Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new approach to networking, both to the data centre, and as a connection across data centers. SDN defines the networks in software, meaning designers can operate, control, and configure networks without physical access to the hardware. Effectively, SDN frees the network and applications from underlying hardware. New technologies are making it possible for enterprises to use virtualized networks over any type of hardware in any physical location – including unifying physical data centers and federating cloud-based data centers.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Patrick Kerpan, the CEO and co-founder of CohesiveFT, will highlight customer use cases to demonstrate a broader SDN definition.
Icahn Hangs Tough on Dell
Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, has refused to drop his threat of
setting off a proxy fight for control of Dell’s board unless the company pays
out a whopping big dividend as he originally proposed.
Dell’s board wants him to make a formal bid for the company.
Before he even thinks about that, he wants Dell to pledge to reimburse his
out-of-pocket expenses for doing due diligence on the company.
The board’s special committee has already agreed to repay Silver Lake and
Blackstone.
It said Friday it would consider Icahn’s request if he dropped his proxy fight
intentions and his threat of “years of litigation.”
Icahn told the Wall Street
Avaya’s cloud UC strategy continues to evolve
Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms
At Enterprise Connect in March 2013 Avaya introduced a set of platforms on which its partners – which include operators, systems integrators, and resellers – can build to offer fully hosted communications services. The move is a marked departure for the company, whose revenues are derived mainly from selling communications software and solutions that enterprises deploy on-premise.
Avaya also has a services business that sells managed and hosted communications services to a highly restricted set of business customers. Last month’s announcement, however, represented something new for the company.
In addition to selling its communications solutions and services to businesses, Avaya will now sell them to service providers, which will use them as the basis for the cloud-based unified communications (UC), video conferencing, and contact center services that they sell to enterprises.
This is a good move on the part of Avaya, which has lagged behind …
Analysing the importance of cloud’s role in the enterprise
Aryaka, a company which offers wide area network optimisation in the cloud, has collated together several pieces of research emphasising the importance of cloud in a modern enterprise.
Pooling together studies from the likes of CIO Insight, Forrester and IDC, Aryaka has examined cloud strategies at different points of the enterprise, predominantly assessing the UK market.
Among the statistics cited in the infographic include an interesting summation of the top cloudy growth areas. According to the 1300 people surveyed, IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is predicted as the key growth area in cloud computing by 41% of respondents, followed by management and security (27%) and PaaS (platform as a service (26.6%).
This arguably goes against current wisdom that PaaS is the quickest growing (albeit still smallest) cloud market, SaaS (software as a service) – which trailed behind on 17.4% – will still increase healthily whilst IaaS will flatten out.
Last …
In Big Data We Hope and Distrust
Big data helped re-elect a President, find Osama bin Laden, and contributed to the melt-down of our financial system. We are in the midst of a data revolution where social media introduces new terms like Arab Spring, Facebook Depression and Twitter anxiety that reflect a new reality: big data is changing the social and relationship fabric of our culture.
Grizzly Roars Out of the OpenStack Initiative
The OpenStack movement is about to release Grizzly, the seventh and latest release of the open source infrastructure cloud platform for building public, private and hybrid clouds.
Among other things it was on time. The widgetry is on an every six-month release schedule.
The changes made were across virtualization, storage, networking, security and systems engineering and are supposed to solve not only complex cloud problems, but drive the entire technology industry forward.
The initiative’s contributors are reportedly up 45% in the last six months and Grizzly is supposed to deliver the broadest support for Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and enterprise technologies, SDN being the latest techno-craze.
Data as Paint, and the Rise of the Data Artist
Art has always been a means of communication, reflection, persuasion, storytelling, and interpretation. Artists use their imagination to create visual representations of the world, both literal and abstract. The earliest art, prehistoric cave paintings, used simple representations, such as a cross to represent a man, and a triangle for a woman.
Business Architecture and Enterprise Transformation
The Open Group’s first conference in Australia will focus on enterprise transformation. Speakers and a variety of sessions will place the transformation in the context of such vertical industries as finance, defense, exploration, mining, and minerals.
As a prelude to the event, BriefingsDirect recently interviewed two of the main speakers at the conference — Hugh Evans, the Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Architects, a specialist enterprise architecture (EA) firm based in Melbourne, Australia, and Craig Martin, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Architect at Enterprise Architects.
As some background, Hugh is both the founder and CEO at Enterprise Architects. His professional experience blends design and business, having started out in traditional architecture, computer games design, and digital media, before moving into enterprise IT and business transformation.
In 1999, Hugh founded the IT Strategy Architecture Forum, which included chief architects from most of the top 20 companies in Australia. He has also helped found the Australian Architecture Body of Knowledge and the London Architecture Leadership Forum in the UK.
Since starting Enterprise Architects in 2002, Hugh has grown the team to more than 100 people, with offices in Australia, the UK, and the U.S.
With a career spanning more than 20 years, Craig has held executive positions in the communications, high tech, media, entertainment, and government markets and has operated as an Enterprise Architect and Chief Consulting Architect for a while.
Scaling Big Data in the Cloud
Need to scale your data tier? The foundation of every application is the database layer, and today application architects have more choices than ever. With these choices come new questions: Which database technology is best for your application? How can your application take advantage of Big Data technology? Can you run your relational database at Big Data scale? What does it take to implement a comprehensive data infrastructure, including your core database, incorporating SQL, No SQL and Big Data platforms?
What CIOs Need to Know About Enterprise Virtualization
As a CIO, it’s your responsibility to chart the technological course for your organization and to do so in a way that meets business needs while fitting inside a budget. Virtualization is one of the most significant advancements to hit the enterprise, and it can be a tremendous boon for the CIO who understands the technology and is willing to implement it across the enterprise.
There are four key areas related to virtualization that CIOs need to understand and keep on top of:
- Managing your enterprise virtualization approach. Implementing virtualization isn’t something that should be rushed. While it’s tempting to try to keep up with other organizations and earn bragging rights for being “in the cloud” or “75% virtualized,” the fact of the matter is that the approach must be cautious. Your virtualization strategy will touch every aspect of the enterprise, including desktop machines, applications, servers and other infrastructure.
- Monitoring the enterprise virtualization environment. The monitoring tools used by IT in the past aren’t quite sufficient in a virtualized environment. There are newer tools that have been used to establish what your users’ typical use patterns are throughout the day, week, month and year. These monitoring tools are essential to provisioning – making sure that every application gets the resources it needs at the right time.
- Desktop virtualization isn’t always a viable option. There was a time that enterprises were so enthralled with how effective server virtualization had been that they concluded, incorrectly, that desktop virtualization must necessarily provide the same benefits. That’s not always the case. In fact, desktop virtualization can create its own bag of problems for your business. We’re not saying to take desktop virtualization off the table, but think long and hard about how to do it. And, don’t forget the BYOD trend, which throws a whole other concern into the desktop virtualization mix.
- Supporting disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Virtualization technologies, when properly deployed, offer benefits for your disaster recovery planning. Because disaster recover rarely gets its own line item in the budget, you need to find creative ways to make your systems able to survive major catastrophes and keep business running. Virtualization offers you an opportunity to do just that.
Today’s CIO is forced to deal with virtualization, like it or not. If you want your organization to come out on top, include these principles in your virtualization decision-making processes.
