Category Archives: Vendor

Cisco, Converged Infrastructure, Nebula, News & Analysis, Open Source, OpenStack, Private Cloud, Vendor

Converged OpenStack cloud pioneer Nebula closes its doors

Nebula, an OpenStack pioneer, is closing its doors

Nebula, an OpenStack pioneer, is closing its doors

Converged infrastructure vendor Nebula, one of the first companies to pioneer integrated OpenStack-based private cloud hardware, announced it will close its doors this week.

A notice posted by the Nebula management team on its website says the company had no choice but to cease operations after exhaustively searching for alternative arrangements that would allow the company to keep operating.

“When we started this journey four years ago, we set out to usher in a new era of cloud computing by curating and productizing OpenStack for the enterprise. We are incredibly proud of the role we had in establishing Nebula as the leading enterprise cloud computing platform. At the same time, we are deeply disappointed that the market will likely take another several years to mature. As a venture backed start up, we did not have the resources to wait.”

“Nebula private clouds deployed at customer sites will continue to operate normally, however support will no longer be available. Nebula is based on OpenStack and is compatible with OpenStack products from vendors including Red Hat, IBM, HP and others, providing customers with a number of choices moving forward.”

One of the original players behind the OpenStack codebase, Nebula offered Nebula Cosmos, a fast and secure deployment, management, and monitoring tool for enterprise-grade OpenStack private clouds, and converged infrastructure solutions based on x86 servers running OpenStack- the Nebula One.

Nearly five years after the creation of OpenStack the market is clearly still in its early stages despite loads of vendor hype and a flurry of acquisitions in this space. Indeed, the first challenge for independents like Nebula is their ability to gain critical mass and maintain operations – at least before being acquired by firms like Cisco, Red Hat, HP and other IT vendors that have snapped OpenStack startups in recent years in a bid to grow their portfolios based on the open source platform; the second is, of course, competing with the Ciscos, Red Hats and HPs of the world, which is no small feat.

Analytics, BlueMix, IBM, Internet of Things, News & Analysis, smart cities, Vendor

IBM to pour £2bn into Internet of Things business unit

IBM is putting billions of dollars into creating a standalone IoT division

IBM is putting billions of dollars into creating a standalone IoT division

IBM announced it plans to spend up to £2bn over the next four years to consolidate and revamp its Internet of Things technologies and services into a standalone business unit. The move seems aimed at broadening its appeal beyond proto-IoT segments it traditionally caters to.

Through its Smart Cities and Smarter Planet programmes the company has effectively been offering what many today refer to as Internet of Things technologies, but the renewed investment will see IBM mobilise and train a massive fleet of consultants (over 2,000) on its consolidated IoT services portfolio, and offer a cloud-based platform for companies to help them marry data real time IoT data streams with other data sets and services.

The company also plans to carve out a section in Bluemix, IBM’s platform-as-a-service, for specialist IoT services, and expand IoT-focused partnerships with a range of technology and service providers.

“Our knowledge of the world grows with every connected sensor and device, but too often we are not acting on it, even when we know we can ensure a better result,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. “This is a major focus of investment for IBM because it’s a rich and broad-based opportunity where innovation matters.  Over the next decade, integration of IoT in business operations and decision-making will transform business.”

The move is part of a broader reorganisation effort currently underway at IBM, which is seeing the company realign internally (and trim headcount) to more effectively support service and technology development around cloud, mobile, security, and data analytics. Its Internet of Things offerings are both increasingly drawing from those other segments, and broadening beyond traditional smart cities or intelligent manufacturing segments use cases – areas where IBM has traditionally played.

In February for example ARM and IBM jointly announced an Internet of Things starter kit to enable developers to rapidly prototype mbed-based IoT applications using Bluemix, which ships with a development board from Freescale, powered by an ARM Cortex-M4 processor. The companies are aiming the kit at startups, which hasn’t traditionally been IBM’s nor ARM’s target demographic.

Anise Asia, Asia Pacific, News & Analysis, SAP, Simon Aspinall, Suhaimee Abu Hassan, Vendor, Virtustream

Anise Asia taps Virtustream to help serve up SAP cloud software to SMEs

Anise Asia is working with Virtustream to deliver SAP applications to SMEs

Anise Asia is working with Virtustream to deliver SAP applications to SMEs

Malaysia-based cloud service provider Anise Asia has selected Virtustream to help the company offer SAP Business One software via the cloud to SMEs.

The partnership will see Anise Asia deploy Virtustream’s micro-VM technology in a bid to help it scale and bill for SAP cloud services, which will be aimed primarily at Malaysian SMEs.

