February 24, 2014
Volume XLVII, Issue 3
Cloud Computing: A Disruptive Business Model
Excerpted from InformationWeek Report by Srikanth RP
Bharat Light and Power (BLP), a leading renewable energy producer in India, recently formed a strategic engagement with IBM. The agreement will see BLP use IBM's cloud capabilities to significantly enhance its power generation ability.
In this context, InformationWeek met Balki Iyer, Chief Development Officer, BLP, who shares how the company is using cloud to gain a competitive advantage.
India's energy infrastructure is highly strained, with an ever increasing demand for energy. To sustain its growth trajectory, India needs to meet its energy demands in an environmentally sustainable manner.
This calls for intelligent analysis of data for energy generated from various sources like wind, solar, biomass, and hydro technologies.
As one of the largest clean energy generation companies in India, BLP aims to address the sustainable energy challenge by increasing its renewable energy generation capacity to one gigawatt (GW) over the next few years.
Q: How acute is the problem of power shortage in India?
A: India is a power deficit country, and according to industry estimates, approximately 400 million people in India do not have access to electricity. From a human development index perspective, if the US consumes 30,000 units per person, India consumes 600 units per person. India also has a growing population and a natural resources problem, which makes India a perfect case for clean energy generation.
Q: As a large clean energy generation company in India, what are some of your biggest challenges?
A: As a clean energy company, we focus on wind, solar, biomass and hydro technologies for power generation. For a company like us, our challenges lie in execution and in improving the operational efficiencies of plants in remote locations. If a wind turbine breaks down, then we have to send our field staff to fix it — which is a major issue as most of our wind farms are located in remote regions.
Q: How can IT and more specifically, a technology like cloud computing help?
A: Our partnership with IBM will help us gather valuable insights from the data generated, which will ensure that BLP has an integrated view of its operations and is equipped to take pro-active measures. Using IBM's mobile technology, we will be able to provide all the information, analyzed on the cloud platform, to our ground staff on their handsets and alert them well in advance.
This will enable us to build smarter operations with higher efficiency and greater utilization. IBM will also help us in centrally monitoring and managing BLP's existing and future generation plants as well as store and manage the data on the cloud. This will also help us in being proactive than being reactive. For example, if a gear box is likely to go down, we can predict this incident, months in advance and take appropriate action.
Using analytics, we can also build accurate wind forecasting models and use this analysis for improving our production and overall operational efficiencies. The key is in being able to predict and improve power generation and bring down the percentage of device breakdowns through proactive monitoring. Overtime, we envisage this to be a shared platform, which can be offered as a service to other companies. We believe that cloud computing is a disruptive business model and has the potential to deliver huge transformational benefits for enterprises.
How to Become a Cloud Computing Leader
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Joe McKendrick
Technologists working with cloud need a range of specific skills, from Java or .NET framework to REST API development to knowledge about Amazon Web Services. But businesses are also crying out for people who can take leadership roles in moving operations into the cloud world.
When it comes to leadership, it's the "soft skills" that matter, as cloud often requires the ability to look at the big picture, marshal organizational resources and funds, and sell new ways of doing things to skeptical line of business managers.
Bill Kleyman, writing at Data Center Knowledge, provides several pointers for improving cloud skills:
Think like an architect -- see the big picture. This is important, and it highlights the emerging role of enterprise architecture in cloud computing efforts. But Kleyman suggests that it would be helpful for everyone to be able to see the big picture, especially as it relates to the potential growth of the business. As he put it: "Thinking like an architect forces you to understand the entire problem, everything that it will impact, and how to design an all-encompassing solution."
Learn the language of business. This is something that is said a lot at conferences and in analyst reports. But it's something that's extremely important for cloud leaders. Businesspeople don't care if you're using REST or SOAP-based protocols -- but they care a lot about delivering new business, or getting innovations to market faster. The cloud leader coming from IT will need to understand business, but the cloud leader coming from the business side is going to have to improve his or her tech knowledge as well.
Understand organizational dynamics. Over the years, many of the most well-designed and well-intentioned tech projects fizzled out due to lack of funding and support. The same goes for cloud. Kleyman puts it nicely: "Here's something that needs to be understood immediately: IT is no longer an independent function of the business organization. Rather, modern businesses are actively integrating technology functions directly into their enterprise model. This means more communication, more reliance on the data center, and a lot more demands from the IT department. Business no longer tells IT where to go. Now, IT and technologists have a direct say in the direction that a business must take."
Keep learning new technologies and methodologies. Many of the services available to enterprises today were not even on the radar five years ago.
Think outside the data center box. This goes with learning new things. "Get creative," says Kleyman. "There are so many supportive technologies out there to help optimize your environment. If you're a storage expert, start thinking about data management and optimization. How can you increase density, improve I/O, or decrease space utilization? Here's the challenge: How can I optimize my data center environment while still lowering operational costs? Understanding SDx technologies and the data center virtualization revolution can help you create new types of business strategies. Learn about new supportive technologies which directly optimize core data center functions."
Take advantage of social media. Especially if you want to be heard, and communicate with stakeholders.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 CLOUD COMPUTING EAST (CCE:2014), the upcoming strategic summit for business leaders and software developers in our nation's capital, is shaping up to be a must-attend event.
Plenary sessions will feature principal representatives of such leading organizations as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, and Verizon, providing delegates with a real insider's view of the latest issues in this space from those leading our industry's advancement.
CCE:2014 will focus on the gCLOUD (The Government Cloud) and the hCLOUD (The Healthcare Cloud).
Jointly presented by the DCIA&CCA, CCE:2014 will take place on Thursday and Friday, May 15th-16th, at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC.
This important gathering of thought leaders and first movers will thoroughly examine the current state of adoption and the outstanding challenges affecting two major and increasingly related sectors of the economy, whose principals are currently engaged in migrating to the cloud.
gCLOUD case studies will expose the truth about cloud computing and the public sector. What really happened when a local municipality tried to streamline operations by moving just a few basic functions to the cloud? Why was the FedRAMP experience of one major cloud provider with government bureaucracy such a total shocker?
gCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as ASG Software, Clear Government Solutions, DST, HP, IBM, Ipswich Public Library, NASA, NetApp, The City of New York, QinetiQ-NA, SAP America, Tech Equity, Unitas Global, Verizon, Virtustream, and WSO2.
hCLOUD sessions will range from revelations of the astonishing experience of a medical imaging company new to this arena to a generous sharing of the deep wisdom from a patient-records-storing firm that was doing cloud computing before the name cloud was even coined.
hCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as AVOA, BP LOGIX, BrightLine, Dell, DICOM Grid, Johnson & Johnson, Level 3, MultiPlan, NTP Software, Optum, ServerCentral, SYSNET Intl., and Vizix.
Other featured speakers will include authors, analysts, industry observers, and representatives of such organizations as ActiveState, Aspera, BUMI, CDAS, Edwards Wildman Palmer, Expedient, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Kwaai Oak, M*Modal , Mobily, Numecent. The PADEM Group, Rackspace, SOA Software, Stratus Technologies, Trend Micro, Trilogy Global Advisors, V2Solutions, Veristor, Visionary Integration Professionals, and WikiPay,
The gCLOUD will examine the ways that local, state, and federal governments can improve services and protect citizens with cloud-based tools. It will also address liabilities and challenges that need to concern government agencies regarding cloud-based services, countering NSA-fallout gloom with energized and confident approaches that overcome concerns raised by the Snowden scandal.
The explosion of data, advances in security and reliability, and options for redundant storage; challenges to natural resource management, transportation, and utility grid monitoring; and the impact of cloud services on law enforcement and emergency responsiveness will be featured topics.
The hCLOUD will explore progress being made by the healthcare industry in adopting cloud-based solutions to become more efficient, collaborative, and interactively connected. It will also address legitimate concerns that healthcare organizations must address in implementing cloud-based services.
Managing private patient records; collecting clinical research data; big-data imaging, and remote patient monitoring will be covered.
Speakers will include end-user organizations, public-sector thought-leaders, and private-sector cloud vendors, representatives of hospitals, clinics, multi-physician practices, and healthcare solutions providers, and executives and innovators from the cloud computing industry.
Please contact Don Buford, CEO, or Hank Woji, VP Business Development, at the CCA to learn more about attractive conference exhibition and sponsorship opportunities.
To review conference topics and apply to join the speaking faculty for this event, please click here. If you'd like to speak at this major industry event, please contact me, Marty Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA, at your earliest convenience. Share wisely, and take care.
Governments Reap Cloud Rewards
It's widely accepted that cloud computing is transforming organizations across all industries, and affording businesses that adopt cloud technologies massive savings as well as other benefits. The private sector was first to realize this and capitalize on cloud's numerous benefits, but government entities are also starting to realize how cloud can benefit them.
"Scalable, on-demand cloud computing services can help government entities to focus on mission-critical objectives, while boosting innovation and lowering IT costs," says Richard Vester, Director of Cloud Services at EOH.
"There can be little doubt that the past five years' recession has seen organizations having to tighten their belts, and stretch their budgets further than before. This has affected the way in which their solutions are deployed, and driven the need for optimized business models, and closer scrutiny on performance and delivery. The need to get more for less has boosted the adoption of hosted and shared services in a big way."
Cloud computing provides tremendous benefits in terms of both immediate and long-term cost savings for governments. "Cloud offers services on a 'pay-as-you-go' and 'pay-per-use' model, eliminating the upfront costs associated with buying IT tools, solutions and hardware," explains Vester.
Adoption of cloud can also be extremely beneficial in light of fast growing urbanization. "With more and more of the population living in urban areas, officials in city planning are struggling to keep up with and manage these burgeoning populations. Meeting the needs of a fast-growing population demands careful planning, preparation and distribution of resources. Cloud can be of huge benefit here, as it standardizes and pools technological resources, automating many functions that were traditionally accomplished manually. This frees up time and human resources to boost service delivery across the board."
