Leysin American School is an exclusive, private boarding school located in Leysin, Switzerland. Leysin selected an OpenStack-powered, private cloud as a service to manage multiple applications and provide development environments for students across the institution.
Seeking to meet rigid data sovereignty and data integrity requirements while offering flexible, on-demand cloud resources to users, Leysin identified OpenStack as the clear choice to round out the school’s cloud strategy. Additionally, the school sought a partner to provide OpenStack infrastructure deployment and operations expertise. They ultimately selected Blue Box’s Private Cloud as a Service, powered by OpenStack, leveraging Blue Box’s Zurich, Switzerland data center.

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The cloud is one of those technology trends that seems to be perpetually on the cusp of becoming ubiquitous. But if recent analyst reports are any indication, cloud’s breakthrough moment is imminent. Late last year, Gartner predicted that in 2016, the bulk of new IT spend would shift to the public cloud, and that by the end of 2017, nearly half of all enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments.
But if cloud has been around for so long, why will it take so long for cloud to become the dominant source of IT spend?

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Google has offered an olive branch to eligible startups, promising them $100,000 (£61,500) in Cloud Platform credits to get their companies off the ground.

The initiative, with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin name of ‘Google Cloud Platform for Startups’, was announced at the Google for Entrepreneurs Global Partner Summit and gives companies access to the search giant’s support team 24/7, as well as access to the firm’s technical solutions team.

“This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy,” wrote developer relations director Julie Pearl in a blog post. “We want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure. Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google.”

Not just anyone can chance their arm for Google’s bucks, however: eligible companies have to be part of an approved Accelerator, Incubator or VC fund, have less than $5m in funding, have less than $500,000 in annual revenue, and not have had any previous Cloud Platform credits.

Google isn’t alone in providing support to startups, however. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a similar initiative in place called Portfolio Package, while Rackspace pledged £250,000 for the same cause under the Rackspace Startups Programme. It’s with Amazon in mind that Google appears to have taken this philanthropic leap.

Google recently hired former Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens to run its cloud platforms division

The search giant recently hired former Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens to run its cloud platforms division. Stevens unexpectedly quit Red Hat at the end of last month, leading commentators to muse about his influence running Google’s cloudy operations going forward.

Reaction to the news was generally positive. Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, seemingly drew inspiration from the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch for his reply:

Google offering startups $100K in cloud credits. When we started out we had to build our servers, and walk to the office up hill both ways.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) September 12, 2014

“It has been amazing to watch Snapchat send over 700 million photos and videos a day, and Khan Academy teach millions of students,” Pearl added. “We look forward to helping the next generation of startups launch great products.”

You can find out more about the Google Cloud Platform for Startups here.

Read more: Harnessing the power of Google’s cloud: Google BigQuery Analytics book extract

All too many discussions about DevOps conclude that the solution is an all-purpose player: developer and operations guru, complete with pager for round-the-clock duty. For most organizations that is not the way forward. In his session at DevOps Summit, Bart Copeland, President & CEO of ActiveState Software, will discuss how to achieve the agility and speed of end-to-end automation without requiring an organization stocked with Supermen and Superwomen.

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It’s the Great Convergence! That is, the convergence of the IoT and WebRTC. “From telemedicine to smart cars, digital homes and industrial monitoring, the explosive growth of IoT has created exciting new business opportunities for WebRTC, real time calls and messaging,” says Ivelin Ivanov, CEO and Co-Founder of Telestar. Ivelin will be one of the featured speakers at our @WebRTCSummit, to be held Nov 4-5 as part of the overall @CloudExpo @ThingsExpo conference and exhibition Nov 4-6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA.

In his session, Ivelin promises to share “some of the new revenue sources that IoT created for Restcomm – the open source telephony platform from Telestax.”

Unmistaken Identity
@WebRTCSummit Conference Chair Peter Dunkley, based in the UK at Acision, says “we are reaching the end of the beginning with WebRTC and real systems using this technology have begun to appear. One challenge that faces every WebRTC deployment–in some form or another–is identity management.”

“For example,” he says, “if you have an existing service – possibly built on a variety of different PaaS/SaaS offerings – and you want to add real-time communications you are faced with a challenge relating to user management, authentication, authorization, and validation. Service providers will want to use their existing identities, but these will have credentials already that are (hopefully) irreversibly encoded.”

