Category Archives: Private Cloud

Cloud computing, Dell, hybrid cloud, Infrastructure as a Service, multicloud, Platform as a service, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Software as a service

Dell APEX portfolio advancements help customers strengthen multicloud strategies

Dell Technologies has unveiled new Dell APEX offerings across cloud platforms, public cloud storage software, client devices and compute. These additions to its as-a-Service and multicloud portfolio spanning data centre to public cloud and client devices could help businesses operate and innovate faster through improved management and mobility of their applications and data wherever they… Read more »

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BMC, Cloud computing, Data, data analytics, hybrid cloud, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

Basil Faruqui, BMC: Perfecting cloud strategies, and getting the most out of automation

Could you tell us a little about what BMC does and your role within the company?  BMC delivers industry-leading software solutions for IT automation, orchestration, operations, and service management to help organisations free up time and space as they continue to drive their digital initiatives forward. We work with thousands of customers and partners around… Read more »

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AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM continue cloud market dominance

male and female during the run of the marathon raceNew research from Synergy states while the cloud market is growing at a healthy rate quarter-by-quarter, the four dominate cloud brands are continuing to pull away from the pack, controlled more market share month-by-month, reports Telecoms.com.

Data from Synergy Research claims the four companies now collectively control more than 50% of worldwide cloud market share (IaaS, PaaS and Hosted Private Cloud), with AWS maintaining its lead at the top of the leader board controlling almost a third of worldwide share. Over the course of the second quarter of 2016, the top four grew revenues by 68%, while the next 20 players, who roughly account for a quarter of the market share, grew 41%. All other vendors in this space grew by a collective 27%.

“In a variety of ways Amazon and the other big three players have distanced themselves from the competition in this market and continue to widen the gap,” said John Dinsdale, Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “What marks them out as different is their global presence, marketing muscle, ability to fund huge investments in hyper scale data centres and, in most cases, a determination to succeed in the market.

“The ranking of the next 20 largest cloud providers features some interesting companies, with Alibaba and Oracle growing particularly strongly, but they are all starting from a long way behind Google, which is itself growing by well over 100% per year and yet remains only a sixth the size of Amazon.”

Although AWS is still the dominant market player, growth is slowing. Google and Microsoft both posted growth figures of more than 100%, though it is far too soon to write AWS’ obituary, as it still controls more than three times the market share of its nearest rival, Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft has been going through a number of transformation projects in recent years, and while the market share for cloud shows it will still be some time before it catches AWS, the team are finding success in other arenas. According to additional research from Synergy, in the data centre infrastructure market, HPE and Cisco may be leading the way for public and private cloud hardware, but Microsoft now accounts for just over 40% of cloud software share, with VMWare its nearest competitor at roughly 20%. The research including share for servers, server OS, storage, networking, network security and virtualization software.

“With spend on cloud services growing by over 50% per year and spend on SaaS growing by over 30%, there is little surprise that cloud operator capex continues to drive strong growth in public cloud infrastructure,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Chief Analyst. “But on the enterprise data centre side too we continue to see a big swing towards spend on private cloud infrastructure as companies seek to benefit from more flexible and agile IT technology. The transition to cloud still has a long way to go.”

Cloud computing, Cloud Computing Model, Parallels RAS, Parallels Remote Application Server, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

The Evolution of Private Cloud Computing

Private Cloud Computing Implementing a cloud solution for a business is a very complex process, one that requires a lot of thought and consideration. This is mainly due to the fact that there are different kinds of cloud services, which generally can be divided into two: public cloud and private cloud. The public cloud is […]

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hybrid cloud, IaaS, News & Analysis, NTT, Private Cloud

NTT makes play for IaaS

NTT CommunicationsNTT Communications has announced the deployment of managed private cloud solutions to HPE and NTT customers in the US in a play for the IaaS market.

Although not hitting the headlines as regularly as competitors such as AWS, Google and Microsoft, NTT has been recognized in the IaaS market by Gartner, and does already have a strong presence in the US market. Although noted as a niche player the IaaS segment, NTT does offer two platforms to global customers; NTT Enterprise Cloud and Cloudn. Gartner has noted the NTT does little to differentiate itself from the rest of the market, though it does have a healthy ecosystem of partners to compensate.

