Watch Tech Talk on May 17 for an in-depth GDPR discussion

Computerworld | May 8, 2018

The GDPR deadline is coming up fast, and most businesses in the U.S. aren’t ready yet. Join Ken Mingis and his panel of experts as they discuss the impact of the new rules and what U.S. organizations must do now to protect customer data. Find the show here on May 17.

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

Comcast Selects AWS As Its Preferred Public Cloud Provider

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) has announced that Comcast Cable has selected AWS as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider. Comcast Cable will expand its use of AWS by migrating material workloads and building new applications on AWS.

AWS provides important infrastructure and services to Comcast as it focuses on building cloud-native products and services on AWS that adapt and evolve to meet the needs of customers. That focus is reflected in the class-defining X1 Platform, award-winning voice-control technology, and Xfinity xFi, Comcast’s personalized Wi-Fi experience that gives customers pinpoint control over their home networks. Comcast’s primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal, are currently running workloads on AWS which has enabled these businesses to become more nimble and launch new, revenue-generating initiatives in the competitive entertainment industry.

“We have deepened our strategic relationship with AWS, making the industry’s leading cloud our preferred public cloud provider,” said Jan Hofmeyr, chief network and operations officer and senior vice president at Comcast Cable. “Over the years, we have leveraged the breadth and depth of AWS’s services, including compute, storage, and analytics. In that process, we’ve found AWS to be extremely customer focused.”

“For industry leaders like Comcast Cable, the quest to anticipate and exceed consumers’ media and entertainment needs is never ending,” said Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales at AWS. “Comcast Cable’s goal has always been to stay a step ahead of the competition. In order to do that, they wanted solutions that were agile, flexible and ready for what’s next. Together, AWS and Comcast Cable collaborated to enable them to confidently move core business workloads, build new applications with ease, and gain the agility they required by using AWS.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Cloud Standards Customer Council Updates White Paper

The Cloud Standards Customer Council™ (CSCC™) has published version 2.0 of its white paper, Interoperability and Portability for Cloud Computing: A Guide. Authors of the paper will present a complimentary webinar on January 24, 2018, from 11:00am – 12:00pm ET to introduce the paper.

Today, organizations are employing a wide range of cloud services and transitioning data and applications to cloud computing environments. The topics of “interoperability” and “portability” are significant considerations in relation to the use of cloud services, but there is also confusion and misunderstanding of exactly what this entails. The aim of this guide is to provide a clear definition of interoperability and of portability and how these relate to various aspects of cloud computing and to cloud services.

Version 2.0 has been updated to reflect the new ISO/IEC 19941 Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability standard and its facet models of interoperability, data portability, and application portability. The model of an application and the process of porting an application have been updated to reflect new thinking contained in ISO/IEC 19941. Additionally, containers and the role of automation have been addressed, as these have become dominant trends for cloud users.

The paper provides guidance for avoiding vendor-lock in, which allows customers to make the best use of multiple diverse cloud services that can cooperate and interoperate with each other, which is critical to future cloud service adoption and the realization of the benefits of computing as a utility.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CloudHealth Technologies And ParkMyCloud Partner

CloudHealth Technologies and ParkMyCloud have announced they are partnering to marry the hybrid cloud governance of CloudHealth with the automated cost control of ParkMyCloud.

Customers leveraging the integrated solution will experience greater return on their cloud investments. They will be able to automate cloud cost control, simplify management, and consequently free up teams to focus on driving more strategic projects within their organizations.

Public cloud provides agility, efficiency, and flexibility; however, as organizations ramp up in the public cloud, they often find consumption growing rapidly, leading to overspending and inefficient resource utilization. For many, this rising cost is unaccounted for. According to Gartner, “With increasing business unit IT spending on cloud services, IT leaders must prevent new risks, sprawl, cost overruns and missed SLAs. Dynamic optimization technology can help balance the benefits of agility with required governance controls for cloud services and virtualized infrastructure.”1

With CloudHealth’s expertise in cloud governance and management, and ParkMyCloud’s specialization in cloud cost control, they can together provide complete visibility and control over multi-cloud environments, enabling customers to drive better business value. Joint customers will experience a seamless, integrated solution, including: 

Improved Cloud ROI: Users will realize immediate cost savings with non-disruptive, policy-driven automation that helps to eliminate tedious tasks and enable teams to roll out new offerings and updates faster to market.