Peter will look at how this identity problem can be solved and discuss ways to use existing web identities for real-time communication in his session.

Can You Hear Me Now?
Representing another dimension of convergence, Keith McFarlane of LiveOps asks, “Can call centers hang up the phones for good?”

His session will focus on how Intuitive Solutions did just that. “WebRTC enabled this contact center provider to eliminate antiquated telephony and desktop phone infrastructure with a pure web-based solution, allowing them to expand beyond brick-and-mortar confines to a home-based agent model,” he says.

“Since the initial buzz of WebRTC, the ability to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat and P2P file sharing without plugins has been touted as a potential game changer for many industries,” McFarlane notes. “What are the parameters around this technology and its placement? Is it secure enough for prime time? Will WebRTC magnify OTT threat for telcos? Is WebRTC really that big of a deal for consumers?”

Clear Conference Calls? Whaaat?
The convergence also implies collaboration—lots of collaboration—and speaker Alan Kraemer of Technology Marketing notes that “while great strides have been made relative to the video aspects of remote collaboration, audio technology has basically stagnated. Typically all audio is mixed to a single monaural stream and emanates from a single point, such as a speakerphone or a speaker associated with a video monitor.”

Alan will have a very cool demo of “spatial conferencing” with WebRTC, in which confernce-call attendees can pinpoint the locations of all participants, thereby eliminating much of the mass confusion found in these calls.

“The concept of a small speaker unit placed in front of the conference participant that can create a full three dimensional sound field with user interaction supporting free placement of individual conference participants anywhere within that field is introduced,” he says. “This is integrated with WebRTC to create a seemless interactive video or teleconference experience that, from an acoustic standpoint, closely resembles the experience of a live meeting in a conference room.”

The P2P Shift
Yet another aspect of WebRTC convergence and where it’s going will be presented by Erik Lagerway of Hookflash. “P2P RTC will impact the landscape of communications, shifting from traditional telephony style communications models to OTT (Over-The-Top) cloud assisted & PaaS (Platform as a Service) communication services,” he says.
“The P2P shift will impact many areas of our lives, from mobile communication, human interactive web services, RTC and telephony infrastructure, user federation, security and privacy implications, business costs, and scalability. This presentation will walk through the shifting landscape of traditional telephone and voice services to the modern P2P RTC era of OTT cloud assisted services.”

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Code Halos – aka “digital fingerprints” – are the key organizing principle to understand a) how dumb things become smart and b) how to monetize this dynamic.
In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Ben Pring, Co-Director (AVP), Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant Technology Solutions, will outline research, analysis and recommendations from his recently published book on this phenomena on the way leading edge organizations like GE and Disney are unlocking the IoT opportunity and what steps your organization should be taking to position itself for the next platform of digital competition.

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Isaac Saldana is co-founder and president of SendGrid. The roots of the company were born of his frustration in getting emails delivered through apps he was building, he tells us. So he started a company with the snappy name SMTPAPI.com, which as one might expect, featured an SMTP API. He applied and was accepted to the Techstars program, which calls itself the “#1 startup accelerator in the world” and is based in Boulder, CO. Techstars receive mentorship and $118,000 in funding in exchange for a 7-10% share in their company.

After completing the Techstars program in July 2009, Isaac got seed funding for the re-named company SendGrid in November of that year and Series A funding in April 2010. He also met Jim Franklin through Techstars co-founder Brad Feld, and Franklin now serves as SendGrid’s CEO.

Once briefed on this history, we had a couple of other questions for him:

Cloud Computing Journal: So can you give us an idea of the scale of the services SendGrid provides today?

Isaac Saldana: Delivering wanted email to the inbox is increasingly complex for businesses who rely on it as a primary vehicle to grow and retain their customer base. SendGrid is the global leader in providing technology solutions that dramatically increase the deliverability of application-generated and customer engagement email.

SendGrid has built a trusted, globally-distributed cloud platform that successfully delivers over 13 billion emails each month. To date, the company has sent over 250 billion emails, representing 2% of global non-spam email traffic.

CCJ: And who is your customer base?

