Seemingly every tech vendor seems to have a cloud strategy, with new products and services dubbed “cloud” coming out every week. But who are the real market leaders in this business? Gartner’s IaaS Magic Quadrant: a who’s who of cloud market article shows Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for IaaS. Research firm Gartner’s answer lies in its Magic Quadrant report for the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market.
It is interesting that missing from this quadrant figure are big-name companies that have invested a lot in the cloud, including Microsoft, HP, IBM and Google. The reason is that report only includes providers that had IaaS clouds in general availability as of June 2012 (Microsoft, HP and Google had clouds in beta at the time).
Gartner reinforces what many in the cloud industry believe: Amazon Web Services is the 800-pound gorilla. Gartner has also found one big minus on Amazon Web Services: AWS has a “weak, narrowly defined” service-level agreement (SLA), which requires customers to spread workloads across multiple availability zones. AWS was not the only provider where there was something negative to say on the service-level agreement (SLA) details.
Read the whole Gartner’s IaaS Magic Quadrant: a who’s who of cloud market article to see the Gartner’s view on clould market today.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Information Management Executives worry: the cloud problems eating money
IT Services does not take cloud services without reservation – especially the hidden charges is frightening.
Compuware survey showed that 79 percent of IT executives mourn the cloud problems resulting from the use of monetary expenditure.
According to management, the biggest drawback of the software operational problems due to poor user experience.
In addition, poor usability can cause a blow brand and customer loyalty.
Also, the availability of the cloud, the operation and management of the damage caused by a loss of income.
“Surprisingly, many companies do not foresee any problems, but the fire to put it out as and when they are up,” said Compuware Vice President Petri Ahveninen the company’s release.
According to the survey, almost three in four companies use cloud applications, monitoring operations and the management of obsolete ways.
“The most common applications are monitored only the availability and uptime of the more important would be to get information about the end-user experience of the response time, the rendering of the page, and on the interaction of the time,” says Compuware.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/tietohallintojohtajat+murehtivat+pilviongelmat+syovat+rahaa/a922712
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud market revenue to reach $20bn in three years
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/3217/cloud-market-revenue-to-reach-20bn-in-three-years
Revenue generated from cloud computing could reach almost $20 billion (£12.75 billion) by the end of 2016, according to a projection by Market Monitor, a division of analyst house 451 Research.
That’s according to the company’s Cloud as-a-Service overview report, which forecasts the revenue generated by 309 cloud services providers and technology vendors across 14 sectors.
It suggests cloud market revenue will increase at 30 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next three years, bringing it close to the $20 billion mark.
The research has also shown that Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) accounted for the majority of the total market revenue in 2012 and Market Monitor predicts a 37 per cent CAGR for it between now and the end of 2016.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) made up 24 per cent of total 2012 cloud revenue and, according to the organisation, is expected to experience the fastest growth at 41 per cent CAGR to 2016.
Tomi says:
Microsoft takes second run at platform cloud
Windows Server 2012 R2 tries to rehabilitate PaaS tech
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/30/microsoft_paas_windows_azure/
Microsoft is taking a second run at platform-as-a-service clouds with a set of features to be included in Windows Server 2012 R2 that may give Redmond some credible tech to take on a field flush with rivals.
When Windows Azure launched in 2009 many media and analyst reports (El Reg excluded) thought the future for platform-as-a-service seem bright: money would be made, Microsoft would make a smooth transition into the heavens where it would rain Bezos’s infrastructure-as-a-service Amazon Web Services cloud out of existence and, once again, Ballmer would be the king of software.
It didn’t pan out that way.
Something about the proprietary nature of platform-as-a-service seemed to unnerve developers, with few choosing the technology over more modifiable, component based IaaS clouds, like AWS.
Both Windows Azure and Google’s App Engine floundered, with neither service drawing enough devotees to quell the rise of Amazon. Years later, the two tech titans flip-flopped on their PaaS-first attitude and came out with infrastructure-as-a-service clouds (Azure and Google Compute Engine).
Now, Microsoft is putting the PaaS credentials back into Azure with a renewed focus on the technology as it boosts the cloud tech of the 2012 R2 version of Windows Server via the “Windows Azure Pack”.
New features include 64-bit worker processes for developers that need a huge memory footprint for their applications, IPv6 support for both HTTP and encrypted HTTP traffic, and native WebSocket Protocol Support.
By implementing WebSocket Protocol Support, Microsoft says developers will be able to build applications around apps that push data out to devices automatically (“push” models) rather than apps that instead phone-home occasionally (“pull” models).
Tomi says:
Snowden is great news for hybrid cloud says VMware
Customers don’t want no steeenking NSA sniffing their data
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/27/vmware_says_snowdens_great_news_for_hybrid_cloud_business/
VMworld 2013 Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of the online snoopery in the US are good for business, say VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and COO Carl Eschenbach.
Speaking today at VMWorld 2013 the, pair were asked if Snowden’s leaks are changing customers’ attitudes to public clouds. Both answered in the affirmative.
“We have clearly seen sensitivity has increased since Snowden’s disclosure,” Gelsinger said, adding that he’s now feeling a bit smug about VMware’s plan to offer hybrid cloud services deeply integrated with on-premises IT, an arrangement under which users can keep confidential data in their own data centres.
“This re-enforces that our strategy is the right one,” he said. The strategy is playing particularly well outside the USA. “As we go to foreign countries it is critical infrastructure be on their soil,” he said.
Eschenbach concurred, saying “the US government is validation that users will leverage hybrid clouds. It is not if but when people take advantage of hybrid cloud.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft to Build $250 Million Data Center in Finland
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/09/03/microsoft-to-build-250-million-data-center-in-finland/
Accelerating its global data center expansion, Microsoft will build a $250 million data center in Finland, the company said today. The investment was announced alongside a larger deal in which Microsoft will pay $7 billion to acquire Nokia’s devices business.
The data center in Finland continue a massive expansion of Microsoft’s Internet infrastructure to support growth in its Azure cloud services and Xbox Live gaming service. It also reflects Microsoft’s growing focus on its international infrastructure. The company recently said it would construct data centers in Singapore and Australia to boost its footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. Microsoft has been gradually expanding its primary European data center hub in Dublin, Ireland.
The announcement is another big win for the booming Nordic data center scene. Google has already built a huge data center in a former paper mill in Hamina, Finland, while Facebook just opened a huge server farm in Lulea, Sweden.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free space equipped with race pace with cloud services
Recording of data is shifting more and more from their own computers with Internet services. Users are lured to an increasingly larger amounts of free storage space. The race has moved hundreds of megabytes in the category of terabytes in the world.
Data volumes have increased since then, but in recent years the growth rate has been peaceful.
Now, the Chinese web services seem to follow Google’s early model. However, the change gigabytes terabytes.
Such a storage space for the user is required a little effort. The Next Web publication, services, registration is complicated. In addition, Baidu will charge the storage space of about ten euro cents registration fee, and requires the user to join its payment system. Thereafter, the user may, however, a terabyte of free storage space.
The huge storage of free provision of facilities it is possible to measure because of their actual availability is low. This is due to online connections speeds.
Many have access to tens or even hundreds of megabits per second speeds have access to broadband connections. Usually the return channel to the Internet, however, a speed of a few megabits per second.
Such speeds of terabytes storage facilities may not be fully rational. Discussions have found many online backup services to users. Computer tens of gigabytes to be secured file transfer web service can easily take weeks or months. Net-sized storage services on a realistic alternative only when the broadband return channel speed increases by tens of megabits category.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/ilmaisen_tilan_varustelukisa_vauhdissa_pilvipalveluissa
Tomi says:
Oracle spins-up public sector ‘Cloud’
Follows in Amazon’s footsteps to claim Uncle Sam’s dosh
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/06/oracle_government_cloud_service/
Oracle has fired up its big red branding machine and coated some of its software-as-a-service products with a cloud label as it tries to create a suite of tech for public-sector organizations.