Ability to Drive More Strategic Projects: Rather than focusing on “keeping the lights on,” technical experts can shift their efforts to continuously innovate and thereby maintain a competitive advantage—not just business as usual.

Simplified Hybrid Cloud Governance: Broken down by environment, department, application, resource and more, this integrated offering empowers teams to implement better resource management through simple and easy-to-use, customizable dashboards for different personas such as CFO and CTO, among others.

Better Analytics: Users gain unparalleled insight and can use this visibility to make smarter business decisions.

“There are huge business gains to be reaped in the public cloud, but business transformation also brings complexity,” said Tom Axbey, CEO and president, CloudHealth Technologies. “In partnering with ParkMyCloud, we’re eliminating cloud management inefficiency and bridging the divide between cost and utilization. We’re uniting disparate cloud environments, business ops and DevOps teams by equipping them with the tools they need to be agile and productive.”

“Our goal at ParkMyCloud has always been to help our customers do more with their cloud by saving time and money,” said Jay Chapel, CEO and founder, ParkMyCloud. “That’s why we provide them with automated cost control, which we do by finding and turning off idle resources in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. By collaborating with CloudHealth Technologies, we are providing customers with end-to-end visibility and control over their environments for optimized cloud usage and spend.”

“With ParkMyCloud, anyone in your organization can be responsible for their own cloud costs,” said Reed Savory, Connotate. “That’s immensely valuable and brings real cost savings. CloudHealth offers unparalleled rightsizing capabilities, among other things, so we know we aren’t leaving money on the table. Integrating these solutions will only further the simplicity and efficiency with which our team operates – even as we manage a rapidly scaling cloud environment.”

1. Gartner, Innovation Insight for Dynamic Optimization Technology for Infrastructure Resources and Cloud Services, Donna Scott and Milind Govekar, Refreshed: 6 February 2017 | Published: 29 February 2016.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Rootstock Acquires Kenandy Inc.

Rootstock Software has announced the acquisition of Kenandy Inc., a developer of cloud ERP software. The acquisition solidifies Rootstock Software’s standing as a leading developer of cloud ERP applications focused on the needs of manufacturers, distributors and supply chain organizations utilizing the Salesforce Platform.

“By combining the talent, skills and intellectual property of both companies, Rootstock will achieve greater economies of scale to compete with the likes of Oracle-NetSuite, Microsoft and SAP, while giving us the ability to create more cutting-edge capabilities for Kenandy and Rootstock customers,” said Patrick Garrehy, CEO of Rootstock. “Both Rootstock and Kenandy are known for taking a customer-centric approach to ERP, and this furthers Rootstock’s recent focus on advancing personalized manufacturing with capabilities that deliver a more individualized customer experience across all customer touch points in an organization.”

The combination of Rootstock Cloud ERP, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, and the underlying Salesforce Platform technologies, such as Salesforce IoT and Einstein Analytics, form a compelling choice for manufacturers, distributors and supply chain organizations aiming to compete more effectively and better serve their customers. “As the cloud marketplace has matured, buyers are increasingly making CRM and ERP decisions in the context of an overall cloud platform strategy,” said Garrehy. “This acquisition creates a bigger, stronger entity focused on building cloud ERP applications for those who choose the Salesforce Platform as their underlying technology.”

