Guest blog by Dhruba Jyoti Das, Parallels Support Team Your home may be packed with more than one Mac plus other devices, but if you’re like a lot of other households, you have a central “family” Mac. This is the computer located in a high-traffic area such as the living room, kitchen, etc. Each family member […]
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Picture credit: CenturyLink
Richard Warley, the new EMEA managing director of communications giant CenturyLink, argues the natural winners in the cloud and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) space should be the telcos – and he’s relishing the chance of leading the charge.
Warley’s appointment represents a near full-circle transformation, having been managing director of SAVVIS up until 2008, which CenturyLink acquired in 2011. Indeed, it goes further than that; the new EMEA MD was speaking to CloudTech from a CenturyLink office in Denver which previously belonged to software manufacturer Quest – now part of Dell – whose IPO in 1996 Warley worked on in a previous life as an investment banker.
Having been out of the fold for the best part of seven years, Warley (left) notes CenturyLink has changed ‘radically’, admitting when SAVVIS was acquired by the Louisiana telco, his first thought was ‘who the hell are CenturyLink?’ Yet his reasons for taking the job on are clear. “Part of the reason I came back is the company’s strategic vision is absolutely in the sweet spot of what customers are looking for,” he explains.
“If you look at some of the natural competitors from the global infrastructure side, BT, Vodafone, Verizon, AT&T, all those folks are all predominantly interested in the consumer and the retail play,” he adds. “CenturyLink has said [they are] interested in satisfying the enterprise’s infrastructure problems on a local basis, in region and on a global basis.”
This feeds into Warley’s belief as to why the telco should win – the complexity of bringing together the network and the data centre from an operational and a sales standpoint. It can be quickly summed up in two terms; ‘hybrid IT’ and ‘telco cloud’. Both terms are less than ideal for Warley – they’re both pretty vague, for a start – but he says the latter has an ‘element of truth’ to it.
“The natural winners in the cloud space, and the infrastructure as a service space, are the telcos – or should be, for a number of reasons,” he argues, adding: “The cloud doesn’t work without the network. Increasingly, we’ve seen Microsoft, Amazon and certainly Google getting into the network space in rather a big way, and making substantial network investments, because the cloud doesn’t work if there’s no network to connect it.”
The second reason, a point echoed by CTO Jared Wray when he spoke to this publication last year, is that the cloud is, primarily, a utility service. Who has had experience in offering utility services for donkey’s years? The telcos.
Warley explains: “It takes a lot of innovative expertise to imagine the cloud and then to code it, but over a period of time it will become commoditised to an extent, and the people who can run infrastructure efficiently and cost effectively should be the telcos.” You put the legacy experience and the network together and it should be a recipe for success. Yet there’s a caveat.
“From a customer’s perspective this makes perfect sense, because the customer needs the network, the data centre, dedicated or traditional IT managed services, and needs cloud,” says Warley. “When you look at it from the vendor’s perspective, it looks difficult because you’ve got different skillsets, different operational frameworks that people want to work in.”
This, incorporating DevOps as opposed to a traditional ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) model, is a key tenet for CenturyLink, primarily through the CenturyLink Cloud Development Centre in Seattle.
From the enterprise customer’s perspective, the sentiment is still focused on ‘journey to the cloud’. How do they make their infrastructure more agile and cost effective, yet without sacrificing the stable operational state of a managed service? “That is the overwhelming topic of discussion amongst the client base,” Warley says, “and we are ideally positioned to have that discussion with our clients and to help them on both sides.”
Warley’s opinions on the competition aren’t restricted to the telcos. The more recognised IaaS players, he argues, don’t come from a service provider perspective as much as the telcos, ceding competitive advantage. The IaaS market as a whole, he notes, is growing rapidly and eating into the total infrastructure market, but will hit ‘increasing headwinds’ in the corporate market. He notes IBM, with its legacy in traditional IT, can stand on both sides of the argument, yet is ‘not sure how happy SoftLayer is in that environment’.
All considered, it’s exactly the sort of mission statement one would expect from the new EMEA managing director of a company in an extremely interesting strategic position. “I wouldn’t say that this is an incrementalist company,” Warley adds. “When it decides to do something, it says ‘this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to go about it’.
