As enterprises deploy private IaaS clouds into production they are reevaluating their future application delivery models. SUSE and WSO2 believe that private PaaS will leverage the automation and scalability of Private IaaS solutions, such as OpenStack-based SUSE Cloud, to deliver the secure, standardized development environments that will make migrating to an agile, serviceoriented delivery model possible.
In their session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Chris Haddad, VP of Technology Evangelism at WSO2, and Frank Rego, Business Development Manager at SUSE, will show how the combination of IaaS and PaaS enables enterprises to more efficiently and flexibly tackle the challenges of the modern connected enterprise.
Vendor-agnostic data centres: Fact or fantasy?
In some ways, everything about IT is about creating uniformity. Standard configurations. Synchronized patches. 1000 identical laptops shipped to all employees.
We place a high premium on “everything being exactly the same.” And for good reason – if everything is the same, management and administration becomes far far easier.
And while we enjoy the fantasy of racks and racks of identically-configured servers humming away in the icy cold data centre of the future, anyone who knows what a data centre smells like (mmm, silicon) also knows that we can, at best, approximate that fantasy – but never truly taste it.
Why? Life is a big, hairy exception.
Exceptions for different workloads. Exceptions for supported software packages. Legacy systems where updates are either impossible or cost-prohibitive. New environments needed to support fun new applications and capabilities. Servers bought by enterprising LOB folks and stored under their desk until they were confiscated like gum …
Splunk and Cloudera Team on Hadoop
Splunk, the real-time operational intelligence platform, and Cloudera, the Apache Hadoop player, have fashioned a strategic alliance to deliver Big Data analytics across the enterprise.
Splunk Enterprise can integrate with Cloudera’s Enterprise Hadoop distribution using Splunk’s Hadoop Connect, which provides bi-directional integration to move data between Splunk Enterprise and Hadoop. It’s supposed to let customers to use Splunk’s machine data ingestion and management to deliver data to Hadoop, or ingest data into Splunk from Hadoop, such as the output of Hadoop MapReduce jobs, then analyze and visualize the data.
Together they expect to attract a broader spectrum of end users.
SNAP Interactive is a joint customer of Splunk and Cloudera. It owns and operates AYI, one of the largest social dating applications on the Internet, with more than 20 million Facebook-connected profiles and more than a billion interest data points.
Splunk collects analytics data from all of its online systems so engineering and business users can do ad hoc analysis and visualize important trends. Splunk Hadoop Connect then sends data from Splunk to Cloudera for the specialized batch analytics that powers many features on Splunk’s site.
Building Open Interoperable Cloud Infrastructure
At pennies per virtual machine-hour, the economics of cloud computing are both compelling and daunting to replicate. Whether you are building your own cloud infrastructure, building a public cloud or choosing a cloud service, there are key strategy and technology decisions that make the difference between success and failure.
This session will share industry best practices for deploying cloud infrastructure that maximize the benefits of cloud economics, agility and interoperability. Learn how Intel is working with industry leaders to deliver open, secure and efficient cloud computing based on optimized compute, networking, storage and software technology and what are key tools and resources to help you achieve your cloud computing goals.
New Features, Bells and Whistles: Google I/O Conference
Guest Post by Paul Williams, a copywriter with InternetProviders.com
The Google I/O 2013 conference started with a bang on May 15th. Developers, tech journalists and venture capitalists crowded the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where CEO Larry Page and VP Amit Singhal delivered masterful keynotes that set the tone for the rest of the event.
Although Google I/O events are mostly for developers, the conference thus far has produced many interesting items for users to dissect and marvel at. In fact, the buzz surrounding the I/O conference has mostly been focused on developments and new features that will soon be ready to enhance the Google user experience. The major announcements are related to maps, music, finances, pictures, education, games, social networking, and search.
Providing Instant Answers with Conversation and Learning
Google is leaning on its Knowledge Graph to deliver a rich search experience that draws from a massive relational database that stores 570 million entries. According to Amit Singhal, Knowledge Graph will progressively learn from the queries entered by hundreds of millions of users. To this end, a film enthusiast searching for information about director Kathryn Bigelow, will instantly see highlights from her filmography, biographical data, reviews for Zero Dark Thirty, discussions about the possible remake of Point Break, and even more nuggets of information right on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).
