Information technology is an industry that has always experienced change, and the dramatic change sweeping across the industry today could not be truthfully described as the first time we’ve seen such widespread change impacting customer investments. However, the rate of the change, and the potential outcomes from today’s digital transformation has the distinct potential to separate the industry into two camps: Organizations that see the change coming, embrace it, and successful leverage it; and on the other side, organizations that will find themselves as roadkill on the technology highway.

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Throughout history, various leaders have risen up and tried to unify the world by conquest. Fortunately, none of their plans have succeeded. The world goes on just fine with each country ruling itself; no single ruler is necessary. That’s how it is with the container platform ecosystem, as well.
There’s no need for one all-powerful, all-encompassing container platform. Think about any other technology sector out there – there are always multiple solutions in every space. The same goes for container technology. When you create something that is super scalable, the drawback is that it’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach. However, one person’s drawback is another person’s advantage.

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The digital signage market was valued at USD 16.88 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 27.34 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 6.7% between 2016 and 2022, as per marketsandmarkets.com. It is also considered as a future for retail and similar industries, where customer experience plays a major role.

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An Azure platform is running on a virtualized server and hence the above container hosts may not give the same performance as an equivalent container host on a bare metal server. However, this thought process will help organizations to come up with new use cases of utilizing Windows 2016 containers as part of their Infrastructure equations. Again as the industry as seen both SMP and MPP architectures, the usage of SMP should be viewed with respect to specific workloads.

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About a year ago we tuned into “the need for speed” and how a concept like «serverless computing” was increasingly catering to this. We are now a year further and the term “serverless” is taking on unexpected proportions. With some even seeing it as the successor to cloud in general or at least as a successor to the clouds’ poorer cousin in terms of revenue, hype and adoption: PaaS.
The question we need to ask is whether this constitutes an example of Hype Hopping: to effortlessly pivot to the next new thing once the previous one turns out to be just a bit less attractive and certainly a lot more complex then we all thought at first. The Gartner Hype Cycle has been calling this for years the trough of disillusionment, a valley that only the strongest of innovations manage to pass in order to reach the slope of enlightenment or even the plateau of productivity that lies beyond.

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In their 2014 CIO Agenda report Gartner describe how ‘Taming the Digital Dragon‘ is key to Digital Transformation strategies, with the Hybrid Cloud Platform model as the enabling technology blueprint AND business model.
As their ‘We are here’ arrow describes Gartner propose we are at the transition point from a second to a third generation of IT, the shift from IT industrialization to Digitization, where the key skills of a CIO are business models and digital leadership, rather than just IT service management aka a shift from the CIO to the CDO – Chief Digital Officer.

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Just as writing has come to mean texting, blogging or any form of digital writing, the cloud today means one or all of the three Cs: computing, connectivity and communication. And just as nearly all thought to putting pen to paper has disappeared, all reference to the natural cloud is long forgotten. The three Cs have altered the way we consume services. The adage, “change is the only constant,” holds true in the IT landscape like no other, forcing IT admins to constantly learn new skills and make strategic decisions.

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Phishing has been around since the dawn of the internet. The term was first used in an AOL Usenet group back in 1996 but it wasn’t until 2003 when many baited hooks and lures started dropping. Popular transaction destinations like PayPal and eBay were some of the early victims of these spoofed sites asking customers to update their personal and credit card information. By 2004, it was a full-fledged ‘get rich quick scheme’ with many financial institutions – and their customers – as targets.

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IBM has announced the launch of a new cloud data centre in Oslo, Norway, becoming the latest vendor to support a growing need for cloud in the Nordics.

The new facility, which takes IBM’s global cloud data centres to 48 in total with 12 in Europe, offers the full range of IBM’s cloud infrastructure services, from bare metal to virtual servers, storage, security services, and networking. Customers will also have access to a plethora of other options, from platform as a service (PaaS) Bluemix, to Watson, as well as more than 150 APIs and services across big data, blockchain, and the Internet of Things.

One of the customers IBM is championing is Nordic IT services company EVRY. The two companies announced a strategic partnership this time last year, including establishing a private cloud and running on SoftLayer ‘later next year’, inferring the launch of a specific data centre.

“We are committed to providing global and local clients the fastest and easiest on-ramp to the IBM cloud to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM Cloud senior vice president. “This investment will provide Nordic customers, especially those in regulated industries, with more flexibility to manage and gain insight into data within the region.”

“Local access to IBM’s global network of public cloud data centres provides the ideal flexibility for our customers,” said Arne Norheim, CEO of IBM Norway. “The new cloud data centre is designed to fuel support for innovation and quick adoption of new solutions that will improve business efficiency.”

Plenty of stories have been written on how the Nordics is increasingly becoming a tech hub. Virtual data centre provider Interoute announced the launch of a zone in Stockholm earlier this month, while in June the Swedish government announced plans to lower electricity taxes on data centres, following an initial study last year.

Cloud infrastructure rival Microsoft announced greater availability of its German data centres on the same day as IBM’s announcement. 

(c)iStock.com/wundervisuals

Microsoft has announced its new German Azure data centres are being managed by a subsidiary of telco giant Deutsche Telekom in what is being claimed as a ‘first of its kind’ European business model.

The German data centre regions, in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, were announced at the end of 2015 and opened earlier this year. Yet being under the control of a ‘data trustee’, T-Systems International, enables customers with additional controls on their data, as well as complying with German data handling regulations, Microsoft said.

“As part of our mission to enable every person and organisation to achieve more, we continue to make Microsoft Cloud offerings more accessible to organisations around the world that need their data to remain within specific borders,” wrote Takeshi Numoto, corporate VP for Microsoft cloud and enterprise in an official company blog.

Customers in the new region include the Hamburg Port Authority, as well as the Austria, Switzerland and Germany (ASG) arm of technology and managed services provider Avanade. “Microsoft Cloud Germany enables the successful digital transformation of customers, even those that have had reservations about public cloud solutions or have to meet strict compliance requirements,” said Robert Gögele, general manager of ASG Avanade Deutschland GmbH.

“The openness of Microsoft’s platform is significant: we are now able to move Linux-based applications as well as SAP to the cloud.”

Microsoft recently announced the launch of its UK data centres, again having first revealed the plans late last year. As with the German announcement, high profile customers were revealed; in this case, the Ministry of Defence and the South London & Maudsley NHS Trust.

Read more: Seven ways Microsoft redefined Azure for the enterprise – and emerged a leader