“Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
CloudBerry Backup is a leading cross-platform cloud backup and disaster recovery solution integrated with major public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Keynote: Hybrid Cloud & #DigitalTransformation | @CloudExpo @IBMcloud #IoT
In an era of historic innovation fueled by unprecedented access to data and technology, the low cost and risk of entering new markets has leveled the playing field for business. Today, any ambitious innovator can easily introduce a new application or product that can reinvent business models and transform the client experience.
In their Day 2 Keynote at 19th Cloud Expo, Mercer Rowe, IBM Vice President of Strategic Alliances, and Raejeanne Skillern, Intel Vice President of Data Center Group and GM, will discuss how clients in this new era of innovation can apply data, technology, plus human ingenuity to springboard to advance new business value and opportunities.
Pokémon Go and Big Data | @CloudExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData #Analytics
Yep, I play Pokémon Go. I take joy walking around the neighborhood and in strange towns catching a Pinsir, Ponyta, or Growlithe or two (though I have to put up with those pesky Ekans, Paras and Spearows). You see, I play Pokémon Go for …er, um,… research purposes. I can’t help but to imagine how organizations can leverage “augmented reality[1],” the secret sauce behind Pokémon Go, to deliver analytic insights and recommendations to key business constituents in a way that is more direct and actionable (not to mention measurable).
Tech News Recap for the Week of 10/10/2016
Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 10/10/2016.
VMware and Amazon have announced a new strategic partnership that should have a big impact on the industry. Almost six thousand online shops have been compromised by hackers who added specially crafted code that steals payment card details. Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Server 2016. The Department of Health and Human Services has published new guidance on complying with HIPAA privacy, security, and breach notification rules when using cloud computing, Cisco and Pure Storage have expanded their FlashStack converged infrastructure offering, and more top news this week you may have missed!
Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.
Tech News Recap
- VMware’s new cloud service will run on AWS
- Thousands of online shops compromised for credit card theft
- Windows Server 2016 Released, Touted as Hybrid Cloud Enabler
- Why (and how) Microsoft is circling its hybrid-cloud wagons
- New guidance lays out HIPAA obligations for cloud computing
- Amazon and VMware Are Now Best Friends When It Comes to the Cloud
- Cisco, Pure Storage Expand FlashStack Converged Infreastructure Partnership With New CVDs
- This is the newest tactic cybercriminals are using to deliver ransomware
- 80% Of IT Pros Say Users Set Up Unapproved Cloud Services
- Michael Dell tells IT leaders all they need to know about the new Dell Technologies
- The Path To CIO: Hard Hats, Muddy Boots And Technology
- Putting the “Converged” in Hyperconverged Support
- GreenPages Ranked #24 in the World for Cloud Services and #31 for Managed IT Services
- Cisco CTO and Cloud Exec Exits
- 3 ways to improve customer experience using AI
- Microsoft Draws Up Azure Cloud Blueprint for Government Agencies
- Here’s Who Wins and Who Loses Now that Amazon and VMware Are BFFs
- Yahoo shows that breach impacts can go far beyond remediation expenses
- Could this be the end of Samsung’s smartphone reign?
- Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls Augmented Reality ‘Profound,’ Says it Should ‘Amplify’ Human Contact
- 7 Keys To Building A Successful Big Data Infrastructure
Did you miss VMWorld? Register for our upcoming webinar to get all of the most important updates from Las Vegas and Barcelona.
By Ben Stephenson, GreenPages Technology Solutions
VMware’s Software on Amazon Cloud – Surprise!
For many years, VMware and Amazon have been on two sides of the storage world. While VMware had asked customers to run their businesses on their own computer servers, Amazon had always encouraged companies to move it to the cloud. But now, both the companies have teamed up to integrate their views and services.
Beginning next year, VMware’s software will run on Amazon cloud, thereby giving VMware customers to use the existing tools to manage their servers, except that their servers will be located in the cloud. Alongside, users can also make use of Amazon’s database and storage tools and services.
