Archivo de la categoría: IBM

Blue Box, Cloudsoft, Duncan Johnston-Watt, IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Jesse Proudman, News & Analysis

IBM boosts OpenStack cloud presence with Blue Box integration

IBM has integrated Blue Box, which offers managed private OpenStack clouds on-premise, into its own datacentres

IBM has integrated Blue Box, which offers managed private OpenStack clouds on-premise, into its own datacentres

Less than a few months after buying the managed OpenStack-based private cloud provider Blue Box IBM announced it has integrated the company’s technology into its SoftLayer infrastructure.

IBM customers now have access to Blue Box’s dedicated cloud offering through its cloud datacentres, which the company is pitching as a way to complement and ease provisioning of resources in the public cloud.

The company also announced that Cloudsoft, an open source application management company, will operate its Application Management Platform (AMP) via Blue Box Cloud.

“I’ve been impressed by the way the IBM and Blue Box engineering teams have collaborated to quickly bring Blue Box Cloud to a worldwide infrastructure platform,” said Jesse Proudman, chief technology officer at Blue Box. “Today, we’ve taken a big step toward our goal of delivering private clouds to customers anywhere in the world—and we’re offering deployment timelines that are unheard of within traditional private cloud.”

Duncan Johnston-Watt, chief executive of Cloudsoft said: “Implementing Cloudsoft AMP on Blue Box Cloud across IBM Cloud datacentres will allow us to meet the increased demand from customers for hybrid cloud solutions built on OpenStack. The combination of Blue Box’s best-in-class OpenStack service and IBM Cloud’s global footprint and legendary private network will enable us to model, deploy and manage our customers’ business critical applications and services worldwide.”

Bob Proctor, Cisco, IBM, Internet of Things, IoT, LoRa, M2M, News & Analysis, Samsung, Semtech

Link Labs bags $5.7m to boost IoT network dev efforts

Link Labs scored $5.7m, which it will use to double down on product development

Link Labs scored $5.7m, which it will use to double down on product development

Internet of Things (IoT) networking specialist Link Labs has secured $5.7m in series A funding which the company said would be used to boost its low-power wide area network (LPWAN) expansion efforts.

The funding round was led by TCP Venture Capital, which included investment from the Maryland Venture Fund, Blu Venture investors, Inflection Point Partners, and individual and existing investors.

Link Labs specialises in developing IoT networking technology based on LoRa, a standard for IoT-centric wide area networks. Its wares are popular in the intelligent manufacturing, healthcare and smart metering sectors.

The company’s Symphony Link software and hardware connects a range of IP-connected devices over long ranges, both indoors and outdoors, over both licenced and unlicensed spectrum (915 MHz ISM band and ETSI­ compliant for use in the 868 MHz band in Europe and are capable of deployment from 137 MHz­1020 MHz).

“This round marks an important milestone for us as we shift from system development, to accelerated deployment with our early customers,” said Brian Ray, chief executive of Link Labs. “This gives us the capital to expand our distribution channel and open up additional international markets and new applications.”

Bob Proctor, founding member at Blu Venture Investors said: “Link Labs is quickly emerging as the leader in hardware and software systems for low-power, long-range communications. We were excited to provide the seed round for Link Labs last year and are proud to be a major part of the Series A round.”

Link Labs is one of a small but growing number of startups making inroads in the IoT networking space, where there is a flurry of activity around developing standards to handle the communications element.

LoRa, which is developed by Semtech, is being backed by IBM, Cisco, and Microchip among the members of the LoRa Alliance, but other include Sigfox (which is being backed by Samsung) and Neul (which is being backed by Huawei).

Datacentre, Facebook, HP, IBM, Intel, Mike Yang, News & Analysis, Open Compute, Open Source, Quanta, Rackspace, server

Quanta intros Intel RSA Open Compute proof of concept

Quanta is mashing up Intel's RSA and Open Compute designs

Quanta is mashing up Intel’s RSA and Open Compute designs

Taiwanese datacentre vendor Quanta has introduced an Intel Rack Scale Architecture (Intel RSA) proof of concept rack solution based on Open Compute specifications which the company is pitching at hyperscale datacentre operators and cloud providers.

Intel RSA is the chip vendor’s own modular architecture design that disaggregates compute, storage and networking and weaves them together in a fabric it claims makes resources easier to pool and pod.

Now Quanta has developed a proof of concept for a server that blends Intel’s RSA specs and Open Compute designs.

The hardware vendor, which already offers hardware based on Open Compute designs, claims will significantly reduce datacentre energy consumption and costs, reduce vendor lock-in and ease management and maintenance.