Google is moving beyond the traditional keyboard-mouse-screen input methods of Internet search. “OK Google” is the new approach to conversational search. In this regard, Google’s plans for voice search have already impressed users and developers alike with an interface that will surely rival Apple’s Siri. The Google Now voice-activated personal assistant is also becoming smarter with reminders, recommendations and alerts that conform to each user’s search history and preferences.
Mapping and Finance
A revamped Google Maps for mobile devices will serve as a full-fledged handheld or in-vehicle navigator while the Maps version for tablets will feature an interface that encourages exploration. Google Wallet does no longer seem to be pursuing a debit-card strategy, although it intends to take on rival PayPal with an electronic funds transfer system powered by Gmail.
Advanced Social Networking
More than a dozen new features have been added to Google Plus (G+), the search giant’s promising social network. One of the most significant upgrades is Babel, a communication tool that integrates G+ Hangouts with other messaging applications such as Voice, Talk, Gmail, and the G+ Messenger.
Google is borrowing a page from Twitter with its own set of hash tags for G+. These smart tags will search across the G+ network for user-generated content that can be analyzed and organized by hash tags that can be clicked and expanded to reveal related content. This is similar to the discontinued Google Sparks feature of G+.
The most visible G+ upgrade can be appreciated in its user interface. Multiple columns that stream updates with animated transitions and photos retouched with Google’s patent “I’m feeling lucky” style of image editing make for a much more visually-pleasing experience on G+.
Streaming Music and Game Services
Google Play is no longer limited to solely serving as a marketplace for Android apps. For less than $10 per month, users can listen to unlimited tracks streamed from Google Play’s vast online music library. Users will be able to listen from their Android mobile devices or from compatible Web browsers.
Gamers will now be able to begin playing a game on their smartphones or tablets and later resume playing on a different device or Web browser. This is similar to the popular Xbox Live online gaming service from Microsoft, although Google plans to let developers come up with third-party gaming apps on Apple iOS and non-Chrome browsers.
Paul Williams is a part-time tech blogger, and full-time copywriter with InternetProviders.com. You can contact him via email.
The Who, What and How of Selling Cloud to SMBs
Cloud enables SMBs to access new, scalable resources – previously only available to enterprises – in flexible and cost-effective ways. McKinsey’s SMB Cloud Report projects the public cloud market to reach $40-$50 billion by 2015, with SMBs comprising 65% of public cloud spending in 2015. But selling cloud to SMBs raises the questions of who, what and how.
In this session Manjula Talreja, VP of Cisco’s Global Cloud Business Development Team, will discuss the importance of knowing who SMBs are through market segmentation; understanding what cloud services they will consume; and understanding how best to sell to SMBs and from which channels.
Speaker Bio:
Manjula Talreja is Vice President Global Cloud Business Development for Cisco, where she is creating new business models and partnerships with technology vendors, SPs and SIs in cloud. In addition to her focus on key customers and partners, she is helping shape the next phase of Cisco’s enterprise cloud strategy. She is a highly sought-after industry thought-leader, and was recently named to CableFAX Magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Women in Cable 2012’.
Cloud Computing Bootcamp at Cloud Expo New York: Full Agenda
New, “Super-Sized” 4-Day Cloud Computing Bootcamp is a brief introduction to cloud computing carefully created and devised to help you keep up with evolving trends like Big Data, PaaS, APIs, Mobile, Social and Data Analytics. Solutions built around these topics require a sound cloud computing infrastructure to be successful while assisting customers harvest real benefits from this transformational change that is happening in the IT ecosystem.
Turning Cloud Sense into Dollars
As small and medium businesses (SMBs) continue to increase their use of cloud services, web hosters have been asking, “How can I leverage this opportunity to better serve my customers’ needs and grow my business?” Here are some tips on how offering a competitive core bundle and upselling value added services can be a successful way to increase your average revenue per user (ARPU), reduce churn and differentiate your services.
• Increase ARPU – To increase the revenue your customers generate, you need to continuously offer them new services. Upselling and cross-selling additional services and products—both during and after the point of sale—will play a major role in maximizing revenues from your existing customer base.
