SUSE has entered into an agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to acquire technology and talent that will expand SUSE’s OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution and accelerate SUSE’s entry into the growing Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) market. The acquired OpenStack assets will be integrated into SUSE OpenStack Cloud, and the acquired Cloud Foundry and PaaS assets will enable SUSE to bring to market a certified, enterprise-ready SUSE Cloud Foundry PaaS solution for all customers and partners in the SUSE ecosystem. The agreement includes HPE naming SUSE as its preferred open source partner for Linux, OpenStack and Cloud Foundry solutions. In addition, SUSE has increased engagement with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, becoming a platinum member and taking a seat on the Cloud Foundry Foundation board.

Mirantis launched the first vendor-agnostic Kubernetes and Docker certification, giving enterprises a way to identify container skills in a competitive cloud market. Professionals preparing for the certification are recommended to take the Kubernetes and Docker bootcamp. The company also announced a new online, self-paced KD100 training for self-learners looking for economy pricing and additional flexibility.

Cloud computing skills have progressed from being niche to mainstream as the world’s most in-demand skill set. LinkedIn named cloud computing as the hottest skill in demand in France, India, and the United States in 2015. Within cloud computing, Kubernetes and containers have grown in popularity. The OpenStack User Survey shows Kubernetes taking the lead as the top Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tool, while 451 Research has called containers the "future of virtualization," predicting strong container growth across on-premises, hosted and public clouds.

"Many of our customers have been using Chef for years to easily manage their cloud infrastructure. This new solution delivers robust automation capabilities with almost no setup or maintenance required," said Scott Wiltamuth, VP of Developer and Productivity Tools, AWS. "AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate makes it even easier for customers to ensure their cloud and on-premises resources are fast and secure. Development and operations teams have a strong foundation for leveraging DevOps practices in AWS or on-premises to turbocharge software delivery."

Author: Stephanie Rowan.

As your company grows, so does its responsibilities and capabilities. However, your time to manage these responsibilities shrinks in a comparable fashion to the speed of your company’s growth, and you are left with few options. You can scramble to manage everything in-house, but the quality of your work and your level of customer service will most likely suffer. A second option would be to never sleep and suffer through a terrible work/life balance. The third option is to outsource. There is a better way to balance the demands of quality and value.

Play to Your Strengths

"Having been involved with Cloud Foundry for a while now, we recognize the value of contributing to and working with this very important community," said Thomas Di Giacomo, CTO, SUSE. "Cloud Foundry is a key element of SUSE’s software-defined infrastructure and application platforms strategy, and our intent is to bring an enterprise-grade, fully certified Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service product to market. We believe our customers and partners will welcome such a solution, and we are pleased to help the Foundation and its members develop innovative, open source solutions that deliver real business benefits."

The AWS Service Delivery Program recently launched and is designed to highlight APNPartners who have a track record of delivering verified customer success for specific AWS products, so . customers can easily find qualified APN Partners that provide expertise in a specific service or skill area. To qualify, APN Partners must pass service-specific verification of customer references and a technical review, meaning customers can be confident they are working with partners that provide recent and relevant experience.

"CloudPassage continues to focus on developing and delivering innovative automated security and compliance solutions to help companies embrace the power of agile computing," said Ram Krishnan, Chief Product Officer, CloudPassage. "In fact, our SaaS-based platform was purpose-built to handle the dynamic nature of the modern IT infrastructure, and operates seamlessly across any environment to provide a broad range of controls — at speed and scale — to enable secure innovation and deployment. This newest release delivers numerous capabilities that enhance the security team’s visibility and eases management."

The benefits of running workloads in the cloud are well documented, yet the actual migration and implementation of a cloud strategy still pose challenges for enterprises with an established IT infrastructure. According to research conducted in 2016 by IHS Markit, a world leader in supplying critical information, analytics and solutions for major industries and markets, 53 percent of enterprise respondents in North America cite data security as the top barrier to adopting off-premises cloud security technologies, indicating the need for faster, more scalable virtual software solutions for securely routing or migrating workloads between private and public clouds.

The study is based on survey results from more than 200 industry professionals. The research outlines businesses state of operations, biggest changes expected and greatest needs for the digital age. Today’s CIO understands the delicate balance between managing for today’s demands and preparing for the technology solutions of tomorrow.

Here are some key results from the survey: