Schlagwort: cloud @en

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Verizon Cloud: Compute and Storage. Boring. Next, please!

There are those moments in which I read a press release and think: „Wow this could be exciting.“ But there are mostly this very press releases I do not want to continue after the second paragraph. Oh by the way, Verizon has reinvented the enterprise cloud and thus would compete with the Amazon Web Services. Oh well, and Verizon offers compute power and storage. These are very promising services in order to be successful in the IaaS market and make sure to turn the market upside down. Where 100% of all IaaS providers have exactly these services in their portfolio and do not differentiate from one another.

Verizon Cloud

An excerpt from the press release:

“Verizon created the enterprise cloud, now we’re recreating it,” said John Stratton, president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “This is the revolution in cloud services that enterprises have been calling for. We took feedback from our enterprise clients across the globe and built a new cloud platform from the bottom up to deliver the attributes they require.”

And then this:

„Verizon Cloud has two main components: Verizon Cloud Compute and Verizon Cloud Storage. Verizon Cloud Compute is the IaaS platform. Verizon Cloud Storage is an object-based storage service.“

Verzion seriously offers compute power and storage. Something that 100% of all IaaS providers on the market have in their portfolio and sells it as a REVOLUTION? Not really, right?

ProfitBricks and CloudSigma to salute

In addition, Verizon to praise the granularity of their infrastructure resources:

„Previously, services had pre-set configurations for size (e.g. small, medium, large) and performance, with little flexibility regarding virtual machine and network performance and storage configuration. No other cloud offering provides this level of control.„

Wrong! From the beginning ProfitBricks and CloudSigma offer this level of granularity and flexibility. Even this property of the Verizon cloud is not a revolution.

Which is likewise not a revolution, but could appeal to current VMware users is the compatibility with the VMware hypervisor. A promising market because many companies still continue to use VMware hypervisor. But where also VMware with its own vCloud hybrid service to have some say.

Fight a war with the wrong weapons

It’s amazing how many providers try to fight the Amazon Web Services with new offerings and only bring a blunt knife rather than a nuclear bomb. Especially since Verizon has developed the solution from scratch.

For me this slowly raises the question, when we will see the first Nirvanix within the IaaS providers who only offer compute power and storage. Finally, more and more candidates position oneself.

Next, please! (Viva la Revolution.)

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Google PR agency to feedback on the long-term availability of the Google Compute Engine

After I have called the long-term availability of Google’s Compute Engine (GCE) into question, Google’s PR agency has contacted me to understand the motivations for the article. In the article I have reacted to a GigaOM interview of Googles Cloud Platform manager Greg DeMichillie who wouldn’t guarantee the long-term availability of GCE.

Background

Google Cloud Platform manager Greg DeMichillie responded in a GigaOM interview to a question on the long-term availability of Google cloud services and answered unexpected and not within the meaning of the customer.

„DeMichillie wouldn’t guarantee services like Compute Engine will be around for the long haul, but he did try to reassure developers by explaining that Google’s cloud services are really just externalized versions of what it uses internally. ”There’s no scenario in which Google suddenly decides, ‘Gee, I don’t think we need to think about storage anymore or computing anymore.“

Although DeMichillie to qualify in the end that Google wouldn’t shut down their cloud services in a kamikaze operation. However, it’s an odd statement on a service which is relatively as of late on the market.

Feedback of Google’s PR agency

Beforehand I want to clarify that this was no call to influence me, but to understand how it came to the article. Google’s PR agency said that DeMichillie was apparently misunderstood and my article only highlights this negative statement and neglects the positive themes. Google today severely invests in infrastructure resources and there are no signs and reasons that the Google Compute Engine will be closed.

My statement

It was and is never about to cast a shadow on Google (or any other vendor). This is what I told the PR agency. But at the end of the day the user needs to be advised and equally be protected. Moreover I am an analyst and advisor and counsel companies who rely on my judgment. For this reason I need to react on those statements and include it in my decision matrix, especially when it directly comes from an employee of a vendor. What should I do when I recommend the use of the GCE since the technical things and requirements fits, but Google subsequently announced to close the service? For this reason I react extremely sensitive on such topics. In addition, Google had not cover oneself in glory the recent months and years when it comes to maintain its service portfolio for the long-term. The end of Google Reader caused more negative reactions by the users than the current NSA scandal. Notabene, this is a free service for consumers. With the Google Compute Engine we are talking about a service which mainly address companies. For companies it’s about a lot of money to spend to bring the workloads to the GCE. If the service is suddenly closed this generates, depending on the respective company, a non incalculable economic damage to migrate the data and applications. This Google should consider when making decisions. Even if this was just one statement as part of an interview. This does not create trust in the cloud portfolio and fits well with the experience of the recent past when Google cleaned it’s room.