Just as Amazon, Dell, and others have forged their own dedicated cloud services for the US public sector, so too has Oracle.
But there’s a twist – Oracle’s “Public Sector Cloud” bares little resemblance to a cloud, as at launch the service contains some software-as-a-service technology, and no infrastructure or platform components.
The software will be served from “Oracle-owned infrastructure in co-located data centers,” an Oracle spokesperson confirmed. “No parts of the Oracle Government Cloud announced this week are on customer premises.”
However, Oracle has not yet been granted a critical Federal cloud security certification known as FedRAMP. Current holders of this crucial stamp of legitimacy include Akamai, AT&T, Amazon Web Services, Autonomic Resources, CGI Federal, HP, Lockheed Martin,and the US Department of Agriculture, according to the US General Services Administration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AppDirect raises $9M, acquires Standing Cloud to help businesses adopt a hybrid network in the NSA’s wake
http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/10/appdirect-raises-9m-acquires-standing-cloud-to-help-businesses-adopt-a-hybrid-network-in-the-nsas-wake/
The revelations have led to questions concerning the safety of many US-based technology services, with some suggesting that consumers should boycott or avoid companies based in the country, whether they’ve been implicated in the leaks or not. (Many companies are unable to reveal government requests.)
The acquisition will allow AppDirect to better serve businesses seeking to use a privately-hosted cloud infrastructure instead of relying on public clouds. Daniel Saks, the company’s chief executive, says that this capability will become increasingly important as businesses adopt hybrid infrastructures which rely on both privately-and publicly-hosted networks.
“People are certainly more afraid of the cloud for certain things but are embracing it for others,” Saks says. “Our response to that is, let’s give customers options.”
US-based cloud networks have advantages over private networks, Saks says — namely that they can be more reliable and easier to scale. Privately-hosted networks, meanwhile, are often seen as more secure and less likely to be tampered with by the US government. Hybrid solutions are meant to offer the best of both set-ups.
“Businesses need to make the choice that their data is confidential and that it needs added security,” Saks says. They can use a private network to host that data, he says; for other information and services they can use public networks.
That approach is riddled with potentially — or perhaps probably — faulty assumptions, of course. Most of us are unaware of the NSA and other government agencies’ ability to gather information from anything connected to the Internet, whether it’s a smartphone or a privately-hosted network.
Relying on a private network to keep data secure is like hoping that encryption will protect your communications or that a blanket will ward off nightmarish creatures in the middle of the night: it might make some businesses and citizens feel better, but it’s unlikely to make much of a difference in practice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Cloud Era Begins for Enterprise Tech
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/the-cloud-era-begins-for-enterprise-tech/?_r=1
Let’s say it: Last summer was the beginning of the end for the old guard in what is still the biggest part of technology – business spending on everything from servers to software. This fall begins a new competition for the hearts and minds of corporate customers.
Consider a few of summer’s events. Dell started to go private in the face of eroding personal computer demand. Hewlett-Packard once again announced lower revenue, and had more executive reshuffles. Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, resigned, then in the last big weekend of summer bought the handset business of a deeply weakened Nokia.
That last step, an effort to build up mobility, is at the heart of Microsoft’s efforts to be relevant in a new world of cloud computing, smartphones and tablets. So was VMware’s announcement that it is building out its cloud business and changing its sales strategy globally.
The world now passing away consisted of business systems dominated by computer servers and personal computers. The new one subsumes these into cloud computing and devices like smartphones and tablets. The inability of companies like Microsoft and Dell to cope quickly enough with this change led to their current problems. The steady, thorough way that companies like Amazon and Salesforce have used the new technology to go after their elders’ business is what makes them contenders.
Other challengers include Google, Workday and NetSuite. There are many more, but these companies in particular have both the assets and the money to build comprehensive offerings in software and services, and also to afford something like service guarantees in what many see as a still-unstable and security-challenged world.
Big data is being sold as a way to build efficiency and gain insights. But for many of these companies, offering big data services is also a way to consolidate data for customers. If you control information, you are almost by default the trusted partner, or what is known in the business as “the single throat to choke if something goes wrong.” Jobs like that pay a premium.
Some of these older enterprise tech companies, which also include Cisco and Oracle, will make the transition, just as incumbents like I.B.M. made it from mainframe computers to servers and PC’s. Oracle’s approach is to offer a complete system, making it a single throat to choke. I.B.M. already seems to be working both camps in the new world, offering its own systems and consulting with the new players. But just as surely as all of them, in their time, supplanted big incumbents, there will be other companies coming along to topple them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Centers is intense race between the two countries
Finland competes with data centers in Sweden in particular, where community service was opened in the summer on a data center. Norway has also more strongly in the race.
Investment in Finland attractive to Invest in Finland in the organization, it is believed that the government’s planned electricity tax reduction is an important factor in obtaining new data center in Finland.
- The biggest Finnish-looking in the direction of a group of U.S. companies. When the company expand its market, the next step is usually to enter the European continent. They consider the whole, says the investment unit of drive Timo Antikainen.
IT giant Microsoft announced last week that the Nokia acquisition will establish a new data center in Finland.
Source: http://www.iltalehti.fi/talous/2013091217478802_ta.shtml
Tomi Engdahl says:
CloudFlare CEO: ‘Insane’ NSA gag order is costing U.S. tech firms customers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/12/cloudflare-ceo-says-insane-nsa-gag-order-is-costing-u-s-tech-firms-customers/
We’ve now moved beyond mere talk about how the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs may hurt U.S. cloud providers, says Matthew Prince, the chief executive of CloudFlare. The companies are already feeling the pain.
CloudFlare, a Web site security firm and network provider with clients that run the gamut from WikiLeaks to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is getting 50 to 100 calls per day from customers demanding more answers about the firm’s involvement with the U.S. National Security Agency, Prince says.
But that’s information the company can’t give out, he explains, and the inability to say anything about government requests is seriously hurting his business.
“We get calls regularly that say, ‘CloudFlare must be working with the NSA,’ which we’re not,” Prince said. “We’ve gone so far as to litigate requests that did not meet with our processes, but I can’t tell you anything beyond that, which is insane.”
“The fundamental thing here is trust. We’re in the trust business. These programs threaten that trust,” Prince said. “We’ve lost customers as a result of this and will continue to lose customers as a result of this.”
Prince said the tech community is as much to blame as Washington for these types of problems. The two often have conflicting goals, with tech working to flow around barriers, and law aiming to build them up, he said.
Without more leeway from the government, Prince said, tech companies will have to come up with their own solutions that could cost law enforcement agencies valuable crime-fighting tools. Google has said that it’s planning to encrypt its records to hamper government security programs that affect its customers’ privacy. And Prince said he may have to do the same, for the good of his clients.
Tomi says:
Gartner complains no public cloud is good enough for business
Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace all fail to deliver key features
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/09/gartner_no_public_cloud_good_enough/
No public cloud fits the stringent criteria required for “enterprise” use, according to the soothsayers at Gartner, though Amazon is far ahead of the competition.
In a report released on Monday Gartner ranked Windows Azure for public cloud use and found it fit 55 per cent of enterprise criteria, compared with 53 per cent for Rackspace and 71 percent for Amazon, according to documents seen by The Register.
Any score less than 100 means the companies are not “ready for widespread enterprise production environments for every business but are capable of hosting many workloads,” Gartner analyst Chris Gaun told El Reg.
All three clouds shared some failings, such as a lack of global load balancing, keeping many services in extended “preview” forms, failing to offer good cloud-to-cloud replication services, and a lack of transparency over recovery processes.
“Recovery plans [are] not widely available,” Gaun said. “There are some issues on the performance as well. The kit they are using on the hardware side is so abstracted we know nothing about it as far as the storage architecture, the network architecture.”
“AWS defines innovation and feature sets that many competitors aim to incorporate into road maps and offerings months and years in the future,” according to Gartner.
When asked Gaun said he expects Amazon would be at around 77 per cent if assessed today – the AWS assessment was carried out at the start of the year – and could attain a 100 percent ranking in the first half of 2015.
“Features are coming out very quickly, new data centers are popping up all over the world, and, of course, new providers are entering the market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysis: Despite fears, NSA revelations helping U.S. tech industry
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/15/us-usa-security-snowden-tech-analysis-idUSBRE98E08S20130915
(Reuters) – Edward Snowden’s unprecedented exposure of U.S. technology companies’ close collaboration with national intelligence agencies, widely expected to damage the industry’s financial performance abroad, may actually end up helping.
Despite emphatic predictions of waning business prospects, some of the big Internet companies that the former National Security Agency contractor showed to be closely involved in gathering data on people overseas – such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. – say privately that they have felt little if any impact on their businesses.
Insiders at companies that offer remote computing services known as cloud computing, including Amazon and Microsoft Corp, also say they are seeing no fallout.
Meanwhile, smaller U.S. companies offering encryption and related security services are seeing a jump in business overseas, along with an uptick in sales domestically as individuals and companies work harder to protect secrets.
“Our value proposition had been that it’s a wild world out there, while doing business internationally you need to protect yourself,”
LITTLE IMPACT
Google employees told Reuters that the company has seen no significant impact on its business, and a person briefed on Microsoft’s business in Europe likewise said that company has had no issues. At Amazon, which was not named in Snowden’s documents but is seen as a likely victim because it is a top provider of cloud computing services, a spokeswoman said global demand “has never been greater.”
Politicians in Europe and Brazil have cited the Snowden documents in pushing for new privacy laws and standards for cloud contracts and in urging local companies to steer clear of U.S. vendors.
“If European cloud customers cannot trust the U.S. government, then maybe they won’t trust U.S. cloud providers either,” European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told The Guardian. “If I am right, there are multibillion-euro consequences for American companies.”
There have indeed been some contract cancellations.
There are multiple theories for why the business impact of the Snowden leaks has been so minimal.
One is that cloud customers have few good alternatives, since U.S. companies have most of the market and switching costs money.
Perhaps more convincing, Amazon, Microsoft and some others offer data centers in Europe with encryption that prevents significant hurdles to snooping by anyone including the service providers themselves and the U.S. agencies. Encryption, however, comes with drawbacks, making using the cloud more cumbersome.
Another possibility is that tech-buying companies elsewhere believe that their own governments have scanning procedures that are every bit as invasive as the American programs
BOON FOR ENCRYPTION SECTOR
“One of the results we see from Snowden is an increased awareness across the board about the incredible cyber insecurity,” Denaro said.
“Clients are now inquiring how they can protect their data overseas, what kinds of access the states might have and what controls or constraints they could put in with residency or encryption,” said Gartner researcher Lawrence Pingree
Stiennon said that after more companies encrypt, the NSA and other agencies will spend more to break through, accelerating a lucrative cycle.
“They will start focusing on the encrypted data, because that’s where all the good stuff is,” Stiennon said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud deployments that you should avoid
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/iaas/3298/cloud-deployments-that-you-should-avoid/page/0/1
Don’t think of moving everything to the cloud – there are some implementations that really don’t fit
1) Stable, mature, mission-critical applications
New applications, being as they are new, means you can only guess what storage, bandwidth and compute power they will require. Older applications will have been around the organisations so long, its requirements will be long known and documented, so the value of putting these into the public cloud will be very little indeed when compared with applications that need to rapidly scale up and down.
2 – The highly-integrated, business critical application on legacy hardware
Applications such as financial ones or ERP are more often then not a pain to move anywhere, let alone the cloud, as porting them elsewhere can cause a lot of problems and can bring business processes to an abrupt halt.
“Many IT organisations have tight SLAs with their business customers,”
3 – Applications and data you want to keep under your control
Many start-ups use the cloud at the beginning because to the cost and agility benefits, but Rabbetts says that as they grow the cloud becomes less cost effective and they need or want to move it to a more stable platform over which they have greater control.
standard banking applications would be unlikely to make the transition to the cloud, not for technical reasons but for those of risk.
4 – Intellectual property
Organisations should never put intellectual property they are working on in the cloud, unless they can guarantee its security through encryption.
“If a hacker knows your organisation is using a cloud provider to store or share IP related data, the first thing they will do is buy or trial the very same service,”
5 – Keeping the only copy of your important data on the cloud
While public clouds can be secure, they are run by third parties that are subject to various laws or business scenarios (bankruptcy, mergers, etc.). According to Gracely, these laws and scenarios are entirely outside of your control.
“As such, you should make sure that you have a working copy (within your immediate control) of any information that you deem “catastrophic to lose” for the business,” he says.
6 – Having no exit strategy for your data on the cloud
Putting data and applications into the cloud may have huge advantages for your business, but nothing should go into the cloud without a strategy of how you will get it out
7 – The applications with low latency/tight SLA requirements
Just because it is technically feasible to put an application into the cloud (ie there are no hardware/legacy issues) doesn’t mean that you should. Factors such as latency or high SLA can mean that cloud is not the appropriate choice for some apps.
“Latency sensitive apps come under this heading and often need to be relatively close to one another to operate effectively,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud provider Nirvanix gives customers two weeks to vacate data
http://www.information-age.com/technology/cloud-and-virtualisation/123457347/cloud-provider-nirvanix-gives-customers-two-weeks-to-vacate-data
US-based cloud storage provider Nirvanix tells employees it has “gone to the wall”, gives customers until the end of the month to move their data elsewhere
The company was founded in 2007 after an online storage company called StreamLoad split into consumer and business units. Not longer after, the consumer arm – MediaMax – gave customers one month to relocate their data following a botched migration onto the Nirvanix platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The U.S.’s crap infrastructure threatens the cloud
Thanks to state-sponsored cable/phone duopolies, U.S. broadband stays slow and expensive — and will probably impede cloud adoption
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/the-uss-crap-infrastructure-threatens-the-cloud-226917
According to the broadband testing firm NetIndex, U.S. consumer broadband speeds rank 33rd in the world, right behind the Ukraine. Personally, I pay more than $1,500 per month for 30/30MB fiber for our office. This is ridiculously expensive and slower than the average household Internet in many other countries. It’s a serious impediment to the United States maintaining its economic competitiveness — and to enabling all of us to take full advantage of the cloud, which is clearly the next phase of computing.
Poor laws and regulations have protected a duopoly in most areas of the country. You can buy Internet from the local cable monopoly or the local phone monopoly, period. Neither have much motivation to make it much faster nor any cheaper.
For many small businesses, $1,500 per month is out of reach.
Plus, in some rural areas of my state and the rest of the country, there is no broadband at all.
Originally, my company used the same cable broadband you get in the home with 50MB down and 5MB up (believe it or not, this is perceptibly slower than 30/30MB fiber in general). When we moved from local servers to the cloud, we knew the 5MB uplink would be a serious problem.
The effect on the cloud
One would expect that the United States would lead in “cloudification,” since Amazon and most of the other cloud pioneers are located here. But I can’t help but wonder if the broadband advantage outside our borders will not only make those countries more competitive in technology, but also speed up their cloud adoption. If you’re moving out of your local network or local data center, then not only burst capacity, but packet loss and latency are seriously important.
After the initial cloud rush, where everyone will be talking but only a few will be doing, I expect that cloud adoption will closely match broadband speed, cost, and availability curves
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft hooks up with AT&T, gazes into YOUR data center
Bit barn threesome ties Microsoft, AT&T + your gear together with MPLS
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/20/microsoft_azure_att_partnership/
Microsoft and AT&T have announced a strategic alliance that should let punters shift workloads from their data center into AT&T’s cloud and then into Windows Azure.
The unnamed service is due to launch in 2014, and was announced by Microsoft in a fluffy blog post on Wednesday.
The technology lets people “access Windows Azure as a logical extension of their existing data centers” via a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPN, Redmond wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
Microsoft says this can lower latency by as much as 50 percent compared with typical connectivity options.
If you squint, the service shares many traits with Amazon Web Services’s DirectConnect product, which lets companies connect directly into AWS via a VPN in a data center where AWS has a physical edge presence, such as facilities operated by Equinix, transit provider Level 3, and others.
“Through this strategic alliance with AT&T,” he continued, “we can reduce the barriers to entry for cloud computing by providing a more secure and reliable connectivity option for enterprise customers, accelerating the growth of cloud computing and the rapid adoption of Windows Azure.”
The offering is very similar to a deal AT&T inked with IBM in late 2012 to offer users a way of hooking their VPNs into AT&T, which in turn linked with IBM’s SmartCloud. It also operates a VMware vCloud-based “Synaptic Compute as a Service” offerings as well. All these products, including the forthcoming Azure tech, use AT&T’s “NetBond” technology to let customers shuttle compute and network resources into and out of the cloud services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CloudSigma lashes cloud to colocation partners
It’s hybrid cloud, ma’am, but not as you know it
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/20/cloudsigma_hybrid_cloud_announcement/
European infrastructure-as-a-service provider CloudSigma has followed in the steps of Amazon and Microsoft to offer a direct connection between private servers in colocation facilities and its cloud.
The “hybrid hosting” service was announced by the company on Wednesday, and will see it give customers the option of renting colocation servers in an Interxion facility in Zurich, the Switch SuperNAP in Las Vegas, and Equinix data centers around the world, then getting a direct line into its cloud as well.
Theoretically, this allows you to burst capacity into the pool of SSD-backed gear in CloudSigma’s IaaS service, but spend most of your time chugging away on cheaper prepaid colocation servers.
The hybrid hosting service can give either a 1GbE or 10GbE private patch into the CloudSigma network, and customers can tap the cloud for DDoS protection systems, redundant routing, and external IP connectivity services. In addition, CloudSigma will offer customers a rebate on spending on its cloud of up to 20 percent of their private hosting costs.
This type of colo-public cloud approach was pioneered by Amazon Web Services with its DirectConnect tech, which launched in August 2011 and saw Bezos & Co. partner with Equinix. That was followed by Microsoft, which has teamed up with AT&T to offer a similar service starting in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft and Oracle were forced to cloud federation
Amazon’s cloud services phenomenal growth has forced the two old competitors to cooperate to secure their own positions. Microsoft and Oracle announced the alliance in the summer, and now the fruits of cooperation are customers coming to consumption.
Microsoft Windows servers boss Brad Andersson said the reforms Oracle Open World conference. The cooperation of Microsoft Windows Server servers can now use Oracle Database-rate and the Java Platform, Standard Edition package. In addition, Windows Azure running in virtual machines can be installed on Oracle WebLogic Server.
In either case, the license is included in the Oracle applications directly from the package price.
In addition, Microsoft brings Azure cloud customers the ability to run Linux with Oracle databases and Oracle WebLogic Server.
According to Microsoft, this is a unique service in which the user is offered the chance to drive Oracle’s services, as well as on Windows and Linux, Oracle’s full support.
Also, Amazon is offering in its high of Oracle technologies, but the services are not covered by the license price and the support is not as extensive.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/microsoft+ja+oracle+olivat+pakotettuja+pilviliittoon/a933240
Tomi Engdahl says:
The first test F-Secure Dropbox-killer, Younited
Finnish security company F-Secure offers consumers a custom recording service Spotify packaged. Techno Geek wonders minute choice, but to find a promising start over.
Helsinki-based security company is in the right place at the right time. Company intends to strike up Edward Snowden uncover the PRISM project markets created and begins to provide secure cloud storage.
F-Secure today revealed the name of the service – Younited – and let the experiment with how the service works.
The company’s purpose is to create a storage service that works seamlessly with the operating system. Younitedista has applications for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Windows PC and Mac. There is also a HTML5-based browser version.
The service name is silly (brings to mind a dating site). F-Secure claims service appearance tuned to hipster more than the traditional techo-nerd: the user interface is reminiscent of Spotify, not the traditional file management view.
Synchronize or share folders -
oh so what?
Before you start to use the program, the user must internalize the file sharing. Or at least one of them.
Younited can be used either by throwing the files in the sync folder, which is the traditional way of using cloud storage. The service recognizes the file type and automatically sorts the files to image, video, music, documents and views.
Another way is to define the folders whose contents are automatically copied to the cloud.
In fact, the interface is intuitive. The program offers a general view and file formats based on subviews. While it may make sub-folders, the main idea is for people to create a collection of files in the Spotify playlists. The collection may want to put any number of files, and it can be shared on any other storage services in a familiar way.
Facebook, Picasa, and Dropbox can be integrated into the Younitedia, which means that Younited works a metadata service: images and contents on other integrated services are displayed as part of the Younited view.
The software is still in development, which showed..
Since the program is still in progress, not all of the final version come with features not yet in place.
Younited is not yet publicly available. F-Secure of October to the beginning of service, “a three-digit number of” testers. In fact, the test will start in November and the program will be released sometime early next year.
Basic use is free, and as complimentary get five gigabytes of storage. In addition there are two commercial versions.
Laaksonen says that the version of the service will also enable small and medium-sized enterprises.
Can Younited become Dropoxin and partners contender? Maybe. – if they are lucky and service becomes fashionable.
F-Secure will compete in storage instead of the service features. Some of the features, such as a mobile service, file scanning for malware virtual sandbox, there are free and some paid.
Another major competitive advantage is Finnish. Laaksonen assure you that the service is no back doors.
The content is encrypted with 256-bit AES algorithm and the content is digested in three different locations. One stored in the service files to another user data and metadata in the third.
The data centers are located: two in Finland and F-Secure does not reveal the location of third.
In the same market, competing with, among other things, Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive. Dropbox offers 2GB of free storage, SkyDrive 7 GB, 5 GB of iCloud and Google Drive 15 GB.
Sources:
http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/12/f-secure-haastaa-googlen-ja-dropboxin–jakaa-ilmaiseksi-salattua-tallennustilaa/201312767/66
http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/25/ensitestissa-f-securen-dropboxin-tappaja-younited/201313308/66
Tomi Engdahl says:
Continued buuming – again a new data center in Finland
The data center boom in Finland received today the continuation of the Vantaa opened a plush Hansa data center, taking advantage of the latest technologies in energy use and cooling. The server is hosted by a leading European operator-independent data center company TelecityGroup. The new machine at the gym havitellaan clients seeking to establish the East-West junction.
TelecityGroup acquired last year for Finnish companies Academica and Tenue. It had already been four data center, metropolitan area, is the fifth-look Vantaa.
Hansa is located in Vantaa, Martin Valley in the former Hansa’s printing house, Vantaa Energy’s 195-megawatt power plant smoke stacks in the shade. Energy supply provides two data centers pull the 10 MVA power line, but it was, however, less important reason for the rankings.
“Electricity is cheaper in Finland than in Britain, but more savings in the data center cooling capacity. Cold weather here to keep the data center cool, free of charge about 80 per cent of the year, “by City Group CEO Mike Tobin said.
“We are always in the new data centers to implement something new, and here the new invention are stacked on top of each server cabinets, between which the flow of cold air from the bottom. This has been done here in the first world. The solution is a high-performance. ”
Tobin noted that the Finnish company is a very important hub between East and West. In Finland, attracted by good transport links, good infrastructure, good skills availability, and security.
“Finland is very important to us for many reasons, one of which is the fact that Helsinki is the transport port. Russia’s connections to go through this. The German submarine cable project is important to us, because emphasizing the role of Finland. The political position of various data protection laws at the border is good, “Tobin described. As a new trump card, he mentioned the planned energy tax reduction for data centers.
The company hamuaa data center customers not only from Finland to Russia, Baltic States and Western Europe.
Vantaa room capacity is 5 MW. And can accommodate a couple thousand Rack cabinet. Now the areas have only one pair of rows of server racks, but the cabinets are empty.
