For Valentine’s Day, here’s a lighthearted look at the «relationship» between two complementary technologies: service virtualization and cloud dev/test labs.
Hey, I know it’s been a while since we started being «a thing.» When we met, everyone said you were just mocking, and that I wasn’t real enough to make a living, with my head in the clouds. Yet, here we are, a few years later.
Efficiency gains most compelling reason for cloud, say enterprises
The majority of US enterprises will increase their spending on cloud computing by up to 50% this year, according to US based researcher Clutch.
Conversely, the research also indicates that 6% of enterprises will cut their spending on cloud. The survey of 300 IT professionals at medium to large enterprises could indicate the different uses for cloud computing, with some companies using it to manage costs while others use it as a strategic weapon.
The study found that nearly 30% of the sample will maintain their current levels of cloud spending, with 6% saying they will reduce their cloud computing budget. A significant minority, 47%, identified efficiency improvements as the main benefit of cloud computing. There were no figures on whether performance improvements may encourage companies to spend less money on cloud services in future however.
The statistics on the uses for cloud computing do not suggest this is a tactical, strategic investment, however. The most popular motive cited for enterprise cloud usage, in the US, would appear to be better file storage, which was nominated as the primary objective for buying cloud services by 70% of the survey. The next most popular application of the cloud, backup and disaster recovery, which was nominated by 62% of the IT professionals, is another cost item. However, the cloud was chosen for application deployment among 51% of the sample, but there was no breakdown of whether this was viewed as a cost saving measure or a tactical investment. Similarly, the figures for the numbers of buyers who used the cloud for testing, 46%, was not broken down into tactical and cost saving motives.
Storage costs are the easy win and prove the value of the cloud: tactical use may be a later development, said Duane Tharp, VP of technical sales and services at service provider Cloud-Elements. “The returns on file storage are pretty straight-forward. Every company needs file storage,” said Tharp. “The ease of adopting the cloud for file storage could prove the concept and pave the way for the adoption of other use cases later.”
[session] Keeping High Availability in the Cloud By @LeeAtchison | @CloudExpo #Cloud
When building large, cloud-based applications that operate at a high scale, it’s important to maintain a high availability and resilience to failures. In order to do that, you must be tolerant of failures, even in light of failures in other areas of your application.
“Fly two mistakes high” is an old adage in the radio control airplane hobby. It means, fly high enough so that if you make a mistake, you can continue flying with room to still make mistakes.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Lee Atchison, Principal Cloud Architect and Advocate at New Relic, will discuss how this same philosophy can be applied to highly scaled applications, and can dramatically increase your resilience to failure.
Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/8/2016
Were you busy last week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/8/2016!
Oracle posted a Java patch for a bug that could compromise Windows machines. VMware announced a bunch of licensing and product changes including end-of-life, pricing, and new feature information. The U.S. Government wants to increase IT spending 1.3% in its proposed budget. The Microsoft Azure IoT Hub connects and manages Internet of Things devices. Google made improvements to gmail’s security, a hacking group is targeting ATMs to dupe banks, and a man loaded malware in his ‘My Documents’ folder to turn the tables on scammers. To get real-time updates on all of the most important tech news, follow GreenPages on Twitter!
Tech News Recap
- Oracle posts Java patch for bug that could result in complete compromise of Windows machines
- VMware Licensing and Product Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changs
- Microsoft’s Azure IoT Hub Connects, Manages IoT Devices
- 7 Ways IaaS Delivers Business Value
- VMware Accelerates the Shift to Digitization and Hybrid Cloud With the Introduction of vRealize Suite 7
- Government wants to increase IT spending 1.3% in proposed budget
- Metel APT hacking group rolls back ATM transactions to dupe banks
- Network Virtualization Is VMware’s Net Frontier
- Why Converged Infrastructure is the Future of Cloud
- Google makes improvements to gmail security
- Man turns tables on scammers
- Why No One Should Be Surprised the Internet of Things Is a Gift to Spies
- Do You Have A Broken iPhone? Apple Will Let You Trade It In For Credit
- Reno Is Gambling It All on Tech
- Palo Alto CIO: What are smart cities
- How can CIOs develop a business case for virtual reality?
- Sharpening the CIO Saw
- How high will IT salaries climb?
