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Cisco – More than Half of Workloads to be Cloud - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
More than 50 percent of all workloads will be processed in the cloud by 2014. This statement comes from a Cisco “Global Cloud” whitepaper, which examines the current state of things and guesses where we’ll be at in 2015. It also forecasts a 22-percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for cloud datacenters, with the share of workloads handled by these centers rising from 21 percent back in 2010 to 57 percent by 2015. The report says that the workloads themselves will increase about 2.5 times in that period. Cloud is of course the key to these additional workloads, as it shifts the paradigm from one workload to multiple workloads on any single server. The Cisco report also sees cloud-based traffic growing at a 33-percent CAGR in the 2010-2015, accounting for 34 percent of all datacenter traffic by 2015, as the total datacenter dataflow approaches 5 zettabytes annually worldwide. A quick reminder shows that 5 zettabytes equals 5 billion terabytes. (I prefer to think of a zettabyte as a 1021 byte, as I quickly lose track of the names after “tera-”.) Much of this will be driven by video, and especially video on mobile devices. The Cisco research implies this – although overall cloud-based datacenter traffic will be 34 percent in 2015, the consumer cloud will be 37-percent cloud-driven, compared to only 19 percent within the business cloud. Getting out my old slide rule deduces that this means the consumer cloud will account for five-sixths of total datacenter traffic – about 83 percent of it. ZOMFG. No wonder the paleolithic mandarins of the music and film industries want to cast sharing and everything else under the guise of stealing and terrorism. The Cisco report also has a section devoted to Cloud Readiness. This is the same term used by AsiaCloud, which published a report on the topic last year, and which features Cisco’s Singapore-based CTO Bernie Trudel as one of its leaders. The Cisco report states that a location must have a download speed of greater than 2.5Mbps (and latency of less than 50ms) to handle advanced cloud applications. It defines the latter as advanced gaming, video chat, and file sharing; HD audio and video conferencing; and streaming of super HD video. It prescribes a modest download speed between 750kbps and 2.5Mbps for “intermediate” cloud apps, including telephony, basic chat and conferencing, and what it terms advanced social networking. Seems modest enough. My recent research on bandwidth around the world, which used – as did the Cisco report – bandwidth speed data from Seattle-based Ookla, shows all of the world leaders with speeds many times that of Cisco’s advanced requirement. Even the laggards amongst today’s dynamic, developing economies – such as such as India and the Philippines (both at 1.7Mbps), Indonesia (at 1.35Mbps), and Nigeria (at 880kbps) – meet the intermediate standard. Other developing hotspots such as Jordan (at 2.97Mbps), South Africa (at 3.02Mbps), and Kenya (at 3.31Mbps) are far above the advanced standard. The leaders in my own Tau Index research are typically 6x to 10x above the advanced standard. All this tells me that Cisco is on track with its projections. We’ll be wallowing in zettabytes soon enough, and we’ll have the capacity to do this. Now, if someone can help me figure out what this means for the hardware industry – chips, storage, and plumbing – I might get totally optimistic about the near future.
The New OpenNebula Self-Service Portal in Action - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
A new episode of the screencast series is now available at the OpenNebula YouTube Channel. This screencast demonstrates the new easily-customizable self-service portal for cloud consumers. Its aim is to offer a simplified access to shared infrastructure for non-IT end users. The screencast shows how to create a virtual network, how to upload an image, and how to launch virtual machines using them.
Big Data: “An Even Bigger Deal than Cloud,” Says Expert - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
“The volume of data we’re generating now from machines pales in comparison to the volume of data we’ll soon generate from our own bodies,” says data security expert Dave Asprey. Writing in a Trend Micro blog, Asprey – who is one of the leaders in the emerging Quantified Self movement – explains his vision of a world in which personal biometrical data is shared via the cloud.