Rootstock, which recently announced a strategic win replacing SAP at Mipox, a global producer of polishing films for the high-tech industry, to provide cloud ERP applications for more than 400 users in 12 countries, aims to not only advance ERP technology with the combined companies, but also continue developing best practices that aid manufacturers in migrating from legacy ERP. “When it comes to cloud ERP implementations, customer success is often determined by how you implement, not just what you implement,” said Garrehy. “Our combined company is dedicated to making the transition from legacy ERP easier for our customers. We welcome Kenandy customers into the Rootstock fold.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

ClearSky Data Attains Advanced Technology Partner Status In The Amazon Web Services Partner Network

ClearSky Data has announced it has achieved Advanced Technology Partner status in Amazon Web Service (AWS) Partner Network (APN). AWS’ global partner program focuses on helping APN Partners with go-to-market and technical support. ClearSky Data’s expanded relationship with AWS furthers its mission to help more companies get to the cloud quickly, so they can eliminate secondary infrastructure, take advantage of hybrid DR and dramatically reduce costs with consumption-based enterprise storage.

As enterprise IT teams struggle to consolidate multiple infrastructure silos and free themselves from painful upgrade cycles, the case for cloud migration is escalating. At the same time, these organizations are tasked with multiple data management challenges, from backing up archival information assets to rapidly ingesting massive amounts of machine data at the edge. ClearSky Data provides a storage-as-a-service solution integrated with AWS, enabling enterprises to access all of this data wherever it’s needed — on-premises or in the cloud — without replication.

“Our partnership with AWS extends our ability to help enterprises seamlessly get to the cloud and get out of their secondary data centers,” said Ellen Rubin, CEO and co-founder of ClearSky Data. “As an Advanced Technology Partner in the APN, ClearSky Data will continue to innovate at the place where the edge meets the cloud, so enterprises can more easily and efficiently manage their data today and into the future.”

“Our hybrid cloud storage clients want the economics of the cloud, but with the same level of security and performance as on-premises workloads,” said Arthur Olshansky, CEO of Federal Hill Solutions and founder of Molnii Cloud, an MSP that delivers hybrid IT services and solutions. “ClearSky Data’s support of AWS technology helps us offer high-performance data access, primary storage, offsite backup and disaster recovery, reducing the costs and complexity seen with traditional storage.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

VAZATA Chooses ZERTO As IT Resilience Partner for Disaster Recovery

VAZATA has announced it has chosen Zerto to build its cloud-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) disaster recovery offering. The partnership helps IT teams achieve enterprise-class data replication in real-time for disaster recovery within their virtual environments faster and more affordably.

The combination of VAZATA’s cloud IaaS platform with Zerto’s IT resilience software platform provides full control over disaster recovery processes in cloud virtual environments. This minimizes hardware costs and disaster recovery complexity, supporting extremely quick Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) of minutes and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) of seconds.

“Uninterrupted cloud computing has become a non-negotiable best practice for business,” said Wade Thurman, chief operations officer, VAZATA. “Even a few minutes’ unavailability of data and applications puts a business at risk.”

“VAZATA offers an IaaS platform architected on enterprise-class equipment that delivers rapid provisioning, flexible customization, and outstanding compliance and security, including FedRAMP accreditation,” said Don Wales, vice president global cloud sales, Zerto. “VAZATA’s flexible, secure, and scalable cloud solutions help Zerto customers accomplish their disaster recovery mission.”

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. VAZATA was the first Infrastructure-as-as-Service (IaaS) organization to earn an Authority to Operate (ATO) for the U.S. Federal Government’s “Cloud First” policy.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

2017 Review Shows 0 billion Cloud Market Growing at 24% Annually

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that across six key cloud services and infrastructure market segments, operator and vendor revenues for the four quarters ending September 2017 reached $180 billion, having grown by 24% on an annualized basis. IaaS & PaaS services had the highest growth rate at 47%, followed by enterprise SaaS at 31% and hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 30%. 2016 was notable as the year in which spend on cloud services overtook spend on hardware and software used to build public and private clouds, and in 2017 the gap widened. In aggregate cloud service markets are now growing over three times more quickly than cloud infrastructure hardware and software. Companies that featured the most prominently among the 2017 market segment leaders were Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, Dell EMC, HPE, and Cisco.

Over the period Q4 2016 to Q3 2017, total spend on hardware and software to build cloud infrastructure approached $80 billion, split evenly between public and private clouds, though spend on public cloud is growing more rapidly. Infrastructure investments by cloud service providers helped them to generate over $100 billion in revenues from cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, hosted private cloud services) and enterprise SaaS — in addition to which that cloud provider infrastructure supports internet services such as search, social networking, email, e-commerce and gaming. Meanwhile UCaaS, while in many ways a different type of market, is also growing strongly and is driving some radical changes in business communications.

