While technology changes on a regular basis, IT teams have had a standard approach to administration. In recent years, however, there has been a drastic shift in data center administration. One of the biggest shifts is the adoption of private and public clouds. In part two of this series, we will examine public cloud architectures.
From small businesses to major organizations, companies are moving to cloud architectures to meet a variety of different application needs, such as CRM and email. According to IDC, worldwide spending on public IT cloud services is expected to be more than $107 billion in 2017. They believe the next phase of cloud adoption will focus on being more user and solution driven in order to continue to drive growth and innovation across all industries that depend on IT. Public cloud services are generally used for servers, storage, and backup infrastructure. Ultimately, public cloud infrastructure is about cost, scalability and flexibility.
Monthly Archives: March 2014
NuoDB Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that NuoDB, Inc., the leader in distributed database technology, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Everyday businesses face challenges with application deployments, maintaining business continuity and providing outstanding application performance. NuoDB leads the industry with a cloud database management system to solve these problems.
NuoDB provides scale-out performance, continuous availability and active/active operation. It’s a single, logical database easily deployed in multiple locations simultaneously. This unique capability is unavailable in any other SQL product.
Day 2 Keynote at Cloud Expo | Cloud Odyssey: A Hero’s Quest
The time has come for humanity’s first interstellar trek to Terranuvem, the cloud planet, and Chief Engineer Cyrus Agarwal has been chosen to ready a ship for the voyage. He must make the right architectural choices to transform the ship for the long journey and be prepared for the unknown. He will be tested and overcome challenges during the mission.
Join Cyrus and the crew of the Stratus at Oracle VP Rex Wang’s Day 2 Keynote at 14th Cloud Expo for a unique, sci-fi movie experience while learning key success factors for your own journey to cloud.
A Big, Perhaps Watershed Week of Cloud Annoucements
- Google harmonized its cloud computing business to a single entity, with a pricing model intended to hold customers by enticing them to build ever cheaper and more complex software.
- Cisco announced it would spend $1 billion on a “cloud of clouds” project.
- Microsoft’s new CEO made his first big public appearance, offering Office for the Apple iPad, partly as a way to sell more of its cloud-based Office 365 product.
- Amazon Web Services announced the general release of its cloud-based desktop computing business, as well as a deal with to offer cloud-based enterprise software tools to industries like healthcare and manufacturing.
For more detail and opinions read this, and listen to this.
Preparing for a New Type of Workforce
It’s now clear that we are entering into a very diverse and even unprecedented work environment — something the world perhaps has never known. Companies need to prepare for it now.
But how do enterprises prepare, and how do they create the means to analyze and manage the transition to very different work environments? BriefingsDirect had an opportunity to learn first-hand at the recent 2014 Ariba LIVE Conference in Las Vegas.
To learn more about hiring and acquiring talent and managing a diverse and socially engaged — and even more knowledge-driven workforce — we sat down with Shawn Price, President for Global Cloud and Line of Business at SAP, and the former President of SuccessFactors, now part of SAP. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
What Being Cloud-Native Really Means
You hear this everywhere these days: Build applications that are cloud-native – that is, developed specifically for cloud platforms. The trouble is everyone has his or her own definition of “cloud-native.” As a result, cloud-hosted applications are all over the place in their use of native features. Many are not designed properly, and they’re worse off in the cloud than when they ran in the data center.
What are the fundamentals of being cloud-native? As I see it, being cloud-native is more about the application architecture and design than how you code the thing. Sadly, many people – in IT and at the vendors – are missing the boat on both points.
MetraTech Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that MetraTech Corp., the leading global provider of Agreements-Based Billing™ (ABB), Commerce and Settlement solutions, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Commerce is driven by agreements between sellers and buyers. The best agreements can be fluidly negotiated and flexible enough to meet the needs of both sides. This allows a business to be able to adapt to new markets, new business models, or competition, giving them a distinct advantage.
Google & Amazon Cut Prices & Microsoft is Next. Why Not Take Advantage of Them All?
By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud
There’s been a lot of talk this week about price cuts coming from cloud providers. First Google announced several price reductions for most of its cloud services. In response, Amazon announced a round of price cuts as well. This marked the 42nd time AWS has reduced prices since 2006. This means that Microsoft Azure will most likely get in on the action as well. Last April, Microsoft pledged that it would match any price drops from AWS. In early 2014, Microsoft did just that when it lowered prices to match a reduction made by Amazon. TechCrunch has nice write-ups on the specifics of the Google & Amazon price reductions.
Obviously price cuts are beneficial to organizations using these platforms, but wouldn’t it make sense to take advantage of price cuts from multiple providers at the same time to maximize cost savings and performance? What if you moved different applications to different clouds – or even different parts of an application to different clouds?
Let’s say you have some applications for your database that require high-end performance, and you’re willing to pay more for performance. But if you use a more expensive provider exclusively, you may be overspending in other areas that do not require as high performance. So, instead of running all your apps on the same provider, you could move some, say, commodity web-based applications that don’t require as much performance to the cheapest provider. You also have to keep in mind that the best option could be to keep the application on premise. This is only one example. John Dixon wrote a great ebook about the evolution of the corporate IT department and gives a more in depth look at the “which app, which cloud” philosophy that I highly recommend downloading.
So why don’t more companies split applications across multiple cloud providers? It’s simple; it’s complex and painful to manage. Furthermore, price cuts can happen at the spur of the moment so you need to be able to take advantage in real time to maximize savings.
This is where you need a management platform like GreenPages’ Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) Brokerage and Governance offering. CMaaS gives you the ability to match the right applications to the right cloud providers and compare the true cost of running your resources at a CSP before even placing an order. The platform eliminates cloud sourcing complexity with a central portal where business and IT users can quickly and easily aggregate, procure, and pay for cloud solutions. It answers the “which app, which cloud?” question across both internal private and public cloud environments.
Has your organization looked into spreading different applications across different clouds? What are your thoughts?
Download whitepaper: Cloud Management, Now
The Cloud – Modernize as You Migrate
Assuming that your organization is well down the road when it comes to adopting the Cloud and in fact, has been utilizing the Cloud for a while, then you are likely a true believer that ultimately all of your applications will be migrated to the Cloud. It is no longer a question of “if” but more a question of “when” and “how.” These days, the majority of test, dev, external websites and mobile apps are already born in the cloud.
Applications make businesses run. Businesses have tons of applications ranging from purchased (commercial off the shelf) to homegrown (bespoke) and likely some customized, purchased apps that now look a lot like the homegrown ones. One of the big problems with apps is that once they are built and deployed they rarely get replaced or decommissioned. Application sprawl and aging application portfolios are among the root causes for much of the fixed cost in an IT budget and can consume close to 80% of the dollars.
Basic6 to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Basic6 will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Basic6, the tool that securely consolidates the management and control of Linux/Unix and Windows servers across Data Center, Virtual, and Cloud environments from one easy to use console, announces its extended ability to now remotely manage, control and re program Embedded Devices across the Internet of Things as well.