In the midst of the widespread popularity and adoption of cloud computing, it seems like everything is being offered “as a Service” these days: Infrastructure? Check. Platform? You bet. Software? Absolutely. Toaster? It’s only a matter of time. With service providers positioning vastly differing offerings under a generic “cloud” umbrella, it’s all too easy to get confused about what’s actually being offered.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Kevin Hazard, Director of Digital Content for SoftLayer, an IBM Company, breaks down the most commonly used industry buzzwords and discusses what each “aaS” is good for. No BS(aas).
Monthly Archives: June 2015
IBM and Box announce global enterprise cloud partnership
US enterprise tech giant IBM has revealed a new global partnership with cloud storage outfit Box to integrate their products and sell into vertically targeted enterprise markets.
More specifically the strategic alliance will combine Box’s cloud collaboration platform with a number of IBM solutions, including analytics, cloud and security. Both companies will sell the combined products.
“Today’s digital enterprises demand world-class technologies that transform how their organizations operate both internally and externally,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “This extensive alliance between Box and IBM opens up an exciting opportunity for both companies to reach new markets and deliver unified solutions and services that can redefine industries, advance secure collaboration and revolutionize enterprise mobility.”
“This partnership will transform the way work is done in industries and professions that shape our experience every day,” said Bob Picciano, SVP of IBM Analytics. “The impact will be felt by experts and professionals in industries such as healthcare, financial services, law, and engineering who are overwhelmed by today’s digital data and seek better solutions to manage large volumes of information more intelligently and securely. The integration of IBM and Box technologies, combined with our global cloud capabilities and the ability to enrich content with analytics, will help unlock actionable insights for use across the enterprise.”
The alliance will focus on three main areas: content management and social collaboration; enterprise cloud, security and consulting; and custom app development for industries. The general thread of the announcement seems to be a desire to bring cloud applications to regions and industries that are not currently making the most of them and is just the latest in a sequence of collaborations by both Box and IBM.
IBM and Box team up to “transform work in the cloud”
Picture credit: Box/IBM
Tech giant IBM and enterprise cloud storage provider Box have announced a wide-ranging partnership, aimed at content management and social collaboration to improve the enterprise cloud and digital push.
The two companies aim to integrate their existing products and services to develop new solutions across multiple verticals, from medicine, to engineering and academia.
Among the developments proposed, Box will integrate with IBM’s enterprise content management solution, as well as collaborating to integrate Box into IBM’s business email and social collaboration platforms, IBM Verse and IBM Connections. IBM will leverage Box’s platform and APIs in its iOS applications, while Box will for the first time enable customers to choose a partner’s cloud platform for data storage.
“This partnership represents the work of hundreds of individuals over the past nine months, bringing together the strengths of two very different but similarly-motivated companies,” Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, wrote in a blog post. “IBM was founded more than 100 years ago to push business technology forward, and continues to be the longest lasting and most durable company in the tech industry. We couldn’t [be] prouder to be able to work with them as we work toward creating the digital enterprise.”
The companies also promise integration with Watson Analytics, with IBM’s supercomputer linking up to content stored in Box. Watson Analytics launched in September 2014 and uses natural language to spit out its algorithms and analysis, meaning a much easier use case.
When CloudTech spoke to IBM to find out more about Watson’s working methods last year, this was a key component of its viability – and its cloud-based nature made it even more accessible. Watson doesn’t go so far to say whether the data you have is right or wrong, but it does show the strength of the data and how confident you can be in making key business decisions with it.
IBM’s extensive partnerships range from long time ally SAP, with SAP’s HANA Enterprise Cloud being delivered through IBM’s cloud, to an enterprise application partnership with Apple. You can read more about the Box and IBM deal here.
‘Airbnb for cloud’: How the sharing economy will end the mega-hosters’ monopoly
(c)iStock.com/mediaphotos
Cloud as a concept has been discussed for years. While it has often been misunderstood, one of the persistent themes has been that cloud is about ‘infrastructure on tap’, like water or electricity.
A public cloud consumer, an enterprise or SME hosting apps in the cloud has a basic expectation that its cloud provider supplies pretty much unlimited infrastructure, without a long term contract. The customer just pays for however much capacity it uses. That goes against the traditional service provider business model, which is largely based on long term recurring contracts, and an expectation that only 40-60% of the infrastructure paid for is actually being used. Overselling is very common, and a fundamental part of how the industry works.
