Parallels Desktop 11 Update2 Highlights Parallels Desktop 11 Update 2 was just released. While the update is recommended for all users, there are some new features especially for Pro users and Business users. I list some of the highlights in this blog post. But first of all, for everyone here is how to get the […]
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Oracle has announced it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Opower for approximately $532 million.
Opower, which provides customer engagement and energy efficiency cloud services to the utilities industry, boasts a healthy customer list of more than 100 utilities including companies such as PG&E, Exelon and National Grid. The announcement follows a similar one from last week, with Oracle acquiring Textura, a provider of construction contracts and payment management cloud services.
“Utilities want modern technology solutions that work together to meet their evolving customer, operational and compliance needs,” said Rodger Smith, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit. “Together, Oracle Utilities and Opower will be the largest provider of mission-critical cloud services to utilities.”
Oracle has certainly changed its tune in recent years, as it was once one of the foremost critics of the technology. “The computer industry is the only industry which is more fashion driven than women’s fashion. I was reading W and it said that orange is the new pink. Cloud is the new SaaS,” Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said in an analyst briefing in 2008.
While other organizations seemingly embraced cloud as a technology during its embryo days, and have in turn developed a portfolio to compete in this competitive marketplace, Oracle appear to be using financial muscle as a means of levelling the playing field and catching up with industry leaders.
Although the aforementioned acquisitions have increased Oracle’s share in the cloud market place, the company has been on the receiving end of some unfavourable reports recently. Research from JP Morgan highlighted while there are still a number of enterprise organizations who will continue to utilize the services of Oracle, this is more due to the complications of migrating their systems to another vendor, as opposed to the technological strength of the tech giant.
The goal of any tech business worth its salt is to provide the best product or service to its clients in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. This is just as true in the development of software products as it is in other product design services.
Microservices, an app architecture style that leans mostly on independent, self-contained programs, are quickly becoming the new norm, so to speak. With this change comes a declining reliance on older SOAs like COBRA, a push toward more sustainable API approaches and fewer monolithic development and deployment models.
Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell
Speaking at EMC World in Las Vegas, Dell CEO Michael Dell and EMC CEO Joe Tucci outlined the rationale behind one of history’s largest mergers, and announced the name of the industry’s latest tech giant – Dell Technologies.
The group itself will be known as Dell Technologies upon the completion of the reported $67 billion merger, though there will also be several individual operating brands. Dell’s client services group will continue to be known as Dell, with the soon-to-be merged enterprise business known as Dell EMC.
“There are certain times once every two or three generations where everything changes,” said Tucci. “The industrial revolution went on for more than 100 years and changed everything they knew back then. Many new companies were born out of the opportunities that were created, and many failed as they didn’t. We are now on the cusp of an even bigger revolution, the digital revolution.”
Tucci, speaking at what he seemingly disappointingly admitted would be his final EMC World, highlighted the vast scale of change at which the world is undergoing currently. IoT and the connected world specifically are redefining not only the way in which individuals communicate with each other, but also the way in which enterprise organizations are structured and operated. The merger enables two companies, which could potentially be perceived as being stuck in a traditional IT world, to create a new brand which can capitalize on digitalization trends.
“We have to change rapidly to be on the wave of this revolution,” said Tucci. “The merger with Dell allows the company to change the concept of the business and capitalize on the opportunities presented by the digital revolution.”
Michael Dell’s contribution to the opening keynote focused more on the rate of innovation, normalization and implementation of new technologies which are driving the digital revolution. EMC World has now been running for 15 years, debuting in 2001, the same year which saw the launch of the iPod, Sun E25k as the state of the art data centre technology and the first availability of 3G networks. Dell commented that while these once-innovations could now be seen as relics, it raise the question of what is possible during the next 15 years.
EMC CEO Joe Tucci and Dell CEO Michael Dell on stage at EMC World
“Think about 15 years from now, to the year 2031,” said Dell. “Currently, if you want to code the human genome it takes around 36 hours. In 2031 it will take 94 seconds. In 2031 more than half the cars on the road will be driverless, and there will be more than 200 million connected devices. There will be thousands of innovations which we can’t even begin to perceive. I believe that it could happen sooner as well. The marginal cost of making something intelligent is fast approaching zero.
“The new digital, connected world will require data centre infrastructure to be architected in a different way. It’s going to be cloud native and operated on a Devops methodology. EMC and Dell are merging to create a company which can deliver this concept.”
“We are combining Dell and EMC to help you navigate a successful path, to modernise your IT, reduce costs and helping you create your digital future.”
The merger itself could be evidence of the weight of the digital world and the expectations which are placed on companies to succeed in the new ecosystem. Rather than attempting to change the perception of the organization which they oversee, like IBM and Intel for instance, the merger enables Tucci and Dell to create a new brand which can be defined as how and where they desire. Unlike companies who are in the process of redefining themselves for the cloud era, Dell Technologies can position itself where-ever it chooses in the market, without worry of legacy perceptions.
Dell also claimed the new company will have a significant advantage over competitors due to the fact it will be private. Leaning on the idea Dell Technologies will not have outside influences to be concerned about as publicly trading organizations do, Dell believes the new company can invest for long-term ambition, as opposed to short-termist aims which could be perceived to damage technological innovation.
