n the cloud doesn’t matter whether you are running on an Open Source platform or not – it is NOT free because you pay for the service. And for long Open Source project have been funded through the services premiums that you pay. I would argue that Open Source vendors have mastered the way they can take profit from Open Source services and are far ahead than the proprietary vendors. The whole catch here is that you pay nothing for the software and incur no capital expenditures (CapEx) but you pay for the services (i.e. Operational Expenditures or OpEx) – remember, this is also the cloud model. Bottom line is that you may be better off with a propriatery vendor than an open source one, because the former need to yet master that business model.
The Importance of Cloud
Three HP executives discuss the implications and business value from the Converged Cloud, the major focus of discussion at HP Discover 2013.
What’s happening in the market today, is that on one end, you have startups that are rushing to the cloud very quickly, that use cloud and don’t use anything else, because they don’t want to spend a penny on building up an IT department.
On the other extreme, you have very large corporations that look at all the things that are unknown around cloud and are sticking their toe in the water.
And you have everything possible and every possible scenario in the middle. That’s where things are getting interesting. You have forward-looking CIOs who are embracing clouds, and understand how cloud can help them add value to the business and, as such, are an important part of the business.
You have other CIOs who are very reluctant and that prefer to stay managing the traditional boat, if I can put it that way, in keeping and providing that support to our customers. It’s a interesting market right now.
AMD Aims for the Cloud via Seattle, Berlin & Warsaw
Over the weekend Barron’s put out a piece touting AMD’s chances of taking share in the mainstream server market that belongs to Intel with its SeaMicro microserver acquisition, a development that would tickle its tiny stock price, if it ever happened. But even the thought of it, although the possibility is a ways off, tickled the shares Monday.
“SeaMicro’s technology looks good; its management team, astute; and the market opportunities, promising,” the story said.
It was the opening salvo for myriad articles sketching out AMD’s already tipped plans to make its first ARM chip, a 64-bit processor that it expects to have sampling in the first quarter of 2014 with production following sometime in the second half.
Achilles Selects MetraTech for Billing and Settlement
MetraTech Corp., a provider of Agreements-Based Billing, Commerce and Compensation solutions, on Tuesday announced that Achilles, a global software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of supply chain management services, has selected the MetraNet billing and settlement platform to support its global business growth.
Achilles manages the supply chains of 800 of the world’s largest companies to reduce the risk, time and cost associated with procurement activity. The company verifies and keeps up-to-date data of around 80,000 suppliers across 23 countries to ensure they are operating to the highest possible standards. Achilles recently invested GBP 12 million in the development of new global platforms, which will offer a true SaaS solution to customers looking to manage their data anytime, anywhere – with no downtime for maintenance.
AWS Is Hiring Software Development Engineers
This is one of several recent videos outlining AWS career opportunities. To apply for a position as a software development engineer, send your resume to awssdejobs@amazon.com.
Red Hat Plays Its Trump Card
Red Hat made its power play Wednesday. One it’s been itching to make for a couple of years. One that it hopes will ultimately jam a stick through the spokes of VMware’s front wheel. And to make sure that happens it’ll be telling everybody who’ll listen that its widgetry is a third the price of VMware’s vCloud.
This is where Red Hat gets to play a card that only Microsoft can match – its operating system, commonly known as RHEL – and create a tightly integrated cloud platform by fusing RHEL with OpenStack, the open source cloud computing software.
The move came as a one-two punch consisting of a kit called the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and another called Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure that deliver the company’s essential vision of an Open Hybrid Cloud.
Cloud Computing Is Getting Personal
The personal cloud will be the main catalyst in bringing services otherwise unavailable to developing nations.
While businesses have been deploying cloud technology for some time, it’s only recently that personal cloud services have emerged. The rise of the personal cloud means content, applications and computing power can move off the device.
While iPhones and iPads are unlikely to fade in popularity, the personal cloud will create opportunity, according to an article on NetworkWorld.com. Opportunity for users who have not been able to afford services historically tethered to an expensive device; opportunity for manufacturers to design lower-cost hardware to reach a new demographic in developing countries; and huge opportunity for businesses to bring a new wave of services to this previously untapped audience.
Enterprise PaaS Is About Operations
The notion that PaaS exists solely “in the cloud” as a discrete environment of developer services is hampering the maturation of enterprise PaaS.
