“We are a fast-firing, hard-charging, startup of professionals who are passionate about building clouds using OpenStack,” wrote Cloudscaling founder and CTO Randy Bias today as he announced that he and the company’s Board of Directors, having decided that a change in leadership is needed, have “initiated a leadership transition process” – or, in non-jargon, have dumped their existing CEO.
How to save money before taking the first step into the cloud
Cloud hosting can bring many benefits to both small and large businesses, but before you fly into the software sky, it’s always worth looking at the business case before any such move.
Application vendors will no doubt be shortly banging on your door with their options and proposals for hosting your current services in the cloud. Let’s stop to consider a few things before you sign away on any new hosting contacts.
The benefits
There are plenty of benefits for moving to cloud hosting for both your company and the software provider. These will help ease some of the management headache of running, maintaining and upgrading of applications. However, it’s always worth looking at what’s currently going on, how much it costs and what the anticipated savings may be.
Existing contracts
IT costs for the majority of businesses are significant; according to Gartner, IT cost reduction …
Datalogix Selects WHIPTAIL to Accelerate Data Analytics Processing
WHIPTAIL has been chosen by Datalogix to improve the performance of applications running on its statistical analysis grid. Leveraging WHIPTAIL’s ACCELA flash storage array, Datalogix has reduced application response times and storage costs.
“Being chosen by an industry leader like Datalogix is a testament to our application acceleration go to market strategy, as Datalogix realizes the inherent value of faster, consistent and more reliable application performance,” said Erik Hardy, executive vice president of worldwide sales at WHIPTAIL.
As it worked to process massive levels of analytical data, Datalogix required a solution to improve its overall speed and efficiency, while staying compatible with its existing storage technology. It was essential for the company to sustain 2GB per second of Write/Read throughput with low latency. After reviewing a number of flash-storage solutions, Datalogix chose the WHIPTAIL ACCELA solution to run all statistical analysis system (SAS) jobs.
Five Steps to Making the Right Cloud Provider Choice
Choosing a cloud vendor is all too often an exercise in what you’re willing to give up, instead of what you are able to gain.
The truth is, just with any business relationship, there is a necessary give and take. But with infrastructure, the degree of importance to that relationship has real claims on your ability to do business the way you need to.
In that light, choosing a cloud provider who is best able to understand and map solutions to your goals is the most important metric in your decision making. However, there are a few other key considerations that are important to factor into a final decision.
Where’s the Cloud Taking IT Next?
What are the remaining barriers perhaps still preventing some companies from moving some of their on-premise computing to the Cloud, in whole or part? What specific Cloud implementations can we be most proud of, to date? In this CEO Power Panel at 12th Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid; Brian Patrick Donaghy, CEO of Appcore; Fausto Bernardini, IBM Vice President & Distinguished Engineer at IBM SmartCloud; Ross Brouse, COO and President of Solar VPS; and Terry Woloszyn, Founder of Leeward Security discussed these topics and more.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, 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.
Why Worry About Public Cloud and AWS Cost Optimization?
Most users moved to the cloud to save money — and they are saving relative to building and operating a data center. However, the story does not end there. Detailed user analysis shows that public cloud users are still leaving a lot of savings on the table – on average 40%. Here is ‘why’ and the ‘what to do’ to reduce cloud costs without sacrificing performance.
Cost optimization is a hot topic because of the enormous opportunities for the average user to reduce AWS costs. CloudCheckr surveyed 400 of its users and found that the average potential saving exceeded 40%.
UnboundID Research: Real Identity Data Is More Valuable
“There’s great value for corporations who choose to properly use digital identity data to market to individuals, not segments,” said Andy Land, Vice President of Marketing at UnboundID, on the release of new research by UnboundID that offers insight into the value of a consumer’s digital identity.
“Consumers already know that companies use their data,” Land observed, “the key is to use their data to create a better experience for the consumer. Tying multi-source data together with user consent creates a comprehensive identity profile, resulting in enhanced, more personalized marketing to the end user.”
The report, “Valuing Identity in Today’s Digital World,” shows that using real identity data increases a consumer’s profile value by up to 100 times when compared to aggregated, anonymous data. Real identity data is valued in the hundreds of dollars (up to $124 per identity) as compared to pennies on the dollar for aggregated, anonymous data.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: From the Data Center to the Cloud
“In AppZero what we do is we pick up applications and move them from one machine to another and the cloud context is the big use case is to move stuff from the data center to the cloud,” explained Greg O’Connor, President & CEO of AppZero, in this interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at our Times Square Studio in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, 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.
MetraTech, Saugatuck Report Highlights Limitations of Subscription Billing
MetraTech on Tuesday released the report, “Monetization that Fits the Business: The Limitations of Subscription Billing,” published in conjunction with research and advisory firm Saugatuck Technology. The report examines the past decade’s evolution of monetization strategies driven by the adoption of cloud solutions, and recommends a continued growth beyond subscriptions to yield maximum profits and differentiation. Enterprise customers are demanding bills that are better aligned with their actual consumption. Furthermore, they want the services they consume to be personalized and not simply multiple features bundled by the service provider to justify a single flat subscription price. Billing done right is a strategic business enabler that supports service personalization and stickiness; billing done wrong is a business inhibitor that leads to service commoditization.
Why the Cloud May Require You to Learn Multiple Words for Snow
Cloud is at the center of a convergence trend that is impacting people across all of ICT. This convergence is breaking down the walls that separated the traditional silos of IT, networking, storage and security. But with this breaking down of the walls we also need to better understand the subtleties of each other’s domains in more details.
A famous urban legend is that Eskimos have many words for snow, as it makes sense to – if you spend your whole day in snow – to distinguish the subtle and not so subtle differences.
Similar in IT, where others simply refer to IT as IT, the people living in IT tend to distinguish between operations, development, support (helpdesk), testing, portfolio management, information and master data management, etc.