Now, you can already run VMware’s virtual machines on Amazon’s cloud, and can even use VMware’s management tool, vCenter, to manage your virtual machines. So, what’s different with this partnership? Well, to start with both the companies have decided to create a new version of Amazon cloud that’ll allow VMware’s virtual machines to run directly on the cloud, without the need for an Amazon software in between. Also, this new partnership will give users the flexibility to run their software both on the cloud as well as on the existing data centers.
In many ways, this partnership has reiterated the fact that cloud is the present and the future, and no business can afford to ignore it. In addition, it’s also a significant milestone in the world of cloud computing, as VMware has gone from seeing Amazon as a rival, to admitting that its products are the future.
In fact, VMware made a brief foray into the cloud world with its own product called vCloud Air, but it never really took off. As a strategic move, this company has decide to focus on its core business of running virtual machines, and at the same time, is looking to expand to capabilities that’ll allow these virtual machines to run on the cloud. This way, VMware can cater to businesses that want to stay on their own data centers, and also to businesses that want to move to the cloud. This is why such a move is likely to expand the market reach and customer base of VMware, as it’s looking for ways to cope with the changing digital environment.
This partnership is significant for Amazon too, as this is an opportunity to reach out to customers who haven’t still migrated to the cloud. This would give it a better foothold among conservative businesses that still want to keep data on their local servers for reasons ranging from lack of knowledge to security concerns. In fact, this partnership with VMware can help Amazon to reach these customers before its rivals, thereby increasing its market share in a competitive market.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), this deal will be significant in the short-term for VMware, but in the longer term though, Amazon will be a huge beneficiary as it can bring on more corporate customers under its AWS cover. The biggest winner is of course, the customers, as they can now choose to run their operations on their own VMware-equipped data centers and on Amazon Cloud.
The post VMware’s Software on Amazon Cloud – Surprise! appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
AWS and VMware announce hybrid cloud partnership
(c)iStock.com/Prykhodov
It had been rumoured, but now it’s confirmed: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware have announced a strategic alliance which will culminate in a new hybrid cloud service snappily titled ‘VMware Cloud on AWS’.
The two companies say the announcement will give customers a full software-defined data centre (SDCC) experience, combining leadership in private and public cloud. The service will run on AWS bare metal infrastructure, while the SDDC side will come predominantly from VMware Cloud Foundation, including VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN, as well as NSX virtualisation technologies.
The product will be available from ‘mid 2017’ onwards, and will be sold by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service. The companies said pricing information would be made available closer to availability date.
“VMware Cloud on AWS offers our customers the best of both worlds,” said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger in a statement. “This new service will make it easier for customers to preserve their investment in existing applications and processes while taking advantage of the global footprint, advanced capabilities, and scale of the AWS public cloud.”
Andy Jassy, AWS CEO, added: “Most enterprises are already virtualised using VMware, and now with VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time, it will be easy for customers to operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment using their existing VMware tools on AWS, and without having to purchase custom hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operating model.”
VMware has been busy on the partnership front of late; earlier this week, there was an update on the company’s collaborations with IBM, first announced back in February. According to IBM, 1,000 joint customers are now moving their VMware environments to the IBM Cloud, as well as mobilising and training 4,000 global service consultants to help VMware customers access and leverage IBM’s cloud.
At VMworld in August, the company made note of its SDDC capabilities; VMware Cloud Foundation was claimed to offer “a new ‘as a service’ option that delivers the full power of the SDDC in a hybrid cloud environment.” As this publication noted at the time, VMware’s role in the industry landscape appear to be “an enabler for businesses running on other, more populous clouds.” With that in mind, you can’t get any bigger than AWS in that regard.
[session] Organizational Agility for Digital Transformation | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DigitalTransformation
Successful digital transformation requires new organizational competencies and capabilities. Research tells us that the biggest impediment to successful transformation is human; consequently, the biggest enabler is a properly skilled and empowered workforce. In the digital age, new individual and collective competencies are required.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Bob Newhouse, CEO and founder of Agilitiv, will draw together recent research and lessons learned from emerging and established companies, providing a road map for engaging our organizations in the creation and support of digital value chains.
