Monthly Archives: June 2016

News, Services

Amazon Launches New Cloud Region

Public cloud provider Amazon Web Services has recently announced the launch of a new cloud region in Mumbai, India. This marks AWS ’s 35th availability zone across 13 technology infrastructure regions.

This new region will provide services for over 75,000 active customers that have already begun to take advantage of the power of the platform. Launch of the region allows Indian enterprises, startups, etc. to harness the full power and scalability of the platform.

There are three edge locations in India currently: Mumbai, Chennai, and New Delhi and AWS has opened six offices in India to support it growing customer base within the country.

The region is set to consist of two separate availability zones that refer to two different distinct data centers. Most Indian tech startups create their businesses utilizing AWS and new cloud regions allows Indian companies to fully take advantage of the services Amazon has to offer. AWS is also offering training and certification programs to Indian developers that wish to take advantage of these technologies.

Comments:

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services: “These same 75,000 Indian customers, along with others anxious to start using AWS, have asked for an AWS India Region so they can move their applications that require low latency and data sovereignty. We’re excited to make this available today, with the same pay-as-you-go pricing, ability to get started immediately without having to negotiate enterprise agreements or wait days for access, and unmatched functionality that customers enjoy in AWS Regions worldwide – all of which allows customers to go from idea to launch faster than ever before was possible”

Jagdish Belwal, CIO of Tata Motors Limited; AWS customer:”We have been working with AWS since 2012, steadily moving workloads to the cloud, such as test and development environments for our core enterprise systems, we run one of the largest CRM based Dealer Management implementations in the world, more than 90 Tata digital properties in production on AWS, and many other applications.”

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Mind the gap: How to assess your organisation for cloud readiness

(c)iStock.com/ymgerman

Talking to IT teams and business leaders, it is clear that the benefits of cloud in supporting new business models for the delivery across the public sector is now well understood.

There is also a growing consensus that the different business model for IT operations which is enabled by cloud IT, could add substantial value to the organisations – particularly local authorities – as they shape and reshape services in the future.

So why isn’t the public sector moving to the cloud more quickly and in greater numbers? In our experience this is down to a gap between an organisation’s willingness and its readiness to adopt. Clearly, it is critical for any organisation which wants to reap the benefits of cloud to bridge this gap. IT teams can help the organisation help itself get cloud ready by focusing on these six areas.

Cultural readiness

The first job to do is to assess the level of knowledge around cloud in your organisation. If there are gaps in awareness about it can benefit the organisation, they will need filling – particularly among business leaders. Equally those who understand that cloud is not about technology but helping people work differently will be useful advocates for cloud adoption. Before you talk to people, be clear about how you will articulate your vision for cloud, based on business benefits, not “IT speak”.

Business needs

The next area to focus on is a roadmap for moving to the cloud. For this to be realistic you will need to balance areas of biggest business need against the complexity of moving to the cloud, ease of implementation and other risks. Articulating the priorities for your organisation and how they benefit the organisation and individual service areas is the starting point for your cloud adoption strategy.

Budgetary readiness

A cloud operating model is different from a traditional IT one. This has implications for the way budgets are set and investments are made. You will need to work with your finance team to clarify how this rental-based model of IT works, establish how future and past operating models can be compared on a like-for-like basis as well what you can do to accurately forecast future costs and savings.

People and time

Cloud migration is a major change project which needs its own resource to succeed. Identify what resources and skills you need to deliver a project and whether you can manage this with existing in-house resources.

Risk management

A move to cloud needs to be aligned with your organisation’s approach to risk management. You must clarify what measures you will need to see from potential suppliers and their supply chains to mitigate and manage risk. This will be an important part of the specification you take to market when you look for suppliers.

Technical readiness

You can’t move to the cloud until you understand fully the shape of your current IT estate and the applications which support the organisation. Mapping these will allow you to understand areas which are compatible and incompatible with a cloud operating model ahead of time.

Approaching cloud adoption in this way will prime the organisation for cloud adoption, accelerate the process and ensure you are focusing on business outcomes rather than the simple adoption of a new technology solution.

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Customer Story – Family Tree Maker

Meet Charlie. Charlie is 71 years young and enjoying retirement by working extensively on the genealogy of his family and related families as well as the local histories of the areas they settled. His mother and father started the project using old letters and scraps of paper from their past, writing everything down on notebook […]

The post Customer Story – Family Tree Maker appeared first on Parallels Blog.

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[slides] Data-Driven DevOps | @DevOpsSummit @AndiMann #DevOps

Much of the value of DevOps comes from a (renewed) focus on measurement, sharing, and continuous feedback loops. In increasingly complex DevOps workflows and environments, and especially in larger, regulated, or more crystallized organizations, these core concepts become even more critical.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Andi Mann, Chief Technology Advocate at Splunk, showed how, by focusing on ‘metrics that matter,’ you can provide objective, transparent, and meaningful feedback on DevOps processes to all stakeholders. Learn from real-life examples how to use the data generated throughout application delivery to continuously identify, measure, and improve deployment speed, code quality, process efficiency, outsourcing value, security coverage, audit success, customer satisfaction, and business alignment.

