Making big data analytics available to everyone in an organisation means that it has to be much simpler than traditional data analytics solutions such as databases, data warehouses and Hadoop clusters. It needs to be consumerized! We need a new generation of data analytics solutions that are not just powerful and scalable, but also very easy-to-use.
With Dropbox, Jive, Yammer, Chatter and a number of other new services, the modern enterprise is rapidly becoming "consumerized". And it's not just business, the same is happening in major web companies, on Wall Street, in government agencies, and in science labs. Thirty years of bad "enterprise software" experiences is making this transition happen much more quickly than anyone would have expected. The shift to cloud computing is also accelerating the trend, as is the goal of developing a much more "social" approach to business.
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The Consumerization of Big Data Analytics
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Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies
While the benefits and value of the federal cloud computing policy can be debated, the world’s transition to cloud computing as an integral component of any IT infrastructure cannot be denied. The prudent government executive should, therefore, heed the lessons learned from the many private industry corporations that already have miles behind them on this journey.
When identifying a potential cloud computing project, one should always count on a multi-year transition. Organizations should always use a consistent cloud opportunity identification process to reduce the risk of project failure by leveraging data from successful cloud implementations. Clients need to determine set metrics (economic, operational and service) with direct linkage to specific mission requirement(s). Use of a gate-driven cloud adoption process designed to terminate failed projects early in the project lifecycle and deliver measurable capabilities within a quick timeframe (weeks—not years) is highly recommended.
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ServiceMesh Joins OpenStack Community
ServiceMesh on Thursday announced it has joined the OpenStack community. Using the ServiceMesh Agility Platform and the OpenStack open source cloud operating system, Global 2000 enterprises can construct a modern, high-performance cloud computing environment. The Agility Platform ensures that all enterprise governance, policy management, and workflow capabilities are applied in a consistent manner across each of the clouds, whether based on OpenStack or other private and public cloud technologies, allowing the enterprise to shift to a modern, agile IT operating model. An agile IT operating model, in turn, helps customers realize concrete business value from cloud computing technology.
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Implementation of Cloud Computing Solutions in Federal Agencies: Part 4
The defense and intelligence communities are not immune to cloud computing. Arguably more than any other government agencies, their missions require a fabric of utility computing that scales on demand and enables self discovery and self-service access to secure, timely and relevant information in support of mission: individual or shared. The traditional IT model requires system engineering that binds most software to the hardware and does not provide an enterprise suite of functionality or allow for increased flexibility and a governed lifecycle of services. Designing software independence from the hardware allows an operating system, applications and data to “live” across the enterprise and is fundamental to the transformation of compute, storage and network functionality.
Defense is dealing with a $78 billion budget cut—the first since September 11, 2001—and another $100 billion in other cost-cutting measures over a five-year period commencing in FY 2012. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is directing that the budget be cut from agency administrative and structural areas (e.g., the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Network Intelligence and Information, the Business Transformation Agency, and the Joint Forces Command are in the process of being eliminated or disestablished with some essential functions transferred to other organizations with the Pentagon).
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An A-Z of Cloud Computing at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
An alphabetical selection of some of the many themes & topics to be discussed at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (9th Cloud Expo) - being held November 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA. The markets may still be melting, but Cloud Expo is definitely coming of age!
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SOA Software Appoints Former IBMer as VP Technology
SOA Software has appointed Corey Scobie to the position of Vice President Technology, the company announced on Tuesday. Scobie, who has been a leader in the IT industry with roles ranging from software development to SOA portfolio strategy, will become part of SOA Software's senior technology development group. At SOA Software, Scobie will be involved in SOA Governance, partner activities and the company's growing API management product line.
Commenting on the announcement Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, stated "We are looking forward to Corey’s contributions to our efforts, especially in partner integration and SOA architecture."
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Leading C-Suite Perspectives Upcoming at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
What does the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Abiquo, Apprenda, Tier3, OutSystems and OpSource, the Co-Founder & CTO of Dell Boomi, the CTOs of Rackspace, rPath, Compuware, BMC, NextIO, SoftLayer, SOASoftware, Gale Technologies, CiRBA and UShareSoft, and the Chief Cloud Executive at VMware? Answer: all are members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, due to take place November 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA - the heart of Silicon Valley.
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The Benefits of Cloud Computing for SMEs
In our increasingly globalized world, small businesses need an operational communications network to span the geographically dispersed regions of the company. But the business applications required to achieve this are an pricey proposition in our current economic climate. This is making it increasingly hard for smaller organizations to compete with huge corporations who hold seemingly infinite budgets. But we are now seeing the emergence of multi-tenanted business applications based upon a price-per-user model, or in other words, the Public Cloud. This is allowing youthful organizations to enjoy enterprise level services, security and products, at a fraction of the cost.
Now is the time to start "Thinking Big" - and employing communications to get there. With Cloud Computing, instead of operating Desktops, Applications, Exchange or Voice through physical in-house servers, they are hosted on centralized virtual servers in a data center. This whole process is rapid to setup and uncomplicated to use; you just login, customize and begin. Applications are more scalable, more secure and more reliable as you don't need a copy of an app for every department using it, just one app which is flexible enough for everyone to customize for their own unique needs. You can immediately supply applications whenever you require them as the end user directly controls the resources they require. This allows businesses endeavoring to adapt to the pace and dynamism of business today to deploy highly resilient virtual machines for their employees, dawning a new era of flexibility.
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OpSource Opens West Coast Facility
OpSource, which recently got bought by Dimension Data, has opened a new IaaS cloud hosting facility in Santa Clara, California, giving its enterprise, service provider and SaaS clients a West Coast location for both development and production cloud environments. The company said it would lower the network latency of its West Coast clients and provides a secondary back-up site for existing clients. Multiple locations can be managed through a single web-based UI. OpSource can also provide a single bill.
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The Economic Benefit of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a model for enabling “… convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” NIST is implying the economies of scale that go with cloud computing when it refers to a pool of configurable computing resources.
Cloud computing is often referred to as a technology. However, it is actually a significant shift in the business and economic models for provisioning and consuming information technology (IT) that can lead to a significant cost savings. This cost savings can only be realized through the use of significant pooling of these “configurable computing resources” or resource pooling. According to NIST, this capability is an essential characteristic of cloud computing. Resource pooling is the ability of a cloud to serve multiple customers using a multi-tenant model with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand.
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Akamai Joins OpenStack Community
Akamai Technologies, Inc. has joined the OpenStack community. Akamai plans to provide the OpenStack community with advice and guidance on best practices for platform design and architecture to help overcome the availability, delivery, performance, and scale challenges inherently faced by globally distributed cloud infrastructures and applications.
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Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan Talks About the Cloud Channel
This afternoon I had a very interesting discussion with Mr. Jeffrey Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace. His firm is focused entirely on the business implications of the transition of the technology industry from product-centric to services-driven solutions, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Managed Services. Mr. Kaplan is also the Founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace (www.cloudshowplace.com), a vendor-independent, online directory and best practice resource center regarding SaaS, Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), including Managed Services with nearly 1,800 companies divided into over 90 categories.
Our conversation focused on the evolution of the system integrator within the public sector marketplace. One of his key goals was to dispel the myth that system integrators and their channel partners will be displaced by the rapidly growing list of cloud providers. In his view, system inegrator must quickly evolve their businesses to deliver cloud based solutions. Today's traditional information technology channel sales model will morph into a new cloud channel sales model.
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Oracle Goes Cloud
Larry Ellison, who once famously called cloud computing “water vapor” and “complete gibberish,” capitulated this week and announced the coming of an Oracle Public Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld.
Untroubled by any inconsistency, Ellison basically shrugged and said, “Everyone’s got a cloud. We need a cloud.”
Users are meant to run Oracle’s cloud-ified Java-based Fusion Applications and BPEL-based Fusion Middleware, as-is Oracle databases and existing custom-built Java EE apps on a resource-intensive subscription-based Oracle-managed, -hosted and -supported single-tenant infrastructure that Oracle is building out of its own (Xen?) virtualized Sun hardware that will give them instant provisioning and elasticity on-demand.
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NJVC to Demonstrate Enterprise Automation at GEOINT 2011
NJVC, one of the largest information technology solutions (IT) providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), is pleased to offer live, compelling demonstrations on the company’s Streamlined NJVC Automation Products, Services and Solutions™ (SNAPSS™) at GEOINT 2011 Symposium—the largest intelligence event in the United States—on Oct. 16 – 19 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio.
More than 200 exhibitors will showcase their services and products at the GEOINT 2011 Symposium Exhibit Hall. Approximately 4,000 people are expected to attend the symposium, including the leadership of the intelligence, defense and homeland security communities.
