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Cloud’s Inevitability Looms As Cloud Expo Nears

I apparently like hitting myself on the head with a hammer, as I’m once again reviewing estimates of global cloud-computing spending and growth.

It’s difficult enough to get insightful estimates of IT spending in general – the most valid number seems to be about $3.6 trillion (coming from IDC), but which includes telco. Where do we draw the line with telco today, with smartphones and tablets and literally zettabytes of information flying around each year?

Anyway, rather than parrot or compare cloud estimates, which are all out there in a tube somewhere on the Internet, I’ll focus on the key aspect of cloud: it’s growing faster than IT overall.

This may seem to an insight from The Book of Duh, but it relates to cloud’s inevitability. Sooner or later, cloud computing will mean the same thing as computing. It may take 50 years or it may take 100. It won’t take 5 or 10. But it is inevitable because the promise of cloud computing is an evergreen: efficiency and elasticity.

The numbers I’ve seen show cloud rising as percentage of overall IT from 2% today to 11% by 2020, to 6% today growing to 22% by 2020. Again, given the mixing of computers and telco into many IT estimates, I don’t see how we can measure this accurately.

But we can simply accept that it’s growing, and it will have specific benefits for everyone.

Counter-arguments are being made today that cloud is not actually less expensive on a cashflow basis, even if it shifts expenses from investment to operations. Counter-counter-arguments are being made that nobody has promised cloud would always be cheaper.

But there is some place in every large organization for cloud, and my own direct experience has been that cloud is the go-to idea for smaller companies that are trying something new. One project I’m on doesn’t have budget for big iron or even much little iron. It does have budget for whatever cloud instances we’ll need for the next year.

So I’ve found the pain stops when I put the hammer back in the toolbox. I’ll be at Cloud Expo West in Santa Clara in a few weeks to see what’s going on, to ignore any information about growth, focus on any information about usability, and enjoy the inevitability of what’s going on.

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Security Automation Connects Silos

A wealth of security information exists in our networks from a variety of sources – policy servers, firewalls, switches, networking infrastructure, defensive components, and more. Unfortunately, most of that information is locked away in separate silos due to differences in products and technologies, as well as by companies’ organizational boundaries. Further complicating the issue, information is stored in different formats and communicated over different protocols.
An open standard from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) offers the capability to centralize communication and coordination of information to enable security automation. The Interface for Metadata Access Points – IF-MAP for short – is like Facebook for network and security technology, allowing real-time sharing of information across a heterogeneous environment.

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Cbeyond Offers Businesses More Secure, Customized Access to the Cloud

Cbeyond Inc. on Monday announced the launch of its new TotalCloud(TM) Data Center managed service. With TotalCloud Data Center, small and medium-sized businesses can now access secure, enterprise-class, customizable cloud services without having to purchase, configure, install and manage servers.
Cbeyond’s TotalCloud Data Center service is built on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V platform. It combines enterprise-class networking, storage and security to handle demanding, real-time business application workloads. Available in both public and private formats based on security needs, the service includes managed and monitored security features, backup services and round-the-clock infrastructure monitoring and support.

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Day 3 Keynote at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley | Cloud Apps: Assembly Required

Today we present ten imperatives for constructing next generation applications that we have defined based on research findings from a community of 1,500 application building companies. Emerging applications will not just be cloud-enabled, but also mobile, connected to social media networks and able to consume and respond in real-time to patterns in Big Data. Most important, application building must become more productive with a reduced time-to-market. To meet these demands, there is an imperative to move from a model of “build everything” to a model of “application assembly” from available customizable parts.
In his Day 3 Keynote at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Dr. John Bates, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Progress Software, will illustrate what has to go into a platform and model to deliver the 10 imperatives of next-generation applications. As part of this, he will present how existing applications and services can be wrapped and exposed as cloud APIs. These APIs can be assembled like Lego blocks to rapidly create new mobile, social and big data aware cloud applications. Examples of cloud APIs that he will discuss include: smart data connectors that integrate with and analyze the data of existing cloud applications such as Salesforce.com, Workday, NetSuite, etc.; services that track social media sentiment on Twitter, Facebook etc.; back-end services for mobile applications; services that analyze massive clusters of Hadoop nodes; and services that track and respond to mobile user locations to enable location-aware applications.

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Anti-Virus, Data center, Information security, Internet security, McAfee

McAfee Launches New Data Center Security Suites

Image representing McAfee as depicted in Crunc...

McAfee today announced four new Data Center Security Suites to help secure servers and databases in the data center. The suites offer a unique combination of whitelisting, blacklisting and virtualization technologies for protecting servers and virtual desktops. These solutions provide optimal security for servers and databases in physical, virtualized and cloud-based data centers, with minimal impact on server resources which is a key demand for data centers.

“Performance and security are key concerns for servers in the physical, virtualized or cloud-based data centers,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst, Information Security and Networking at Enterprise Security Group. “The new server security suites from McAfee, based on its application whitelisting, virtualization and blacklisting and AV technologies, provide an enhanced security posture while maintaining the high server performance needs of the data center.”

The suites offer customers the ability to protect their physical and virtual servers and virtual desktops with a unique combination of technologies in a single solution.

  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server provides a
    complete set of blacklisting, whitelisting, and optimized
    virtualization support capabilities for basic security on servers of
    all types
  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server–Hypervisor Edition
    provides a complete set of blacklisting, whitelisting, and optimized
    virtualization support capabilities for basic security on servers of
    all types and is licensed per Hypervisor
  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Virtual Desktop
    Infrastructure     provides comprehensive security for virtual desktop
    deployments without compromising performance or the user experience
  • McAfee Database Server Protection provides data base activity
    monitoring and vulnerability assessment in a single suite, for all
    major database servers in the data center

“McAfee is leading the industry with these new solutions for protecting servers in the data center,” said Candace Worley, senior vice president and general manager of endpoint security at McAfee. “The combination of whitelisting, blacklisting and virtualization in a single solution, offers an optimal security posture for protecting servers in the data centers. These solutions address the need in the industry to offer solutions that provide the highest level of protection with minimal impact on the resources they are deployed on and in a wide range of customized licensing options.”

 


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Cloud Computing: Amazon Reportedly Interested in TI’s ARM Unit

Amazon is negotiating to acquire Texas Instruments’ abandoned ARM business, according to Calcalist, the Israeli business daily written in Hebrew. It says the companies are in advanced talks.
According to the story Amazon wants to be a merchant chip house competing with Qualcomm, Samsung, and Apple, not just for its cheap sold-at-cost Kindle tablets, which will be facing competition soon from Apple’s fabled iPad mini.
Amazon is also understood to be working on its own smartphone.
Calcalist figures it for a multibillion-dollar deal.
Amazon sourced its ARM OMAP chips from TI, which is giving up its tablet and smartphone chip line in a bow to superior competitive forces. It means to focus on industrial and automotive chips instead.
Barnes & Noble also uses TI processors in its Nook e-readers.

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Avaya, M&A Activity, Polycom, ShoreTel

iQ Solutions Group Acquires Fidelis Communications

iQ Solutions Group, a provider of converged communications, data center solutions, managed services and cloud based solutions announced today that it has acquired Fidelis Communications, Inc., a provider of solutions including Avaya, ShoreTel, Samsung and Polycom. The acquisition brings a strong base of Avaya clients into the iQSG portfolio, including a high concentration of healthcare, financial and retail businesses.

David Mayhew, President and CEO of Fidelis – “I am very pleased with the acquisition as I have the upmost confidence and respect for iQSG’s capabilities and their Executive Management Team, our customer base can rest assured that they will have the support of one of the most experienced IT Solutions Partners in Ohio and the Tri-State area.”

“This acquisition is particularly exciting for us because of the excellent relationships and client base that this acquisition presents to our business. iQSG looks forward to continuing to support and service Fidelis’ clients, while enhancing the quality of care extended,” commented Tom Richardson, Principal at iQSG.

“Fidelis’ passion for client care and emphasis on understanding their clients’ business requirements aligns strategically with our core values and approach. Their impressive client base includes organizations whom have invested in leading market solutions from Avaya, ShoreTel and Polycom, which align very well with our expertise. The acquisition of Fidelis allows us to continue to build upon our ability to extend premium support and service to our clients, which we refer to as ‘iQ Care,’” added Mark Nield, Principal with iQSG.


Enterprise resource planning, ERP, IFS, Mobile

IFS Launches New Smartphone Apps

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, launched seven new smartphone apps in the IFS Touch Apps series, in addition to its first app for Windows Phone and Windows 8. The new applications—which are available from Google Play Store, Apple App Store and Windows Marketplace—offer intuitive mobile functionality in areas such as human resources, customer relationship management, ad-hoc reporting, enterprise application search, vehicle management, and IFS support services.

Following on from the release of IFS Notify Me, a cloud-based smartphone app for purchase, expense and invoice approvals, IFS is now extending its offering for the mobile workforce with seven new apps. In addition, IFS is also releasing IFS Notify Me for Windows Phone and Windows 8.