The new proposition will enable joint customers of HPE and NTT to purchase the company’s IaaS portfolio solutions, including cloud migration services, data centre consolidation, managed infrastructure services, and disaster recovery-as-a-service. The NTT team claim it is one of HPE’s first service provider partners capable of providing managed private cloud environments using the new HPE Helion CloudSystem.

“NTT America, the U.S. subsidiary of NTT Com, provides flexible, agile and cost-effective private hybrid cloud solutions to the NTT Com and HPE customer base,” said Indranil Sengupta, Regional Vice President of Product Management at NTT America. “These solutions can be delivered at NTT Com data centres, customer premises or at third party data centres.

“The solution architecture allows customers to leverage their current investments and augment with additional services that they need to run their business efficiently. All of NTT Com’s cloud solutions focus on the five key considerations of security, compliance, migration, legacy integration and change management.”

While a niche player in the market, the move could represent a strategic win for the NTT team, who already has a healthy reputation in North America, and a growing customer base. It would also be considered a timely move as trends in the industry are leaning more towards multi-cloud propositions, where decision makers are more open to working with different cloud providers for different workloads and data sets.

Cisco, HPE, hybrid cloud, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

Microsoft, HPE and Cisco take top-spot for infrastructure vendors

male and female during the run of the marathon raceMicrosoft, HPE and Cisco have been named as three of the leading names in the cloud industry by Synergy Research as the firm wraps up the winners and losers for the first quarter.

While the cloud infrastructure market has been growing consistently at an average rate of 20% year-on-year, 2016 Q1 was estimated at 13%, though this was to be expected following peak sales during the latter stages of 2015. Microsoft led the way for cloud infrastructure software, whereas HPE led the private cloud hardware market segment, and Cisco led the public cloud hardware segment.

“With spend on cloud services growing by over 50% per year and spend on SaaS growing by over 30%, there is little surprise that cloud operator capex continues to drive strong growth in public cloud infrastructure,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s Chief Analyst. “But on the enterprise data centre side too we continue to see a big swing towards spend on private cloud infrastructure as companies seek to benefit from more flexible and agile IT technology. The transition to cloud still has a long way to go.”

For the last eight quarters total spend on data centre infrastructure has been running at an average of $29 billion, with HPE controlling the largest share of cloud infrastructure hardware and software over the course of 2015. Cloud deployments or shipments of systems that are cloud enabled now account for well over half of the total data centre infrastructure market.

cloud leaders

Opinion, outsourcing, Private Cloud, Public Cloud

Should Public Cloud be Synonymous with Outsourcing?

Marathon runners taking the position for the start of raceI caught an internet meme the other day that said, “The Cloud is just a computer somewhere else.”  But is that true?  Is the cloud really all about outsourcing your infrastructure to somewhere or someone else?

Popular opinion seems to indicate that’s the case.  But I would argue otherwise.

The cloud is a way of thinking.  Consider the ease with which you can swipe your credit card and walk away with a virtual infrastructure in the cloud.  Pay for what you need now, and scale out to meet your growing demands as your business or projects expand.  Who could say no to that?

In my experience as an IT leader and solutions architect, this is what the cloud is really all about.  Self-service provisioning; elastic, pay-as-you-grow infrastructure; and a service-driven operating model with all-inclusive, per-VM pricing.

If we take that perspective, we see that the cloud is not just about outsourcing.  In fact, all IT leaders should aspire to deliver the same agility, elasticity, and efficiency of the cloud model – whether their infrastructure runs on-premises or “in the cloud.”

With that said, this has not always been feasible or easy.  Traditional IT infrastructure is costly, complex, and rigid.  It simply doesn’t provide the same level of efficiency and agility as public cloud providers can deliver.  And that’s no surprise.  Early in their history, pioneering service providers and technology giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, discarded the old IT model and built their own infrastructure based on key design principles of software-defined, scale-out, and x86 commodity hardware.

Until now, visionary IT leaders who sought to deliver a cloud operating model on-site had little at their disposal.  But that is changing.  Breakthroughs in on-premises infrastructure like hyperconvergence are making it possible to bring the benefits of the cloud on-site, avoiding the tradeoffs of outsourcing their infrastructure and core business applications to the cloud.

