2013 is turning into a big year for Big Data. Colorfully described by one commentator recently as being “like Moneyball for geeks”, Big Data is – quite literally – the Next Big Thing. The big data analytics marketplace is truly heating up in terms of interest, activity, technology and competition.
Cloud-Based DevOps
By working with IT across the software development lifecycle via cloud-based DevOps, development teams can decrease software bottlenecks, increase code output and be seen as drivers of the business.
I have a confession. I am Shadow IT. I am the guilty party operations and security love to hate because I expense tens of thousands of dollars in cloud services…every month. Truth be told, my team and I couldn’t afford to wait in line for IT to provision the resources we needed to begin work. We had goals to meet and objectives to achieve – all of which didn’t include waiting in line for IT to give us virtual machines, development platforms or set up sandboxes so we could begin work.
With a lengthy approval process and cost justifications, there was no way I would have been able to secure either the physical infrastructure or cloud vendor approvals I needed to achieve the business unit’s goals. And, honestly, the risk of choosing a vendor that would leak our data, or otherwise put the business at risk, seemed a lot lower than the risk of not getting my job done.
So, even though my monthly cloud bill continued to rise, it didn’t surprise me too much that I was never questioned about the expense because my team was delivering. And, that is exactly what everyone from the business side of things cares about – is development creating new applications and/or services that can be brought to market before the competition? Can we secure ‘first-mover’ status or market leadership because development is firing on all cylinders? These are the questions marketing, business development, and other teams ask. Not, did central IT get you those VMs you needed?
Cloud Enables a Win-Win on Both Sides of the Business
“I believe it is incumbent on the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and/or System Integrators (SIs) to understand the regulatory and compliance-related issues that their customers face,” noted Manjula Talreja, VP of Global Cloud Business Development at Cisco, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Of course these issues are different in each industry and in each country.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree?
Manjula Talreja: Putting aside the old adage that “time is money,” Cisco agrees that cloud is more about creating efficiencies in business processes. This is true for the cloud consumers (to take advantage of new technologies more quickly and with maximum flexibility and to tap into pay-as-you grow business models where they pay only for what they consume). This is equally true for cloud providers (to create new services rapidly and with fewer barriers to sell, offer services to qualified resellers, and create demand for those services).
What CIOs Need to Know Today About SDN
SDN is a new, dynamic network architecture that transforms traditional network backbones into more intelligent service-delivery platforms. IT leaders can use SDN as a tool to change the way they do business. For example, enterprises can foster closer relationships with their customers by offering greater online access to select data over the enterprise network. A financial services firm can give large corporate customers the opportunity for third-party reporting, governance, or even allow analytics firms to directly access enterprise credit card transactions, obviating the need for intermediate sites and cumbersome manual process steps that are needed to provide sufficient multi-level security. An SDN would create virtual network partitions governed by stringent and limited access policies, and security to decrease unauthorized access.
Policy-Driven Application Management
Millennium Pharmacy Systems, Inc., has successfully deployed mission critical SaaS applications, and implemented advanced IT management and operational efficiency processes and systems to keep all the applications up to date, compliant, performant, and protected.
Managing applications sprawl has long been a burr in the IT saddle, and the popularity of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications hasn’t exactly been a balm on the situation.
As with on-premises applications, the key to SaaS and hybrid apps is getting better visibility and operational data on the applications’ health, and then automating the processes across standardized methods and controls.
Workday Has Not, Repeat Not, Left Amazon
Last week, on the last day of HP’s Discover conference in Las Vegas, HP software chief Bill Veghte stood on stage and said that Workday, the promising HR SaaS company started by David Duffield, who also started PeopleSoft only to lose it to Oracle’ ravenous appetite for acquisitions, had left Amazon Web Services for HP’s OpenStack-based Public Cloud because enterprise customers need real support and stronger SLAs than Amazon offers.
CRN captured the moment, but didn’t check it out.
Veghte’s statement made tweeters sit up and take note, and Amazon denied it.
People, process, technology for Cloud service providers
People, Process, Technology for Cloud Service Providers
There’s been a lot written in cloud circles about the preparations enterprises need to make to prepare for the move to cloud – but what about service providers? A lot of service providers are coming from a managed hosting, managed services or even a telco background and are now building a cloud business. The planning, provisioning, marketing & selling of cloud services can be vastly different from these more traditional IT services. Potential cloud service providers need to prepare for their transformation to cloud from a people, process and technology perspective.
People: The Who
The people part is all about understanding the diverse cloud needs that different users within your customers’ organizations will have. For example, consider the control, visibility and cost transparency requirements that IT leaders may have compared to the day to day governance and performance concerns of IT line managers. Also …
SiSense Unveils In-Chip Analytics in the Cloud
SiSense, the Big Data Analytics Company, has announced that it is introducing the first In-Chip Analytics solution in the Cloud. With SiSense Prism 10X, companies of all sizes are able to run Terabyte-range analytics workloads in the Cloud without having to worry about setting up complex clusters, acquiring or maintaining expensive hardware. The solution provides enterprise-grade service, unmatched analytics power in the Cloud and reduces the cost of Big Data Analytics to as low as $1 per Terabyte per hour.
“The current model for Big Data Analytics is broken. It is prohibitively expensive and complicated,” said SiSense CEO Amit Bendov. “By letting SiSense and Rackspace do the heavy lifting, businesses of all sizes can farm out the hassles and focus on achieving business results. We are evening the playing field by putting enterprise-grade services and software into the hands of businesses that would otherwise be shut out of the game.”
SiSense Unveils In-Chip Analytics in the Cloud
SiSense, the Big Data Analytics Company, has announced that it is introducing the first In-Chip Analytics solution in the Cloud. With SiSense Prism 10X, companies of all sizes are able to run Terabyte-range analytics workloads in the Cloud without having to worry about setting up complex clusters, acquiring or maintaining expensive hardware. The solution provides enterprise-grade service, unmatched analytics power in the Cloud and reduces the cost of Big Data Analytics to as low as $1 per Terabyte per hour.
“The current model for Big Data Analytics is broken. It is prohibitively expensive and complicated,” said SiSense CEO Amit Bendov. “By letting SiSense and Rackspace do the heavy lifting, businesses of all sizes can farm out the hassles and focus on achieving business results. We are evening the playing field by putting enterprise-grade services and software into the hands of businesses that would otherwise be shut out of the game.”
Cloud Skills Shortage: Does It Matter?
More and more companies around the world are embracing the cloud – and that’s a good thing.
But this massive IT shift also presents a problem: With so many businesses moving to cloud, is there enough quality IT technicians available to help businesses manage the switch?
Don Reisinger from CIO Insight, among many others in the space, has identified the IT skills shortage as a real issue facing the cloud industry. With so much of the technology creating a rift between the old school IT managers of the mainframe to pure virtualization eras and the newer DevOps and Cloud engineer roles, it’s hard to see the simple path towards ample expertise.
But then again, according to Reisinger, perhaps it’s not such a problem as so many fret over. Companies are still purchasing cloud tools and services at incredible volumes, causing projections of the overall revenues of the industry to balloon to many billions of dollars over the next 10 years.