Category Archives: News & Analysis

Big Data, IBM, marketing cloud, News & Analysis

IBM adds Universal Behavior Exchange into its Marketing Cloud

IBMIBM says the new Universal Behavior Exchange (UBE) in its Marketing Cloud will help businesses to understand their customers better.

The vendor and cloud service provider claims UBE can solve the problem of connect up all the different sources of information available to them. In some companies this means taking data from up to 30 different systems. Cloud service UBE aims to connect and personalise all relevant information and allow marketing staff to devise more effective campaigns on Facebook and across the Web.

UBX is supported by an open ecosystem of certified partners that includes social, mobile, CRM and paid advertising solutions. Vendor partners include MediaMath, Spredfast, MutualMind, SugarCRM and Exchange Solutions.

Features in the cloud based system include a click-to-connect integration that should simplify the getting and using of data marketers. A pre-integrated network of the vendor partner’s technology should give clients a faster access to a wide range of customer behaviour types, with event and audience data available across a range of paid, owned and earned channels. The system ultimately allows users to study the behaviour of customers and create a highly personalised interaction in response, according to IBM.

“IBM is making it simpler to understand how customers prefer to engage,” said MediaMath president Mike Lamb, “Connecting advertiser data to other channels could create more timely and relevant interactions.”

In a related announcement, mobile marketing system vendor Vibes leader has announced a complementary offering. The Vibes mobile marketing platform will now personalise mobile campaigns with IBM Campaign for targeted text messaging and mobile wallet offers. It will also work IBM Marketing Cloud systems to trigger transactional and service-oriented mobile messages, like appointment reminders and service updates.

“UBX is cracking the code on big data applied to the marketing cloud, and we’re thrilled to be a part of this emerging ecosystem,” said Vibes CEO Jack Philbin.

Amazon, AWS, Datacentre, Financial Results, News & Analysis, Q3 2015

AWS profitability quadruples as revenue surges 78%

amazon awsAmazon Web Services’ revenue grew by 78% year over year to $2.1 billion in the third quarter of 2015 and its operating profit more than quadrupled to $521 million. Its high profits – attributed to 500 new inventions and eight price cuts – contributed to earnings which surpassed analyst expectations and created a surge in parent company Amazon’s stock price.

The high growth rate in AWS profitability could be accounted for by last year’s low margins caused by a competitive price cuts on AWS services.

Meanwhile parent company Amazon reported an overall third-quarter operating profit of $406 million on $25.4 billion of sales. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky answered criticism that AWS is keeping the company profitable and that, in the face of cloud competition, it may have to cut prices again to ensure further growth.

“I will point out that this quarter showed a lot of innovation, a lot of new products and features and a lot of investment,” Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told analysts. “Globally we are investing very heavily in our Prime platform. We’ve launched multiple devices including e-readers, tablets priced under $50, Echo dash buttons, so there’s a lot of investment going on, and there will continue to be, especially related to prime. Innovation and investment will continue and can be lumpy over time.”

The pace of innovation in AWS and the scale of its business has allowed it to do the ‘heavy lifting for Amazon’ said one Wall Street blogger.

By constantly re-inventing itself AWS has been able to cut its prices eight times since April 2014, said Phil Hardin, Amazon director of investor relations, in an analyst conference calls. “The company rolled out 539 new features and services in the past year alone, many of which have been designed so that its customers can access enterprise-grade services for a fraction of what they would traditionally cost on-premise,” said Hardin.

Enterprise IT, HP, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

HP Helion Public Cloud to end, buyers told to go to Amazon

HPHP has revealed that the OpenStack-driven HP Helion Public Cloud will close on January 31 2016 as it looks to focus on private and managed cloud offerings, which is says it will now ramp up.

HP announced the news via its blog in which it also revealed that would invest more in the Helion OpenStack platform which, it said, has more realistic prospects for strong customer adoption. The Helion Openstack system is the foundation of its private cloud offering.

Bill Hilf, HP Cloud’s general manager, explained the logic behind the decision. “The market for hybrid infrastructure is evolving quickly. Today, our customers are consistently telling us they want a hybrid combination of efficiently managed traditional IT and private cloud,” said Hilf. They only want access to software as a service (SaaS) applications and public cloud capabilities for certain workloads, he added.

With customers pushing for private cloud to be delivered faster than ever before, the company has had to prioritise, he said.

“We will continue to innovate and grow in our areas of strength, we will continue to help our partners and to help develop the broader open cloud ecosystem, and we will continue to listen to our customers to understand how we can help them with their entire end-to-end IT strategies,” said Hilf.

