Microsoft Azure now provides the right services for enterprises. But what scenarios are most interesting to enterprise leaders, and why? Which of these do most enterprises want to start with, why do they want them, and what are the common objections?
In his General Session at 14th Cloud Expo, David Chappell, Principal of Chappell & Associates, will walk through these basics, giving you a big picture introduction to how enterprises are adopting Microsoft Azure and how you can help them do this.
Security in Cloud Computing for HIPAA Compliance
At healthcare events throughout the world, we have met many health tech companies who are considering migrating to the cloud, but have serious concerns about protecting electronic protected health Information (e-PHI) and maintaining HIPAA compliance as they virtualize their environments.
We are seeing a serious gap between healthcare companies’ security and compliance needs, and the solutions offered by their cloud providers.
Below, a summary of the questions we are continually asked at shows, events, and meetings with healthcare professionals.
IDC claims IBM is vendor of choice for US enterprise IaaS market
An independent study from analyst house IDC has revealed that IBM is the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) vendor of choice for US enterprise buyers, well ahead of rivals Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services.
Of the three competitors, only Google made the top five vendors, with Cisco, HP and AT&T all ahead. IBM was one of ‘the top three vendors that [respondents] believe can provide infrastructure as a service for private and/or public, most effectively’ according to 35% of respondents. Cisco came in at just under 30%, while the remaining vendors had less than one fifth of the vote – Microsoft and Google scored approximately 16% while Amazon languished at 13%.
The overall market share, according to the more than 400 respondents at US enterprises with over 1000 employees, can be seen below:
David Tapper, VP at IDC and author of the report, said he wanted to understand …
AppZero to Launch New Application Modernization Tool
Microsoft Tech Ed 2014 attendees will get a first look at the only automated application migration tool for modernizing enterprise server applications ahead of the end of life of Windows Server 2003 when AppZero releases AppZero V6 during the conference May 12-15 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX. Microsoft and AppZero will also cohost a webinar “How to Solve the Challenge of WS 2003 End of Life” on May 29 at 1:00 (EST) showing AppZero V6 in action. Register here for the webinar.
Key Announcements from Citrix Synergy 2014 – Part 2
By Randy Becker, Enterprise Architect, Solutions
Here is the second part of my blog series providing a recap of Citrix Synergy 2014. If you missed part one, you can find it here. Enjoy!
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
On day 2 Intel disclosed its new “Crystal Well” Xeon process, including the Intel Iris Pro Graphics. The Iris Pro Graphics is Intel’s most powerful graphics technology and the first time Intel has included it in the Xeon Processor Family. What does this mean? Well, this will now enable incredibly high density graphics capable infrastructure supporting workloads like CAD, 3D Rendering, video editing and other high end graphics requirements. HP joined the stage to announce Moonshot with the Xeon E3 processor support. If you are unfamiliar with HP Moonshot you should take a look at this technology. HP had it out on their booth at the conference. The Moonshot chassis will support 45 cartridges, each with four System on a Chip (SoC) having up to four x86 cores each. That is 180 systems in a 3U chassis. Moonshot doesn’t require a hypervisor and leverages Citrix Provisioning Server and XenDesktop to provide maximum user performance with dedicated hardware, maximum security with isolation and maximum compatibility with access to bare metal with no hypervisor tax! I am expecting to see more adoption of this in the future. The prototype for the Intel Iris support looks like a single system per cartridge, so 45 per chassis. We will have to wait and see how this shapes up. We have a Moonshot system in our lab now and will be anxiously awaiting a new Iris supported cartridge for testing.
XenServer with 64-Bit
This caught me off guard because I already thought XenServer was 64-Bit. There is an important distinction here because today Dom0 is still run on 32-Bit architecture. While we may think that VMware won the hypervisor battle, we continue to see development with XenServer and NVIDIA and this will allow for significant increases in the number of GPUs per host using pass-through. This is really for customers requiring increased density in graphically-intensive XenDesktop workloads.
XenDesktop 7.5 Update
One of the most notable new features in XenDesktop and XenApp 7.5 is the ability to directly provision to Amazons Web Services, (AWS). It allows for an on-premises deployment and burst or deployment in AWS for certain use cases. This is true hybrid cloud, and I have several customers getting ready to deploy this architecture now. AWS is supported today and IBM Softlayer and Microsoft Azure will both be supported in the future.
XenApp 7.5 is back
XenApp is back as a dedicated platform now in 7.5. What does that mean? Not much if you are already familiar with the new architecture. With XenDesktop 7.0, XenApp came bundled and the architecture received a full refresh using the XenDesktop Flexible Management Architecture (FMA) vs. the old Independent Management Architecture (IMA). With 7.5, there is now a dedicated XenApp product available separately or integrated with XenDesktop. As more features have been added back into 7.5, I think we will see more customers start to migrate from 6.5 to 7.5. I hate to admit it but I know there are a lot of customers still running on XenApp 4.5! Now is a good time to start looking at an upgrade to the new supported versions. This shouldn’t scare most small to medium sized customers, as this is a good time to look at the design and treat it as an opportunity to truly look at how you deliver applications to users. You may be surprised at some of the benefits in a new design. To assist customers that have a large number of applications, Citrix is working on a migration tool. During Synergy, Citrix announced a new Migration Tool for customers upgrading from previous versions of XenApp. You can register for the Tech Preview here.
