Ian Redpath, Principal Analyst, Network Infrastructure

ian.redpath@ovum.com

Internet content providers, stock exchanges, banks, communications service providers (CSPs), and others are investing billions of dollars to build data centre space. The proliferation of data centres in new geographic locations is fundamentally changing network demands and driving larger volumes of traffic. Data centres (DCs) with thousands of servers will require terabits of optical transport. CSPs have an opportunity to serve these new high-capacity transport network demands.

Data centre headlines and new connectivity required

Data centre investment announcements have been impressive over the past few years. Recent expansion activities include the following:

• Google invested €450m for a DC in Hamina, Finland, 150km from Helsinki
• ATT built a $200m DC in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, 50km from Charlotte
• IBM invested $1.2bn in 15 DCs, including one in Barrie, Ontario, 100km from Toronto
• NYSE built a 400,000-square-foot DC in Mahwah …

It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks for Couchbase. Not only has the NoSQL database provider rounded up $60 million (£35.2m) in series E funding, but has also released benchmark figures which significantly outperform the competition, including MongoDB and DataStax.

The latest round of funding featured two new investors, WestSummit and Accel Growth Fund, along with existing venture capital investors, to bring overall figures to $115m (£67.6m).

It’s not often that companies get to the series E funding stage. As Marc Andreessen cited earlier this month, it’s generally accepted among venture capitalists that series A funding is to build the product and get first beta customers, while series B funding is to build the business around the product and get to revenue.

Noted VC Fred Wilson wrote a blog post expanding on this, saying series C funding was to get to profitability so cash …

“We just completed the roll out of our first public and private cloud offerings, which are a combination of public, hybrid, and private cloud,” stated Erik Levitt, CEO of Open Data Centers, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 14th International Cloud Expo®, held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4–6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

read more

I recently led a panel discussion for SYS-CON.TV on the topic of “Cloud Computing 2.0,” a term I decided to employ just a few minutes before we started recording.

A few years ago, any right-minded person would wince at the use of “2.0” to describe anything, as it had long become a meaningless cliché.

So I don’t know if I was being ironic, too clever by half, or just tedious when I told the panelists that we’d go with the topic of Cloud Computing 2.0.

The Debate Evolves
My point was, and is, that the discussion about cloud computing has notably changed this year.

Three years ago, the debate was how to define cloud, whether virtualization alone was enough to fit the definision, whether an on-site datacenter could even fit the definition of cloud, and to what degree the big-vendor latecomers were engaged in cloud washing.

A couple of years ago, the chief debate was over public vs. private cloud. Last year and into the start of 2014, I heard and read endless discussion of PaaS vs. IaaS, whether the former had simply become part of the latter, and so forth.

All of those debates seem a little quaint to me now. Not that these specific issues can, and must, come up within any enterprise of any size when considering, defining, designing, and deploying its cloud strategies. The world is a hybrid, and XaaS is what you make of it. To me, the big issue today is the integration of cloud, Big Data, and the IoT.

If you’re not talking about Big Data and the Internet of Things today, you’re not talking about cloud computing. Also, you’ve fallen down and you may not be able to get up.

Ulcer Time
Just creating a catalog of all the data within an organization (of any size), trying to predict dataflows for the next few years, and (gasp) trying to conduct any sort of rational capacity planning is an ulcer-inducing task that I wish on no one but realize is being experienced by everyone in this industry.

Ergo, Cloud Computing 2.0. Somebody asked the question at the recent Cloud Expo in New York when we would start hearing the term “legacy cloud.” The comment was meant in jest.

But it’s no joke. Yesterday’s cloud discussions are not today’s cloud discussions. With all of the major technology vendors pushing hard on their IoT strategies, with numerous start-ups focusing on Big Data and its accompanying analytics, and with longstanding debates about Open Source vs. proprietary continuing, I fear an analysis paralysis by many organizations in this new cloud era.

You Will Submit!
I’m in the midst of working with a very sophisticated team of people to put together the upcoming Cloud Expo in Santa Clara November 4-6—with co-located events focused on Big Data, the IoT, SDDX, DevOps, and WebRTC. We are addressing the very thorny and serious issues that face enterprise IT today.

Submissions to the conference remain open, as does my Twitter account for any comment and perspective. I welcome not only technical opinions and harangues, but also specific use cases that highlight how things have been done, either well or badly, in this age of Cloud Computing 2.0.

read more

I recently led a panel discussion for SYS-CON.TV on the topic of “Cloud Computing 2.0,” a term I decided to employ just a few minutes before we started recording.

A few years ago, any right-minded person would wince at the use of “2.0” to describe anything, as it had long become a meaningless cliché.

So I don’t know if I was being ironic, too clever by half, or just tedious when I told the panelists that we’d go with the topic of Cloud Computing 2.0.

The Debate Evolves
My point was, and is, that the discussion about cloud computing has notably changed this year.

Three years ago, the debate was how to define cloud, whether virtualization alone was enough to fit the definision, whether an on-site datacenter could even fit the definition of cloud, and to what degree the big-vendor latecomers were engaged in cloud washing.

A couple of years ago, the chief debate was over public vs. private cloud. Last year and into the start of 2014, I heard and read endless discussion of PaaS vs. IaaS, whether the former had simply become part of the latter, and so forth.

All of those debates seem a little quaint to me now. Not that these specific issues can, and must, come up within any enterprise of any size when considering, defining, designing, and deploying its cloud strategies. The world is a hybrid, and XaaS is what you make of it. To me, the big issue today is the integration of cloud, Big Data, and the IoT.

If you’re not talking about Big Data and the Internet of Things today, you’re not talking about cloud computing. Also, you’ve fallen down and you may not be able to get up.

Ulcer Time
Just creating a catalog of all the data within an organization (of any size), trying to predict dataflows for the next few years, and (gasp) trying to conduct any sort of rational capacity planning is an ulcer-inducing task that I wish on no one but realize is being experienced by everyone in this industry.

Ergo, Cloud Computing 2.0. Somebody asked the question at the recent Cloud Expo in New York when we would start hearing the term “legacy cloud.” The comment was meant in jest.

But it’s no joke. Yesterday’s cloud discussions are not today’s cloud discussions. With all of the major technology vendors pushing hard on their IoT strategies, with numerous start-ups focusing on Big Data and its accompanying analytics, and with longstanding debates about Open Source vs. proprietary continuing, I fear an analysis paralysis by many organizations in this new cloud era.

You Will Submit!
I’m in the midst of working with a very sophisticated team of people to put together the upcoming Cloud Expo in Santa Clara November 4-6—with co-located events focused on Big Data, the IoT, SDDX, DevOps, and WebRTC. We are addressing the very thorny and serious issues that face enterprise IT today.

Submissions to the conference remain open, as does my Twitter account for any comment and perspective. I welcome not only technical opinions and harangues, but also specific use cases that highlight how things have been done, either well or badly, in this age of Cloud Computing 2.0.

read more

When focusing on one element of a SaaS provider to evaluate, it should not be the technology it is providing today but its commitment to finding new ways to succeed in the future. This kind of agility that goes beyond technology is why SaaS is so loaded with potential for entrepreneurs.
With the barriers to entering the communications market nearly eliminated, this next wave of entrepreneurs have an opportunity to focus on enabling the success of their customers through sourcing, developing and delivering the technologies they need. It is a mindset shift that is critical to leveraging the cloud delivery model to its fullest potential. This is about not just delivering features or functionalities, but helping customers to shape agile, efficient and successful businesses.

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Developers are continually upping the ante by creating better, smarter and more valuable apps. However, these apps also have increasingly sophisticated data requirements, and the ability to take them to the next level may be stymied by an archaic approach to databases in which developers are required to either make serious compromises about how they store and query their data, or learn to manage their own data infrastructure.

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“Veeam Cloud Connect is about being able to connect service providers with Veeam end users and Veeam customers and giving Veeam customers a quick, easy and secure way to get their backup files up to the cloud,” explained Doug Hazelman, VP, Product Strategy, and Chief Evangelist at Veeam, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 14th International Cloud Expo®, held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4–6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

read more

SYS-CON Events announced today that NuoDB, Inc., the leader in webscale distributed database technology, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
NuoDB was launched in 2010 by industry-renowned database architect Jim Starkey and accomplished software CEO Barry Morris to deliver a webscale distributed database management system that is specifically designed for the cloud and the modern datacenter.

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“We are seeing a lot more of the enterprise class customers building a hybrid type solution as well as expanding into managed services,” explained Darryl S. Brown, VP Product Management & Marketing at Net Access, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 14th International Cloud Expo®, held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo® 2014 Silicon Valley, November 4–6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

read more