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"Amazon is just a webshop!" – "Europe needs bigger balls!"

This year I had the honor to host the CEO Couch of the Open-Xchange Summit 2013. This is a format were Top CEOs are confronted with provocative questions on a specific topic and had to answer to the point. Among the guests on the couch were Herrmann-Josef Lamberti (EADS), Dr. Marten Schoenherr (Deutsche Telekom Laboratories), Herbert Bockers (Dimension Data) and Rafael Laguna (Open-Xchange). This year’s main topic was cloud computing and how German and European provider to assert oneself against the alleged overwhelming competition from the US. I’ve picked out two statements mentioned during the CEO Couch, I would like to discuss critically.

Amazon is just a webshop!

One statement has got me worry lines. One the hand VMware already had underlined that it seemingly underestimates its supposed biggest competitors, on the other hand its absolutely wrong. To call Amazon today still a webshop one must close its eyes very wide and hide about 90% of the company. Amazon is today more than just a webshop. Amazon is a technology company respectively provider. Rafael has illustrated this very well during his keynote. There are currently three vendor who have managed to set up their own closed ecosystem of the web services over the content to the devices. These include Google, Apple and Amazon.

Besides the webshop Amazon.com further technology and services belong to the company. Including the Amazon Web Services, content distribution for digital books, music, movies (LoveFilm, Amazon Instant Video), ebook reader Kindle and Kindle Fire (with an own Android version), the search engines A9.com, Alexa Internet and the movie database IMDb.

Above that, if you take a look at how Jeff Bezos leads Amazon (e.g. Kindle strategy; sell at cost price; sales over content), he focuses on the long-term growth and market share, rather than to achieve quick profits.

Who wants to get a good impression of Jeff Bezos‘ mindset, I recommend the Fireside Chat with Werner Vogels during the 2012 AWS re: Invent. The 40 minutes are worth it.

Europe needs bigger balls!

The couch completely agreed. Although Europe has the potential and the companies to technically and innovative play its role in the cloud – apart from privacy issues, compared to the United States we eat humble pie, or better expressed: „Europe needs bigger balls!“. That depends on the one hand with the capital that investors in the U.S. are willing to invest, on the other hand, to the mentality to take risks, to fail and to think big and long term. At this point, European entrepreneurs and investors in particular can learn from Jeff Bezos. It’s about the long-term success, not about the short term money.

This is in my opinion one of the reasons why we will never see a European company that, for example, is able to hold a candle to the Amazon Web Services (AWS). The potential candidates like T-Systems, Orange and other major ICT providers that have data centers, infrastructure, personnel and necessary knowledge, rather focus on the target customers they have always served – the corporate customers. However, the public cloud and AWS similar services for startups and developers are completely neglected. On one side this is alright since cloud offerings on enterprise level and virtual private or hosted private cloud solutions are required to meet the needs of enterprise customers. On the other hand, nobody should be surprised that AWS currently has the most market share and is seen as an innovation machine. The existing ICT providers are not willing to change their current business or to expand it with new models to address another attractive audiences.

However, as it also my friend Ben Kepes well described, Amazon is currently quite popular and by far the market leader in the cloud. But there is still enough room for other provider in the market who can offer use cases and workloads that Amazon can not serve. Or because the customers simply decide against the use of AWS, since it’s too complicated, too costly or too expensive for them, or is simply inconsistent with legal issues.

So Europe, put on bigger eggs! Sufficient potential exists. Finally, providers such as T-Systems, Greenqloud, UpCloud, Dimension Data, CloudSigma or ProfitBricks have competitive offerings. Marten Schoenherr told me that he and his startup process of developing a Chromebook without Chrome. However, I have a feeling that Rafael and Open-Xchange (OX App Suite) have a finger in the pie.

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Conferences

CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 – Here we go!

On 29th October CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 takes place as part of the SNW Europe. This year we focus on the leading theme „Cloud First! – Is cloud the new normal?“ and expect as in 2012 a range of participants. Besides ProfitBricks CMO Andreas Gauger also CloudCamp co-founder and Citrix new Chief Cloud Advocate Reuven Cohen will give a talk.

Cloud First! – Is cloud the new normal?