The new IFS Touch Apps are:

IFS Time Tracker for project time and attendance reporting, confirmation, etc.

IFS Trip Tracker for real-time, as-you-travel expense reporting for the mobile individual.

IFS Sales Companion for sales people to manage their accounts, tasks and opportunities.

IFS Quick Reports for running and viewing ad-hoc reports on a mobile device.

IFS Quick Facts for fast keyword search of any object in IFS Applications.

IFS Flight Log for management of platform operational data in the aerospace and defense industry.

IFS Support Companion for interaction with IFS support centers.

“By focusing on the actual needs of our mobile users, we have developed an app concept that delivers enhanced user experience, ease-of-use, and security to promote high user acceptance and increased efficiency,” IFS CTO Dan Matthews said. “The functionality of the new Touch Apps has largely been determined by our customers to exactly match their needs. In this way, we continue to produce functionally rich, elegant apps that are easy to try, buy and use.”

IFS bridges the gap between the fast-moving world of smartphones and apps and the slower-moving world of ERP software via a unique use of cloud technology. Rather than having the apps talk directly to the ERP back-end, the apps talk to services running inside IFS Cloud.

The IFS Touch Apps are designed to offer great, hassle-free user experience to the mobile workforce. The apps are focused on quick-to-complete tasks and present the user with only the relevant, rather than all, information. The apps are designed to minimise typing and allow the user to exit the app at any point and continue later.


Data center, InfiniBand, Mellanox, Mellanox Technologies, Networking, Scalability, SDN

Mellanox Introduces SwitchX-2 Software Defined Networking VPI Switch

Mellanox Technologies today announced SwitchX-2, the next generation of its switch silicon optimized for Software Defined Networking (SDN). SwitchX-2 includes advanced capabilities of remote configurable routing tables, lossless and congestion free networks, efficient control planes, and SDN-optimized software interfaces. SwitchX-2 enables IT managers to program and centralize their server and storage interconnect management and dramatically reduce their operational expenses by completely virtualizing their data center network. According to IDC*, the broader SDN/OpenFlow market is expected to see rapid growth, reaching $2 billion by 2016, a significant portion of which will be network infrastructure.

SwitchX-2 is based on Mellanox’s leading Virtual Protocol Interconnect® (VPI) technology which allows for simultaneous connection to InfiniBand or Ethernet with integrated gateways to legacy data center and storage systems. Utilizing industry-first, RDMA-based 56Gb/s Ethernet and InfiniBand, SwitchX-2 is the world’s fastest, most scalable SDN switch with unmatched 4Tb/s switching capacity (50 percent higher than closest competition), the industry’s lowest power consumption, extremely low 170ns latency, hardware-based L2/L3 congestion management for highest efficiency and hardware-based data error correction for highest reliability. SwitchX-2’s advanced feature set enables the creation of larger flat SDN networks with lower cost and higher performance.

“Software Defined Networking is rapidly emerging as a key architectural element for next generation cloud, Web 2.0 and scalable data centers. As a building block for SDN-enabled network infrastructure, switches with high throughput, low latency and low power consumption are expected to be instrumental in realizing the goal of reducing operational expense while enabling data center scalability and flexibility,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Enterprise and Datacenter Networks, IDC. “Technologies such as Mellanox SwitchX-2, when built into next-generation data centers, will enable IT to benefit from the promise of Software Defined Networking by delivering improved throughput, latency and power, along with enhanced programmability, automation and control.”

“Mellanox’s SwitchX-2 VPI switch leads the industry with the highest throughout capacity, low latency with nearly zero jitter, as well as advanced SDN interfaces for control and management,” said David Barzilai, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “SDN technology has been a critical component of the InfiniBand scalable architecture and has been proven worldwide in data centers and clusters of tens-of-thousands of servers. Now, with SwitchX-2, Mellanox provides the most efficient SDN solution for both InfiniBand and Ethernet data centers. Mellanox’s fast, RDMA-based interconnect technology leads the competition in terms of performance, SDN technology and return-on-investment advantages it brings to IT and application managers.”


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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Anatomy of an Internet Scale Application

Planning scalable environments isn’t terribly difficult, but it does require a change of perspective.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Phil Jackson, Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer, will broaden your views to think on an Internet Scale by dissecting a video publishing application built with The SoftLayer Platform, Message Queuing, Object Storage, and Drupal. By examining a scalable modular application build that can handle unpredictable traffic, you’ll be able to grow your development arsenal and pick up a few strategies to apply to your own projects.

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