Moreover, over and above cost containment, he says cloud is allowing governments to be more innovative, to improve flexibility and boost operational efficiencies through the consolidation of their IT. "IT consolidation is helping governments to increase efficiencies and lower the cost of ownership. Through virtualization and cloud adoption, government departments are reducing their server footprint, and consolidating their data centers to lower hardware costs as well as energy consumption, which is a major expense."
According to Vester, governments are also seeing huge savings through shared services. "Sharing IT services not only greatly reduces costs, it improves efficiencies. Solutions such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) include other features such as asset management and monitoring tools, and removing the need for additional services. In addition, the shared, cloud model offers greater flexibility particularly in terms of capacity — where services can be added as needed. In this way, government departments can instantly respond to changing business demands."
He cites another area where governments are reaping cloud benefits as being improved service delivery to citizens. "Most governments offer citizens the ability to access their rates, electricity consumption, vehicle licensing, tax and suchlike online. The cloud model gives citizens greater control, and allows them not only to monitor their use more carefully, but improves citizen awareness."
Finally, he says, cloud goes a long way towards eliminating technological obsolescence. "The shortening upgrade cycles and constant stream of new products, upgrades, hardware and software, is seeing technology becoming obsolete sooner than ever before. Moreover, companies who opt to stick with the same old technology for years, in order to save costs, are at great risk of being left behind. Cloud helps tackle this issue, as the risk is taken from the organization, and put in the hands of the service provider.
Cloud Security Enables New Business Models for Healthcare
Excerpted from Sys-Con Media Report by Gilad Parann-Nissan
Effective cloud security allows businesses to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing while ensuring that data is secure.
Healthcare organizations have many good reasons to use the cloud. Healthcare typically involves masses of data and large amounts of data analysis. The cloud excels at mass storage and at large scale computation. The fit between cloud capabilities and Healthcare needs is striking.
However Healthcare involves very private data. Respect for patient privacy is as old as Hippocrates. Security — and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA/HITECH — have typically delayed usage of the cloud.
Sample cloud use cases for healthcare are emerging.
Many healthcare customers use the cloud for data analysis. This can involve analysis of hospital data to identify trends. A hospital may want to identify wards where certain diseases may be on the verge of spreading, as early as possible. A testing center may wish to mine masses of clinical data for nuggets.
Such large scale analysis is perfect for the cloud. The customer can bring up a hundred servers, crunch the numbers, and then give the servers 'back to the cloud'. The savings are huge, and the customer can also easily choose servers that have the right power for the job. Sometimes you need servers with a lot of data storage, other times high performance computation may be required. The cloud provides both cost savings and flexibility.
Or take the use case of Healthcare Revenue Management. Hospitals and Clinics need to process huge amounts of forms in order to get paid. Typically these forms must be accessed by both the health provider and an insurance company (HMO). Form analysis may require both "character recognition" to decipher hand written forms, and lots of financial support for getting paid. Online solutions are perfect for such applications
But how to manage health data securely?
The benefits should by now be clear. But privacy and HIPAA/HITECH regulations — are a limitation.
Meeting the regulations in the cloud is achievable. It involves going through the same checklists as in any data center. It can be tedious, yet the prize is large.
However one area does require some getting used to. Clouds don't have walls — how does that affect patient privacy?
The solution is to make sure data is encrypted in the cloud, and that the owner of the data maintains ownership of the encryption keys. The technology now exists that allows you to use the cloud and scale with it as much as you need — yet maintain ownership of your data through encryption.
Cloud encryption provides a Safe Harbor.
An added benefit of encryption — with proper key ownership — is Safe Harbor. The HHS has set criteria for Safe Harbor; if you meet them — you may be exempt from the most onerous fines and reporting requirements even if something does go wrong (whether it is data getting lost through an innocent mistake, or more suspect events).
In sum, cloud encryption with proper management of the encryption keys enables new business models for Healthcare. Massive storage and large scale compute now become available for applications ranging from Big Data analysis to Revenue Management.
The post Cloud Security Enables New Business Models for Healthcare appeared first on Porticor Cloud Security.
5 Must-Read Cloud Computing Reports
Excerpted from Silicon Angle Report by Jack Woods
To stay competitive and agile in today's shifting digital landscape, data center architectures are evolving to meet the demands and complexities imposed by increasing business requirements. Gartner, in fact, predicts the importance, role, and function of data centers will change over the next five years, which may leave many organizations wondering how to plan their future data center architectures.
To shed light on the evolving data center, we've compiled a list of five must-read cloud computing reports that cover everything from new technologies to data center strategy and future data center and operational models. Take a look through the following report summaries to better understand the rapidly changing data center environment, as well as some of the industry trends and challenges contributing to this evolution.