NetScaler 10.5
A new update to 10.5 for the NetScaler platform was announced. This latest update will include deep visibility into mobile network traffic streams and cloud-first architecture. Today, we have this visibility with NetScaler HDX Insight for XenDesktop and XenApp traffic. If you haven’t looked at HDX Insight yet, you should see the level of detail that is available at the protocol level. This makes troubleshooting slow connections significantly easier.
Synergy Instructor Led Training
If you have not had the opportunity to take advantage of the Synergy training, you should consider this the next time. While I was at Synergy, I took advantage of two, five hour instructor lead training sessions. The first was SYN617 – Take the mobility and networking journey with us. This deployment included a full XenMobile deployment with the App Controller, WorxMail, WorxWeb, NetScaler and XenApp. You even get to enroll your own personal smartphone and tablet to control deployment.
The second one was SYN619 – Build enterprise or private cloud workloads in a few hours using Citrix CloudPlatform. I have seen other platforms so I was curious to see how easy it would be with Citrix. The lab was built perfectly and allowed for the ability to test some pretty advanced scenarios. CloudPlatform can leverage most of the major hypervisor out there, (XenServer, KVM, vSphere, Hyper-V) and can also burst to AWS.
All in all, another great event put on by Citrix. If you have any questions about specifics from the event, leave a comment or fill out this form and I will be sure to get back to you.
Rackspace announces solid Q1 figures, aims to confound critics with business model
Open cloud provider Rackspace has announced healthy first quarter results, with CEO Graham Weston telling investors that his company will continue to differentiate from the price slashing of AWS, Google and Microsoft.
For the quarter ending March 31, Rackspace posted a net revenue figure of $421m, up from $408m at the end of Q413 and representing a 16% year on year increase.
Income fell year on year from $27.2m to $25.4m, but Q114 figures represented a boost from the fourth quarter trough of $20.8m income – a percentage increase of 22% per quarter. Adjusted EBIDTA also went up from Q413, $140m representing a 5.8% spike.
Looking at the nuts and bolts, Rackspace added 2343 servers in the first quarter of 2014, and gained 92 new employees.
It was a pretty good showing, with Reuters reporting that Rackspace shares rose by up to 12% after the bell trading …
Opening Keynote at Cloud Expo New York | Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is open and flexible, enables rapid development and is enterprise proven. Come find out why more than 57% of Fortune 500 companies are using Microsoft Azure to accelerate their time-to-market, open up new business opportunities and save them money.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Steven Martin, General Manager of Window Azure, to discuss how to extend your on-premises storage, move virtual machines to the cloud, build mobile/web applications, or and harness the power of Big Data.
Don’t Let Latency Get in the Way of Your Cloud Ambitions
Most enterprises are concerned with security and privacy when putting data into the cloud, but what about latency? In putting data in the cloud, you need to make sure you have a sense for latency or the time it takes for messages to traverse the network (and back). If your message suffers as little as 20 milliseconds (1/1000th of a second) delay, you are looking at a 15% plunge in Web page load time. How do you avoid downtime while housing your data in the cloud, where the cost savings are tremendous?
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, David Hall, Commercial and Strategy Manager at TelecityGroup (Cloud-IX), will discuss how TelecityGroup has made the issue of latency a thing of the past with Cloud IX, which allows data center managers to seamlessly connect to and between a range of cloud partners (Amazon AWS included), physical infrastructure and networks. He will share how Cloud IX helped – among others – a leading London-based wealth management group cut its latency by over 50% and increase bandwidth by 20 times, allowing the company to provision IT workloads on demand without overinflated operational costs, while increasing the reliability and resilience of business applications.
Red Hat Collaborates with NetApp
Red Hat, Inc., on Monday announced collaboration with NetApp to deliver an open hybrid cloud reference architecture based on OpenStack IceHouse, the newest version of the rapidly maturing open source cloud software platform. Based on open technologies, the architecture will help organizations build agile, interoperable private and hybrid clouds that are easily managed, massively scalable, and highly reliable. This reference architecture will be designed to enable customers to more closely integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform with NetApp® storage and data management technology.
Avere Systems to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Avere Systems, a leading provider of enterprise storage for cloud-enabled data centers, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Avere delivers a more modern architectural approach to storage that doesn’t require the overprovisioning of storage capacity to achieve performance, overspending on expensive storage media for inactive data or the overbuilding of data centers to house increasing amounts of storage infrastructure.