Like so many other IT solutions, cloud computing services have long been promoted from a standpoint of administrative efficiency. As the rationale goes, if you get your cloud services from a single provider, you’ll enjoy the reduced hassle of consolidating third party business relationships, receive IT services at bargain prices, and have an easier time coordinating those services.
It’s true that using fewer service providers can offer some nice perks, but cloud computing is moving in the opposite direction at many companies. Instead of reaping the benefits of placing cloud services under one umbrella, businesses are mining the advantages of the antithetical approach: receiving cloud services from multiple providers – a discipline known as “multi-cloud computing.”
Monthly Archives: August 2017
Design Thinking: Future-Proof Yourself from AI | @CloudExpo #ML #Cloud #ArtificialIntelligence
It’s all over for us humans. It may not have been “The Matrix”[1], but the machines look like they are finally poised to take our jobs. Machines powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning process data faster, aren’t hindered by stupid human biases, don’t waste time with gossip on social media and don’t demand raises or more days off.
While there is a high probability that machine learning and artificial intelligence will play an important role in whatever job you hold in the future, there is one way to “future-proof” your career…embrace the power of design thinking.
What is VMware’s New Cloud Strategy?
VMware’s partnership with AWS has truly been a game-changer for the company and has ushered in a new era of hybrid cloud, so as to speak.
In many ways, VMware now sees itself as a bridge in hybrid cloud deployments, and its latest cloud strategy also revolves around this thought. In VMworld 2017, the CEO, Pat Gelsinger made a slew of announcements. Here’s a look at some of them.
New security product
VMware has announced an expanded set of products and services that’ll help customers to connect, manage, and secure applications spanning all their devices and cloud storage. These products are expected to reduce operational complexities and challenges when customers have to work across different cloud providers.
More partnerships
After taking the first step with AWS, VMware has now decided to partner with other cloud giants like Google. In fact, the CEO announced that the company will be partnering with Pivotal and Google to create a new service called Pivotal Container Service (PKS). This service is expected to provide network and security provisioning with VMware and NSX.
New version of vSphere
During this conference, VMware launched a new version of vSphere platform that’s tailored specifically for big data and high performance computing, in addition to hyper converged infrastructure. This new version is likely to help businesses to virtualize their big data and other high computing workloads.
Improvements to VMware Workspace ONE
VMware’s Workspace ONE is going to see a ton of improvements over the coming months. It will have improved onboarding, app delivery and endpoint management, according to the announcements made during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas.
With all these offerings, it’s clear that VMware is increasingly seeing itself as a bridge between private and public clouds, and in the process, it is also acquiring new technologies such as containers and OpenStack. Its partnership with companies like Google also is expected to boost its customer base, as its customers will have more options to choose from.
Overall, Gelsinger sees VMware’s role to be a company that can clean up any kind of messy technological footprint, whether it’s bad choice of apps or infrastructure, or even an incompatible set of software and hardware components.
This strategy has worked well for VMware as it produced stellar results during the last quarter. These results are only going to get better as VMware has placed itself in a strategic niche within the cloud market.
The post What is VMware’s New Cloud Strategy? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
[session] The Need for the Public Cloud Alternative | @CloudExpo @Cloudistics #Cloud #DataCenter
What You Need to Know
You know you need the cloud, but you’re hesitant to simply dump everything at Amazon since you know that not all workloads are suitable for cloud. You know that you want the kind of ease of use and scalability that you get with public cloud, but your applications are architected in a way that makes the public cloud a non-starter. You’re looking at private cloud solutions based on hyperconverged infrastructure, but you’re concerned with the limits inherent in those technologies.
What do you do?
[session] A Better Private Cloud PaaS with Containers | @CloudExpo @IBMSystems #Cloud #DevOps #Analytics
Trying to improve density, lower costs and run applications faster than before? Today, enterprises looking for a secure cloud strategy are increasingly turning to container-based Platform as a Service solutions for on-premises hosted DevOps.
In her session at 21st Cloud Expo, Alise Cashman Spence, Offering Manager, Power Systems Cloud Solutions at IBM, will discuss the driving factors behind these cloud trends and how IBM customers are realizing exceptional performance, security and control for data and analytics services.
[session] Deploy an Armored Cloud with Secure Service Containers | @CloudExpo @IBM #Cloud #Security #Containers
Your clients expect transactions to never fail, cloud access to be fast and always on, and their data to be protected – no exceptions. Hear about how Secure Service Container (SSC), an IBM-exclusive open technology, enables secure building and hosting of next-generation applications, both cloud and on-premises. SSC protects the full stack from external and insider threats, allows automatic encryption of data in-flight and at-rest, and is tamper-resistant during installation and runtime – with no changes to applications required.
[session] Data Mobility: Embracing Hybrid Cloud | @CloudExpo @IBMSystems #Cloud #Agile #Automation
Leading companies, from the Global Fortune 500 to the smallest companies, are adopting hybrid cloud as the path to business advantage. Hybrid cloud depends on cloud services and on-premises infrastructure working in unison. Successful implementations require new levels of data mobility, enabled by an automated and seamless flow across on-premises and cloud resources.
In his general session at 21st Cloud Expo, Greg Tevis, an IBM Storage Software Technical Strategist and Customer Solution Architect, will explore how storage and software-defined solutions from IBM have evolved for the road ahead. Walk-away knowing how you can bring new levels of speed, agility and efficiency to the applications and workloads you choose to deploy across a hybrid cloud model.
Microsoft extends lead over Salesforce in enterprise SaaS – thanks to LinkedIn acquisition
Microsoft has extended its lead over Salesforce in the enterprise software as a service (SaaS) market with the LinkedIn acquisition starting to make its presence felt, according to Synergy Research.