Server SAN Market Definition
The largest web-based companies in the world have proven a new model for managing and scaling a combined architecture of compute and storage. The hyperscale companies, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, use a design of local distributed storage. The key differentiation of this new architecture is the ability to be extremely scalable and simple to manage. The advantages of this architecture can also benefit enterprise and service provider customers. Wikibon believes that this new category, which shall be called Server SAN, is an important component of software-led infrastructure. This paper will start the discussion for defining this new category and explaining how it fits into the IT marketplace.
Creating Customer-Centric Data Centers That Are Agile, Efficient, and Secure with IBM's Data Center Services
Data Centers are powering a new and more demanding era of IT built to accommodate organizations' growing reliance on mobile devices and applications, greater use of cloud-based applications, and use of data analytics to transform existing business processes. These data centers should be highly automated and standardized, where applications and data will be deployed and provisioned on systems and in sites based on workload demands.
Pervasive Technology Trends Shaping the Business and the Implications for Your Data Center
This IBM white paper describes the data center implications of cloud computing, mobile technologies, social collaboration, and business analytics. It also introduces you to the predictive tools and techniques that IBM is using to help companies build data center strategies that hold up in the face of such disruptive technologies. For businesses, the stakes couldn't be higher. Those whose data centers can flex and adapt will be in the best position to act and to capitalize on emerging technology trends and the leadership opportunities they bring.
Data Center Knowledge Guide to Modular Data Centers
The data center infrastructure has evolved far beyond a centralized solution. Now, with cloud computing, more data demands, and distributed environments—there is a greater than ever need for agility. In creating a more flexible data center solution, organizations are seeing the direct benefits in working with modular designs. A modular data center is an approach that implies a prefabricated module or a method for delivering data center infrastructure in a modular fashion. A modular solution takes the best ideas for design, reliability and efficiency and packages everything into a prefabricated, repeatable and operationally optimized module. Now data centers can grow and expand while using efficient modular technologies.
The State of Data Center Evolution
Most IT executives say that some of their organizations' data centers will max out of power, cooling, or space by the end of 2014, according to new research from UBM Tech and InformationWeek Marketing Services. This study, conducted in April 2013, takes an in-depth look at how IT decision makers rate the challenges they face as they evolve data centers to handle fast-growing volumes of data.
The rapidly changing data center environment is forcing architectures to evolve to address industry trends such as virtualization, power and cooling, server density, and more. What's missing from our list of cloud computing reports discussing the future of the data center? What would you add to yours?
Why Data-as-a-Service Has Taken Off
Excerpted from InfoWorld Report by David Linthicum
The primary drivers for moving data into private, public, or hybrid clouds are the efficiency and capabilities that clouds can bring. Enterprises have never seen such efficiencies and capabilities in traditional database technologies, including those from Oracle and IBM.
What databases in the public cloud offer is hugely compelling: Elastic scalability, universal network accessibility, integration with mobile platforms, pay-per-use efficiencies, avoidance of capital costs, and the ability to work with widely scattered structured and unstructured data (that is, big data).
As a result, there's been a massive migration to cloud-based databases, aka data-as-a-service -- one that seems to have escaped notice perhaps because it seems such an obvious step to take. The cloud is just too cheap, too fast, and too compelling. We'll see this massive migration continue this year as well.
Two recent developments are accelerating this growth:
1) Many startup database technology vendors are providing single-purpose databases. They do one or two things really well, such as transaction processing or analytics. Typically, these startups have a data-as-a-service offering, in addition to an on-premises version, that makes it easier and cheaper to try it out -- and to keep using it once proven.
2) Most enterprises are moving to the use of complex database tools, whether the databases reside on site or in the cloud. The data-as-a-service option lets them both test these out more easily and avoid the upfront capital costs and deployment effort, a fundamental advantage of any cloud service.
The key initial driver is the move to single-purpose databases. Their use in the public cloud is largely driven by small, tactical enterprise IT projects that end up using database-as-a-service providers out of sheer need for the technology, as well as limited budgets. Because these databases are single-purpose, it's easier for IT to address security and compliance issues related to cloud deployment, because the footprint of the effort is both smaller and clearly delineated.
Cloud-based database vendors are regularly adding features, decreasing costs, and becoming better at handling prime-time business. Even with the almost knee-jerk concerns around security and compliance at many IT organizations when it comes to the public cloud, soon it will be difficult to avoid the advantages offered by databases in public clouds. Already, the Oracles and IBMs are no longer the first place you seek to do a new database effort in.
Cloud-based databases are here -- and here to stay.
Telefonica Expands through the Cloud
Excerpted from Tech Page One Report by Kathy Mahady
Keeping pace with new technologies is one of the most important things for leading telecommunication companies. Telefonica Digital, part of Telefonica , is doing just that with the company's Instant Servers public-cloud service. Already Telefonica Digital has regional hubs in Silicon Valley, Sao Paulo, Spain, London and Israel. And the company is currently developing services in sectors such as financial services, e-health and cloud computing. I had the pleasure of talking to Juan Antonio Sanchez Canibano, head of Cloud Information Communications Technology (ICT) Strategy.
What are business customers looking for in a public-cloud service?
