SYS-CON Events announced today that CommVault has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and the 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
A singular vision – a belief in a better way to address current and future data management needs – guides CommVault in the development of Singular Information Management® solutions for high-performance data protection, universal availability and simplified management of data on complex storage networks. CommVault’s exclusive single-platform architecture gives companies unprecedented control over data growth, costs and risk. CommVault’s Simpana® software suite of products was designed to work together seamlessly from the ground up, sharing a single code and common function set, to deliver superlative Data Protection, Archive, Replication, Search and Resource Management capabilities. More companies every day join those who have discovered the unparalleled efficiency, performance, reliability, and control only CommVault can offer.
Monthly Archives: March 2015
Evaluating Private PaaS By @ActiveState | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
In comparison to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has experienced a slower rate of adoption. However, PaaS is coming into its own as evidenced by increased usage and top technology companies such as HP and IBM supporting open source projects like Cloud Foundry by bringing their own PaaS to market.
PaaS is important because apps are an important part of our lives. With this relatively new dependency on web and mobile applications, organizations need to find a way to automate their app deployment and management process just to stay in the game. If you are not looking for a way to speed up your pipeline, you can bet that your competition is. And PaaS is a critical component to achieving this.
F5 Solutions Simplify Service Delivery | @F5Networks @CloudExpo [#SDDC]
F5 Networks introduced software solutions to expand its offerings and simplify service delivery across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. These new, lightweight solutions extend the capabilities of the F5 Synthesis™ framework to allow all applications to receive services – from basic load balancing to more advanced security and optimization capabilities – regardless of where the applications are located.
F5® LineRate Point™ Load Balancer provides an application proxy that expands F5’s application delivery solution family with a new offering that enables customers to easily and affordably deploy layer 7 load balancing in a virtual form factor. Point Load Balancer is quick to deploy and massively scalable for cloud service providers and enterprise Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) environments, presenting a compelling option for customers with large volumes of applications that require foundational load balancing and application proxy capabilities.
Announcing @Site24x7 to Exhibit at @CloudExpo New York [#Cloud #DevOps]
SYS-CON Events announced today that Site24x7, the cloud infrastructure monitoring service, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Site24x7 is a cloud infrastructure monitoring service that helps monitor the uptime and performance of websites, online applications, servers, mobile websites and custom APIs. The monitoring is done from 50+ locations across the world and from various wireless carriers, thus providing a global perspective of the end-user experience. Site24x7 supports monitoring HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, TCP, IMAP, SSL, Ping, FTP, SFTP, DNS and other Internet-facing network services.
A Quick History of Web Browsers (Infographic)
Which web browser you use depends on more than just personal preference—for instance, you can obviously only use Apple’s Safari on a Mac. Thankfully, with Parallels Desktop 10, you can use pretty much whichever web browser you’ve got your heart set on. In fact, you can even use multiple browsers at once! (This is especially […]
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Design is ‘How It Works’
Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.” Here at Parallels, this is one of our favorite quotes of his—words we love and design by. One of our favorite quotes about design. Happy Monday! #Stevejobs #Design A photo posted by Parallels (@parallelsdesktop) on Mar […]
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IBM opens SDN, NFV labs in Dallas, Paris
IBM is moving to bolster its service provider business
IBM has announced the launch of two Network Innovation Centres, where the company’s clients can experiment with software-defined networking and network function virtualisation technologies. The move seems aimed at bolstering its service provider business.
The centres, one in Paris, France and the other in Dallas, Texas, will focus primarily on experimenting with solutions for large enterprise networking systems and telecoms operators, and feature technologies from a range of IBM partner companies including Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Juniper Networks, Riverbed, and VMware.
IBM said facilitating automation and orchestration innovation will be the main thrust of the centres.
“Effectively applying cloud technologies to the network could allow a company to reduce its overall network capacity while increasing utilization by dynamically providing resources during the day in Beijing while it’s nighttime in New York, and vice versa,” said Pete Lorenzen, general manager, Networking Services, IBM Global Technology Services.
“A telecom company could better manage periodic, localized spikes in smartphone usage caused by major sporting events or daily urban commutes, dynamically provisioning capacity when and where it’s needed,” Lorenzen added.
IBM has pushed farther into the networking space in recent years, having scored a number of patents in the area of networking automation and dynamic network resource allocation. A significant driver of this is its service provider business, where some of the company’s competitors – like HP – are attempting to make inroads.
Red Hat says OpenStack, OpenShift deals trebled year-on-year
Red Hat enjoyed a solid fiscal year, with OpenStack and OpenShift
Red Hat revealed its fourth quarter 2015 financial this week, reporting revenue of $464m, up 16 per cent year-on-year. The firm also said deals involving OpenStack and OpenShift-based offerings tripled when compared to the fourth quarter 2014.
For the full fiscal year total revenue hit $1.79bn, up 17 per cent on the previous year, and the Linux incumbent reported subscription revenue for the quarter reached $405m, up 15 per cent year-on-year.
