Recorded session: Enterprise Application Operations in the Cloud Powered by Cloud360 & AWS

AWS and Cognizant invite you to learn more about Cloud360, an enterprise IT management solution that enables enterprise application migration and operations on AWS. Cloud360 provides a comprehensive portfolio of services for provisioning, deploying, monitoring, managing and securing enterprise applications running on AWS. Learn more: https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/si/cognizant

Possible spin off of vFabric line of products from VMware

Finally the news seems to be coming out...
 
VMware plans to turn over SpringSource, Cloud Foundry, GemStone and other non-core technologies over to a new EMC-owned subsidiary, GigaOM has learned. The move helps separate the money-making, enterprise-focused VMware business from the future CloudFoundry unit that will compete against Amazon and Microsoft Azure.

VMware is finally getting ready to spin off most of its non-core products to an EMC-run subsidiary, GigaOM has learned. If everything goes according to plan, the move will be announced next week, according to several sources familiar with the effort.

http://gigaom.com/cloud/remember-that-vmware-spin-off-its-baaa-aack/ 

The AWS Report - Ramesh Panuganty of Cognizant

... my recent interview with Jeff Barr @AWS.

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/11/the-aws-report-ramesh-panuganty-of-cognizant.html

Cloud 360 helps technology and business managers to deploy and manage cloud-based architectures in a flexible and scalable fashion. Learn more about Cloud 360...

AWS speeds-up EBS and reduces instances pricing

Another busy week for AWS which added new compute instance types, cut prices on existing ones, and increased the limit on provisioned IOPS for EBS volumes. Amazon is getting busier as more public cloud options come on line. 

Some computing and storage tasks require faster data input/output than others. That’s why in August, Amazon Web Services said customers could, for an additional fee, allocate up to 1,000 Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) per EBS storage volume.  On Thursday, the company doubled the limit to 2,000 IOPS per EBS volume according to a post on the very busy AWS blog.  Faster storage input/output is important in database and transaction processing applications. Insights here.

Enterprise Application Operations in the Cloud Powered by Cloud360 & AWS

AWS and Cognizant are pleased to invite you to attend this live webinar where you will learn more about Cloud360, an enterprise IT management solution that enables enterprise application migration and operations on AWS. Cloud360 provides a comprehensive portfolio of services for provisioning, deploying, monitoring, managing and securing enterprise applications running on AWS.

Featured speakers will provide insights into how Cloud360 enables enterprises to achieve: 

• Rapid Provisioning: cutting down time from weeks to minutes.
• Simplified IT Management: simple service management, distributed control.
• Improved Planning and Budgeting: more insights, better cost control.
• Automated Governance: controlled usage, enterprise compliance.
• Improved Security: auditing and variance detection.

Agenda:

• State of the Cloud - Paul Roehrig, Cognizant
• AWS Platform Overview - Tom Stickle, AWS
• Cloud360 for the Enterprise - Ramesh Panuganty, Cognizant

Who should attend:

• CIOs, CTOs, IT Executives, Enterprise Architects, and other Technical IT Leaders

Date / Time

• Tuesday, November 6, 2012 - 10AM PST/ 1PM EST

Attendees get a chance to win a Kindle Fire HD.

>> Register now for this live webinar on Nov 6

Cloud Computing: Hey, Hey, You, You, Get Off of My Cloud! - Geoffrey Moore

The economics of cloud computing are so compelling it is clear, over time, that it will re-engineer the entire landscape of enterprise IT.  It is that little phrase—over time­­—that poses challenges, for customers and vendors alike.  Different applications will drive cloud adoption at different paces and in different directions.  To help sort out your priorities, here is a cartoon of the various types of clouds in nature, with a companion cartoon mapping them to the cloud applications getting the most traction these days.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121015205517-110300724-cloud-computing-hey-hey-you-you-get-off-of-my-cloud?_mSplash=1

Cognizant Announces Significant Expansion of Data Center and Cloud Infrastructure to Deliver a Broader Range of Transformational Services

Cognizant's enterprise-class, multi-tenant cloud infrastructure platform broadens the company's overall cloud services portfolio, which includes cloud assessment, architecture and design consulting, cloud system integration, and cloud management services across private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions. These services are powered by Cloud360™, Cognizant's cloud management solution that efficiently automates provisioning, management, and monitoring of diverse cloud operations from a single consolidated management console. These capabilities position the company well to help clients re-platform existing applications on the cloud, deploy new mobile, software-as-a-service, and social networking services to their end-users, and support other business-critical processes. 

http://news.cognizant.com/2012-10-25-Cognizant-Announces-Significant-Expansion-of-Data-Center-and-Cloud-Infrastructure-to-Deliver-a-Broader-Range-of-Transformational-Services

 

Microsoft to acquire cloud-integrated storage provider StorSimple

The eco-system is changing a lot and also very quickly. The difference between on-premise and IaaS is going to fade-away pretty soon. It is all going to be about the time to market, cost of services,  integrated offering and managed services.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232447/Microsoft_to_acquire_cloud_integrated_storage_provider_StorSimple

This acquisition is going to give a boost to both Azure & Hyper-V, to deliver cloud storage to data centers, and also offer integrated Backup/DR/Archival solutions.

What is Cloud and what drives its adoption?

While "Cloud" is the most overused/overloaded word in the industry, one key attribute stands out consistently... The single most key tenets of Cloud is "self-service". This has been the biggest driver of cloud adoption and will continue to drive the products & requirements. If there is any product that is not self-service, but is intended only to be used by administrators - folks, reconsider your products.

Multi-user profiles in tablets & freetime support for kids!

Great job Amazon! You are the first tablet maker to allow multi-user profiles on the same device. This is a common item on any personal computer, as common as the buttons on a shirt. Happy to see this 'new feature' on Kindle Fire. We can now store user's own settings, data, applications and perhaps even special restrictions. 

Freetime is another wanted setting to allow specific usage hours for the kids - otherwise, it has become very uncontrolled. Finally someone is paying attention to a common problem.

PaaS - private and public modes

We haven't heard of Private PaaS or Public PaaS (or hybrid!) but the industry is clearly moving in multiple directions here if you observed App Engine, Azure, Force.com, Heroku, Engine Yard, ActiveState, AppFog, Tier 3, Uhuru Software, PaaS.io or CloudFoundry.com. 

VMware is clearly pitching for private PaaS within enterprises to deploy internal applications. This would enterprises to have a common PaaS platform that results in 'standardization' and 'governance'. While the productivity boost is questionable since any PaaS would need a mindset change in the developer community and PaaS enforces thinking in one-way. 

It is interesting to see so many new PaaS platforms (such as AppFog) as new-entrants in the market (some based on CloudFoundry), and others with the message of running PaaS across infrastructure providers. If I am anyway going to be on PaaS - why worry about IaaS flexibility - I am locked in at the usage layer itself.

Oracle Throws in the Towel on VMware Licensing

... Oracle has maintained that all servers in a cluster must be licensed if even a single VM on any server in the cluster is running Oracle software. VMware has officially disagreed with this statement in their white paper on Oracle Licensing and Support. But the opposing view by Oracle has been a serious deterrent to adoption of VMware virtualization of Oracle servers. No longer.

http://oraclestorageguy.typepad.com/oraclestorageguy/2012/08/oracle-throws-in-the-towel-on-vmware-licensing.html

Cognizant's Cloud360 is an enterprise-class cloud management solution that helps enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively deploy, manage and operate modern, dynamic and scalable architectures on industry leading cloud platforms.

User Experience of IT Delivery & Cloud benefits

What are the top benefits of cloud as viewed by Enterprise IT managers? Interestingly most of the enterprise IT organizations seem to feel that cloud is going to shape the user experience of IT delivery, with the primary benefits being:

• Enable work from anywhere
• Enable collaboration more effectively and with coworkers
• Simpler access to business applications regardless of client device
• Improved IT applications

VMware & public cloud IaaS offering

If you haven’t heard the rumors, there are rumblings that VMware is launching a public cloud IaaS service. The formal announcement may come at next week’s VMWorld conference where theCube will be broadcasting.