When customers look at the public cloud, they look for computing resources, including storage and network, which come as a self-service in a highly-automated way, on-demand and in near-real-time. They require a low latency and easily scalable cloud services platform with quick response times, enabling them to rapidly respond to their own needs but also customers' expectations. With our Instant Servers service, customers make significant cost savings because they pay only for the cloud services they require and the amount of time they use them.
How did you choose the right IT partner to help you launch the Instant Servers service? What was important to you when launching the Instant Servers?
It was important to find the right IT partner because we looked to do many things. We wanted to create a cloud service that delivered high-performance virtual servers, optimized for mobile, enterprise, machine to machine and big-data services. It is part of Telefonica 's global ICT strategy to provide a complete portfolio of services to meet the needs of business customers. With this in mind, we chose Dell as a partner. It was clear the company could deliver a full range of solutions to support the Instant Servers service. With Dell, it was like, "You want to use Joyent software, that's great; let's get to work." We really liked the openness and expertise in delivering end-to-end solutions.
Time to market seems crucial in the public-cloud space. How did you manage to launch the service in such a short time?
The market is moving extremely fast, and we were able to launch our public cloud in just five weeks by working with Dell. Our success at Telefonica has been built on an ability to react quickly to new opportunities. We are very customer focused and look to add value to our existing portfolio whenever possible. Instant Servers demonstrates a commitment to continued development and it forms a key part of Telefonica 's transformation to an agile digital telco.
What benefits is the Instant Servers service bringing to your customers?
This case study and video will highlight the benefits to our customers in detail. Among the benefits most mentioned and valued by our customers are: a robust, highly scalable service with very high performance; a solution allowing quick and inexpensive proof of concepts for new services and applications, as well as reducing time to market from months to days for new services in production; and paying on a usage-only basis and responding instantaneously to peaks in demand without needing to invest in peak capacity.
Huawei Unveils Cloud Edge Solution
Excerpted from Voice & Data Report
Huawei has launched a Cloud Edge solution for implementing Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) capabilities on mobile broadband (MBB) networks.
Cloud Edge builds on Huawei's industry-leading SingleEPC solution for convergent Evolved Packet Core (EPC) operations, and encompasses capabilities for virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), virtualized Multi-Service Engine (vMSE), and Cloud Management and Orchestration (MANO).
"Cloud Edge employs a cloud-oriented MBB network architecture to achieve automation of whole-network management," the company mentioned in its statement.
It is a part of Huawei's SoftCOM roadmap for introducing advances in cloud, NFV, and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies into the global telecom market over the next 10 years," it said.
During the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2014, Huawei in partnership with leading operators will introduce further information about Cloud Edge's capabilities for agile mobile telecom operations that are helping Huawei and its customer build a better connected world.
Re-Engineering IaaS: The New Verizon Cloud
Since the inception of cloud computing, infrastructure as a service, or IaaS, has been positioned as a low-cost, utilitarian approach to obtaining computing resources, on demand. The benefits seemed clear and simple: pay only for the resources used; no need for extravagant capital outlay; and purchase more resources as consumption dictates.
Though the lure of the cloud sounds appealing to many enterprises, and most agree that it will be a part of their future IT plans, only 14 percent of US businesses currently reaps the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), according to the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Cloud User Survey. Providers in the cloud space are caught in a living hamster wheel in which they chase an elusive cloud service that will accelerate enterprise adoption beyond the small percentage that has deployed IaaS to date.
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, has dominated the IaaS market from the outset; at present it earns just under 67 percent of the total IaaS US market revenues. Verizon Terremark, the third-ranked IaaS provider, has been trailing AWS and second-ranked Rackspace since its acquisition of Terremark in 2011.
But recently, Verizon Terremark launched a new cloud architecture that solves some of the scaling and reliability issues inherent in other IaaS platforms. Poised to challenge market leader AWS, the new Verizon Cloud is a public cloud that has the potential to deliver on the promise of the cloud in a way that can attract skeptical enterprises, and take on market leader AWS, thus growing overall cloud adoption.
In this SPIE, Stratecast examines Verizon Terremark's new cloud offering, and evaluates how it stacks up in the market.
Growth in the IaaS Market
The US IaaS market reached $3 billion in revenues in 2012, according to Frost & Sullivan research, signaling an increase in acceptance of a hosted, on-demand model for IT service delivery. The cloud has finally pushed past the early adopter phase, and is entering a period of early growth. Though businesses still have trepidation about deploying a cloud model as their prime IT environment, many are trying IaaS for specific workloads, and adding new workloads to their cloud environment.
Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS), the earliest form of cloud computing, continues to grow steadily among enterprise users; while Storage as a Service gains exponential growth, thanks in part to the Big Data craze, and the desire—or need, for compliance reasons—of many organizations to retain more data for longer periods of time.
