Sin categoría

Google announces data centre expansion plans: 12 more regions by 2017

(c)iStock.com/serg3d

Google has announced a major expansion of its cloud data centres, with two new regions to start running this year and another 10 to be available by the end of 2017.

The news comes days after a note from Synergy Research which found the US remains far out in front as the number one location for data centres. Google’s two upcoming launches will include one US site, a US Western region in Oregon, with another to be built in Tokyo.

“We’re opening these new regions to help Cloud Platform customers deploy services and applications nearer to their own customers, for lower latency and greater responsiveness,” wrote Google product manager Varun Sakalkar in a company blog post. “With these new regions, even more applications become candidates to run on Cloud Platform, and get the benefits of Google-level scale and industry leading price [and] performance.”

It has been a busy period for Google’s cloudy operations, with recent announcements of a client win in the form of Home Depot, as well as the news that Apple would move a portion of its data to the search giant from Amazon Web Services (AWS). The majority of the reaction to the news has not surprisingly been around Google’s attempts to catch up with AWS, which turned 10 years old earlier this month and is also looking to expand its data centre operations in the UK among other locations.

Responding to Google’s expansion of its data centre footprint, John Dinsdale, Synergy chief analyst and research director, said: “As we have reported previously Google lags far behind AWS and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure market, and at least part of that was down to having a cloud data centre network that wasn’t as extensive.

“Google is now on a drive to help fix that – in addition to increasing its corporate focus on the cloud market. This was long overdue,” he added.

ConfigMgr, Guest Blog, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, Parallels Business Solutions, Parallels Mac Management, PMM, SCCM, Windows Management Experts

Parallels ConfigMgr Plugin v4.5: New Features

Guest blog by Matt Tinney, CEO & Lead System Center Architect of Windows Management Experts Parallels is proud of our partnerships within the SCCM community.  Windows Management Experts, Inc. (WME) is a key partner with us here in the Seattle area.  They are system integrators for companies committed to installing, implementing and more effectively managing their […]

The post Parallels ConfigMgr Plugin v4.5: New Features appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Parallels Remote Application Server, PRAS, RDP, terminal server

Terminal Server Printing Made Easy

Terminal Server Printing Made Easy The advent of virtualization has revolutionized the IT segment. With server-based computing, businesses are now able to centrally host applications and publish them to users, regardless of the device they use. Windows applications are now published on non-Windows clients such as iOS, Android, and BlackBerry. However, terminal server printing can […]

The post Terminal Server Printing Made Easy appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Sin categoría

The Nerdery Evolves Its Brand | @CloudExpo @The_Nerdery #Cloud

The Nerdery has launched a new website. This time The Nerdery created a website and revealed a brand evolution, as their own client.
The Nerdery’s brand evolution includes a refined logo and heightened focus on the core services of mobile applications, web applications, websites, systems integration and digital consulting. Their online makeover happened over a stealth four-week sprint.

read more

Apple, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis

Apple enters consumer e-health market

Apple carekitApple has announced the launch of CareKit, an open-source software framework which enables its consumers and doctors to proactively keep track of their health through monitoring symptoms and medications in real-time.

The open-source framework follows the launch of ResearchKit last year and enables consumers to us data collected from various sources to understand their health. The app also enables consumers to record feedback on how well they are feeling or recovering from a procedure which can be shared with family members and their doctor remotely.

“We’re thrilled with the profound impact ResearchKit has already had on the pace and scale of conducting medical research, and have realised that many of the same principles could help with individual care,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. “We believe that giving individuals the tools to understand what is happening with their health is incredibly powerful, and apps designed using CareKit make this a reality by empowering people to take a more active role in their care.”

From next month, the developer community will be able to build their own apps through the open-source software, however Apple have designed four modules in the first instance. Care Card is a to-do list reminding consumers to take medication or perform certain exercises, which can be tracked through various Apple devices. The Symptoms and Measurement Tracker enables consumers to record their symptoms and progress. The Insight Dashboard compares the symptoms to the data taken from the Care Card to ensure that treatment is effective, and the Connect module shares all information with the person’s doctor.

The concept of CareKit is one of the few data analytics use cases available to the consumer market, though the open-source framework will offer opportunities for developers. While the framework is not available for the wider community currently, Apple has been working with a number of developers to demonstrate the use case of the framework. One example, Glow Nature, is an app incorporating the CareKit modules to offer advice to women to guide them through a healthier pregnancy.