Cloud Expo New York: The Dark Side of Virtualization - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
Virtualization and private cloud are good for server consolidation, creating flexible environments, and saving IT budget dollars. A recent survey of 1200 companies with 500+ employees showed that 59% had server virtualization in production or pilot. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dave Asprey, VP of Cloud Security at Trend Micro, will explain the types of situations when you should consider not virtualizing some of your applications. Reasons range from technical to legal to IT ops to politics to finances. Attend this session, and hear a true IT insider’s guide to the truth about virtualization.
SoftLayer Appoints New Chief Financial Officer - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
SoftLayer Technologies on Monday announced the appointment of Walter Z. Berger as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective in March. A seasoned finance and accounting executive, Mr. Berger will help guide and oversee the company’s continued market leadership and financial growth. He brings more than 30 years of experience to SoftLayer, including extensive operational experience as a CFO with several large, publicly held companies. Lance Crosby, CEO for SoftLayer, notes that Berger’s “proven track record and leadership will be invaluable as we embark on our next phase of growth. We’re delighted to have such a high caliber executive join our team.” Prior to joining SoftLayer Technologies, Mr. Berger was the CFO and executive vice president of Leap Wireless International Inc. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Berger served in senior management roles at CBS Corporation, including as executive vice president and chief financial officer for CBS Radio, a division of CBS Corporation. Prior to joining CBS Radio, Mr. Berger served as executive vice president and CFO and a director of Emmis Communications from 1999 to 2005. From 1996 to 1997, Mr. Berger served as executive vice president and CFO of LG&E Energy Corporation and in 1997 was promoted to group president of the Energy Marketing Division, where he served until 1999. Early in his career, Mr. Berger held a number of financial and operating management roles in the manufacturing, service and energy fields. Mr. Berger began his career in audit at Arthur Andersen in 1977. Mr. Berger is a certified public accountant and holds a Bachelor of Arts in business administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Security in the Clouds: The IPT Swiss IT Challenge - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
Probably the best part of my job as CTO of Layer 7 Technologies is having the opportunity to spend time with our customers. They challenge my assumptions, push me for commitments, and take me to task for any issues; but … Continue reading ?
Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Security for Regulated Industries – CloudAudit - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
Regulation of consumer and corporate data is increasing in response to the growing movement into cloud service offerings. Coupled with high-profile intrusions by groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec, the necessity for a standard way to assess the security of cloud service providers becomes apparent. CloudAudit is an open standard developed by a Cloud Security Alliance working group that provides an open, common, extensible namespace and interface to enable cloud providers and authorized customers to automate audits, assertions, assessments and assurance for their cloud infrastructure, platform or application environments.
Why SaaS and ISVs Clash - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
Interest in cloud-based applications continues apace, but hosting can be a complicated endeavor for ISVs. The enduring popularity of Software-as-a-service (SaaS) isn’t accidental. Whether you’re a technology reseller or a traditional enterprise, there’s a lot to like about the use of a service model for software delivery, including low monthly cost, fast time-to-market and few deployment hiccups. But SaaS does not reward all organizations equally. Unfortunately for ISVs, who fall on the ‘delivery’ side of the service-delivery relationship, the benefits of SaaS are tempered by risks. The nature of being an ISV complicates many decisions about technology and some of these will be amplified when ISVs move toward SaaS delivery. In order to make a smooth transition, ISVs must develop a strategy in full recognition of these unique challenges.
How Quickly Will Software Vendors Move to the Cloud? - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
There’s an excellent discussion going on over on the Cloud Computing Google Group about the pace of migration of traditional software to a SaaS model. Here I recently went into some of the very real reasons why the migration is slower than some would like, but didn’t really talk about the pace of adoption. There are some numbers that make for some interesting analysis. According to PwC, in 2009, the top 100 software vendors (traditional non-SaaS) generated 3.7% of their revenues from SaaS in the US; and 1.1% of their revenues from SaaS in Europe. In the same report, the US has a 44% market share and Europe has 36% market share by revenue (License, Maintenance and Support). According to Gartner, in 2010, the WW installed enterprise software market grossed about $104 Billion. So, roughly, we could say that installed software vendors (US & EU only) brought in nearly $5 Billion in revenues in 2010. So nearly 5% of revenues since the inception of SaaS (not including ASP)?
Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Computing and Healthcare - Tue, 07 Feb 2012
What are the legal implications and consequences of cloud computing in the healthcare and high-tech sectors? What are the potential legal protections and solutions from the point of view of providers, suppliers and consumers? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Paul Rubell, a Partner at Meltzer Lippe, will discuss the federal mandates that will encourage “meaningful use” of EHR technology by 2015, and what those mandates will require executives to understand about cloud computing and solutions for implementing cloud computing across large companies, corporations and not-for-profits in advance of federal mandates.
Google, Facebook Fierce Tech Rivalry Looms: 10 Reasons Why - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
NEWS ANALYSIS: Google and Facebook have their gun sights set on each other. As Facebook gains huge new riches with its initial public stock offering, the competition between these two giants is likely to become fierce and even nasty. – When Facebook first launched, it was looked at as a niche social network. The site catered to college kids and seemed to be destined to live in that world. But after an increasing number of people joined the site, and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to open it up to the general pu…
Facebook IPO to Dwarf Recent Groupon, Zynga, LinkedIn Stock Market Debuts - Thu, 02 Feb 2012
Facebook filed for its initial public offering as expected Feb. 1, ending a week of hype, buzz and punditry that had financial and Internet analysts predicting the social network giant’s initial public offering would be the biggest in the history of the Internet. The company will trade under the ticker symbol ?FB,? but has not revealed whether it will trade on the NASDAQ or NYSE. While Facebook will go on touting its Like buttons for Web publishers and hawking its Timeline user interface for consumers and applications alike, the company’s financial statements will be poked, prodded and pored over by hundreds of experts looking to divine just how big an Internet player Facebook is now and can become 5, 10, 15 years down the road. Facebook may be the biggest IPO to date, but it isn’t the only game in town. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the top Internet company IPOs of the past couple of years, along with some obvious earlier blockbuster debuts. Plus, we make our logical guess for whom we think the next IPO will be. – …
Facebook IPO Will Put Social Network in Google, Apple’s League - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
Facebook’s Feb. 1 filing for a $5 billion initial public stock offering has the potential to give the world’s biggest social network a market capitalization that would put it in the same rarified league as Google and Apple. The question is whether its future growth and financial performance will keep it there. – Facebook filed for a $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) Feb. 1, claiming to make $3.7 billion in annual revenue, $1.8 billion in operating income and $1 billion in net income. With some 845 million users, Facebook may not have been an Internet darling for a few years. When the social net…
Microsoft Snipes at Google on Privacy - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
Microsoft wasted no time taking some very public jabs at Google’s privacy-policy controversy. – Microsoft wasted no time swiping at Google over its recent privacy controversy. Starting March 1, Google will fold 60 of its 70 existing product-privacy policies into one blanket policy. Users cannot opt out. Under the auspices of its new policy, the search-engine giant will also treat any user wit…
EnterpriseDB Creates Database as a Service for Cloud Hosting Platforms - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
News Analysis: EnterpriseDB is hoping entice more enterprises into cloud computing with a database-as-a-service offering geared to challenge Oracle in the database market. – EnterpriseDB has announced a new database-as-a-service offering, which will bring EnterpriseDBs PostgreSQL and PostgreSQL Plus database products to the cloud. The company has already forged agreements with leading cloud services hosts to immediately offer EnterpriseDB’s PostgreSQL Plus Cloud Ser…
CloudPassage Fills Gaps in Private-Public Cloud Security - Mon, 30 Jan 2012
The security as a service (SaaS) vendor combines hosted security with cloud access to build secure environments for public and hybrid cloud users. – When it comes to the cloud, security has always been the No. 1 concern for users. After all, as data travels around the Internet, there are numerous windows of opportunity for data interception or capture. A single weak link can lead to system compromise and lost information. Now there’s a clou…
