Tag: Cloud

EMC releases next gen data centre product range

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

DSC_0017EMC hit the hyperbole when it released a refresh of its new mid-range data centre products.

Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division, EMC told the product launch in Milan yesterday that when people look at the history of datacentre computing they will see this particular product launch as the “day everything changed.”

To be fair the outfit has a lot to be proud of, if even half the stats for the VNX series are true.

The outfit has been the leader in the market with its VNX boxes which are for companies who want a data centre.

According to EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, David Goulden the rise of mobile data has made the data centre a vital part of any IT plan.  Huge amounts of data were flowing into the company which not only needed to be stored, but also used.

One of EMC’s customers, Enrico Parsini, from Conserve Italia, said that active use of the datacentre within his company was being seen as a way of driving down costs for the rest of the business.  This was particularly important in his company which has seen a three years of falling prices in the food industry.

VNX products are based on the idea that if you make Intel’s Sandy bridge cores more efficient and make SD cards run on special software rather than traditional HD methods you can make data centres go like the clappers for less energy and cost.

If what EMC says is true, its channel partners will be able to sell their clients a cheaper box than what they would have previously bought, and still see data centre speed improvements of about 50 per cent.

The product puts other hardware makers on the back foot.  While they have been touting the use of virtual computers, some even have hybrid systems for sale, they do not have the speed options of the EMC machines.

EMC said that many people were expecting it to just announce a refresh of the product, when it actually announced that it was going to change everything.

This is partly because the hardware is ahead of the competition and is already gearing up for its next generation.

It is the first time that we have heard of companies coming up with a use for Intel’s multicore products and making them work properly.  With Chipzilla planning more cores on its chips in coming months, EMC will have an easy upgrade path.

Part of the product’s success has been because of the involvement of Cisco and VMWare.

Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Centre Group, Cisco said that his company partnered with  EMC to speed its customers’ journey to the cloud.  These include allowing  custom-designed infrastructure, validated reference architectures via EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE Vblock Systems.

Cisco kit and software integrated with offerings from EMC and VCE have generated significant momentum with customers and partners.

“Cisco and EMC have hundreds of joint channel partners and thousands of joint customers around the world.  Together, Cisco and EMC plan to accelerate this success with our mutual channel partners,” he said.

He added that EMC’s next-generation VNX technology will complement Cisco’s Unified Compute and Unified Fabric solutions, helping customers maximise their existing infrastructure and further simplify cloud deployments.

 

 

HP and VMware team up for federated networks

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News

HPHewlett Packard and VMware have teamed up to deliver the industry’s first federated network solution, which is designed to provide customers with more automation and visibility in physical and virtual data virtual centres. Or so they say.

Companies are embracing mobile, cloud, BYOD, so manual network configuration is proving tricky and demanding. Virtualisation helps, as it offers a centralised control pane, but it still does not automate configuration and provisioning of physical devices. That’s where the new HP – VMware “solution” comes into play.

It will combine the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller with VMware’s NSX network virtualisation platform to let customers automate their physical and virtual network infrastructure, all in one place. The companies say the new networking solution will provide a centralised view, unified automation, visibility and control of the complete data center network, improving agility, monitoring and troubleshooting. Or so they say.

It all revolves around man or possibly woman hours. A typical cloud data centre network may need 10,000 provisions per day, each requiring at least 20 network command line changes. These 200,000 command line changes would require 3,333 man or woman hours to complete, assuming one minute per command. The HP-VMware networking “solution” threatens to eliminate manual configuration of both the physical and virtual data centre networks through interoperable automated orchestration of policies. It also will create a single view of the network, both physical and virtual. Or so they say.

“Customers are adopting network virtualisation to gain the necessary agility needed to realise the promise of virtualised and cloud data centres. To be successful, IT organisations need solutions to deliver common management of services and operations across the physical and virtual domains,” said Stephen Mullaney, senior vice president and general manager, networking and security business unit, VMware. “By collaborating with HP on a federated networking solution, we will help our joint customers create a unified network operations model that will radically simplify IT in the software-defined data centre.” Or so they say.

The new HP-VMware networking thing will be available in the second half of 2014, along with HP’s new ConvergedControl software.