The three most common answers to “give me an example of PaaS” are: Force.com, Azure, Google. I didn’t even need to do an unscientific Internet survey to nail that one down.
These are certainly fine examples of PaaS, but they are not necessarily examples of enterprise PaaS solutions. While off-premise PaaS offerings do address many of the same challenges being faced by enterprise operations today, they do so in a way that makes integration and control – not to mention the measurement and monitoring required by developers – nearly impossible.
What You May Have Missed From Citrix Synergy 2013
By Randy Becker, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne
Citrix held its most important event of the year for customers and partners at the end of May. I have been attending these events for many years and this had to be the largest attendance I have ever seen. I was told that 60% were first-time attendees. There was plenty of excitement, and those of you who know Mark Templeton know that he tied in great classic rock to the event. The theme was “Going Mobile,” and what else to lead things off but The Who’s classic “Going Mobile.”
So what were the highlights of the event? Mark talked about two CEO meetings he recently attended. These meetings were focused on DOS and MAC. Yes, DOS and MAC are back, but in a very different way. DOS = Don’t Add Stuff and MAC = Moves Adds and Changes. DOS focuses on doing more with what you have and leveraging technologies that reduce complexity. MAC is reduce the number of and costs associated with moves, adds and changes.
I would say that the predominant message of this conference was providing the mobile workforce the tools (applications) they require to perform their job. This is not a new message; this has been the pervasive message from Citrix for many years. The real twist here is that customers are now really able to work and perform their jobs with devices like tablets from Apple, Samsung, and others. It is my opinion that delivering Windows applications to these devices still has its limitations. It isn’t that they don’t work; it’s that the application may not be conducive to a touch pad device. Citrix offers their Mobility Pack to address some of these limitations, and I have customers successfully using Windows applications delivered by XenApp and XenDesktop to iPads.
So what does all this mean? Well, for one, Citrix recently acquired Zenprise, an MDM solution. Zenprise sits in Gartner’s magic quadrant with Mobile Iron and Air Watch. We have had a lot of fun with this one, and yes, Citrix performed a find and replace on the Z and substituted with a X. This acquisition puts Citrix in a unique position when combined with the rest of the product suite. XenMobile is the complete solution set that Citrix is marketing as an all-inclusive MDM solution.
I think two of the challenges Citrix is going to face with XenMobile are the overlap in existing products, mainly their existing MDX solution set and the complex implementations associated with MDM solutions. The challenge here will be to keep the best of both products and provide an integrated console. I would expect the overlap and integrated console will be addressed in the near future. Don’t get me wrong, I have attended a number of training sessions and I was able to easily build my own XenMobile MDM environment and enroll my iPad and iPhone and push some apps down in an afternoon hands-on session. When I was done, I was even able to perform a selective wipe and remove my corporate managed apps with ease. Citrix spent a little time up front to get the APNS cert squared away. Apple doesn’t make it easy for large corporations to manage Apple devices.
Project Excalibur, now XenDesktop 7, is the most significant release we have seen yet to date, to be released in the June timeframe. Included in this we will now see the integration of XenDesktop and XenApp in one platform. This is a major product change, and the end of Independent Management Architecture (IMA), replaced with XenDesktop’s FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA). This will mean a clean install for XenApp customers, again. To combat the whole XenDesktop is complex, Citrix did an amazing job reducing consoles and simplifying the install. I never minded the extra consoles; it just amazed me that it takes so long to integrate them. As Mark Templeton said, two consoles, eight clicks and 20 minutes and you have a working environment. I’m a strong advocate for proper planning and design, so this is fine for a POC. Spend the time up front before the “20 minutes” to install. Now the two consoles are not 100 percent accurate if you want Provisioning Server (PVS), and I almost always recommend that you include this in your delivery solution.
The two primary consoles are Desktop Studio; this is where you perform all of your configuration and Desktop Director, the place you go to manage and support your users. The interface to Desktop Director ROCKS! We continue to see Citrix develop support tools that makes everyone’s lives easier, including the users. XenDesktop also allows for easy publishing of single applications on desktops, so if you need backward for forward compatibility this is even easier than before.
XenDesktop 7 also has better integration with high-end video adapters from NVidia and two new K adapters for two different purposes. We are now seeing that you need Graphic Processors for even Knowledge Workers in VDI using standard office applications. This is different than the need for high-end graphics cards for software like Solid Works and AutoCAD. Two different requirements and two different cards and solutions that can be integrated, check out these cards from NVidia.
