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How to Cannibalize Your Own Products Without Getting Eaten Alive

The scenario is fairly typical. You launch your SaaS application for $14.99 per month. A few months later, a competitor launches a competing service for $10 per month. How do you respond with a competitive offer without cannibalizing your existing customers? We asked three software executives for their thoughts on the topic and have summarized their responses.
In the above scenario, you are introducing a new tier in the Free->Premium continuum. The inherent risk is that existing customers might want to downgrade to the new level to save albeit with a constrained set of features. While you cannot stop this, one way to have your customers think about this decision is to make the distinction between the SKUs extremely clear in the new tier vs. the premium SKUs. For example, at the low-end customers might be able to only perform 50 transactions a month (or an equivalent measure that makes sense in your business). While this might be okay for someone who is getting on board just to try the service, existing customers must think twice about downgrading for the ever-present fear of “what if I grow?” Usage-based price tiering lets your customers experience the product with little risk then upgrade to customize features to their unique needs.

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Data Rich, Data Poor: Big Data Economics & Managed APIs at Cloud Expo NY

The average business in 2012 will double its amount of data, with more than half of that increase occurring within the cloud. Aggregation of data is no longer the competitive lever in itself, but rather the distribution and commercialization of data across multiple platforms.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Drew Bartkiewicz, VP Strategy at Mashery and a data economist, will analyze the massive intersection of Big Data Economics and Managed APIs as a way for Cloud and Mobile ROIs to be realized, understood, and predicted. He will discuss what “the market of APIs” means for your business and what it takes to compete in Big Data distribution.

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The Business Agility of Cloud Computing

“Big Data is not simply code for lots of information,” observed Victoria Kouyoumjian, Sr. Business and Technologies Strategist at Esri, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Instead,” Kouyoumjian noted, “Big Data refers to information in myriad different formats from varying sources – and many of these digital formats and streams haven’t existed until recently.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – “While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.”
Victoria Kouyoumjian: Agree. Many organizations are initially attracted to Cloud Computing as the new bright shiny object that can potentially improve their IT portfolio. At the top of the list of benefits is cost savings, including reducing overall operational costs and exposing more cost avoidance opportunities. However, if the pay-as-you-go model does not fit with the business model of the organization, the savings aspect using the predominant cloud cost model cannot unanimously be adopted. For example, a Federal government agency accustomed to committing spend and decrementing after, or a public company with budgeting forecasting mandates might not have the same business needs as a commercial organization. Additionally, sitting down and doing the math on those cloud-hosted services that run 365 days a year may not equate to a compelling case for significant IT savings.

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BIG-IP Solutions for Microsoft Private Cloud

Five of the top six services critical to cloud are application delivery services and available with F5 BIG-IP.

f5friday

The big news at MMS 2012 was focused on private cloud and Microsoft’s latest solutions in the space with System Center 2012. Microsoft’s news comes on the heels of IBM’s latest foray with its PureSystems launch at its premiere conference, IBM Pulse. 

As has become common, while System Center 2012 addresses the resources most commonly associated with cloud of any kind, compute, and the means by which operational tasks can be codified, automated, and integrated, it does not delve too deeply into the network, leaving that task to its strategic partners.

One of its long-term partners is F5, and we take the task seriously.The benefits of private cloud are rooted in greater economies of scale through broader aggregation and provisioning of resources, as well its ability to provide for flexible and reliable applications that are always available and rely on many of these critical services. Applications are not islands of business functionality, after all; they rely upon a multitude of network-hosted services such as load balancing, identity and access management, and security services to ensure a consistent, secure end-user experience from anywhere, from any device.most important features cloud nww 5 of the top 6 services seen as most critical to cloud implementations in a 2012 Network World Cloud survey are infrastructure services, all of which are supported by the application delivery tier.

The ability to consistently apply policies governing these aspects of every successful application deployment is critical to keeping the network aligned with the allocation of compute and storage resources. With the network, applications cannot scale, reliability is variable, and security compromised through fragmentation and complexity. The lack of a unified infrastructure architecture reduces the performance, scale, security and flexibility of cloud computing environments, both private and public. Thus, just as we ensure the elasticity and operational benefits associated with a more automated and integrated application delivery strategy for IBM, so have we done with respect to a Microsoft private cloud solution.

BIG-IP Solutions for Microsoft Private Cloud

BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft private cloud take advantage of key features and technologies in BIG-IP version 11.1, including F5’s virtual Clustered MultiprocessingTM (vCMP™) technology, iControl®, F5’s web services-enabled open application programming interface (API), administrative partitioning and server name indication (SNI). Together, these features help reduce the cost and complexity of managing cloud infrastructures in multi-tenant environments. With BIG-IP v11.1, organizations reap the maximum benefits of conducting IT operations and application delivery services in the private cloud. Although these technologies are generally applicable to all cloud implementations – private, public or hybrid – we also announced Microsoft-specific integration and support that enables organizations to ensure the capability to extend automation and orchestration into the application delivery tier for maximum return on investment.