“That’s how they’ve come from a switchboard in Louisiana to a very substantial company in a short space of time.”
IBM announced their new cloud service called High Performance Services for Electronic Design Automation (EDA), which is the industry’s first Software-as-a-Service that provides users the tools to build out electronic systems used for mobile and wearable devices. These tools have been made available through a partnership with SiCAD, a Silicon Design Platform provider with expertise in EDA, design flows, networking, security, platform development, and cloud technologies.
The service opens up the door for anyone interested in designing the next big tech innovation. IBM says that anyone with the SoftLayer subscription can begin designing electronic technology in the cloud using patented technology that IBM’s own internal product designers use. This service is delivered on their SoftLayer infrastructure and is on a pay as you go model.
The first phase of the launch will deliver three key tools: 1) IBM Library Characterization, to create abstract electrical and timing models required by chip design tools and methodologies; 2) IBM Logic Verification, to simulate electronic systems described using the VHDL and Verilog design languages; and 3) IBM Spice, an electronic circuit simulator used to check design integrity and predict circuit behavior, all on an IBM Platform LSF cluster built on the IBM SoftLayer cloud.
The cluster will use physical and network isolations for enhanced security and the cloud services ingle-tenant servers, which means that clients don’t share servers and firewalls to enhance security as well. These tested tools are expected to set new benchmarks in price-performance. This means that verification work will get done quicker and utilize fewer resources or produce better quality through more verification in the same amount of time.
Cloud computing provides the scalability requirements for EDA, along with making it affordable. Clients can scale up or down based on demand, manage peak demands, increase design productivity, reduce capital expenditure and increase operational efficiency using IBM High Performance Services. Another positive of using this cloud service is that clients will not need to purchase any new hardware or technology.
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The basic integration architecture, as defined by ESBs, hasn’t changed for more than a decade. Most cloud integration providers still rely on an ESB architecture and their proprietary connectors. As a result, enterprise integration projects suffer from constraints of availability and reliability of these connectors that are not re-usable across other integration vendors. However, the rapid adoption of APIs and almost ubiquitous availability of APIs amongst most SaaS and Cloud applications are rapidly redefining traditional integration approaches and their reliance on proprietary connectors.
In her session at 16th Cloud Expo, Laura Heritage, Director of API Strategy at Akana, will discuss how enterprises can adopt an API-based integration and connector-less architecture to achieve lightweight, quick, and configurable drag-and-drop integration that is fit for the new digital enterprise.
SYS-CON Events announced today that BMC 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.
BMC delivers software solutions that help IT transform digital enterprises for the ultimate competitive business advantage. BMC has worked with thousands of leading companies to create and deliver powerful IT management services. From mainframe to cloud to mobile, BMC pairs high-speed digital innovation with robust IT industrialization – allowing customers to provide amazing user experiences with optimized IT performance, cost, compliance, and productivity. BMC believes that technology is the heart of every business, and that IT drives business to the digital age.
Kansas City is working with Cisco, Sprint and a range of partners on fa large-scale IoT deployment
Kansas City, Missourim announced a deal with Cisco and Sprint that will see the municipality deploy an Internet of Things (IoT) platform it said will transform the urban services it offers citizens.
As part of the deal Cisco will offer up its Smart+Connected wireless networking and mobile app services and work with a group of partners to bring together an ecosystem to develop applications including smart lighting, digital kiosks, a development data portal, and smart water innovation development.
Some of the applications being developed by project partners include CityPost, which broadcasts real-time location-based information and alerts through a Smart City network powered on the street by interactive Smart Signs (city posts) and on smartphones, and a series of applications designed to enhance policing.
“It’s exciting to see forward looking cities like Kansas City driving innovations that enable cities to connect people, process, data and things, and bring the Internet of Everything to life,” said Wim Elfrink, executive vice president, industry solutions group, and chief globalisation officer for Cisco.
“Kansas City is empowering its citizens, helping them become more efficient and more productive, and the city is poised to create significant new economic value. We’re pleased to be part of the team that will deploy a Smart+Connected City framework,” Elfrink said.