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Get Ready for the "BigData Office"
Unlike traditional analytics tools like SQL and Hadoop, these new office platforms will be highly interactive and realtime, and will be for everyone - business users, data scientists, app developers, individuals. Anyone, or any organization, that needs a simpler way to handle today’s explosively growing data volumes.
First it was just about documents, then about collaboration, now it's all about data. Office software is changing, and changing fast. It's moving to the cloud, and moving to the age of big data.
Data is growing exponentially everywhere. With this relentless data deluge, every enterprise from global Fortune 50 companies down to SMBs, every government agency, and every R&D lab, now needs a "big data office" solution to ensure that everyone in the organization has instant access to all the information they require, at all times.
We're now entering the third generation of office software.
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IBM OEMs Nirvanix Cloud Storage
IBM Global Services is going to be OEMing Nirvanix’ enterprise-grade cloud storage under what the pair calls a strategic partnership.
IBM said integrating Nirvanix would give its SmartCloud storage services a solution capable of supporting millions of users, billions of objects and exabytes of data to complement its secure cloud-ified virtual server environments.
The technology IBM is bringing on board is supposed to let users upload any size file just once rather than force them to upload the same file multiple times in multiple geographies because of strict file-size limitations. They will still get continuous access to the data at multiple redundant locations.
IBM says the widgetry is ideal for unstructured data as well as for storing objects in which data, metadata and index are all encapsulated as one blob. Each node in the SmartCloud storage service knows what’s stored in its neighboring nodes so they essentially work like a massive, cross-connected grid.
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NJVC Spotlights Cyber Security and Automated IT at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions providers supporting the Department of Defense, announces its lineup for the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo®, Oct. 16 - 20 at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Fla.
Visit the NJVC booth (#206) on the tradeshow floor to meet with company representatives and earn about NJVC’s extensive and proven portfolio of IT solutions for government and commercial customers. NJVC will provide the following live demonstrations for attendees.
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IBM's Cloud Billows
IBM wants 200 million users on its cloud widgetry by the end of next year. It has to get to them before Oracle, HP or Dell do. It projects $7 billion in revenue from cloud computing hardware, software and services by 2015.
To advance its ambition it’s unveiled a new “simplified” enterprise-grade public cloud PaaS it calls SmartCloud Application Services (SCAS) that will ride on its SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ IaaS, which won’t be deployed globally until the end of next year. Initially it’ll be US-only.
SCAS is supposed to be safe enough for new and traditional mission-critical enterprise applications development and deployment. IBM promises cloud-based economics along with enterprise-grade security and governance, open Java and “cross-platform support with no vendor lock-in.”
It’s to beta later this quarter with what IBM calls “business-centric” SLAs. What they are exactly isn’t clear.
Among Blue’s offerings is a new SmartCloud for SAP Applications service for automating the most common labor-intensive tasks associated with managing SAP environments in the cloud. The widgetry will put all databases on the cloud IBM said.
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NJVC General Manager, Cloud Services, Kevin Jackson to Moderate Cloud Panel
Cloud computing, a new approach in the provisioning and consumption of IT, has been described as a means to cut federal IT budgets. This panel of esteemed intelligence community technologists will discuss the implementation of cloud solutions (private, public, community and hybrid) from public and private providers specific to intelligence community customers.
Jackson heads the new NJVC cloud services business unit, and joined the company in 2010. A prolific blogger and first-time book author on cloud computing, he was recently named one of the “Most Powerful Voices in Security” by SYS-CON MEDIA.
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The Realtime Commerce Revolution
A new "realtime commerce" revolution is underway that will be as profound a shift for the business world as the eCommerce revolution of the 1990s. Big data tools are essential, but they need to be realtime, and aimed at ordinary business users.
Over the next few years, the "realtime commerce" space is set to experience phenomenal growth. Companies such as One Kings Lane, Groupon, LivingSocial, Ideeli and others are developing a whole set of new retail business models. Others such as Amazon and Netflix are developing ever more powerful recommendation engines, and a huge number of companies are looking to develop more accurate models for personalization and targeted advertising. A new "realtime commerce" revolution is underway that will be as profound a shift for the business world as the eCommerce revolution of the 1990s.
To be successful in realtime commerce, companies will have to put in place a whole raft of new capabilities, many or most of which will require, and be powered by, new realtime big data analytics platforms.
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