The cloud is a commercial vehicle. This undeniable truth must now be accepted as a deeply entrenched truism by CIOs who are looking to manage the forward-looking growth of their technology architectures.
We can actually refine this statement further. The cloud is a commercial vehicle designed to facilitate customer engagement, sales and therefore profits.
These are not inconvenient truths, but it is an undeniable truth if you believe the proclamations being made by some of the new change-makers driving cloud computing from the Platform-as-a-Service level.
This commercialization of the cloud is facilitated by the way users are interacting with cloud services. Although that may sound like stating the obvious, what we mean by this use of the term “interacting” is now increasingly impacted by social applications. Analyst firm McKinsey estimates that there is $1.3 billion dollars waiting to be unlocked in the global economy if we harness enterprise level social technologies effectively.
Self-Service, Automated Software Delivery to the Cloud
“Cloud computing is still in the early stages of adoption and demand will continue to grow,” noted Alban Richard, CEO of UShareSoft, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Pricing, however, will vary,” Richard continued. “Many cloud providers are playing a volume game and will reduce prices for compute, storage and network resources to meet the needs of price-sensitive customers.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Just having the enterprise data is good. Extracting meaningful information out of this data is priceless. Agree or disagree?
Alban Richard: Agree. Making sure you collect data is an essential first step, and new technologies including cloud computing make data collection easier than ever. But there is little value inherent in the data itself. You need to be able to extract information that can be used in a concrete way to help set, then achieve your business goals and objectives.
Study: If Federal Agencies Move Three Applications Each to the Cloud, Savings Top $16 Billion
MeriTalk recently surveyed Federal IT professionals to understand if and how they are moving mission critical applications to the cloud. They found that Feds estimate they can save $16.6 billion annually if all agencies move just three mission-critical applications to the cloud.
As Federal agencies are making cloud progress, the early-adopters that are moving their mission-critical applications to the cloud are realizing cost savings and improved access to IT, according to the report, which was sponsored by EMC Corporation, VMware and Carahsoft. The report says the Feds spend more than half their IT budget on supporting mission-critical applications – and that private cloud is the platform of choice for mission-critical application transition. The study reveals how Federal IT executives view the barriers, current status, and future plans related to this shift.
Not surprisingly, Feds say security is a challenge – 73 percent identify security as a primary barrier. As a result, most favor private clouds. Thirty-eight percent of respondents say they have moved a mission-critical application to a private cloud; 11 percent say they have moved a mission-critical application to a hybrid cloud; and, 10 percent say they have moved a mission-critical application to a public cloud.
“Private and hybrid clouds offer significant cost-saving benefits along with the necessary security infrastructure that have not yet been realized through public cloud models,” said Kyle Keller, Cloud Business Director at EMC Federal. “The benefits of moving mission-critical applications to the cloud can be realized while also maintaining confidence in the security of those resources.”
Agencies spend 70 percent of their IT budget maintaining outdated legacy applications[1] – this is identified as a significant obstacle to cloud transition. Federal IT executives report that 52 percent of their mission-critical applications are custom built. When asked what would be required to make mission-critical applications ready for the cloud, 45 percent of Federal IT executives said these applications will require major re-engineering to modernize for the cloud.
Forty six percent of Federal IT executives say moving mission-critical applications to the cloud will improve their agencies ability to fulfill their mission, and 43 percent say it will improve their agencies’ big data analytics capabilities.
Of those who have moved a mission-critical application to the cloud, 91 percent report success. Federal IT managers surveyed report moving applications including financial management, procurement, logistics, customer relationship management systems, and project management.
“Our customers who are migrating their mission critical applications to the private cloud are realizing great benefits in cost savings, efficiency, availability and agility,” says Aileen Black, Vice President of U.S. Public Sector, VMware. “These benefits, enabled by the cloud, are the keys to customer success in the cloud.”
“Transitioning legacy, mission-critical applications to the cloud is not a forklift exercise – in many cases it’s more like an organ transplant,” said Steve O’Keeffe, founder, MeriTalk. “With the complexity and security concerns, it’s not surprising many agencies want a private room.”
“It’s been our experience that agencies are moving to the cloud in great numbers and are, as this survey clearly indicates, achieving significant benefits from doing so,” said Craig P. Abod, President, Carahsoft. “What began with virtualization now encompasses mission-critical applications as the next step in the journey and the value chain.”
