“Social and word of mouth are important to the solar industry,” noted Candice Adams, Marketing Manager for Trinity Solar, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, “many of us do the majority of our social networking on our mobile devices and the cloud is the backbone of our favorite smartphones and tablets.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree?
Candice Adams: Absolutely agree! While the financial savings are a tremendous benefit, it is the time savings where we see the largest cloud benefits. We have a very large sales team spread from MA to MD, and the cloud allows us to pass information in real-time, no matter where we happen to be working that day.
Compuware to Speak on APM for Big Data at Cloud Expo New York
Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company delivering a new generation of APM, has announced that Michael Kopp, a Technology Strategist for Compuware’s application performance management (APM) business, will present a session titled: “When APM Meets Big Data – Making Your Hadoop Jobs Faster” at the 12th International Cloud Expo at the Javits Center, June 10-13, in New York City.
Analyzing Hadoop jobs and speeding them up is often a tedious and time-consuming effort that requires experts. During this session, attendees will learn how proven APM techniques can be used to speed up Hadoop jobs at the core, without going through tons of log files–beyond just adding more hardware and within minutes instead of hours or days.
Moving to the Cloud Creates Efficiencies
“A substantial amount of the ‘Big Data’ discussion is relevant and interesting to organizations (as a practical matter) because of the advent of the “cloud,” said Alon Israely, Co-Founder & Manager, Strategic Partnerships, Business Intelligence Associates, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, “especially as the deployment and implementation of many ‘Big Data’ systems rely on utility computing.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree?
Israely: It’s about saving both time and money, but primarily it’s about saving money – when you save time, you save money. The advent of utility computing environments and distributed storage is very much about the economics that technology brings. Today, businesses can focus on spending more of their budgets (and time) on their core business and not on IT (e.g., IT assets, resources, etc.). Of course moving to the “cloud” also creates efficiencies around time spent on technical tasks – such as deployment of systems and applications, and allows for faster business processes because, for example, using web-based interfaces and smarter workflows – but since saving time translates directly to saving money, in the end it is primarily about saving money.
Cloud Expo New York: From Your Datacenter to the Cloud and Back
Nowadays IT has the challenge to keep the core business systems running smoothly, bringing in as little disruption as possible while at the same time meeting the constantly growing LoB demands for new features and improved ways to access data. To make it harder – with the growth of mobile clients corporate data is now accessed primarily from outside of the realm of corporate network.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Krasimir Semerdzhiev, Principal Development Architect at SAP AG, will introduce several options that SAP HANA Cloud Platform provides for bridging the gap between the cloud and all onPremise systems.
TwinStrata Shows Off Cloud Integrated Storage at Cloud Expo New York
Nicos Vekiarides, CEO and co-founder of TwinStrata, Inc., an innovator in cloud-integrated storage solutions, will present on the roles of traditional and cloud storage in the era of Big Data to attendees of Cloud Expo New York, June 10-13 at the Javits Center in New York City. TwinStrata will also show its newly launched CloudArray 4.5 in booth 450.
Vekiarides’ presentation, “How to Cram Big Data into a Small Storage Package with Cloud Storage,” is an in-depth examination of the problems created by the meteoric increase in amount of data, common workarounds and why they fail, and how cloud storage can be a simpler, far more effective alternative. Vekiarides looks at how the era of big data and the “keep everything” attitude has led to common and often devastating problems surrounding the storage, management and recovery of data. He’ll also discuss the potential benefits of cloud storage in addressing those problems. The presentation is featured at 5pm in the Big Data track on Wednesday, June 12 as part of the conference’s Cloud Computing & Big Data session.
At Cloud Expo NY, Appcara Spotlights Management of Hadoop Apps in Cloud
Appcara, an innovator in cloud application management solutions, is using next week’s Cloud Expo New York to spotlight technology advances for simplified launching and managing of large, distributed Hadoop workloads into both private and service provider clouds through the use of new cloud application management technologies and cloud platforms such as CA AppLogic®. As CIOs increasingly adopt Big Data-type applications such as Hadoop but struggle to deploy, manage and scale-out across hundreds or thousands of servers, the presentations and demonstrations at Cloud Expo New York will showcase approaches that will save hours of time and lower costs, to enable both technical and business end-users to more readily maximize the value of cloud-based Hadoop applications.
