Picture credit: iStockPhoto

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has released two new standards for cloud computing, in an attempt to “put some order in the chaos” for users.

The generally accepted definition of cloud computing was put together by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with the final version hitting the stands in September 2011. In it, cloud computing is defined as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources…that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

Yet the new standards from the ISO give a largely similar definition, choosing to call cloud computing an “evolving paradigm.” The document’s assessment of cloud’s key concepts – including broad network access, measured service, multi-tenancy, on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity and scalability, and resource pooling – ring very true with the NIST ruling.

As opposed to the NIST ruling which only proffers platform as a service, software as a service and infrastructure as a service, the ISO ruling has seven distinct cloud service categories, including network as a service (NaaS) and data storage as a service (DSaaS). Similarly, ISO expands on NIST’s 2011 definition on cloud deployment models, adding community cloud to public, private and hybrid.

There are two standards which have been released by ISO; the ISO/IEC 17788, a 16 page overview, and the ISO/IEC 17789, a 58 page behemoth.

In a blog post, ISO’s Vivienne Rojas outlines the problems with current cloud computing standardisation.

“The sky’s the limit for cloud computing, which seems set to change the entire computer industry,” she wrote. “This revolutionary concept has reached unexpected heights in the last decade and is recognised by governments and private sector organisations as major game-changing technology.”

“The cloud, as it is known, poses many issues, chiefly related to compatibility,” she added. “With more and more providers offering cloud-based services, the technology has suffered from chaotic development, making it almost impossible for companies to ascertain the quality of services offered,” Rojas added.

ISO adds that its joint ISO/IEC technical committee, JTC 1/SC 38, is piloting projects in areas such as SLAs, interoperability, and dataflow across devices and cloud services.

You can see the standards in full here.

Picture credit: Marc Smith/Flickr

SAP has released its third quarter results, with cloud subscriptions and total revenue going up over 2013 figures, but software revenues taking a downturn.

Cloud subscriptions and support hit €738 million (£584.1m), a jump of 51% from Q313’s €488m (£386.2m), at an increase of 51%. Software revenues were at €2.53bn, a downturn of 3% from €2.61bn in 2013.

Total revenue was up 3% at €12.1bn, but operating expenses also increased to €9.53bn, up 5%. Profit after tax was down, at €1.97bn compared to €2.01bn. SAP gained 2774 employees between Q313 and Q314.

 “We are accelerating our shift to the cloud with more than 40% revenue growth in the cloud,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott in a statement. “SAP is THE cloud company powered by SAP HANA helping customers run simple with over 44 million cloud users and the world’s largest business network.

“Our portfolio depth in the cloud, global scale and industry domain expertise are the bedrocks that separate us in the marketplace,” he added. “With SAP HANA and the Business Network, SAP will continue to shape the future of the enterprise software industry.”

Analysis

Even as software numbers continue to fall, it represents good news in terms of SAP’s master plan. The company, like Oracle and IBM, is engaged in a long term battle to shift its key revenue streams to the cloud and provide a seamless transition.

Oracle announced its Q1 financial results this time last month. New software license revenues were down 2%, yet overall net income practically stood still, noting a very slight decrease in constant currency. The new CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, noted immediately that the first quarter was traditionally a leaner financial time, as well as arguing that cloud software will bolster the figures in due course.

SAP seems a little further down this path than Oracle, and the firm’s recent partnership with IBM, where SAP HANA will be delivered through IBM’s cloud, solidifies this.

SAP and IBM’s partnership goes back more than 40 years, so the deal makes sense from that standpoint. Doug Clark, UK&I cloud leader at IBM, told CloudTech at the time: “We are trusted by a lot of clients who live or die by that SAP system being up and running. This is SAP’s biggest news sitting on one of IBM’s biggest investments.”

The company’s first quarter figures, released back in April, started the trend which the Q3 numbers continue. Back in June Kevin Kimber, SAP UK&I managing director, told CloudTech the project was “hugely ambitious” and added the agile startup culture was something the nearly 70,000 strong German firm was aspiring to.