That all changed with the cloud. Suddenly the model was turned upside down, and service providers actually had to ‘undersell’ services, keeping large amounts of infrastructure idle for users to scale into, or fail over into. In the traditional model, 40-60% of capacity was being sold and monetised, but not consumed. In the cloud, 40-60% of the infrastructure was sitting idle, and not being monetised.
Why cloud makes it harder to compete
This put immense CAPEX pressure on service providers, and as a result made it really hard to compete with the mega-hosters on pricing. The mega-hosters (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) have unlimited access to capital and look at this from a very long-term strategic perspective. This is where scale is really key.
Geographical reach is a related effect of scale. The mega-hosters all focus on offering infrastructure world-wide. There are many reasons why this is important, chief among which are performance in local markets, in terms of latency and throughput; and data locality/sovereignty, which, with new local legislative data barriers popping up all the time, is becoming more and more of an issue. SaaS businesses have global client bases, and need worldwide infrastructure to provide the service their customers want.
Just like scale, it is really hard for the traditional service provider to compete on reach. It’s simply too expensive and risky for most of them to launch new points of presence, so they can offer infrastructure and services from multiple locations world-wide. Once more, access to capital is key.
Enter… the cloud sharing economy
Is it the end for any cloud provider without the capital of the mega-hosters? Far from it. There are tens of thousands of cloud providers around the world, and while individually they may fall short of the mega-hosters, they more than make up for it as a collective.
By sharing their infrastructure they are able to offer more scale and reach than the mega-hosters combined. Each provider connects their cloud to a central marketplace where they buy cloud infrastructure, on demand, to add scale and reach to their local cloud, and sell their local infrastructure to monetise that 40-60% idle capacity when it isn’t being used.
This approach is the only one that makes sense if providers are to stand a chance against the mega-hosters, regardless of the technology their cloud runs on. Sharing infrastructure gives access to global scale without CAPEX. It provides a way to increase the overall utilisation of local cloud infrastructure, and it gives access to cloud locations all over the world. Sharing infrastructure means providers can host apps wherever their customers need them, and control where data and applications live to help them deal with data sovereignty issues.
Airbnb for cloud
It’s the same approach companies like Airbnb have taken to compete with the world’s largest hoteliers, another industry which requires large amounts of capital to build infrastructure (hotels) and in which a large percentage of their capacity (hotel rooms) lies dormant most of the time.
This ‘Airbnb for cloud’ approach is turning the market upside down. Just as Airbnb offers more ‘infrastructure’ in San Francisco than Hilton offers world-wide, any one of the world’s cloud providers can now offer more scale and reach than giants like Amazon.
What about the benefit for end users? It’s the same in both cases. Whether they’re buying cloud infrastructure, or buying somewhere to stay for a few days, the federated/sharing economy model means they get closer to where they need to be, much more choice of infrastructure, and many more options for price and features.
Parallels 10 for 10: All Apple, All the Time
It’s the last day of our #Parallels10for10 giveaway, and the Parallels team wanted to take this opportunity to share the love for a gadget that is truly awesome—the Apple TV! Seriously, though—as Apple aficionados, we can all get behind the seamless experience of the Apple TV. On a personal note, I especially love the Apple […]
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Box Teams Up with IBM
Box and IBM have paired up to boost both of their sales in a corporate setting. Both companies will benefit from this pairing; IBM becomes more modern with the integration of box into its cloud services and Box has a new channel with larger corporations and will be able to reach customers in new settings like finance and healthcare.
Box users will be able to store files on IBM’s SoftLayer cloud platform and IBM’s mobile apps will deliver Box services on Apple’s iPhones and iPads long with IBM’s content management and security tools. “We see this partnership as a kind of blueprint for where enterprise technology is going to go,” said Box CEO Aaron Levie. While building Box into SoftLayer will take more than a year, BM could start building Box’s services into custom software immediately.
Out of a registered 37 million box users, few pay for the services. In order to increase revenue, Box has built services aimed at markets such as Healthcare.
