The third of the three “startling” alliances that Larry Ellison predicted would happen this week has come to pass.
Failing organic growth Oracle has tied up with Larry’s “other” company, sometime competitor NetSuite, one of the first SaaS companies, predating even salesforce.com by a year thanks to Larry’s nickel.
NetSuite’s specialty is selling cloud-ified ERP to SMBs. By the end of the year, the widgetry will be integrated with Oracle’s human capital management (HCM) software used to manage employees in a combination clearly aimed at Oracle’s new nemesis Workday, started by the folks driven out of PeopleSoft when Oracle bought the place out from under them.
Deloitte Consulting LLP also has a piece of the action. It’s going to start a practice to help customers deploy the widgetry.
The Cloud: The Most Disruptive Approach to DR/BC
Floods, fires, tornados, earthquakes, pandemics, riots, and hurricanes are just a small sample of the potential disasters that threaten businesses almost daily. Throughout my career, I have been responsible for preparing, managing, and rebuilding major communications infrastructure and the businesses they support before, during, and after disasters. Sometimes this was due to devastating natural disasters but most were the more common disasters that visit us every day like burst pipes, public transportation strikes and the extended loss of utilities to one or more locations.
Naturally, businesses are all building good Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance (DR/BC) plans for that inevitable bad day – or are they? According to the Small Business Alliance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), between 25 and 40 percent of businesses never reopen after a major disaster. With all the cloud-based technology available, this statistic is astonishing and entirely avoidable.
Impetus Reiterates Its Leadership in the Cloud Computing / Big Data Space
Impetus Technologies, a Big Data thought leader and software services and solutions company, recently participated in the Cloud Expo in New York as speakers and exhibitor. The expo remains a major platform of interaction for C-level executives involved in cloud computing, Big Data, and data analysis.
Pankaj Mittal, CTO, Impetus, reiterated the company’s thought leadership in the cloud domain by exchanging views with eminent speakers in a power panel discussion. Mittal shared the stage with senior leaders from Appcore, Dell, IBM, and SOA, brainstorming with them on the topic, ‘Has Cloud Computing Changed IT for the Better?’ The panel addressed the issues and challenges surrounding cloud computing, focusing on the future of cloud.
CoreSite Selects FieldView’s DCIM Solution
“Data center providers like CoreSite need better tools and automation to support their customers,” said Bill Wosilius, Senior Vice President, Corporate Operations, CoreSite, as the company announced its selection of FieldView Solutions as a component in a technology transformation project.
“Data center infrastructure management is our livelihood, and a world-class customer experience is essential to our growth,” Wosilius continued. “Being able to support our customers more efficiently and effectively is a differentiator that enables us to create added value. That’s why our approach to our technology transformation project was to select best-in-class technologies like FieldView and further strengthen our integration.”
Understanding Red Hat’s ManageIQ Acquisition
Cloud Operations Management tools have different functions, starting from monitoring and management to automation of processes through both a virtual and cloud infrastructure. The tools in CloudForums can handle the monitoring, automation and measuring aspects in virtual as well as cloud based infrastructures but at a higher level, managing all these operations is basically about lifecycle management of the service. That involves workload management, transparency of costs and the proper retirement of resources when they have served out their purpose.
Understating the vitality of these functions, Red Hat bought ManageIQ so that these capabilities could be rapidly brought under the CloudForums umbrella. It is interesting to know that Red Hat now supports the ManageIQ EVM products that were already in the market prior to this ManageIQ – Red Hat CloudForums 2.0 merger.
Azure to Support Engine Yard
Microsoft and Engine Yard, the Platform-as-a-Service, announced a strategic alliance Wednesday to deliver a commercial-grade open source-based platform on top of Windows Azure’s on-demand infrastructure.
Engine Yard Cloud will be available in the Azure Marketplace beginning July 31.
It’s supposed to suit everyone from the smallest start-up to the largest enterprise. Developers who use open source languages and frameworks will be able to take advantage of the widgetry to create and deploy modern web and mobile apps more easily.
