Archive for the ‘Cloud Computing’ Category
A Google executive recently said the cloud computing market in 2012 will focus more on mobile devices and social networking in order to keep pace with businesses’ interests. Amit Singh, vice president of Google Enterprise, told eWeek that the cloud trend next year will try to move businesses more into the realm of teamwork from the era of individual production.
With the move more into social networking, Singh said Google is trying to push forward the integration ability of its social networking website Google+. Singh said businesses will start using more of a BYOD, or bring your own device, approach when it comes to using mobile devices at work. Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com said he sees the cloud helping users break through with features and capabilities they may not have had before, such as the ability to create a document on one device and view it on another.
“People do not want to be burdened by what device is holding a piece of content,” said Coffee, who added that having content that is device-neutral will be important for everyone in the business world.
Gartner’s predictions for the future of cloud computing agrees with Singh’s prediction, adding that by 2016, 50 percent of cloud-based email users will rely on a browser, tablet or mobile device instead of a desktop.
China’s top economic planner has allocated 660 million yuan (103.6 million U.S. dollars) of special funds to guide cloud computing research, as part of the government’s efforts to boost the sector’s development, the China Securities Journal reported Friday.
The funds, the first batch of their kind, were designated to 15 cloud computing programs scattered across the country’s five cloud-computing pilot cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Wuxi, according to the report.
Internet giants Alibaba and Baidu received more than 100 million yuan to lead the projects while several other companies, including Shanghai East-China Computer Co. Ltd and Beijing Teamsun Technology Co. Ltd, received some 15 million to 20 million yuan, the report quoted an unnamed source as saying.
The news gave a brief lift to related stocks despite the downbeat sentiment on the broader market. Stocks of East-China Computer Co. Ltd, rose 2.23 percent in the morning trading to end the session at 23.4 yuan per share.
The business-led projects will experience a five-year assessment period, through which the National Development and Reform Commission will follow and evaluate the process to decide whether to inject more money, according to the source.
The report also said China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has drafted a framework document on the development of cloud computing during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).
Tang Gang, an official with the MIIT, said China will see the effects of applying the technology by the end of the 2011-2015 period, but its large-scale application won’t emerge till the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).
According to estimates by Orient Securities, the cloud computing sector in China could be worth 750 billion to 1 trillion yuan over the next five years, about 15 percent of the value of strategic emerging industries.
- Aditi Technologies, a software product and application development services provider, has acquired Seattle-based cloud-computing start-up, Cumulux.
- Cumulux, founded in 2008 by former Microsoft employees Paddy Srinivasan and Ranjith Ramakrishnan, provides cloud computing services to customers such as US automaker Ford Motor, power generation equipment maker General Electric and Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
- Aditi is betting its business on the cloud. We expect over 50% of our future revenues to come from cloud computing”, said Pradeep Rathinam, chief executive officer of Aditi Technologies. He declined to reveal the deal size.
- Bangalore-based Aditi, a $90-million privately held company with 1,400 employees, focuses on industries such as financial services, online, mobile, gaming and bioinformatics.
- For Aditi, founded by technology entrepreneur Pradeep Singh, the acquisition will help the company offer cloud solutions to customers such as Swiss bank UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Nomura and Barclays Capital.
Meet Intel’s Crazy 50-Core ‘Knights Corner’, World’s First 1 TFLOPS Processor | TIME
Posted on: November 17, 2011
Intel may be about to change all that, with a processor built on an architecture it’s dubbed “Many Integrated Core” or MIC.
But first let’s talk FLOPS, or floating point operations per second, which signify a popular measure of supercomputer’s processing prowess. We know from the latest benchmarks that the world’s fastest computer, Fujtisu Co.’s K supercomputer, can do 10.51 petaflops, which amounts to over 10 quadrillion calculations per second.
In scientific notation, we’d call 1 petaflop equivalent to 1 x 10 to the 15th power floating point operations per second. So over 10 of those add up to what the K supercomputer can do. But it takes the K supercomputer 864 computer racks and 88,128 parallel-linked, eight-core CPUs to pull that off. That’s a whole lot of CPUs.
Enter Intel’s “Knights Corner,” a commercial co-processor based on the company’s MIC architecture and capable of 1 TFLOPS (teraflops) double precision performance. Granted, that’s running software that may have been optimized for Intel microprocessors, notes the company, but okay, 1 teraflops, equivalent to 1 x 10 to the power of 12, or 1 trillion calculations per second.
By comparison, a single Intel i7 processor with six cores can do about 158 GFLOPS or 158 billion calculations per second. Knights Corner—sounds like a chess move, right?—is thus over six times faster than some of the fastest consumer-grade processors available right now.
via Meet Intel’s Crazy 50-Core ‘Knights Corner’, World’s First 1 TFLOPS Processor | TIME
Google TV 2.0: With apps and more, it’s finally ready for a close-up – vb
Posted on: November 16, 2011
Almost a year after its launch, Google TV owners are finally beginning to receive a major update that will dramatically improve the service with the addition of apps, a cleaner interface and more. But will the update make a dent in the many criticisms — sluggishness, and a lack of web video content, to name a few — lodged against it?
After living with the latest version of Google TV for the past few weeks, I’m happy to say that the updated service finally lives up to Google’s initial promises of unifying traditional TV with web content. It’s a massive update that makes existing Google TV devices feel completely fresh and new. But new buyers will likely want to hold off until Google announces new Google TV devices before they jump aboard.
First, a bit of history: I’ve been living with Logitech’s Revue Google TV unit since I reviewed it last year, so I’m intimately aware of the platform’s existing strengths and weaknesses. But since the update was first made available to Sony’s Google TV devices, Google sent me a Sony set-top box to check out. (Google says the update should be headed to Revue units within the next few weeks.)
The first thing you’ll notice about the new Google TV interface is that it looks nothing like the original — which, frankly, was an eyesore. Gone are the ugly text menus and complicated user interface GTV users have grown to hate, and in their stead are attractive icons and a far more streamlined experience. This time around it feels like Google actually paid attention to how people use GTV, instead of just rushing it out the door.
With the new update, Google TV is now powered by Android 3.1, which opens the door for it to support Android apps. GTV’s assortment of available apps is small at the moment, but there are already some standouts like Redux, an innovative app that sorts high-quality web video into hand-picked channels. I’ve also grown quite fond of GTVBox, a tiny barebones app that supports just about every video file format I throw at it.
Google TV isn’t the first connected TV platform to sport apps — Samsung has already made a decent business of selling apps on its TVs, and Roku offers something similar with its multiple channels — but the fact that it runs Android makes it easy for developers to bring their apps into the living room.
Google has also updated some apps of its own: The new YouTube app is a vast improvement over the previous HTML5 app (which is still accessible through the web browser), and a new “TV and Movies” app compiles content available across cable or satellite, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and other sources. As I’ve previously written, YouTube’s upcoming original channels could be a boon Google TV owners as well.
Apple Monday released a new version of its media player programme iTunes, adding the much-anticipated scan-and-match service for music iTunes Match.
The feature, included in iTunes 10.5.1, can scan a user’s library to find music and match the content to the music available in an iTunes Store.
If it finds a match, users don’t need to upload the music and can listen to them anywhere, even better-quality versions, on any devices running Apple’s iOS operating system. Music that doesn’t match is automatically uploaded, reported Xinhua.
With a subscription fee of $24.99 a year, users can store up to 25,000 of their own songs in Apple’s cloud server. The iTunes Match is currently only available in the US.
The iTunes Match was first introduced in June along with Apple’s iCloud platform, the company’s cloud service enabling users to sync their files, apps and content among Apple devices.
Unlike Google and Amazon, Apple got the official blessings from all four major music labels, making the company only need to keep one copy of each song in its cloud server, eliminating the uploading work for users and redundancies for servers.
- Huawei, a China-based leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, is considering Gujarat for setting up its manufacturing base. The move which is seen as a fallout of Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi’s recent goodwill visit to China also has the company considering on a move to set up an research and development center (R&D) with specific focus on e-Governance and a future technology solutions lab in Gujarat.
- The global telecommunications giant might bring its technical knowhow for setting up a data center, the smart city project for Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, creating a Government data base in Cloud technology and building linkages with educational institutions,” the state government said in a statement.
- Huawei has strengthen its position in India by providing end-to-end network solutions to all the top 10 Indian telecom operators over the last decade.
- During the five-day visit to China between November 8 to12, Gujarat chief minister laid a foundation to many future plans that will in turn strengthen the business, economic and cultural ties between China and Gujarat. Among the other highlights of the trip include plans of introducing and bettering air connectivity between Ahmedabad and the Chinese cities of Beijing Shanghai and Chengdu.
- The China Rail Engineering has plans to lead a delegation to Gujarat in the next few months to assess the potential and scope for participation through metro or high-speed trains. The two also plan to work on affordable and sustainable housing technology in a bid to create affordable mass housing and make urban areas slum free.
Top Five Emerging Cloud Trends
Posted on: November 14, 2011
1. Private cloud deployment is fast and furious.
There has been a rapid rise in private cloud adoption among large enterprises. This isn’t really a surprise as there are a fairly robust set of infrastructures and applications that enterprise IT staff manage and they want to take advantage of the tools and technologies available in the private cloud space – such as multi-tenancy, service automation and self-service portals. Companies are moving past traditional San Diego Colocation, Phoenix Colocation and Los Angeles Colocation. IT staffs think in terms of three core capabilities or “services stacks” that cloud computing can provide their organizations: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and the familiar Software as a Service (SaaS). Private Clouds provide a framework to streamline the delivery of these IT services to internal customers, enabling business agility while reducing cost.