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Voxbone Launches ‘The Workshop’ | @CloudExpo @Voxbone #IaaS #Cloud #RTC #WebRTC

So you’ve heard how click-to-call widgets can really enhance a website’s potential for customer interaction and you want to try it out for yourself. Or you’re considering offloading pieces of your VoIP infrastructure, but want to see how that would unfold first. Where can you find this technology, that’s free and available to try out?
Spotting the potential in a space where customers can experiment with these types of features, Voxbone is launching The Workshop.

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News

Oracle Pushing to Become Biggest Cloud Computing Company

Oracle is known as one of the top companies in the cloud computing space. Over the past year alone the company has made many moves to solidify its spot, such as unveiling a new hybrid cloud service.

Larry Ellison has reason to believe that his company will be first to reach $10 billion in combined platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call he said, “We think we’re going to be the first one there.”

Competition is Hot

Of course, there is a big difference between saying and doing. Oracle is well on its way to this mark, but there are other companies, most notably Salesforce.com, that are growing at a fast rate.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has made it clear to investors that the goal is to reach $10 billion in revenue. Furthermore, he said the company is closing in on that goal.

During the last quarter alone, SaaS alone generated $1.92 billion, which was an increase of nearly 30 percent year over year.

How does this compare to Oracle? During the same period, the company “only” generated $690 million in revenue for its PaaS and SaaS businesses. In other words, Oracle has some catching up to do.

While the battle between Oracle and Salesforce.com is one to watch, don’t overlook the fact that other companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, are also vying to become the first $10 billion cloud computing company.

In Oracle’s fourth quarter earnings release, Ellison told investors that he expects the “SaaS and PaaS hypergrowth we experienced in FY16 will continue on for the next few years.” If this happens, Oracle, among others, are in position to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

There is a lot going on in the cloud, with Oracle one of the many companies out in front. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out as 2016 comes to an end and the calendar turns.

The post Oracle Pushing to Become Biggest Cloud Computing Company appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

News, Services

Google Brings Cloud Technology to Students for Free

Many companies, such as Samsung, are doing their best to get more involved in the cloud services space.

Google, however, is out in front of the pack. While some see this company as nothing more than a search engine, those with advanced knowledge realize that it goes well beyond that.

According to a recent blog post by Alison Wagonfeld, Vice President of Marketing, Google Cloud & Google for Education, the company is happy to announce the Google Cloud Platform Education Grants program for computer science faculty and students.

As of June 21, 2016, faculty in the United States who teach computer science courses can apply for free credits, which can then be passed along to students. These credits provide access to a variety of Google Platform tools, many of which have come to be known as the best in the industry.

Google has high hopes for the program, believing that it can help students reach their full potential, both while in school and when they enter the job market.

Some of the many tools students will be able to access include:

  • Cloud Machine Learning
  • Cloud Vision API
  • Google BigQuery
  • Google App Engine

All of these tools offer something special, with Google noting that they “are unique among cloud providers.”

For example, the use of Cloud Vision API gives computer science students the opportunity to implement state-of-the-art image recognition capabilities into the development of a mobile apple website.

With grants available for use anytime during the 2016-17 academic year, computer science faculty are beginning to apply in great numbers. While the program is only available in the United States for the upcoming academic year, Google hopes to expand it to other parts of the world in the near future.

The post Google Brings Cloud Technology to Students for Free appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

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Case for Cloud Network Systems Engineering | @CloudExpo #IoT #M2M #API #Cloud

IoT networking requirements are vastly different from those supported by today’s cloud network. The processing and transport levels are multiple orders of magnitude higher than ever seen before. More importantly though, societal economic and the safety ramifications of making mistakes during this transition are off the scale. This is why system engineering of the cloud computing network is now an immediate global imperative.

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[slides] The Benefits of Cloud Bursting | @CloudExpo @AvereSystems #Cloud #BigData

When it comes to cloud computing, the ability to turn massive amounts of compute cores on and off on demand sounds attractive to IT staff, who need to manage peaks and valleys in user activity. With cloud bursting, the majority of the data can stay on premises while tapping into compute from public cloud providers, reducing risk and minimizing need to move large files.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Jeschonek, Director of Product Management at Avere Systems, discussed the IT and business benefits that cloud bursting provides, including increased compute capacity, lower IT investment, financial agility, and, ultimately, faster time-to-market.

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[slides] DevOps the Cloud Enabler | @DevOpsSummit @Datical #DevOps

You are moving to the Cloud. The question is not if, it’s when. Now that your competitors are in the cloud and lapping you, your “when” better hurry up and get here. But saying and doing are two different things.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Robert Reeves, CTO of Datical, explained how DevOps can be your onramp to the cloud. By adopting simple, platform independent DevOps strategies, you can accelerate your move to the cloud.
Spoiler Alert: He also makes sure you don’t forget the database in your adoption of DevOps and the cloud.

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