HP will support its new model by expanding its partner base and integrating different public cloud environments, Hilf said. Customers who want public cloud should go to Amazon, Hilf said.

“For customers who want access to existing large-scale public cloud providers, we have already added greater support for Amazon Web Services as part of our hybrid delivery with HP Helion Eucalyptus,” said Hilf.

Azure, Dell, Enterprise IT, hybrid cloud, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Dell and Microsoft unveil joint hybrid cloud offering

Dell office logoDell has expanded its cloud portfolio with a new hybrid cloud offering with technology jointly developed with Microsoft. The new system is designed to break down the barriers to cloud adoption and offer a simpler but more secure payment system.

According to Dell’s own research, nine out of ten IT decision makers say a hybrid cloud strategy is important to achieve a Future-Ready Enterprise. The recently unveiled Dell Global Technology Adoption Index revealed that 55% of organisations around the world will use more than one type of cloud. The study also identified cost and security as the biggest barriers to adopting the cloud, with complexity being the biggest blockage associated with hybrid cloud.

The new Dell Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft promises customers an on-premise private cloud with consistent Azure public cloud access in less than three hours. Clients are promised minimised downtime with non-disruptive, fully automated system updates that don’t impose themselves on users when not needed. It also offers workload templates to simplify service provision and governance models. The management of multiple clouds will be simplified by an out-of-the-box integration with Dell Cloud Manager (DCM) and Windows Azure Pack (WAP), Dell says.

The Dell Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft is built around the CPS Standard, which combines optimised Dell modular infrastructure with pre-configured Microsoft CPS software. This will include Microsoft’s software stack and Azure Services for back-up, site recovery and operational insights.

Meanwhile the Dell Cloud Flex Pay programme gives customers a new flexible option to buy Dell’s Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft without making a long-term commitment. Cloud Flex Pay will eliminate the risks of being locked into paying for services that aren’t used fully says Dell.

“Customers tell us their cloud journey is too complex, the cost-risk is too high and control isn’t transparent,” said Jim Ganthier, vice president and general manager of engineered solutions and cloud at Dell. “With our new Cloud Flex Pay program, cost-risk is all but eliminated.”

Big Data, Datacentre, HPC, IBM, News & Analysis, UK

IBM to create HPC and big data centre of excellence in UK

datacenterIBM and the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have jointly announced they will create a centre that tests how to use high performance computing (HPC) for big data analytics.

The Hartree Power Acceleration and Design Centre (PADC) in Daresbury, Cheshire is the first UK facility to specialise in modelling and simulation and their use in Big Data Analytics. It was recently the subject of UK government investment in big data research and was tipped as the foundation for chancellor George Osborne’s northern technology powerhouse.

The new facility launch follows the government’s recently announced investment and expansion of the Hartree Centre. In June Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson unveiled a £313 million partnership with IBM to boost Big Data research in the UK. IBM said it will further support the project with a package of technology and onsite expertise worth up to £200 million.

IBM’s contributions will include access to the latest data-centric and cognitive computing technologies, with at least 24 IBM researchers to be based at the Hartree Centre to work side-by-side with existing researchers. It will also offer joint commercialization of intellectual property assets produced in partnership with the STFC.

The supporting cast have a brief to help users to cajole the fullest performance possible out of all the components of the POWER-based system, and have specialised knowledge of architecture, memory, storage, interconnects and integration. The Centre will also be supported by the expertise of other OpenPOWER partners, including Mellanox, and will host a POWER-based system with the Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform. This will provide options for using energy-efficient, high-performance NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators and enabling software.

One of the target projects will be a search for ways to boost application performance while minimising energy consumption. In the race towards exascale computing significant gains can be made if existing applications can be optimised on POWER-based systems, said Dr Peter Allan, acting Director of the Hartree Centre.

“The Design Centre will help industry and academia use IBM and NVIDIA’s technological leadership and the Hartree Centre’s expertise in delivering solutions to real-world problems,” said Allan. “The PADC will provide world-leading facilities for Modelling and Simulation and Big Data Analytics. This will develop better products and services that will boost productivity, drive growth and create jobs.”

EMC, Enterprise IT, Networks, News & Analysis, Virtustream, VMware

EMC, VMware unveil plans for Virtustream hybrid for the enterprise cloud

EMC and VMware are to combine their cloud offerings under a jointly-owned 50/50 shared Virtustream brand led by its CEO Rodney Rogers.

