Guest Post: Cloud Management

 

By Rick Blaisdell; CTO ConnectEDU

Cloud computing has definitely revolutionised the IT industry and transformed the way in which IT Services are delivered. But finding the best way for an organization to perform common management tasks using remote services on the Internet is not that easy.

Cloud management incorporates the task of providing, managing, and monitoring applications into cloud infrastructures that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location or of the system that delivers the services. Monitoring cloud computing applications and activity into requires cloud management tools to ensure that resources are meeting SLA’s, working optimally and also not effecting systems and users that are leveraging these services.

With appropriate cloud management solutions, private users are now able to manage multiple operating systems on the same dedicated server or move the virtual servers to a shared server all from in the same cloud management solution.  Some cloud companies offer tools to manage this entire process, some will provide this solution using a combination of tools and managed services.

The three core components of cloud environment, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and finally Software as a Service (SaaS), now offer great solutions to manage cloud computing, but the management tools need to be flexible and scalable just as the cloud computing strategy of an organization should be. With the new paradigm of computing, cloud management has to:

  • continue to make cloud easier to use;
  • provide security policies for the cloud environment;
  • allow safe cloud operations and ease migrations;
  • provide for financial controls and tracking;
  • audit and reporting for compliance.

Numerous tasks and tools are necessary for cloud management. A successful cloud management strategy includes performance monitoring in terms of response times, latency, uptime and so on, security and compliance auditing and management, initiating, supervising and management of disaster recovery.

So, why is it so important to implement a cloud management strategy into an organization? By having a cloud management strategy that fits into the cloud computing resources that a company uses, it offers a faster delivery of IT services to businesses, it reduces capital and operating costs, it charges backs automatically for resource usage and reporting and it allows IT departments to monitor their service level requirements.

 

 

This post originally appeared on http://www.rickscloud.com/cloud-management/

Teradici APEX 2800 Server Offload Card Now Supporting VMware View 5.1, vSphere

Image representing Teradici as depicted in Cru...

Teradici, the developer of the PC-over-IP (PCoIP) protocol that enables a true PC experience for desktop virtualization, today announced the compatibility of the APEX 2800 server offload card with the latest release of VMware View 5.1, continuing full compatibility with all current VMware View and VMware vSphere releases.

“As organizations of all sizes accelerate their journey to cloud, and adopt desktop virtualization, businesses are looking for solutions that can provide a rich, flexible and secure experience for end-users,” said Vittorio Viarengo, vice president, End-User Computing, VMware. “VMware cloud infrastructure is built to support active end-user demands and we welcome products that can provide exceptional benefits for VMware Viewenvironments. The Teradici APEX 2800 server offload card is an important tool for IT managers trying to reclaim CPU cycles while leveraging their existing virtual desktop infrastructure.”

The Teradici PCoIP server offload card dynamically offloads the most active 64 displays on the server, improving the consolidation ratio by up to 2x and reducing the cost per virtual desktop. The card also helps reduce the CPU buffer put aside in View deployments for “just-in-case” graphic peaks. The card can easily be enabled in VMware View Administrator.

“Teradici has a commitment to ensure full compatibility for all its products in the growing PCoIP and VMware End-User Computing ecosystem, so we’re happy to support VMware View™ 5.1 and VMware vSphere® with the APEX 2800,” said Trent Punnett, vice president of marketing, Teradici. “As the developer of the industry’s only server offload card designed to maximize the benefits of VMware View PCoIP deployments, we are dedicated to ongoing development of the APEX 2800 to ensure the best end-user experience for virtual desktop deployments.

The Teradici APEX 2800 PCoIP server offload card is available through distributors worldwide, as well as from HP and Dell websites as a peripheral at the list price of $1,995 in the US. For more information, please visit www.teradici.com/APEX.


G-cluster Global, Ubisoft Partner on Cloud Gaming in France

Ubisoft logo

Today, G-cluster and Ubisoft announced they are partnering to bring many of Ubisoft’s popular games to the G-cluster platform, including Assassin’s Creed 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands, Rabbids Go Home and Tom Clancy’s Hawx 2.

Starting this week, the Ubisoft games will be available on the G-cluster platform for customers of the French carrier SFR. In October, 2010, G-cluster launched a white label Cloud Gaming service in partnership with SFR, and the service is currently available to 3.1 million households on TV, and is also available on PC and Mac. Ubisoft’s games will be available in the form of rentals, purchases and subscriptions, and the company expects to bring more of its high-definition titles to the G-cluster platform in the near future.

“Ubisoft has always been at the forefront of new technological trends, and this partnership with G-cluster further extends our leadership in delivering games to customers on any platform they choose, including the cloud,” said Geoffroy Sardin, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Ubisoft. “G-cluster’s platform delivers proven quality of service, relationships with carriers, and profitability, and this collaboration will allow millions of new users to seamlessly access Ubisoft’s catalogue of AAA titles.”

G-cluster provides a white-label cloud-based video gaming service using its patented G-cluster technology – the first of its kind to be operational on large scale. The technology allows interactive content requiring low latency, such as high-end video games and full-length DVD films, to be distributed to a wide range of devices. G-cluster has partnerships with more than 30 game studios and more than 90 games are commercially live today on its platform.

“Having this partnership with Ubisoft validates G-cluster as a leading platform in cloud gaming and will allow the discovery of the unique Ubisoft IPs to an entirely new audience”. Said Sevan Kessissian, Vice President of Content and Strategy at G-cluster. “This will be the first time that AAA games are made available in the cloud in the competitive French market.”


