“The DNA of the company has been all about innovation. Our CEO Thai Lee gets all the credit for really setting that foundation for the company and allowing us to go off and do market contributions like we’re doing with the cloud marketplace,” explained Richard Place, General Manager, Enterprise Solution Services, at SHI International, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, held Nov 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Expo® 2014 New York, June 10-12, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Testing in the Cloud
“The entire market knew for a long time that to test a site at scale required a lot of hardware. SOASTA was founded a little before the cloud and when the cloud came that was the pivot point as that was exactly what the load testing market had been waiting for,” explained Brad Johnson, VP of Product Marketing & Business Development at SOASTA, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, held Nov 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Expo® 2014 New York, June 10-12, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Cloud Model 2014: Hybrid, Google, Brokerage, Startups and The Enterprise
2013 has been incredibly eventful for the cloud industry, mostly for making itself an eminent presence in the mainstream IT market. Businesses of all sizes have made their ways to the cloud, confirming my 2013 predictions. Government agencies worldwide take the cloud seriously, as demonstrated by the CIA’s contract switch over to Amazon from IBM. AWS has proven its rapid pace of innovation and has introduced great leaders who have completely replaced the concept of sluggish IT servers with instances. While the market is still relatively small, I believe it will take over the IT market sooner than some of us think. I am not alone in my forecast… another analyst predicted that AWS will become a $50B business in 2015, which means it will multiply 12 times its size from last year. So, have a look at my 2013 predictions and read on to see what 2014 has in store for the world of cloud computing.
Why You Need an API-First Strategy for the Cloud
Everyone talks about a cloud-first or mobile-first strategy. It’s the trend du jour, and for good reason as these innovative technologies have revolutionized an industry and made savvy companies a lot of money. But consider for a minute what’s emerging with the Age of Context and the Internet of Things. Devices, interfaces, everyday objects are becoming endowed with computing smarts. This is creating an unprecedented focus on the Application Programming Interface (API) as developers seek to connect these devices and interfaces to create new supporting services and hybrids. I call this trend the move toward an API-first business model and strategy.
Identity Challenges in Cloud Computing
Enterprises are seeing a great potential in cloud-based services. However, security is a primary concern that keeps enterprise from harnessing the full potential. Identity management is one of the most important aspects of security. There is always an authentication required in an application to identify the user and provide service based on the user details. Authorization is required to allow only privilege user to execute privilege operation. An identity store required to maintain the identity and roles for the user.
Identity Management is a solution that takes into consideration all the identity concerns: authentication, authorization and maintaining identity.
In this article we will discuss some of the challenges occur while moving to the cloud in terms of identity. And what are the Microsoft technologies available to resolve identity management issues over the cloud and scenarios and solutions to use those technologies
Thoughts on Vertical Integration: The Cloud and (Gasp!) Ma Bell
Although it has been a couple of months since the hysteria of re:Invent, there has been a great deal of consternation by hoards of people in enterprise IT over the emergence of Amazon AWS. The fear is that AWS and it’s main competitors will substantially disrupt the market for enterprise infrastructure and create the next big oligopoly or even monopoly in the technology industry: The Cloud. In this weekend’s Barrons, we find Tiernan Ray making the near term case for mediocrity, if not eventual doom for the big enterprise technology players (Note: subscription may be required):
The key concern among investors – both venture and public market – and users everywhere really centers around the notion of AWS being a “dominant exchange”. This is what happens when the game becomes one where the entire solution set is owned by a single player, scale matters most, and customers can no longer see an incentive to go anywhere else for their needs.
Thoughts on Vertical Integration: The Cloud and (Gasp!) Ma Bell
Although it has been a couple of months since the hysteria of re:Invent, there has been a great deal of consternation by hoards of people in enterprise IT over the emergence of Amazon AWS. The fear is that AWS and it’s main competitors will substantially disrupt the market for enterprise infrastructure and create the next big oligopoly or even monopoly in the technology industry: The Cloud. In this weekend’s Barrons, we find Tiernan Ray making the near term case for mediocrity, if not eventual doom for the big enterprise technology players (Note: subscription may be required):
The key concern among investors – both venture and public market – and users everywhere really centers around the notion of AWS being a “dominant exchange”. This is what happens when the game becomes one where the entire solution set is owned by a single player, scale matters most, and customers can no longer see an incentive to go anywhere else for their needs.