- VMware’s new management tools are hybrid, hybrid, hybrid
Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality. Strategies for Migrating & Supporting Mobile Workforces [Download on-demand webinar]
By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist
Five Ways to Safeguard Your Application from Third-Party API Outages By @webcodepro | @CloudExpo #Cloud
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at a rapid pace with millions of new devices getting connected every day.
Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use in 2016 and by 2020, the number will reach 20.8 billion. Billions of devices including smartphones, laptops, cars, watches, refrigerators, and even thermostats are all getting connected thanks to APIs. Many of these devices are part of a larger application ecosystem, connected to the cloud and each other using the same APIs.
Silver Spring IoT Platform | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #InternetOfThings
Silver Spring Networks, Inc. (NYSE: SSNI) extended its Internet of Things technology platform with performance enhancements to Gen5 – its fifth generation critical infrastructure networking platform. Already delivering nearly 23 million devices on five continents as one of the leading networking providers in the market, Silver Spring announced it is doubling the maximum speed of its Gen5 network to up to 2.4 Mbps, increasing computational performance by 10x, supporting simultaneous mesh communication on both 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies, integrating 4G LTE communications, and delivering simplified modularity for easier device integration. These Gen5 platform enhancements, coupled with Silver Spring’s existing multi-application, range, latency, scale, distributed intelligence, and power optimization capabilities, further enable utilities, cities and other Internet of Things (IOT) device and application providers to deliver multiple applications on a single, unified network without compromising reliability, speed, security, or cost.
Rackspace launches private cloud with Red Hat OpenStack help
Picture credit: «Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011», by «Andrew Hyde», used under CC BY / Modified from original
Cloud provider Rackspace has announced the launch of a new private cloud service utilising the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack platform.
The move plays further into Rackspace’s ‘OpenStack as a service’ offerings, which aim to simplify the process of OpenStack private and hybrid cloud uptake. The latest product, ‘Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat’ to give its full name, will be fully managed by OpenStack and Red Hat experts at Rackspace and promises all the hype of the public cloud but with enterprise-grade security.
“Rackspace is excited to expand our managed services and expertise to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform,” said VP and OpenStack private cloud general manager Darrin Hanson. “We help make OpenStack simple by eliminating the complexity and delivering it as a service to customers in their data centre, a Rackspace data centre or in a colocation facility.”
The move ties in with various Rackspace policies, including its ‘fanatical support’ for managed cloud services, and partnering with other technologies. In July, Rackspace announced an expanded service offering with Microsoft, combining its private cloud with Microsoft Cloud Platform, for customers who are not entirely ready to go all in with public cloud.
Like Microsoft, Rackspace has enjoyed a long partnership with Red Hat and claims it is uniquely positioned to provide customers benefits through managed deployment of Red Hat clouds. “We are consistently hearing feedback from enterprises that one of the primary barriers to OpenStack adoption continues to be the operational complexities around deployment,” said Gina Longoria, Moor Insights & Strategy senior analyst. “With Rackspace expanding their offerings, customers can take out a lot of the uncertainty of the do it yourself model and leverage the OpenStack as a service product portfolio at Rackspace.”
The Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat is generally available now.
The Story of Parallels: A Leader in Virtualization
From its humble beginnings as a small startup, Parallels Inc. always envisioned a new way to approach virtualized computing. The story behind Parallels dictates a company filled with dozens of innovative industry firsts introduced with every new product release over the years. This unrivaled leadership in innovation began in 2006 with the introduction of mainstream virtualization on […]
The post The Story of Parallels: A Leader in Virtualization appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Big Data Services | @CloudExpo #BigData #IoT #M2M #ML #InternetOfThings
The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service).
In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, will provide an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data professionals, as experts estimate that “as-a-service” cloud sourcing will increase from today’s 15% to 35% by 2021. Learn more and hear important considerations to help evaluate and rank your options.
Continuous Delivery Toolchain | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #IoT #Microservices
One of the bewildering things about DevOps is integrating the massive toolchain including the dozens of new tools that seem to crop up every year. Part of DevOps is Continuous Delivery and having a complex toolchain can add additional integration and setup to your developer environment.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Miko Matsumura, Chief Marketing Officer of Gradle Inc., will discuss which tools to use in a developer stack, how to provision the toolchain to minimize onboarding time for new developers, and how to maximize productivity according to some of the leading companies in Silicon Valley whether in the coding, build, integration, testing or deployment phase.