Cloud Computing Is Meeting the “Enterprise” Needs of SMBs

I have been in technology marketing since my career began, and there is one word that I have come to loathe because of its misuse by marketing and business leaders in technology – enterprise, (or enterprise-class). I’m guilty of using it – it’s my job to ensure prospects know that we offer the best technologies available to handle complex workloads and applications.
But what is the definition of enterprise, really? A quick Bing search produces three definitions – commercial business, business activities directed at profit, and a daring new project. A quick search of the Gartner IT Glossary tells me the definition of enterprise-class is “a term referring to the ability of a given tool or product to handle complex processes or services.”

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Another Vote for the Apache Hadoop Stack

The two primary commercial providers that signed on for the proprietary files systems – IBM and EMC (via partnership with MapR) – have retrenched.
As we’ve noted previously, the measure of success of an open source stack is the degree to which the target remains intact. That either comes as part of a captive open source project, where a vendor unilaterally open sources their code (typically hosting the project) to promote adoption, or a community model where a neutral industry body hosts the project and gains support from a diverse cross section of vendors and advanced developers. In that case, the goal is getting the formal standard to also become the de facto standard.
The most successful open source projects are those that represent commodity software – otherwise, why would vendors choose not to compete with software that anybody can freely license or consume? That’s been the secret behind the success of Linux, where there has been general agreement on where the kernel ends, and as a result, a healthy market of products that run atop (and license) Linux. For community open source projects, vendors obviously have to agree on where the line between commodity and unique value-add begins.

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Generating New Revenue Opportunities with Cloud Computing

“We are embarking on a critical journey where identity information becomes the key asset of the digital age,” declared Andy Land, Vice President of Marketing at UnboundID, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. Land noted that “Facebook and Google make tremendous amounts of money just by accumulating and selling identity information.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – “While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.”

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Layer 7 Technologies to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley

SYS-CON Events announced today that Layer 7 Technologies, a leading provider of Application Gateways for SOA integration, cloud connectivity and API management, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 11th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Layer 7 Technologies helps enterprises secure and govern interactions between their organizations and the services they use in the cloud, across the Internet, and out to mobile devices. Through its award-winning line of SOA Gateways, Cloud Brokers and API Proxies, Layer 7 gives enterprises the ability to control identity, data security, SLA and visibility requirements for sharing application data and functionality across organizational boundaries. In 2011, Layer 7 was named the 71st fastest-growing private or public technology company in North America on the Deloitte Fast 500 list. With more than 150 customers spanning six continents, Layer 7 supports the most demanding commercial and government organizations. Layer 7 solutions are FIPS compliant, STIG vulnerability tested and have met Common Criteria EAL4+ security assurance.

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Big Data and the Cloud at Cloud Expo New York

Organizations in every industry, regardless of size or geography are embracing cloud computing as a way to reduce the complexity and costs associated with traditional IT approaches. This reality is driven by three related shifts:
Customer, employee and partner expectations are changing as self-service consumption of technology and services becomes the norm.
The economics of computing are changing as organizations access world-class computing power, now available anytime, anywhere.
Faster delivery of higher-value products and services is now mandatory to address formidable competition and escalating customer and shareholder expectations.

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The Rise of The Vertical Cloud

While some are happy to debate definitions of cloud computing, I prefer to focus on the characteristics that make successful companies, successful. Lately there seems to have been a shift from the anything for anyone cloud to the industry or vertically focused cloud. Adding to this is today’s piece of news from Zynga who announced what they describe as “the beta release of Zynga.com,  a new service enabling third party developers to create and publish games on the Zynga Platform.” Yes, that company that brought you farmville is now going to be a cloud service provider enabling a whole new crop of game companies, which I can only assume they will acquire when the time is right.

So why is this news important? It’s another great example of a trend in the cloud computing sector of “Vertically focused” cloud products and services. In the early days, there was this mentality of just build it and they would come. Problem was that for most, they never really came. Instead you had a handful of very large players and everyone else fighting over the table scraps. What those who survived learned, is that in order to be successful it isn’t about being the best funded or even the best performing, but instead it is about being the most focused on the needs of a particular customer vertical. Those who focus on a particular problem, be it for a particular enterprise sector, application or customer need will have a clear and distinct differentiation in a market dominated by me-too cloud services.

This trend certainly isn’t unique to the cloud space, look at Facebook as an example. In an early market they were able to quickly gain a dominate position as a fairly generic social network. As the social market began maturing you started to see the most successful companies becoming more and more laser focused. A great example  is Instagram who according to Mashable now has more than 50 million users and is gaining about 5 million users per week, not to mention it was recently acquired by Facebook for 1 billion dollars. They succeed because of their ability to focus on a vertical. This trend seems to be gaining momentum recently with apps like SocialCam seeing astounding growth by focusing on the vertical niche opportunities over looked by their larger, better funded competition..  TechCrunch reported that SocialCam jumped from 12 million users last week to 20 million users today. Yes, 8 million new users in 1 week. Focus Focus Focus. Where’s youtube?

So what does a consumer focused app and a gaming company have to do with Cloud computing? Everything, as our market matures we are beginning to see the same sort of vertical focus for  the most successful new bread of cloud companies entering the scene. No longer is it acceptable to want to be a clone of Amazon or who ever you consider to be the leader in a particular sector. Nor is it wise. Those who focus on the industry sectors neglected by the largest players will see the most success and will be selling themselves for an Instagram or two.
(1 instgram = $1 Billion USD)

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