2. The hybrid cloud is here to stay.
Across all sectors in both large and mid-size enterprises, it’s clear that the hybrid cloud computing model – linking an internal, premises-based private cloud with the capabilities and bandwidth of public clouds – is here to stay. Companies are looking at application stratification when making decisions. Certain types of CRM, collaboration and messaging applications are seen as appropriate for public clouds, while applications with more sensitive or private information – such as those with industry or government compliance requirements – are being architected to reside within private infrastructures or application spaces that exist within the four walls of the enterprise. “We can appreciate that separation and the reasons for it,” Doscher says. “The Enteracloud Enterprise Cloud Platform offers a shared, multi-tenancy environment that enables us to consult and build a roadmap for our customers. We leverage ITSM and business processes to allow customers to take their existing private cloud infrastructure and build a blueprint that addresses application cloud awareness, connectivity, and security in building one’s hybrid cloud strategy.”
3. Consolidation is inevitable.
Every technology and industry has gone through cycles of consolidation and while the trend isn’t new, it seems to be one that is gaining traction in the cloud. Customers are seeking to deploy applications in different ways creating demand for consolidation of the cloud delivery models – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS – in the form of a unified stack as a service delivery model. This may be a harbinger of consolidation of cloud service providers as well, in order to provide greater economies of scale to customers. Today a provider may be focused on infrastructure, but with no linkage to the applications. Or a provider may be focused on software, but with no capabilities to manage their cloud-based infrastructure. There is a customer requirement for these capabilities going forward and an effort needs to be made to consolidate infrastructure and platform, bridging these two areas where integration makes the most sense. Doing so allows customers to take advantage of an elastic infrastructure with platform hooks for building and running custom applications.
4. Application-specific cloud communities are forming.
In public space in particular, discussions around application-specific cloud communities are on the rise, particularly so in three central areas:
- Application Performance Communities
- Regulatory Communities
- Location-Based Services Communities
5. Managed Services get a cloud twist.
Cloud computing has refueled interest in “outsourcing” tasks and organizations are again looking to managed services as they reassess their resource strategies. They are not focused on the ability to utilize a virtual machine, but are focused on the management of infrastructure and taking advantage of the services that cloud computing offers. So, the cloud has become the trigger for discussion and a renewed interest and demand for managed services.
Mobile cloud computing next
Posted on: November 14, 2011
- The rapid uptake of smartphones and tablet computers is expected to create an opportunity for software developers to create mobile cloud computing services, industry experts say.
- There has been a great deal of hype around cloud computing, an internet-based consumption and delivery model for future IT services. Basically it means the shifting of data, services and hardware from, for instance, a company’s premises or dedicated data centre, onto an external platform, often shared, and accessed via the internet. Take for example Google Docs — instead of having Word software installed on your personal computer, you access it via a browser when you require it.
- Among the benefits of adopting cloud-computing services are a decrease in costs — mainly technology infrastructure costs — as well as increased capacity and flexibility. Although cloud computing has been touted as the next big thing for the past five or six years, it needed a critical mass of desktop users for it to take off in the developed world and so allow companies to take advantage of the benefits.
- With the bulk of internet access taking place via cellphones, it is going to be the more compelling mobile services that will drive higher customer numbers and traffic volumes, says Wilter du Toit, the CEO of Virtual Mobile Technologies. Roelof Louw, cloud computing expert at T-Systems in SA, says the proliferation of mobile devices and applications has changed the way people buy and use business services today.
- According to Juniper Research, more than 240-million business customers will access cloud-computing services via mobile devices by 2015.
- A Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Enterprise Data Services Market 2010 news analysis reveals that the market for enterprise data services is robust and it estimates that revenues will almost double and reach $27.20 billion in 2017.
- The analysis goes on to state that despite having the benefit of advanced technology, enterprise data services appears to be hindered by the rapid uptake of enterprise mobility, which is rather attractive to small and medium businesses.
- In addition, with an increase in the adoption of cloud computing consolidation of data centers, Ethernet is being adopted for data center-to-data center connectivity because of the huge bandwidth requirement and faster throughput speeds. Hence, over a period of time, the larger branches that are still using multi-protocol switching (MPLS) will gradually change over to Ethernet.
- However, multi- protocol switching IP virtual private networks are used to connect the smaller branches.
- Old technologies such as asynchronous transfer mode, frame relay and leased circuits are being cast aside in favor of the new IP Ethernet. High-end MPLS circuits also seem to be fighting a losing battle, especially where speeds in excess of 100 Mbps is required and will probably give way to Ethernet once it becomes more ubiquitous.
- PaaS Rules: IaaS becomes niche. In the long-run, IaaS doesn’t make sense, except for a limited set of scenarios. All IaaS providers want to be PaaS when they grow up.
