Category Archives: PaaS

Dell partners with Pivotal on Cloud Foundry

Dell Services will resell Pivotal CF and advise customers on implementation, app development and migration to different cloud platforms

Dell Services will resell Pivotal CF and advise customers on implementation, app development and migration to different cloud platforms

Dell Services announced a partnership with Pivotal this week that will see the company include Pivotal CF in its digital services portfolio.

The deal will see Dell Services resell Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry distribution as well as advise clients on application development, integration and multi-cloud migration using both Pivotal’s and open source Cloud Foundry.

The companies said the move will help customers enable a DevOps culture within their organisations and speed up application deployment.

“Digital transformation is driving enterprises to develop and deploy applications in an agile manner thereby creating the need for a new generation of application platforms,” Raman Sapra, executive director and global head, Dell Digital Business Services.

“Our collaboration with Pivotal expands our digital services portfolio to include development of next-generation, enterprise-class solutions using a leading platform like Pivotal Cloud Foundry to help customers unlock the power of innovation and fast track their digital transformation journey,” Sapra said.

Scott Aronson, senior vice president, worldwide field operations at Pivotal said: “Pivotal Cloud Foundry is emerging as a fundamental enabler of digital transformation as companies are under increased pressure to leverage software to differentiate their business models. Our partnership with Dell Services, a leading and trusted global services provider, will help our customers accelerate their digital transformation journey.”

IBM bolsters Bluemix with added services, Cloud Foundry Dojos

IBM is bolstering its Bluemix and Cloud Foundry initiatives

IBM is bolstering its Bluemix and Cloud Foundry initiatives

IBM has signed up a number of partners for its Bluemix platform that will see the company bolster the platform-as-a-service with and its Cloud Foundry efforts by establishing developer meeting spaces.

The company announced a public beta of a .NET runtime, which will enable Cloud Foundry developers to use Microsoft’s development technologies and develop .NET apps.

ThinkData Works’ data catalogue Namara.io, application KPI service Cupenya Insights, event processing service flowthings.io and push service Reappt were also added to Bluemix catalogue, as well as some new internally developed mobile and API management capabilities.

IBM also said it is supporting the expansion of Cloud Foundry Dojos, physical developer spaces designed to host developers looking to leverage the open source platform-as-a-service. The company said it will establish its first of a number of independent Cloud Foundry Dojos in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a bid to boost the number of – and mentor –Bluemix developers.

Having poured billions of dollars into cloud and PaaS, it’s clear IBM has high hopes for Bluemix. The company is putting Bluemix at the core of its Internet of Things strategy – it recently announced plans to carve out a section in Bluemix for specialist IoT services (IoT Zone) and a number of new IoT-focused cloud services available on the platform.

IBM claims Bluemix is the largest deployment of Cloud Foundry in the market today, though it hasn’t really clarified what “largest” means in this context; it’s equally unclear how Bluemix deployments compare with Pivotal CF and HP Helion among other commercial Cloud Foundry distributions.

Mirantis, Pivotal team up on OpenStack, Cloud Foundry integration

Mirantis and Pivotal are working to integrate their commercial deployments of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, respectively

Mirantis and Pivotal are working to integrate their commercial deployments of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, respectively

Pivotal and Mirantis announced this week that the two companies are teaming up to accelerate integration of Cloud Foundry and OpenStack.

As part of the move Pivotal will support Pivotal CF, the company’s commercial distribution of the open source platform-as-a-service, on Mirantis’ distribution of OpenStack.

“Our joint customers are seeking open, bleeding-edge technologies to accelerate their software development and bring new products to market faster,” said James Watters, vice president and general manager of the Cloud Platform Group at Pivotal.

“Now, with Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Mirantis OpenStack, enterprises across various industries can rapidly deliver cloud-native, scalable applications to their customers with minimal risk and maximum ROI,” Watters said.

The move comes just one month after Mirantis announced it would join the Cloud Foundry Foundation in a bid to help drive integration between the two open source platforms. At the time, Alex Freedland, Mirantis co-founder and chairman said an essential part of rolling out software to help organisations build their own clouds includes making it as easy as possible to deploy and manage technologies “higher up the stack” like Cloud Foundry.