Engine Yard said it is delivering on its multi-cloud vision by bringing its automation and orchestration, as well as its expertise in open source cloud application development frameworks, to Azure. It’s set to come with an enhanced and modern user interface and advances in its new cluster model supporting applications, databases and load balancers for faster provisioning, configuration and deployment.
Amazon’s AutoRip helps ease consumer transition to the Cloud
Admit it, we all thought the CD was on its way out, and it probably is. Yet if any company wishes to hold on to sales a little bit longer, it’s Amazon.
Today the firm has announced ‘AutoRip’ which offers any physical media you’ve (ever) bought to stream for free from the Cloud.
Whilst many music-lovers have already subscribed to one of the extensive-list of new generation streaming services; such as Spotify, Google Play Music, Rdio, Pandora, Xbox Music, or Deezer. Many still prefer the reliability of a good ol’ fashion disc.
This new service could be the “gateway” for the physical format generation to move online.
Picture the scene – You’ve bought a new CD on Amazon for a camping trip; maybe it’s not been delivered yet, or maybe you’ve left it at home in your hurry to get the kids in the car.
Arriving …
v2.1 of Couchbase’s NoSQL Document DB Released
“With Couchbase Server 2.1, our multi-threaded persistence engine provides customers dramatic disk read and write performance, allowing them to extend the scope and scale of their applications,” said Yaseen Rahim, Sr. VP Products at Couchbase, as the NoSQL database leader today announced the general availability of the latest release of its NoSQL document-oriented database.
“We continue to invest in strengthening and optimizing the core architecture of Couchbase Server,” Rahim continued, “further differentiating us as the NoSQL solution that delivers reliability at scale for customers and users.”
Do CEOs Care About Cloud?
Cloud computing ownership is traditionally seen as the province of CIO or CTO, and where those roles don’t exist in an organization, the VP or even Director/Manager of IT oversees cloud implementation.
However, with more business units accessing cloud platforms for a variety of purposes, the range of required buy-in has similarly increased: the CFO is now a primary consideration in the way a business integrates with the cloud, as do marketing, sales, as well as other business unit heads within the organization.
But the CEO isn’t concerned about the technical aspects of what cloud delivers in the way that it is germane for even marketing and sales to understand how cloud process work at least on a fundamental level. Those groups utilizing Salesforce or different automation platforms need some technical ability to sync systems or specialize the platform.
A Cloud Computing Platform for Small Scale Businesses
Many small businesses are realizing that cloud computing isn’t just for large corporations. Many providers offer services that are targeted at the small business owner. Cloud computing presents unique opportunities for small businesses, giving them access to infrastructure that had traditionally only been available to much larger organizations. There are several options perfectly suited to small businesses.
Small businesses with larger than average hosting needs tend to require some sort of dedicated server hosting system. Basically you rent a private server virtualization from a provider so you can customize the server software at the operating system level. The problem with this setup was the waste of resources when the hardware was running at anything but maximum load.
A Virtual Dedicated Server is a cloud-based service that mimics the customization of a dedicated machine, but with the easy scalability and redundancy of cloud computing. It provides business owners with the ability to modify and control all aspects of their hosting service.
It’s beneficial for the service provider because there are no wasted resources. Any processing power not being used during a period of low activity for one user can be immediately tasked to another virtual server on the same machine. This allows providers to offer VPS at a cost that is lower than traditional dedicated servers.
There is one major difference between a cloud-based VPS and true Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). While both provide flexible and scalable hosting services, a VPS still must operate within the confines of a single machine. IaaS is a broader system that has the resources available that far exceed any single machine. A VPS running as IaaS has none of the confining issues of a single machine server. The scalability and processing power available is only limited by the size of the provider’s network and the budget of the client.
Most small scale businesses won’t have a need for a system as robust as Platform as a Service (PaaS). PaaS is intended for those companies that need to deploy a full customized software application, but lack the hardware resources and storage space to make it happen. The client will handle the creation and deployment of the app. The service provider supplies access to a network, server, storage and programming libraries.
Application PaaS is an extension of PaaS whereby the client builds the customized applications within the PaaS service itself. It further reduces the amount of resources a business must have to develop a custom application. Most of what is needed is provided within the aPaaS framework.