Despite the barriers, many Federal IT executives see mission-critical applications in the cloud in their agencies’ futures. In two years, they expect 26 percent of their mission-critical applications to live in the cloud. In five years, they expect 44 percent to be in the cloud. In order to accomplish implementation goals, Federal IT executives recommend promoting cloud savings opportunities, identifying cloud-ready mission-critical applications, clarifying FedRAMP, and encouraging early adopters to share best practices.
“Mission-Critical Cloud: Ready for the Heavy Lift?” is based on a survey of 151 IT Federal government managers and systems integrators in June 2012. The report has a margin of error of +/- 7.95 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
Cloud Computing: Rackspace Lets Go of OpenStack
control, turned over to an independent foundation charged with developing, distributing, promoting the adoption of the open source cloud platform and strengthening its ecosystem.
To achieve this grand design, the OpenStack Foundation, which claims 5,600 individual members, has gotten $10 million in funding and Rackspace, which had been supplying most of the management and money, has recently turned over the OpenStack trademark and technical assets like the cloud controller.
Since Rackspace and NASA concocted OpenStack it has gotten the support of 180 companies and 550 contributing developers.
Healthcare Provider Pays a Steep Price for Patient Data Privacy Breach
Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Massachusetts Ear and Eye, Inc. (MEEI) agreed to pay a hefty $1.5 million settlement to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for alleged HIPAA violations. According to MEEI, a personal laptop that contained unencrypted electronic protected health information (ePHI) was stolen, exposing a large amount of personal, clinical, and patient prescription data.
The government’s investigation found that MEEI failed to take steps necessary to comply with several HIPAA Security Rule requirements regarding data protection, and that the failures occurred over an extended period of time. And while this healthcare data breach involved a laptop, data security risks like this extend to larger “secure” IT environments as well. Just take a look at the largest healthcare data breaches in the last few years, and you’ll see that intrusions have taken place not only on portable devices, but on enterprise servers, client-server systems, centralized back-up systems, and cloud implementations.
The Basics of Starting an e-Commerce Site
Now that the World Wide Web has taken over bricks-and-mortar shops as the primary medium through which to sell a product or service, there’s never been a better opportunity for anyone, regardless of financial or business background, to set up their own e-commerce store.
While bank loans, property leasing and constant monitoring meant that it took an incredible amount of effort to set up a business 15 years ago, the internet has provided entrepreneurial opportunities that nearly everyone can take advantage of. Provided they know the basics, of course.
So, where should businesses begin when creating an e-commerce site?
New SkyRouter Mobile Satellite Tracking, Fleet Management Apps Support iOS, Android
Blue Sky Network today launched its New SkyRouter mobile application, a fleet management portal for land mobile, aviation, and marine applications. New SkyRouter is a cloud-based solution designed to support connectivity with remotely dispersed mobile assets including Blue Sky Network’s advanced dual-mode GSM and Iridiumtracking and communication services. With the New SkyRouter application, fleet managers are provided around-the-clock connectivity with assets via most Android or iOS mobile phones or tablets.
“The reliance that we have toward our mobile devices has opened up new fleet management opportunities for Blue Sky Network,” said Jon Gilbert, CEO and founder of Blue Sky Network. “The New SkyRouter App provides fleet managers the same constant connectivity in a user friendly mobile interface. Our easy-to-use mobile application provides fleet owners and managers who are on the go, real-time access to asset information.”
Features of the New SkyRouter mobile application include GPS location, fleet asset lists, breadcrumb mapping, active asset indication, automated event reports, and drill-down on asset events. Leveraging the integration of Blue Sky Network’s industry-leading tracking hardware, the new application provides truly global coverage of assets located anywhere in the world. The New SkyRouter application works in combination with Blue Sky Network’s robust and Iridium certified hardware, which can be easily installed on land, aviation and marine assets.
The New SkyRouter Mobile application will be available for download at the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in early October. The product is in beta release and slated for production in Q4 2012.
Blue Sky Network will also be showcasing the New SkyRouter mobile application at the MINExpo International 2012, taking place in Las Vegas during September 24-26, in booth number 21209.
For more information on Blue Sky Network and the new mobile SkyRouter application, please visit: http://www.blueskynetwork.com.
Stacks Evolve as Cloud Expo Approaches
As Cloud Expo approaches, the ongoing, evolving open-stacks scrum emerges as one of the most interesting stories in the business.
