User expectations with respect to performance are always a concern for IT. Whether it’s monitoring performance or responding to a fire drill because an application is “slow”, IT is ultimately responsible for maintaining the consistent levels of performance expected by end-users – whether internal or external.
Virtualization and cloud computing introduce a variety of challenges for operations whose primary focus is performance. From lack of visibility to lack of control, dealing with performance issues is getting more and more difficult.
What Happens in Barcelona…. Can Now Be Seen Here
Also this year cloud computing was a large topic at Gartner’s annual symposium in Barcelona. It shared the limelight with the other three forces of the Nexus (Social, Mobile and Information) but managed to pop into most conversations and presentations.
For those who missed it – and for attendees that did not manage to be in all parallel sessions at once – video recordings can now be accessed at gartnereventsondemand.com (highlights available after registration of email, full sessions for registered attendees).
Personally I did a couple of dozen 1on1’s, seven larger sessions (presentations, roundtable’s and clinics) and met with several more people over breakfast and dinner. With breakfasts at the time most Americans are accustomed to and dinners taking place according to local tradition, you can imagine these were pretty lengthy days. Not that we noticed, because the 1on1 rooms (unlike last year) had no daylight. Luckily we managed to get some fresh air as we popped over to the special CSP (Communication Service Provider) track that was running across the street.
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Racemi Announces Addition of VP Finance
Racemi, the moving company for the cloud, announced that Christian Nelson joins as vice president of finance bringing more than 15 years experience in finance and accounting.
Most recently, he was senior director of finance and controller for Alimera Sciences, where he assisted in the sale of $72 million of common stock in an initial public offering (IPO) in 2010 (NASDAQ: ALIM).
Before that, he was director of finance EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and corporate controller at JBoss, which was acquired in 2006 by Red Hat for $420 million.
Nelson has worked in finance and accounting roles of other Atlanta-area companies, and began his career in the audit practice of Arthur Andersen where his clients included Georgia Power, Savannah Electric and Power, and SouthernLINC Wireless.
Racemi Announces Addition of VP Finance
Racemi, the moving company for the cloud, announced that Christian Nelson joins as vice president of finance bringing more than 15 years experience in finance and accounting.
Most recently, he was senior director of finance and controller for Alimera Sciences, where he assisted in the sale of $72 million of common stock in an initial public offering (IPO) in 2010 (NASDAQ: ALIM).
Before that, he was director of finance EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and corporate controller at JBoss, which was acquired in 2006 by Red Hat for $420 million.
Nelson has worked in finance and accounting roles of other Atlanta-area companies, and began his career in the audit practice of Arthur Andersen where his clients included Georgia Power, Savannah Electric and Power, and SouthernLINC Wireless.
What’s influencing enterprise IT buyers?
The latest round of cloud computing and enterprise software forecasts reflect the growing influence of analytics, legacy systems integration, mobility and security on IT buyer’s decisions.
Bain & Company and Gartner have moved beyond aggregate forecasts, and are beginning to forecast by cloud and SaaS adoption stage. SAP is using the Bain adoption model in their vertical market presentations today.
Despite the predictions of the demise of enterprise software, forecasts and sales cycles I’ve been involved with indicate market growth. Mobility and cloud computing are the catalysts of rejuvenation in many enterprise application areas, and are accelerating sales cycles. Presented in this roundup are market sizes, forecasts and compound annual growth rates (CAGRS) for ten enterprise software segments.
Key take-aways from the latest cloud computing and enterprise software forecasts are provided below:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud-based business application services will grow from $13.4 billion in …
Cloud-Integrated Storage Broadens Its Appeal
While there is no denying that cloud storage has delivered the promise of unlimited “pay-as-you-go” storage capacity, simplified disaster recovery, and savings in costs and maintenance, these attributes alone aren’t driving the growing business adoption. Instead, it is the rise of cloud-integrated storage appliances, which have augmented cloud storage to provide the levels of security, availability, connectivity and performance found in traditional storage systems, that has made cloud storage a viable choice for business.
With this week’s announcement of TwinStrata CloudArray 4.0, the flexibility, availability and performance of cloud-integrated storage has improved further, narrowing the functionality gap between cloud-integrated storage and traditional data storage systems, while leveraging all of the benefits of cloud.
Elasticsearch Closes A Round to Drive Big Data Search
Elasticsearch, the real-time Big Data search and analytics concern formed to commercialize the eponymous open source project that one of its founders started, has gotten a $10 million A round.
The financing was led by Benchmark Capital with Rod Johnson, the creator of Spring and co-founder of SpringSource, and Data Collective kicking in.
The company says it will use the money to build out the organization in all functional areas and expand into key geographic regions to support the adoption of Elasticsearch.
The Amsterdam-base start-up means to open an office in Silicon Valley with the money.
Actuate Offers ActuateOne for Customer Communications Management
Actuate Corporation today announced ActuateOne® for Customer Communications Management (CCM), an integrated solution for top-tier organizations to design, process, store and deliver high-volume customer communications, including account statements, policies, and bills. ActuateOne for CCM is the first in a series of solutions based on the BIRT iHub, a next generation solution deployment framework for delivering applications that keep end-users up to date on the insights they need – where and when they are needed.
“ActuateOne for CCM is designed to give organizations ultimate flexibility to integrate individual components within their existing infrastructures, or to deploy the complete solution to manage their enterprise customer communications,” said Steve Jones, Vice President and General Manager, Actuate Xenos Group. “With the solution, organizations are now able to aggregate customer data for campaign analysis, create targeted customer communications and deliver them to customers through their desired channels, via print and mail or digital channels on desktop or mobile devices.”
“In Customer Communications Management, as with other information management environments, awareness of the entire CCM process tends to be fragmented and limited to an individual’s specific area of focus,” said John Mancini, President at AIIM International. “When information managers don’t have a sense of how the entire Customer Communications process fits together, it limits their ability to make optimal decisions, plus they waste an inordinate amount of resources trying to integrate technologies and processes. What are needed are end-to-end technologies that enable CCM to be understood across data acquisition, content composition, processing, archiving and delivery.”
Within an integrated ActuateOne for CCM environment, organizations can:
- Build market-driven and customer targeted strategies: With
sophisticated data acquisition, data mining and analytics,
organizations can freely analyze customer data. Marketers can identify
market-specific insights and create targeted communications.
Communications can be defined to insert directed trans-promo, next
best offers and targeted marketing messages tailored to each targeted
customer segment. - Compose and create targeted customer communications: With
end-to-end document composition using BIRT, ActuateOne for CCM
simplifies the creation of customer communications. Taking raw data
from varying data sources, the solution creates targeted and
personalized customer communications for both modern-interactive and
traditional-print delivery. Through the use of definable templates
organizations can quickly create customer communications with
organizational branding, customer data and personalized marketing
messages. - Automate and manage customer communications: With leading
document processing and transformation capabilities, ActuateOne for
CCM easily stays on top of data deluge and the process complexity that
accompanies it. The solution simplifies the processes involved in
managing disparate systems and applications by managing the end-to-end
communications process, from data acquisition to analysis,
composition, archive and delivery to end consumers for print and
electronic consumption. With the ability to define and automate
business processes, ActuateOne for CCM enables administrators to
control, log and audit the entire communications process. - Securely Store Customer Communications: Using state-of-the-art
electronic archiving, ActuateOne for CCM addresses a key challenge
faced by today’s IT personnel – to efficiently store and retrieve
documents for numerous business purposes, ranging from business
analytics to online presentment to regulatory compliance. The solution
provides efficient search and retrieval and enables the retention and
disposition to satisfy industry-specific regulatory requirements. With
a built-in audit, logging and reports, ActuateOne for CCM provides a
360° system view, letting administrators identify potential concerns
before they become performance bottlenecks. - Delivering content where it’s needed, when it’s needed: With
its electronic, multi-channel delivery architecture, ActuateOne for
CCM facilitates secure internal and external access of customer
communications, enabling organizations to efficiently deliver content
to internal users and external customers. By using ActuateOne for
CCM’s ability to leverage a single composition design, only a single
format is required to enable delivery for print, web, mobile and touch
enabled devices. - Enrich customer-facing applications: With the ability to build
or integrate with application portals and dashboards, ActuateOne for
CCM enables organizations to share useful information such as
insurance policies, service specifications and billing details to
enrich the individual customer experience. The solution connects
customer-facing applications with relevant content to increase
application functionality by delivering communications in traditional
static formats like PDF for simple statement review, as well as
interactive formats that allow users to analyze, aggregate, manipulate
and graph data within the customer-facing application.
What is the long-term future of the data centre industry?
The world is changing faster than ever. The economic centres of power are shifting: from West to East, and from North to South. Economic liberalisation is one driver, as is the speed at which capital moves seamlessly around the world and the general demographic trends of people moving from insular communities in the countryside to faster paced environments in towns and cities. But the biggest driver is technology.
Manufacturing and IT technology is moving faster than it ever has. Small armies which can adapt and exploit new technologies quickly are taking on and defeating large armies which are wedded to long-lead capital expenditures.
Wealth is unlikely to be evenly distributed. A recent long term report from HSBC projects that by 2050 the richest countries measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be China, the USA, India and Japan, in that order. But the richest countries by Income per Capita (i …