We use the term “hybrid cloud” to indicate a joining together of two disparate environments. We often simplify the “cloud” to encompass public IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and private cloud. But even though the adoption of such hybrid architectures may be a foregone conclusion, the devil is, as they say, in the details and how that adoption will be executed is not so easily concluded.
At its core, cloud is about integrating infrastructure. We integrate infrastructure from the application and networking domains to enable elasticity and scalability. We integrate infrastructure from security and delivery realms to ensure a comprehensive, secure delivery chain that promises performance and reliability. We integrate infrastructure to manage these disparate worlds in a unified way, to reduce the burden on operations imposed by necessarily disconnected systems created by integrating environments.
Cloudscape 2012: WhatsUp at GreenPages? Journey to success!
Guest Post from Caitlin Buxton, Director of North American Channel Sales, WhatsUp Gold Network Management Division of Ipswitch, Inc.
The WhatsUp Gold team attended the GreenPages Annual Technology Summit this week on the scenic New Hampshire/Maine Seacoast. This event was one of the most valuable technology summits we have participated in this year. The three-day event showcased all of GreenPages’ exemplary talent, skill, and professionalism that the organization brings to the IT community for both clients and vendor partners.
During the Partner Pavilion, we exhibited WhatsUp Gold’s Suite of Network Management and Log Management solutions and showed attendees how these solutions install, discover, and map network connected assets in minutes. We also showcased the powerful SNMP, WMI and SSH monitoring, alerting and notification capabilities, and web-based management which gives organizations a complete picture of an entire network infrastructure in real-time.
The entire GreenPages staff worked very closely with our team both in pre-event planning and during the event to make sure our investment and time was well spent by engaging with their clients, learning their challenges, and understanding how our solutions can make life easier. The GreenPages Account Managers were fantastic in providing insight into their clients’ needs and facilitating productive conversations.
I was also impressed by how many clients raved about the incredible value they receive from GreenPages. Repeatedly, I was told how hard the GreenPages team works to understand their individual business needs and helps to deliver solutions and information specific to their needs. They are always looking out for their customers’ best interests.
This is not surprising given that 100 IT Executives with limited time and budgets would not have travelled from all over the country for this event if they did not get significant value from it. However, it was refreshing to hear directly from the customers. It validates the pride I have in our GreenPages partnership knowing such a quality organization is on our team representing the WhatsUp Gold family of solutions.
Well done GreenPages! Thank you!
Rackspace looks further to the cloud after strong results
Rackspace has announced that they are incorporating their commitment to open source cloud into their official company branding.
The hosting provider is using the tagline “the open cloud company” as part of its logo, reaffirming their belief in the cloud.
This comes after their strong second quarter results for 2012, which included a yearly increase of 29% on net revenue, up to $319 million (£204.1m), up 5.9% from the previous quarter.
Rackspace’s net income grew 43% year on year to $25m (£15.9m), with their adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBIDTA) calculated at $112m (£71.7m), a 37% yearly increase.
The company’s shares also shot up to $54.62 (£35) per share, a jump of over 10%.
Rackspace, of course, is trying to promote open source cloud computing through their OpenStack programming code, unveiled in 2010, which they are trying to make a …
Cloud Computing: Rackspace Cloud Revenues Up 69%
Rackspace revenues were up 29% year-over-year in the June quarter to roughly $319 million, passing lowered expectations. Earnings soared 43.1% to $25.1 million, or 16 cents a share, despite substantial investments in servers, storage and software related to OpenStack.
The company is hopeful but not convinced that OpenStack will start contributing in Q4, its first full quarter, increasing next year after customers kick the tires and see some performance metrics.
Cloud computing revenues were $72.6 million in Q2, up 69% year-over-year, while managed hosting revenue rose 21% to $246 million.
The company said it saw demand from SMBs for cloud hosting and European business is hanging in there maybe because it’s mostly in the UK.
Gross margin was 71.8%. Operating margin was 12.8%. Net margin was 7.9%.