“With SAP Business One Cloud, we answered our clients’ call for an ERP solution that was quick to deploy and easy to run and maintain. By moving those solutions into the cloud, we are addressing their demand for more flexibility, security and cost savings,” said Suhaimee Abu Hassan, founder and chief executive officer of Anise Asia.

“Virtustream is a trusted partner with vast SAP application and managed services expertise, and SAP certification that enables us to provide our customers with the best and most comprehensive set of services available in the market,” he said.

Virtustream said the move will help expand the reach of its cloud and software services, as well as its professional services unit.

“This is a strategic move for both companies,” said Simon Aspinall, president of service provider business, Virtustream. “Together, Anise Asia and Virtustream are able to address the growing demand for enterprise-class cloud services in the ASEAN market.”

Bernard Chiang, managing director of SAP Malaysia said: “Our partners are an extension of the SAP network and, quite often with their local knowledge and expertise, play the critical role of fulfilling the ‘last mile’ of implementation.”

cloud logging, Google, News & Analysis, operations management, Vendor

Google adds log analysis to cloud platform

Google is giving enterprises more tools to troubleshoot persnickety workloads and apps

Google is giving enterprises more tools to troubleshoot persnickety workloads and apps

Google has added a service enabling users of its cloud platform to analyse data logs from both Compute Engine and App Engine, which the company said would help users optimise management operators.

Google already offers a cloud monitoring tools that gives enterprises visibility into networking and compute resources associated with their instances (the company acquired these capabilities from Stackdriver last year), but much more can be gleaned from the massive number of logs that workloads generate – particularly when investigating consistent service errors.

That’s where the cloud logging service comes into play, enabling users of Google’s cloud services to view, analyse and export log data in real time.

“Businesses generate a staggering amount of log data that contains rich information on systems, applications, user requests, and administrative actions. When managed effectively, this treasure trove of data can help you investigate and debug system issues, gain operational and business insights and meet security and compliance needs,” explained Deepak Tiwari, product manager at Google in a recent blog post.

“But log management is challenging. You need to manage very high volumes of streaming data, provision resources to handle peak loads, scale fast and efficiently and have the capability to analyse data in real-time,” he said.

A number of Google’s rivals (Microsoft, AWS) already offer log analysis tools for cloud service users but Google said its tool, which is currently in beta (and free for the time being), comes pre-integrated with a number of its services (BigQuery for analysis, Google Cloud Storage for longer term log data storage) and can be deployed quickly.

Asia Pacific, Cisco, Internet of Things, IoT, Irving Tan, News & Analysis, Vendor

Cisco to open Internet of Things innovation centre in Australia

Cisco will open an Internet of Things innovation centre in Australia this year

Cisco will open an Internet of Things innovation centre in Australia this year

Networking giant Cisco plans to open an Internet of Everything Innovation Centre in Australia this year, which the company said will house experts in the Internet of Things and help catalyse IoT innovation in the region.

The $15m centre, one of eight planned globally (Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Songdo, Berlin, Barcelona, Tokyo and London) will include locations in Sydney at Sirca and in Perth at Curtin University. Perth-based energy firm Woodside Energy will also contribute resources to the centre.

The centres include dedicated space to demonstrate Internet of Things platforms, and are being pitched as areas where customers, startups and researchers can come together to prototype and test out their ideas.

“Australia is a sophisticated market with a high level of innovation and an early adopter of new technology. Australia is already highly regarded globally for its resources and agriculture sectors and is well-placed to serve the rapidly growing Asian markets, and the Australian government has prioritised these sectors accordingly,” said Irving Tan, senior vice president Asia Pacific and Japan at Cisco.

“The aim now with Cisco IoE Innovation Centre, Australia and its ecosystem of partners is to accelerate innovation and the adoption of the IoE in Australia,” Tan said.

The announcement comes the same week Cisco published a report claiming UK Internet of Things startups could generate more than £100bn over the decade as their offerings catch on in industries like healthcare, retail, transport and energy.

The company also said large firms, SMEs, and government organisations in the UK need to cultivate more joint innovation partnerships if any industry stakeholders are to reap the financial benefits of such a proliferation in internet-connected devices.

Corey Bell, Datacentre, IBM, Ken King, News & Analysis, Open Compute, OpenPower, OpenStack, Power8, Vendor

OpenPower members reveal open source cloud tech mashups

OpenPower members have been busy creating open source server specs based on the Power8 architecture

OpenPower members have been busy creating open source server specs based on the Power8 architecture

OpenPower Foundation members pulled the curtain back on a number of open source cloud datacentre technologies including the first commercially available OpenPower-based server, and the first open server spec that combines OpenStack, Open Compute and OpenPower architectures.