The high-level view finds three unique strategic ploys:
OpenStack launches its foundation, with IBM, HP, RedHat, and now VMware (primarily because of Ncira, we hope) as key members.
CloudStack pins its hopes on being an Apache Software Foundation project
Eucalyptus buddies up with Amazon
OpenNebula, led by OpenStack pioneer Christopher C. Kemp, is also in any open-source discussion, as it continues its strategy as a cloud-management toolkit.
Analysts and pundits enjoy viewing the world in term of absolute winners and losers, and indeed, some enterprise shops will make a sole winner out of one of the open-source cloud stacks. The reality is more complex, as one will no doubt find any or all of these products within many enterprises within a few years.
VMware is often said to be “the enemy” of open-source, although in many instances (so to speak) its foundational product is not said to be cloud at all, but merely a nice way to achieve server consolidation.
Meanwhile, the true enemy is the idea of a “cloud in a box,” offered by a company that has its core database technology in 90% of enterprise shops in the US, and likely, the world.
I don’t have a problem with the premise that cloud can be on-premise, but it must be decoupled into services, virtualized, metered, and highly elastic to be so. The same should be said for off-premise cloud as well – can’t live on hosted services alone.
Otherwise, we’re just fooling ourselves. Cloud computing’s promise is to let us use our IT resources wisely – one doesn’t need ideology or religion to be wise, but we can’t just sing the same old song either.
QlikTech Launches QlikMarket Business Discovery Exchange
QlikTech today announced the launch of QlikMarket, a Web marketplace that delivers an interactive way for QlikTech customers to evaluate and acquire technologies and applications that leverage the QlikView Business Discovery platform.
QlikMarket is a site to harness the innovation of QlikTech partners in the new breed of business intelligence, known as Business Discovery, or self-service BI. QlikMarket currently includes Big Data connectors and extensions (Google BigQuery), unstructured analytics solutions (Attivio), connectors to Facebook, Twitter and Google Analytics (Industrial Codebox), and Cloud offerings like RApid Spend Analysis – Professional and QlikView OnDemand (Rosslyn Analytics). Specific industry and functional applications include pharmaceutical and manufacturing apps and those focusing on specific areas like property management and sales channel management.
QlikMarket is live with over 50 offerings in its debut at market.qlikview.com, featuring technology connectors, extensions, and purpose-built apps powered by QlikView:
- Connectors: Link QlikView to specific source systems or data
including connectors to Salesforce.com, SAP, or ETL solutions. - Extensions: Extend the QlikView experience to include features
like new chart types, geo-spatial mapping, or real-time data streaming. - Purpose-built Apps: QlikView applications that solve a specific
buyer’s need from a CFO dashboard to procurement benchmarking.
QlikMarket allows customers, prospects and the over 90,000 members of QlikCommunity to easily navigate the site by industry or solution, sort by relevance or partner, monitor solutions that are “most downloaded” and research offerings that are “highest rated.” They can also make educated selections of solutions with access to feedback from peers. In its first months in beta use before launch, two geo-spatial mapping apps (IdevioMaps for QlikView and GeoQlik extension), as well as the Connector Suite QVSource were among the leaders for both popularity and ratings.
“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our partners and customers to do business with QlikTech,” said Drew Clarke, vice president of Business Development at QlikTech. “For partners, QlikMarket creates revenue opportunities for their developed assets. For customers, it provides a one-stop shop to create their own ecosystem around the QlikView platform. For QlikTech, it allows us to use crowdsourcing to gauge customer interest and demands for specific applications and technologies to better serve customers’ needs.”
QlikMarket offerings come from submissions from QlikTech’s Qonnect Program solution providers, technology partners, OEM partners, and system integrator partners. QlikMarket is different from other software companies’ catalog-style exchanges because it enables users to interact with and experience the solution with live demonstrations.respective owners.
BYOD and the Death of the DMZ
BYOD remains a topic of interest as organizations grapple not only technologically with the trend but politically, as well. There are dire warnings that refusing to support BYOD will result in an inability to attract and retain up and coming technologists, that ignoring the problems associated with BYOD will eventually result in some sort of karmic IT event that will be painful for all involved.
Surveys continue to tell us organizations cannot ignore BYOD. A recent ITIC survey indicated a high level of BYOD across the global 550 companies polled.