“Datacentres face significant challenges to efficiency, flexibility and agility,” said Mike Yang, general manager of QCT. “Working with Intel on the Intel RSA program, we have developed our product lineup based on Open Compute to give customers the utmost in efficiency and performance, supported by open standards.”

“In addition, we provide manageability from the chassis level and rack level, up to pod level, so customers can easily pool resources across these levels to support dynamic workloads,” Yang said.

ODMs like Quanta have gained strong share in the hyperscale datacentre space because of their cost competitiveness, and at the same time the Open Compute project, an open source hardware project founded by Facebook a few years back, seems to be gaining favour among large cloud providers. Facebook, IBM, HP and Rackspace are among some of the larger providers building out Open Compute-based services at reasonable scale.

IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Jim Zemlin, Linux, mainframes, News & Analysis, server, Tom Rosamilia

IBM announces Linux mainframe app development cloud

IBM is trying to keep mainframes relevant in the cloud era

IBM is trying to keep mainframes relevant in the cloud era

IBM is open sourcing a large set of Linux mainframe code and launching the LinuxONE Developer Cloud, a cloud-based platform for developers to create applications for a Linux server based on the mainframe.

The LinuxONE Developer Cloud, which will be deployed in select IBM datacentres globally, will provide developers access to a cloud-based development, piloting and testing environment for Linux-based mainframe workloads.

The move coincides with the company’s launch of a portfolio of Linux mainframe services, called LinuxONE, that IBM says are optimised to run cloud-native workloads like Dockerized apps and NoSQL databases.

“Fifteen years ago IBM surprised the industry by putting Linux on the mainframe, and today more than a third of IBM mainframe clients are running Linux,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems.

“We are deepening our commitment to the open source community by combining the best of the open world with the most advanced system in the world in order to help clients embrace new mobile and hybrid cloud workloads. Building on the success of Linux on the mainframe, we continue to push the limits beyond the capabilities of commodity servers that are not designed for security and performance at extreme scale,” Rosamilia said.

As part of the move the company is contributing tens of thousands of lines of code to the recently created Open Mainframe Project, formed by the Linux Foundation to optimise Linux deployments on mainframes.

“Linux on the mainframe has reached a critical mass such that vendors, users and academia need a neutral forum where they can work together to advance Linux tools and technologies and increase enterprise innovation,” said Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation executive director.

“The Open Mainframe Project is a direct response to the demands of Linux users and the supporting open source ecosystem to address unique features and requirements built into mainframes for security, availability and performance,” Zemlin said.

Datacentre, Enterprise IT, IBM, Netflix, News & Analysis

Netflix to retire on-prem datacentres by summer’s end

Netflix is making big changes to how it architects its service

Netflix is making big changes to how it architects its service

Netflix said it plans to move its last remaining on-prem systems to the cloud in a move aimed at streamlining its datacentre strategy.

According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal, while its entire customer-facing business runs on AWS, Netflix said the company is planning to completely retire its own datacentres later this summer.

While most of its internal applications also run in the public cloud the company still uses its own infrastructure to store backups of its video collection, and for persistent failover.

It is clear Netflix has until very recently continued to invest in that infrastructure. Earlier this year the video streaming giant swapped 16 existing storage systems for three XIV systems to reduce datacentre floor space used by about 80 per cent and boost its database transactions-per-minute.

It was also testing IBM’s recently announced Spectrum Storage software, which is designed to optimise storage and ease management within hybrid cloud environments.

Moving all of its systems and applications to the cloud will complement a massive architectural overhaul announced earlier this year.

The company said rising demand for its service, which is mostly deployed on AWS infrastructure from multiple locations (initially just in the US) has prompted an effort to simplify its architecture so that it can scale more rapidly and reduce outages.

“Over the past 7 years, Netflix streaming has expanded from thousands of members watching occasionally to millions of members watching over two billion hours every month.  Each time a member starts to watch a movie or TV episode, a “view” is created in our data systems and a collection of events describing that view is gathered.  Given that viewing is what members spend most of their time doing on Netflix, having a robust and scalable architecture to manage and process this data is critical to the success of our business,” the company said at the time.

Hootsuite, IBM, News & Analysis, Vendor

Hootsuite, IBM strike cloud deal

IBM and Hootsuite are teaming up on social media skills development

IBM and Hootsuite are teaming up on social media skills development

Hootsuite will deploy its App Directory service on SoftLayer infrastructure, the companies announced this week. The two companies also intend to team up to create a university programme aimed at fostering social media analysis skills development.