The partnership will also allow Box to expand globally, as it would be able to utilize IBM 40 data centers in 17 different countries. “We plan to use IBM’s cloud in at least a dozen or so key markets that we’re going after internationally,” Levie said.
Recently, IBM has faced declining revenues in its hardware, software and services businesses. It is looking toward companies like Box to revive it as a cloud services company and enable it to compete with companies such as Microsoft.
This partnership is just one of many both companies have made in recent months. Box has paired with both Microsoft and Cisco and IBM has also made a string of agreements that ally it with the fast growing internet.
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CENTRI Joins Cloud Security Alliance
Data Security Software Provider to Contribute Expertise on Data Encryption and Optimization with CSA Activities
SEATTLE, Wash. – June 23, 2015 – CENTRI , a provider of enterprise data protection solutions, today announced that they have joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.
CENTRI’s BitSmart solution delivers next generation data protection in a Software-as-a-Service model or as software easily and quickly installed on existing application and database servers, mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. BitSmart uses ultra-fast and secure algorithms that provide stronger, more scalable, and portable data encryption than previous generation technologies. BitSmart enables better enterprise data protection in the cloud, on site or on mobile and IoT devices.
“CENTRI offers a different approach to securing data across mobile devices, cloud networks and other endpoints essential for successful cloud computing,” said Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA. “We look forward to CENTRI contributing alongside the group of security industry leaders that comprise the CSA.”
“The latest cyberattacks against enterprises demonstrate the persistent threats from hackers that have become common occurrences in a world growing ever more connected,” said Vaughan Emery, president and CEO of CENTRI. “With the assumption that persistent hackers will eventually find ways around the network as the first line of defense, the best practice for security professionals is to begin to focus more on data encryption as their best defense. We look forward to working with the CSA to help educate audiences on this new paradigm of security.”
For more information about CENTRI, please connect with the company on LinkedIn, Facebook and follow@CentriTech on Twitter.
About CENTRI
CENTRI provides next generation data encryption and optimization solutions for the connected world. Our technology helps organizations secure what matters most – their data – by seamlessly integrating into their existing applications and services in the cloud, data centers or mobile devices and the Internet of Things. Enterprises and governments rely on CENTRI to seamlessly protect the full lifecycle of their data – on the endpoint, in transit and in storage. For more information visit centritechnology.com.
About the Cloud Security Alliance
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, certification, events and products. CSA’s activities, knowledge and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud — from providers and customers, to governments, entrepreneurs and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which diverse parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. CSA has developed the definitive best practices for the industry, such as the “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing”, the “Cloud Controls Matrix”, “Top Threats to Cloud Computing” and 50 other cloud security research artifacts. For further information, visit us at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org.
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Competitive Telecoms Group Places Two New Board Members at Leading Telecoms Organizations
Customers Continue to Benefit from CTG’s Free Board and Advisory Council Placements
New York, NY – June 23, 2015 – Competitive Telecoms Group, Inc. (‘CTG’), one of the leading consulting and recruiting companies in the telecommunications space with more than 50 global carrier clients, announces the placement of two additional board members through its free Board Search service, which offers customers the opportunity to enhance the skills and talents of their board and advisory councils at no additional cost.
In addition, CTG continues to expand its contingency recruiting for positions of all levels within the telecommunications arena and provide a broad array of consultancy services that include management restructuring, operational enhancements, sales and marketing reviews and due diligence for merger and acquisition.
“The tremendous executive talent pool available in the telecoms industry, coupled with our far-reaching C-level relationships with global carriers and operators, enables CTG to help companies attract, identify and place proven industry executives that enable companies to achieve their goals and objectives more effectively,” comments Jerry DeMartino, CEO of Competitive Telecoms Group, Former President of MCI International and Former CEO of GlobeNet.
“Building upon our earlier board placements at BroadSoft and vXchnge, we are happy to announce the placement of Laura Thomas, former CEO and CFO of XO Communications, to the board of TNCI, and Jay Sinder, former CFO at Focal Communications and CEO at CoreLink Data Centers, to the board of PCTEL. With several other board searches in progress, we are confident that we have found a unique approach to helping companies, and building our brand and reputation,” adds DeMartino.
CTG is a specialized executive placement and advisory firm for the telecommunications industry. With an extensive proprietary database, experienced recruiters and proven executive leadership, the company’s knowledge, speed and network remain unmatched.
To learn more about Competitive Telecoms Group, visit www.competitivetelecoms.com.
About Competitive Telecoms Group, Inc.
Competitive Telecoms Group (CTG) was founded in 1999 in New York by Jerry DeMartino, former President of MCI International, the multi-billion dollar subsidiary of MCI WorldCom. After more than 26 years as a senior executive holding senior positions in strategy, development, sales, marketing and international at MCI WorldCom, Mr. DeMartino saw the unique opportunity to create an organization of senior executives and affiliates with extensive, competitive telecommunications expertise to provide services to carriers throughout the world.
Media Contact:
iMiller Public Relations for CTG
Tel: +1 866 307 2510
pr@imillerpr.com
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EDM Council Partners with Cambridge Semantics to Operationalize FIBO
‘Smart Data’ Analytics Company to Operationalize Financial Industry Ontology Standard
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – June 23, 2015 – Cambridge Semantics, the leading provider of smart data solutions driven by Semantic Web technology, today announced that the Enterprise Data Management Council (EDM Council) has partnered with the company to support deployment of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) initiative.
Founded by the financial industry in 2005, the EDM Council is a neutral business forum dedicated to elevating the practice of data management as a mandate for efficient business operations. It is developing an industry standard to define financial business terms, FIBO, to simplify the way financial institutions describe complex processes, allowing industry participants and regulators to harmonize reporting, authorize data quality, collect transactions and analyze risks across the global financial system.
Cambridge Semantics, along with industry practitioners, semantic technology experts and information architects, are collaborating to standardize the language used to define and simplify terms associated with financial processes, market data and legal obligations.
Cambridge Semantics will utilize its award-winning Anzo Smart Data Platform to automate deployment of the ontology. Anzo Smart Data Platform helps financial enterprises and others rapidly discover, understand, combine, analyze, link and manage data from diverse sources, both from within and across organizational boundaries.
“We look forward to offering our services and contributing to the development of the FIBO ontology to enhance the efficiency of operations among financial institutions,” said Marty Loughlin, VP Financial Services, Cambridge Semantics. “With the Anzo Smart Data solution, FIBO Content Team members will have the tools they need to access and analyze data quickly and effectively.”
FIBO offers a standard reference model for harmonizing disparate data that can be used for both regulatory reporting and business process automation.
“We are pleased to partner with Cambridge Semantics and use their Anzo platform to deploy FIBO,” said Michael Atkin, Managing Director of the EDM Council. “We look forward to our continued collaboration with Cambridge as part of the ongoing FIBO deployment process.”
About the EDM Council
The EDM Council is a non-profit trade association founded by the financial industry to elevate the practice of data management as a business and operational priority. The Council is the originator of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO™), a content standard used as the common reference point for harmonizing data across the financial industry; and the Data Management Capability Assessment Model (DCAM), the standard criteria for evaluating data management programs. For more information, please visit www.edmcouncil.org.
About Cambridge Semantics
Cambridge Semantics (CSI), the Smart Data Company, is an enterprise analytics and data management company. It enables customers and partners to rapidly build interactive, real-time smart data solutions based on its Anzo Smart Data Platform (Anzo SDP).
IT departments and business users gain better understanding and data value through the semantic linking, analysis and management of diverse data whether internal or external, structured or unstructured. The Anzo SDP smart data solutions are delivered with increased speed, at big data scale and at the fraction of the implementation costs of using traditional approaches.
The company is based in Boston, Massachusetts.
For more information visit www.cambridgesemantics.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter: @CamSemantics.
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Avenue4 Supplies Choice and Flexibility to the IPv4 Market
Team Combines Three Decades of Tech-Sector Legal Counsel with Deep Domain Expertise in the IPv4 Marketplace
WASHINGTON D.C. – June 23, 2015 – Avenue4 LLC, a highly knowledgeable and experienced organization focused on solving the needs of sellers and buyers of IPv4 number blocks, announced that its professionals have brokered transactions in 2014 and 2015 with a total value exceeding $74 million. With more than 30 years combined experience providing legal counsel to the technology industry, Avenue4’s principals have established unique domain expertise in the IPv4 industry, which allows them to drive transparency and professionalism in the IPv4 market.