The Anonymous Neighbor Problem in IT | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DigitalTransformation
COMED, my power company, sends out a monthly report that shows me my energy consumption relative to my neighbors. Every month I’m considerably higher than all my neighbors. This report also has a list of things I could do to reduce my energy consumption. The problem with this report is that it doesn’t take into account my house size relative to the other houses in my neighborhood. My house is the largest model and accounts for about one-third the local sample size. If I were to attempt to reduce my energy consumption so that I would be in line with the monthly average of my neighbors, I would probably have to adopt a lifestyle akin to the Amish. Hence, I call this the Anonymous Neighbor Problem and, I believe, is responsible for driving decisions that are thrust upon IT leadership from executive business managers.
One in three public sector firms have ‘no concrete plans’ for cloud
(c)iStock.com/RapidEye
A new research report from software and business services provider Agilisys has found that more than a third of public sector firms have ‘no concrete plans’ to adopt cloud-based technology.
The findings, which appear in the 2016 Cloud Adoption Survey, found that of the 180 respondents, 36% had no plans to migrate to the cloud.
Almost 60% said that cloud adoption would help to reduce on-site maintenance and IT support requirements, which may indicate it is not a lack of knowledge holding these companies back, although ‘confusion’ and ‘uncertainty’ were cited as key reasons hindering adoption. Perhaps not surprisingly, data compliance and security were also seen as primary obstacles.
“While the report shows that adoption of cloud services is underway in the public sector, some organisations have concerns about their capability to manage compliance and regulation within the cloud as well as how to transform, migrate and operate services in this new environment,” said Sean Grimes, Agilisys IT services director.
“Changing any IT system has inherent challenges, and moving to the cloud is no different. But working with the right partner, the shift should be seen as a transformative move about which organisations can feel positive, potentially providing more control over specific aspects of their IT, not less,” Grimes added.
Naturally, the research results mean something for Agilisys; alongside the report the company has recently launched its Community Cloud initiative aimed specifically at public sector organisations, with Microsoft being confirmed as the first partner to join.
Recent research from Eduserv, a company which offers public sector IT services, found that 12% of all UK council authorities, or 50 councils overall, account for 90% of G-Cloud local government spend. As the company noted, local governments and authorities are more than likely using cloud services, if not officially then in a shadow IT role, so it would make more sense to create official policies given the data risks involved.
IBM launches object storage for hybrid clouds, updates on VMware partnership
(c)iStock.com/Graffizone
IBM has made a couple of major cloudy launches, announcing what is claimed as the industry’s first object storage service for hybrid clouds, as well as elaborating on the partnership with VMware announced earlier this year.
IBM Cloud Object Storage is based primarily around the technology of Cleversafe, which was acquired by the Armonk giant in November last year, but also around SecureSlice, which combines ‘erasure coding’ – whereby data is broken into fragments and stored across a set of different locations – with encryption and decryption.
Alongside security, IBM is also touting the availability and economic benefits of its new storage, saying it can tolerate ‘even catastrophic regional outages’ with continuous availability inherent in its architecture. The company argues that, on internal testing comparing IBM Cloud Object Storage Vault Cross-Region Services to a ‘leading vendor’, it was 24% less expensive when managing half a petabyte of data.
“As clients continue to move massive workloads to hybrid clouds there is a need for an easier, more secure and economical way to store and manage mounting volumes of digital information,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM Cloud senior vice president in a statement. “With today’s announcement, IBM becomes the leading cloud vendor to provide clients the flexibility and availability of object data storage across on-premises and public clouds.”
As is often the way, IBM has unveiled a brand spanking new customer with its launch, and in this case it is link management platform Bitly, which is using the cloud object storage to analyse the more than 10 billion clicks it processes each month globally. “We turned exclusively to IBM Cloud because of its leadership in data services,” said Robert Platzer, Bitly CTO. “Through this partnership IBM will help us transform our business and build a variety of new cloud services – from advanced analytics and data mining to data research – into our software platform.”
Regarding VMware, IBM has pushed out a number of stats: 1,000 joint customers are now moving their VMware environments to the IBM Cloud, as well as mobilising and training 4,000 global service consultants to help VMware customers access and leverage IBM’s cloud. The news of customers involved in this partnership, including Marriott International and Monitise, were referenced at the recent VMworld event in August.