Recently while I was in Europe presenting some sessions at conferences and doing some seminars, I was invited by Ed Saipetch (@edsai) of Inktank.com to attend the first Ceph Day in Amsterdam.
As luck or fate would turn out, I was in Nijkerk which is about an hour train ride from Amsterdam central station plus a free day in my schedule. After a morning train ride and nice walk from Amsterdam Central I arrived at the Tobacco Theatre (a former tobacco trading venue) where Ceph Day was underway, and in time for lunch of Krokettens sandwich.
Lets take a quick step back and address for those not familiar what is Ceph (Cephalanthera) and why it was worth spending a day to attend this event. Ceph is an open source distributed object scale out (e.g. cluster or grid) software platform running on industry standard hardware.
The Case for Cloud Brokers
The Cloud market is diverse and highly fragmented – typical of any market in its early stages. The broad range of cloud activities and the frantic pace of new products / services getting launched is driving the need to consolidate and unify cloud services for the end user and for the market as a whole.
This article tries to understand the business model of cloud brokers and its importance to the cloud market. Typically, almost all business models involve different levels in what are known as value chains or supply chains.
EVault, Cequel Data Centers Partner for Cloud Backup
EVault, Inc., a Seagate Company, and Cequel Data Centers, LLC, today announced that Cequel Data Centers has joined the EVault® Partner Program and will promote and sell EVault’s cloud-connected™ backup and recovery services at its locations across the United States.
Cequel Data Centers owns Dallas, Texas-based Colo4, Perimeter Technology in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and TierPoint in Spokane, Washington. The three managed services providers currently offer primary and secondary backup and colocation services, and are now extending their cloud services to offer the EVault integrated suite of award-winning, cloud-connected backup solutions.
“As a colocation and managed services company with multiple data centers across the country serving a wide range of customers and industries, it is important for us to offer the best data storage options and continually work to expand our offerings,” said Andy Stewart, vice president of corporate development for Cequel. “Partnering with EVault enables us to deliver a unified solution across all of our markets, allowing us to provide our customers with a range of features and services that go above and beyond what single-site operators can offer.”
EVault provides onsite, cloud, and cloud-connected — or hybrid — data protection solutions to help organizations protect and access their business data. EVault has led the industry in the move to hybrid storage models, with a uniquely integrated ecosystem of EVault storage software, SaaS, managed services, and appliances that help ensure customers maintain business continuity in multi-platform, multi-site environments. EVault data protection, disaster recovery and other storage services are optimized to perform in a distributed environment; supported by a secure, reliable cloud storage infrastructure; and backed by the highest quality customer service.
“Building a strong partnership with a respected national colocation and managed services provider like Cequel is instrumental to EVault’s growth and success,” said Dave Hallmen, vice president of sales and marketing, EVault, Inc. “By joining forces with a national provider of carrier-neutral, data center colocation services to distribute our cloud-connected services, EVault is able to complement our award-winning backup and recovery solutions with Cequel’s leading offerings.”
EVault cloud-connected backup and recovery products and services are available immediately through Colo4, Perimeter Technology, and TierPoint.
Cbeyond Offers Top Five Disaster Prevention Tips for SMBs
In the wake of superstorm Sandy, and with the potential for disruptive winter storms in the coming months, Cbeyond Inc. on Tuesday released its top five disaster prevention strategies IT teams can implement now to ensure business continuity.
With the threat of natural disasters such as storms and floods as well as man-made hazards such as fires, power outages and theft constantly looming, businesses need to prepare for incidents that could potentially inhibit their ability to operate. In the worst case scenarios, these events can force businesses to close permanently. The end of the year is the ideal time for small and mid-sized businesses to evaluate and refine their current disaster recovery plans or, if such plans do not already exist, build a first-time strategy.
Garbage Data in, Garbage Information Out, Big Data or Big Garbage?
Do you know the computer technology saying, garbage data in results in garbage information out?
In other words even with the best algorithms and hardware, bad, junk or garbage data put in results in garbage information delivered. Of course, you might have data analysis and cleaning software to look for, find and remove bad or garbage data, however that’s for a different post on another day.
If garbage data in results in garbage information out, does garbage big data in result in big garbage out?
Orange Digital moves to Amazon cloud
Citing its previous infrastructure as being expensive to run and time consuming to maintain Orange Digital, which manages the online portals for EE, has moved to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The firm claims that by moving to Amazon’s cloud, it is better able to support spikes in traffic and capacity and reduce costs by £2m over a three-year period.
Cloudera Impala – Closing the Near Real Time Gap Working with Big Data
On October 24, 2012 Cloudera announced the release of Cloudera Impala and the commercial support subscription service of Cloudera Enterprise Real Time Query (RTQ). Impala is a SQL based Real Time Query/Ad Hoc query engine built on top of HDFS or Hbase. As I watched the demonstration unfold, I wondered if one of the remaining technology gaps in the NOSQL arsenal had been closed. What gap you ask? Near Real Time Analytics on a NOSQL stack. Working with customers across the Cyber Security customer space, not only do they face the familiar BIGDATA horsemen of the apocalypse: Volume, Velocity and Variety but one more large challenge crept in: Time (V3T). The Near Real Time Analysis/Near Real Time Analytic capability that Cloudera Impala provides is essential in many high value use cases associated with Cyber Security: comparing current activity with observed historical norms, correlation of many disparate data sources/enrichment and automated threat detection algorithms.
Cloud service providers need to think small
The African enterprise space may be in the nascent stages of development, but it’s time has certainly come. A new stream, Enterprise ICT Africa, made its appearance at AfricaCom this year, putting a strong focus on the opportunities for cloud services in the region.
As many of the industry’s thought leaders have advised, Africa is in a good position to generate opportunities where other more developed regions have failed. On the opening day Camille Mendler, principal analyst and head of enterprise verticals at Informa Telecoms & Media, called for new segmentation methods for the market in order to capitalise on contextual opportunities. In this case, Mendler believes there is a significant opportunity for cloud services in the ‘long tail’, the blue collar market and micro-businesses.
Cloud on the rise in New Zealand as firms spend more
Research published by analysts Frost & Sullivan this week has revealed that over half of New Zealand companies surveyed are looking to increase their cloud budgets.
Two in five organisations which use cloud services in New Zealand spend more than 10% of their total IT budget on the cloud, whilst 57% of organisations intend to increase their cloudy budgets in the next 12 months.
As part of its State of Cloud Computing New Zealand 2012 research, Frost & Sullivan examined the usual metrics concerning the cloud – primarily the biggest drivers, concerns, as well as costs.
The research found that software as a service (SaaS) was, unsurprisingly, the most commonly used cloud model, with lower costs, standardisation, and seamless integration with legacy systems cited as the main reasons for SaaS success. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, as it hits prevalent trends.
Similarly, security was cited as the most important criterion …
How Can the US Improve Its ICT Standing?
How can the United States improve its technology standing in the world? For that matter, how can any country do this?
These are among the questions we’ve undertaken with our ongoing research at The Tau Institute, which I founded earlier this year with the sponsorship of Cloud Computing Journal and Computerworld Philippines. We have a small staff in our joint headquarters offices in Illinois and Manila.
We integrate several technology, economic, and societal measures into two algorithms that are designed to measure the relative, “pound-for-pound” impact of the ICT environments of 102 nations. The first algorithm integrates all factors; the second focuses on the technology factors alone, to determine which countries have the most remaining potential.
The factors – all publicly available – include the World Bank’s per capita income figures (nominal and adjusted for local cost-of-living), the Gini coefficient (which measures income disparity), Transparency International’s Perception of Corruption Index, and the United Nations Human Development Index. We also integrate Internet access and datacenter data from the International Telecommunications Union.
We normalize the factors, then integrate in a fashion that weighs their impact uniquely and highlights the star performers in all regions and at all income levels. I’ve provided a list of the top performers before.
But returning to the question at the top of this piece, how can nations improve?
Two of the most important things they can do is reduce their corruption and increase their citizens’ access to broadband connections. These two things are not necessarily strongly related, but we believe they are connected.
The Worldwide Web is the apotheosis of Schumpeter’s doctrine of creative destruction – the introverted Tim Berners-Lee does not seem like an anarchic man, but his invention has already destroyed journalism as we knew it and played a role in bringing down governments as well. The Web thus has a power that terrifies old-guard businesspeople and all government leaders.
On the one hand, broadband only increases – or facilitates – citizens’ ability to find, create, and dissemminate information and opinion in an incredibly inexpensive fashion. On the other, a highly corrupt leadership will be more effective in curbing the freedoms enabled by the Web, including access to it.
Our rankings do not weigh the type of government, nor do they have any baked-in prejudice toward any particular political point of view. The world’s top performers include the very open societies of Finland and New Zealand, less open South Korea, and Communist Vietnam.
The United States drags along at 34th, trailing Canada in its own region, and many Western, Eastern, and Northern European counterparts. The BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) all trail counterparts in their regions and income tiers.
Increasing income disparity in the United States also hurts its rankings, particularly in comparison to Canada. We see this as linked to corruption, although strong programs to bring wider-spread access to all corners of the country may improve things independently of the societal factors.
We’ll be looking at Australia’s NBN broadband effort in coming years to see what difference it makes, for example.
Have a question on how our data can help you or your country? Contact us via Twitter and we’d love to start a discussion.