“Enterprises everywhere are adopting a new generation of tools, processes and platforms to help them compete more effectively,” said Boris Renski, Mirantis chief marketing officer and co-founder. “Mirantis and Pivotal have made Pivotal Cloud Foundry deployable on Mirantis OpenStack at the click of a button, powering continuous innovation.”

Joint customers can install Pivotal Cloud Foundry onto Mirantis OpenStack using the companies’ deployment guide, but the two companies are working towards adding a full Pivotal CF installation into the application catalogue of the next OpenStack release, Murano.

Accenture, Oracle form business unit to accelerate cloud uptake

Accenture and Oracle are forming a business unit to accelerate cloud  uptake

Accenture and Oracle are forming a business unit to accelerate cloud uptake

Oracle and Accenture are teaming up to create a joint business unit that will help mutual customers move more quickly onto (mostly Oracle) cloud platforms.

According to the companies the Accenture Oracle Business Group will bring together technologies and consulting power in order to help customers implement cloud-based services, which includes helping those clients tailor their business processes to those technologies.

Thomas Kurian, president, product development at Oracle said: “By providing a single process to implement end-to-end mission- critical services, the Accenture Oracle Business Group is ideally positioned to help our customers realize the true benefits of cloud computing.”

The group will offer vertically-integrated solutions built using Oracle’s software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings, supported by fleets of Accenture consultants skilled in Oracle and Java tech – who will also help implement cloud readiness and data migration strategies for clients.

“Building on our 23-year alliance relationship, the Accenture Oracle Business Group combines Accenture’s deep industry and technology experience with Oracle’s expansive set of cloud solutions to deliver client value not found elsewhere in the market today,” said Stephen Rohleder, group chief executive for North America, Accenture.

“This is part of our strategy to take advantage of Oracle’s leading technologies and build our business together for the future. It is a game-changer for our clients, Oracle, and Accenture,” Rohleder said.

LeShop taps OpenShift for hybrid cloud app development and management

LeShop has deployed OpenShift to support the company's hybrid cloud strategy

LeShop has deployed OpenShift to support the company’s hybrid cloud strategy

LeShop.ch, one of Switzerland’s largest online supermarkets has selected Red Hat’s commercial OpenShift distribution in a bid to improve how it develops and deploys applications in the cloud.

The company, which uses a combination of its own datacentres and the public cloud to host its applications and consumer-facing websites, was looking to deploy a platform-as-a-service because it wanted increase the performance of its apps and ease their management in a hybrid environment.

Last year the e-retailer migrated its applications to a tightly linked micro-services oriented architecture in order to make its online platforms more scalable, and said it selected OpenShift after considering a number of options including Cloud Foundry and Docker-based platforms.

“It’s not going to be a problem to complete the project on time and on budget,” said Raphaël Anthamatten, head of infrastructure and operations at LeShop.ch. “OpenShift Enterprise provides all of the functions we need to implement the highly flexible micro-services architecture in development and operation.”

Ashesh Badani, vice president and general manager, OpenShift at Red Hat said: “Quickly and reliably launching innovative solutions to market, while leveraging new technologies and application architectures, is one of the key challenges for any online retailer. With OpenShift Enterprise, we support LeShop.ch in developing innovative new services for their online customers in order to become an even more prominent leader in the Swiss market.”

Top 25 Findings from Giagom’s 4th Annual “Future of Cloud Computing” Survey

By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud

 

Giagom Research and North Bridge Partners recently released their 4th annual “Future of Cloud Computing” study. There was some great data gathered from the 1,358 respondents surveyed. In case you don’t have time to click through the entire 124 slideshare deck, I’ve pulled out what I think are the 25 most interesting statistics from the study. Here’s the complete deck if you would like to review in more detail.

