“Big data represents a sea change of capabilities in IT” notes Matt McLarty, Vice President, Client Solutions at Layer 7, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. McLarty continued: “In conjunction with mobile and cloud, I think Big Data will provide a technological makeover to the typical enterprise infrastructure, drawing a hard API border in front of core business services while blurring the line between logic and data services.”
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.»
Matt McLarty: Agree. We have a number of customers who are able to use Layer 7 Gateways to protect their cloud deployments, and leverage the elastic scaling model of the cloud to handle seasonal or sporadic bursts of traffic dynamically. Historically, these companies would have to try and forecast this and risk over-buying infrastructure. So there is a big cost savings, but dynamic scaling is a new capability that only comes with the cloud model.
By generating massive amounts of new data that in turn require more and more bandwidth, Big Data is stretching an already-congested enterprise WAN to the breaking point. Many companies have made sizable investments in Big Data technologies, and are now looking to emerging cloud technologies to reduce costs and improve performance.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Raj Kanaya, CEO & Co-Founder of Infineta Systems, will discuss how, as private cloud build-out intersects with Big Data adoption, the WAN links gluing it all together must deliver enough performance and reliability to make the transformation worthwhile and ensure that the private cloud sustains its cost and performance advantages.
There is no longer any question that the cloud computing model will be the prevailing style of delivery for computing over the coming decades; Forrester Research predicts that the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. Greenfield application development projects can be designed from the outset to benefit from cloud computing features such as elastic scalability, automated provisioning, infrastructure level APIs, object storage services and middleware services such as message queues and key/value stores. However, for existing legacy applications the journey to cloud is not quite so straightforward.
Understanding the impact of factors such as security/compliance, application architecture, integration, the pattern of demand and operational maturity is crucial when performing a cloud feasibility assessment. Additionally, many organizations perceive cost-reduction as one of the primary benefits of adopting a cloud hosting model. In practice however, this is not always an accurate assumption. There are nuances to the financial analysis: public cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than traditional dedicated hosting. Furthermore, there are considerations around the impact on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), transformation/migration costs and the position of an organization with the IT life cycle.
Cloud and Managed Hosting provider, Pulsant, has announced it is helping technology integrators AppLayer transform its cloud services, by providing highly flexible managed hosting to support a new range of pre-packed Cloud solutions.
If the weekend IT press is to be believed, EMC are on the verge of acquiring solid-state array vendor XtremIO in a deal worth around $450 million. This would be a remarkable outcome for a company that is still technically “in stealth mode” and has no obvious revenue or customers.
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now only seven weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now only seven weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?
Symform, the SETI-like cloud storage and backup start-up, has pulled down an $8 million B round led by WestRiver Capital, which now gets a board seat.
Existing investors OVP and Longworth Capital also kicked in. Symform is expecting to bring a strategic investor into this round at some point. It doesn’t know who yet but wants $3 million from whoever it is.
Three months ago Symform rounded out its $9 million A round when WestRiver first bellied up.
The B money will be used to finance the growth and global expansion of Symform’s Cloud Storage Network, now represented in 138 countries, up from 46 at the end of last year. The start-up says it’s seen 100% quarter-over-quarter growth in customer accounts, which are supposed to number in the thousands, and the number of devices on the Symform network and data files stored jumped 50% in the March quarter.
Using Amazon web services for elasticity and scale to build cloud applications.
Traditional IT environments that are built using physical servers can only scale and grow by buying new hardware and software and taking time to install and rack the hardware, configure the software and the application. If/when the excess capacity is not needed the servers stand idle consuming power, cooling and rackspace. This is inefficient and a waste of money.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows customers to scale using elastic demand. Just like a rubber elastic band stretches to accommodate more items , AWS provides elastic computing to allow a customer to scale up (or down); to grow or shrink their architecture quickly efficiently with minimal intervention.
The following is a summary of an AWS whitepaper and webinar that describes how you can use AWS to architect your system for the cloud.
Anybody who is considering a move to the Cloud knows that the greatest economic motivation for Cloud Computing is the pay-as-you-go, pay-for-what-you-need utility computing benefit, right? Deal with spikes in demand much more cost-effectively, the public Cloud service providers gush, since we can spread the load over many customers and pass the savings from our economies of scale on to you. The utility benefit is also a central premise of Private Clouds. Build a Private Cloud for your enterprise, the vendors promise, and you can achieve the same economies of scale as Public Clouds without all that risk.
Unfortunately, what sounds too good to be true usually is. There are a number of gotchas on both the Public and Private Cloud provider sides that limit—or even prevent—organizations from obtaining a full measure of the utility benefit. Let’s go back to economics class and take a closer look …
25th April 2012