Monthly Archives: March 2016

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Is it time for virtual reality to influence the data centre?

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The part virtual reality (VR) can play in the evolution of the data centre has been mooted as far back as 2013 – but now the future looks good so long as organisations’ infrastructure can stand up to it, according to Aegis Data.

Three years ago, writing for Data Center Knowledge, Rich Miller reported on data centre provider IO, whose latest innovation was to provide a 3D visual representation and walkthrough of a customer’s specific environment, with IO describing it as a “gamification of the data centre.” And according to Greg McCulloch, CEO of Aegis Data, the data centre industry has the potential to be the largest beneficiary of VR – but it will take time.

“As a concept, its presence has been felt for a long time but limited computing power combined with slow connectivity speeds means there has always been a cap as to what can be achieved,” said McCulloch. “Now that we have the technology in place, it looks like early visionaries for VR are starting to see it come to fruition.”

Evidently, there are more obvious – and arguably sexier – candidates to benefit from the VR boom, not least gaming and entertainment, as well as enterprise use cases ranging from military to manufacturing. Yet McCulloch argues for the data centre industry, speed, connectivity, and a secure infrastructure is vital, as well as high performance computing (HPC) capabilities.

“Historically one of the criticisms levelled at VR has been its inability to handle the demands on it,” he said. “Having dedicated fibre connections to key internet exchanges will enable customers to benefit from high connectivity and speeds, allowing the user to have a seamless, unhindered experience.”

Elsewhere, Dynatrace is aiming to ease the migration path to software defined data centres (SDDC) with the release of a new version of its data centre real user management (DC RUM) solution. As IT departments need to be able to handle increasing workloads and application demands, the move towards SDDC helps this increased amount yet adds other complexities. For Dynatrace, DC RUM offers deep insights and analytics for quicker turnarounds and more seamless transition into the SDDC.

e-procurement, News & Analysis, Public Sector, public sector cloud, The Reform, uk government

E-procurement platform could save UK government £10 billion – report

Duncan: 'Australian public sector is warming to cloud but technology gaps remain our biggest challenge.'

Central government could save up to £10 billion per annum through a reformed e-procurement platform, placing a greater emphasis on administrative efficiencies and market competition, according to a new report.

With the use of e-procurement models championed by the likes of South Korea and Estonia, The Reform, a public-service think-tank, claims that savings of 25% could be made to the present $40 billion procurement bill. Even if e-procurement growth continued on trend, UK government would be set to save in the region of £550 million annually.

Whilst there is a large level of scrutiny placed on the government spending, significant steps have been made since 2010. The government now procures more than 25% of its services from small and medium-sized businesses, and since 2015, has relied upon G-Cloud for the procurement of cloud services.

G-Cloud as a platform has lowered barriers to entry, allowing more firms to compete for government business, and saving in the region of 20-50% when compared to legacy contracts. Building on this success, the implementation of the Crown Marketplace platform will enable government to move e-procurement models to new departments beyond IT services.

While it is still early days within the UK, other countries have demonstrated the wide benefits of e-procurement. Estonia currently attributes roughly 50% of its expenditure through e-procurement platforms, saving an estimated 30-40% on the cost of administrating procurement.

The Reform has recommended a consolidated platform for all government procurement activities:

“The Crown Marketplace should be a single portal for the e-procurement of goods and services. This should be accompanied by an integrated payment function,” said the report. “The framework to purchase commodities must be recompleted regularly to ensure maximum competition.”

While the immediate benefits demonstrate a reduction in expenditure, the move away from the current process will allow government employees to create value-for-money propositions, as opposed to drowning in administrative tasks.

Though the report and supporting statistics demonstrates a positive outlook for government spend, the potential of e-procurement can only be achieved if trends accelerate. The report highlights “If e-procurement continues to expand at the rate of G-Cloud growth in 2015, total government e-procurement spend could reach £3 billion by 2020”

Current e-procurement adoption levels would see UK central government save in the region of £1.8 billion and £4.5 billion depending on the level of pro-rata savings, though emulating the example of South Korea or Estonia would see the UK save in excess of £10 billion.

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HGST Active Archive System Certified with Avere 5000 FXT | @CloudExpo @HGSTStorage #Cloud

SYS-CON Events announced today that HGST, a Western Digital Company, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 18th Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2015 at the Javits Center in New York, New York.
Helping the world harness the power of data, Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC), has announced that its HGST Active Archive System has been certified with the FXT 5000 Series Edge Filer family from Avere, a leading provider of cloud file storage infrastructure. The combined strength of the HGST Active Archive System and Avere 5000 FXT Edge Filer provides maximum flexibility to enable enterprises to leverage the scalbility and economics of cloud architectures, while preserving investments in file storage and applications. The solution allows users to deploy on-premises and remote cloud-scale file storage as well as hybrid cloud-bursting models. The HGST Active Archive System provides exabyte scalability with 15-nines of data durability, while the Avere 5000 FXT Series Edge Filers provide effortless storage tiering between high performance NAS and the HGST Active Archive System. The cloud-bursting solution uses intelligent file system caching to shepherd only active data to cloud-based compute platforms, while still delivering the performance of local compute and storage.