The social media tool provider has previously teamed up with IBM in the past – it integrated IBM’s marketing automation service, Silverpop, with App Directory – but the latest deal will see Hootsuite move its service onto SoftLayer’s IaaS.

“IBM Cloud offers high performance, granular control and flexibility. When you couple that with its globally integrated footprint, we will have the ability to move data between datacentres efficiently which will provide resiliency, flexibility and control,” said Aaron Budge, vice president of operations and IT at Hootsuite.

“We have had a great relationship with IBM for more than two years and are excited about expanding our relationship with new product integrations and the ability to leverage IBM technology,” Budge said.

The two companies are also joining forces to develop a no-charge university program that pairs IBM’s Academic Initiative with Hootsuite’s Higher Education Program, which blends analytics and cloud training with social media skill development. The move will see the two companies offer students and faculty at participating universities access to IBM and Hootsuite technical experts and technology.

“The partnership between IBM and Hootsuite will blend analytics and social technologies to provide students and professionals the skills they need for social marketing,” said Randy Hlavac, a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and a member of IBM’s Academic Initiative.

“Utilizing IBM Cloud and Analytic solutions, students are able to gain deep market knowledge. The Hootsuite tools will utilize this insight and allow students to test messaging immediately and deliver the most engaging content globally,” Hlavac said.

Big Data, IBM, John Kelly, M&A, Merge, News & Analysis, Vendor, Watson

IBM bolsters Watson Healthcare capabilities with $1bn Merge acquisition

IBM is bolstering its Watson Health Cloud with the Merge acquisition

IBM is bolstering its Watson Health Cloud with the Merge acquisition

IBM announced its intention to acquire Merge Healthcare, a medical imaging and processing platform provider, which it plans to integrate with Watson. The company said the move would bolster the cognitive computing cloud’s clinical and medical capabilities.

Merge claims its technology is used at more than 7,500 US healthcare sites and many of the world’s largest clinical research institutes and pharmaceutical firms to manage and process medical images.

IBM said it plans to integrate Merge’s medical image handling technologies with the Watson Health Cloud. The company said the move would enable it to extend Watson’s analytics to medical images and create a consolidated platform to store, analyse and suggest treatments based on them, as well as cross-reference the images against a growing trove of lab results, electronic health records, clinical studies and other healthcare-related research and data.

“As a proven leader in delivering healthcare solutions for over 20 years, Merge is a tremendous addition to the Watson Health platform.  Healthcare will be one of IBM’s biggest growth areas over the next 10 years, which is why  we are making a major investment to drive industry transformation and to facilitate a higher quality of care,” said John Kelly, senior vice president, IBM Research and Solutions Portfolio.

“Watson’s powerful cognitive and analytic capabilities, coupled with those from Merge and our other major strategic acquisitions, position IBM to partner with healthcare providers, research institutions, biomedical companies, insurers and other organizations committed to changing the very nature of health and healthcare in the 21st century. Giving Watson ‘eyes’ on medical images unlocks entirely new possibilities for the industry.”

“Medical images are some of the most complicated data sets imaginable, and there is perhaps no more important area in which researchers can apply machine learning and cognitive computing.  That’s the real promise of cognitive computing and its artificial intelligence components – helping to make us healthier and to improve the quality of our lives,” he added.

IBM sees huge potential for its Watson service in healthcare, and has moved to back that belief with a flurry of acquisitions and partnerships.

Earlier this year it bought Phytel, which provides cloud-based software that helps healthcare providers and care teams coordinate activities across medical facilities by automating certain aspects of patient care, and acquired Explorys, a provider of cognitive cloud-based analytics that provides insights for care facilities derived from datasets derived from numerous and diverse financial, operational and medical record systems.

It also announced a partnership with Apple that is seeing IBM offer its Watson Health Cloud platform as a storage and analytics service for HealthKit data aggregated from iOS devices, and open the platform up for health and fitness app developers as well as medical researchers.

Christopher O’Connor, developers, IBM, Internet of Things, Jone Rasmussen, News & Analysis

IBM targets IoT with developerWorks

IBM is targeting IoT developers with developerWorks

IBM is targeting IoT developers with developerWorks

As part of the recently announced developerWorks initiative IBM is creating a community, developerWorks Recipes, aimed specifically at developers creating Internet of Things (IoT) services.

The developerWorks Recipes community will offer participating developers access to IBM’s Bluemix platform as well as tutorials and technical guides on how to develop and deploy IoT services like connected car, healthcare device or industrial machine monitoring and diagnostic services.