Isaac: SendGrid’s customer base includes best-of-breed Internet and mobile-based applications such as Pinterest, Airbnb, Pandora, Hubspot, Spotify, Uber, Linkedin and FourSquare as well as more traditional enterprises.

SendGrid’s customers also include a large community of developers who build cloud-based applications that leverage our platform. In total, SendGrid has had over 175,000 customers.

CCJ: How do you see email evolving in an era of mobile devices?

Isaac: According to data from the U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report from Movable Ink, 65 percent of email is now being accessed via mobile devices in the US.

As a result, email is becoming an important tool for customer engagement via mobile devices.

But, while email opens on mobile devices have gone up, the time spent reading emails has decreases and as such the content, frequency and messages in email must be customized and optimized for mobile. SendGrid has several recommendations has for optimizing an email campaign on a mobile device and has conducted its own recent study in the US and UK about which devices are being used to open email.

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In 2013, there was increasing demand for cloud computing, with enterprise after enterprise committing to a rapid and vigorous redeployment of resources toward cloud-based solutions. Gigaom Research conducted surveys of both mainstream and leading-edge users in the second quarter of 2014 and results suggest that another wave of cloud technology investment is anticipated over the next 1-2 years.
In Gigaom’s analysis of the survey, there were evident key drivers and inhibitors for cloud adoption, as well as workload migration patterns.

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By Giorgio Bonuccelli, Marketing Director

Cloud computing and virtualization technologies have undoubtedly brought about a revolution in the IT world in the past decade. With the increase in BYOD environments, a work-from-home culture and the drive for resource optimization, desktop virtualization and remote application delivery have been welcome solutions for modern businesses of all sizes – often being their first foray into cloud computing.

IT analysts had predicted that 2012 would be the ‘year of VDI’ (virtual desktop infrastructure). The same forecast was made for 2013, and again for 2014. However, while desktop virtualization is perceived as a mature market, it is far from being so – VDI penetration is still less than 2% of all desktops worldwide. VDI has been touted as the short cut to cloud computing, so what has put a sea of traffic cones in the way?

Desktop virtualization trends

Despite all the discussions and predictions, it is surprising to discover that the penetration of desktop virtualization is not as extensive as expected. Most companies are not using VDI, and those that are use it for only a small part of their business.

According to DataCore’s State of Virtualization survey in March 2013, the percentage of organizations that haven’t implemented some desktop virtualization is 55%, while only 11% have virtualized up to a quarter of their desktops. According to Gartner, VDI penetration was around 1.5% before 2012 and this percentage is expected to grow to 8-15% by 2015. Clearly, these statistics highlight a major shortfall and potential in the market.

To reap the rewards of desktop virtualization, organizations need to understand how this technology works and the benefits it offers to businesses.

Benefits of desktop virtualization

Coupled with application virtualization and Windows user virtualization, desktop virtualization offers centralized desktop management. Each desktop is virtualized and offered in an isolated state, resulting in highly secure networks.

Employees moving between work locations can access the same work environment, data and applications. If a user loses a device, he can easily connect to the server from another device as all components are readily available at login. All data are saved in the data center, so lost or stolen devices will have little effect on the organization’s data integrity (assuming that they are secured correctly). Recovery from any disaster is easily achievable.

Potential barriers for desktop virtualization

With optimized resources, lower TCO (total cost of ownership) and highly scalable desktop solutions, desktop virtualization is a very attractive approach to IT. As we have seen, few organizations have implemented this technology widely, so what are the issues that are acting as potential barriers?

Cost / Return on investment (ROI)

It is commonly thought that desktop virtualization reduces infrastructure costs when compared to other network solutions. However, there are certain caveats attached. The costs saved on desktop hardware and infrastructure are balanced by the more expensive server infrastructure required, including storage and network solutions. The network must be always on, and graphically rich applications demand more bandwidth and low latency to provide a rich user experience – all of which adds to the infrastructure cost. The solution is to effectively plan the VDI environment so that more desktops are delivered and resources are optimized.

Uninterrupted network connection

Secondly, the VDI environment requires an always-on network connection. As desktops, application and data are delivered from a centralized server, any network issues deny access to company resources. For this reason, organizations have to provide highly reliable network solutions with contingencies for possible outages.