Can the cloud benefit the healthcare industry?
Medical experts and researchers have been talking about the cloud in the healthcare industry for some time. When it comes to its application in this field, the information technology seems to be on a very poor level.
The majority of medical services still practice a complicated paper-based administration. Considering how many medical records, application forms and walking-orders a hospital has to issue in a single day, another solution for the whole process is highly necessary.
Enhancement of productivity and collaboration
Even the largest hospitals all over the world still sacrifice their time, space and efficacy using the outdated technology.
While the number of patients remains the same the hospital archives are filling up. In order to keep up with at least the basic advancements in IT industry, hospitals must regularly invest in equipment for servers, applications, and maintenance.
Cloud computing might be a solution for restructuring medical papyrology in a …
BMC Buys Another DevOps Start-Up
BMC just bought Varalogix, a two-year-old self-funded start-up and near neighbor located in Austin, Texas, where BMC has acquired a couple of other DevOps companies in the last couple of years that mesh with its latest prize.
Varalogix and its purpose-built VaraLogix Q widgetry does automated application deployment and configuration management for Java and .NET applications and just about everything they might need (think plug-ins) ‘cause it’s got “application awareness” ensuring that the app’s dependencies are covered.
Woz is Worried About “Everything Going to the Cloud” — the Real Issue is Giving Up Control
Guest Post By Nati Shalom, CTO and Founder of GigaSpaces
In a recent article, Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, predicted “horrible problems” in the coming years as cloud-based computing takes hold.
“I really worry about everything going to the cloud,”.. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years. ….“…with the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away.”
When I first read the title I thought, Wozniak sounds like Larry Ellison two years ago, when he pitched the Cloud is hype, before he made a 180-degree turn to acknowledge Oracle wished to be a cloud vendor too.
Reading it more carefully, I realized the framing of the topic is instead just misleading. Wozniak actually touches on something that I hear more often, as the cloud hype cycle is moves from a Peak of Inflated Expectations into through the Trough of Disillusionment.
Wozniak echos an important lesson, that IMO, is major part of the reason many of the companies that moved to cloud have experienced lots of outages during the past months. I addressed several of these aspects in in a recent blog post: Lessons from the Heroku/Amazon Outage.
When we move our operations to the cloud, we often assume that we’re out-sourcing our data center operation completely, including our disaster recovery procedures. The truth is that when we move to the cloud we’re only outsourcing the infrastructure, not our operations, and the responsibility of how to use this infrastructure remain ours.
Choosing better tradeoffs between producivity and control
For companies today, the main reason we chose to move to the cloud in the first place was to gain better agility and productivity. But in starting this cloud journey, we found that we had to give up some measure of control to achieve the agility and productivity.
The good news is that as the industry mature there are more choices that provides better tradeoffs between producivity and control:
- Open source cloud such as OpenStack and CloudStack
- Private cloud offering
- DevOps and automation tools such as Chef and Puppet
- OpenSource PaaS such as Cloudify, OpenShift and CloudFoundry
- DevOps and PaaS combined such Cloudify
As businesses look at cloud strategy today, there isn’t a need to give up control over productivity. With technologies like Cloudify, businesses can get the best out of both worlds.
References
- Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Distrusts the Cloud: Is He Right?
- Mapping the Cloud/PaaS Stack
- Why Larry Don’t Get It
- Lessons from Zynga & Sony on moving from Amazon AWS
- Public vs Private clouds (Again!)- it’s not about the cost
- Putting DevOps and PaaS together with Cloudify
Nati Shalom is the CTO and founder of GigaSpaces and founder of the Israeli cloud.org consortium.
From Cloud Computing to Virtualization
“Cloud will provide the technology to allow virtualization of mainframe workloads,” observed Scott Morrison, CTO at Layer 7 Technologies, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “But,” Morrison continued, “the organizational inertia in large enterprises will keep many mainframes operating for the foreseeable future.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Just having the enterprise data is good. Extracting meaningful information out of this data is priceless. Agree or disagree?
