and independent software vendors to optimize scale-out file and object-based storage—simply and effectively. With the Kinetic Open Storage platform, applications can now manage specific features and capabilities and rapidly implement and deploy in any cloud storage software stack. The technology also increases I/O efficiency by removing bottlenecks and optimizing cluster management, data replication, migration, and active archive performance.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Locking Down the Cloud with Akamai
Cost savings, scalability and offload are the hallmarks of cloud computing benefits. Sub-par performance, sketchy reliability, and porous security concerns rank among top concerns and have undoubtedly led to delays in growth and adoption.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Michael Schmidt, Principal Solutions Engineer at Akamai Technologies, will show how Akamai’s Intelligent Platform can help you address these challenges without sacrificing security or control.
Michael Schmidt is a Principal Solutions Engineer based out of San Mateo California. Mr. Schmidt is responsible for selling Akamai’s security and cloud acceleration and enablement services to many of the Bay Area’s largest high tech customers. He is works extensively with his customers in helping them shape and secure their evolving Cloud strategies. He has been with Akamai for 8 years and has over 15 years of experience in IT and web development.
Transformation Is More Important Than Cloud
On the surface it looks to be a chicken and egg problem. Is cloud driving IT transformation or is IT transformation driving cloud’s growth? The movement to cloud requires a shift in approach for many IT organizations for how to deal with procurement, management, security, etc. In some cases, public cloud offerings are driving IT to change how it delivers services as the business has access to options that don’t require IT’s participation in order to acquire.
The truth is that IT organizations can build and deliver private cloud offerings without changing how they operate internally. Often, these efforts result in less than stellar adoption by the business. Without transformation of the business and operational processes, cloud is just another silo that increases operational overhead and often acts to “prove” the businesses’ point that IT is too slow and difficult for the needs of today’s businesses.
Three main barriers between AWS and businesses
Recently Gathering Clouds’ friend and cloud computing expert David Linthicum dug into a few ways in which AWS continues to create gaps between its offering and businesses.
While Linthicum focused on cost, contract, and utility-based computing issues, we thought we would explore a few other obstacles that still keep AWS from full enterprise adoption.
While we are sure AWS will eventually figure out how to crack the enterprise, (especially as enterprise IT becomes more comfortable with the cloud) there are aspects of the service that still don’t go far enough to fulfill the requirements of the businesses that are still tentative about cloud adoption.
1) Compatibility issues: AWS created*planned* conflicts with integrating with other systems.
Without any compatibility between AWS-specific tools, platforms and environments with in-house systems (no matter which platform a business is running in house – VMware, Windows, Citrix, etc., Amazon won’t be compatible), businesses either …
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Ten Myths of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is transforming the way businesses think about and leverage technology. As a result, the general understanding of cloud computing has come a long way in a short time. However, there are still many misconceptions about what cloud computing is and what it can do for businesses that adopt this game-changing computing model.
In his general session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, will discuss and dispel some of the common myths about cloud computing that still exist today. Attendees will learn about the flexibility and choice that the cloud can offer so that they can make more-informed decisions when choosing the cloud for their business.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The Evolution of Cloud Flexibility
It was supposed to be about flexibility, wasn’t it? Cloud computing lets you alter your capacity as your demand fluctuates, something on-premise solutions could never do the same way. But, is the cloud as flexible as it could be? With cookie-cutter VM sizes, scalability that removes an entire former dimension, and reserved instance pricing that requires prediction we went to the cloud to avoid in the first place, the first generation of public cloud providers don’t go as far as they could.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Pete Johnson, Chief Evangelist for ProfitBricks, will explain how Cloud 1.0 falls short and how Cloud 2.0 offers the flexibility you’re looking for.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Fear & Loathing in the Enterprise Cloud
You want to move your enterprise applications to the cloud, but fear (security, uptime, responsiveness) and loathing (exaggerated claims, undisclosed complexity, etc.) seem to keep getting in the way. It feels like this fear & loathing in the enterprise cloud is resulting in organizations realizing only a small percentage of the potential benefits that can be gained through cloud adoption.
In his general session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Gary Ballabio, Product Line Director at Akamai Technologies, will examine a variety of strategies you can employ to make your cloud architecture better performing, more secure and available. Through a variety of best practices learn how to escape fear & loathing and achieve the optimal reliability for applications running in the cloud.
Five Cloud Encryption Tips
A day doesn’t go by when we don’t hear about sensitive information being exposed or stolen. The culprits could be the government, professional hackers, careless employees with data on mobile devices, or internal employees with unauthorized access to data or unintentional release of data. It seems the wave of data breaches has gained momentum as data has moved from internal servers to the cloud; and access has gone mobile. Though the fact remains that there will be gaps in security, the goal of companies and IT departments should be to make those gaps as small and as difficult to take advantage of as possible.
Encryption has always been viewed as one of the strongest security measures, and its price-performance has become very attractive with the advent of cloud computing. This is because encryption is by far the best way to replace physical walls in the cloud.
SilverSky Selects SoftLayer, an IBM Company, to Power Cloud-Based Email
SoftLayer, an IBM Company, has announced that SilverSky, a provider of cloud-based information security and messaging solutions, has chosen SoftLayer to help power its cloud-based email and Email Protection Suite offerings. SilverSky’s comprehensive security services, running on SoftLayer’s cloud platform and distributed through IBM’s global sales channel, will enable businesses around the world to quickly move email workloads and critical information into the cloud in a secure and cost-effective way.
As a provider of cloud-based information security, secure messaging and collaboration services, SilverSky protects $525 billion in customer assets and handles more than 500 million security events each day. SilverSky’s growing customer base includes 6,700 organizations around the globe in the financial services, retail, healthcare, energy, critical infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.