“The goal is that the spaces are filled within five years,” TelecityGroup Finland, Sales Sami Holopainen said.
New kinds of cooling solutions make the Hansa unique in the world. A special feature is how the rows of server racks are placed in two layers on top of each other so that the two lines form a pair cabinet. Distance between them is two storeys high so-called hot aisle and back sides are responsible for the cold aisles, of which the cooling air is drawn through the cabinets. The hot exhaust air from the passage and up the waste heat is recovered. Cold and warm air do not mix.
The data center cold air is 24 degrees, not freezing cold Finnish winter. Cooling fans are the climate, despite the heavy duty.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/talous/jatkoa_buumille_taas_uusi_konesali_suomeen
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft defends Azure with two-factor auth security
Like Amazon, but it costs money
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/26/microsoft_azure_authentication_update/
Microsoft’s multi-factor authentication service has gone into general availability, doubling prices and giving enterprises a service-level agreement.
Microsoft announced the general availability of the product in a blog post on Thursday. The MFA technology allows admins to add an additional layer of security to accounts using the company’s cloud services.
Users can authenticate via an application on their mobile device, an automated voice call, or a text message. The technology was introduced in June of this year, and is based on assets it gained from its acquisition of PhoneFactor in October 2012.
The service works with on-premises VPNs and web applications via integrating with Windows Server Active Directory, as well as with cloud applications such as Windows Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM.
Pricing for the tech is $2 per user per month, or $2 for 10 authentications, making Microsoft significantly more expensive than Amazon Web Services, which charges nothing for a similar service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security Concerns about the cloud cast a shadow over the world
Cloud services in the Nordic countries take a more cautious approach than the rest of Europe. Doubts about the security and also their skills.
Such results can be read in a survey commissioned by CA Technologies. According to the North half of the decision-makers is still waiting for more convincing on the usefulness of the cloud, while the rest of Europe, cloud technology has received over with 57 per cent of IT.
The down side is, however, is that half of the Nordic IT decision makers already have a pro cloud view. They tend to use cloud technology whenever possible, or at least to consider the suitability of new decisions.
Supporters praise the cloud for cost-effective, as it allows you to maintain a more efficient processes and facilitates communication
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/tietoturvahuolet_varjostavat_pilvimaailmaa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft follows Amazon in gaining critical US gov certification
Redmond zooms onto FedRAMP, but where’s Google?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/30/microsoft_fedramp_azure/
Microsoft has gained a US federal government certification that makes it easier for agencies to buy cloud services from Redmond.
The company announced on Monday that the platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service components of its Windows Azure cloud have been given a Joint Authorization Board (JAB) provisional version of the FedRAMP certification.
FedRAMP “is a government-wide, standardized approach to security assessments and ongoing assessments and authorizations (continuous monitoring),” according to the US General Services Administration, and was created in 2010 as a way to help agencies assess cloud service providers.
“FedRAMP builds upon the existing baseline security controls in place today, adding a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud services,”
“Windows Azure is the first public cloud platform, with infrastructure services and platform services, to receive a Provisional Authority to Operate from the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board,” Microsoft said in a press release announcing the move.
Though rival Amazon Web Services gained FedRAMP certification in May for IaaS services from its US East, US West, and GovCloud data centers, Microsoft’s certification is slightly broader and better, which could lead to greater use by government.
Besides Microsoft and Amazon, other companies that hold FedRAMP include AT&T, Akamai, Autonomic Resources, CGI Federal, HP Enterprise Cloud Services, Lockheed Martin, and the USDA National Information Technology Center.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Cloud Storage Partner Nirvanix Files for Bankruptcy
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/nirvanix-bankrupt/
The company behind IBM’s storage cloud is indeed on the way out.
Last month, Nirvanix — the San Diego, California company that powered IBM’s SmartCloud Storage service — told customers and partners that it was shutting down on September 30, giving them just two weeks to migrate data, and now, it has filed for bankruptcy.
Nirvanix finally broke its silence this week with a post to its website revealing the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and giving customers and partners an additional two weeks to remove data from its service. The deadline for data removal is now October 15.
“Nirvanix voluntarily sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to pursue all alternatives to maximize value for its creditors while continuing its efforts to provide the best possible transition for customers,” the site says.
The initial news of the shutdown came as a surprise. Nirvanix — founded in 2007 as StreamLoad — had partnerships with IBM and Dell, was lauded for its technical chops, and was well funded.
This week’s announcements, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, provide some closure for those waiting to see what would become of the company — and of SmartCloud Storage.
The Nirvanix site specifically mentions IBM SoftLayer, Amazon S3, Google Storage, and Microsoft Azure as possible replacements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
arkOS: Building the anti-cloud (on a Raspberry Pi)
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/528273/arkos_building_anti-cloud_raspberry_pi_/
arkOS is an open source project designed to let its users take control of their personal data and make running a home server as easy as using a PC
At the start of this year, analyst firm Gartner predicted that over the next four years a total of US$677 would be spent on cloud services. The growth of ‘things-as-a-service’ is upending enterprise IT and creating entirely new, innovative business models. At the same time, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have built massive user bases, and created databases that are home to enormous amounts of information about account holders.
Collectively, all of this means that people’s data, and the services they use with it, are more likely than ever to be found outside of home PCs and other personal devices, housed in servers that they will probably never likely to see let alone touch. But, when everything is delivered as a service, people’s control and even ownership of their data gets hazy to say the least.
Earlier this year NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden offered some insight – in revelations that probably surprised few but still outraged many – into the massive level of data collection and analysis carried out by state actors.
arkOS is not a solution to the surveillance state, but it does offer an alternative to those who would rather exercise some measure of control over their data and, at the very least, not lock away their information in online services where its retrieval and use is at the whim of a corporation, not the user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Personal Clouds Wiki
http://personal-clouds.org/wiki/Main_Page
Cloud computing today typically means that we have to hand over our data to big companies who decide which features they give us (and sometimes force on us), and who can and do unilaterally change their terms of service on us whenever they like.
What if instead, we could each have our own, personal cloud? Where we decide what data to put there and whom to share it with, where we decide which apps to run on it, and where we define the terms of service?
Personal Cloud is a fairly new idea. It has been compared to the wild idea back in the 1970′s that everybody could have a Personal Computer, instead of having to accept whatever the mainframe guys gave us. Obviously, Personal Computers turned out to be an idea that has appealed to hundreds of millions of people who today all own PCs. Could it be the same for Personal Clouds?
Personal Cloud right now is barely beyond the Homebrew Computer Club stage, but things are happening.
This brand-new wiki is intended to be the place where the community can collect relevant links and other relevant knowledge. Feel free to constructively contribute.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft takes fight to Amazon on raft of cloud announcements
Stays mute on custom chips
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/microsoft_azure_enterprise_refresh/
Microsoft has tried to close the distance between Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services by confronting the threat posed by Bezos & Co’s cloud.
The company announced a range of new cloud services on Monday
To take on Amazon, Microsoft has partnered with Equinix to let companies connect directly into its cloud – an identical technology to Amazon’s DirectConnect.
It has also spun up a dedicated facility for use by the US public sector named GovCloud – again, identical to Amazon Web Services GovCloud, though Microsoft has a marginally more useful strand of FedRAMP certification.
Microsoft will also offer cut-price access to Azure to customers that have signed Enterprise Agreements with the company, which should help it load businesses into its cloud.
These announcements follow the general availability of Azure’s infrastructure-as-a-service component.
“70 percent of the Azure footprint is [now] IaaS, which is tremendous,” Nadella said, implying both that customers had a huge hunger for IaaS, and the potentially small size of the PaaS business.
The three cloud announcements are part of a wider enterprise push by Microsoft that has also seen it enhance Windows InTune, System Center, and other technologies for on-premise cloud deployment.
