As technology evolves, business models evolve. The corner grocery store gave way to the emporium, which became the supermarket. Now we order groceries online with a credit card, and a truck turns up with the goods. Hansom cabriolets became taxis and limos, and now we have Uber. At one time, people would communicate at a distance through pigeons and human messengers. Then we created postal services, then email, and now a plethora of social networks. We still eat food, move around and communicate, but we do it all in different contexts. None of this contextual change would be economically or technically possible without the information systems to manage the business relationships, track transactions and settle accounts.
Now, think about your phone and Internet access arrangements. For most people, this means a subscription with one big company, a contractual commitment, a monthly payment and perhaps some usage charges. Big companies build and own the infrastructure; they may subcontract work to other companies, but the carrier “owns” the customer relationships. It was pretty much like that 50 years ago.
A Hybrid Future: Blending Public and Private Clouds
“Organizations take time to evolve. That’s why we’re bound for a hybrid future, where public and private clouds blend to create a shared infrastructure that spans application, organization and data center boundaries,” noted Esmeralda Swartz, CMO of MetraTech, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo conference chairs Larry Carvalho and Vanessa Alvarez.
Cloud Computing Journal: How are cloud standards playing a role in expanding adoption among users? Are standards helping new business models for service providers?
Easing the Road to Service Management
ServiceNow this week launched its Eureka version of its online service management suite with new features aimed at letting non-technical folks build custom applications and process flows.
IT service management (ITSM) has long been a huge benefit to complex and exception-rich IT operations by helping to standardize, automate and apply a common system-of-record approach to tasks, incidents, assets, and workflows.
ServiceNow has been growing rapidly as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of ITSM, but clearly sees a larger opportunity – making service creation, use, and management a benefit to nearly all workers for any number of business processes.
It’s one of those rare instances where IT has been more mature and methodological in solving complexity than many other traditional business functions. Indeed, siloed and disjointed “productivity applications” that require lots of manual effort have been a driver to bring service orientation to the average business process.
Red Hat to Acquire eNovance
Red Hat, Inc., on Wednesday announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eNovance, a provider of open source cloud computing services. Combined with Red Hat’s existing leadership in OpenStack, the addition of eNovance’s systems integration capabilities and engineering talent is aimed at meeting growing demand for enterprise OpenStack consulting, design and deployment.
Red Hat and eNovance first partnered in 2013 to deliver OpenStack implementation and integration services to joint customers, helping to accelerate adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. Most recently, in May 2014, the two companies announced an expanded collaboration to drive Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and telecommunications innovations into OpenStack, aimed at delivering the industry’s most complete, carrier-grade telecommunications offering based on Linux, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), and OpenStack.
Red Hat to Acquire eNovance
Red Hat, Inc., on Wednesday announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eNovance, a provider of open source cloud computing services. Combined with Red Hat’s existing leadership in OpenStack, the addition of eNovance’s systems integration capabilities and engineering talent is aimed at meeting growing demand for enterprise OpenStack consulting, design and deployment.
Red Hat and eNovance first partnered in 2013 to deliver OpenStack implementation and integration services to joint customers, helping to accelerate adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. Most recently, in May 2014, the two companies announced an expanded collaboration to drive Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and telecommunications innovations into OpenStack, aimed at delivering the industry’s most complete, carrier-grade telecommunications offering based on Linux, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), and OpenStack.
Could the net neutrality battle kill cloud competition and create SaaS monopolies?
The scorched-earth legal and PR battle currently taking place between Netflix and Verizon makes for some entertaining headlines. But the outcome of this fight will have profound impacts for both end-users and IT professionals.
One thing that doesn’t get discussed enough is the potential effect that this battle could potentially have over market freedom and competitively within the general SaaS and media space. But before we get into this discussion, let’s look at some of the key areas of conflict that have pushed the Net Neutrality debate to the point where it is today. (Not just for Netflix-Verizon, but for the general ISP industry as a whole).
Consumers and SaaS/Content Providers
The argument from the consumer and SaaS and content provider perspective is simple and easy enough to understand. Consumers are paying for a specific ISP service, and they would like to enjoy the full benefits of …
Network Security: Is It Time to Think Like a Thief?
What do a firewall and a fortress have in common? They are no longer strong enough to protect the valuables housed inside. Like the walls of an old fortress, the cracks in the firewall are allowing the bad guys to slip in – unannounced and unnoticed. By the time these thieves get in, the damage is already done and the network is already compromised. Intellectual property is easily slipped out the back door leaving no trace of forced entry. If we want to reign in on these cybercriminals, it’s high time we start thinking the way these thieves think. If we don’t, malware, rootkits, AETs and other nefarious threats will continue to undermine our sense of security.
Podcast: IBM’s Sandy Carter Gets Social
“Companies that don’t leverage social will e extinct before long,” noted Sandy Carter, IBM’s General Manager of Ecosystem Development and Social Media Evangelist.
Sandy recently spoke to me about social media, the cloud, and all that it entails for Big Blue. She outlined an ecosystem of traditional partners and “influencers,” a diverse group that includes customers, academia, agencies, as well as technology partners.
“The cloud has really changed the game,” she said. ‘It’s really opened the door for these new types of partners.”
Listen to what else she had to say in our exclusive podcast:
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Getting the Most Out of Your SDN
Fundamentally, SDN is still mostly about network plumbing. While plumbing may be useful to tinker with, what you can do with your plumbing is far more intriguing. A rigid interpretation of SDN confines it to Layers 2 and 3, and that’s reasonable. But SDN opens opportunities for novel constructions in Layers 4 to 7 that solve real operational problems in data centers. “Data center,” in fact, might become anachronistic – data is everywhere, constantly on the move, seemingly always overflowing. Networks move data, but not all networks are suitable for all data.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Steve Riley, Technical Leader in the Office of the CTO at Riverbed Technology, will discuss how finding (or building) the right network, with the right applications, is still a labor-intensive task. Must it always be this way? No: for networks will soon be expressed as code. Finally, the data, the applications that process it, the networks that move it and the objects that store it can all be described by software constructs – let’s call this collection a super-blob – in the hands of skilled developers. Freed from their dependence on any given location, super-blobs can move around as necessary, resting on any physical fabric that can satisfy their requirements. As requirements change, locations may change – while preserving all application states. Location-independent computing is within our grasp.
BlueMix represents the next step in the transformation of IBM’s cloud offering
Gary Barnett, Enterprise Mobility and Productivity Software
At IBM Innovate 2014 in Orlando, Florida, IBM announced that its BlueMix PaaS offering will be made generally available at the end of June. BlueMix was first launched as a beta program in February this year at IBM’s Pulse conference, and the platform has seen a considerable amount of development in the four months since its first unveiling.
BlueMix is based on CloudFoundry, and runs on IBM’s SoftLayer cloud infrastructure management platform. IBM has also integrated DevOps services (both from the open source world and from its Rational portfolio), along with a number of pre-built services from IBM and its partners presented via a highly polished user interface (the result of BlueMix being one of the first projects to benefit from IBM’s major Design initiative).