 

  • 49% using the cloud for revenue generating or product development activities (Slide 9)
  • 80% of IT budget is used to maintain current systems (Slide 20) <–> GreenPages actually held a webinar recently explaining how organizations can avoid spending the majority of their IT budgets on “keeping the lights on
  • For IT across all functions tested in the survey, 60-85% of respondents will move some or significant processing to the cloud in the next 12-24 months (Slide 21)
  • Shifting CapEx to OpEx is more important for companies with over 5,000 employees (Slide 27)
  • For respondents moving workloads to the cloud today, 27% said they are motivated to do so because they believe using a cloud platform service will help them lower their capital expenditures (Slide 28)
  • Top Inhibitor: Security, remains the biggest concern, despite declining slightly last year, it rose again as an issue in 2014 and was cited by 49% of respondents (Slide 55)
  • Privacy is of growing importance. As an inhibitor, Privacy grew from 25% in 2011 to 31% (Slide 57)
  • Over 1/3 see regulatory/compliance as an inhibitor to moving to the cloud (Slide 60)
  • Interoperability concerns dropped by 45%, relatively, over the past two years…but 29% are still concerned about lock in (Slide 62)
  • Nearly ¼ people still think network bandwidth is an inhibitor (Slide 64)
  • Reliability concerns dropped by half since 2011 (Slide 66)
  • Amazon S3 holds trillions of objects and regularly peaks at 1.5 million requests per second (Slide 71)
  • 90% of world’s data was created in past two years…80% of it is unstructured (Slide 73) <–> Here’s a video blog where Journey to the Cloud blogger Randy Weis talks about big data in more detail
  • Approximately 66% of data is in the cloud today (Slide 74)
  • The number above is expected to grow 73% in two years (Slide 75)
  • 50% of enterprise customers will purchase as much storage in 2014 as they have accumulated in their ENTIRE history (slide 77)
  • IaaS use has jumped from 11% in 2011 to 56% in 2014 & SaaS has increased from 13% in 2011 to 72% in 2014 (Slide 81)
  • Applications Development growing 50% (Slide 84) <–> with the growth of app dev, we’re also seeing the growth of shadow IT. Check out this on-demand webinar “The Rise of Unauthorized AWS Use. How to Address Risks Created by Shadow IT.”
  • PaaS approaching the tipping point! PaaS has increased from 7% in 20111 to 41% in 2014. (Slide 85) <–> See what one of our bloggers, John Dixon, predicted in regards to the rise of PaaS at the beginning of the year.
  • Database as a Service expected to nearly double, from 23% to 44% among users (Slide 86)
  • By 2017, nearly 2/3rds of all workloads will be processed in cloud data centers. Growth of workloads in cloud data centers is expected to be five times the growth in traditional workloads between 2012 and 2017. (Slide 87)
  • SDN usage will grow among business users almost threefold…from 11% to 30%  (Slide 89) <–> Check out this video blog where Nick Phelps talks about the business drivers behind SDN.
  • 42% use hybrid cloud now (Slide 93)
  • That 42% will grow to 55% in 2 years (Slide 94) <–> This whitepaper gives a nice breakdown of the future of hybrid cloud management.
  • “This second cloud front will be an order of magnitude bigger than the first cloud front.” (Slide 117). <–> hmmm, where have I heard this one before? Oh, that’s right, GreenPages’ CEO Ron Dupler has been saying it for about two years now.

Definitely some pretty interesting takeaways from this study. What are your thoughts? Did certain findings surprise you?

 

 

 

The PaaS Market as We Know it Will Not Die Off

I’ve been hearing a lot about Platform as a Service (PaaS) lately as part of the broader discussion of cloud computing from both customers and in articles across the web. In this post, I’ll describe PaaS, discuss a recent article that came out on the subject, and take a shot at sorting out IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

What is PaaS?

First a quick trip down memory lane for me. As an intern in college, one of my tours of duty was through the manufacturing systems department at an automaker. I came to work the first day to find a modest desktop computer loaded with all of the applications I needed to look busy, and a nicely printed sheet with logins to various development systems. My supervisor called the play: “I tell you what I want, you code it up, I’ll take a look at it, and move it to test if it smells ok.” I and ten other ambitious interns were more than happy to spend the summer with what the HR guy called “javaweb.” The next three months went something like this:

Part I: Setup the environment…

  1. SSH to abcweb01dev.company.com, head over to /opt/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, configure AJP to point to the abcapp01 and 02dev.company.com
  2. SSH to abcapp01.dev.company.com, reinstall the Java SDK to the right version, install the proper database JARs, open /opt/tomcat/conf/context.xml with the JDBC connection pool
  3. SSH to abcdb01dev.company.com, create a user and rights for the app server to talk to the web server
  4. Write something simple to test everything out
  5. Debug the environment to make sure everything works