EMEA companies put IT budgets to good use

Posted on August 23, 2013 by - News

poundsResearch from CA Technologies has revealed that companies in EMEA are increasingly switching their IT budgets from dull, routine maintenance towards designing projects that enable revenue-generating services. The CA Technologies Channel Index 2013 found that EMEA partners spend 34 percent of their time helping consumers with such projects rather than maintenance. However, only 18 percent of the IT spend in Britain was devoted to new revenue-generating services.

“IT projects are being driven by the need for businesses to innovate for growth, while creating new ways to serve customers. And today’s IT director is expected to be the driver of these efforts,” said Sean McCarry, Senior Director, CA Technologies. “Our solutions and partner programmes equip partners with the tools they need to help their customers fuel innovation and drive growth. The Channel Index 2013 shows just how far IT departments and channel partners have come on this journey.”

Chris Gabriel, VP of Solutions Management at Logicalis Group, pointed out that the shift results in less operational waste, allowing IT departments to increase their participation in productive, revenue-generating fields.

“CIOs now see their role as Chief Innovation Officer, and they have recognised that their business value isn’t in managing IT infrastructure, but delivering new IT enabled business experiences,” he said.

The index revealed that 83 percent of surveyed partners in EMEA expect to see increased spending on enterprise mobility over the next year and almost all recognise that the rapid adoption of mobility creates opportunities to help grow their business. Among UK partners, this figure rose to 95 percent.

Cloud computing was identified by CA Technologies partners as the second priority for their customers’ IT investments. Nearly two thirds of the partners surveyed predicted an increase in cloud computing spending over the next year. In the UK, a significant 81 percent of partners expected increases.

Microsoft partners get cloud headache

Posted on August 21, 2013 by - News

cloud (264 x 264)Over the next six to 12 months Microsoft’s cloud partners are going to have a major headache keeping up with the sweeping changes that Microsoft is planning.

Microsoft Australia partner business and development director, Dean Swan has warned resellers down under that there is going to be a sudden rush of new products and ideas coming in the next six months to a year.

Swan told ARNnet normally they only had to cope with a major new technology release would occur every three to four years.

Resellers needed to work out how to keep sales, pre-sales, and technical teams trained and up to speed with what is happening in the Redmond cloud.

He warned that if a business model was  100 percent service delivery, companies will have to consider what it would look like if 20 percent was managed services delivery that is Cloud-oriented.

Swan also cautioned that companies should not concentrate on the hype but show ways to build a profitable business around the Cloud.

Partners will need to work out the time it will take to achieve the appropriate business model and what form of training is necessary.

Swan said to have a look at what customers are asking for, what they expect from a Cloud vendor and what are they looking for when they move to the Cloud.

Partners must commit to understanding what the Microsoft technology can do and effectively present its capabilities as being powered by the Cloud.

SAP wants VARs to cash in on big data

Posted on August 2, 2013 by - News

sapbeerSAP is telling its partners that it is time to cash in on big data. The company estimates that its global partner base will earn up to $220 billion by selling its big data and analytics products.

So it sees a huge opportunity for partners and resellers, who could provide more services and products in addition to SAP software.

A recent IDC report revealed that SAP partners could be in for a lot of growth over the next five years. IDC’s Worldwide Ecosystem Analytics and Big Data: Growth Opportunities for SAP Partners found that EMEA partners could earn $70 billion by 2018, dabbling in big data and analytics. Asia Pacific and Japan should climb to $40 billion, while North America will lead the way with $102 billion.

One of the more curious factoids from the report claims that the digital landscape will grow more than 30 thousand percent between 2005 and 2020, from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes. It’s not called big data for nothing.

“SAP and its partners make a significant impact on the global economy,” said Darren Bibby, vice president for IDC Channels and Alliances Research. “SAP does an excellent job delivering great products for partners to work with, as well as effective sales, marketing and training resources. The result is that the SAP ecosystem is well-positioned for the future and customers will benefit from these additional skills and resources.”

Interestingly, the IDC report concluded that 68 percent of the companies don’t have a business intelligence or analytics strategy, while a whopping 63 percent don’t even know what big data is. However, 69 percent said they are looking for staff who can handle analytics.

As it grows, the industry will change. IDC believes 90 percent of industry growth will come through third-platform technology, cloud, mobile and social.

Alvea updates Cloud offering

Posted on July 15, 2013 by - News

cloud1Managed security and cloud company Alvea has bolted on some updates to the Alvea Cloud Attached Storage service.

It aims to address demands in enterprise mobility and bring your own device, by helping businesses protect corruption of business data with centralised cloud based storage, and off site data protection and recovery.

Alvea’s service will now include file sharing and syncing, mobile security, and cloud storage SLA capabilities, with a focus on using mobility for collaborative data, across different devices and in the cloud.

Customers now have access to team collaboration, mobile security policy – or remote file deletion and sandboxing synced iOS and Android files – and improved offline seeding. There is now Microsoft Hyper-V and Sharepoint backup, and active delivery integration, plus Kerberos authentication.

Alvea’s Neil Gardner said enterprise mobility and BYOD have become top priorities for businesses.

“The enhanced features of Alvea Cloud Attached Storage backed by support and expert advice from our partners means businesses can have peace of mind that their data is secure, synchronised and easily accessible in the cloud,” Gardner said.

Microsoft: partners want Microsoft cloud

Posted on July 8, 2013 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeMicrosoft is going nuts over an IDC report that claims customers like a catch-all, single cloud provider, because it’s confident it can fill that gap.

The study, which was sponsored by… Microsoft, says as companies are dragged into the cloud,63 percent of customers want a provider that can do it all. Meanwhile, 67 percent are after a wide variety of services from a single vendor, and 74 percent expect their data to be moved back on premises if they want it to.

Veep at Microsoft’s worldwide partner group, Jon Roskill, boasted that Office 365 is bringing in tonnes of annual revenue and the company has over 250,000 customers on Windows Azure, so partners should really exploit the trend and sell Microsoft kit in particular.

Microsoft’s calling its efforts a hybrid approach: offering services on site and cloud for public and private. Of course, it’s not the only company offering such services.

While it is an increasingly common opinion that European businesses would be insane to put too much stock in US servers, Microsoft is sure that its partners will be able to win Redmond more business and turn a buck or two themselves by pushing its cloud offerings.

Prism threatens US cloud leadership

Posted on July 5, 2013 by - News

Eu-flag-vector-material2US IT cloud companies could be shut out of the EU thanks to its government’s obsession with spying.

While the EU is happy to have its own governments spying on citizens, it is less pleased when the data goes over the pond.  Last year it warned that US cloud providers should make sure that data stays within the EU.

Now it seems that PRISM has indicated that the US companies will hand over European corporate data even if that information has not crossed the US border.

Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for digital matters, warned that if she was an American cloud provider, she would be quite frustrated with her government.

In her view, European businesses are likely to abandon the services of American internet providers because of the National Security Agency surveillance scandal.

Her statement appears to be more of a prediction than signs of a potential ruling from Brussels.

In a statement, she said that if businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. “Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?” she said.

Kroes said that American providers will miss out because they are often the leaders in cloud services. But if European cloud customers cannot trust the United States government, then maybe they won’t trust US cloud providers either.

“Concerns about cloud security can easily push European policy-makers into putting security guarantees ahead of open markets, with consequences for American companies. Cloud has a lot of potential. But potential doesn’t count for much in an atmosphere of distrust,” Kroes said.

Logicalis scores Juniper Network Elite status

Posted on July 3, 2013 by - News

JuniperLogicalis has nabbed itself Elite Partner status for Advanced Security at Juniper Networks’ partner advantage programme, the top level for partners.

Logicalis has got itself Firewall/VPN & IDP and Policy and Access Control authorisations, which the company hopes will score it some more brownie points with companies thinking of hiring it.

MD at Logicalis UK, Mark Starkey, said the company had worked with Juniper Networks for quite some time, so getting the Elite status should help it sell itself to businesses concerned with advanced security in emerging trends like mobility and cloud.

“This accreditation provides us with access to the latest technologies and advanced training at Juniper,” Starkey said.

Darryl Brick, director of partners UK&I at Juniper, said that Logicalis is now offering advanced security from data centre through to small and medium enterprise, so customers can “take advantage of some of the most advanced security technology and services in the market”.

Adobe buys digital marketing firm

Posted on June 28, 2013 by - News

cloud (264 x 264)Adobe has written a cheque for Neolane, a software company which allows for managing digital marketing campaigns over multiple platforms.

It is believed the deal cost Adobe $600 million and is part of the company’s bid to bring cross-channel campaign management to the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Adobe Marketing Cloud is a set of tools encompassing analytics, social, advertising, targeting, and web management.  Neolane has been tried and tested at Barnes & Noble and Bridgestone Tires.  It means that clients get a software platform for automatic web campaigns.

Adobe said the acquisition, expected to close next month, will not materially affect its revenue forecast and adjusted financial results for the current fiscal year.

According to Forbes, Neolane CEO Stéphane Dehoche will continue to lead the former Neolane team as part of Adobe’s digital marketing business.

The move means we can expect to see Adobe more heavily pushing its cloud offerings, backed by its software rental model, in the next few months.

Gerry Brown, senior analyst at Ovum, said that Adobe desperately needed a good  campaign management platform as a lack of one had been “a glaring hole in its digital marketing platform proposition”.

At more than ten times what Neolane earned, the cost of the deal was steep for Adobe. But Brown said it was worth it because it could propel Adobe into the market leadership.

He thinks that the catalyst for this acquisition was Salesforce.com’s recent $2.5 billion purchase of Exact Target.  Adobe had wanted to get its paws on Exact Target and Eloqua but did not manage it,

“Adobe was likely compelled to act before all the their campaign management best-of-breed vendor acquisition options evaporated,” Brown said.

Canon offers editable scanning in the cloud

Posted on June 20, 2013 by - News

Canon logoPrinting company Canon is offering partners the use of Nuance Scan to Cloud as part of its Imagerunner Advance Multifunctional Devices (MFDs).

This software lets customers turn paper documents into forms that can be edited digitally, which can then be uploaded to the cloud using services like Google Drive, Dropbox and Salesforce. Canon promises that the technology will nicely complement other already available scanning software in the Imagerunner Advance platform, such as Scan Kit and eCopyShareScan.

Scan to Cloud is available to partners from today – and is offered on three, four or five year contracts. Partners can pick whether they want a limited or unlimited amount of scan-to-edit conversions.

Partners will be able to install the software on the MFD’s multifunctional embedded application platform – remotely and without needing access to a server. As a result, according to Canon, installation is cheap as chips and easily scalable for customers. Devices at an organisation can be configured with an all in one utility tool, cutting down on installation times.

Canon exec Daniel Seris pointed out that, as more organisations plan on pushing their businesses to the cloud, there will be loads of physical documents lying around that firms will need to hold onto. They “expect partners to be able to provide them with the best technology to support this trend,” Seris said. “Employees need to access and edit documents whenever and wherever they want, in the office, at home, or on the go,” he added.

Time to make a quick buck on PRISM fiasco

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News

National-Security-Agency--008While the big internet companies are wringing their hands about being caught helping the US snoop on its citizens, there are some companies who are turning this into a money making opportunity.

DuckDuckGo, a service that does not does not keep a record of searches or tailor them to what its users have looked for in the past, said it took the company four years to get one million searches a day, but this had tripled to three million in the eight days after the PRISM surveillance scandal broke.

A tweet from the company said: “It took 1445 days to get 1M searches, 483 days to get 2M searches, and then just 8 days to pass 3M searches.”

While this is nothing in comparison to Google, it could be the tip of the iceburg for companies who are concerned about the deals that US companies made with their government.

The Patriot Act, under which PRISM was developed, has already been helping fledgling European Cloud companies see off much larger US competition.

This is because the US companies would have to guarantee to the Europeans that their data will not leave Europe, otherwise they would have to give it to the US government. This created a rush to build European data centres to support US cloud operations in the “old country.” However there is still some concern that a strict interpretation of the Patriot Act could force those US suppliers to hand over foreign data whether it is stored in Europe or not.

While all this is a mess for the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, it is great news for European Cloud providers such as the French Sovereign Cloud.

While there are fears that local spooks might also want to look in corporate clouds, that is a better option that giving the data to a foreign power.

As F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen pointed out: “If you are going to have a Big Brother, it is better to have a domestic Big Brother than a foreign Big Brother.”

Meanwhile European Union could force US cloud suppliers to give up the European customers. At the moment they are asking the US some fairly sticky questions, and could turn to regulating the American cloud users from the market.

At very least, it could recommend that companies opt for European cloud providers instead. In Germany they take such recommendations very seriously. One security recommendation nearly killed off the use of Internet Explorer and gave Firefox a significant boost.

Telecoms groups such as Orange and Deutsche Telekom have announced that they are trying to exploit the concerns as they build their own cloud businesses.

Government agencies and municipalities, especially in more privacy-conscious countries such as Germany, are more likely to turn to local alternatives for cloud services.