Web Interface is now dead with the release of XenDesktop 7. It has been replaced with StoreFront. Customers should be focusing on moving to StoreFront even for existing deployments. No big changes here for the end users. On the back-end there are significant changes in terms of flexibility and scale. To make it easy for users, one can download Citrix Receiver and all they need to know to get setup and access to applications is their email address. This auto provisioning is amazingly easy, and I highly recommend that this be included in any implementation.
There was some significant news on the NetScaler front. A new code update, HDX Insight, an additional high-end model and an expansion of the partner solutions running on NetScaler SDX. SDX is physical hardware, with a hypervisor using virtualized NetScaler instances with dedicated hardware to each instance. Partners like Palo Alto and BLUECAT will be able to leverage the SDX platform. More to come on these announcements but we can all see where this is going. Cisco and Citrix have formed a very strong partnership including the NetScaler as a Cisco Validated Design (CVD). Cisco is now using the NetScaler as their go to Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and XenDesktop on Unified Computing System (UCS). Customers are also going to be able to add HDX Insight for the NetScaler; this will give additional monitoring visibility into all traffic flowing through the NetScaler including High Definition User Experience (HDX). For those of you not familiar with HDX, think of HDX protocol as ICA on steroids.
One announcement that didn’t get much attention is the Mac Desktop Player. I think this is part of XenClient and allows for the checking out of a Windows desktop. Almost everyone that has a Mac uses some type of virtualization layer to run Windows on a Mac now. I assume we will see more information on this once it goes into tech preview.
In summary, some key takeaways:
- Citrix Redefines Enterprise Mobility with XenMobile Enterprise
Citrix XenMobile Enterprise Edition combines mobile device, app and data management, a unified corporate app store, mobile productivity apps and “one-touch” live support into an inclusive solution for delivering mobile services to business. Worx App and Citrix MDX app container technology to add features like data encryption, password authentication, secure lock and wipe, inter-app policies and micro VPNs to mobile applications. - Citrix Continues to Expand Enterprise Mobility Strategy with XenDesktop 7
XenDesktop 7 is the first release of Project Avalon, a multi-phased initiative to deliver Windows as a cloud service. XenDesktop 7 offers integrated Windows app and desktop mobility, easier deployment options and simplified management, all delivered through a new, cloud-style architecture. Current XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp customers will find the new architecture easier than ever to deploy, manage and support. XenDesktop 7 represents the state-of-the-art in app and desktop virtualization, enabling any business to mobilize Windows apps and desktops and deliver them as a cloud service to any device. XenDesktop 7 breaks the bonds between application workloads and delivery infrastructure so that multiple versions of Windows Server and desktop operating systems may be run side by side, including newly enabled support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. - HDX Insight with NetScaler Insight Control
This is a really powerful tool to give admins and support personnel full end user experience visibility for the HDX protocol, as well as other applications being delivered by the NetScaler. HDX Insight runs as an appliance and collects data on the NetScaler using AppFlow. - ShareFile Mobilizes and Secures Enterprise Data Everywhere
With the Synergy announcement, Citrix is uniquely positioned to mobilize user data everywhere, including data within SharePoint and network drives and public cloud storage on Microsoft Azure, while providing IT with comprehensive control to secure enterprise data everywhere. - Citrix announced new Citrix ShareFile innovations for mobilizing and securing enterprise data, including StorageZone Connectors for SharePoint and network drives, new Citrix-managed StorageZone options with Microsoft Windows Azure and unique integration with Citrix XenMobile.
All in all, a successful event!
Genesys accelerates cloud strategy with new Platform On Demand offering
Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst, Customer Experience and Interaction
Genesys is making bold moves to strengthen its position in the cloud customer service market. Following its acquisitions of Angel.com in February 2013 and, more recently, SoundBite Communications, Genesys will also offer its own suite of contact center applications in the cloud.
The new solution, Platform On-Demand, will be offered in addition to Genesys’ existing partner-led cloud solutions. It is targeted at contact centers with over 100 seats that are looking for an entire Genesys suite, as well as customers that want to add select applications in the cloud.
As the uptake of cloud contact center solutions rapidly increases, it is a logical move for Genesys to offer its own suite of contact center applications in the cloud. Although the vendor is behind its competitors in launching its own cloud offering, there is a significant opportunity in the market as customers …