Part II: THEN start coding…

  1. SSH to abcweb01dev.company.com, head over to /var/www/html and work on my HTML login page for starters, other things down the road
  2. SSH to devapp01dev.company.com, head over to /opt/tomcat/webapps/jpdwebapp/servlet, and code up my Java servlet to process my logins
  3. Open another window, login to abcweb01dev and tail –f /var/www/access_log to see new connections being made to the web server
  4. Open another window, login to abcapp01dev and tail –f /opt/tomcat/logs/catalina.out to see debug output from my servlet
  5. Open another window, login to abcdevapp01 and just keep /opt/tomcat/conf/context.xml open
  6. Open another window, login to abcdevapp01 and /opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh; sleep 5; /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh (every time I make a change to the servlet)

(Host names and directory names have been changed to protect the innocent)

Setting up the environment was a little frustrating. And I knew that there was more to the story; some basic work, call it Part 0, to get some equipment in the datacenter, the OS installed, and IP addresses assigned. Part I, setting up the environment, is the work you would do to setup a PaaS platform. As a developer, the work in Part I was to enable me and my department to do the job in Part II – and we had a job to do – to get information to the guys in the plants who were actually manufacturing product!

 

So, here’s a rundown:

Part 0: servers, operating systems, patches, IPs… IaaS

Part I: middleware, configuration, basic testing… PaaS

Part II: application development

So, to me, PaaS is all about using the bits and pieces provided by IaaS, configuring them in a usable platform, delivering that platform to a developer so that they can deliver software to the business. And, hopefully the business is better off because of our software. In this case, our software helped the assembly plant identify and reduce “in-system damage” to vehicles – damage to vehicles that happens as a result of the manufacturing process.

Is the PaaS market as we know it dead?

I’ve read articles predicting the demise of PaaS altogether and others just asking the question about its future. There was a recent Networkworld article entitled “Is the PaaS market as we know it dying?” that discussed the subject. The article makes three main points, referring to 451 Research, Gartner, and other sources.

  1. PaaS features are being swallowed up by IaaS providers
  2. The PaaS market has settled down while the IaaS and SaaS markets have exploded
  3. Pure-play PaaS providers may be squeezed from the market by IaaS and SaaS

 

I agree with point #1. The evidence is in Amazon Web Services features like autoscaling, RDS, SQS, etc. These are fantastic features but interfacing to them locks developers in to using AWS as their single IaaS provider. The IaaS market is still very active, and I think there is a lot to come even though AWS is ahead of other providers at this point. IaaS is commodity, and embedding specialized (read: PaaS) features in an otherwise IaaS system is a tool to get customers to stick around.

I disagree with point #2. The PaaS market has not settled down – it hasn’t even started yet! The spotlight has been on IaaS and SaaS because these things are relatively simple to understand, considering the recent boom in server virtualization. SaaS also used to be known as something that was provided by ASPs (Application Service Providers), so many people are already familiar with this. I think PaaS and the concepts are still finding their place.

Also disagree with point #3, the time and opportunity for pure-play PaaS providers is now. IaaS is becoming sorted out, and it is clearly a commodity item. As we highlighted earlier, solutions from PaaS providers can ride on top of IaaS. I think that PaaS will be the key to application portability amongst different IaaS providers – kind of like Java: write once, run on any JVM (kind of). As you might know, portability is one of NIST’s key characteristics of cloud computing.

Portability is key. I think PaaS will remain its own concept apart from IaaS and SaaS and that we’ll see some emergence of PaaS in 2014. Why? PaaS is the key to portable applications — once written to a PaaS platform, it can be deployed on different IaaS platforms. It’s also important to note that AWS is almost always associated with IaaS, but they have started to look a lot like a PaaS provider (I touched on this in a blog earlier this month). An application written to use AWS features like AutoScaling is great, but not very portable. Lastly, the PaaS market is ripe for innovation. Barriers to entry are low as is required startup capital (there is no need to build a datacenter to build a useful PaaS platform).