In many ways, hyperconverged infrastructure delivers the same efficiency and agility of cloud.  It’s based on the same design principles noted above – x86 commodity building blocks, software-defined, and linear scalability. However, hyperconverged infrastructure also provides the performance, protection, and resiliency enterprises require – all while reducing complexity and costs.

In fact, in a recent independent study, focusing on the cost-effectiveness and three-year total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of hyperconvergence and the public cloud, hyperconvergence vendor SimpliVity was compared to public cloud vendor Amazon Web Services. The study found that SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution offers a TCO savings of 22% to 49% when compared to Amazon Web Services. This shows that cost is no longer a barrier to creating a private cloud. Enterprises can choose what best suits their workloads, public or private.

Overall, with hyperconvergence, enterprises can now outsource to the public cloud or decide to stay on-premises, all the while maintaining the agility, elasticity, and cost-effectiveness of the public cloud.

Written by Rich Kucharski, Vice President of Solutions Architecture at SimpliVity

hybrid cloud, Ixia, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Visibility

Ixia launches CloudLens to increase network visibility across cloud environments

Closeup on eyeglasses with focused and blurred landscape view.Ixia has launched its new CloudLens offering, a platform which it claims will increase network visibility across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments for service providers, cloud providers, and enterprise customers.

The new offering will enable customers to gain insight into network traffic in both physical and virtualized environments, using the company’s virtual network taps, packet and application flow filtering. The offering claims to answer the challenge of elastic demands of cloud customers in a multi-tenant self-serve model, deploying scalable traffic monitoring system in a matter of minutes, as opposed to days.

“The CloudLens platform is a true reflection of what Ixia is well recognized for in the industry, which is combining technology innovation with solutions that address real-world network challenges,” said Dennis Cox, Chief Product Officer at Ixia. “We are committed to addressing those challenges, and will continue to innovate, leveraging our years of experience, to deliver unprecedented visibility across all cloud environments.”

CloudLens will also include a number of automation features enabling the virtual taps and analysis tools to automatically change in reaction to demand or failures, without the need for an operator. The platform currently supports OpenStack KVM, VMWare ESXi, and NSX, and is expected to be extended to Microsoft Hyper-V later in the coming months.

AWS, Financial Results, hybrid cloud, Managed services, Microsoft Azure, News & Analysis, OpenStack, Private Cloud, Rackspace

Rackspace prioritises AWS and Azure partnerships for future growth

Taylor Rhodes

Taylor Rhodes, President and CEO at Rackspace

Rackspace has reported healthy growth for Q1 2016, as the team continues its transition to become managed services provider, leveraging partnerships with AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Revenues for the first quarter were reported at $518 million, a year-on-year growth of 9.9%, while profits grew 77.5%. Although the growth of the business over the last 12 months has been viewed as generally positive, industry commentators highlighted the $24 million gain from the divestiture of Jungle Disk, and what could be perceived as a lacklustre outlook for the rest of 2016 has dampened the news. The exec team expects revenues of between $519 million and $524 million for the second quarter.

“First, we saw a strong demand for our expertise and support on the AWS and Microsoft Clouds and for our OpenStack private cloud offer. Collectively, we now serve more than 400 customers on these platforms and our demand is scaling rapidly,” Taylor Rhodes, President and CEO at Rackspace. “From the October launch of our AWS service through the end of April, we’ve been actively marketing with AWS and have signed 187 customers across every firm size, geography, and vertical.”

The transition to a managed cloud services company began a number of years ago with the launch of Rackspace’s Fanatical Support services, though seemingly began making real traction within the industry last year, as the team announced expanded partnerships with Microsoft in July, when Azure public and private cloud infrastructure was incorporated into the offering, and AWS in August. The team also recently announced a new partnership with Cloud Technology Partners, which it believes will increase cloud adoption rates.

The partnerships are also enabling the company to diversify its geographical focus as over 40% of the AWS customers are coming from non-U.S. regions. Rhodes also believes the new capital-light business models employed enables the company to roll-out new offerings worldwide. Previously, new products were rolled out first in the USA, due to capital intensity, and then phased out over time into other regions worldwide, however the new model is claimed to offer Rackspace increased flexibility and agility in bringing new offerings to the market.