Complexity

Compared to an RDP (remote desktop protocol) network, a VDI deployment is a complex procedure. It has to be well-planned and effectively implemented. There are several aspects to consider, such as the components that are to be virtualized, the types of users that require virtualization, and the total ROI. Moreover, adequate bandwidth and low latency must be managed, based on the organization’s network requirements.

How can these barriers be overcome effectively to improve ROI?

Looking at present desktop virtualization trends, many organizations are obviously unable to reap the full potential of desktop virtualization. However, it is important to understand that desktop virtualization is designed with a specific purpose: to deliver a rich user experience with an easy and scalable desktop management environment, and to deliver medium/long term ROI.

Desktop virtualization adds value to businesses in a number of ways

ROI – the investment in server hardware for desktop virtualization results in a customized user experience and better (and more reliable) management of desktops from a centralized location.

Efficiency – administrators can deliver virtual applications to virtual machines (VMs) on the go.

Offline virtualization – running applications inside a VM means that you can securely access corporate information; additionally, you can work offline when the network connection is not available and synchronize later.

VDI with 2X Remote Application Server

2X Remote Application Server (2X RAS) allows companies to test and experiment with the advantages of VDI. 2X RAS allows you to deliver remote desktop and virtual desktop services to your network through the same console. One of the the reasons discouraging companies from fully embracing VDI is the initial cost, with CEOs and CIOs reluctant to trash previous investment to migrate to a new paradigm. With 2X RAS you can easily implement VDI in specific areas of your business, as it is possible to rely on different hypervisors at the same time. For example, is possible to implement VDI side by side with remote desktops and virtual applications. IT administrators can migrate part of the infrastructure and perform stress testing on the network, with immediate gains in flexibility through the hybrid cloud infrastructure.

2X RAS easily delivers Windows applications hosted on hypervisors and Windows remote desktop servers to anyone anywhere, using any type of operating system, computer or mobile device. By hosting applications in the cloud, businesses benefit from reduced administrative overheads and less helpdesk support, with easy control over access to applications, and assurance that all users are using the latest and most secure versions of applications.

Conclusion

Not all desktop virtualization systems are equal. Likewise, storage solutions differ too. What works well for one organization cannot be assumed to be the ideal fit for a second. A comprehensive desktop virtualization plan would involve factors like IT requirements, infrastructure, user experience and application workload.

With the evolution of software delivery models, a company’s CIO now has multiple options to choose from. Desktop virtualization is sure to yield good ROI in the long run, notwithstanding its cost and complexity. With proper planning, complexity can be replaced with ease of management and highly scalable, agile, and cost-effective virtualization solutions for businesses of all sizes – effectively clearing the road up ahead for your 21st century corporate network.

Eucalyptus is known in the cloud arena as being an open source offering that gives private cloud engineers the tools they need work seamlessly with Amazon Web Services APIs. Eucalyptus helps organizations pool together their resources such as compute, network and storage which in turn gives end users the ability to tap into on-demand resources within hybrid and private clouds.

It is being reported that HP has purchased Eucalyptus for an undisclosed amount. HP has largely shied away from mergers and acquisitions considering their last notable acquisition was quite the flop. HP once ponied up $11 billion for Autonomy, which proved to be a catastrophe according to some analysts. HP’s acquisition of Eucalyptus seems much more methodical than the Autonomy deal and the PC giant looks to stretch further into cloud by picking up one of the marquis names in hybrid and private cloud.

“We want to be able to go to those customers and say, ‘When you go with HP Helion, we give you that level of choice.’ We’re not going to try to have you bet just on our public cloud,” says Bill Hilf, SVP at HP Cloud.

Many analysts are describing this deal as having multiple benefits for HP. Not only can they increase the profile of their private cloud offerings , the HP team gains valuable experience by onboarding all of the talent of the Eucalyptus team. Marten Mickos, the CEO of Eucalyptus, will transition into a Vice President and General Manager role reporting directly to HP CEO Meg Whitman. Mickos is notable for his role in the development of MySQL, which was previously purchased by Sun Microsystems for nearly $1 billion.

Eucalyptus, which was founded in 2007, will retain is Goleta, CA office while operating under the HP cloud brand. Before the acquisition, Eucalyptus was awarded over $55 million in funding from venture capital. Although dollar figures have not been announced, many speculate that the purchase of Eucalyptus was at least a 9 figure deal.

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