Scott Morrison: Strongly agree. Data has no inherent value; it’s the interpretation we place on it that creates value. Over the years, we’ve gradually improved in how we handle the ever-increasing volumes of enterprise data, but there is a big new challenge on the horizon. This challenge is the interpretation of API transaction data, which captures the timeline of who is doing what and when. We need more advanced tools to capture and understand this new mine of data in the context of existing enterprise data sources.
Systemation’s New Tool Aids Project Managers
Even experienced project managers get stuck occasionally. Perhaps, they need a memory jog regarding a concept they learned in training last year. Or advice on a PM scenario they’ve never faced before. Systemation’s new e-tool, Ask My PM Coach, provides quick responses on over 1,000 project management topics, via computer or mobile device, 24/7.
“This is a new type of on-the-job aid for the project management community,” says Ben Snyder, Systemation’s CEO. “When under a deadline crunch, project managers do not have time to wade through a workbook or online curriculum to locate answers. Ask My PM Coach enables PM’s to get just-in-time responses to burning project management questions.”
The tool provides soup-to-nuts information for every phase of a project: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. Users can find tips for managing risk, scope, schedule, people, communication, estimating, and more, as well as tricks to get the most from project management tools.
Designed for project managers who have spent time in a classroom, it helps folks translate textbook knowledge into real-world projects.
“In most any sport, players can get advice from their coach in the middle of competition,” explains Snyder. “Ask My PM Coach provides this type of real-time support for project managers—in a friendly, relaxed, accessible way that won’t sideline your key players.”
Companies can purchase bulk licenses for all the project managers in their organization. Or project managers can purchase a license individually.
For more information on Ask My PM Coach, or to learn about Systemation, contact Laurel Bretting at 1.800.747.9783.
PLUMgrid Gets $10.7 Million for Software-Defined Networking
PLUMgrid, Inc. today announced that it has secured $10.7 million in Series A Funding from US Venture Partners (USVP) and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. PLUMgrid, with nearly two years of development completed, is pioneering an ecosystem-driven network infrastructure built on software-defined networking (SDN) concepts. The company will deliver network virtualization solutions that will enable businesses to manage their physical, virtual and cloud datacenters with greater agility and efficiency.
In 2011, PLUMgrid raised an initial funding round of $2 million, and USVP partner Chris Rust joined the company’s Board of Directors. Hummer Winblad managing director Lars Leckie co-led the PLUMgrid series A and now joins Rust on the PLUMgrid Board of Directors.
PLUMgrid CEO Awais Nemat co-founded the company in early 2011, and has brought together an outstanding team of industry veterans with a proven track record of success in designing, developing and deploying some of the most important systems and services in the history of the networking industry. Nemat has assembled a group of highly decorated innovators from companies such as Cisco Systems, Marvell, Nicira, SUN, Vyatta and VMware. With a strong heritage in mission-critical enterprise network infrastructure, PLUMgrid’s engineers and software visionaries have contributed significantly to the emergence of network virtualization technology in the past five years.
“Network virtualization and the move to software-defined networking (SDN) is a strategically important focus area for the networking industry,” said Nemat. “PLUMgrid was started nearly two years ago with a vision of providing a better way for customers to address new networking application needs and reduce excessive costs and complexity. This $10.7 million financing round provides the resources for PLUMgrid to realize this vision and deliver a comprehensive SDN solution to our customers.”
“PLUMgrid has a compelling combination of large market opportunity, highly differentiated approach with deep IP, and an exceptional team with a track record of commercial success. USVP is delighted to be a founding investor in PLUMgrid, and to be joined by Hummer Winblad as our co-lead in what we believe to be the best-of-breed SDN solution in the marketplace,” said Chris Rust, partner, USVP.
“The networking industry is experiencing a major shift as infrastructure becomes software-driven,” said Lars Leckie, managing director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. “We see tremendous potential in supporting a new, unified network infrastructure that delivers value to customers by building on networking best practices yet enabling the radical agility, simplicity and ease of management that software brings to the table.”