Sprint will deploy Cisco hardware to build and manage a Wi-Fi network that will serve as the backbone of the connectivity platform.
“Sprint looks forward to playing an integral role in this ground-breaking initiative to bring greater connectivity across a wide range of business and consumer applications that support the Internet of Everything in our hometown,” said Stephen Bye, chief technology officer at Sprint. “Delivering Wi-Fi connectivity is a great fit for Sprint, and enables our customers to more easily use both cellular and Wi-Fi for a better mobile experience.”
The first phase of the project is due to kick off later this year, the municipality said.
The need to collaborate with co-workers, external partners and clients has always been paramount for organisations, but as the results of the 2015 BCN Annual Industry Survey – which includes responses from over 715 senior IT professionals – make clear, the needs of workers and their employers are changing swiftly.
Flexible working is becoming more mainstream, and as a result the need to provide content collaboration and management capabilities for any device – whether corporate or employee-owned – while maintaining the strongest levels of security and data privacy is becoming not just more important – but essential. In a bid to facilitate more mobile workstyles, organisations are increasingly looking to adopt cloud-based collaboration services because of the many benefits they could bring: greater flexibility and employee productivity, lower CAPEX, and the ability to centralise data governance more effectively are but a handful that come to mind.
But as the survey results also make clear, a number of barriers slowing the adoption of cloud-based collaboration services persist. This whitepaper, sponsored by Sharp Document Solutions and published by BCN, analyses the results of the 2015 BCN Annual Industry Survey to help explain:
Download the whitepaper for free from Business Cloud News now.
Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 6/1/2015.
The U.S. believes it could have been hit by the biggest data breach ever on the government’s computer networks. Microsoft buys Wunderlist as it continues to target mobile productivity. A nasty bug lets hackers into Apple computers. The Apple Watch is set to hit retail stores on June 26th. Attackers are using medical devices to bypass hospital security. Remember, there is a leap second adjustment happening at the end of June that could affect your IT environment. And much more!
The corporate IT department has evolved. Has yours kept pace?
By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist
UK enterprises are still struggling with their cloud migrations, the CIF research shows
The latest research published by Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) suggests over a third of UK enterprises IT decision-makers believe cloud service providers could have better supported their migration to the cloud.
The CIF, which polled 250 senior IT decision-makers in the UK earlier this year to better understand where cloud services fit into their overall IT strategies, said its clear UK business are generally satisfied with their cloud services and plan to use more of them. But 35 per cent of those polled also said their companies still struggle with migration.
“The transition to cloud services has, for many, not been as straightforward as expected. Our latest research indicates that the complexity of migration is a challenge for a significant proportion of cloud users, resulting in unplanned disruption to the business,” said Alex Hilton, chief executive of the Cloud Industry Forum.
“There may be a case that cloud service providers need to be better at either setting end user expectations or easing the pain of migration to their services. But equally, it’s important that end users equip themselves with enough knowledge about cloud to be able to manage it and ensure that the cloud-based services rolled out can support business objectives, not hinder them.”
Piers Linney, co-chief executive of Outsourcery said the research highlights the need for providers to develop a “strong integrated stack of partners.”
“IT leaders looking for a provider should first assess their existing in-house skills and experience to understand how reliant they will be on the supplier to ensure a smooth transition. Equally, cloud suppliers need to be more sensitive to their customers’ requirements and tailor their service to the level of support needed for successful cloud adoption,” he said.
“The most critical factor is for IT leaders to really get under the bonnet of their potential cloud provider, make sure that the have a strong and highly integrated stack of partners and a proven track record of delivery for other customers with needs similar to their own.”
(c)iStock.com/alexsl
Despite the varying methodologies used in the studies mentioned in this roundup, many share a common set of conclusions. The high priority in gaining greater insights into customers and their unmet needs, more precise information on how to best manage and simplify sales cycles, and how to streamline service are common themes.
The most successful Big Data uses cases revolve around enterprises’ need to get beyond the constraints that hold them back from being more attentive and responsive to customers.
Presented below is a roundup of recent forecasts and estimates:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