Embracing Big Data for cloud-based applications is one thing, but when users struggle to manage these applications due to a lack of appropriate tools, both IT and end user time is squandered and the very purpose of Big Data deployment itself can be threatened. During a talk at Cloud Expo New York, Appcara and CA Technologies will discuss new techniques that enable users to deploy complex Hadoop deployments into cloud environments in minutes and also enable holistic management of these applications across their lifecycle. By elevating application management, significant productivity gains can be achieved versus the present IT practice of making one-off changes to a piecemeal collection of servers. A separate demonstration will show how IT teams have achieved a 30-50% reduction in the time required for such activities as provisioning multi-tier and distributed applications and performing ongoing lifecycle management of these apps, when using these new approaches.
Akamai Outlines Best Practices for Cloud Success at Cloud Expo NY 2013
Akamai Technologies, Inc., a cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, is showcasing its cloud delivery and optimization expertise at Cloud Expo NY 2013 which will be held at New York’s Javit’s Center, June 10-13, 2013. Through a combination of keynote, general and technical sessions, as well as booth demonstrations (Booth 418) of the company’s Terra Alta solutions, Akamai will show attendees how they can maximize the results of their cloud computing strategies.
Terra Alta is a cloud-based application delivery platform designed to improve enterprise agility and collaboration by offering the power to instantly configure and deliver all web-based applications, to any users, anywhere in the world. The solution also can help overcome the inherent challenges related to performance, availability, scalability and security, which cannot be accomplished by deploying specialized hardware within the data center. Further, Terra Alta is designed to mitigate new application delivery challenges introduced by the rapid migration and movement of applications across cloud computing platforms, the diversity of mobile device types and networks, and the need for real-time aggregation of data sources.
Cloud Enables a Win-Win on Both Sides of the Business
“Open source is very important for the cloud ecosystem,” noted Manjula Talreja, VP of Global Cloud Business Development at Cisco, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “One of the biggest concerns our customers have about cloud is the fear of lock-in: cloud, especially public cloud, has the potential of becoming ‘a hotel’ where customers can check in but can never check out.”
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) and for cloud providers (to create new services rapidly and with fewer barriers to sell and create demand for those services).
What Will Stop the Amazon Cloud Juggernaut?
Amazon has built a classic virtuous cycle. They got IaaS to work, disrupting the pre-existing data center outsourcing market. They achieved market dominance, enabling them to be the low-cost leader. And they figured out how to scale, facilitating unlimited growth. But such growth and market dominance cannot go on forever, can it? What—if anything—has any hope of stopping, or even slowing down, the Amazon Cloud juggernaut?
The first place to look for an AWS-killer, of course, is the competition. And perhaps the one adversary that has a real shot at dethroning Amazon is Google. They are the only competitor that understands infrastructure at scale as well as Amazon does. They also have a trusted, well-established brand, and they’ve shown they’re willing to take risks and provide market leadership. Expect better than an AWS clone from Google.
FinancialForce, Bluewolf Partner For Apps+Consulting
FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, and Bluewolf, the global business consulting firm “born in the cloud,” today announced a strategic global partnership. Together, Bluewolf and FinancialForce.com will help companies access and improve visibility into data that speeds bookings-to-billing cycles and enriches customer engagement.
Bluewolf and FinancialForce.com will provide cloud-based applications and services to joint customers that eliminate the borders between the front and back office, and consolidate information across disparate customer relationship management (CRM), back office and supply chain applications. This will allow companies to organize as teams around their customers, instead of internal departmental structures.
“Rather than invest in the maintenance of rigid, on-premises systems, the cloud frees us to focus on customizations and innovations that meet customer needs and create a first-mover advantage in the market,” said Jonathan Adlerstein, CIO of Plymouth Rock Energy. “Working with Bluewolf and FinancialForce.com, we have integrated our sales, customer care, marketing and billing information in the cloud, enabling employees at every level to own any customer interaction.”
Two areas of focus for the Bluewolf and FinancialForce.com partnership will be media billing and general accounting processes.
“Billing reconciliation is a problem for online media companies as most back office systems used to manage ad billing are unequipped to handle changes in orders and invoices. This can result in long billing cycles, unacceptable Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and in some cases, lost revenues,” said Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.com. “FinancialForce.com’sMedia and Accounting offerings coupled with Bluewolf’s expertise in the industry will make us the go-to team for customers seeking a proven end-to-end solution.”
As partners, FinancialForce.com and Bluewolf will provide customized and scalable cloud-based billing solutions that reduce the time it takes organizations to send invoices, resulting in a faster turnaround on receivables.