• Reduce customer churn – Customer retention is the litmus test of your ability to differentiate yourself as a service provider and demonstrate to your customers you understand their needs. Studies show that when SMBs buy additional services through their Web service provider, they are less likely to leave. You can also differentiate yourself by engaging customers with great service; educating them on how to derive the greatest value from the solutions they purchase from you; and offering them outstanding support.
But how can you determine which solutions SMBs need? Our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research can help give you the answers:
30% of SMBs plan to add site building tools in the next three years – to capture your fair share, offer Parallels Web Presence Builder, a full-featured website design tool that any SMB can use. With Parallels Web Presence Builder, you can attract new customers and differentiate your services by offering try-and-buy evaluations or configuring a freemium website offer and upselling to paid or hosting packages.
50% of US SMBs have or plan to build mobile websites – with the highest growth in next three years. The time to start selling mobile optimized websites is now and UNITY Mobile will enable your customers to quickly create and publish a mobile site that run on any mobile phone and tablet. You can offer mobile services bundled or as standalone and UNITY Mobile products also offer you upsell options.
44% of SMBs are concerned about security – Web Hosters can help reduce security fears by upselling key services such as StopTheHacker, a great website security solution to help your customers prevent, detect and quickly recover from hacker or malware attacks. Another important application is CloudFlare, which extends your network globally with 23 points-of-presence on four continents, making your customer’s websites load twice as fast, while keeping them safe and optimized.
If you’re an Infrastructure Provider, you should offer server-wide services to protect your customers, secure your reputation and improve customer satisfaction – Parallels Premium Antivirus and Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam are two must-have applications. With Parallels Plesk Panel Power Pack you can extend Parallels Panel capabilities with high-value add-ons. As an example, Panel Power Pack includes five mailbox licenses for Kaspersky Antivirus server-side e-mail scanning software. These licenses are resalable, so you can use them to upsell your customers to additional mailbox protection, you can also upsell to an unlimited per server license.
Leslie McGuire
Channel Marketing Director
Google To Sell Compute Engine By the Minute
Google’s Compute Engine, its interpretation of Amazon Web Services’ EC2, is here, 11 months after it was announced and a little late to the party with Amazon.
It’s now available for anybody who’s interested, not just the chosen few.
To differentiate itself from AWS, Google’s widgetry will be sold by the minute, not the hour, with 10 minutes being the minimum. Figure less than two cents an hour.
Google says it’s also got:
Shared-core instances to provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads;
Advanced routing features to help users create gateways and VPN servers that enable them to build applications spanning their local network and Google’s cloud; and
Large persistent disks that support up to 10TB per volume, which, it chortles, translates into 10x the industry standard. It used to just support 1.25TB.
Google has been working on adding a PHP runtime and the new App Engine 1.8.0 includes a limited preview of the popular web programming widgetry. Google says it offers deep integration with other parts of Cloud Platform including Google Cloud SQL and Cloud Storage. App Engine already supports Java, Python and Google’s own Go language.
To make building modular application on App Engine easier, developers can now partition apps into components with separate scaling, deployments, versioning and performance settings.
Google is also rolling out a Cloud Datastore, a fully managed and schema-less solution for storing non-relational data based on App Engine High Replication Datastore, which reportedly serves 4.5 trillion transactions a month. It says it’s a standalone service that features automatic scalability and high availability as well as ACID transactions, SQL-like queries and indexes. It’s a direct competitor to Amazon’s S3.
Senior VP of technical infrastructure Urs Holzle blogged that with all the feature enhancements that have been made lately, Google Cloud Platform is seeing increased use, with “over three million applications and over 300,000 unique developers,” using it in a given month.
Apparently Google is counting on expanding its partnerships with Oracle, SAP and Red Hat to attract the enterprise folk.
Google Compute Engine Now Available for All
With over 3 million applications and over 300,000 unique developers now using Cloud Platform in a given month, according to Google Sr. VP Urs Hölzle, it is time to open that infrastructure “and make it available to any business or developer anywhere.”
Blogging in the Google Cloud Platform official blog, Hölzle wrote: