APIs are the coding interfaces that enable developers to create third-party apps, plug-ins, and add-ons that extend the functionality and potential of existing Software-as-a-Service products. Pedro’s comments reframe the entire API industry and, if pursued, would fundamentally alter the existing dynamics between developers and third-party app businesses.
«We’re now in a phase of market maturity and people are starting to realize that they need to be careful about what the API is exposing and what the end user will see around the SaaS product,» said Pedro after presenting at the API Strategy and Practice Conference, hosted by 3Scale and API Evangelist, and held in New York in late February, 2013.
Conversation with One of CloudNOW’s Top 10 Women: Lori MacVittie
F5 Sr. Technical Marketing Manager Lori MacVittie received CloudNOW’s prestigious Top 10 Women in Cloud award for her exceptional contributions to the cloud community. CloudNOW, an executive consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, presented the award during UBM Tech’s Cloud Connect—the premier technology event for cloud computing.
I’ve had the good fortune to have known and worked with Lori for almost 7 years and sat down with her to talk about cloud, convergence and application delivery.
Peter: First, Congratulations Lori on yet another award. If I remember correctly, this is the 2nd year in a row that your contributions, accomplishments, and thought leadership has been recognized by CloudNOW. How’d you get so smart?
Reflections on the Future of Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Cloud solutions are evolving rapidly with users eager to easily leverage the underlying infrastructure. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is one option that help developers meet their needs.
Typical cloud computing conferences feature a large contingent of pay-to-pay sponsors who are looking primarily for ROI from marketing budgets at these shows. It is always refreshing to attend a sponsored event where speakers focus instead on energetic presentations and panel discussions aimed at gaining clarity on evolving topics. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is one aspect of cloud computing that is still evolving but maturing quickly. Deploycon 2013 was a good sponsored workshop (held in conjunction with the Cloud Connect conference) to set the tone on the future of PaaS.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise expands its cloud vision
Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst, Enterprise
Through 2013 Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALU-E) will roll out a set of solutions on which its partners can offer a range of hosted unified communications (UC) services. The company’s strategy is different to those of its competitors in that it will deliver separate solutions for enterprises and SMBs, as well as a set of application services.
These will be offered to operators, and also sold to value-added resellers and distributors that want to compete not only against telcos’ managed services but hosted services as well.
ALU-E’s hosted UC platform for enterprise-grade services became available earlier this year, with a handful of partners offering services based on it. The SMB platform and application service are in a less mature state; both are still in development, and no service provider partners are associated with them as yet. ALU-E is in a similar position to Avaya, which …
Impetus Technologies to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Impetus Technologies, a Big Data thought leader and innovation-based software services company, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Impetus operates on a global delivery model and has executed large-scale Big Data projects with vertical domain expertise in areas such as financial services, media, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and telecom. Impetus’ experience extends across the Big Data ecosystem including Hadoop, NoSQL, NewSQL, MPP databases, machine learning, and visualization.
Cloud Expo NY: Cloud & Location-Aware Big Data Is Changing Our World
Social media streaming and satellite imagery stored as Big Data in the cloud is changing the way we understand our world. By being able to tap into these new Big Data collections of real-time social media and up-to-date world-wide imagery we can now see patterns and activity not possible before. By utilizing common platforms for global location information exchange and self-service computing applications that are deployed through the cloud, we are able to integrate and apply our knowledge of geospatial science to location-aware geographic analysis and reporting on a scale not possible until now. Direct spatial query of Big Data repositories and on-the-fly location analysis are capable of showing relevant, real-time activity that can easily be visualized on a map display. Configurable applications deliver a solution framework that is easy to maintain for integration, collaboration, and efficiency.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Ty Fabling, a Sr. Enterprise GIS Systems Architect at Esri, will explore how cloud-based applications integrate and synthesize information from many sources, facilitating communication and collaboration, and are breaking down barriers between institutions, disciplines, and cultures. Online GIS platforms deployed in the Cloud enable real-time location analytics and spatial visualization for everyone.
Space Monkey Beta Launches
Space Monkey’s beta started Wednesday.
It’s taking pre-orders for its P2P device on Kickstarter, where it’s looking to raise money for the project.
A pledge of $99 will fetch the widget, 1TB of space and a year’s subscription. A pledge of $199 buys 2TB for a year.
The number of devices is limited and delivery appears set for July.
A pledge of $1,000 – and it appears to have one – buys a so-called special edition device and 2TB for five years. The company says the user would work with a designer «to come up with something not even the ‘Jones’s’ can get their hands on.»
Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing
My favorite and least favorite question I get is the same – “Can you help me build a business case and ROI for cloud computing?”
Well, yes… and no. The issue is that cloud computing has such a massive impact on how IT is delivered that many of the metrics and KPIs that are typically used at many enterprises don’t capture it. I mean, how do you capture Agility – really?
In the past I have broken this down into 3 buckets. Yes, some people have more but these are the big three…
Microsoft fronts up for cloud battle with Infrastructure Services release
Microsoft has stepped up its cloud push by releasing Windows Azure Infrastructure Services this week, and pricing it in direct competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Infrastructure Services is designed to help Windows Azure customers migrate their applications into the cloud, and, as the title suggests, it is primarily an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution – although it encompasses both platform as a service (PaaS) and hybrid scenarios.
“Our announcement today is a significant step in our cloud computing strategy, which has been influenced directly by our discussions with customers and partners around the world,” Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Azure, wrote in an Azure blog.
Microsoft’s cloud agenda has been evident for some time, with CloudTech previously reporting on the tech giant’s set at Convergence 2013, whereby hotly anticipated releases such as Exchange Server, Lync and Dynamics CRM continue to emphasise the roadmap for a cloud …
Azure Goes Dollar-to-Dollar with AWS
Windows Azure got into the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) business Tuesday when a hungry Microsoft took on Amazon Web Services, vowing to match its pricing on “commodity services” such as compute, storage and bandwidth despite Amazon’s habitual price cutting.
To start, Microsoft will cut prices on its IaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) virtual machines by 21%-33%.
Microsoft also said that, “Regardless of how you choose to buy Windows Azure, you’ll get the benefit of this price reduction.”
For a six- or 12-month spending commitment Microsoft will discount the standard pay-as-you-go rates. The discount applies to any Azure resource the user buys so he can tinker with deployment sizes.