F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center
Provides two-way communication between BIG-IP devices and the System Center management console. Health monitoring, failover, and configuration synchronization of BIG-IP devices, along with customized alerting, Maintenance Mode, and Live Migration, occur within the Operations Manager component of System Center. The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center
Enables one-step, automated deployment of load balancing services through direct interoperability between the Virtual Machine Manager component of System Center 2012 and BIG-IP devices. BIG-IP devices are managed through the System Center user interface, and administrators can custom-define load balancing services. The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012
Provides F5 traffic management capabilities and takes advantage of workflows designed using the Orchestrator Runbook Designer. These custom workflows can then be published directly into System Center 2012 service catalogs and presented as a standard offering to the organization. This is made possible using the F5 iControl SDK, which gives customers the flexibility to choose a familiar development environment such as the Microsoft .NET Framework programming model or Windows PowerShell scripting.

 

F5 big ip msft private cloud solution diagram

Private cloud – as an approach to IT operations – calls for transformation of datacenters, leveraging a few specific strategic points of control, to aggregate and continuously re-allocate IT resources as needed in such as way to make software applications more like services that are always on and secured across users and devices. Private cloud itself is not a single, tangible solution today. Today it is a solution comprised of several key components, including power/cooling, compute, storage and network, management and monitoring tools and the the software applications/databases that end users need.

We’ve moved past the hype of private cloud and its potential benefits. Now organizations need a path, clearly marked, to help them build and deploy private clouds.

That’s part of F5’s goal – to provide the blueprints necessary to build out the application delivery tier to ensure a flexible, reliable and scalable foundation for the infrastructure services required to build and deploy private clouds.

Availability

The F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center and the F5 PRO-enabled Monitoring Pack for System Center are now available. The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center is available as a free download from the F5 DevCentral website. The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012 is based on F5 iControl and Windows PowerShell, and is also free.

Connect with Lori: Connect with F5: o_linkedin[1] google  o_rss[1] o_twitter[1]   o_facebook[1] o_twitter[1] o_slideshare[1] o_youtube[1] google Related blogs & articles: Complexity Drives Consolidation  At the Intersection of Cloud and Control…  F5 Friday: Addressing the Unintended Consequences of Cloud  F5 Friday: Workload Optimization with F5 and IBM PureSystems  The HTTP 2.0 War has Just Begun  F5 Friday: Microsoft and F5 Lync Up on Unified Communications  DevCentral Groups – Microsoft / F5 Solutions  Webcast: BIG-IP v11 and Microsoft Technologies – Applications   Technorati Tags: F5,F5 Friday,MacVittie,Microsoft,MMS 2012,BIG-IP,private cloud computing,cloud computing,devops,automation,orchestration,architecture,System Center 2012,load balancing,security,performance,scalability domain,blog

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Federal Cybersecurity and IT News

Today’s federal cybersecurity and IT news: Maj. Gen. Suzanne Vautrinot, commander the 24th Air Force and Air Force’s Cyber Air Component to USCYBERCOM emphasized the importance of “full-spectrum” cybersecurity that prepares for offense, defense and exploitation. More here. The U.S. Cyber Emergency Response Team warned of social engineering attacks against utilities’ industrial control systems by hackers posing as Microsoft customer support. […]

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Compare / Contrast MS Server App-V and appzero

Greg O’Connor, appzero’s CEO will be joined by CTO Giovanni Boschi in a webinar focused on moving Windows server production applications to any cloud or datacenter server. The discussion will take a use-case approach to compare and contrast appzero capabilities with those of Microsoft Server App-V.
Movement of Windows server applications within a private cloud or to a public cloud, (especially Azure) was among the topics covered atMicrosoft’s recent Management Summit 2012. Extending its App-V desktop product to Windows server applications in Server App-V, Microsoft has primed the market for a broadened discussion of moving production apps to any cloud (not just Azure).

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Compare / Contrast MS Server App-V and appzero

Greg O’Connor, appzero’s CEO will be joined by CTO Giovanni Boschi in a webinar focused on moving Windows server production applications to any cloud or datacenter server. The discussion will take a use-case approach to compare and contrast appzero capabilities with those of Microsoft Server App-V.
Movement of Windows server applications within a private cloud or to a public cloud, (especially Azure) was among the topics covered atMicrosoft’s recent Management Summit 2012. Extending its App-V desktop product to Windows server applications in Server App-V, Microsoft has primed the market for a broadened discussion of moving production apps to any cloud (not just Azure).

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Compare / Contrast MS Server App-V and appzero

Greg O’Connor, appzero’s CEO will be joined by CTO Giovanni Boschi in a webinar focused on moving Windows server production applications to any cloud or datacenter server. The discussion will take a use-case approach to compare and contrast appzero capabilities with those of Microsoft Server App-V.
Movement of Windows server applications within a private cloud or to a public cloud, (especially Azure) was among the topics covered atMicrosoft’s recent Management Summit 2012. Extending its App-V desktop product to Windows server applications in Server App-V, Microsoft has primed the market for a broadened discussion of moving production apps to any cloud (not just Azure).

read more

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Compare / Contrast MS Server App-V and appzero

Greg O’Connor, appzero’s CEO will be joined by CTO Giovanni Boschi in a webinar focused on moving Windows server production applications to any cloud or datacenter server. The discussion will take a use-case approach to compare and contrast appzero capabilities with those of Microsoft Server App-V.
Movement of Windows server applications within a private cloud or to a public cloud, (especially Azure) was among the topics covered atMicrosoft’s recent Management Summit 2012. Extending its App-V desktop product to Windows server applications in Server App-V, Microsoft has primed the market for a broadened discussion of moving production apps to any cloud (not just Azure).

read more

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Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: George Gerchow – VMware

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just eight weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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