Cloud Infrastructure Marketplace: Chasing the Leader
When acquiring Terremark, in 2011, Verizon cited the ability to accelerate its "as a service" strategy, and put the company on a path to leadership in the cloud. Though it was the target of acquisition, the Terremark brand—appended with "a Verizon company"— was retained on most legacy data center and cloud services; and existing Verizon hosting and cloud services were migrated to the Terremark infrastructure. Because Terremark was known as a flexible, agile IT service company at the time of acquisition, the brand was retained in order to leverage this brand perception. As a result, the Verizon brand continued to be known primarily as a network provider; services like cloud computing were tertiary to its core network expertise.
Today, nearly three years after the completion of the acquisition, Verizon has captured approximately 5 percent of the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, making it the third largest provider in the US IaaS market.
The market is poised for growth in future years. Revenues are expected to grow by more than 60 percent CAGR; and, although only 14 percent of enterprises are using IaaS today, 81 percent state that they are planning to deploy cloud in their future. With such great potential for growth, providers will seek a leadership position, though not necessarily on AWS' terms. Serving enterprise needs will be paramount, but pinpointing those needs has proven difficult. As such, providers continue to re-tool their strategies and platforms to jockey for competitive position. Consider the recent acquisition of SoftLayer by IBM, or the partnerships AT&T has announced with CSC and others to help strengthen its own presence in the cloud market. Verizon's re-engineering of its cloud service is another example of a provider seeking to fulfill enterprise IT needs.
The New Verizon Cloud Architecture
On October 3, 2013, Verizon Terremark announced the launch of its new cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform, which strives to deliver a service that is poised to both increase the adoption of enterprise cloud and challenge market leaders with a new type of public cloud. Verizon's new approach to the cloud appears to come from the perspective of the enterprise, which has very specific requirements. Consumption-based pricing works well with dynamic workloads like testing and development, but is not ideal for enterprise business workloads, which require application reliability, network bandwidth scaled to application usage, security, and compliance with corporate regulations.
VMware Joins Mobile Cloud Forces with Google
Excerpted from Gadget Report
VMware is joining forces with Google to modernize corporate desktops for the Mobile Cloud Era by providing businesses with secure, cloud access to Windows applications, data and Desktops on Google Chromebooks.
This expanded relationship between Google and VMware enables enterprise customers to achieve greater security and lower Total Cost of Ownership of Google Chromebooks along with cloud access to current and legacy applications, delivered on the industry proven Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platform from VMware.
"Google Chromebooks can save businesses about $5,000 per computer when compared to traditional PCs," said Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise. "Chromebooks are designed for the way people use computers today and are a secure, easy and cost-effective solution to help organizations embrace a new way of doing business. Through our partnership with VMware, businesses can now capitalize on these advantages with access to legacy applications, data and desktops they need to keep employees productive."
"VMware's End-User Computing mission is to radically simplify IT and enable customers to run any application, anywhere, any place, and any time, so they can work at the speed of life," said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. "We are pleased to expand our partnership with Google and offer customers added choice for their corporate desktop environments with two of the technology industry's strongest brands behind them. VMware DaaS and desktop virtualization will enable Windows-based applications and desktops to run on Google Chromebooks, delivering on the promise of the Mobile-Cloud Era without compromise."
Initially available to customers as an on-premise service, the joint solution is expected to be delivered as a fully managed, subscription DaaS offering by VMware and other vCloud Service Provider Partners, in the cloud or within hybrid deployments. Users will be able to access their Windows applications, data and desktops using VMware's Blast HTML5 technology from a Web-based application catalogue on their Chromebook. In addition, VMware Horizon DaaS will provide enterprises with a choice between a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or Remote Desktop Services (RDS) connection.
Chromebooks and DaaS: An Opportunity to Help Redefine Corporate Desktops
Recent forecasts from Gartner predict PC shipments are forecast to decline 15 percent this year from 2012 levels, while ultramobile devices are forecast to increase nearly 407 percent in the same time period.
With today's announcement service providers, systems integrators, resellers and channel partners looking to take advantage of the growing demand for ultramobile devices such as Google Chromebook, now have an enterprise-ready solution to bring to their customers that can help redefine the corporate desktop.
"The partnership between Google and VMware offers an unparalleled value proposition that will enable Softbank to cost-effectively offer DaaS to customers who want to modernize their desktop infrastructure without disruption to their business," said Ken Miyauchi, representative director, senior executive vice president, SoftBank Corp. "This evolution of traditional enterprise desktops to cloud connected Chromebooks brings a lot of benefits to both IT organizations and the users they support, with greater access and mobility being the most in-demand."
"Google Chromebooks offer customers a more cost-effective solution than traditional desktops or laptops, and provide the mobility coveted by today's enterprise users," said Sumeet Sabharwal, General Manager of NaviSite, a Time Warner Cable Company and Premier Level VSPP partner. "When combined with VMware DaaS, Chromebooks can become powerful business tools for companies that want to move to the cloud but are heavily invested in Windows environments. With our comprehensive suite of DaaS offerings, NaviSite is enabling seamless and ubiquitous access for the enterprise community."
Availability
Available now to VMware Horizon View 5.3 and Google Chromebook customers as an on-premise service, the joint solution is also expected to be delivered as a fully managed, subscription.