PaaS Leads to Healthcare Solutions for Remote Regions of the World
The medical needs of developing countries are staggering and come in many shapes and sizes. The trouble is the real issues can only be understood once an individual or organization gets involved. About 10 years ago, our organization was routinely shipping medical supplies to hard-to-reach places. But what we found was that in many cases there were no hospitals to receive the supplies. We overcame this challenge by adapting the shipping containers used to move goods internationally into portable clinics outfitted with supplies and laptops. Once we were “on the ground” and learned more about the healthcare systems in countries such as Kenya, we found that even where there was an existing brick-and-mortar hospital, the medical software in place wasn’t really compatible with local needs. This was for two reasons: either it was too complex or it was not designed to tolerate the frequent Internet service gaps or disruptions that are common in developing regions.
IoT 2014: Tiny Sensors, Open APIs and Hybrid Clouds
Throughout 2013 most senior executives have been exposed to the key emerging business technology trends. During 2014, you’re going to see and hear a lot more about the Internet of Things (IoT) — and the impact will reach just about every industry and all the major markets within the Global Networked Economy.
Let’s consider the forward-looking outlook, from a leading industry analyst. International Data Corporation (IDC) recently offered their predictions for the coming year.
“The 3rd Platform’s impact was felt throughout the ICT industry in 2013 as a high-profile CEO lost his job, a major IT player went private, numerous vendors endured cash cow stagnation, and billion-dollar bets were placed on new technologies,” said Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC.
The ASEAN ICT Challenge
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations – known as ASEAN – comprises 10 nations with a combined population of 600 million people and total GDP of $3.5 trillion.
The population is about twice that of the US, with a total economy twice that of India.
ASEAN is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, but strives to be unstintingly fair in the distribution of its events, programs, and emphasis. The ASEAN region covers a range of language, religion, governments, and culture that is breathtaking in its scope.
Yet its members’ national leaders seem uniform in their commitment to regional cooperation and peace. This can put the association at occasional odds with Western powers when it treats Myanmar (former Burma) with the same consideration as, say, the Philippines.
We’ve been able to produce rankings for eight of the ASEAN nations in our research: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. We’re missingly only Brunei and Myanmar at this point.
Leaders
Among the ASEAN nations, Vietnam ranks among the Top 10 in our overall global rankings, Singapore among the Top 25. They are joined by the Philippines in our Top 25 global measuremnt of raw potential.
In our “Goldilocks” rankings, which seek to determine the Top 25 ICT environments that are growing just right (neither too hot nor too cold), we find Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand.
So we’ve found positive measures in each of the eight countries we’ve researched. There are clear, often severe challenges in most of these places, of course. We never want to minimize the difficulty of addressing those challenges.
Wide Range
There is also a wide range of ICT development throughout the region, from Singapore’s 30Mb average bandwidth to less than 2Mb in the Philippines, and Singapore’s 75% Internet connectivity to Cambodia’s 3.1%. Average income ranges across 1.7 magnitudes, as does the relative cost of living.
With our relative approach to analyzing ICT environments, we find that there are hopeful signs throughout the ASEAN nations. For example, cloud computing is a big topic in the social- and mobile-driven cultures of the Philippines and Indonesia; in Laos, where abundant hydroelectric power is drawing investment in a place ripe for new datacenters; in cyber-centric Malaysia; etc.
SMAC
In response, I’m working with local firms throughout the ASEAN region to develop a SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) Seminar Series in 2014. We’ve already scheduled our first event in Manila on April 24.
I’m also working to link our ASEAN series with a major cloud event in Beijing March 27-28, and an emerging user-driven Cloud APAC organization. Tweet me for details!