“The investments we’re making from an acquisition perspective, the organic developments we’re making, they’re all cloud first,” he said.

Last month SAP acquired software firm Concur Technologies for an estimated $7.4bn, the biggest buyout in its history, to bolster its cloud play. It’s one of many good signs – and both sets of numbers, cloud and software, are going in the right direction.

In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Mark Hinkle, Senior Director, Open Source Solutions at Citrix Systems Inc., will provide overview of the open source software that can be used to deploy and manage a cloud computing environment. He will include information on storage, networking(e.g., OpenDaylight) and compute virtualization (Xen, KVM, LXC) and the orchestration(Apache CloudStack, OpenStack) of the three to build their own cloud services.

read more

POMPTON LAKES, N.J., Oct. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Kubisys announced today its namesake CID Platform, which automatically captures production environments and orchestrates the provisioning and deployment of replicas for development, testing and QA. The Kubisys CID Platform makes it easy for developers of mission critical multi-tier applications, such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, to follow DevOps practices for continuous delivery. The Kubisys platform delivers greater accuracy and agility than existing processes that rely on virtualization technologies and release management solutions.

read more

Thoroughly knowing the difference between the three prominent types of datacenter storage will help you immensely in job interviews, product pitches and tech conferences. Server storage is typically stored in one of three different methods. Since each acronym is similar, it is imperative for you to know the stark differences when discussing DAS, SAN and NAS.

read more

What are the benefits of using an enterprise-grade orchestration platform?
In their session at 15th Cloud Expo, Jeff Tegethoff, CEO of Appcore, and Kedar Poduri, Senior Director of Product Management at Citrix Systems, will take a closer look at the architectural design factors needed to support diverse workloads and how to run these workloads efficiently as a service provider. They will also discuss how to deploy private cloud environments in 15 minutes or less.

read more

There’s Big Data, then there’s really Big Data from the Internet of Things. IoT is evolving to include many data possibilities like new types of event, log and network data. The volumes are enormous, generating tens of billions of logs per day, which raise data challenges. Early IoT deployments are relying heavily on both the cloud and managed service providers to navigate these challenges.
In her session at 6th Big Data Expo®, Hannah Smalltree, Director at Treasure Data, to discuss how IoT, Big Data and deployments are processing massive data volumes from wearables, utilities and other machines.

read more

For the third year in a row, we worked together with Pacific Crest Securities, an investment banking firm with a specific focus on SaaS, to survey 306 SaaS companies. This represents nearly double the # of respondents from last year, giving us deeper benchmarking data and insights to share on the growth and operations of […]

read more

Swiss innovators dizmo Inc. launches its ground-breaking software, which turns any digital surface into an immersive platform. The dizmo platform seamlessly connects digital and physical objects in the home and at the workplace.

Dizmo breaks down traditional boundaries between device, operating systems, apps and software, transforming the way users work, play and live. It supports orchestration and collaboration in an unparalleled way enabling any data to instantaneously be accessed on any surface, anywhere and made interactive.

Dizmo brings fantasies as seen in Sci-fi movies such as Iron Man and Minority Report, as well as in Corning’s video ‘A day made of glass’ to reality, revolutionising traditional methods of interacting with digital content and objects.

read more

Depending on whom you listen to, the private cloud is either dead or on the cusp of a major market breakthrough. Some tech pundits argue this technology has already been replaced by more efficient public cloud offerings and businesses just need time to catch up, while others claim there’s a bright future for private solutions.
Research supports the latter – according to IDC, spending on hosted private cloud services should hit $24 billion by 2016. Why? Because there’s real value in this model. Here’s a look at five compelling advantages of the private cloud.
It’s Not On-Premises (Necessarily)
As noted by a recent Business 2 Community article, there’s a critical misconception about the private cloud still making the rounds even after years of corporate adoption: that it must be on-premises. At first glance, the idea makes sense – public clouds are always hosted off-site because they cater to multiple tenants, while private alternatives come with security of locally deployed servers.

read more