About 15 years ago I gave an application performance presentation to some storage guys. Since I was a database jock at the time and didn’t “speak” I/O very well, I had to try a different approach. Rather than speaking over their heads in my own language, or faking it using their language, I tried to pick something neither of us were experts in – microeconomics. What’s interesting is that that presentation became my modus operandi for tuning systems. As I went from customer to customer, each with a different application or architecture, I needed a normalized approach so I didn’t get lost in the technology.
Fogs, Logs, and Cogs By @JamesKobielus | @ThingsExpo [#IoT #BigData]
The Internet of Things (IoT) is causing data centers to become radically decentralized and atomized within a new paradigm known as “fog computing.” To support IoT applications, such as connected cars and smart grids, data centers’ core functions will be decentralized out to the network’s edges and endpoints (aka “fogs”). As this trend takes hold, Big Data analytics platforms will focus on high-volume log analysis (aka “logs”) and rely heavily on cognitive-computing algorithms (aka “cogs”) to make sense of it all.
New York Times to Exhibit at @CloudExpo New York [#Cloud]
SYS-CON Events announced today that On the Avenue Marketing Group, a sales and marketing firm that utilizes events to market and sell products to consumers, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
On the Avenue Marketing Group (OTA) is a sales and marketing firm that utilizes events to market and sell products to consumers. On behalf of our clients, we attend thousands of fairs, festivals, expos, concerts, conferences, and sporting events annually, helping them reach millions of individuals nationwide.
An Unparalleled Opportunity By @AriaSystemsInc | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
How do you surge ahead of the competitors and completely shake up the game? What determines who becomes the next Netflix, Apple, or Salesforce of your industry? It all comes down to identifying the opportunity to grow revenue and gain the competitive advantage. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel – just reinvent how you package and sell your products and services.
Consider the brands above – each company is not the sole provider, or even the inventor, of the products and services they sell. A convergence of cloud computing technologies, mobility, and changing consumer preferences created the opportunity for brands to take the lead by repackaging products and services already sold in the marketplace.
Smart Labels Will Power the Internet of Things By @MadGreek65 | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
When people think of IoT technology they usually think of silicon based sensors made by semiconductor companies.
These types of sensors can be found tracking data on airplane engines, wind turbines, medical devices, and many more internet connected devices.
The problem with silicon based sensors is that they are not feasible for cost sensitive items or items in small or bendable packaging where embedding sensors just won’t work.
To solve this problem, a company called ThinFilm has created printed electronics.
Rackspace posts solid financial results, continues to bang drum for managed cloud services
Picture credit: Scott Beale/Flickr
Rackspace has announced solid fourth quarter financial results, with adjusted EBIDTA at $165m, up 25% year on year, and net revenue up 16.4% from Q413.
Net income for the fourth quarter was $36.9m, up 5.1% year on year, while return on capital in the quarter went up to 15.5% from 9.6% in 2013.
The company’s primary USP in 2014 was its Managed Cloud portfolio, launched in July, aiming to give flexibility on managed services but with DIY-styled pricing. Not surprisingly the managed cloud ethos is one CEO Taylor Rhodes feels as extremely important to the company going forward.
“The cloud market is bifurcating into two distinct categories – unmanaged cloud and managed cloud,” he told analysts according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “Rackspace has emerged as the company best positioned to dominate the managed cloud segment of the market.
“We’re now competing primarily against large telecom companies and legacy providers of IT hardware and services, most of whom are struggling to adapt to the demands of the cloud era,” he added.
Rhodes sees this as a clear gap in the market for Rackspace. “We intend to dominate this part of the cloud market,” he said. “Going into 2015 we look forward to demonstrating to customers and investors the success of our strategy and our position as the world’s number one managed cloud company.”
It’s been, all told, an interesting year for Rackspace. The company was shocked by the retirement of CEO Lanham Napier in February 2014, citing Rackspace’s strength in OpenStack and hybrid cloud as good reasons to step aside. In September the company announced Rhodes as its new CEO, as well as confirming it was continuing with its standalone trajectory and dismissing any merger and acquisition talk.
Even though the company’s press material argued it had taken this decision of its own free will, not everybody was convinced, with Forbes columnist Ben Kepes writing that he was “worried…before this potential sellout was announced, and nothing seen since has changed [his] perspective.”
The company’s branding is an interesting point. Even though it’s full steam ahead for managed cloud, Rackspace continues to be lumped in with the likes of Amazon, IBM and Google for cloud infrastructure – and comes off a fairly poor relation. Yet the company insists this is not the company’s strength. Nigel Beighton, VP technology, told CloudTech in July it was a ‘good marketing challenge’.
“I’m forever explaining the difference to people and I think I still will be going forward, just because you’ve got some very strong players in the market,” he said.
Google Cloud Platform goes down for two hours after connectivity issue
(c)iStock.com/gmutlu
Google has resolved an issue with Google Compute Engine whereby its platform went down for two hours.
The network issue where instances in ‘multiple zones’ lost connectivity first began at 2259 US Pacific time (0659 GMT), with Google first issuing an update on 2346.
“The problem with network connectivity in Google Compute Engine is resolved as of shortly after 0100 US/Pacific,” a Google status page explained. “We are sorry for any issues this may have caused to you or your users and thank you for your patience and continued support.
“Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are constantly working to improve the reliability of our systems,” it added.
Google has traditionally been one of the more reliable public cloud providers. According to CloudHarmony’s metrics for 2014, Compute Engine suffered 66 outages last year for a 99.982% SLA. Google’s Cloud DNS had a 100% record, with Cloud Storage suffering eight outages and App Engine just one outage.
Yet this downtime is particularly ironic given the search giant launched PerfKit earlier in February, an open source cloud benchmarking tool which aims to be a “living benchmark framework, designed to evolve as cloud technology changes.” It was particularly interesting as to how Google would measure up against its opponents.
Earlier this year Google also announced Cloud Monitoring, a service which tracks usage and uptime for Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services customers, as well as Cloud Trace, which allows developers to create reports on their app’s performance by finding traces of slow requests.
Did you suffer any issues with the outage?
Don’t Automate What You Don’t Understand By @MadGreek65 | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
Our guest on the podcast this week is Alan Sharp-Paul, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ScriptRock.We discuss a blog post by Alan entitled “You’re Doing DevOps Wrong. Automation in the Enterprise” that introduces the common misconception that automation is the first step that needs to be taken in your DevOps initiative. Listen in to learn what you should be doing before you automate.
11 Common DevOps Bottlenecks By @MadGreek65 | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
After performing this analysis at a number of Fortune 500 companies and by collaborating with my peers in this space, I have compiled a list of 11 bottlenecks that have the biggest impact on the flow of work.
IoT and Big Data are Transforming the Energy Industry By @MadGreek65 | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
I keep coming across amazing use cases for IoT that radically change, enhance, or transforms industries. This week’s use case focuses on renewable energies like wind and solar power. I had the privilege of talking to Guido Jouret, president of the Digital Innovation Center at Envision Energy. Envision Energy is the maker of the Smart Wind Farm™ System which collects data from various sensors to aid in preventative maintenance of wind turbines and solar panels, optimizes the efficiency of energy production, and accurately and timely forecasts energy output.