“IBM has long been a leader in offering innovative tools for developers to create the applications of our future.  Now, IBM is expanding that focus so anyone – from the software novice to the experienced hardware engineer – can easily and quickly access materials providing guidance in the creation, management and connection of IoT devices to each other and the cloud,” said Christopher O’Connor, general manager, offerings, Internet of Things at IBM.

“With developerWorks Recipes, IBM provides easy access to new analytics and operational insight capabilities that tap into the vast data from many connected devices, home appliances or cars,” O’Connor said.

IBM just launched developerWorks last week, a cloud-based platform that provides access to Bluemix and emerging IBM tech and expertise in the form of blogs, informational videos and other multimedia, as well as the opportunity to collaborate with specialists.

Jone Rasmussen, general manager of IoT developer tool startup Bitreactive said the platform has the potential to help companies that want to develop new services quickly at a time when device development and vendor activity is expanding rapidly and standards scarcely available.

“Developers just can’t be experts on each new ‘thing’ that gets added to the IoT,” Rasmussen said. “To control costs of IoT projects, developers need easy, repeatable ways to quickly extract data from devices.”

How are developers using cloud to develop IoT services? Click here to download the whitepaper created by BCN and IBM to find out.

Alibaba, Aliyun, AWS, Daniel Zhang, Datacentre, Equinix, Google, IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Intel, Meeras, News & Analysis, PCCW, Singtel

Alibaba takes aim at AWS, Google, Microsoft, pours $1bn into global cloud rollout

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba announced plans this week to plough $1bn into its cloud computing division, Aliyun, in a bid to expand the company’s presence and establish new datacentres internationally. The move may give it the scale it needs to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon and Google.

The company currently operates five datacentre in China and Hong Kong, and earlier this year set up a datacentre in Silicon Valley aimed at local startups and Chinese multinational corporations.

The $1bn in additional investment will go towards setting up new cloud datacentres in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and in various countries across Europe.

“Aliyun has become a world-class cloud computing service platform that is the market leader in China, bearing the fruits of our investment over the past six years. As the physical and digital are becoming increasingly integrated, Aliyun will serve as an essential engine in this new economy,” said Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group.

“This additional US$ 1 billion investment is just the beginning; our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities, and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure. We want to enable businesses to connect directly with consumers and drive productivity using data. Ultimately, our goal is to help businesses successfully transition from an era of information technology to data technology,” Zhang said.

The company said it also plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships through its recently announced Marketplace Alliance Program, a move that sees it partnering with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

The investment if anything confirms Alibaba’s intent to grow well beyond Asia and displace other large public cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Google, which already boast significant global scale.

Africa, Funding, IBM, Kenya, Kenya Education Network, Meoli Kashorda, Naguib Attia, News & Analysis, public private partnership

IBM to invest $60m in Africa to expand cloud, analytics skills

IBM is investing $60m in Africa over three years to train students in cloud, big data and analytics

IBM is investing $60m in Africa over three years to train students in cloud, big data and analytics

IBM will invest $60m in Africa over three years to expand its technical academy and educational initiatives in the region. The company said it wants to bolster its investment in developing stronger regional capabilities in cloud services, big data and analytics.

In Kenya, where IBM’s Africa Research lab and Innovation Centres are based, the company is partnering with the Kenya Education Network (KENET) to deliver advanced certification courses in cloud and data sciences to faculty and students of 50 Kenyan universities linked by KENET’s broadband network.

The courses will be administered by IBM technical experts along with key faculty from participating universities.

“With a research laboratory, innovation centers, offices and other advanced facilities in more than 24 African countries, IBM has the highest concentration of technical talent on the African continent,” said Naguib Attia, IBM chief technology officer & vice president of technical leadership, MEA.

“As the leader in science and technology in Africa, we see it as IBM’s responsibility to make a strategic investment in skills development helping to lay the foundations of the Africa of tomorrow,” he said.

Attia said partners hope to reach up to 35,000 students by 2017.

Meoli Kashorda, executive director of Kenya Education Network said the certification program will provide university graduates with critical entry-level job skills in high demand by employers in Kenya and Africa more broadly.

“Both the African universities and leading private sector companies that are investing on the continent stand to benefit from this program,” he said.

The move comes just a few days after IBM unveiled a tech collaboration space in Nairobi, where the company hopes to facilitate tech partnerships between startups in the region. The space, which will make a range of IBM services like Bluemix and various cloud applications available to developers by offering credits, will open in August this year.