It has been less than four months since we introduced the first public preview for Windows Azure Mobile Services and in this short time we have seen continual improvements to the service offering including:
SDKs for Windows Store, Windows Phone 8 and iOS app
Auth using Microsoft Account, Facebook, Google and Twitter
Push Notification support via WNS, MPNS and APNS
Structured storage
Deployments in East and West US datacenters
SYS-CON Media Launches Big Data Journal and SDN Journal
SYS-CON Media has launched Big Data Journal and SDN Journal Each journal features hundreds of original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries.
Big Data solutions are playing an increasing role in the Enterprise IT mainstream. Big Data Journal focuses on how to use your own enterprise data – processed in the Cloud – most effectively to drive value for your business.
Big Data Journal premier issue authors include Brian McCallion, Greg Ness, Greg Schulz, Kevin Nikkhoo, John Cowan, Adrian Bridgwater, Richard Minney, Patrick Burke, Jim Kaskade, Jnan Dash, Bob Gourley, Kevin Remde, Lori MacVittie, Jason Bloomberg, and Ajay Budhraja.
Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to networking in which control is decoupled from hardware and given to a software application called a controller. In a software-defined network, a network administrator can shape traffic from a centralized control console without having to touch individual switches.
Driving lessons
Connected cars represent an exciting evolution for consumers, car manufacturers and mobile operators alike. There are already over one billion cars on the world’s roads today, according to research firm Ward’s Auto, and that number is expected to continue growing as more consumers in emerging markets get onto the roads. Automotive manufacturers have already put plans into action to ensure, that in the coming years, the majority of new cars will be equipped with broadband connectivity.
Keeping Cloud moving
It’s been a year for serious cloud investments and networking specialist Cisco has closed out 2012 with a $1.2bn outlay on privately held cloud management company Meraki.
Having missed the 3G boat, Cisco is attempting to make an impression in the telco space by using its IP expertise to cash in on the migration to endto- end IP architecture brought in with LTE. At the same time, however, specialist telecom equipment providers are developing their own ‘Cisco killer’ switching infrastructure.
2013 ERP predictions: The customer takes control
From the obvious to the outrageous, enterprise software predictions often span a wide spectrum at the beginning of every year.
In enterprise software in general and ERP specifically, there are many safe harbours to dock predictions in, from broad industry consolidation to Oracle buying more companies. Or the inexorable advances of cloud computing and SaaS platforms in ERP today, which is often cited in enterprise software predictions.
Too often predictions gravitate too much towards theoretical economics, overly-simplified industry dynamics and technologies, leaving out the most critical element: customers as people, not just transactions.
So instead of repeating what many other industry analysts, observers and pundits have said, I am predicting only the customer side of ERP advances in the next twelve months.
The following are my predictions for ERP systems and enterprise computing in 2013:
1) The accelerating, chaotic pace of change driven by customers will force the majority of …
Cloud Computing: EMC Buys iWave
Storage titan EMC has quietly acquired Texas-based iWave Software, whose Automator suite streamlines the provisioning and management of storage systems, data centers and private clouds. No price was mentioned.
It will be another Storage-as-a-Service ornament for EMC’s Advanced Storage Division.
EMC uses iWave widgetry in its VMAX Service Provider Platform. Users can provision, remove and extend block storage for Linux, VMware ESX servers and VMware clusters.
The news got out through a posting by iWave Brent Rhymes, who’s of course “thrilled” with the acquisition.
2013: A Take-Off Year for Enterprise Transformations
As 2013 gets off the ground and we look at the year ahead, there can no longer be any doubts that cloud computing has caused a paradigm shift in computing. Cloud computing has fundamentally changed the Internet world – and is having an impact on every form of business. Not only is it helping organizations to fast-track revenue generation, but it’s also creating new business and growth opportunities as well.
Cloud adoption is gaining ground and ready to take a center stage. However, many organizations are still bogged down with worry as to how they can create or maintain differentiating business value for various stakeholders. This has a profound impact on the future of their businesses – from their ability to compete and even their very existence.
How VMware Could Beat Amazon in the Cloud
This is part of a series of blog posts on the emergence of hybrid cloud and how it will impact enterprise IT, solutions and public cloud service providers.
Over the last four years Archimedius has tracked the evolution of VMware from server virtualization leader to private cloud leader and the rise of Amazon as a public cloud leader. Earlier in December I predicted the rise of the hybrid cloud in 2012, and later discussed the implications in greater detail in Top Five Cloud Predictions. In short, I think that hybrid cloud promises to transform the way that enterprises and service providers deliver IT services, and the way that vendors develop and bring to market their products and services.
Over the next five years we will watch IT move from a feudalistic, hardware-bound model to a service and software-driven model, thanks in large part to the transformation of public and private clouds into hybrid clouds. That will shift enterprise investment into cloud computing and shift tech market valuations from the stable and hardware-enabled to the nimble, service and software-driven. Trillions in market capitalizations are at stake, based on the timing and breadth of this transformation.
Cloud Conversations: Gaining Cloud Confidence | Part 2
There is good information, insight and lessons to be learned from cloud outages and other incidents.
Sorry cynics no that does not mean an end to clouds, as they are here to stay. However when and where to use them, along with what best practices, how to be ready and configure for use are part of the discussion. This means that clouds may not be for everybody or all applications, or at least today. For those who are into clouds for the long haul (either all in or partially) including current skeptics, there are many lessons to be learned and leveraged.
Amazon Fields High Storage Instances
Amazon Web Service has fielded what it calls High Storage instances, a new EC2 instance family for applications requiring fast access to large amounts of data.
These new instances are currently available as a single instance type, Eight Extra Large (hs1.8xlarge) and provide customers with 35 EC2 Compute Units (ECUs) of compute capacity, 117GiB (gibibytes) of RAM and 48TB of storage across 24 hard disk drives.
The widgetry is capable of delivering more than 2.4GB a second of sequential I/O performance.
With large amounts of direct-attached storage per instance, these High Storage instances are good for data-intensive apps like Hadoop workloads, log processing, data warehousing and parallel file systems to process and analyze large data sets in the AWS cloud.