How Rackspace Plans to Win the Cloud War
Excerpted from Daily Finance Report by Adrian Campos
In the last month, shares of Rackspace Hosting have underperformed against other cloud-computing peers. The company took a beating after the news of the departure of co-founder and CEO Lanham Napier.
Napier, who joined Rackspace in 2000, took the company's top line from $1.5 million to $1.5 billion in 2013. Under his leadership, the company became a global leader in offering hosting services, from managed servers to hybrid cloud, with hundreds of thousands of customers using Rackspace for their IT needs. However, the company now appears to be caught in the middle of a fierce fight for the promising cloud market, where giants such as Amazon.com and Google continue investing heavily in technology to capture market share. In this difficult environment, how does Rackspace plan to continue increasing its top line?
The Cloud War
The company's biggest problem appears to be how it will fend off an increasing number of larger players competing for cloud customers. Amazon, which has more than 70 job openings in sales related to Amazon Web Services, is a strong competitor in the cloud-computing business. Its cloud-based hosting platform has become an indispensable tool for start-ups, thanks to Amazon's policy of giving one-year free trials to software developers. Google, which released its cloud platform early in 2013, is another must-watch. As the owner of the most popular search engine, the Internet giant's experience in mass infrastructure is unique.
A Differentiated Service
In a difficult business environment, the key to succeed relies in building strong competitive advantages. Rackspace is doing this by focusing on providing a differentiated hosting service and investing heavily in technology. For example, the company is actively supporting the development of OpenStack, one of the largest open, cloud-based systems for infrastructure as a service.
OpenStack
OpenStack is a free, open-source software that consists of a series of interrelated projects that control processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, which can be managed through a convenient web-based dashboard.
Because OpenStack is free, open, and scalable, it has become quite popular within the cloud world. It can be used by both small and large organizations who are willing to reduce the risks of lock-in, usually associated with proprietary cloud platforms. As a result, OpenStack is used by several tech giants, including Dell, IBM, and Red Hat. Because Rackspace's private and public cloud software is powered by OpenStack, the company can offer customers a truly open platform, fast resolution times, and the possibility of installing a private cloud in less than an hour.
Note that Rackspace's emphasis on open technology has allowed the company to improve its top line, despite fierce competition from tech giants. In the latest quarter, revenue came in 15.6% higher than the year-ago period, reaching $408.1 million, and helping Rackspace to beat the Street consensus.
That being said, because Rackspace is relying on aggressive pricing models and heavy technology investments to increase the popularity of OpenStack, net income was down in 2013. Therefore, although Rackspace's public cloud-computing revenue increased significantly last year, the company also reported an $86.7 million net profit, well below the $105.4 million net profit achieved in 2012.
Final Takeaway
The cloud industry is well-known for being highly competitive. However, Rackspace is improving its top line by offering cloud services based on a truly open software system, which allows companies to move their applications freely between providers. By doing this, Rackspace wants to become a sort of insurance against vendor lock-ins. Although shares took a strong beating after the departure of Napier was announced, Rackspace's cloud strategy seems to be working just fine, as the company continues increasing revenue despite facing a fierce business environment.
The Internet of Things Means Business
Excerpted from Baseline Report by Samuel Greengard
One of the remarkable yet sobering realities of business is how quickly the world has become networked—and interconnected. Over the last decade, wireless technologies have extended the reach of computers to almost every corner of the planet and have left no enterprise untouched. A spate of machines—including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones—makes data available and accessible in real time.
As people and computers become inextricably linked through these technologies, the next phase of computing is already taking shape: connected objects that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT). Increasingly sophisticated devices and apps — along with sensors embedded into everything from ordinary household objects to industrial machinery — are enabling businesses, government agencies and other institutions to collect information and act on it in ways that promises to redefine technology and business.
"We are witnessing a very fast transition to embedded intelligence in all sorts of items," explains Chris Curran, chief technologist at consulting firm PwC. "The ability to extract data from a wide array of objects and devices helps businesses analyze things and gain far better insights. Instead of making educated guesses, it's possible to tap into data and analytics in order to understand patterns, trends and behavior in a more thorough and comprehensive way."
The Internet of things (also called the Internet of everything and, in the business world, the Industrial Internet) is expanding at a rapid clip. Cisco Systems predicts that the number of Internet-connected devices will reach 25 billion by 2015 and top 50 billion by 2020. The firm also forecasts that 99 percent of physical objects will eventually become part of a network through technologies such as cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC).
Almost anything and everything—from trees, milk cartons and medical equipment to roads, bridges, vehicles and power generators—can be equipped with sensors that collect and transmit data about consumption, usage patterns, location and more. The IoT beckons with the promise of helping manufacturers, health care providers, the military, retailers and others better track equipment, supplies and people; ratchet up marketing; understand behavior; build smarter vehicles; detect machine failures and, quite simply, understand the world in ways that weren't possible only a few years ago.