Tomi says:
Google App Engine PHP Runtime now available to everyone
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.fi/2013/10/google-app-engine-php-runtime-now-available-to-everyone.html
At Google I/O earlier this year, we added PHP, the fourth language runtime on Google App Engine in Limited Preview. Today we’re moving to Preview, making PHP on App Engine available for everyone immediately. It is no longer necessary to whitelist your application for deployment.
PHP is one of the world’s most popular programming languages for web programming today. Since the runtime was launched at Google I/O earlier this year, thousands of developers around the world have started using App Engine for PHP, taking advantage App Engine’s legendary scalability and ease of use to run popular PHP products like phpMyAdmin, Drupal and phpBB and frameworks such as Laravel, Silex and CodeIgniter. And as you would expect, you can use Google APIs such as Drive and Google+ on App Engine.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free Cocaine giveaway from Russian search engine Yandex
Naughtily named platform-as-a-service product may get up Google’s nose
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/free_cocaine_giveaway_from_russian_search_engine_yandex/
Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, has launched a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering named “Cocaine”.
Yandex is easily understood as the Russian equivalent of Google and not only because it dominates search in its home nation. The company’s expanding product portfolio mirrors Google’s with flattering precision, to the extent that it is billing Cocaine as “an open-source PaaS system for creating custom cloud hosting apps that are similar to Google App Engine or Heroku.”
The tool is available for download at GitHub , making it something google and OpenStack might want to keep an eye on, as Yandex says that once Cocaine is wafted beneath the nostrils of a web server it “provides an automatically scalable deployment environment for web apps.” Those apps can be written in C++, Python or Javascript. Java and Racket support are on the way.
Cocaine relies on Docker and LXC containerisation, an interesting alternative to virtualisation that enables applications to run in a discrete environment that behaves an awful lot like a virtual machine but can see several apps share a single operating system kernel. Containerisation is making waves at present, having recently won support from Red Hat.
The big difference between Cocaine and App Engine is that Google’s PaaS is designed to run apps inside the Chocolate Factory’s own cloud. Yandex lacks a competitor for that service, so is offering Cocaine as a way to build PaaS on someone else’s servers.
Yandex says it is already using Cocaine for internal ops
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most ‘cloud’ traffic never sees the cloud: Cisco
Bits are stay at home types and find the wide world a scary place
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/most_cloud_traffic_never_sees_the_cloud_cisco/
A disconnect seems to be emerging between the technologies vendors believe are important in the cloud, and the way traffic is flowing between cloud data centres.
While much is made of a world in which workloads are so virtualised they float around between data centres like quanta teleporting around the world, most of the world’s traffic leaves a disk, travels a few feet to a server, hops into a virtual machine, gets munched, and returns home to the disk.
Data centre, traffic, in other words, looks rather like road traffic in meatspace: most cars spend most of their time within a few kilometres of their home base.
There’s a growing conviction among vendors that users want their virtual machines to be able to span different data centres – the vendors believe there’s a high demand for the ability to pick up a VM workload in Sydney and move it to, say, San Francisco.
But is this supported by the data? Right now, not much: according to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index available((PDF) here), just seven per cent of cloud traffic is travelling between data centres, and most of that’s for disaster recovery and backup.
Most of the traffic generated by the cloud remains not just in the cloud, but inside single data centres – 76 percent of it, in fact. The remaining 17 per cent of traffic comprises what you and I probably think is the whole point of the cloud: delivering stuff to users.
That puts an interesting cast on the numbers Cisco is presenting for cloud growth. The CAGR of 35 per cent looks relatively muted, even though there are lots of Zettabytes involved – Cisco says the annual 1.8 ZB of cloud data centre traffic predicted for 2013 will grow to 5.3 ZB by 2017. Traffic growth in traditional data centres will be far lower, running at about 12 percent CAGR, Cisco says.
If the distribution of traffic remains unchanged, that extra 3.1 ZB of cloud data centre traffic will contribute just 0.53 ZB to the Internet and private IP WANs.
The Register notes that there’s at least one physical constraint that caps the growth of traffic leaving the DC: the network itself. Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report puts the global average connection speed at just 3.3 Mbps. However, even growth in higher-speed broadband will probably be outpaced by what’s happening inside the data centres.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Russian Google’ Yandex doles out free cloud service ‘cocaine’
Search giant unveils free web app engine with cheeky moniker
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/17/russian-google-yandex-free-cloud-service-cocaine
Russia’s go-to search engine, Yandex, has launched a free and open-source challenge to Google’s App Engine called “cocaine”.
The open-source platform as a service (PaaS), allows creation of custom cloud-hosted web apps, such as the Google-owned Panoramio location-based photo service, supporting C++, Python and JavaScript programming languages, with Java and Racket support in development.
The tool is available for download on GitHub, and can be installed on most custom hosting web servers, providing an automatic scalable platform to manage custom web apps and their processing demands.
The difference between Yandex’s cocaine and Google’s App Engine is that Google’s offering solely provides web app hosting on its own servers.
Cocaine can be run on personal web hosting anywhere in the world – and crucially, following the NSA revelations – not necessarily routed through the US.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Go East! Rackspace expands public cloud to Asia
Doubles Hong Kong datacentre space to launch new offering
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/22/rackspace_public_cloud_asia_hong_kong/
Rackspace Hosting announced the launch of its first public cloud service in Asia in Hong Kong today, allowing businesses in the region to tap the firm’s Hybrid Cloud offering for a more flexible mix-and-match approach to IT infrastructure.
Rackspace Hybrid Cloud gives customers the option to choose any combination of public and private cloud and dedicated servers.
“You can use dedicated servers, public cloud or private cloud and RackConnect to connect them, and you have our fanatical support underlying everything.”
“A lot of our Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 customers have expanded their operations here so as they expand globally we expand with them,” said Melarkode.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Schneider Electric selects Microsoft Windows Azure as preferred cloud platform
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/schneider-azure-cloud.html
Schneider Electric announced its selection of Microsoft Windows Azure, a cloud computing and infrastructure platform, as the preferred cloud provider for the company’s StruxureWare platform of integrated software applications and suites that help companies manage and monitor their sustainability initiatives, optimize their current operations and better manage their sites and processes. The Windows Azure platform is being rolled out globally to support Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare cloud-based software offerings, beginning with StruxureWare Resource Advisor and StruxureWare Energy Operations.
Windows Azure expands Schneider Electric’s ability to rapidly deploy public, private and -hybrid cloud solutions. StruxureWare software customers can achieve gains in speed of processing, providing instant access to the online, web accessible software.
Azure’s cloud functionality allows customers to leverage installed investments through secure cloud connectivity to existing energy metering and monitoring systems, says Schneider Electric. It also increases mobility for customers by providing access to information within the StruxureWare software applications on the go. Schneider Electric software developers benefit from Windows Azure’s pay-as-you-go structure
Windows Azure is already in use in Schneider Electric’s Orbit, a mobile field data collection solution for ArcFM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft and AWS pulled techno price rises
Microsoft’s share price climbed to a peak on Friday to six years, and the increase has been supported by the Amazon cloud gorilla share.
Techno Nasdaq Stock Exchange IT index was the week end boost internet companies and service providers. The Nasdaq index rose to 1896.93 points on Friday, or the index value was only four points to 12 in the highest-level.
The last time the Nasdaq index, it was just at a high level in October 2000, shortly before the Internet bubble burst.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/microsoft+ja+aws+vetivat+teknot+kurssinousuun/a942201
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s holding back the cloud industry?
Cloud enthusiasts blame processes, not technology
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/102913-cloud-industry-275350.html?hpg1=bn
hile cloud enthusiasts roaming the halls of McCormick Place convention hall in Chicago last week at Cloud Connect may be high on the market, the reality is that many enterprises IT shops are still reticent to fully embrace public cloud computing.
Network World asked some of the best and brightest minds in the industry who were at the event about what’s holding the cloud industry back. Here’s what they said:
Cloud sounds like a great idea, but how will it really work when it’s adopted? Hanselman says one of the biggest barriers is an organizational one. Typically IT organizations are split into groups focusing on compute, network and storage. When applications run from the cloud, those are all managed from one provider. That means the jobs from each of those groups within IT may change. How can organizations evolve? “You’ve got to converge,” Hansleman says. That could be easier said than done with people’s jobs at stake.
Security is still the biggest concern that enterprises point to with the cloud. Is that justified? Cloud providers spend a lot of money and resources to keep their services secure, but Subramanian says it’s almost an instinctual reaction that IT pros be concerned about cloud security. “Part of that is lack of education” he says.
If you’re using cloud computing to deliver legacy enterprise applications, you’re doing it wrong, Bias says. Cloud computing is fundamentally a paradigm shift
The biggest inhibitor to more prevalent cloud computing adoption is that organizations are still holding on to their legacy processes, says Golden, who recently authored the Amazon Web Services for Dummies book
One of the biggest hurdles for broader adoption of public cloud computing resources continues to be the regulatory and compliance issues that customers need to overcome, Knosp says. Even if providers are accredited to handle sensitive financial, health or other types of information, there is “still enough doubt” by executives in many of these industries about using public cloud resources.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon lashes Nvidia’s GRID GPU to its cloud: But can it run Crysis?
It’ll certainly cost you top dollar at Jeff’s Virtualization Palace
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/aws_gpu_grid_service/
Amazon has chugged Nvidia’s new virtualized GPU technology to spin-up a new class of rentable instances for 3D visualizations and other graphics-heavy applications.
The “G2″ instances, announced by Amazon on Tuesday, is another nod by a major provider to the value of Nvidia’s GRID GPU adapters, which launched in 2012.
These GRID boards provide hardware virtualization of Nvidia’s Kepler architecture GPUs, which include an H.264 video encoding engine. The instances will give developers 1,536 parallel processing cores to play with for video creation, graphics-intensive streaming, and “other server-side graphics workloads requiring massive parallel processing power,” according to the PR bumf.
It also supports DirectX, OpenGL, Cuda, and OpenCL applications, demonstrating Amazon’s lack of allegiance to any particular technology in its quest to tear as much money away from on-prem spend as possible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS launches GPU instances, mobile app developer tools
http://www.zdnet.com/aws-launches-gpu-instances-mobile-app-developer-tools-7000022814/
Summary: Amazon Web Services and Nvidia are launching cloud services designed to move GPUs beyond high performance computing to SaaS companies.
On the GPU front, AWS said that it will launch G2 instances, an Elastic Compute Cloud service designed for 3D graphics. The service is aimed at graphic intensive efforts such as visualizations and large workloads.
Separately, Amazon said it launched two cloud services for mobile developers. The services revolve around analytics and A/B testing and are aimed at iOS and Android developers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM makes cheeky grab for AWS’s cloud crown
Gartner squints at Big Blue’s ‘truth-stretching’ claims and agrees, mostly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/ibm_cheekily_claims_cloud_crown_from_aws/
IBM has launched an offensive in which it claims it is the world’s foremost cloud company.
Big Blue’s claim hinges on a metric it has taken public, namely that it’s cloud “powers 270,000 more websites than Amazon”. That message has appeared in ads placed in prominent financial newspapers and the like.
One such journal, Forbes, has labelled the claim “dodgy advertising” and accused it of “stretching the truth” because it is “a desperate move by a company that has failed to win the competitive battle based on innovation.”
That failure was made obvious last week when IBM killed off its own cloud and announced it would migrate customers to recently-acquired SoftLayer.
Ouch.
Toombs points out that IBM’s claim relies on this data from hostcabi.net that does indeed show SoftLayer is streets ahead of Amazon Web Services in the web-hosting caper.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Truly secure clouds? Possible but not likely say Georgia Tech boffins
And that’s before we hook up the Internet of Things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/cloud_mobile_keep_sysadmins_awake_georgia_tech/
Georgia Tech has added itself to the chorus, nay, throng of voices warning that poorly-implemented cloud computing and the world of BYO mobile devices are threats to enterprise security.
In its Emerging Cyber Threats 2014 report, GT’s Information Security Center joins World+Dog in noting that the Snowden NSA whistle-blowing has concentrated minds wonderfully on the question “who’s reading my cloud?”
However, trying to secure what leaves the premises comes at a cost, says GTISC director Wenke Lee: “Encryption in the cloud often impacts data accessibility and processing speed. So we are likely to see increased debate about the tradeoffs between security, functionality and efficiency.”
Even if a company bites the bullet and encrypts everything going to the cloud services it has bought on contract with an enterprise provider, the report notes that employees’ individual use of “shadow” services like Dropbox, Box.com and Google’s sharing services can undermine that security
In the mobile space, GTISC points to the university’s own work on AppStore vetting bypasses and malicious chargers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Box CEO talks European plans, warns about meeting BlackBerry’s fate
http://www.citeworld.com/business/22655/box-ceo-aaron-levie-talks-disruption-in-london
Starting by talking about the differences between European and US markets, Levie noted, “Europe sees the exact same business challenges as anywhere else in the world, the exact same trends transforming businesses.” They’re familiar trends: the move from on-premises to the cloud, the move from the traditional PC to tablets and mobile, and the changing nature of work itself. He’s been talking to CIOs around Europe, and says, “They’re trying to implement new technologies from a new set of vendors for a new set of experiences to solve a new set of problems.”
That’s why Levie sees Box as more than a collaboration platform. “We realized this transformation of the enterprise was going to be the biggest thing we could latch on”.
A key element of Box’s European announcements was its place on the G-Cloud, the UK government’s list of approved cloud software.
Asked about further European expansion, and the implementation of a European data center, Levie said “One of the things that differentiates Box is that we typically go further for regulatory compliance.” He suggests that some form of common regulatory framework is necessary for the success of cloud services, “We’re going to have to have some amount of standardization, it’s the only way we can get globalized communication.” Even so, it’s not regulations that will bring Box’s infrastructure to Europe, but performance, “We need to get closer to our customers […] It’s far more about how fast we scale out in a country rather than whether we can sell to a country”.
Privacy remains important to Box, and it’s paying close attention to the fallout from the recent NSA spying revelations. Levie remains optimistic about the future. “Our focus is on control and security…. We want to avoid some of the noise about the balkanization of the cloud. It doesn’t make sense technologically, and it’s also not where the economy is going.”
While those NSA revelations haven’t had much effect on Box, Levie isn’t being complacent.
Levie remains well aware that the biggest threat facing Box is the same one that makes it a threat to incumbent enterprise software vendors. As he points out, the shift to cloud and mobile changes the way software is bought and deployed. “This shift means the onus more than ever is on the vendor. If we don’t stay competitive, if we don’t build whatever that that next thing is the user wants to do and build it in as simple a way as they expect from the consumer tools they are using, then we will get swapped out.”
By making it simple for users to deploy solutions, companies like Box need to be aware that they’re also making it easy for customers to replace them with something new. “You will either get swapped out because IT will swap you out or just because people will stop using you because they’re using a consumer solution, And because it’s SaaS, they’re only paying for what they use — and you stop getting paid”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paas is – how will it affect the IT department works?
Companies fasting makes of (platform-as-a-service) cloud services are consumed amounts well above the growth in businesses other IT budget growth. Paas means to buy a cloud development platform.
Research firm IDC predicts fasting-growing market by 2017 to $ 14 billion last year to $ 3.8 billion. This fasting of the market would increase by about 30 percent boost in the other it-satsausten growth would be four per cent per annum.
According to IDC’s report, the forecast has been raised in recent years under fasting accurate solutions in the light of the introduction of the quantities, especially in the Microsoft Azure’s disposal for.
Paas services attractive to companies because they allow you to calculate your company’s IT infrastructure maintenance and development costs and expenses at the same time the need to use the scalable resources.
Paas, 2012 the market was the busiest Americas continents, which was 65.2 per cent of fasting venturing into. Similarly, Europe, Middle East and Africa representing 20.7 percent of market. Asia and the Pacific was still 14.1 per cent, but the market is expected to grow by 2017 to 19 per cent.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kehittaja/paas+tulee++miten+kay+itosaston+toille/a945773
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rackspace claws fistful of bucks from Amazon-ruled cutthroat cloud bearpit
Web biz squeezes just $3 extra revenue out of each server
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/rackspace_q3_2013/
Rackspace is making less money than before on higher revenues as a vicious cloud market takes a cleaver to what was previously a steady business.
The Texan web-hoster-turned-cloud-provider reported a net income of $16m on revenues of $389m on Monday for its third quarter of 2013, missing analyst expectations on profit but just beating them on revenue.
Net income was down 40 per cent from $27m in the same quarter a year ago. Revenues were up 16 per cent
Several key indicators displayed warning signs, with strategically crucial public-cloud revenues inching up nine per cent for the quarter from $99m to $108.4m. The company’s traditional dedicated hosting business – and, we reckon, main profit center – crept up a mere 1.5 per cent to $280.2m.
These results stand in stark contrast to cloud rival Amazon Web Services, which booked revenues of $1.011bn in its cloud-containing “other” category last quarter, compared with $892m in the quarter before, representing a 13 per cent climb.
Scale aside, in the hyper-competitive market for cloud computing, growth matters, and for Rackspace to be growing slower than Amazon
The average monthly revenue per server for the quarter rose to $1,290, up from $1,287 the company was making a year ago. Given the near-30 per cent rise in Rackspace’s public cloud business since then, we would expect a far greater rise in revenue-per-server due to the cost-savings afforded by the growth of virtualized multi-tenancy that cloud computing is built on. As this hasn’t happened, we surmise the company is having a hard time making its OpenStack-based infrastructure scale cheaply, and that competitive cloud pricing is biting into its lucrative dedicated server revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM to offer Watson supercomputer as cloud development platform
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=5250F744-D0F0-0A35-8F715B38C9AAE176
IBM is preparing to give third parties access to its Watson supercomputer with the aim of spurring the growth of applications that take advantage of the system’s artificial intelligence capabilities.
Watson, which is derived from IBM’s DeepQA project, drew worldwide attention in 2011 after it soundly defeated human opponents on the Jeopardy! game show.
IBM has been applying Watson’s machine learning — or “cognitive computing” — technology to domains such as health care, but now the company is ready to share Watson with the broader world.
“We’ve been developing, evolving and maturing the technology,” said Rob High, an IBM fellow who serves as CTO of Watson, in an interview. “It’s stable and mature enough to support an ecosystem now. We’ve become convinced there’s something very special here and we shouldn’t be holding it back.”
IBM is initially working with a handful of partners on the Watson cloud service, and each is developing specialized applications.
Fluid is creating a Watson-powered program for retail. “The model is to have a running dialogue between the consumer and Watson,” which helps them make more informed buying decisions, High said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon WorkSpaces – Desktop Computing in the Cloud
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-workspaces-desktop-computing-in-the-cloud.html
Our new Amazon WorkSpaces product gives Enterprise IT the power to meet this challenge head-on. You, the IT professional, can now provision a desktop computing experience in the cloud for your users. Your users can access the applications, documents, and intranet resources that they need to get their job done, all from the comfort of their desktop computer, laptop, iPad, or Android tablet.
The IT professional chooses to supply each user with a given WorkSpaces Bundle. There are four standard bundles. Here are the hardware specifications for each one:
Standard – 1 vCPU, 3.75 GiB of memory, and 50 GB of persistent user storage.
Standard Plus – 1 vCPU, 3.75 GiB of memory, and 50 GB of persistent user storage.
Performance – 2 vCPU, 7.5 GiB of memory, and 100 GB of persistent user storage.
Performance Plus – 2 vCPU, 7.5 GiB of memory, and 100 GB of persistent user storage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who’s hogging Amazon’s cloud CPUs? I’ll kill ‘em … oh, look, it was me
CloudTrail sent in by web bazaar to flag up greedy API slurpings
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/cloudtrail_api_amazon/
No one trusts the cloud, not even people who have built their businesses entirely on it – or so Amazon has indicated with a new tool that reveals how individual Amazon Web Services systems are being accessed.
For organizations that have sat themselves in Bezos & Co’s cloud, the web bazaar announced a new security utility called CloudTrail, which monitors calls to the AWS software interfaces.
The service gives sysadmins a clear idea of what exactly is accessing the cloud’s resource at any one time. Security logs are stored in Amazon’s mainstay S3 service with the option of being archived to its long-term low-cost Glacier storage as well.
“It is a service that logs all API calls you are making to AWS resources,”
Initially CloudTrail will logs API calls to a decent portion of the alphabet soup of Amazon services, including EC2, EBS, RDS, VPC, IAM, STS, and Redshift.
Tomi Engdahl says:
18 hours, $33K, and 156,314 cores: Amazon cloud HPC hits a “petaflop”
1.21 petaflops? Great scott!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/18-hours-33k-and-156314-cores-amazon-cloud-hpc-hits-a-petaflop/
What do you do if you need more than 150,000 CPU cores but don’t have millions of dollars to spend on a supercomputer? Go to the Amazon cloud, of course.
For the past few years, HPC software company Cycle Computing has been helping researchers harness the power of Amazon Web Services when they need serious computing power for short bursts of time. The company has completed its biggest Amazon cloud run yet, creating a cluster that ran for 18 hours, hitting 156,314 cores at its largest point and a theoretical peak speed of 1.21 petaflops. (A petaflop is one quadrillion floating point operations per second, or a million billion.)
To get all those cores, Cycle’s cluster ran simultaneously in Amazon data centers across the world, in Virginia, Oregon, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, and São Paulo. The bill from Amazon ended up being $33,000
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft FAILS to encrypt data centre links despite NSA snooping
Odds of a new ‘F*CK YOU NSA’ engineer’s rant: Medium
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/ms_data_centre_link_uncryption/
Microsoft has admitted it doesn’t yet encrypt “server-to-server” communications, although it plans to review its security arrangements in the wake of ongoing revelations about NSA spying.
The non-cryption admission, made by a senior Microsoft legal officer during an EU inquiry, comes shortly after leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that Google and Yahoo! data centre interconnects were being tapped by the NSA’s spies, as part of a program code-named MUSCULAR.
“These risks were well known before Snowden, and European companies who want to show they are serious about data protection will be considering legal action.”
Google’s Lundblad told MEPs that the internet giant is encrypting server connections and data centre interconnects, which he described as an ongoing process that never finishes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tencent to launch international version of free 10TB storage service. New photo-sharing app coming soon to US
http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/18/tencent-to-launch-international-version-of-free-10tb-storage-service-new-photo-sharing-app-coming-soon-to-us/
Tencent, China’s largest Internet company, will release an international version of its 10TB cloud storage product next year, and within the coming weeks it’ll launch a new photo-sharing app in the US, according to one of its vice presidents.
In a speech at MIT’s China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum in Boston over the weekend, Peter Zheng, the Shenzhen-based vice president of Tencent’s social network group, said the free storage offering and Story Camera, an English-language version of a photo app that has already proven popular in China, will soon arrive in the US.
Story Camera, which is like Instagram with more location-aware context, is set to launch in the US in the next two to three weeks, Zheng said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitcasa’s infinite cloud storage balloons to $999 a year
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/bitcasa-infinite-cloud-storage-price-change/
If you thought Bitcasa’s infinite cloud storage was too sweet of a deal to exist on this mortal plane for $99 a year, that’s because it was — or at least partly because the bulk of subscribers filled up far less of their digital lockers than expected. According to the outfit, 98 percent of its customers use less than five terabytes of data, and 92 percent “do not store anywhere close to a terabyte.” In addition, the firm says a survey of its customers revealed they valued more features over additional space. As result, the unlimited service will now cost $999 a year, or $99 per month, and the company will focus on making the platform more useful