“We continued to experience strong demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies, as evidenced by increased cross-selling in our top 30 deals which were all over $2 million for the first time,” stated Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer of Red Hat. “Customers value the consistency and flexibility as they run their applications using Red Hat solutions across a variety of deployment models, including public and private clouds, to modernize and transform their IT infrastructure.”
In a call with analysts this week Whitehurst also said its OpenStack and OpenShift offerings, as well as Ceph – the storage system provider it acquired last year – are starting to show signs of market acceptance.
“Half of our OpenStack wins are six figure OpenStack wins in the quarter had Ceph as a component. So fully strong affinity between OpenStack and Ceph and our ability to be a credible provider of both, I think helps us do well in both. So we’re seeing a lot of benefit there.”
“The number of times the top 30 deal included OpenStack or OpenShift this quarter tripled from Q4 a year ago. Interestingly, one technology customer expanded their existing OpenShift deal this quarter and we now have our first $10 million plus open shift customer,” he said. “OpenShift has been performing well with customers and momentum is growing.”
OpenShift is currently pitted in a battle for mindshare against Cloud Foundry, another open source platform as a service. Cloud Foundry seems to have gained the lion’s share of vendor buy-in, but Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s executive vice president, products and technology said OpenShift wins over Cloud Foundry when it comes to standards.
“One of the biggest differences is that cloud foundry from the various vendors is it’s very difficult in implementation. So getting applications that are compatible across those different vendors on Cloud Foundry will be challenging for one thing,” he said, adding that OpenShift relies on more tried-and-tested technology standards.
Red Hat enjoyed a solid fourth quarter and fiscal 2015, and it will be interesting to see how the incumbent attempts to keep that positive momentum going. Professional services may be one viable avenue. The company recently created a consulting division that combines technology expertise and consulting resources the firm acquired over the years.
Ultimate Software, NetSuite link HCM and ERP clouds
Ultimate Software and NetSuite are integrating their HCM and ERP services
Ultimate Software, a provider of cloud-based human capital management services has inked a deal with NetSuite, a vendor of ERP cloud services, which will see the two companies integrate their software.
The two companies will integrate the UltiPro HCM solution and NetSuite’s ERP suite, which will enable joint customers to manage a broader chunk of their business lifecycles –financials, supply chain, CRM, payroll, HR, and talent management.
“By connecting UltiPro’s rich HR, talent, and payroll capabilities to NetSuite’s suite of ERP applications, Ultimate and NetSuite offer businesses the ability to manage their entire spectrum of business technology needs through two of the most trusted cloud vendors in the world—while enjoying industry-leading functionality, scalability, and configurability—without requiring point solutions for different business applications,” said Scott Scherr, chief executive officer of Ultimate.
“Not only are both our solutions leaders in cloud business technology, but our commitment to culture and service to customers is highly aligned. We’re excited to bring this partnership to the market,” Scherr said.
Zach Nelson, chief executive officer of NetSuite said: “The combination of Ultimate’s robust HCM functionality together with NetSuite’s system of record for core operational processes provides our customers with a tightly integrated solution to run the core aspects of their business.”
The move suggests cloud ERP vendors are looking to double down on beating the large incumbents at their own game. The SAPs and Oracles of the world have long found that combining ERP and HR platforms make them more attractive to some large enterprises, so any move to bring end-to-end integration of these services in the cloud space will likely be welcome news to born-in-the-cloud firms that are also keen on de-risking their supply chains with multiple vendors.
Private vs public vs hybrid cloud: Which one to choose?
(c)iStock.com/Henrik5000
Most enterprise IT departments now manage applications across multiple environments in a dizzyingly complex overall IT architecture. They also must constantly reevaluate their unique mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud infrastructure to meet new business goals and determine how applications can be migrated to the public cloud in a cost-effective way.
This is no small feat. Dozens or even hundreds of applications built at different times, in different languages, and by different teams need to be evaluated for migration to the cloud, which often requires deep knowledge of the existing IT infrastructure as well as the public cloud resources that could replace these functions.
Ultimately, enterprises must determine the hosting solution that suits each application: on-premises, private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud. Below we outline some basic considerations and cloud comparisons, as well as best practices for how to integrate and manage these complex deployments.
Public cloud
By now, most organisatons understand the cost benefits of an IaaS provider like Amazon Web Services, including a low and predictable cost of ownership and a shift from a capital expenditure to an operating expenditure. This makes it possible to significantly reduce an organisaton’s upfront costs, its ongoing costs of IT labor and potentially its tax liability.
The technical benefits are equally attractive: scalability, automated deployments, and greater reliability, to name a few. There are also very few technical limitations that would prevent an organisaton from moving their infrastructure to AWS; almost every function a traditional resource supports in the private cloud or in a data centre could be replicated in AWS.