The cloud service will be aimed at enterprises with an emphasis on hybrid cloud, which Virtustream’s owners identify as one of the largest markets for IT infrastructure spending. The company will provide managed services for on-premises infrastructure and its enterprise-class Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform. The rationale is to help clients make the transition from on-premise computing to the cloud, migrating their applications to cloud-based IT environments. Since many applications are mission critical, hybrid cloud environments will be instrumental in the conversion process and Virtustream said it will set out to provide a public cloud experience for its Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud service.

Nearly one-third of all IT infrastructure spending is going to cloud-related technologies, according to a research by The 451 Group, with cloud service buyers now investing on the application stack. Enterprise adoption is increasing, says the researcher, and buyers increasingly favour private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is increasingly being run on cloud systems, and enterprises will spend a total of $41.2B annually on ERP software by 2020, says The 451 Group.

Virtustream will incorporate EMC Information Infrastructure, VCE and VMware into one and will offer services using VMware vCloud Air, VCE Cloud Managed Services, Virtustream’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service and EMC’s Storage Managed Services and Object Storage Services offerings. VMware will establish a Cloud Provider Software business unit led by VMware’s senior VP Ajay Patel. The unit will incorporate existing VMware cloud management offerings and Virtustream’s software assets.

The business will integrate existing on-premises EMC Federation private cloud and take them into the public cloud, according to Virtustream. The aim is to maintain a common experience for developers, managers, architects and end users. Virtustream’s cloud services will be delivered directly to customers and through partners.

Virtustream addresses the changes in buying patterns and IT cloud operation models that both vendors are encountering now, said EMC CEO Joe Tucci. “Customers consistently tell us they’re on IT journeys to the hybrid cloud. The EMC Federation is now positioned as a complete provider of hybrid cloud offerings.”

Virtustream’s financial results will be consolidated into VMware’s financial statements beginning in Q1 2016.

Big Data, Content & Applications, Devcon Construction, Egnyte, News & Analysis, Software as a service

New Egnyte service promises to impose strict version in the cloud

AppsCloud file service provider Egnyte has launched a Smart Reporting and Auditing service which promises to impose order on the way content is created, edited, viewed and shared.

The service is currently exclusive to Egnyte customers who want visibility and control over their organisation’s entire content life-cycle, whether files are in-house or in the cloud. The rationale is to help companies stop wasting money on the multiplication of effort involved when multiple versions of the same file exist across the diaspora of in-house systems, private and public clouds.

The promised returns on investment in these cloud services, the company says, are lower costs, less risk and higher productivity through visibility. Cost savings are promised on reducing bandwidth consumption, minimised support issues and less wasted employee time. Risk will be minimised, according to Egnyte, as fewer files will be leaked out of the organisation and suspicious activities – both internally and externally – can be highlighted. Visibility improvements will boost productivity by speeding the progress of projects and the prevention of unchecked document replication and mutation, which leads to multiple teams working on multiple different versions of the same project.

Companies and vendors have still not cracked version control yet, said one analyst, and the cloud will only make the task more complicated.

“Content is at the core of just about every business process today, but users are accessing files across multiple devices, anywhere, any time,” said Terri McClure, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “It is entirely too costly and there is simply too much data.”

Solving the big data analytics problem will be increasingly important, said McClure.

Devcon Construction, the largest general contractor in Silicon Valley, has used the service on trial to track confidential design plans and blueprints. “It gives complete visibility on how the files are shared and accessed, so we can effectively manage desktop and tablet device workflows out in the field,” said Joe Tan, director of IT at Devcon Construction.

The cloud service now makes detailed file analytics and insights possible, claimed Isabelle Guis, chief strategy officer at Egnyte. “It’s critical for businesses to optimise file infrastructure and protect against potential threats,” she said.

Corporate, IDC, M&A, News & Analysis, SanDisk, Western Digital

Western Digital buys SanDisk for $19 billion for its cloud driving flash

Disk CloudHard disk vendor Western Digital is to buy chip maker SanDisk for around $19 billion as the consolidation of chip-making industry continues.

Flash specialist SanDisk is one of the largest makers of NAND flash memory chips. The capacity of NAND Flash Memory products to store data in a small footprint, while simultaneously using less power but granting faster access to data, has made this technology particularly popular in the mobile, internet of things and data centre sectors, Increasingly, according to analysts, NAND is becoming the storage technology of choice in data centres that support cloud computing.

The market for NAND flash chips rose to $28.9 billion in 2014, according to IDC and SanDisk (with joint venture partner Toshiba) was the largest producer.

Meanwhile the market for traditional disk drives, where Western Digital is a market leader, is declining, say analysts. The commoditisation of hardware, driven by the software definition of data centres, has seen profit margins on sales decline, even if volumes are up.