The launch of CareKit follows healthy adoption of ResearchKit, a similar open-source framework designed for medical researchers. ResearchKit enables doctors, scientists and other researchers to gather data from participants anywhere in the world using iPhone apps. While ResearchKit enables researchers to more accurately gather data and further their research, CareKit provides these organizations an alternative means to communicate with the mass audience.

“With ResearchKit, we quickly realised the power of mobile apps for running inexpensive, high-quality clinical studies with unprecedented reach,” said Ray Dorsey, Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Centre. “We hope that CareKit will help us close the gap between our research findings and how we care for our Parkinson’s patients day-to-day. It’s opening up a whole new opportunity for the democratisation of research and medicine.”

Sin categoría

SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 Now Available | @CloudExpo @SUSE #Cloud

SUSE® has announced the general availability of SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6, the latest enterprise-ready technology for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds with less stress on IT staff and resources. Based on the OpenStack release Liberty, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 delivers high availability enhancements and non-disruptive upgrades for future releases, along with Docker and IBM z Systems mainframe support to make it easier to move business-critical applications and data to the cloud. In addition, SUSE is offering new OpenStack training and certification for deployment and operation of OpenStack private clouds.

read more

Sin categoría

Analysing a new model for connecting the cloud

(c)iStock.com/swissmediavision

Growth in cloud over the last three years has been phenomenal. It has changed the enterprise IT landscape and is finally driving change in global networks. And as cloud growth continues to rise, enterprises need new and innovative models for connecting their cloud services.

Research firm Gartner expects that global spending on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) reached almost $16.5 billion in 2015, an increase of 32.8% from 2014, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019 forecast at 29.1%.

The traditional networking model is simply not fast enough to keep up with a cloud ecosystem moving this quickly. Traditional networking can no longer match the needs or expectations of enterprises that are rapidly adopting cloud services. For too long networking has lacked the agility, flexibility, stability, and visibility that cloud services require.

Removing the limits on cloud

Cloud-based applications are only as good as an enterprise’s ability to connect to them. Traditional models rely on slow manual procurement processes that mean enterprises have to wait to connect their cloud services. Typically, this involves emails and spreadsheets being exchanged between enterprises and their suppliers with long wait timers until the service is actually available. Demands within the enterprise can change but the network isn’t ready to immediately respond to these changes.

Similarly, long inflexible contracts lock enterprises in for years, making it difficult to adjust or scale their services. This hurts an enterprise’s ability to realise the benefits and efficiencies of cloud services. It limits them and keeps them from scaling up or down locations based on changing demand.

Always on and on-demand

For enterprises, waiting for connectivity is no longer an option and they are using cloud connectivity platforms to solve these challenges. These platforms are removing the barriers around customising and shaping network services to meet enterprise-specific business needs and can give them on-demand Ethernet access from an online portal.

No more emailing and no more waiting.

Enterprises need to see increased levels of automation from their connectivity providers that enable them to procure services instantly with visibility into network performance. From building-to-building, data centre-to-data centre or cloud-to-cloud, networking models must deliver on-demand connectivity that simplifies how enterprises connect to the cloud. This should be available from an online portal that offers click-to-connect procurement and end-to-end monitoring that supports quality of experience for end users.

The days of ‘best effort’ services that need a team to manage them are over.

On-demand connectivity delivered from cloud connectivity platform is rapidly replacing traditional networking models because it gives control back to the enterprise and enables them to self-serve 24/7.

Today, connectivity is a barrier to success. With new models that include cloud connectivity platforms, the network can be the foundation for new innovation in cloud. It can be central to cloud enablement while supporting widespread adoption. When enterprises are able to gain friction-free access to cloud connectivity they can realize the full potential of the cloud.    

M&A, News & Analysis

Micro Focus moves into DevOps space with $540 million Serena acquisition

Money cloudUK enterprise software vendor Micro Focus has announced its intention to acquire US firm Serena Software, in a bid to improve its position in the DevOps space.

Subject to competition clearances from the US and Germany the $540 million acquisition is set to close in May. It will enable Micro Focus to enhance its DevOps credentials, and capitalize on one of the industry’s fastest growing trends.