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Fusion to Provide Cloud Solutions to Affiliate of Non-Profit Organization | @CloudExpo @FusionConnectSM #Cloud

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusion, a leading provider of cloud services, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Fusion has announced that an East Coast affiliate of a major national non-profit organization has signed a three year agreement with Fusion to migrate its voice communications systems to the cloud. A key reason for the non-profit organization’s selection was Fusion’s ability to improve productivity while lowering costs, which will enable the non-profit to devote more of its budget to its mission.

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Citrix Web Receiver, Parallels client, Parallels HTML, Parallels RAS, Parallels Remote Application Server

Eliminate Citrix Web Receiver Setup Issues

Eliminate Citrix Web Receiver Setup Issues with the Parallels HTML Client Citrix Software enables businesses to centrally host applications and publish them to remote devices. The XenApp is the flagship product of the company, and is used to provide application delivery. With a server-client based technology, businesses can host Windows application on a central server […]

The post Eliminate Citrix Web Receiver Setup Issues appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis, redundancies, Survey

Fresh redundancies illustrate IBM’s continuing cloud challenge

IBMWithin the last twelve months, the company has inducted more than 70,000 IBMers and spent more on acquisitions than in any other 12-month period in its history. Focusing on data analytics, security, machine learning and mobile, the business is attracting a new breed of employee to its ranks. All would seem well until you consult social media.

The Facebook group, Watching IBM, has increased its following by more than 66% over the last week. The group has taken responsibility for bringing light to the 70,000 job losses experienced by the firm in the past few months. Comments such as “At the beginning of 2015 our department had 25 people in it. At the beginning of 2016 our department has 13 in it,” highlight the decline.

For all the positive news of expansion, new product offerings, and 70,000 new employees, the headcount over the course of the twelve month period has shrunk around 1% to 377,757 from 379,592.

With company revenues declining for fifteen consecutive quarters, this should not come as a great surprise for most; IBM’s struggles to re-invent itself as a cloud business have been well documented over recent years.

Back in January, Clive Longbottom, Service Director at Quocirca commented that IBM could risk being left behind, should the transition take too long. With AWS, Microsoft and Google continuing to surge forward, that risk is continuing to grow, though the consultancy skills nurtured in IBM will remain in demand “I still believe that IBM will remain a major force in the IT world, it just has to make sure it positions and messages itself effectively to its existing customers and to its prospects”

Last week IBM released a report which highlighted that two- thirds of organizations implementing hybrid cloud are gaining competitive advantage from their hybrid environments are nearly three times as likely to use it to assemble data assets or monetize data.

Surveying more than 500 hybrid cloud implementers, in 26 countries worldwide, the report highlighted that 85 percent of respondent commented that a hybrid approach to cloud is accelerating the digital transformation in their organization. During 2015 Q4, total cloud revenues (public, private and hybrid) for the vendor increased 43% to $10.2 billion, though revenues throughout the business were down 9% to $22.1 billion in the same period for 2014.

Despite some negative press, and a surge in social media activity being directed towards the tech giant, it seems the workforce transition is far from complete. “We’ve been shifting resources aggressively,” CFO Martin Schroeter commented last week “and we’d like to shift them more aggressively.”

News, Services

Telstra and Cisco Unveil New Products

Telstra and Cisco have recently announced three new software-designed networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) products that aim to improve both cloud security and global data center interconnection. These products come in addition to Telstra’s two additional functions for its SDN PEN platform, announced in January.

Cloud Gateway Protection: This product was the first of the three made available in beta. It is a virtual security application that aims to secure cloud services and  internet access, as well as Next IP networks against cyber-attacks.

Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN): This product will provide both a secure and encrypted office network over public internet. This can be used by businesses across several sites. The launch is expected to occur later in March.

Data Center Interconnect: This product will extend Telstra’s SDN PEN1 global data center interconnection. Australian data centers will be added. Customers may configure links between domestic and foreign data centers.

These products aim to revolutionize the cloud. The three new products will be connected by Telstra’s self service portal. The two companies have a long standing partnership and this combined effort utilizes both companies’ assets.

The additional features Telstra added in January allow customers to call upon network functions and make digital partnerships.

PEN Exchange: This function allows customers to connect their network services with other customers’.

Improvements to PEN Marketplace: This function improved the marketplace; businesses may order NFV equipment from various vendors.

In addition to the strong partnership between Telstra and Cisco, Telstra has also formed a strong connection with HP and other businesses, allowing Telstra to further its BFV strategies and other programs.

Telstra-2

Comments

Philip Jones, Telstra executive director of Global Products and Solutions: “By allowing us to overcome the constraints of traditional network infrastructure, the software-driven customer experiences dramatically increases our agility by enabling us to quickly create new solutions, and puts the control of those solutions into the hands of our customers.”

Kelly Ahuja, Cisco senior vice president of Service Provider Business, Products, and Solutions: “By combining Cisco’s agile and flexible software platform with Telstra’s customer-focused and customer-friendly range of products, we send a powerful message to the industry and a provide a clear example of how to develop and design the network services of tomorrow.”