Cofounded by Marc Lindsey and Janine Goodman, Avenue4 possesses a deep understanding of the current market conditions surrounding IPv4 address trading and transfers. Through a broad network of contacts within Fortune 500 organizations, Avenue4 has gathered a significant inventory of IPv4 numbers, with contiguous blocks ranging from /16s (65,536 numbers) to /9s (8,388,608 numbers) that are immediately available for sale. Leveraging this inventory and its reputation within the IT and telecom industries, Avenue4 is creating value for sellers and helping buyers make IPv6 adoption investment decisions that are not driven by the “artificial scarcity” of IPv4 numbers.
Understanding the IPv4 Market
Internet Protocol addresses, or IP addresses, are essential to the operation of the Internet. Every device needs an IP address in order to connect to the Internet, and then to communicate with other devices, computers, and services. IPv4 is Version 4 of the Internet Protocol in use today. There is a finite quantity of IP addresses, which until recently have been generally available (for free) through Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) – such as American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). ARIN is expected to exhaust its supply of IPv4 numbers before August 2015. After ARIN’s free pool is exhausted, additional IPv4 addresses will only be available in the North American, European and Asia Pacific regions through trading (or transfers) in the secondary market.
The next-generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, provides a near limitless free supply of IP addresses from the RIRs. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which currently dominates the majority of Internet traffic (as much as 93% of all traffic is IPv4). In addition to its low penetration globally, migration to IPv6 is costly – requiring significant upgrades to an organization’s IP network infrastructure (e.g., installing and configuring IPv6 routers, switches, firewalls, other security devices, and enhancing IP-enabled software, and then running both IPv4 and IPv6 networks concurrently). As a result, many organizations are planning their IPv6 deployments as long-term projects, which means demand for IPv4 numbers will continue to be strong for several more years.
Supplying Choice
Avenue4 specializes in connecting buyers and sellers of IPv4 addresses, and currently has access to a supply of address space that is several times greater than ARIN’s existing inventory. The availability of this considerable supply of IPv4 numbers provides organizations with a viable choice to support their existing networks while the extended migration to IPv6 is underway. According to network equipment giant Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) report, only a quarter of global internet content will be carried using the IPv6 protocol by 2019. Some organizations will choose to migrate to IPv6 now. However, the prevalence of anywhere between 800 million to 1 billion potentially available IPv4 numbers in the IPv4 trading market provides adequate supply for several years – allowing network operators (and their customers) time to develop and execute IPv6 deployment plans that are appropriate for their businesses.
“The pending RIR exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has created significant confusion in the marketplace. We refer to this as ‘artificial scarcity’ because the widespread fear that IPv4 addresses are no longer available is unfounded,” said Marc Lindsey, Avenue4’s Cofounder and President. “The truth is that, even within just our clients’ inventory, there are more transfer market addresses available than ARIN has had since the end of 2013. Our goal is to provide choice to organizations with existing IPv4 infrastructure investments until they are ready to transition to IPv6.”
Expertise Needed
Organizations in need of IPv4 addresses can purchase from other entities with unused addresses. While still plentiful in supply, these types of transactions are complex and require advisors that understand the nuances of such deals. Successfully navigating these challenges to broker, structure and negotiate some of the largest and most complex IPv4 transactions to date, Avenue4 has emerged as one of the industry’s most trusted IPv4 market advisors.
“Our experience has focused on providing the counsel and guidance necessary to complete high-volume transactions that provide buyers with flexibility and choice. Based on this, we believe that enterprises should feel confident in their ability to evaluate all their options before investing in significant capital expenditures that may not be in alignment with their overall business objectives,” said Lindsey.
Avenue4 LLC specializes in the needs of sellers and buyers in the IPv4 marketplace cultivating those most likely to reach closure and structuring creative arrangements for large blocks of IPv4 addresses by matching buyers with sellers, identifying value enhancing arrangements and negotiating transactions, and facilitating registration transfers. Avenue4’s leadership team has advised some of the largest and most sophisticated holders of IPv4 number blocks.
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