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/08/20/project-zephyr-vmwares-upcoming-public-cloud-project-built-to-take-on-aws-rackspace-ms/

... a recently purchased data center in Nevada... Pricing for this service will likely be aggressive in order to gain the most market possible from major players such as Amazon, Rackspace and Microsoft.

It would be interesting to see how the partner eco-system will play out for VMware.

8 Possible Outcomes From the Great Cloud Outage of 2011

...AWS users — and all cloud users — cloud supporters and many analysts argue, could stand to learn a lot about how to design their cloud application infrastructures to handle failures on their cloud provider’s end...

http://gigaom.com/cloud/8-possible-outcomes-from-the-great-cloud-outage-of-2011/

The best practices are what saved most of the AWS customers in the recent outage, though the news took several rounds with start-ups as examples. Anyways - for some, these 8 solutions are for future and for others these are a way of life.

VMware & Mozy join hands

Today's announcement:
http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2011/04/mozy.html

Next in line could be a compute cloud for VMware?

From the Mozy blog:
Today is “virtual moving day” here at Mozy. While our offices and focus remain the same, Mozy employees are transferring as an intact team to VMware from our mutual parent company, EMC. VMware and the Mozy team will continue the full portfolio of Mozy services. In addition, staff from both companies will begin to integrate longer-term development plans central to building and delivering hybrid cloud solutions. EMC retains the Mozy business as it has been delivering it for over four years now. An operational support agreement between EMC and VMware is in place to make this possible and ensure no impact to Mozy customers. We’ve developed a strong partnership with VMware and over these past several months it has become increasingly clear that moving to VMware will allow us to take advantage of and extend the synergies we’ve been building between the companies. VMware and Mozy share a vision for how cloud computing will transform IT and help businesses achieve greater agility. By joining forces, we believe we can accelerate the development of offerings that businesses are looking for.

Performance comparison of clouds without moving apps

Working with Srikanth Kandula and Ming Zhang of Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, Yang and Li have developed a suite of benchmarking tools that make it possible to compare the performance of different cloud platforms without moving applications between them. These tools use algorithms to measure the speed of computation, and shuttle data around to test the speed at which new copies of an application are created, the speed at which data can be stored and retrieved, the speed at which it can be shuttled between applications inside the same cloud, and the responsiveness of a cloud to network requests from distant places.
...

They are building software that captures the performance of an application when running on a local server and then creates a dummy version of it on several clouds to compare how they hold up. The dummy doesn't actually perform the function of the software, but it exerts the same computational, storage, and network demands. "Without actually migrating the app, I could just try out that representation of what it does," says Yang.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25815/page1/

Cloudkick has been acquired by Rackspace!

... as posted in the Cloudkick site ...

Why did Rackspace acquire Cloudkick?

From the beginning, Cloudkick has been obsessed with making life easier for system administrators as they deploy and manage infrastructure and applications on the cloud. In a short time, they established their position as one of the most advanced business-to-business focused start-ups in the cloud computing space and the system administrators tools they provide are recognized as best in the market. As Rackspace continues help customers manage their move to the cloud, Cloudkick will play an important role in improving the Fanatical Support® Rackspace already offers its customers. Rackspace’s mission is to be recognized as one of the world’s great service companies and we believe Cloudkick aligns very well with this mission.

https://www.cloudkick.com/acquisition-faq

Cloud broker - new word?

... One of his biggest concerns now is to make sure the various cloud services work well together—and are compatible with existing systems...

...

In the future, companies may hook up with more than a dozen different cloud services providers. Brokers would serve as intermediaries, offering such services as customization, integration, security, and aggregation. Through 2014, cloud service brokerage will generate more than $5 billion in sales—up from less than $50 million this year—making it the fastest growing area of cloud computing, Gartner said earlier this year.

The need for brokers is compounded by the lack of standards in the cloud services industry, which means that information can't travel between different services without specially written code to translate among them. "If companies integrate it themselves, they have no hope of saving money," says Daryl Plummer, group vice-president of Gartner Research. In general, cloud services appeal to companies because they're less expensive than buying hardware and software.

...

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2010/tc2010126_515410.htm