Archivo de la categoría: AWS

Bharti Airtel joins AWS Partner Network service to bolster cloud connectivity

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS' cloud

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS’ cloud

Bharti Airtel has joined Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Partner Network in a move that will see the Indian telco offer private network services for enterprise customers using the AWS cloud.

Airtel said the move would help enterprise customers across the globe leverage AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s datacentres globally, and potentially reduce network costs and offer more consistent network performance.

AWS Direct Connect allows enterprise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and any AWS Direct Connect locations using 802.1q VLANs.

“Today, we are seeing more and more organizations embrace the benefits of hybrid network architectures and on-premise environments across the globe. In line with this market adoption, we are excited to strengthen Airtel’s cloud services portfolio by adding AWS to our growing list of cloud services providers,” said Ajay Chitkara, chief executive officer – global business, Bharti Airtel.

“We are confident that this will help our global customers truly leverage the benefits of cloud, and further Airtel’s long-term commitment towards delivering the best technological capabilities for its customers,” Chitkara added.

In canned remarks, Bikram singh Bedi, head of Amazon Web Services India said: “We are excited to be working with Airtel to bring the security and reliability of AWS Direct Connect to Amazon Web Services customers across India. By utilizing AWS Direct Connect, AWS customers are able to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience, helping Indian businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand their organisations.”

A number of large telcos have partnered with AWS in a bid to bolster their appeal to their own enterprise customers, and attract large multinational firms – which tend to have a strong interest in harmonising their IT estates globally.

Bharti Airtel joins AWS Partner Network service to bolster cloud connectivity

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS' cloud

Bharti Airtel will offer enterprise customers private links directly to AWS’ cloud

Bharti Airtel has joined Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Partner Network in a move that will see the Indian telco offer private network services for enterprise customers using the AWS cloud.

Airtel said the move would help enterprise customers across the globe leverage AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection between customers’ premises and Amazon’s datacentres globally, and potentially reduce network costs and offer more consistent network performance.

AWS Direct Connect allows enterprise customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their network and any AWS Direct Connect locations using 802.1q VLANs.

“Today, we are seeing more and more organizations embrace the benefits of hybrid network architectures and on-premise environments across the globe. In line with this market adoption, we are excited to strengthen Airtel’s cloud services portfolio by adding AWS to our growing list of cloud services providers,” said Ajay Chitkara, chief executive officer – global business, Bharti Airtel.

“We are confident that this will help our global customers truly leverage the benefits of cloud, and further Airtel’s long-term commitment towards delivering the best technological capabilities for its customers,” Chitkara added.

In canned remarks, Bikram singh Bedi, head of Amazon Web Services India said: “We are excited to be working with Airtel to bring the security and reliability of AWS Direct Connect to Amazon Web Services customers across India. By utilizing AWS Direct Connect, AWS customers are able to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience, helping Indian businesses of all sizes to rapidly expand their organisations.”

A number of large telcos have partnered with AWS in a bid to bolster their appeal to their own enterprise customers, and attract large multinational firms – which tend to have a strong interest in harmonising their IT estates globally.

CenturyLink expands public cloud in APAC

CenturyLink is expanding its public cloud platform in Singapore

CenturyLink is expanding its public cloud platform in Singapore

American telco CenturyLink has expanded the presence of its public cloud platform to Singapore in a bid to cater to growing regional demand for cloud services.

CenturyLink, which recently expanded its managed services presence in China and its private cloud services in Europe and the UK, is adding public cloud nodes to one of its Singapore datacentres.

“The launch of a CenturyLink Cloud node in Singapore further enhances our position as a leading managed hybrid IT provider for businesses with operations in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Gery Messer, CenturyLink managing director, Asia Pacific.

“We continue to invest in the high-growth Asia-Pacific region to meet increasing customer demand,” Messer said.

The company said it wants to cater to what it sees as growing demand for cloud services in the region, citing Frost & Sullivan figures that show the Asia-Pacific region spent almost $6.6bn on public cloud services last year. That firm predicts annual cloud services spending in the region will exceed $20bn by 2018.

The move also comes at a time when the Singapore Government is looking to invest more in both using cloud services and growing usage of cloud platforms in the region.

Last year the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said it was working with Amazon Web Services to trial a data as a service project the organisations believe will help increase the visibility of privately-held data sets.

The agency also signed a Memorandum of Intent with AWS that would see the cloud provider offer usage credits $3,000 (US) to the first 25 companies to sign up to the pilot, which will go towards the cost of hosting their dataset registries or datasets.

It’s also announced similar partnerships in the past with Pivotal and Red Hat.

Birst scores $65m to grow cloud analytics

Birst has secured $65m to grow its cloud-based analytics platform globally

Birst has secured $65m to grow its cloud-based analytics platform globally

BI and analytics provider Birst has secured $65m in its latest round of funding which the firm said would be used to fuel sales and marketing efforts globally.

The latest funding round brings the total amount secured by the company to $156m.

“We’ve seen an explosion in data volumes, data sources, and end-user demand in the analytics market. Organizations need speed, end-user self-service and robust data governance from their next-generation business intelligence platform. That’s exactly what we deliver at Birst,” said Jay Larson, chief executive officer of Birst.

Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia Capital, one of Birst’s investors, said the business intelligence market is going through a massive transformation at the moment.

“The BI market is going through a major transition as the legacy suppliers continue to decline. The race for next-generation leadership in BI and analytics is going to be won by the supplier that offers world-class technology, great business leadership, and a proven capability to focus on today’s needs versus those from a decade ago,” Leone said.

Birst’s strategy seems to be in line with where enterprises are headed. According to the BCN Annual Industry Survey, which polled over 700 senior IT decision makers globally, about two thirds of enterprises plan to use cloud-based analytics platforms over the next 18 months.

Last year Birst moved to bolster its presence in Europe and the UK, launching a version of its solution hosted in AWS’s Ireland datacentre, and expanding its UK team. It also struck a deal with SAP to make Birst’s analytics platform available on HANA.

Software AG migrates cloud portfolio to AWS

Software AG plans to deploy its software portfolio on the AWS platform and offer cloud migration services to enterprises

Software AG plans to deploy its software portfolio on the AWS platform and offer cloud migration services to enterprises

Software AG is moving forward with plans to offer cloud migration services to enterprise clients in a move that will see the company deploy its cloud software portfolio onto Amazon Web Services infrastructure.

The company said it has made a “strategic decision” to deploy its entire cloud portfolio on the AWS cloud over the course of 2015, with its Alfabet Cloud and ARIS Cloud suites already running on Amazon’s cloud platform.

t also plans to offer services that help enterprises determine whether and how to move to the cloud while considering ease of access, cost, regulatory, security and business processes transformation issues involved with such a move.

“Software AG is committed to increasing customer choice and ease of use wherever possible and transformation to the cloud is a significant step in this direction, delivering increased enterprise flexibility and adaptability”, said Wolfram Jost, chief technology officer at Software AG. “Not only does this help enterprises and government departments to design and implement individual cloud strategies and architectures, it does so from the cloud, delivering cost efficiencies from the start.”

The company said its focus for 2015 will be on “delivering strategic cloud adoption consulting services,” an area where a good number of boutique consultancies have emerged over the past few years.

Terry Wise, vice president of AWS also commented on the partnership: “Today, more than ever before, leading ISVs are looking for IT solutions that allow them to move quickly, reduce costs, and better serve their customers. Software AG is a leading example of an innovative software vendor going all in on AWS to leverage our secure, robust infrastructure platform, and expanding global footprint to build highly differentiated, value-added solutions for their customers.”

Developers Hit With Big, Unexpected AWS Bills, Thousands on GitHub Exposed

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is urging developers using the code sharing site GitHub to check their posts to ensure they haven’t inadvertently exposed their log-in credentials.

When opening an account, users are told to “store the keys in a secure location” and are warned that the key needs to remain “confidential in order to protect your account”. However, a search on GitHub reveals thousands of results where code containing AWS secret keys can be found in plain text, which means anyone can access those accounts.

From a security perspective it means they can basically go in and gain access to any of the files that are stored in the AWS account.

According to an AWS statement,  ”When we become aware of potentially exposed credentials, we proactively notify the affected customers and provide guidance on how to secure their access keys,”

There is more detail (and some cautionary tales involving big, and unexpected, AWS bills) here.

Cloud Mystery: What’s the Tech Secret Behind Amazon Glacier?

ITProPortal has a good writeup on Amazon Glacier technology: tape? cheap disks they power down? It’s more than just a post filled with wild speculation because it includes informed reasoning on the current state of the art for each of the candidate technologies behind Glacier:

…of all the services offered by AWS, none have fuelled the same level of speculation and interest as Amazon’s Glacier. Though the service is well-known and widely-used in enterprise, no one knows exactly what’s behind it.

