Cloud has been on a lot of boardroom agendas for quite a while, but typically those discussions have focused on using cloud around edge applications – expenses management, human capital management or perhaps customer relationship management. However, as the cloud cover extends to business-critical processes and core activities, five new considerations for enterprise cloud deployment have arisen.
There should be no difference whatsoever to end users when they are faced with an application via the cloud or on-premise. This begins with the user interface, which needs to be intuitive and critically consistent across desktops, tablets and mobile devices. Much of the success of the likes of Facebook is due to the fact that the social experience is not interrupted or disrupted by the cloud behind it and that the interface is so consistent. This invisibility also applies to performance – applications delivered via the cloud must be just a quick, if not faster, than on-premise alternatives.
IBM to Open New SoftLayer Data Center in London
IBM on Monday announced that SoftLayer, an IBM Company, will open a data center in London this month. It will be the latest of 15 new data centers that IBM plans to open as part of a $1.2 billion dollar global investment to strengthen and extend its cloud services in Europe and around the world.
The new facility will provide customers and their end users with SoftLayer services that meet in-country data residency requirements. It will also complement the existing SoftLayer Amsterdam data center and London network Point of Presence (PoP), both launched in 2012, to provide European customers redundancy options within the region.
Red Hat Offers Cloud Management Certification for Linux OpenStack Platform
Red Hat on Monday announced a new cloud management certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform as part of the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network, a commercial ecosystem for OpenStack. Red Hat will enable cloud management solutions from partners to interoperate with and manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. The certification offers customers confidence that their OpenStack-based clouds and management solutions have been fully tested together and are supported jointly by Red Hat and the participating companies.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Ease Application Access in the Cloud
“As the move to the cloud started, we stayed ahead of that by providing security solutions to our enterprise customers, financial customers, and now a whole new range of customers, which are application developers,” explained John Gunn, VP of Corporate Communications for VASCO Data Security, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 14th International Cloud Expo®, held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4–6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Two Digital Transformation Time Bombs
Disruptive innovation is all very fine and good, but legacy technology and disruption don’t mix. That old gear is just too brittle and important to mess with, right? That’s when it hits you: it’s time to go rogue.
Adjectives like “swashbuckling” and “romantic” rarely if ever apply to enterprise technology, so the fact that “rogue” IT is now a Thing should give one pause. Errol Flynn swooping down from a yardarm, disarming smile on his too-handsome face? Hardly the image you’d expect bringing your iPhone to work would elicit.
Turing or Touring Machines – Intelligent Cars and the IoT
The Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) recently hosted the The Value of Things (VoT): MassTLC IoT Conference in Waltham, Massachusetts. There was surprisingly little disagreement between the various panelists on the future of the Internet of Things (IoT), but probably not in the way you might expect. Sure everyone was in agreement about the billions of devices and trillions of dollars in market growth; however, something else was afoot. Nearly all the panelists were in agreement that the free-for-all model of the consumer Internet and mobile markets would not repeat itself. With IoT, the sheer number of devices and their pervasiveness has already put governments and regulators around the world on notice. Here’s the consensus: design your system to support an opt-in model with high security and concerns for privacy otherwise, within the next 5 years, you will be shut-out.
Components, features and use cases for XenDesktop 7.5
Our very own Randy Becker recently wrote a guest post for Tech Target entitled “Components, features and use cases for XenDesktop 7.5.” In the post, Randy gives a detailed overview of XenDesktop 7.5 to give readers a better understanding of how to deploy it. Randy also provides use cases for when it makes sense to use XenDesktop 7.5. Check out the article on techtarget.com!
If you’re looking to hear more from Randy around Citrix technologies, he gives a nice summary of news and announcements that came out of Citrix Synergy 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2).
Why data centre moves are an opportunity for service providers
Ian Redpath, Principal Analyst, Network Infrastructure
ian.redpath@ovum.com
Internet content providers, stock exchanges, banks, communications service providers (CSPs), and others are investing billions of dollars to build data centre space. The proliferation of data centres in new geographic locations is fundamentally changing network demands and driving larger volumes of traffic. Data centres (DCs) with thousands of servers will require terabits of optical transport. CSPs have an opportunity to serve these new high-capacity transport network demands.
Data centre headlines and new connectivity required
Data centre investment announcements have been impressive over the past few years. Recent expansion activities include the following:
- Google invested €450m for a DC in Hamina, Finland, 150km from Helsinki
- ATT built a $200m DC in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, 50km from Charlotte
- IBM invested $1.2bn in 15 DCs, including one in Barrie, Ontario, 100km from Toronto
- NYSE built a 400,000-square-foot DC in Mahwah …
Couchbase secures $60m in funding, toots own horn with benchmark figures
It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks for Couchbase. Not only has the NoSQL database provider rounded up $60 million (£35.2m) in series E funding, but has also released benchmark figures which significantly outperform the competition, including MongoDB and DataStax.
The latest round of funding featured two new investors, WestSummit and Accel Growth Fund, along with existing venture capital investors, to bring overall figures to $115m (£67.6m).
It’s not often that companies get to the series E funding stage. As Marc Andreessen cited earlier this month, it’s generally accepted among venture capitalists that series A funding is to build the product and get first beta customers, while series B funding is to build the business around the product and get to revenue.
Noted VC Fred Wilson wrote a blog post expanding on this, saying series C funding was to get to profitability so cash …
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Private vs Public Cloud
“We just completed the roll out of our first public and private cloud offerings, which are a combination of public, hybrid, and private cloud,” stated Erik Levitt, CEO of Open Data Centers, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 14th International Cloud Expo®, held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4–6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.