"What's special about connected devices is that they can continuously report about usage, operating behavior, conditions and other information," says Vijitha Kaduwela, founder and CEO of consulting firm Kavi Associates. "They generate a lot of data that can be analyzed and acted upon."
He points out that there are a huge number of potential sources of data and enormous diversity in the type of data that organizations can collect. "In terms of business value, this data is very complimentary to the data generated by operations, sales, marketing, finance and other departments in the enterprise," Kaduwela explains.
Embracing the Opportunities
Businesses are beginning to spot the opportunities offered by the IoT. For example, Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods, a Honolulu-based lumber investment and ecotourism firm that grows Koa hardwood trees, has planted more than 225,000 trees over the last four years. It allows 25 percent of the trees to be harvested and protects the remaining 75 percent through a permanent reforestation program.
The organization maintains a database that contains detailed information about each tree. In order to track its inventory, the firm has tagged every tree with passive RFID tags that contain GPS coordinates, information about seed stock and fertilization schedules. "We can keep track of pretty much any event involving the tree," says CIO William Gilliam. "We simply scan it, record it and log it."
Another organization that has embraced the Internet of things is Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). The Portland, Ore.-based health and research institution tags assets ranging from infusion pumps to crutches so they can be easily located. Using passive RFID and WiFi, its nurses, physical therapists and technicians can see exactly where an item is at any given moment.
"The system helps us manage the flow of devices," says Dennis Minsent, director of clinical technology. Later this year, OHSU plans to tag patients and clinicians to better understand where they spend time, how they move around within the facility and how long patients wait in a room before a clinician arrives. "It will provide insights into how we can operate more efficiently," he explains.
PwC's Curran says that the IoT creates entirely new capabilities for businesses, opening the door to new types of products and services that extend throughout the supply chain and out to customers. "The technology has the potential to create far more active and engaged relationships," he adds. "It offers enormous possibilities revolving around big data and analytics."
In fact, by plugging in data from other sources—including social media and crowdsourcing—it's possible to create a much deeper and broader view of fast-changing events, conditions and behaviors.
Kavi's Kaduwela says that machine-generated data currently accounts for about 15 percent of the overall data organizations hold, and he expects the figure to rise to around 50 percent within the next decade. The value proposition for the industrial Internet already exists, he says. Optimizing and streamlining operations—even by a percent or two—can result in substantial gains.
The key to success is by effectively integrating and managing the data and developing the right analytical solutions. Kaduwela believes that, for now, the value proposition is much stronger in the industrial space than it is in the consumer space.
However, the IoT also creates new security and privacy risks that organizations cannot ignore, notes Robert Stroud, chair of the ISO liaison subcommittee for the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). "Information could be aggregated or shared in a way that a person or an organization isn't aware of—or in a way they don't approve," he says.
Part of the problem, Stroud notes, is that many connection points and vulnerabilities are not well-tested or understood. "A failure could lead to unintended implications and serious consequences," he explains, "so there needs to be an understanding of how to mitigate risks and secure the data." Already, hackers have demonstrated that it's possible to breach automobiles, baby monitors and medical devices.
PwC's Curran says that, in the end, it's crucial to formulate a strategy for the industrial Internet and IoT. It's important to begin thinking about how to connect devices or sell products that fit into a larger ecosystem of intelligent devices. This means identifying opportunities and problems that connected technologies can solve and understanding how they can provide deeper insights into a business, including customer touch points.
"It's important to begin building prototypes, testing and piloting systems, and learning how to harness the technology," Curran concludes. "The Internet of things will play a major role in the future of business."
Coming Events of Interest
1st International Conference on Intelligent Cloud Computing 2014 (ICC 2014) — February 24th-25th in Oman, Jordan. The objective of the conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners and developers working with cloud systems and intelligent systems. A variety of intelligent mechanisms and techniques will be presented that may be used to develop advanced cloud systems, solutions, and services that offer new functionalities.
Interop Las Vegas — March 31st to April 4th in Las Vegas, NV. The leading independent technology conference and expo series designed to inspire and inform the world's IT community. New in 2014: Cloud Connect Summit and the InformationWeek Conference.
CLOSER 2014 — April 3rd-5th in Barcelona, Spain. The Fourth International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2014) sets out to explore the emerging area of cloud computing, inspired by recent advances in network technologies.
NAB Show — April 5th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. From broadcasting to broader-casting, NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. From creation to consumption, NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence — helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
Media Management in the Cloud — April 8th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. This two-day conference provides a senior management overview of how cloud-based solutions positively impact each stage of the content distribution chain, including production, delivery, and storage.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2014 — May 13th-14th in Washington, DC. Three major conference tracks will zero in on the latest advances in the application of cloud-based solutions in three key economic sectors: government, healthcare, and financial services.
International Conference on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems — September 22nd in Calabria, Italy. IDCS 2014 conference is the sixth in its series to promote research in diverse fields related to Internet and distributed computing systems. The emergence of web as a ubiquitous platform for innovations has laid the foundation for the rapid growth of the Internet.
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