This is just my opinion on PaaS — I think the next few years will see a growing interest in PaaS, possibly even over IaaS. I’m interested in hearing what you think about PaaS, feel free to leave me a comment here, find me on twitter at @dixonjp90, or reach out to us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

To hear more from John, download his whitepaper on hybrid cloud computing or his ebook on the evolution of the corporate IT department!

 

 

5 Cloud Predictions for 2014

By John Dixon, LogicsOne

 

Here are my 5 Cloud Predictions for 2014. As always, leave a comment below and let me know what you think!

1. IaaS prices will drop by at least 20%

Amazon has continued to reduce its pricing since it first launched its cloud services back in 2006. In February of last year, Amazon dropped its price for the 25th time. By April prices dropped for the 30th time and by the summer it was up to 37 times. Furthermore, there was a 37% drop in hourly costs for dedicated on-demand instances. Microsoft announced that they will follow AWS’s lead with regard to price cuts. I expect this trend to continue in 2014 and likely 2015. I highlight some of these price changes and the impact it will have on the market as more organizations embrace the public cloud in more detail in my eBook.

2. We’ll see signs of the shift to PaaS

Amazon is already starting to look more like a PaaS provider than an IaaS provider. Just consider pre-packaged, pre-engineered features like Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, SQS, RDS among other services. An application hosted with AWS that uses all of these features looks more like an AWS application and less like a cloud application. Using proprietary features is very convenient, but don’t forget how application portability is impacted. I expect continued innovation in the PaaS market with new providers and technology, while downward price pressures in the IaaS market remain high. Could AWS (focusing on PaaS innovation) one day source its underlying infrastructure to a pure IaaS provider? This is my prediction for the long term — large telecoms like AT&T, Verizon, BT, et al. will eventually own the IaaS market, Amazon, Google, Microsoft will focus on PaaS innovation, and use infrastructure provided by those telecoms. This of course leaves room for startup, niche PaaS providers to build something innovative and leverage quality infrastructure delivered from the telecoms. This is already happening with smaller PaaS providers. Look for signs of this continuing in 2014.

3. “The cloud” will not be regulated

Recently, there have been rumblings of regulating “the cloud” especially in Europe, and that European clouds are safer than American clouds. If we stick with the concept that cloud computing is just another way of running IT (I call it the supply chain for IT service delivery), then the same old data classification and security rules apply. Only now, if you use cloud computing concepts, the need to classify and secure your data appropriately becomes more important. An attempt to regulate cloud computing would certainly have far reaching economic impacts. This is one to watch, but I don’t expect any legislative action to happen here in 2014.

4. More organizations will look to cloud as enabling DevOps

It’s relatively easy for developers to head out to the cloud, procure needed infrastructure, and get to work quickly. When developers behave like this, they not only write code and test new products, but they become the administrators of the platforms they own (all the way from underlying code to patching the OS) — development and operations come together. This becomes a bit stickier as things move to production, but the same concept can work (see prediction #5).

5. More organizations will be increasingly interested in governance as they build a DevOps culture

As developers can quickly bypass traditional procurement processes and controls, new governance concepts will be needed. Notice how I wrote “concepts” and not “controls.” Part of the new role of the IT department is to stay a step ahead of these movements, and offer developers new ways to govern their own platforms. For example, a real time chart showing used vs. budgeted resources will influence a department’s behavior much more effectively than a cold process that ends with “You’re over budget, you need to get approval from an SVP (expected wait time: 2-8 weeks).”

DevOps CIO Dashboard

 Service Owner Dashboard

The numbers pictured are fictitious. With the concept of Service Owners, the owner of collaboration services can get a view of the applications and systems that provide the service. The owner can then see how VoIP spending is a little above the others, and drill down to see where resources are being spent (on people, processes, or technology). Different ITBM applications display these charts differently, but the premise is the same – real time visibility into spend. With cloud usage in general gaining steam, it is now possible to adjust the resources allocated to these services. With this type of information available to developers, it is possible to take proactive steps to avoid compromising the budget allocated to a particular application or service. On the same token, opportunities to make informed investments in certain areas will become exposed with this information.

So there you have it, my 2014 cloud predictions. What other predictions do you have?