These application tiers are especially well suited to the public cloud:
- Long-term storage, including tape storage, which has significantly more cost-effective solutions in AWS (Glacier and Storage Gateway’s Virtual Tape Library)
- Data storage of any kind, especially if you are currently hosting physical media that fails often or needs to be replaced (S3 is an infinitely expandable, low-cost storage resource)
- The web tier of an application that is bursty or highly seasonal (EC2, Auto Scaling, ELBs)
- The web tier of an application that is mission-critical or latency-intolerant (Custom Auto Scaling groups and automated deployments with Puppet scripts)
- Any new application that demand is uncertain for, especially for microsites or other interactive properties for marketing and ad campaigns
- Testing environments, due to the fact that it is so much easier to spin up and down instances for load testing.
Enterprises must then decide whether they want to manage their public cloud infrastructure themselves or outsource it to a managed cloud services provider. A managed cloud services provider can maintain the entire cloud infrastructure (web servers, application servers, load balancing, custom failover scripts) and some may also be able to integrate with on-premises or private cloud solutions to provide a single monitoring interface.
Note that compliance requirements no longer necessitate a private cloud solution rather than a public cloud solution. AWS has been on the leading edge of compliance in the cloud for several years, and while there is lingering skepticism, the adoption of AWS cloud by the largest and most complex healthcare and financial institutions is a indication of the degree to which AWS ensures compliance and security in the cloud. We presented at Amazon re:Invent on the architecture required for HIPAA-compliant deployments here.
Private cloud
Although there are many advantages to the public cloud, enterprises very rarely deploy 100% of their applications into the public cloud. Logistically, it is often much simpler to move from your on-premises environment to a private cloud than from on-premises to public cloud.
Private cloud environments can be configured to support any application, just as your data centre currently hosts it. Private cloud is an especially attractive option if certain features in legacy applications prevent some applications from operating well in the public cloud.
Here are some indicators that your application would be a good candidate for maintenance in a private cloud:
- You are using Oracle RAC (shared storage) and require dedicated infrastructure for compliance. The shared storage equivalent in AWS, RDS, is not HIPAA-compliant.
- You need high performance access to a file system, as in a media company that creates or produces large video files.
- An application is poorly written and infrequently used, and therefore not worth the effort of migrating to the public cloud.
- The application has very predictable usage patterns and low storage costs.
- An application is unstable and heavily trafficked, but current IT staff is unfamiliar with the application. This may instead be a case for partial rewriting in the cloud.
- The engineering team responsible for maintaining the application is not equipped for migrating the application in a cost-effective time frame. This may instead be a case for bringing on a managed cloud service provider.
A private cloud solution can be implemented in your on-premises data centre with a virtualisation layer such as VMware, though many mid-sized and large enterprises let a managed private cloud services provider maintain servers, storage, network, and application infrastructure.
On-premise servers
While cloud-based infrastructure has many advantages, there are some applications that would see little to no cost benefit from migrating to the cloud. This is usually the case when you have invested significant capital in on-premise infrastructure, such as high-performance databases, that are specially configured to support that application.
Here are some situations where on-premises infrastructure might work best for your application:
- The cost savings of cloud storage and compute resources do not outweigh significant capital in on-premise solutions
- Your application already sees high performance and high availability from custom infrastructure
- You produce large multimedia files that your in-house staff needs low-latency access to for editing purposes
- An email platform that is high-volume, time-sensitive, and confidential. For example, some brokerage houses send very large volumes of email early each trading day.
Applications that meet these requirements are often not well-suited to the cloud. Often it would be wiser financially to maintain the infrastructure until its value has depreciated.
Hybrid cloud
Ninety percent (90%) of enterprises say they are going to pursue a hybrid cloud solution this year. As explained above, enterprise architecture is often so complex that a hybrid cloud solution — where public, private or on-premises infrastructure supports a single application — is the best solution.
Hybrid architectures are especially attractive for large organisatons that want to explore the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud. An audit will not always reveal how an application will perform in the public cloud, so enterprises choose to test a single tier in the public cloud while maintaining key infrastructure on their private cloud or dedicated infrastructure.
A hybrid system is also a good solution if there is institutional hesitancy about the security of the public cloud for sensitive data (whether this is justified or not). Frankly, it is often easier to convince internal executive or IT teams to experiment with cloud solutions rather than adopt them wholesale. Maintaining veteran IT staff and legacy applications on legacy infrastructure while opening new lines of business in the cloud is a cost-effective solution that also manages institutional risk.
Finally, an important thing to understand about hybrid environments is that they are only as strong as the integrations that unite them. Performance monitoring, regular testing, and data ingress and egress procedures will reveal future areas of difficulty as well as signal when and how to further evolve the application. The team orchestrating the infrastructure is almost always more important than the specific type of cloud solution you chose.
If you want to learn more about what cloud solution is right for you, contact Logicworks for Hybrid, Private, and Public Cloud solutions.
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