David Robertson, Telstra Operations director of Transport and Routing Engineering for Networks, said at the time: “Partnering with multiple vendors helps us to deliver impactful virtualization and orchestration capabilities within a flexible architectural framework. As service providers look to build seamless application delivery networks, vendors that have qualified their technologies with the industry’s standardization groups are seen as more attractive to customers.”

The post Telstra and Cisco Unveil New Products appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

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Finding a Framework for Hybrid Cloud Risk Management By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming essential to today’s information technology processes. This is why hybrid cloud risk management has become the keystone to many modern corporate strategies. To effectively manage this shift, leading enterprises are reorganizing how the business side of IT is accomplished. When this reality is coupled with the rising cost of poor cybersecurity, decisions often rise to the board level.

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The five key traits your burgeoning DevOps team needs to have

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It’s the buzzword of the moment. It’s growing so fast in popularity according to Gartner that a quarter of Global 2000 organisations will deploy it by the end of this year. So what exactly is DevOps?

At the heart of DevOps are four crucial elements: speed, quality, control and cost. Speed is fundamental to competitive execution and market positioning. Quality is vital to successful implementation and long-term viability. Control, the command of data use, security, access and process is crucial to safe operations. And cost as we all know is a key element of nearly all business decisions.

As Tony Bradley, editor in chief of TechSpective, explains, “DevOps really is more about the culture than the tools and technology. A group of traditional developers and IT engineers who understand and embrace DevOps culture can be successful, whereas a team of DevOps experts experienced with Chef, Puppet, Docker, and other DevOps tools that doesn’t accept and adapt to the cooperative, collaborative nature of DevOps culture is more or less doomed to failure.”

While it is a common assumption that implementing DevOps is a primarily technical process, we see here that the cultural aspects and adjustments are equally as important. Every DevOps team need to possess certain traits in order to successfully tackle this cultural shift.

Communication is key

Up until fairly recently, IT professionals had strictly defined roles and responsibilities that allowed them to work more independently than collaboratively. As a result, communication skills weren’t a priority for when putting together an IT team.

However, as rapid deployment and newer, streamlined processes have emerged, communication has become key to making smooth transitions from one phase of the project to the next. Enforcing good communication can lead to better results in a shorter amount of time and ultimately help organisations save money.

There’s no ‘i’ in team

Flexibility is key in effectively implementing a DevOps methodology in an organisation. For those jumping on the DevOps bandwagon, the phrase “it’s not my job” shouldn’t be spoken. While it’s common for organisations to experience a clash between development and operations teams when first implementing a DevOps strategy, successful interdepartmental integration requires collaboration in order for the team to reach their end goal–satisfying the needs of the business.

Think of implementing DevOps as working with a team of teams. While each team brings different skills to the table, it is important for all teams to provide support to deliver the most powerful results as effectively and quickly possible.

Welcoming change

We’ve all heard the saying that the only constant in life is change, whether it involves something as small as adjusting our daily commute or as big as a new career. And like everything else, the implementation of DevOps brings about a large cultural shift for an organisation.

Gartner analyst George Spafford recommends implementing a cultural change programme to make team members aware of the end goals. To begin, he encourages developing a small pilot plan to test the waters initially by deploying tests and taking careful note of what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to know your team what works best to motivate the group to keep them positive and interested. Laying out such a road map and embracing the cultural change will result in a more focused team that will optimise the outcome.

Don’t be afraid of failure

If you’ve been doing your DevOps research, you’ll know that there are just about as many articles on DevOps failures as there are successes. To be on a DevOps team you need to accept that failures can happen, but you can’t fear it.

According to a Gartner study, 75% of enterprise IT departments will have tried to create a bimodal capacity by 2018. However, less than 50% of them will reap the benefits that new methodologies like DevOps promise. Willing to fail and being patient is crucial for a team to get the most out of their DevOps efforts.

Sustain the enthusiasm

DevOps is here and it’s the next big thing. You’re probably getting tired of hearing that by now. A successful DevOps team needs people that want to make a difference with the excitement to drive a significant business transformation. This involves the willingness to listen to customer feedback and adjust accordingly. Since consumers are the main driver on continual software updates and releases, it is crucial to be interested in what they have to say and be more than willing to be accommodating. There will be many highs and lows, and despite processes breaking and things not going according to plan, people involved in DevOps need to maintain continuous enthusiasm for the journey ahead of them.

With these five traits, your team will be able to successfully implement a DevOps strategy and navigate the minefield of cultural change that comes along with it.

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Network Device Management | @CloudExpo #BigData #SDN #IoT #M2M #API

Today, “network device management” means different things to different people, and the reality is that IT organizations do it, or at least do what they consider network device management to be, to vastly varying degrees, including some who do none at all (hopefully this isn’t you).
At least part of the reason network device management has become such an ambiguous thing is because what we consider to be a network device is constantly evolving. At one point, network devices were largely just routers and switches. Back then, even if one added end-user workstations into the mix, things were fairly simple.

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