“Today’s announcement marks another significant milestone for Micro Focus, bringing together two highly complementary solution sets that enable customers to build better applications, adapt to changing business conditions more rapidly and maximise the value of existing investments to drive further innovation within their business,” said Stephen Murdoch, CEO at Micro Focus.

“With Serena, we are further positioned to deliver richer solutions for the complex business demands customers are solving today – with greater reliability, predictability and less risk of failure.”

Micro Focus claims Serena’s capabilities around “true DevOps” will improve its position in a growing market and enable them to improve new business services through automated release and deployment solutions.

“This is an exciting announcement that promises to offer substantial value to Serena customers and partners,” said Greg Hughes, CEO of Serena. “Our complementary strengths in software development and IT Operations will only serve to provide a stronger foundation for the next-generation of applications and services they require to meet ongoing business demands.”

Micro Focus, which says it specializes in enterprise application modernization, has been bolstering its capabilities in recent years, with a focus of diversifying its customer base and portfolio. In 2014, the company announced it was merging with Attachmate Group for approximately US$1.2 billion, which also owned Novell and Suse Linux.

At the time, Kevin Loosemore, Executive Chairman of Micro Focus said “This is a transformational event that enables Micro Focus International to further meet the needs and demands of our customers and global partner network with greater scale, a broader portfolio and the global reach their businesses require.”

data centre, data protection, Datacentre, European Commission, News & Analysis

US revealed to have 46% of all data centres despite EU concerns

Data protectionNew findings from Synergy Research Group show that 46% major cloud and internet data centre sites are located in the US, with second placed China only accounting for 7%.

The research is based on an analysis of the data centre footprint of 17 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms and highlights the dominance of the US in the cloud market place. Japan is listed at third with a 6% market share and Germany was the largest European player with just 4%.

“Given that explosive growth in cloud usage is a global phenomenon, it is remarkable that the US still accounts for almost half of the world’s major data centres, but that is a reflection of the US dominance of cloud and internet technologies,” said John Dinsdale, Research Director at Synergy Research Group.

Considering the dominance of AWS, Microsoft and Google in the cloud market space, it’s unsurprising that the US is top of the rankings, though recent concerns from European countries regarding movement of its citizens’ data outside of the EU could complicate matters. Germany is one country which is sensitive to any changes in data protection policy and is considered to have some of the most stringent data protection laws worldwide.

“The other leading countries are there due to either their scale or the unique characteristics of their local markets. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the UK does not feature more prominently, but that situation will change this year with AWS, Microsoft and Google all opening major data centres in the country,” said Dinsdale.

Back in October, the European Court of Justice decided that Safe Harbour did not give data transfers between Europe and the US adequate protection, and declared the agreement which had been in place since 2000 void. The EU-US Privacy Shield, Safe Harbour’s successor, has also come under criticism in recent weeks as concerns have been raised to how much protection the reformed regulations protect European parties.

While the new agreement has been initially accepted, privacy activist Max Schrems, who has been linked to the initial downfall of Safe Harbour, said in a statement reacting to Privacy Shield, “Basically, the US openly confirms that it violates EU fundamental rights in at least six cases. The commission claims that there is no ‘bulk surveillance’ any more, when its own documents say the exact opposite.” A letter from Robert Litt General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed that there were six circumstances where the NSA will be allowed to use data for undefined “counter-terrorism” purposes

While the concentration of data centres in the US should not come as a huge surprise, it puts into further context the fears of European parties who are concerned with the effectiveness of any EU-US data protection policies.

Sin categoría

Iron.io Delivers New Job Processing Solutions | @CloudExpo @getIron #Cloud

Iron.io has debuted three new solutions that give modern enterprises greater flexibility and control as they build and scale apps. These solutions – for data processing, file processing, and extract, transform, load (ETL) – combined with a rich feature set, empower enterprises to reliably scale their Docker-based jobs on any cloud, including hybrid environments.
Additionally, Iron.io announced Project Kratos, which will enable enterprises to run AWS Lambda functionality in any cloud provider, as well as on-premise, eliminating vendor lock-in. Iron.io is currently seeking project members, who will provide input and feedback as the project is developed. Project members will have the option of becoming beta users.

read more

The cloud news categorized.