Last month’s release of Revolution R Enterprise 6.1 added the capability to fit decision and regression trees on large data sets (using a new parallel external memory algorithm included in the RevoScaleR package). It also introduced the possibility of applying this and the other big-data statistical methods of RevoScaleR to data files distributed in in Hadoop’s HDFS file system*, using the Hadoop nodes themselves as the compute engine (with Revolution R Enterprise installed). Revolution Analytics’ VP of Development Sue Ranney explained how this works in a recent webinar. I’ve embedded the slides below, and you can also watch the webinar…

David Smith

read more

While the adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise offers all sorts of benefits, too many
organizations are forgetting about risks. Yes, the benefits of cloud computing are very real. I’m certainly
not a cloud denier (and they, like Flat Earthers, do still exist), but one costly misstep as you move to the
cloud could quickly eliminate all of those benefits you were hoping for.

read more

I listened to remarks on CSPAN from the very controversial Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s current Foreign Minister, during his recent appearance at a forum in Washington, DC.

He said he believed that if people focused on economic development in the Palestinian Territories enough to give it a per capita income (PCI) of US$10,000 then the peace process would, in essence, take care of itself.

The territories have a current PCI of $1,820, according to the United Nations. This ranks in the bottom third of the world, next to Sudan and the new country of South Sudan. Compare it to Israel at $29,300.

Or compare it to Lebanon ($9,200), Jordan ($4,400), Syria ($2,900), and Egypt ($2,650).

Research we’ve been conducting for the past two years shows that Jordan and Egypt have strong potential for development on the basis of ICT infrastructures that are relatively advanced, given their income levels. Syria also does well by regional standards. We haven’t covered Lebanon or the Palestinian Territories yet.

But would this magical – and given regional incomes, mythical – PCI number for the Palestinian Territories really bring peace? Countries throughout the world that have achieved this income level include Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela.

If we look not only at violence, but at the economic volatility that has at times almost paralyzed the developed world, we see Ireland, Portugal, and Greece far, far above that income level – as is the United States, of course.

ICT in general improves communications and access to the Worldwide Web, social media, and cloud computing. Strong ICT infrastructures, characterized by widespread, fast connections, can be a disruptive force, as we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, as well as with Chinese and American government efforts to limit or chill the Web’s frightening power.

We believe that the developing countries we’ve identified as having the most potential will, in fact, develop economically more quickly than the laggards in our research. We believe this will occur as political turmoil and ugly violence continue.

But at what point does economic development guarantee peace? Does it ever? Is the phrase “peace and prosperity” a dated concept.

It would be nice to think that things calm down and violence decreases at a certain income level, but that looks like a very tough idea to prove. That said, anyone who wishes an honest conversation on the topic would be welcome, in our view.

read more

Adam Holtby, ITSM Research Analyst, Ovum

Through discussions with vendors, clients, and research into technology trends and disruptors, Ovum has identified what it believes will be the key IT service management (ITSM) advances of 2013. More detailed information and analysis can be found in our recently published report, 2013 Trends to Watch: IT Service Management.

Technology is evolving to assist with changing business demands

Technology continues to advance, and we are finally starting to see some good ITSM tool innovations around technology disruptors such as social and mobile. For example, BMC recently announced MyIT, an enterprise IT helpdesk solution that was developed with the objective of empowering users through giving them more visibility and control over their IT services from any device.

As a market leader, it is encouraging to see BMC make such a bold move in embracing and investing in mobility and social technology. BMC was slower than …

Convirture has released a new version of its ConVirt Enterprise and ConVirt Enterprise Cloud software that can now be used to manage VMware vSphere and ESXi in addition to virtual and cloud technologies including Xen, KVM, Eucalyptus, OpenStack and Amazon EC2.
ConVirt is an open source-based tool that is used by IT organizations worldwide to manage virtual and cloud infrastructures. This new version adds VMware to the list of supported technologies. It provides sophisticated management capabilities to operators of heterogeneous data centers that employ multiple technologies and platforms, including major public and private clouds.

read more

Outsourcing the IT operations, support and associated infrastructure maintenance has been the norm for large enterprises over the last decade. Typically the multi-year IT outsourcing contracts cover the following aspects:
Application Development Services: These will be the set of resources and other costs, like environment, required to perform the custom development of various applications and sometimes customization and configuration of COTS products.
Application Testing Services: Even though testing is covered as part of development, to make this step more independent most enterprises outsource testing activities as a separate entity.

read more

A few weeks ago, Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast, leaving devastation in its wake. Thousands of people were without power, food, and water. It quickly became clear that Sandy’s aftermath would bring life on the East Coast to a standstill for days as the region began to rebuild.
Early estimates of the damage put the business loss associated with the storm as high as $30 billion. But Grudi Associates, The John M. Glover Agency, and many others weren’t a part of that group. Evolve IP’s redundant cloud platform allowed them to run their businesses remotely as the storm raged on.
For example, InformationWeek Cloud picked up the story of how we helped Apria Health Care stay functional during the storm so that they could continue to provide their vital health services to customers in the days after the storm. Thanks to Evolve IP, Apria was able to deliver essential products to each customer, the most important being the personal oxygen tank.

read more

Those of you who followed my blog for a while know that the idea of applying manufacturing best practices to cloud computing is a favorite topic of mine*. This week the topic popped up in a fireside chat (the popular term for keynotes delivered from a set of armchairs, often with no fire in sight) between Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogel and CEO Jeff Bezos at re:Invent, the first Amazon Web Services customer conference.
I won’t cover the conference here – many blogs and media sites already did – but in the chat Bezos made a number of interesting points on how principles of lean manufacturing are guiding Amazon’s overall endeavors and how cloud computing both supports and benefits from this approach. He discussed how – for developers- this approach turns the cost of infrastructure operations from an abstract overhead-like concept into a very visible direct cost they can directly influence. And how the cost of quality is always lower than the cost of non-quality, as fixing problems later – after it has shipped to the customer – is many times more expensive than doing things first time right. But also how cloud computing allows to continuously improve products and processes (similar to how factory workers at Toyota were empowered to stop the production line and jointly improve the process). He also stressed the importance of focusing on customers and their requirements (by continuously measuring and providing feedback loops) instead of focusing on competitors or winning.

read more

Recent IDC research shows that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $44.2 billion by 2013. And a recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years.
These two unstoppable enterprise IT trends, Cloud Computing and Big Data, will converge in New York City at 12th Cloud Expo – being held June 10-13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.
As at every Cloud Expo, we are offering in New York City a vast selection of technical and strategic breakout sessions, General Sessions, Industry Keynotes, our signature discussion «Power Panels» and a bustling Expo floor complete with two busy Demo Theaters so that as a delegate you can kick the tires of solutions and offerings, and discuss one-on-one with all the leading Cloud and Big Data players what they are offering and how to make use of it in your particular situation.

read more