Sweden banned Google Apps in the public sector over concerns that Google had too much leeway over how the data was used and stored and PRISM could be a final nail in the service’s coffin in that country.

 

Internet of Everything becomes something

Posted on June 19, 2013 by - News

map-of-internetAccording to a report from Cisco the latest buzzword on the world wide wibble, the Internet of Everything, will become a major market earner by the end of the year.

The Internet of Everything is the networked connection of people, process, data and things so that “everything” joins the network.

Cloud computing is one of the early examples of the Internet of Things along with the boom in the mobility market.

According to the Internet of Everything Value Index study released by Cisco the global private-sector businesses to generate at least $613 billion this year.

Companies who optimise the connections among people, process, data and things will generate the largest profits, the report said.

Rob Lloyd, Cisco President of Development and Sales said that the study of 7,500 global business and IT leaders in 12 countries reports that the United States, China and Germany will earn the most.

They will be chasing the promise of nearly doubling their profits by adopting business practices, customer approaches and technologies that use Internet of Everything ideas.

He said that the Internet of Everything is already driving private-sector corporate profits, it is estimated that an additional $544 billion could be realised if companies adjusted their strategies.

“The Internet of Everything has the potential to significantly reshape our economy and transform key industries. The question is who will come out on top and win in this new economy. This study shows us that success won’t be based on geography or company size but on who can adapt fastest,” Lloyd said.

SmartThings CTO Jeff Hagins said that the study confirms the potential for the Internet of Everything.
“With the SmartThings platform and open community, we believe that more developers and inventors will be able to participate in the value chain and ultimately bring the physical graph to life,” he said.

Global businesses can pursue as much as $14.4 trillion over the next decade by using the Internet of Everything to improve operations and customer service.

 

Infoblox gets plugged in to VMware

Posted on June 18, 2013 by - News

clouds3Automated network control outfit Infoblox has integrated its Infoblox IP Address Management (IPAM) Plug-in for VMware into the vCloud Automation Centre.

The company said that the plug-in is designed to deliver cloud infrastructure resources on-demand to provide maximum business agility when running Vmware..

The company claims that the software speeds up the set up and manual setup and provisioning of IP addresses for virtual machines by more than 300 per cent. It means that virtual machines can be dynamically provisioned, migrated and shut down by an administrator in minutes.

Senior Director, Cloud Management Marketing, at VMware, Rob Smoot, said that incorporating the Infoblox IPAM plug-in with VMware vCloud Automation Centre lets businesses gain greater flexibility and accelerated time to value in automated cloud environments.

“With the help of automated IP address allocation, including DNS management and DNS record updates, enterprise IT departments are provided with the capability of full control for high-quality IP address management,” he said.

The software is available as a no-charge extension to the Infoblox DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management (DDI) product.

It is mostly aimed at large VMware virtualised networks where manual allocation is a nightmare.

Seagate reshuffles sales and marketing team

Posted on June 13, 2013 by - Moving People, News

seagate-longmontSeagate has announced a few changes in its sales and marketing team, most of which are centred on EMEA. The company said it reshuffled the team to address growth opportunities in cloud, SSD and branded storage markets.

Mark Whitby, Seagate’s vice president of EMEA Sales & Marketing and Global Channel Sales, said the changes will ensure that Seagate positions itself to address evolving market opportunities.

“The storage market is both growing and changing rapidly, and the changes we have made to our senior management team are intended to keep Seagate in the forefront of that market,” he said. “In particular, we want to take full advantage of the huge potential we see in areas such as cloud computing, solid state drives and in the market for branded storage solutions.”

In his expanded role as Vice President of EMEA Sales & Marketing and Global Channel Sales, Mark Whitby has now been charged responsibility for the company’s global distribution channel sales, developing and leading strategy and delivery of the business worldwide.

Joe Fagan is being appointed Senior Director of Cloud Initiatives, EMEA. In this newly created position he will be responsible for shaping Seagate’s Cloud strategy and engagement in the region.

Dimitri Galle has been appointed Senior Director of Sales and Marketing, Branded Products, EMEA. In his new position he will be responsible for sales and marketing of all Seagate-branded retail products across the region.

Bernd Breinbauer has been appointed to the newly created role of Director of EMEA SSD Sales with responsibility for developing sales of the company’s comprehensive solid state drive portfolio across the region. Seagate entered the highly competitive SSD market just a few weeks ago and Breinbauer obviously has a lot of work ahead.