“We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream and 2016 as the year when cloud started to dominate many IT market segments. In 2017 cloud was the new normal,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “Major barriers to cloud adoption are now almost a thing of the past, with previously perceived weaknesses such as security now often seen as strengths. Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for cloud service providers and technology vendors and we forecast that current market growth rates will decline only slowly over the next five years.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Trilio Data Predicts 2018 Will Be The Year Of The Hybrid Cloud

Trilio Data is sharing its 2018 predictions.

2018 Will be the Year of the Hybrid Cloud

Enterprises are increasingly adopting the cloud for data management and the hybrid cloud, the use of both private and public clouds, is heading the same way.  According to a SUSE survey, hybrid cloud strategies are growing faster than private or public cloud, with 66% of respondents expecting hybrid cloud growth to continue, compared to 55% for private cloud and 36% for public cloud. Additionally, MarketsandMarkets estimates that the hybrid cloud market will grow from $33.28 Billion in 2016 to USD $91.74 Billion by 2021, at an annual growth rate of more than 22%.

“Organizations evaluating cloud solutions have traditionally been concerned about data privacy, security, and sovereignty and private clouds were seen as the way to address these issues,” said David Safaii, CEO, Trilio Data. “But if there are data security concerns, enterprises should use the security method that makes the most sense, and will increasingly seek out hybrid or multi-cloud approaches. This approach maps performance, data protection, and cost to each workload.”

GDPR Changes the Face of Data Storage and Protection
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) will serve as a catalyst for enterprises investing in data governance, and change the face of data protection as we know it. With the impending May 2018 GDPR deadline, companies are seeking out next generation data protection solutions to replace or fill in gaps. This is happening regardless of their current solution and use of legacy deployments. As public clouds become riskier options under GDPR, this will further bolster interest in hybrid cloud.

“Gartner estimates that fewer than half of all organizations affected by GDPR will be in full compliance by the end of 2018,” said Murali Balcha, CTO and Founder, Trilio. “While GDPR will call for seismic shifts in how businesses manage their data, it may take seeing a non-compliant organization receive a blockbuster fine for some to really take action.”

U.S. Adoption of OpenStack Accelerates
OpenStack has become a popular and strong alternative to traditional IT service delivery models for large enterprises worldwide. An OpenStack User Survey released earlier this year found that while overall adoption of OpenStack has dramatically increased, sixty-one% of users and 74% of their deployments are physically located outside of the United States.

“We will continue to see strong growth of OpenStack in international markets, but 2018 will be the year we see an accelerated uptick in U.S.-based OpenStack deployments,” said Balcha.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Equus Compute Solutions Qualifies As 2017 Intel® Platinum Technology Provider

Equus Compute Solutions announced it has qualified as a 2017 Intel® Platinum Technology Provider in both the HPC Data Center Specialist and Cloud Data Center Specialist categories. To receive these designations, Equus demonstrated commitment and excellence in deploying Intel®-based data center solutions. Equus technical staff successfully completed a set of rigorous, HPC and Cloud data center-focused training courses designed to build enhanced proficiency in delivering leading these technologies.

As an Intel Platinum Technology Provider, Equus has access to a number of value-added benefits. Access to Intel trainings and resources ensures Equus customers can gain market leading insights into the latest technologies and solutions. Collaboration with Intel cloud experts helps Equus deliver the right configuration, tailored specifically to customer requirements. The ability to leverage Intel test tools means Equus can accelerate solution schedules, ensure high quality, and offer customers the lowest total cost of ownership.

“Working closely with Intel at this Platinum level means Equus can help our customers deploy the most advanced software defined infrastructure solutions,” said Steve Grady, VP Customer Solutions. “We look forward to combining our Technology Provider program expertise with the Intel Builders Programs: Cloud, Storage and Network to create custom cost-effective solutions.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag