IBM Monday said it’s going to buy Butterfly Software, a privately held data
analysis and migration software firm in Maidenhead, England.
It would be nice to know what IBM is really doing with its stockpile of
analytics acquisitions or if it’s just taking them off the market. It expects to
generate $16 billion from business analytics by 2015.
Tony Werner, executive vice president & chief technology officer of Comcast Cable in the US, talks about how Comcast is using innovation to keep the cable company at the forefront of the broadband market.
ISPs don’t come much bigger than Comcast. As the largest cable provider in the US, the company is also one of the largest broadband service providers in the world. As such, the decisions it makes in terms of technology and strategy will inevitably have an impact in other parts of the world.
And the federated cloud will be coming to a city near you, allowing your team to take advantage of a globally scattered array of datacentre infrastructure that will power the next generation of gaming apps, social media, e-commerce and online publishing applications.
While Virtual Internet continues to deploy new virtual datacenters in locations such as Singapore and Utah, there are considerable advantages to ‘sharing’ infrastructure from other Telcos, ISPs and providers who have built facilities in far-flung, remote areas, which do not include the VI footprint.
By the year 2015, it’s expected that over 15 billion devices will be connected to the Internet requiring massive bandwidth to satisfy the global demand. No single hosting provider …
In my first contribution to the Allstream blog I introduced the concept of the Cloud-based workforce.
Here is an article that explains how this model can be achieved via the Microsoft Private Cloud platform.
Microsoft provides reference documents for describing their Private Cloud Fast-track best practices, which explains in detail how their core suite of Windows Server, Hyper-V and Systems Management Centre can be used to build internal ‘IaaS’ – Infrastructure as a Service.
“No matter how good we get at Big Data analytics, we’ll never be able to accurately predict the future of technology,” noted John Gilmartin, VP of Product Marketing at Coraid, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This industry is changing fast, bringing ever greater value to end users,” Gilmartin continued. “The only sure bet is that technology will change even faster and in unexpected ways in the future.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Just having the enterprise data is good. Extracting meaningful information out of this data is priceless. Agree or disagree?
John Gilmartin: Definitely agree. Data in enterprises is growing at an unprecedented rate, over 50% year-on-year by some estimates. This growth in data represents both a challenge and an opportunity. IT administrators, faced with the daunting task of storing petabytes of data for their organizations, are turning to cloud architectures for flexibility, ease of management and responsiveness. Once they have a way to capture data, they need ways to mine the data for business insights. According to analysts, business intelligence is the number one priority for CIOs.
Very interesting in-depth article in the New York Times today on the sprawling, electricity-hungry data centers spawned by cloud computing.
Internet-based industries have honed a reputation for sleek, clean convenience based on the magic they deliver to screens everywhere. At the heart of every Internet enterprise are data centers, which have become more sprawling and ubiquitous as the amount of stored information explodes, sprouting in community after community.
the gee-whiz factor of such a prominent high-tech neighbor wore off quickly. First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.
Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.
These data centers are apparently not always good neighbors, and of course as they are there to serve our cloud needs we’re all complicity to some degree.
When the advent of Infrastructure-as-a-Service first took hold a few years back, virtualization of the network was nothing but a pie in the sky idea. Fast-forward a few years and the race to achieve network virtualization is reaching the finish line.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, James Meredith, a product manager for the Rackspace Open Cloud, will discuss how software-defined networking (SDN) will break down another barrier to entry for cloud, pros and cons and everything else in between you need to know to optimize the network in the cloud.
This post is from Matt Vasey, Senior Director, System Integrator Alliances, Parallels
Parallels recently joined IBM at the Telemanagement (TM) Forum Africa Summit in Johannesburg. Together, we focused on helping service providers address many of the cloud and hosting issues facing the African communications market. Like other developing areas, service providers in Africa need to grow and sustain their business, attract and retain their customers and adopt strategies to help differentiate them in the market. Parallels has grown its presence in Africa during the years with this focus by working closely with partners across the continent. This includes MTN Cameroon, who has developed an aggressive strategy with the help of Parallels for offering shared hosting, VPS, hosted messaging and other cloud and hosted services. MTNC has launched one of the most complete cloud services portfolios on Parallels Automation in any emerging market, including Microsoft Exchange, and SharePoint, in addition to shared hosting services with Parallels Plesk Panel with Web Presence Builder. (MTNC is part of the MTNGroup, a multinational telecommunications group, operating in 21 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.)
I was delighted when IBM invited Parallels to join them at the TM Forum Africa Summit for a number of reasons. First, IBMs leadership in the telco space, now includes a compelling joint solution for the rapid deployment and integration of our flagship cloud enablement software, Parallels Automation. Second, I attended a session presented by Gary Cohen, General Manager of IBM’s Global Communications Sector & Chairman, IBM Africa. Gary’s talk – entitled “Integrated knowledge of customers, processes and business can become the source of true differentiation and accelerated growth”, is a theme you’ve often heard Parallels discussing, too. So it’s a natural fit that IBM is the latest partner working side-by-side with Parallels. Together, we’re continued on being focused on helping service providers — in both emerging and established markets around the globe — get their cloud services up and running faster and with the right mix of application bundles.
Follow the ongoing dialogue from TM Forum Africa Summit on Twitter by searching on the hashtag #Africa12. And expect more to come as a result of Parallels new alliance with IBM.
Matt Vasey, Senior Director, System Integrator Alliances, Parallels