Microsoft Offers $60K in Azure Cloud Services to Startups, Launches BizSpark Plus - Mon, 30 Jan 2012
Microsoft announces BizSpark Plus, an extension of its BizSpark program, and teams with startup accelerator TechStars to offer $60,000 in cloud computing services to startups. – Microsoft announced its new BizSpark Plus, an extension to its BizSpark program to help startups get off the ground faster, as well as a new partnership with startup accelerator TechStars to make free cloud computing services available to select, high potential startups. Microsoft and TechSta…
Alfresco Team Simplifies Collaboration - Fri, 27 Jan 2012
Alfresco Team is a package of powerful collaboration tools that can be quickly deployed for a small workgroup or pilot project, but one which can easily scale to fit ones needs. It works well with the Alfresco Mobile tools for Apple iOS, which themselves open up entirely new ways for businesses to capture and use images and sound. Alfresco Software is attempting to address the small and mid-range customer with Alfresco Team, based on the Alfresco Enterprise architecture used by nearly 2,000 businesses, including Home Depot, Michelin and the United Kingdoms National Health Service. It can be deployed in a traditional premise-based environment running Linux or Windows, or on an Amazon EC2 instance. Alfresco Team offers solid enterprise-class content management features including version tracking and granular user access. Coupled with the Alfresco Mobile tools for iOS, which allow the capture of audio, still images and video, Alfresco Team offers a first-class collaboration environment that meets the budget of the smallest organization. Alfresco Team Makes Collaboration Simple – …
Fujitsu, ServiceMesh Expand Cloud Offerings - Fri, 27 Jan 2012
Fujitsu and ServiceMesh have a new partnership that looks to brings more public and private cloud offerings to their enterprise customers. – Cloud platform vendor ServiceMesh has forged a relationship with Fujitsu, giving ServiceMesh customers access to Fujitsus global, on-demand cloud computing footprint. ServiceMesh’s customers will now be able to build hybrid cloud instances, which can be optimized to deliver IT services at lower cost…
Small Business Knowledge of Cloud Capabilities Grows: Fonality - Fri, 27 Jan 2012
The study concluded that cloud-based unified communications (UC) could eliminate productivity shortfalls among SMBs. – Small businesses are increasingly becoming educated about the benefits cloud computing holds for their companies, according to a report from Fonality, a business communications company. Fonality released the results of a survey conducted by Webtorials, which measured 2012 communications goals…
VMware VCP5 certification upgrade deadline fast approaching - Mon, 06 Feb 2012
For many VMware administrators, having VMware certification is a badge of honor within the virtualization community. Being a VMware Certified Professional (VCP) says a lot about an individual’s dedication to the technology and level of expertise. And as the demand for IT professionals with data center virtualization skills increases, it is essential to be able to distinguish yourself in the job market.
The future of hypervisors - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
The world of hypervisors is complicated by the fact that there are proprietary and open source tools, each with different strengths and weaknesses.
One expert says the difference between the two is that innovation is coming out of the open source products at a quicker pace. But another expert doesn’t quite believe that first to market is the key to success. He says this market is too important to be downloading open source bits frequently. With that dilemma, enterprises instead turn to commercially supported products.
Virtualization no silver bullet for Macs or mobile - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
In 2006, Apple’s Intel-based Macs opened the door to running Windows via desktop virtualization; suddenly users could have their personal Macs and business PCs in one box. It’s a big reason, I believe, that Mac market share has continued to grow faster than overall PC market share for the last five years. The shift to Intel and the accompanying ability to run Windows gave people the security blanket they needed to make the switch.
VMTurbo upgrade supports all three major virtualization platforms - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
VMTurbo has upgraded its operations management suite to support the three major virtual environments and to improve its capacity-planning tool.
With the new 3.0 version of Operations Manager, the software can now manage Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware’s vSphere individually or in multi-hypervisor deployments, the company says. This version adds XenServer to its capabilities.
A tour of Microsoft System Center 2012 - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
I admit it: I never liked Microsoft’s System Center server management suite. If you are one of my long-time readers, you know I mention it only sporadically, and even then without enthusiasm. It’s felt like a patch job of unrelated products. But the forthcoming System Center 2012 – now available in the form of a release candidate — might just change my mind.
Microsoft ‘committed’ to Hyper-V OpenStack support - Tue, 31 Jan 2012
Microsoft may try to revive support for Hyper-V in OpenStack as the community considers removing the code — which one OpenStack developer called broken and unmaintained — from the stack.
“Microsoft is committed to working with the community to resolve the current issues with Hyper-V and OpenStack,” Microsoft said in a statement.
VMware releases vCenter Operations Management 5.0 for virtualization and cloud infrastructures - Mon, 30 Jan 2012
VMware’s latest move to help accelerate private cloud adoption came last week with the official announcement of VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.0.
Microsoft takes aim at VMware and the cloud with System Center 2012 - Mon, 23 Jan 2012
The skirmish between VMware and Microsoft for greater control over thevirtualization and cloud markets is only going to get bigger and more intense in 2012.
NetApp’s Tom Georgens: How we got big, stayed nimble, and view storage today - Thu, 19 Jan 2012
Those of us with a bit of institutional memory recall a brash upstart named Network Appliance that burst onto the storage scene to challenge EMC — itself once a brash newcomer — and other storage royalty like IBM. But that was 20 years ago, as difficult as that seems to believe, and the company, now named NetApp, is $5 billion-plus storage leader in its own right.
Smarter hypervisor use can lead to a ‘big, big change’ in security - Thu, 19 Jan 2012
To gain insight on the months ahead as they relate to IT attacks, malware, cloud security, and the impact of virtualization on security, we recently chatted with Simon Crosby, former CTO of Citrix Systems’ data center and cloud business.
Groupon acquires e-commerce data startup Adku - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Founded by a group of former Google employees in San Francisco, Adku used basically big data for the personalization of online shopping experiences.
Redbox’s makeover: NCR deal, Verizon venture - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Redbox will buy NCR’s entertainment kiosk unit and launch a streaming service with Verizon. Meanwhile, Redbox parent Coinstar blows away its earnings targets.
Wolfram|Alpha Pro launching this week - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Wolfram|Alpha’s founder explains the next big step in the evolution of the “knowledge engine,” which is touted to enable users to dig deeper than ever into its vast library and personalize their experiences.
Google: Madonna tops Tom Brady, Patriots and Giants in searches - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Mobile traffic saw a huge increase in Google searches during commercial breaks, likely with more viewers out and about at Super Bowl parties.
PC bill of materials creep higher amid hard drive shortage - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Hard drives represent 11 percent to 12 percent of the PC bill of materials.
NPD: Android attracting more than half of new smartphone shoppers - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Apple sold the most smartphones in Q4 2011, but Android might win the race as it is attracting more first-time buyers than iOS, according to NPD research.
HTC’s Q1 outlook stinks: Is Q2 rebound theory wrong? - Mon, 06 Feb 201
HTC is betting that new products in March can “normalize” its profit margins. The reality may be that HTC’s glory days may be gone forever as Samsung and Apple run away from the smartphone pack.
IT spending to gain 5 percent in 2012, says IDC - Mon, 06 Feb 201
Overall, IDC said it was heartened by the IT spending trends given the wild cards in the global economy. Europe remains an economic mess, but BRIC countries will spend heavily on tech.
EMC unveils VFCache, targets Fusion-io - Sun, 05 Feb 201
EMC’s VFCache is designed to meld the storage array to the server. The storage giant is targeting Fusion-io in an effort to bring more Flash memory to data centers.
Mobile banking could be must-have option for consumers - Sun, 05 Feb 201
Over twice as many consumers at the nation’s largest banks are using mobile banking more than are those at credit unions, according to a new report.