Talking with providers and depending on the numbers of market researcher this question is quite easy to answer – YES! However, this must be proved with significant uses cases and facts. Furthermore not only the status quo will be discussed, but also controversial issues which should exactly call this current status into question and show where we need to go in the future to map cloud computing and its impacts optimal on the enterprise IT.

To that end we already can announce some attractive speaker.

Confirmed speaker

  • Reuven Cohen, Chief Cloud Advocate Citrix, Co-Founder CloudCamp (@ruv)
  • Chris Boos, CEO arago AG (@boosc)
  • René Buest, Analyst New Age Disruption, Analyst GigaOM Research (@renebuest)
  • Mark Masterson, Troublemaker CSC Financial Services EMEA (@mastermark)
  • Hendrik Andreas Reese, TÜV Rheinland i-sec GmbH
  • Steffen Krause, Cloud & Database Evangelist Amazon Web Services (@sk_bln)
  • Andreas Gauger, ProfitBricks (@gaugi)
  • Thomas King, audriga (@thking)
  • Moderation: Roland Judas, Technical Evangelist arago AG (@rolandjudas)

Registration and further information

The registration for CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 is as always free of charge. In addition each CloudCamp participant can also attend „SNW Europe – Powering the Cloud“ for free.

The CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 registration can be found under http://cloudcamp-frankfurt-2013.eventbrite.com. The registration for SNW Europe we initiate afterwards.

Facts

  • CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013
    Within „SNW Europe – Powering the Cloud“
  • Wenn: 29. Oktober 2013, Frankfurt
  • Time: 16:00 Uhr bis 20:00 Uhr
  • Where: Congress Frankfurt, Ludwig-Erhard-Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt am Main
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Analysis

Enterprise Cloud Computing: T-Systems to launch "Enterprise Marketplace"

According to Deutsche Telekom it already could reach about 10.000 mid-size business for its Business Marketplace. Now a similar success should be achieved in the corporate customer environment. For this the Enterprise Marketplace is available to purchase software, hardware or packaged solutions on demand and even deploy firm-specific in-house development for the own employees.

SaaS, IaaS and ready packages

The Enterprise Marketplace is aimed to the specific requirements of large business and offers besides Software-as-a-Service solutions (SaaS) also pre-configured images (appliances) and pre-configured overall packages which can be integrated into existing system landscapes. All services including integrated in-house developments are located in a hosted private cloud and are delivered through the backbone of the Telekom.

Standard solutions and in-house development

The Enterprise Marketplace offers mostly standardized services. The usage of these services includes new releases, updates and patches. The accounting is on a monthly base and based on the use of the respective service. T-Systems also provides ready appliances like a pre-configured Apache Application Server which can be managed and expanded with own software. In the future customers will be able to choose which T-Systems data center they would like to use.

Within the Enterprise Marketplace different offerings from the marketplace can be combined e.g. a webserver with a database and a content management system. Furthermore own solutions like monitoring tools can be integrated. These own solutions can also be provided to the remaining marketplace participants. Who and how many participants get access to the solution the customer decides on its own.

In addition the performance of each appliance in the Enterprise Marketplace can be individually customized. Therefore the user can affect the amount of CPUs as well as the RAM size and storage and the connection bandwidth. In a next expansion stage managed services take care of patches, updates and new releases.

Marketplace with solutions from external vendors

A custom dashboard provides an overview of all deployed or approved applications within the Enterprise Marketplace. Current solutions on the marketplace include webserver (e.g. Apache and Microsoft IIS), application server (e.g. Tomcat and JBoss), SQL databases, Microsoft Enterprise Search as well as open source packages (e.g. LAMP stack or Joomla). In addition T-Systems partners with a number of SaaS solution provider who have been specifically tested for use on the T-Systems infrastructure. This includes among others the tax software TAXOR, the enterprise social media solution tibbr, the business process management suite T-Systems Process Cloud as well as the sustainability management WeSustain.

Cloud computing at enterprise level

T-Systems with its Enterprise Marketplace already arrived where other providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, HP and Rackspace starts its journey – at the lucrative corporate customers. While the Business Marketplace primarily presents as a marketplace for SaaS solutions, T-Systems and the Enterprise Marketplace go ahead and also provide infrastructure ressources and complete solutions for companies including the integration of in-house development as well as managed services.

Compared to the current cloud players T-Systems does not operate a public cloud but instead focused on providing a (hosted/ virtual) private cloud. This can pay off in the medium term. Current market figures from IDC promise a growth for the public cloud by 2013 with 47.3 billion dollars to 107 billion dollars in 2017. According to IDC the popularity of the private cloud will decline for the benefit of the virtual private cloud (hosted private cloud) once the public cloud provider start to offer appropriate solutions to meet the concerns of the customers.

Similar observations we have made ​​during our GigaOM study „The state of Europe’s homegrown cloud market„. Cloud customers are increasingly demanding managed services. Although they want to benefit from the properties of the public cloud – flexible use of the resources, pay per use – but this at the same time within a very secure environment including the support for the integration of applications and systems by the provider. At present, all of this the public cloud player cannot offer in this form since they mainly focus on their self-service offerings. This is fine, because they effectively operate certain use cases and have achieved significant market share in a specific target customer segment. However, if they want to get the big fish in the enterprise segment, they will have to align their strategy to the T-Systems portfolio in order to meet the individual needs of the customers.

A note on the selection process of partners for the Enterprise Marketplace: Discussions with partners that offer their solutions on the Business Marketplace confirm a tough selection process, which can be a real „agony“ for the partner. Specific adjustments specifically to the security infrastructure of T-Systems are not individual cases and show a high quality management by T-Systems.

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The importance of mobile and cloud-based ways of working continues to grow

The advantage of a flexible way of working because of mobile and cloud technologies to outweigh the concerns and risks of 86 percent of executives and managing director of small and medium-sized enterprises. These are the results of a global study among 1.250 enterprises in Europe, North America and Canada by YouGov on behalf of Citrix.

Better productivity and image enhancement

The increase of productivity 48 percent and thus about the half of the respondents expect from the capabilities of flexible ways of working. 32 percent hope for an enhancement of their image as an employer. Approximately a quarter (23 percent) see in mobile ways of working a better compensation of a work-life balance, especially for employed parents (29 percent). In addition 39 percent see an improved integration of external teams and 28 percent an advantage for business continuity.

Concerns with private life

However, mobile ways of working also cause concerns. The largest to refer to the separation of private and work life (41 percent) and the apprehension, employees to obliged themselves for after hours. Although half of the respondend enterprises implemented mobile was of working, however, they encounter concerns with fixed oral or written regulations, controlling the employees. Certainly these restrictions to contradict to the wish to organize the work with self-reliance. Thereto the majority of 73 percent refuse rules to organize flexible and mobile ways of working in timeframes since the basically idea of flexible and mobile ways of working are restricted. Otherwise employees are not able to choose the location and time on their own anymore to be more productive and find their work-life balance.

Mobile and cloud-based ways of working are important

For most of us the worklife not to occur in a local limited area in a long time. Instead we live in a global, connected and especially mobile world from which each of us should gain its main benefits to become more productive and thus more profitable for the company but simultaneously have a balanced private life.

Modern enterprises today need to offer their employees the capabilities/ liberties to work from wherever they want. This must not be the Starbucks at the corner. But it offers the opportunity to withdraw in more creative areas like co-working spaces and thus obtain other impressions and opinions or get feedbacks of potential customer or partner. The biggest advantage consists in the possibility to escape from the daily outine in the office and be able to develop further. Cloud and mobile technologies to enable this like not any other technologies before.

The hazard to work overtime or even to end up in a burnout plays constantly in today’s working environment. But this is not an issue of flexbile respectively mobile ways of working. To the contrary, an employee obtains the liberty to „take time out“ in a personal or even currently environment in order to balance. However, employees need to assume more responsibility to reach the agreed goals and simultaneously take care and organize itself to continue to have a private life. Whereby the employer should also help to make sure to capture the attention.

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Google Compute Engine seems to be no solution for the long haul

In an interview with GigaOM, Google‘s Cloud Platform manager Greg DeMichillie made an odd statement on the future of the Google Compute Engine which again have to lead to a discussion on the future-proofness of Google’s cloud service portfolio and if it makes sense to depend on the non core business areas of the search engine provider.

Google is to agile for its customers

After Google announced to close the Google Reader, I already asked the question how future-proof the Google cloud portfolio is. In particular, because of the background, that Google starts to monetize more and more services, those due to the revenue get a new KPI and thus are threaten a closure. Google Cloud Platform manager Greg DeMichillie exactly meets this question in a GigaOM interview and answered unexpected and not within the meaning of the customer.

„DeMichillie wouldn’t guarantee services like Compute Engine will be around for the long haul, but he did try to reassure developers by explaining that Google’s cloud services are really just externalized versions of what it uses internally. ”There’s no scenario in which Google suddenly decides, ‘Gee, I don’t think we need to think about storage anymore or computing anymore.“

Although DeMichillie to qualify in the end that Google wouldn’t shut down their cloud services in a kamikaze operation. However, it’s an odd statement on a service which is relatively as of late on the market.

These are things customers should better not hear

The crucial question is why a potential customer should decide for the Google Compute Engine for the long haul? Due to this statement one have to advise against the use of the Google Compute Engine and instead set on a cloud computing provider who has its actually core business in infrastructure-as-a-service and not be indulgent to sell its overcapacities and instead operate a serious cloud computing business.

I don’t want to speak of the devil and the devil shows up! But news like the sudden death of Nirvanix – an enterprise cloud storage service – to make massive waves and outface the users. This also Google should carefully understand if it wants to become a serious provider of cloud computing resources.

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Analysis

A view of Europe's own cloud computing market

Europe’s cloud market is dominated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Windows Azure, and Rackspace. So the same providers that serve the rest of the world. Each of these global providers has a local presence in Europe and all have made efforts to satisfy European-specific concerns with respect to privacy and data protection. Nevertheless, a growing number of local providers are developing cloud computing offerings in the European market. For GigaOM Research, Paul Miller and I explore in more detail the importance of having these local entrants and asks whether Europe’s growing concern with U.S. dominance in the cloud is a real driver for change. The goal is to discover whether there is a single European cloud market these companies can address or whether there are several different markets.

Key highlights from the report

  • European concern about the dominance of U.S. cloud providers
  • Rationale for developing cloud solutions within Europe
  • The value of transnational cloud infrastructure
  • The value of local or regional cloud infrastructure
  • A representative sample of Europe’s native cloud providers

European cloud providers covered in the report

  • ProfitBricks
  • T-Systems
  • DomainFactory
  • City Cloud
  • Colt
  • CloudSigma
  • GreenQloud

Get the report

To read the full report go to „The state of Europe’s homegrown cloud market„.

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Analysis

Reasons for a decision against the Amazon Web Services

No question, during each vendor selection for the cloud the Amazon Web Services are always a big option. However, I frequently experience situations where companies make a decision against the use and instead prefer another provider. Enclosed are the two most common reasons.

Legal security and data privacy

The storage location of the data, especially the customer data, is the obvious and most common reason for a decision against the Amazon Web Services. The data should still be stored in the own country and after switching to the cloud not be located in a data center of another country in the EU. In this case the AWS data center in Ireland is no option.

Lack of simplicity, knowledge and time to market

Very often it is also the lack of the ease of use. This means that a company don’t want to (re)-develop its existing application or website for the Amazon infrastructure. Reasons are the lack of time and the knowledge to implement, what may results in a longer time to market. Both can be attributed to the complexity to achieve scalability and availability at the Amazon Web Services. After all, there are not just a few API calls. Instead, the entire architecture needs to be oriented on the AWS cloud. In Amazon’s case its about the horizontal scaling (scale-out) which makes this necessary. Instead, companies prefer vertical scaling (scale-up) to migrate the existing system 1:1 and not to start from scratch, but directly achieve success in the cloud.

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Conferences

CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013: Call for Papers opened

On 29th October the CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 takes place as part of the SNW Europe. With the leading theme „Cloud First! – Is cloud the new normal?“ we expect to see many participants again. After we already could gain a few very attractive speaker, including CloudCamp co-founder Reuven Cohen, we now open this year call for papers.

CfP: Until 10th October 2013

Who would like to submit a talk (Lightning Talk, 6 minutes) on the topic „Cloud First! – Is cloud the new normal?“ has the opportunity until the 10th of October 2013. Please use the form below.

Requirements

  • Lightning Talk, 6 minutes
  • No advertising
  • No sales presentation
  • Experiences and visions
  • Language: English

Confirmed speakers

  • Reuven Cohen, Chief Cloud Advocate Citrix, Co-Founder CloudCamp (@ruv)
  • Chris Boos, CEO arago AG (@boosc)
  • René Buest, Analyst New Age Disruption, Analyst GigaOM Research (@renebuest)
  • Mark Masterson, Troublemaker CSC Financial Services EMEA (@mastermark)
  • Hendrik Andreas Reese, TÜV Rheinland i-sec GmbH
  • Moderation: Roland Judas, Technical Evangelist arago AG (@rolandjudas)

Additional information on CloudCamp Frankfurt 2013 can be found under http://cloudcamp.org/Frankfurt and http://cloudcamp-frankfurt.de.

Who don’t want do speak but participate as an attendee can register for free under http://cloudcamp-frankfurt-2013.eventbrite.com. Hint: CloudCamp participants can also attend SNW Europe for free.

„Cloud First! – Is cloud the new normal?“