The analyst firm, which has put out a note based on Q2 data, finds Adobe, Oracle and SAP round out the top five, with Salesforce still comfortably in the silver medal position.
Salesforce still bests Microsoft in the CRM space – the slowest growing of the buckets enterprise SaaS is measured in (below) – but Microsoft rules the roost in the collaboration category, ahead of Cisco and Google. Oracle comes out on top for ERP, with ADP leading in HR/HCM apps.
While enterprise SaaS is now considered mature in certain aspects, its spending power continues to pale against on-premise software, meaning growth will remain buoyant for many years, according to Synergy.
The company adds the SaaS market will double in size by the end of 2020.
As John Dinsdale, Synergy research director and chief analyst points out, Microsoft still has lots of on-premise customers it can turn into SaaS ones.
“Traditional enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM still have a huge base of on-premise software customers and they are all now pushing to aggressively convert those customers to a SaaS-based consumption model,” he said.
“At the same time, born in the cloud software vendors like Workday, Zendesk and ServiceNow continue to light a fire under the market and help to propel enterprise spending on SaaS,” Dinsdale added.
Announcing Microsoft’s most recent quarterly revenues of $23.3 billion last month, chief executive Satya Nadella made a number of references to LinkedIn, saying record levels of messages were sent through a new messaging overlay, as well as discussing opportunities for product overlap through Dynamics, Microsoft’s CRM and ERP solutions, with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator.
“In a world where customers are increasingly digitising every business process, we continue to invest and expand our portfolio of modern, modular business applications that are infused with AI,” Nadella told analysts.
Living on the edge: The changing face of the data centre and public cloud
Due in part to the increased prevalence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it seems that more computing capacity is moving to the edge than ever before – and a lot of this is happening in the data centres that increasingly cloud-savvy organisations now rely upon. There are many drivers behind this change, including governance, security, regulation and IP protection.
Reducing latency
Moving datacentres closer to the edge can solve various issues, not least of which is latency. Looking into the near future with the likes of artificial intelligence (AI), there will need to be powerful analytics solutions located at the point of consumption, because network latency can be costly and even fatal to businesses.
Imagine the problems that latency could cause if we get to a point where AI is being used to support medical surgery, or if robotics becomes a critical part of vehicle navigation. These scenarios require real-time action and response — something that is prevented through latency.
A time to co-exist
That’s not to say we should forget about cloud entirely. When talking among peers, it is clear that edge computing and networks will co-exist for some time to come, and that a balance will be achieved based on use cases and business scenarios.
Moving to the edge doesn’t signal the end for core data centres. It’s about an appropriate use of edge and public cloud based on specific business requirements, rather than one being better than the other. The answer here lies in hybrid solutions.
A significant evolution
Going forward, we will see an increasingly significant evolution of the hybrid cloud model. People have been talking about hybrid for a little while now, but the evolution of services and architectures that support this model have yet to catch up to requirements.
That’s all changing now. Microsoft will later this year release Azure Stack, a solution that is very much all about putting services and capabilities at the edge, while ensuring that the benefits of hyper-scale computing and services in the (public) cloud are available when required.
The idea of buying a private version of Azure — with all of its inherent services and capabilities — and putting this at the edge to deal with latency, governance, IoT, security and other edge requirements (and doing so in essentially the same ecosystem), will prove to be a game changer.
Horses for courses
Businesses won’t move everything previously kept at the core towards the edge — they will pick and choose depending on circumstances. It is very much a case of horses for courses. We have lived through a period where public cloud has been seen as the bright new shiny toy, capable of solving all the ills of corporate IT. As the public cloud matures and evolves, people are naturally starting to see use cases where the edge has distinct advantages over centralised cloud scenarios.
Look at the differences between the edge versus public cloud. At the cloud end you have less control and less customisability, but better scalability and access to hyper-scale services that you couldn’t justify building for yourself. At the edge end, you have more control, more customisability, lower latency and the ability to apply greater control and regulation.
It’s about finding an appropriate use of these two models based on need rather than one being better than the other – the answer here is about hybrid solutions and building true end-to-end hybrid ecosystems that allow you to get the best of both worlds.
Embrace the change
With the release of Azure Stack, more businesses will be encouraged to put their services and capabilities at the edge, while ensuring that the benefits of hyper-scale computing and services in the (public) cloud are available when required. If a business can buy what is essentially a black box appliance supported by the hardware vendor and Microsoft directly, then all it really has to do is keep the lights on, so to speak.
This makes edge scenarios cost effective and easy to manage, but again with the added benefits of intelligent elasticity back to the (public) cloud, with little if any additional costs or changes required – true hybrid cloud that takes the benefits of both the edge and the centre and combines them together.
The idea of bringing private cloud capability back to the edge is one of the biggest game changers we have seen for some time. The other big public cloud players will undoubtedly try to keep up to ensure they remain relevant to the edge by evolving their true hybrid strategies – we know AWS is talking to VMware right now about this very possibility, so the wheels are already in motion. However, right now, it is Microsoft that has the edge.
Will Low-Code Kill #DevOps? | @DevOpsSummit #LowCode #NoCode DigitalTransformation
Two apparently distinct movements are in the process of disrupting the world of enterprise application development: DevOps and Low-Code.
DevOps is a cultural and organizational shift that empowers enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker – in particular, hand-coded software.
Low-Code platforms, in contrast, provide a technology platform and visual tooling that empower enterprise software teams to deliver better software quicker — with little or no hand-coding required.
Two disruptive approaches with remarkably similar value propositions. Except that one emphasizes hand-coding while the other replaces it.