The shift in strategic direction is supported by a renewed effort in the marketing department, as Rhodes highlighted campaigns will now be directed towards driving brand awareness and demand generation for the managed cloud services business, specifically the Fanatical Support services offered to AWS and Microsoft Azure customers.

“Our new head of Global Sales and Marketing, Alex Pinchev, started work at the beginning of Q1,” said Rhodes. “He and his team are moving aggressively to shift resources toward our new fast-growing offers while sustaining our core business. They are training more of our sales teams to sell our new offers and are hiring additional specialists in areas of high demand. We advised you last quarter that these sales and marketing efforts will take time to gain full traction, that transition contributed to our slow start to the year”

Efforts for Rackspace on the OpenStack front would also appear to be bearing fruit, with the launch of OpenStack Everywhere, Next Generation Bare Metal Servers and the Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat offering. All three offerings would seemingly demonstrate the company’s drive towards the OpenStack private and hybrid cloud market segments. The team are confident in the growth potential of the OpenStack private cloud market, and highlighted a number of major customers wins were through this aspect of the business.

“Our role as the co-founder of OpenStack has given us unique capabilities in software development, DevOps, continuous integration and deployment, and other key disciplines,” said Rhodes. “Those capabilities provide a major differentiation for us versus other managed services providers as we expand to provide managed cloud services on AWS and the Microsoft Cloud.

“We’ve really seen a tipping point, what really looks like a significant tipping point in the market for OpenStack private clouds in the last six months to nine months. Some of our largest deals that we closed in March were OpenStack private cloud deals and some of the largest deals that we have in our pipeline today are OpenStack private cloud deal. So, really that’s the traction that we’re seeing.”

Adoption, Enterprise IT, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, News & Analysis, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Statistics, VMTurbo

57% of organizations still don’t have multi-cloud strategy – survey

Competition. Business concept illustrationResearch from VMTurbo has highlighted 57% of organizations have no multi-cloud strategy at all, where as 35% do not have a private cloud strategy and 28% lack one for public cloud.

Although hybrid cloud is considered one of the growing trends within the industry, the research suggests the noise behind multi-cloud strategies is coming from either a small number of customers, or from vendor organizations themselves. Of those who would be considered in the ‘Functional Multi-cloud Owner’ group, which only represented 10.4% of the respondents, almost half were using a two-cloud model, and just over a quarter were using a three-cloud model. The multi-cloud strategy was favoured by larger organizations in general.

“A lack of cloud strategy doesn’t mean an organization has studied and rejected the idea of the cloud; it means it has given adoption little or no thought at all,” said Charles Crouchman, CTO of VMTurbo. “As organizations make the journey from on-premise IT, to public and private clouds, and finally to multi- and hybrid clouds, it’s essential that they address this.

“Having a cloud strategy means understanding the precise costs and challenges that the cloud will introduce, knowing how to make the cloud approach work for you, and choosing technologies that will supplement cloud adoption. For instance, by automating workload allocation so that services are always provided with the best performance for the best cost. Without a strategy, organizations will be condemning themselves to higher-than-expected costs, and a cloud that never performs to its full potential.”

The survey also demonstrated the total cost of ownership is not fully understood within the community itself, less so within smaller organizations. SME’s planning to build private cloud environments estimated their budget to be in the region of $150,000 (average of all respondents), whereas the total bill for those who have already completed such projects averaged at $898,508.

The stat backs up thoughts of a number of organizations who believe there should be more of a business case behind the transition to the cloud than simply reducing CAPEX and OPEX. Last month, BCN spoke to Gwil Davies, Director & Cloud Lead in the EMEA IT Infrastructure Centre of Excellence at Deloitte, to understand the economics behind cloud computing. Davies believes a successful journey to the cloud is not just focused on reducing CAPEX and OPEX throughout the organization, but identifies where value can be achieved through a cloud-enabled business.

“I think it’s more important for organizations get a real understanding of how to use the cloud and perhaps not automatically assume that moving all of their current IT into cloud is going to be the cheaper solution.” said Davies.

The business case for the cloud is almost entirely dependent on the long-term ambitions of the business itself, though the survey does imply there is a need to further educate some corners of the IT industry on the benefits and perceived cost of private cloud. Cloud computing as a concept could be perceived to have penetrated the mainstream market, though the benefits may be less so.