The 4th International DevOps Summit, co-located with16th International Cloud Expo – being held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY – announces that its Call for Papers is now open.
Born out of proven success in agile development, cloud computing, and process automation, DevOps is a macro trend you cannot afford to miss. From showcase success stories from early adopters and web-scale businesses, DevOps is expanding to organizations of all sizes, including the world’s largest enterprises – and delivering real results. Among the proven benefits, DevOps is correlated with 20% faster time-to-market, 22% improvement in quality, and 18% reduction in dev and ops costs, according to research firm Vanson-Bourne. It is changing the way IT works, how businesses interact with customers, and how organizations are buying, building, and delivering software.

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Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos continues to be a profound analyst as well as industry executive, especially when he talks about beer and cloud computing. He’ll be speaking at the upcoming @CloudExpo in November in Santa Clara.

We asked him a few questions about the state of cloud computing today, and here’s what he had to say:

Cloud Computing Journal: You’ve said public and private cloud are “two dimensions of the same world.” Are you in essence saying “all the world’s a hybrid?”

Marten Mickos: I am not saying that all the world is or will be hybrid. I am saying that most application workloads will not know whether they run on public or private clouds. The workload will see uniform APIs with uniform behavior.

Perhaps beer could serve as an analogy. You have beer on tap (public cloud) and beer in a bottle (private cloud). If you pour beer into glasses, most people won’t know the difference. Even if they know, they won’t mind the difference, as long as they get cold beer.

You can say that draught beer and bottled beer are two dimensions of the same thing. The most discerning consumers will care a lot. But many will be happy with just a glass of cold beer. As the one providing beer, you must have both draught and bottled. If one delivery fails, you always have the other. And some customers are very particular on that topic.

It’s the same with cloud.

CCJ: Yes, I see. I think we can all drink that in.

Now, what are the challenges for IT execs and managers who find themselves in not only a hybrid environment, but a multi-cloud environment? That is, maybe AWS here, GCE there, with Eucalyptus in a private cloud somewhere else? It seems this can happen when one company is acquired by another.

Marten: Multi-cloud environments are tricky, because they’re so much is different. If you have AWS, GCE and Azure in use in your company, you will essentially need three different teams to work with those clouds. And you won’t be able to move workloads easily between them.

It’s conceptually not unlike the situation where you have Windows laptops, Linux laptops and MacBooks in use in a corporation. People and workloads will gravitate towards one of those camps, with little exchange of thoughts or innovation between the groups.

If you have AWS and Euca, however, you just need one set of training and one set of skill and design paradigms. You can use the same tools on both environments. And applications can run on either, irrespective of which environment (AWS or Euca) they were originally developed for.

CCJ: And now an evergreen we always need to ask: what’s your view of OpenStack and Apache CloudStack these days?

Marten: CloudStack is wonderful technology that I have always respected.

OpenStack is hugely popular, still struggling to get its design cleaned up and the code hardened. I wrote about OpenStack in two blog postings:

OpenStack love by Eucalyptus

OpenStack critical analysis

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In this episode Keith Mayer and myself kick off a special 6 part series on “Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud.” Tune in for Part 1 where they discuss the importance of planning for your organization’s move to Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure.

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In this part of the Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud, we are focusing on of the great solutions we introduced with Windows Server 2012 and improved in Window Server 2012 R2, Storage Spaces.
In Windows Server 2012 Storage became a first class citizen, from storage deduplication to SMB 3.0 Windows became a great choice to be the storage platform in many organizations. In many organizations storage will represent a huge part of the IT budget. One of the key features, to help reduce the cost of storage, is the inclusion of Storage Spaces.

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Can call centers hang up the phones for good? Intuitive Solutions did. 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. It also ensured scalability and better service for customers, including MUY! Companies, one of the country’s largest franchise restaurant companies with 232 Pizza Hut locations. This is one example of WebRTC adoption today, but the potential is limitless when powered by IoT. Attendees will learn real-world benefits of WebRTC and explore future possibilities, as WebRTC and IoT intersect to improve customer service.

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Eduserv, the not for profit public sector cloud provider, has won a contract with Bristol City Council worth an estimated £1.5m to migrate its IT infrastructure to the cloud.

The contract sees Eduserv take over the day to day running of the council’s IT, with future IT services being procured in a much more flexible manner, ensuring the council doesn’t own much of its ICT.

Bristol City Council is planning on cutting about £90m in IT costs, as local governments continue to move their resources to the cloud.

“Like every council, we are faced with the challenge of delivering high quality services while reducing our costs by 30%”, said Steven Pendleton, service manager of commissioning and supplier relationship management at Bristol City Council.