Western Digital had a leading 44% share of the market for hard disk drives in 2014, according to statistics from market researcher IDC. However, it suffered a sales decline of 4% in its most recent financial year and the overall storage business also shrank, to $32.9 billion.

“With new storage companies coming through with all-flash systems based on consumer-grade substrate, it is not in WD or Seagate’s best interests to try and do economies of scale aimed more at the enterprise only,” said analyst Clive Longbottom, senior director at research company Quocirca. “By buying up consumer flash companies, they get that economy of scale for themselves.”

The disruption of the IT manufacturers by the cloud has changed the strategies of the encumbents like Western Digital, said Longbottom. “ Dell, HP, IBM and others do seem to be more worried about the new kids on the block than each other at the moment,” said Longbottom.

The cash-and-stock offer values SanDisk at $86.50 per share, or a total equity value of about $19 billion, using a five-day volume weighted average price ending on Oct. 20 of $79.60 per share of Western Digital stock. SanDisk’s shares rose 6.4% to $80 in pre-market trading. Western Digital’s shares were down 1.1% at $74.

The deal is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016.

Datacentre, M&A, News & Analysis, TierPoint, Windstream

Tierpoint buys Windstream’s data centre business for $575 Million

Cloud datacentreCloud service provider TierPoint has entered into a definitive agreement with comms vendor Windstream to buy its data centre business for a pure cash transaction of $575 million.

As part of the deal the two will enter a reciprocal partnership, selling each other’s products and services to their prospective customers through referrals. This structure will allow Windstream to focus on its telecom offerings while continuing to offer traditional data centre services to enterprise customers.

The boards of both companies have approved the transaction, which is expected to close within the next two to four months, subject to customary conditions and approvals.

Cloud service provider TierPoint will inherit invaluable data centre support expertise according to CEO Jerry Kent. “This is a great strategic fit for TierPoint and our customers,” said Kent, “Windstream Hosted Solutions and its employees have a reputation for providing excellent customer service and enterprise-class solutions. We value these team members as a key asset in the acquisition and their expertise adds to our strength.”

The long-term strategic partnership with Windstream allows both the comms vendor and the service provider to concentrate on their own strengths and complement each other’s contributions and data centre services are still an integral component of enterprise service explained Windstream’s CEO Tony Thomas. “We expect the divested data centre business to continue its significant growth under the leadership of TierPoint, and we look forward to partnering closely with them to provide advanced data centre services to our enterprise customers,” said Thomas.

The deal has a certain logic, but it’s also illogical in some aspects, said Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom. “A smaller company trying to compete on non-core data centre activities will always be at a disadvantage, so selling to a data centre expert gives much greater capabilities and flexibility, so at this level, it makes sense,” said Longbottom.

However, he questioned the rational of specialisation followed by duplication of effort. “It leaves Windstream to focus on its comms business on one hand, except it says it won’t, as it will resell data centre services through Tierpoint. And Tierpoint will sell comms services through Windstream. Two companies, selling the same offering, but with overlapping and redundant back office costs, so driving the cost to the customer up,” said Longbottom, “it would make far more sense for the deal to be a merger with two divisions, to my mind.”

DigitalOcean, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis

DigitalOcean simplifies IP addressing of services with new cloud building invention

CloudCloud infrastructure platform maker DigitalOcean has launched new tools for developing building large-scale applications. The tools, Floating IPs and Team Account Management, aim to speed up the process by removing common blockages reported by cloud application writers.

The Floating IPs platform aims to make it easier for developers to quickly associate an IP address with a different cloud server (AKA Droplet). The system caters for quick allocation through one of two routes, using either the system control panel or application programming interface (API). “This eliminates single points of failure and empowers developers to build production applications at any scale,” said Brooke McKim, director of product at DigitalOcean.

The company has also released Team Accounts, a system to improve support for teams of developers working together to power established applications. The system allows developers to invite multiple users to access and manage the account’s resources, such as Droplets, without having to share their own login credentials or billing information.

DigitalOcean says that since its formation, in 2012, 700,000 developers have used its cloud building system to create eight million cloud servers. The release of Floating IPs will make it a lot easier to tag servers to apps and create highly available applications, according to Moisey Uretsky, co-founder and chief product officer at DigitalOcean.

“Simplicity is difficult to achieve,” said Uretsky, “There’s a lot of benefit in taking the time to get it right and making complex technology easy to use. We wanted this networking solution to have the same qualities developers love about The Droplet: simplicity, elegance and incredible user experience.”

Development of the new products was financed by an $83 million funding round in July 2015, with funds from Series B round of financing led by Access Industries. Other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, which led the company’s $37 million Series A round last year. Container pioneer Docker hosts its applications on DigitalOcean.