To hear more from John, download his eBook “The Evolution of Your Corporate IT Department” or his Whitepaper “Cloud Management, Now

 

 

WSO2 Opens Beta for Stratos 2.0 PaaS Offering

Today WSO2 unveiled the beta release of WSO2 Stratos 2.0. Newly re-architected, WSO2 Stratos 2.0 is a foundation for implementing a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that combines support for heterogeneous applications and service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform runtimes with native, secure multi-tenancy. WSO2 Stratos 2.0 also adds the capability to run on any cloud infrastructure, including VMware, Eucalyptus, Amazon and OpenStack.

WSO2 previewed the latest release of WSO2 Stratos at WSO2Con 2013, which runs February 13-14 in London. The company also announced that it has begun accepting customers for the WSO2 Stratos 2.0 beta program.

“Increasingly enterprises view the cloud as a platform for innovation. However, until now they’ve had to make trade-offs between using their favorite development tools and middleware or capitalizing on the multi-tenancy of a native cloud environment. With WSO2 Stratos 2.0, these organizations no longer have to compromise,” said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder and CEO.

The Stratos 2.0 approach to multi-tenancy goes beyond other PaaS environments to support multiple levels of virtualization—from standard virtual machines, via Linux Containers to intra-JVM isolation. This choice of sharing resources while providing the correct isolation level for multiple tenants is a significant factor in enabling lower costs, greater flexibility, and easier on-ramping into a private or public cloud environment.

The new tenant-aware elastic load balancer in Stratos 2.0 is a first-of-a-kind capability that allows the environment to provide highly tunable performance to different tenants, ranging from “economy class” for low priority workloads up to “private jet” mode for workloads that require dedicated resources.

At the heart of Version 2.0 is a new cartridge architecture for plugging software into WSO2 Stratos to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities, such as multi-tenancy, elastic scaling, self-service provisioning, metering, billing, and resource pooling, among others. As a result, WSO2 Stratos 2.0 is able to run, not only 13 WSO2 Carbon enterprise middleware products, but also a choice of frameworks, databases, and other application services.

WSO2 Stratos 2.0 also significantly enhances PaaS deployment through an integration layer that uses the popular jclouds technology to allow it to run on any infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) including OpenStack, VMware, Eucalyptus and CloudStack. Additionally, use of the Puppet open source tool for infrastructure deployment in this release makes it easier than ever to install and configure Stratos in a private or public cloud environment. Like all WSO2 software, WSO2 Stratos 2.0 is 100% open source and will be made available under the Apache License 2.0.

Ideal candidates for the WSO2 Stratos 2.0 beta program are enterprise IT professionals who are planning or evaluating ways to deliver new applications and/or migrate existing ones to the cloud. Participants also must be committed to participating and giving feedback. For more information and to contact WSO2 about joining the beta program, please visit the product Web page: http://wso2.com/cloud/stratos.

AppFog Adds Redis, RabbitMQ Support Across Cloud Providers

AppFog today announced support for Redis and RabbitMQ, two of the most in-demand and widely used solutions for developing enterprise-class, web scale applications.

Used by both enterprise developers and those building cutting-edge, new start-up technologies, Redis is an open source RAM-based key-value memory store providing significant value in a wide range of important use cases. The popular and powerful NoSQL database has become a coding staple for developers worldwide and depended on for scalability by companies with websites serving a massive number of customers and users. Redis has also been the most-requested feature across all developers. Used by companies ranging from GitHub to Blizzard and from StackOverflow to Flickr, Redis has become a best practice for all looking to create solutions with excellent performance.

“Redis has become a required go-to tool for developers looking to solve performance issues for their applications,” said Krishnan Subramanian, Founder and Principal Analyst at Rishidot Research. “Interestingly, it is recommended to add Redis to your stack to take advantage of it in cases where your existing database is of no use. As a critical component of many highly performant stacks, Redis is rapidly becoming the standard for memory-based key-value stores.”

RabbitMQ is an open source enterprise message broker solution, enabling robust and easy-to-use messaging for applications. The messaging queue software provides support for a wide range of languages, platforms and third-party services. Supported by VMware, RabbitMQ is used by a huge number of developers and companies to develop robust and reliable applications.