- Public Rules: Internal clouds will be niche. In the long-run, Internal Clouds (clouds operated in a company’s own data centers, aka “private clouds”) don’t make sense. The economies of scale, specialization (an aspect of economies of scale, really) and outsourcing benefits of public clouds are so overwhelming that it will not make sense for any one company to operate its own data centers. Sure, there need to be in place many security and isolation measures, and feel free to call them “private clouds” — but they will be owned and operated by a few major public providers.
- Specialized Clouds: There are many dimensions to an application: the pattern of its workload; the government regulations it must adhere to; the geographic access to it; the programmig language and framework it supports; the levels of security, performance and reliability it requires; and other more specialized requirements. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world. At least, not always. There will be big generic clouds, and then, many specialized clouds. I’ve written about this in the past.
- Government Regulation: The largest cloud providers will become nationally strategic infrastructure (like utilities, financials, telcos, airlines and shipping companies in the past). Given my “public rules” prediction above, cloud providers will become crucial infrastructure to the economy and the interests of their respective nations. They will become “too big to fail”. Any change in their pricing will have a profound effect on the economy. And they will also hold the risk of a “cloud run” (similar to a “bank run”, a sudden surge of demand they haven’t anticipated. Not to mention the fact that they will maintain the sensitive data of consumers, corporations and government agencies. Any way you slice it, it spells regulation. But if history teaches us anything, this regulation will only come after “The Great Cloud Catastrophe” (use your imagination to figure out what that will look like).
- The Control vs. Freedom Debate: This sums up the story of cloud computing so far. Freedom is the catch-all phrase for drivers of cloud adoption (no upfront costs, on-demand, self-service, empowerment of the rank & file – e.g., developers), but control (or lack thereof) is the catch-all phrase of barriers to adoption by large enterprises. Every democratic country experiences this: there is sometimes a contradiction between the so-called sacred principles of rule-of-law and personal freedom. It’s a matter of drawing the line — and we’re just in the beginning stages of understanding this issue when it comes to cloud computing. This debate will be with us for years to come and will shape the variety of enterprise cloud computing offerings.
- Cloud Federations – While AWS has enjoyed tremendous international success, in any business that relies heavily on trust, such as IT, nothing beats a local brand. So people will flock to the cloud of their trusted national telco or big IT provider. But on the flip side, they will need to reach a global audience and will want servers around the world. As a result, we will see the formation of cloud federations, similar to what we see in airline alliances, such as Star, SkyTeam and Oneworld.
- Financial Efficiency and Sophistication: Computing is a commodity, and every commodity ends up being traded, future-traded, brokered, arbitraged, speculated and manipulated with derivative instruments. The good: the market becomes very efficient. The bad: the market becomes complex and opaque. We are already seeing spot markets
- Cloud Standards: About two years ago there was a strong wave of interest and discussion about the need for cloud standards. I wrote then, and still believe, it is too soon. But it is also inevitable. We will, however, see multiple competing standards. At least one formal stanard specification from a standards body and several de facto standards from large commercial players such as Amazon and VMWare.
- The Ecosystem Wars: I’ve recently written about the importance of ecosystems in cloud computing. Success in building an ecosystem will be a determining factor in who wins and losses in the cloud. It is not just about the size and breadth of the ecosystem, but how well it all works together. In many ways, Amazon has done a poor job of this so far, but it has the one big compelling factor for an ecosystem: a very large install base.
- Horizontal and Vertical Consolidation: As with any industry, as cloud computing matures, it will consolidate. This will happen both horizontally, for example large IaaS players will roll-up regional and smaller IaaS and hosting providers, as well as vertically, for example IaaS providers will acquire cloud management system providers such as RightScale and enStratus.
- Cloud computing will be a key driver of net new IT spending over the next five years as public cloud service providers and the adopters of private cloud environments invest in the supporting infrastructure.
- According to a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC), ‘Worldwide Enterprise Storage for Public and Private Cloud 2011-2015 Forecast: Enabling Public Cloud Service Providers and Private Clouds’, overall spending by public cloud service providers on storage hardware, software, and professional services will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.6 per cent from 2010 to 2015.
- While enterprise spending on storage for the private cloud will experience a CAGR of 28.9 per cent. By 2015, combined spending for public and private cloud storage will be $22.6 billion worldwide.
- Despite current economic uncertainties, IDC expects cloud service providers — both public and private — to be among the most expansive spenders on IT products and services as they continue to build out their facilities worldwide and expand their service options,” said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Systems & Executive Strategies, IDC.
- The most significant driver of storage consumption over the past three years has been the emergence of public cloud-based application and infrastructure providers. Many of these cloud-based service providers (e.g., iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook) act as content depots, which are primarily in the business of gathering, organizing, and providing access to large quantities of digital content.