Amazon has retained a thick veil of secrecy around its most mysterious web service. The Seattle-based company has always kept the processes behind its services fairly quiet, but the omerta surrounding Glacier has been especially strict, leaving experts in the tech community perplexed about what Amazon could be hiding.

TL;DR: It might be old-fashioned robot tape libraries; it might be cheap disks they fill up then turn off until they need them for retrieval; it might be some clever hybrid of the two.

Read the article.

Amazon Goes Beyond AWS Training with AWS Certification

You can now go beyond AWS training and take tests to earn AWS Certification. Meant to provide a way for Solution Architects, System Administrators, and Developers to formally certify knowledge of AWS.

The AWS Certifications are credentials that you (as an individual) can earn to certify your expertise (skills and technical knowledge) in the planning, deployment, and management of projects and systems that use AWS. Once you complete the certification requirements, you will receive an AWS Certified logo badge that you can use on your business cards and other professional collateral. This will help you to gain recognition and visibility for your AWS expertise.

The first certification, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level, is available now. Additional certifications for System Administrators and Developers are planned for 2013.

Certification Exams are delivered by Kryterion, in more than 100 countries at over 750 testing locations worldwide. You can register online to take the exam through Kryterion.

Stackdriver Launches Intelligent Monitoring Service Public Beta

Stackdriver has launched the public beta  of Stackdriver Intelligent Monitoring, a flexible and intuitive SaaS offering that provides rich insight into the health of cloud-powered systems, infrastructure, and applications.  The service features seamless integration with Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Cloud and is optimized for teams that manage complex distributed applications.  Customers can access the service immediately via the company’s website at www.stackdriver.com.

Stackdriver’s engineers set out to build a solution that:

  • Monitors applications, systems, and infrastructure components,
  • Identifies anomalies using modern analytics and machine learning, and
  • Drives remediation and automation using a proprietary policy framework.

Edmodo, a leading social learning platform that runs on AWS, has relied on Stackdriver for several months.  “The technology stack that powers Edmodo’s online learning platform is very sophisticated. We use a variety of application building blocks, including AWS services and open source server software,” noted Kimo Rosenbaum, Infrastructure Architect.  “Before Stackdriver, we monitored our stack with many disparate tools, often designed without the dynamic nature of the cloud in mind.  With Stackdriver, we can monitor our systems, AWS services, and applications with one simple interface built for cloud-based services.”

Stackdriver Intelligent Monitoring is available free of charge for companies using Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Cloud.  Today, Stackdriver manages nearly 100,000 cloud resources and processes over 125 million measurements per day.  Nearly 100 customers, paid and non-paid, use the service, including Edmodo, Yellowhammer Media, Exablox, Atomwise, Qthru, and Webkite.

Study Finds Enterprise Cloud Focus Shifting From Adoption to Optimization

Cloudyn together with The Big Data Group has released the latest AWS customer optimization data, reinforcing the positive growth trend expected for the year ahead.

We set out to evaluate whether the projected 2013 ‘year of cloud optimization’ is on course and discovered that we are well into the public cloud adoption life cycle. In 2011 and 2012 the conversation centered around how and when to move to the cloud. Now it is all about companies looking for efficiencies and cost controls,” commented David Feinleib, Managing Director of The Big Data Group.

The study, based on over 450 selected AWS and Cloudyn customers, highlights a more mature approach to cloud deployments reflected by a deeper understanding of where inefficiencies lurk and how to optimize them. EC2 makes up for 62% of total AWS spend, with more than 50% of customers now using Reserved Instances in their deployment mix. However, On-Demand pricing remains the top choice for most, accounting for 71% of EC2 spend. Even for customers using reservations, there is still opportunity for further efficiency.

For example, Cloudyn’s Unused Reservation Detector has assisted customers in finding a startling 24% of unused reservations. These can be recycled by relocating matching On-Demand instances to the availability zone of the unused reservation.

There is also a shift away from large instance types to medium, where two medium instances cost the same as one large, but can produce 30% more output. However, with the low 8-9% utilization rates of the popular instance types, there is certainly more work to be done on the road to cloud optimization.

Cloudyn and The Big Data Group host a webinar on May 1, 2013 at 9:00 am PT focused on deployment efficiency.