Data Center, Fibre Channel, Ethernet Spending on the Rise–Kind of
The data center is evolving pretty much as expected, with bigger, faster pipes driving the biggest growth, according to new vendor market share and forecast reports from Infonetics Research focused on SAN and data center network equipment. But that may not last, according to the consultancy, as virtualization, cloud computing, and the emergence of fabrics and convergence all contend for a bigger slice of the data center pie.
While data center equipment sales in the first quarter surged 17% year over year, that was still a 6% drop from the fourth quarter. Data center network equipment revenue for the first quarter came in at $2.2 billion. Spending through 2013 will be very uneven, as both data center operators and service providers are at different stages in their upgrades, and some are starting to wind down their current investment cycles, said Sam Barnett, directing analyst for data center and cloud at Infonetics…
Keen: Big data for little devices
The thinking behind Keen.io is pretty simple: No one should have to build their own analytics infrastructure, especially not mobile developers. It’s a long, hard, complex process that’s only made more difficult in an era where developers want to track a lot more metrics than just pageviews. So Keen built an analytics infrastructure for them — well enough to win over the judges at GigaOM’s Structure Launchpad competition on Wednesday.
According to Co-founder and CEO Kyle Wild, mobile developers are an underserved market when it comes to analytics. They don’t necessarily have the tools to build analytics platform in the first place, but there aren’t many places they can turn for products that will do the jobs they require in an analytics product. Whereas there are plenty of web 1.0-style products for tracking pageviews, Wild said, mobile apps need a way to track everything from subscribers to clicks to how many times an app was opened and closed…
Google rumored to launch business-focused cloud computing service at I / O conference
Drive may not be the only cloud-based service Google launches this year. According to GigaOm, sources have confirmed previous rumors that Google wants to compete with Amazon in the corporate cloud services market. That means launching virtual servers like those in Amazon’s EC2. Google already has some similar services for developers, including Google Cloud Storage and Google App Engine, which provide data storage and a web app platform respectively.
If it launches a more comprehensive service, these might end up getting rolled into it, but GigaOm says it’s also planning to work with third parties, specifically cloud management services Rightscale and Opscode…
Public / Private Cloud – The Emperor’s new clothes or stylish business wear?
‘Cloud Computing’ has been on the lips of every IT vendor marketing manager for the past two or three years and Reg readers have always been forthright in telling us what is happening in their organisation compared to the hype. While some vendors think ‘Private Cloud’ to be a contradiction in terms, Reg readers disagree, with many having a good grasp of the solution architecture as well as generally accepting the term itself.
But while public and private Cloud have coined much of the column inches in the press, more recently it is clear that some attention is now being paid to hybrid clouds. In this approach organisations make use of services running inside the enterprise on their private cloud systems and combine these with resources hosted outside the business in public cloud farms. As you’d expect, when we asked readers of the Register to tell us how they see things shaping up here, they filled us in…
NIST Addresses Cloud Computing Uncertainty
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a document, entitled Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations, that aims to cut some of the confusion that chief information officers (CIOs) feel around the issue of cloud business, says a ZDNet report.
The document starts by explaining some of the options for cloud configurations and how organizational goals affect which options are right for a particular business. It paves the way for a deeper look at deployment and service models, economic issues, operational issues, security, and service. With more midsize businesses looking to make the move to cloud-based tools, at least for some non-critical applications, this could be a way to help the decision-making process…
Experts: Security is important to businesses using cloud computing
Grazed from Sacramento Business Journal. Author: Editorial Staff.
Experts in cloud computing told a meeting of Sacramento business leaders Friday that companies can reap benefits from shifting data storage and processing to remote servers — but they must continue to think about security.
“Cloud Security: What Your Business Needs To Know About Cloud Computing,” brought together about 100 business leaders at the Hyatt Sacramento for a breakfast conference sponsored by NWN Corp. , Intel and McAfee and presented by the Sacramento Business Journal…
Top 5 Things The Cloud Is Not
Grazed from Wired. Author: Peter Ulander.
It’s clear that the technology industry is moving from the PC era to the cloud era in several significant ways. While cloud represents a new way for IT to deliver — and end users to consume — IT applications and services, this transition also represents a significant change in how applications, services and systems are defined. The move to cloud computing is the most important technology disruption since the transition from mainframe to client-server, or even since Al Gore invented the internet. While industry veterans like Oracle’s commander in chief declared it a fad, this is a decade-long trend that is here to stay, and one that will define the next generation of IT.
The movement itself has been in play for the last decade, however there continues to be a lot of (mis)information in the marketplace about the cloud. So much so that it is difficult for organizations to figure out what is real and what is not to help them develop a successful cloud strategy, or simply learn about technologies that have been specifically designed and purpose-built to meet this dramatic shift in technology. While it’s important to know what the cloud is, it’s just as important to separate the wheat from the chaff, and for IT to understand what cloud is not…
FedRAMP program expected to boost cloud contracts
Grazed from Federal Times. Author: Nicole Blake Johnson.
The federal cloud computing market is projected to jump from millions to billions of dollars over the next five years, thanks in part to a new cloud security program launched this month.
Market research firm Deltek projects that agency spending on cloud computing services will increase from $734 million this year to $3.2 billion in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent. The projection is based on current cloud computing initiatives at the 12 largest agencies, including the Health and Human Services and Transportation departments, and their readiness and preference for cloud services…
An unStructured Future For Cloud Computing
I’ve spent the last few days here in San Francisco attending the 5th annual Structure conference put on by GigaOM. The event brings together an impressive mixture of cloud computing influencers, pundits and entrepreneurs, sometimes referred to as the “clouderati.” The conference is a great place to connect with the people and companies innovating, shaping and defining the ongoing evolution in the technology industry.
There seemed to be an underlying sense that cloud computing is no longer the new kid on the block with one person noting that “the shine is gone.” Regardless of the whether cloud is or isn’t exciting for some, it’s become pervasive. In a conversation with Michael Skok, a venture capitalist at North Bridge Venture Partners, he told me that cloud computing has become the standard operating procedure for any company looking at building or deploying software today. It’s no longer a question of whether a company should deploy to the cloud, but instead how and when…
Netflix exec: The master copy of our data is in the cloud
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Janko Roettgers.
If there’s one key lesson startups in the consumer web space can learn from the big guys, it’s this: Don’t invest in in-house servers. That was one of the key take-aways from the guru panel at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco, where Netflix’s director of architecture Adrian Cockcroft confided: “The master copy of our data is now stored in the cloud.”
Dropbox’s VP of engineering Aditya Agarwal agreed, and gave founders this bit of advice: “If you are a startup, you’d be crazy if you built your own infrastructure.” He added that using the cloud instead of homegrown infrastructure wasn’t just about costs, but also about giving your own engineers the flexibility they need. “If you build it in-house, it should be easier to use than AWS,” he said…