- Meanwhile, other cloud-based service providers have emerged with a focus on delivering IT infrastructure and applications in an “as a service” model (e.g., salesforce.com, WebEx Connect, Amazon Web Services, etc.). Over the past several years, these companies have undertaken massive storage build-outs as they have expanded their service offerings, entered new markets, and extended their geographic reach.
- Enabling more efficient delivery of information/applications to Internet-based customers
- Reducing upfront infrastructure investment levels (i.e., cutting the cost and time associated with deploying new IT and compute infrastructure)
- Minimizing internal IT infrastructure investment associated with “bursty” or unpredictable workloads
- Lowering and/or distributing the ongoing costs associated with long-term archiving of information
- Enabling near-continuous, real-time analysis of large volumes and wide varieties of customer-, partner-, and machine-generated data (Big Data)
- Deloitte is expanding its cloud computing consulting services with the addition of Deloitte CloudPrint, a proprietary delivery framework specifically designed to help guide clients through the process of becoming a cloud service provider or subscriber.
- Based on Deloitte’s experience in executing Cloud strategy and implementation efforts, CloudPrint is built around three distinct offerings:
- CloudPrint for Providers: a suite of services covering business and process transformations required to become an internal or external cloud computing service provider, including channel strategies, market analysis and maturity and operating models.
- CloudPrint for Subscribers: a suite of offerings covering business, organizational, and process transformations required to become a subscriber to cloud computing services — including Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, and Platform as a Service.
- CloudPrint for Sectors: specific sector editions containing industry insights into some of the most relevant and complex challenges facing clients. Offerings include Subscriber editions focused on Banking, Consumer Products, Health Plan, Insurance, Life Sciences and Media; and Provider editions focused on Technology and Telecom.
- CloudPrint is an expansion of Deloitte’s cloud practice, enhancing our overall cloud computing solutions and offerings for Cloud service providers and Cloud service subscribers,” said Paul Clemmons, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
- One of the biggest costs in a data centre is power cost. Power is needed to fire the servers and storage systems. And since these systems heat up, power is again required to cool the systems with air-conditioning.
- In the dot-com era, data centres consumed 1 or 2 MW. Now it’s common to find facilities that require 20 MW, and already some of them expect to use ten times as much in the years to come. For countries, data centre power consumption is expected to put an enormous burden on their power grids.
- Not surprisingly, an enormous amount of innovation, right from the semiconductor level, is today going into finding solutions to reduce power consumption in computing systems. IBM’s India Software Lab in Bangalore has just contributed towards that. It has developed a system to run data centres on solar power, and is making it commercially available, perhaps the first such commercial offering in the world.
- Until now, no one has engineered solar power for efficient use in IT,” said Rod Adkins, senior VP of IBM’s systems and technology group, who was in Bangalore last week. “We’ve designed a solar solution to bring a new source of clean, reliable and efficient power to energy-intensive, industrial-scale electronics.
- The first implementation is being done at the Bangalore lab itself. A solar power array has been installed, spread over more than 6,000 sft of the lab’s rooftop. Kota Murali, chief scientist at IBM India, says the installation is capable of providing a 50-kilowatt of electricity for up to 330 days a year, for an average of five hours a day. The advantage of solar power is that it is DC (direct current), unlike grid power that is AC (alternating current).
- Processors run on DC, so when you use grid power, you need to convert AC to DC. In the process of that conversion, you lose about 13% of power. On the other hand, when you do a DC to DC conversion, the loss is only 4%. So you have a saving of close to 10%.
Here are four questions, which include key metrics and drivers, to ask when researching cloud solutions that will maximize the value of cloud computing for your organization:
1. Why is investment being spent on areas of IT that are not differentiating your business and can be commoditized?
- Key Metric: The balance of percent of investment on non-core commodity IT
- Key drivers: TCO needs to consider where to focus IT investment
2. How can IT grow and adapt with the ever-increasing expansion of data storage and the growth of computing demands eclipsing on-premise facilities?
- Key Metric: The cost of storage and archiving , recovery and continuity
- Key drivers: Latency of network and storage costs can be targeted through considering the whole IT portfolio, not just niche use cases of cost performance. Look at the bigger picture.
3. How can access to new markets and new channels be better served through extending networks and partnerships?
- Key Metric: Size of markets and effectiveness of sales channels, both internal sales and external direct sales and reselling
- Key drivers: Total cost of acquisition can include the creation or use of third-party distributed marketplaces and self-service portals and platforms
4. Is your own IT fast enough to beat your competition or drive the cost savings or revenue and margin growth plans you need?
- Key metric: Speed of IT delivery and its cost and quality of service.
- Key drivers: Performance can be offered through selected service provisioning. Question whether all knowledge needs to be in-house. Skills can be as-a-service too.
- The analyst firm claims public cloud providers and private cloud users will increase investment in storage over the coming years.
- Cloud computing will ensure growth in the storage sector for the next five years, according to new research released today.
- Analyst firm IDC claimed increased investment in private cloud infrastructure and the growing volumes needed by public cloud providers would lead to combined storage spending of $22.6 billion by 2015.
- “Despite current economic uncertainties, IDC expects cloud service providers – both public and private – to be among the most expansive spenders on IT products and services as they continue to build out their facilities worldwide and expand their service options,” said Richard Villars, vice president of storage systems at IDC.
- Breaking it down, IDC claimed public cloud providers would increase their storage spend at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.6 per cent between 2010 and 2015. Private cloud investments, however, were set to be even higher, with a CAGR of 28.9 per cent.
- Software as a Service is the biggest storage culprit though, with online applications storing large volumes of content, such as videos, pictures or music files.
- Although revenues from simple, large-scale storage will please storage companies, Villars warned it might detract those vendors from providing the more complex storage solutions required by enterprise.
Asia Pacific bosses most willing to move to the cloud, says speaker at HP event
Posted on: November 14, 2011
- At a regional Hewlett-Packard event held in Singapore on October 18th, the keynote speaker said that companies in the Asia Pacific are more enthusiastic about migrating to the cloud than their Western counterparts.
- The region is more ready than other regions on the planet,” says Wolfgang Wittmer, interim senior VP and general manager, Enterprise Services, Storage & Networking in the Asia Pacific & Japan.
- This observation is apparently backed up by a recently survey on CIOs and CTOs which found that 58 percent of Chinese businesses are planning to move to the cloud. In India, the figure is 56 percent. In contrast, 32 percent of CIOs and CTOs in Europe and 34 percent in the US plan to move to the cloud.
- Signs of this demand can be seen in the number of data centers being built in the region.
- In APJ, new data center built annually will double between 2010 and 2014. By 2012, China will be the second-largest data center market in the world,” says EJ Bodnar, HP’s worldwide marketing director for Technology Consulting Services. This region is leapfrogging the world.
- Recently, Google has announced plans to build facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Already, cloud companies like Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com have already established data centers in Singapore.
- Asia Pacific firms are also spending more on disaster recovery on the cloud, a sign of increasing reliance.
- Ford is very soon going to present its cloud based technology in 18th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems. The researchers will demonstrate how a car can switch from gasoline to battery while driving. The vehicle will automatically sense when it needs to change the source of power supply depending upon the conditions to minimize the carbon emission. In other words, the technology is mainly for the plug-in Hybrid vehicles (PHEV).
- For EVs Ford is partnering with other auto majors to set up harmonized and speedy battery charging stations. The American company has rightly sensed the direction of market and is working on the PHEVs before starting for EVs which will at least require another 25 years to replace completely the gasoline fed vehicles. PHEVs will provide a smooth transition in this case and will prove to be a profit making venture.
- It will be a matter of speculation if this technology of adapting the power train performance according to driving conditions can be employed in other car variants also. The company is also considering the aspect of incorporating Drivers habits in to the electrical systems so that they will make him/her comfortable while driving. Of course such features will be optional and will be at customer’s disposal whether to opt for those or not. A similar feature was showcased in last month’s Frankfurt motor show in Ford’s Evos. It will take a few more years to commercialize and to get on road.
Worldwide Software as a Service Revenue is Forecast to Grow 21 percent in 2011
Posted on: November 12, 2011
- Worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue is forecast to reach $12.1 billion in 2011, a 20.7 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $10 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The SaaS-based delivery will experience healthy growth through 2015, when worldwide revenue is projected to reach $21.3 billion.
- Gartner defines SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. The provider delivers an application based on a single set of common code and data definitions, which is consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers anytime on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on use metrics.
- After more than a decade of use, adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets,” said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner. “This is occurring as tighter capital budgets demand leaner alternatives, popularity and familiarity with the model increases, and interest in platform as a service (PaaS) and cloud computing grows.”
- Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread,” Mr. Eid said. “Usage and vendors’ on-demand ecosystems continue to evolve to provide additional business and technology services, more vertical-specific functionality, and stronger communities of partners and buyers.”
- During the past two years, the significant industry buzz surrounding SaaS and other off-premises models has shifted to cloud computing. Cloud computing is a broad concept, of which SaaS is only one variation, representing the application layer of the overall cloud architectural stack. However, SaaS has been a lead indicator of the cloud concept for some time. Gartner estimates that 75 percent of current SaaS delivery, as measured by revenue, could be regarded as cloud services, and this could exceed 90 percent by 2015 as the SaaS model matures and converges with cloud service models.
- Customer relationship management (CRM) continues to be the largest market for SaaS. SaaS revenue within the CRM market is forecast to reach $3.8 billion in 2011, up from $3.2 billion in 2010. Gartner expects SaaS to represent nearly 32 percent of the CRM market’s total software revenue in 2011.
- The market landscape for on-demand CRM continues to evolve and mature as the availability and use of SaaS solutions become more pervasive,” Mr. Eid said. Greater market competition and increased focus on megavendors reinforce the legitimacy of on-demand solutions, mitigating initial objections about security and availability for many, as acceptance of SaaS as a viable model for enterprise computing services grows.”
- SaaS revenue within the content, communications and collaboration (CCC) market is on pace to surpass $3.3 billion in 2011, up from $2.8 billion in 2010. The CCC market continues to show the widest disparity of SaaS revenue generation, with SaaS representing just 5 percent of enterprise content management (ECM) in 2010 but approximately 83 percent of Web conferencing.
- The proportion of enterprise resource planning (ERP) revenue attributed to SaaS overall is still in the single digits, at approximately 7 percent of the overall ERP market. ERP SaaS offerings contributed approximately $1.5 billion to the SaaS market in 2010, and by year-end 2011, Gartner expects this to increase to $1.7 billion. The penetration of SaaS within ERP varies greatly between subsegments, with human capital management (HCM) being the most penetrated (in terms of adoptions and revenue growth) and enterprise asset management (EAM) and manufacturing being relatively unaffected by SaaS.
- Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries will soon expand 4G services in India, according to an ET report. This includes offering 4G enabled data cards and providing tablets at price as low as Rs. 3000. The company plans to start rolling out 4 G services by middle of 2012.
- RIL is trying to woo the young customers with news games and applivcationa and its dealwith Walt Disney is already in the finals stage. It plans to provide data connectivity with speeds of 50-100 mbps, which is much faster than 3G services currently on offer, at cheaper prices.
- The report says the company adopted the similar strategy in 2003 also when it succeeded in taking mobile telephony to the masses with its “Monsoon Hungama” handsets at Rs 501, helping it win 1 million customers in just 10 days. Reliance Infocom, the telecom arm of the undivided Reliance Group, began its services on December 28, 2002, the birthday of the group’s founder Dhirubhai Ambani.
- An industry executive confided in ET that RIL may focus on three to four models, all of which are likely to be priced between Rs 3000 to Rs 8000 and that the entry-level tablets may have Google’s android operating system. Industry executives also confirmed that RIL was not considering UK-based Datawind, which recently launched the world’s cheapest tablet – Aakash – priced at $35 or Rs 1,750 for students with the Indian government sourcing these device at Rs 2,256.
- Singapore, Japan, and South Korea remain the most ambitious in the world when it comes to broadband services, according to a new study from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
- Now in its third edition, the government broadband report shows that East Asian governments are targeting faster services and greater coverage than other countries. Already considered some of the most advanced broadband economies in the world, all three will significantly extend their lead if they meet targets.
- Each has an official plan to provide 1Gbps services within the next two to five years, and both Singapore and Japan aim to cover more than 90% of households with these services over that time frame.
- In Europe, governments have been focused on addressing regional and rural areas the private sector would struggle to serve profitably,” says Iain Morris, editor of the report. “As a result, target speeds tend to range from 20Mbps to 50Mbps for between 75% and 90% of households.”
- Northern countries, including Estonia, Finland and Sweden, are typically more aggressive, targeting speeds of 100Mbps for between 90% and 100% of households within the next five to 10 years.
- Approaches vary in other parts of the world, although higher levels of public-sector funding per household covered generally correspond to more government intervention.
- Australia is spending the most in public-sector funds per household covered of any country in the world, with a government plan to create, own and operate an ultra-fast network in almost all parts of the country.
- In the US and Canada, governments are mainly focused on reducing the so-called ‘digital divide’ by funding network rollout in rural areas
- Malaysian web hosting provider Teliti International announced on Thursday it has partnered with a group of technologies and solutions providers including Emerson Network Power to build a green data center.
- The data center will have an ultimate capacity of 120,000 square feet and be considered Asia’s largest green data center. Located in the Bandar Enstek technology park, the data center is just 10 minutes away from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
- Set to open with an initial 45,000 square feet in the first half of 2012, the data center will offer customers a range of services, including web hosting, flexible colocation, cloud computing, and fully managed information technology services such as managed storage and processing on demand.
- The world-class technologies from Emerson Network Power and our other partners provide us with the unique ability to monitor and control every aspect of our data center infrastructure, including power, cooling, and space utilization,” said Musa Mohd Lazim, CEO of Teliti Datacentres. “This allows us to fine-tune data center operations and to observe trends in capacity utilization to ensure optimal management. In bringing together a consortium of companies with industry-leading expertise in their respective fields, we have found a winning formula for a sustainable, cutting-edge green data center.
- Teliti will deploy a range of Emerson Network Power technologies, including UPS systems, surge protection, battery monitoring, and power transfer switches, precision cooling and cold aisle containment, power distribution units and enclosures, and access, control, and monitoring software and hardware.
- AOL has been operating a trial datacenter that runs without any on-site staff since the start of the month, and reports that the system is resilient and cuts costs.
- Dubbed ATC, the datacenter uses off-the-shelf, pre-racked/vendor integrated gear with open source code, is run as a 100 per cent lights out facility (no BOFH patrolling the racks), and was put together in 90 days from the first proposal. AOL’s special sauce is its configuration management system, which the company says can set up and start a virtual machine in eight seconds and set up global server systems in minutes.
- The provisioning systems were built to be universal so that if required we can do the same thing with stand-alone physical boxes or virtual machines. No difference. Same system.” Said Mike Manos, AOL’s vice president of technology operations in a blog post.
- This system was put to the test during this summer’s East Coast earthquake, a 5.8 magnitude shock in Virginia. “The flood of inquirers to AOL’s servers in the aftermath was handled using the system, adding new virtual machines to handle the steep surge in demand,” he wrote.
- The timing of the announcement is fortuitous, considering AOL is trying to sell itself and touting its datacenter management as one of the assets it brings to any deal. Reuters reports that COE Tim Armstrong told a meeting of top shareholders that the company could be a good buy for Yahoo! He estimated that the two companies, with a combined audience, elimination of overlaps and AOL’s datacenter prowess, could save $1.5bn.
Dublin, Ireland: An energy-efficient, cloud computing data center on 11 acres of land with a $101 million investment. The natural cooling from Dublin’s climate saves energy by eliminating the need for chillers.
Asia – Singapore, Hong Kong &Taiwan: A $200 million investment in three data centers to support increased demand of services via smartphones and tablet computers, and expectations to be operational in 1 to 2 years.
Pryor, Oklahoma – Just opened a new $600 million, 130,000 square feet data center, and plans to open a second building for office space. Another energy-efficient project, the data center will be powered from a wind farm which will feed into the electrical transmission grid.
Microsoft
Dublin, Ireland: Microsoft expects to expand its 19-acre, $500 million data center in Dublin by more than a third – similar to Google, the data center uses natural cooling without any chillers.
West Des Moines, Iowa: $200 million facility originally started in 2008 but put on hold after the recession. The data center project started up again in 2010, and appears to be nearing completion.
Boydton , Virginia: An expansion investment of $150 million and a planned second data center facility. With the first phase of its project requiring $499 million, Microsoft is trying to stay competitive in the cloud computing market.
- North Carolina: Scheduled for completion by September 2013, the second data center for this social network giant will measure 300,000 square feet, same as its first data center that hasn’t even opened yet. Facebook purchased 150 acres of land and invested $450 million in their first data center. The data center will be energy-efficient and deploy evaporative cooling instead of a chiller system.
IBM
- Langfang, China: A cloud computing data center for Range Technology Development Co. Ltd. measured at 620,000 square meters and intended to serve business growth industries such as transportation, telecommunications, e-government and healthcare. IBM’s data center business in China has reportedly tripled in the last four years.
- The Singapore Polytechnic Electrical and Electronic Engineering Cloud Computing Center is set to launch, marking the first educational institute in Asia Pacific to provide students with the latest skills in cloud computing through an operational data center environment.
- Conceived by its School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the SPE3C3 will provide teaching staff and students in the school with “on-demand, scalable, virtual computing and storage in labs to enable more sophisticated projects and research work,” according to the press release.
- The SPE3C3 was developed in collaboration with technology providers Cisco, Citrix Systems and NetApp.
- Singapore Polytechnic is using the benefits of cloud computing to realize cost savings, energy efficiency and dynamic scalability.
- The resources will initially be available to the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering students on campus, then later be accessible to all students on and outside of campus via Internet access in the near future.
- The new SPE3C3 shows Singapore Polytechnic’s commitment to innovation in education and the use of cutting edge technology to provide its students with relevant and up-to-date training to develop their skills in virtualization, enterprise and cloud computing,” said Tan Hang Cheong, principal, Singapore Polytechnic. Singapore Polytechnic graduates will be truly work-ready in the cloud era and be able to contribute immediately to the industry upon graduation.”
- Starting in April 2012, students in the third year of the Diploma in Computer Engineering course at Singapore Polytechnic’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering will be able to take two new elective modules, Data Center Management and System Virtualization.
- The growing popularity of e-learning could see a rise in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using cloud computing, it has been suggested.
- David Patterson, director and consultant with e-learningcentre.co.uk, said that this market has been predicted to grow for decades and has been undergoing a quiet but rapid expansion in recent years. He claimed that the UK’s many companies specialising in this area and the fact that usage levels among corporations, organisations and individuals have been high.
- E-learning, which is often delivered through a cloud computing model, Mr Patterson said, has been the only part of the corporate training market that is actually growing. He cited recent research by analyst Learning Light that has predicted that this submarket is growing at a rate of six per cent a year.
- The consultant added that sales by e-learning developers have actually been expanding at a rate of over 20 per cent a year, showing an underlying strength to the market.
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