Members of the open source hardware community, which IBM – the community’s founding organisation – said now numbers over 110 organisations, revealed a number of joint hardware initiatives falling under the OpenPower umbrella.

The Foundation announced the first OpenPower-based servers, developed by Chinese ODM Tyan (TYAN TN71-BP012), a variant of those IBM recently said it would add to its SoftLayer datacentres. The servers will be commercially available in the second half of 2015.

IBM and Wistron also revealed an OpenPower-based server using GPU and networking technology from Nvidia and Mellanox, respectively, which is being aimed at high performance compute workloads.

The foundation also announced the first server spec and motherboard mock-up combining the design concepts of the Facebook-led open source hardware project, Open Compute, with OpenStack and OpenPower technologies, an initiative Rackspace – among other service providers with a vested interest all three open source projects – was keen to bring to fruition.

“Collaborating across our open development communities will accelerate and broaden the raw potential of a fully open datacentre. We have a running start together and look forward to technical collaboration and events to engage our broader community,” said Corey Bell, chief executive officer of the Open Compute Project.

In an interview with BCN earlier this month Brad McCredie, IBM fellow and vice president of IBM Power Systems Development and president of the OpenPower Foundation said there is a big opportunity for Power to succeed in the market, and that IBM hopes to claim up to 30 per cent of the scale-out market in a matter of years.

Ken King, general manager OpenPower Alliances at IBM said: “OpenPower started off as an idea that immediately resonated with our technology partners to strengthen their scale out implementations like analytics.  Now, OpenPower is fundamental to every conversation IBM is having with clients — from HPC to scale out computing to cloud service providers.  Choice, freedom and better performance are strategic imperatives guiding customers around the globe, and OpenPOWER is leading the way.

connected car, Ford Motor Co., Internet of Things, Microsoft, MyFord, News & Analysis, Sanjay Ravi, Vendor

Ford deploys connected car platform on Microsoft’s cloud

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford Motor Company and Microsoft have teamed up to create the Ford Service Delivery Network, a cloud-based connected car platform for Ford vehicles the companies said would make it easier and faster to add more in-car digital services.

Microsoft said the service will provide Ford a global platform to enable over-the-air software updates and expand availability of MyFord and MyLincoln Mobile connected services, which ships with features like scheduled remote start, vehicle finder, and vehicle status (fuel or charge level, tire pressure).

The connected car platform will be hosted on Azure-based technology in a combination of Azure and Ford datacentres.

“As consumers shift toward more cloud-based services, the Ford Service Delivery Network architecture is a strategic approach to keep vehicles up-to-date and relevant throughout the vehicle ownership period by making it easy to add or evolve services. Microsoft Azure provides a global common cloud platform that allows Ford to deliver services worldwide and scale quickly to reach its broad customer base,” explained Sanjay Ravi, senior director of worldwide manufacturing at Microsoft.

“This means that Ford can send updates as they become available, ensuring customers will have the latest technology as it becomes available,” Ravi said.

Customer deployment will begin later this year, the companies said.

Microsoft is among a growing fleet of technology firms looking to capitalise on growth of the connected car market. According to global telecoms association the GSMA the size of the market will nearly triple over the next four years to $53bn.

Chris Moody, Glenn Finch, IBM, News & Analysis, Social media, Twitter, Vendor

IBM says over 100 enterprises creating Twitter-integrated cloud services

Twitter and IBM are jointly deliver solutions leveraging IBM's technology and consulting expertise with Twitter's vast data troves

Twitter and IBM are jointly deliver solutions leveraging IBM’s technology and consulting expertise with Twitter’s vast data troves

IBM said it has over 100 pilots in place that see the company working with enterprises in a range of verticals to create cloud-based services integrated with Twitter. The move comes months after the two companies inked a deal that would see Twitter make its data stream available to Big Blue’s clients.

IBM said the move enables social data-enabled application development via Bluemix, and the ability to combine predictive analytics and Watson services with Twitter data in compelling ways.

The company also said it has over 4,000 service professionals well-versed in Twitter data integration who are on hand to help enterprises integrate Twitter in their applications

“So much of business decision making relies on internal data such as sales, promotion and inventory. Now with Twitter data, customer feedback can easily be incorporated into decision making,” said Chris Moody, vice president of data strategy at Twitter. “IBM’s unique capabilities can help businesses leverage this valuable data, and we expect to see rapid demand in retail, telecommunications, finance and more.”

Glenn Finch, global leader of big data & analytics for IBM Global Business Services said: “The unprecedented partnership between IBM and Twitter helps businesses tap into billions of real-time conversations to make smarter decisions. Through unique expertise, curation and insights Twitter data is now able to inform decision-making far inside organizations”

IBM and Twitter originally announced the collaboration, which focuses on three distinct areas, in October last year, making IBM one of just a handful of companies to have full access to Twitter’s entire data stream.

Twitter offered up its data for developers to integrate into their big data applications built on IBM’s Watson Developer Cloud or Bluemix.

IBM and Twitter said they would jointly develop enterprise applications that integrate Twitter data with IBM’s customer engagement solutions (ExperienceOne) that help users map sentiment behaviour in real-time.

And the companies also planned to jointly develop solutions for specific industries such as banking, consumer products, retail, and travel and transportation, with IBM throwing its vast consulting resources behind the effort.

Delve, Internet of Things, IoT, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Office, Satya Nadella, Software as a service, Vendor

Microsoft reveals Office 2016, Skype for Business, Azure IoT services

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft revealed a slew of new cloud offerings and updates to its productivity offerings at the company’s annual Convergence conference this week, including a developer and enterprise preview of Office 2016, a re-branded Microsoft Lync (Skype for Business), and an Azure-based suite of Internet of Things services.

The company was keen to show off Office 2016, which will be available later this year and ship with a few new services – notably Office Delve, which uses machine learning algorithms to surface corporate Office 265 documents and files that are relevant to specific users in a cloud-based collaboration environment.

“You know how Facebook has a newsfeed? Think of this as your work newsfeed,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “It’s about enabling anyone in the organisation to find useful information without having corporate hierarchies get in the way.”

Microsoft also announced the general availability of PowerBI, it’s analytics and dashboarding platform, which will come with new connectors for Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Zuora, Acumatica and Twilio – with connections for other analytics platforms coming in the near future.

Microsoft Lync, the company’s enterprise collaboration and communications platform, has been re-branded to Skype for Business and been given a noticeable facelift.

The company also unified its Azure-based analytics and machine learning offerings into what Microsoft is calling the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite. The suite combines Azure Stream Analytics and Azure ML (machine learning) and is being aimed at developers creating real-time data services.

“Devices will come and go. But the most interesting thing is the data being collected,” Nadella said, adding that the rapid increase in the volume and velocity of data requires better and more unified tools for developers.

“We’re going to have something like 26 billion internet-connected devices and 44 zettabytes of data in the cloud by 2019,” Nadella said. “How do we make sure that the ability to have access to that data, the ability to act on the insight – those small patterns that, we as humans, recognise in data? The real power comes from our ability to act on those insights.”

Aamzon, AWS, Consulting, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Software AG, Terry Wise, Vendor, Wolfram Jost

Software AG migrates cloud portfolio to AWS

Software AG plans to deploy its software portfolio on the AWS platform and offer cloud migration services to enterprises

Software AG plans to deploy its software portfolio on the AWS platform and offer cloud migration services to enterprises

Software AG is moving forward with plans to offer cloud migration services to enterprise clients in a move that will see the company deploy its cloud software portfolio onto Amazon Web Services infrastructure.

The company said it has made a “strategic decision” to deploy its entire cloud portfolio on the AWS cloud over the course of 2015, with its Alfabet Cloud and ARIS Cloud suites already running on Amazon’s cloud platform.

t also plans to offer services that help enterprises determine whether and how to move to the cloud while considering ease of access, cost, regulatory, security and business processes transformation issues involved with such a move.

“Software AG is committed to increasing customer choice and ease of use wherever possible and transformation to the cloud is a significant step in this direction, delivering increased enterprise flexibility and adaptability”, said Wolfram Jost, chief technology officer at Software AG. “Not only does this help enterprises and government departments to design and implement individual cloud strategies and architectures, it does so from the cloud, delivering cost efficiencies from the start.”

The company said its focus for 2015 will be on “delivering strategic cloud adoption consulting services,” an area where a good number of boutique consultancies have emerged over the past few years.

Terry Wise, vice president of AWS also commented on the partnership: “Today, more than ever before, leading ISVs are looking for IT solutions that allow them to move quickly, reduce costs, and better serve their customers. Software AG is a leading example of an innovative software vendor going all in on AWS to leverage our secure, robust infrastructure platform, and expanding global footprint to build highly differentiated, value-added solutions for their customers.”