The IoT wave is continuing to grow, and as we see more devices deployed, more data collected and more cloud-orientated behaviour infiltrating the boardroom, the role of the data centre is likely to become more evident. Dell believes the modern data centre will be the centre of the new technology world, enabling innovation in an increasingly competitive market, and the merger has created a new organization which can capitalize on these trends. The success of the new company remains to be seen, though the new proposition and brand does have the potential to remove perceived doubt as to how traditional IT players can operate in “The Next Industrial Revolution” as Michael Dell highlighted.
HIMSS Privacy and Security Forum May 11th and 12th – Los Angeles Parallels will be participating in the HIMSS Privacy and Security Forum on May 11 and 12 at the Intercontinental Los Angeles Century City in Los Angeles, California. Parallels will be presenting a forum on the importance of security, especially in terms of cloud […]
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IBM has launched its updated blockchain offering for the financial, healthcare and government industries, on IBM’s cloud platform Bluemix as well as Docker.
While blockchain is another trend which has been empowered by the transition to cloud computing, the same security concerns persist as with cloud computing as the more senior technology family member. IBM claims the new blockchain offering answers these demands and concerns, while also meeting existing regulatory and security requirements.
“Clients tell us that one of the inhibitors of the adoption of blockchain is the concern about security,” said Jerry Cuomo, VP of Blockchain at IBM. “While there is a sense of urgency to pioneer blockchain for business, most organizations need help to define the ideal cloud environment that enables blockchain networks to run securely in the cloud.”
The blockchain adoption seemingly fits into IBM’s continued quest to transform its business, moving away from legacy technologies and build new fortunes in the cloud. Although IBM could be seen as being slightly slow to the cloud party, it has made positive strides in putting its name forward in the cognitive computing sub-sector (IBM’s Watson), and now blockchain. Industry insiders have told BCN tech giants such as Microsoft are interesting in the potential of blockchain, though IBM are one of the first to make such a solid commitment.
While the company has been demonstrating healthy growth in the cloud market segment, its recent quarterly earnings highlighted the decline of traditional IT technologies. The company’s quarterly earnings declined for the 16th straight quarter though its Strategic Imperatives projects, which include all cloud computing efforts, grew 14% to $7 billion.
From a feedback perspective, we asked BCN readers what they thought of IBM’s cognitive computing technology, Watson, which seems to be gaining healthy media attention. 40% of the industry believes Watson is the industry leader for cognitive computing and 20% say it’s in the pack. 40% believe the media attention is down to a powerful PR machine in IBM’s corporate team.
Are you evaluating a software asset for a potential purchase, investment, decision making for the future, possible termination, etc? Here are some questions to consider.
Is this a revenue generating asset? How much revenue does it generate? – Establishing the true business value of a software asset is a critical piece of the evaluation process.
Internet of Things (IoT), hybrid cloud services, mobile-first, and DevOps are increasing the demands and complexity of the overall development process.
Key factors to improving both development speed and security despite these new challenges include new levels of collaboration and communication across formerly disparate teams — from those who design, to coders, to testers, and on to continuous monitoring throughout operations. The result is security being integrated into software design, even as the pressure builds to bring more apps to market faster.
Wow, if you ever wanted to learn about Rugged DevOps (some call it DevSecOps), sit down for a spell with Shannon Lietz, Ian Allison and Scott Kennedy from Intuit. We discussed a number of important topics including internal war games, culture hacking, gamification of Rugged DevOps and starting as a small team. There are 100 gold nuggets in this conversation for novices and experts alike.
Research from Ingram Micro Cloud claims the UK is well on its way to the digitally enabled ecosystem, as 71% of enterprise organizations believe they will be digitally transformed by 2018.
The findings highlighted 31% of organizations believe they have a strategy in place currently, 23% are actively implementing one and a further 18% claim they will have one in place within the next 24 months. Roughly 80% of the respondents confirmed cloud played either a critical or very important role within the digital transformation projects themselves.
“Cloud has turned everything on its head,” Apay Obang-Oyway, Director for Northern Europe at Ingram Micro Cloud. “It is no longer about big corporations eating small businesses; now it is small challenging the big because with Cloud, small can be so much more innovative and agile. Greater opportunities now lie with SMBs. It’s important to realise the potential of the Cloud; it is about doing more with more to develop strong strategic advantage in a world that is fast changing.”
The transition of cloud computing through to the mainstream market has enforced a substantial number of enterprise organizations to redefine themselves through digital transformation projects to ensure they remain relevant in the new digital economy. 56% of respondents highlighted customer engagement was the primary objective of such strategies, 48% claimed identifying cost reduction and 45% stated remaining competitive, were the main drivers of the strategies.
“The ability to digitally reimagine the business is determined in large part by a clear digital strategy supported by leaders who foster a culture of change,” said Obang-Oyway. “While this is nothing new – and let’s be honest the world of business and IT have seen many technical evolutions – what is unique to digital transformation is that risk taking is becoming a cultural norm. More digitally advanced companies are seeking new levels of competitive advantage.
“New market entrants are appearing almost daily, disrupting traditional industries, the small are now challenging the large, the new challenging the old. Just think Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo. Equally important, employees across all age groups want to work for businesses that are committed to digital progress and this is what will attract the talent of the future. But underpinning this entire revolution is the Cloud. It is without doubt the single most transformative element in this radical rethinking of the way business is done today.”
While digital transformation strategies should not necessarily be considered new within the industry, the increased adoption rate of cloud within enterprise organizations on the whole has accelerated the necessity of such strategies. While it would be considered worst case scenario, Blockbuster is a prime example of the consequences of not accepting the new digital world, and has in turn normalised the concept of digital transformation.