He added: “The ICT market is changing rapidly, becoming much more commoditised and consumer led, where significant economies of scale are now possible.

“Moving our IT estate to the cloud will give us a more flexible cost-effective resource which can adapt to our changing needs.”

With recent news that the Digital Marketplace, the updated one stop shop for government cloud services, is close to being prepared, the portents look good according to Eduserv, a long recognised G-Cloud vendor.

Andy Powell, head of product marketing at Eduserv, told CloudTech at the time his initial reaction to the new service, which will replace the CloudStore by the end of September, was that it had “been streamlined quite nicely”, yet added the Bath-based firm was still in a “wait and see” position.

“It’s good to see consolidation across the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks,” he added.

As a cloud vendor, you might find that winning a new customer can evoke the same feelings of warmth and pride that accompany the arrival of a new member of the family. In many respects, the two can be similar; you have the same feelings of responsibility and obligation that you get with the arrival of a new child, and the same desire to attend to their needs. But should the paternalistic (or even maternalistic) tendencies end there?

Absolutely not! For too many cloud vendors, the cutting of the proverbial umbilical cord is the signal for a parting of ways, with many customers left to their own devices to make their own way through their cloud journey. In fact, for the majority, the next time they will hear from their cloud vendor of choice after the initial sale has been agreed is when their contract comes up for renewal again. From the customer’s perspective, taking this call after such a prolonged period of non-communication can like an estranged parent they haven’t heard from in years trying to get in touch.

It’s clear that instead of being abandoned in this way, customer relationships are something that need to be cultivated over a number of years, and customer lifecycle management (CLM) is becoming increasingly important. With fixed-term contracts becoming a rarity, and more and more customers turning to SaaS, subscription-based models, customer churn is higher. All of which makes it vital to work with your customers in a way that engenders loyalty.

Here are my three tips to ‘raising’ cloud customers to be happy and healthy members of society, who will, perhaps more importantly, return every month to renew their subscriptions!

1. Education, education, education

Any new parent will tell you that it’s important to give your new arrival the right level of attention and, above all, education. The same is true for new customers. Be prepared to invest time and effort into building trust, by conducting regular follow-ups, and offering advice as to how customers can make the best use of your tools. Use of data analytics can be a great way of achieving this, and can give you the insight you need to be able to educate your customer as to what will work best for them.

2. Prepare yourself for the long haul

Developing any relationship, let alone one between a parent and a child, isn’t a short-term fix, and the same is true when it comes to cloud customers. There’s no point in only building a relationship for the short-term, and it’s important to check in regularly with your customers to find out what they need, and how you can help throughout your relationship with them. Only by nurturing the relationship over a long period of time will you be able to build the trust and confidence required to ensure loyalty.

3. Be prepared to take a step back

There comes a time with any child when the time comes for the parent to take a step back and leave it to its own devices. Just as smothering your offspring is not a healthy route for parents to take, so cloud vendors must be prepared to let go, when necessary and let their customers stand on their own two feet. Taking this step back, and allowing yourself to be more of a strategic partner is a long-term sign that you have built a successful relationship, and a sure sign that your customer values the relationship that you have worked so hard to cultivate.

Following these simple steps can play a significant role in improving the sucesss of your organisation. Building any kind of meaningful, long-term relationship can be a thankless task at the best of times, but in the new age of the subscription economy, it’s a philosophy that will reap its own rewards. Indeed, studies have shown that proper management of the CLM, combined with these tips, can increase the level of recurring cloud revenue by at least 15 per cent.

If you can use the tools you have at your disposal to ensure regular subscription renewals, then you’ll unlock the secret to building long-term customer engagement and loyalty. Just don’t expect to receive a card on Mother’s or Father’s Day!

Encrypting cloud storage is now in the mainstream, the accepted best practice and a business imperative. Across the world and all industries, enterprises need to encrypt cloud data to stay compliant, safe and competitive.
There are several offerings of encrypted cloud storage for enterprises. And yet, many enterprises are still doing it wrong.
Which of these pitfalls has your company fallen into?

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In a hybrid world where will have some private-cloud solutions and multiple public clouds, the challenge is to have the right level of governance, and to be in a position to move the workloads, and adjust the workloads with the needs.
The old model of just being an outsourcer or on-premises service provider is dead for many IT solutions providers. Instead, we’re all now in a hybrid world where will have some private-cloud solutions and multiple public clouds. The challenge is to have the right level of governance, and to be in a position to move the workloads, and adjust the workloads with the needs.

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