Managing Hybrid Cloud Complexity: A Battleground and Differentiator

July 10, 2017 Leave a comment

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • For enterprises of all sizes, the need to manage complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments is fueling demand for integrated management solutions.
  • Solution vendors will respond by continuing to expand their portfolio capabilities, the range of cloud platforms supported and the choice of consumption and delivery models.

It is now widely accepted that the future of enterprise cloud will be hybrid, as enterprises of all sizes look for ways of harnessing the benefits of both private and public clouds. Indeed, the perceived opportunity to deliver hybrid cloud solutions to enterprises is encouraging both public cloud service providers and private cloud infrastructure vendors to evolve their existing solutions and introduce new ones – with the latter often involving the formation of new strategic partnerships. Read more of this post

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OpenStack Summit 2017: Hosted Private Cloud Demand Reflects Both the Popularity and Problems of OpenStack

May 19, 2017 Leave a comment

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • OpenStack cloud deployment continues to grow, with the main business drivers among enterprise users including the desire to avoid vendor lock-in and the potential to enhance innovation and operational efficiency.
  • Specific criticisms of OpenStack focus on the current six-month release cycle, as well as the complexity of the installation process for new releases and insufficient support for containers.

The May 2017 OpenStack Summit in Boston highlighted continued growth in the number and size of OpenStack cloud deployments, as well as evidence of increasing maturity for the technology. It also illuminated some of the ongoing challenges facing the OpenStack movement. Read more of this post

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As Huawei Expands Its Public Cloud Platform It Should Not Underestimate Private and Hybrid Cloud Requirements

April 24, 2017 Leave a comment

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• Although Huawei’s public cloud platform will compete internationally against Amazon, Microsoft and Google, Huawei will differentiate by focusing on emerging markets and specific verticals.

• In promoting its public cloud platform, Huawei must continue to support the long-term need among many enterprises for private and hybrid cloud solutions.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Huawei, which has been forging ahead with new initiatives for supporting the adoption of cloud-based technologies and services among enterprise customers. One of the most attention-grabbing announcements at Huawei’s 14th Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen (April 11-13), centered on the international expansion of the company’s public cloud platform. Huawei has offered public cloud services in China since 2015, competing against local providers such as Alibaba. It is now extending its ability to deliver public cloud services internationally via strategic partnerships with Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefónica, which will each utilize Huawei’s platform to offer public cloud services in regions where they have network infrastructure strengths. Although Huawei plans to extend its public cloud platform to other regions, it will do so cautiously, in response to customer demand, and with partners that need strict selection criteria. Read more of this post

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IBM InterConnect 2017: Hybrid Cloud Offers IBM the Best Chance to Differentiate

March 24, 2017 Leave a comment

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • In contrast to HPE and Cisco, which have recently retreated from maintaining public clouds, IBM continues to assert its strengths as a public cloud provider.
  • IBM should build on its capabilities to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, while also preparing for strong competition from Microsoft, Dell EMC and VMware.

The cloud was the central theme at this year’s IBM InterConnect conference in Las Vegas, with IBM emphasizing the growing strength and competitiveness of the IBM Cloud, while also launching several new initiatives to support enterprise hybrid cloud deployments. These include a new strategic alliance with Red Hat that is intended to make it faster and easier for enterprises to deploy OpenStack-based hybrid clouds and the launch of a suite of tools for managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments – some of which utilize IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning engine, Watson, to offer predictive management capabilities. Read more of this post

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At Cisco Live! EMEA 2017 Cisco Showcased its Ongoing Transformation and Unveiled its Vision of an IoT Future

February 24, 2017 Leave a comment

 

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • This year’s Cisco Live! EMEA event showcased Cisco’s DevNet initiative, which fosters cooperation between IT engineers and application developers and promises to change future networking and data center technologies.
  • Cisco’s latest initiatives reflect the recognition that future network and data center architectures must evolve if they are to handle the sort of data processing, storage and analytics that will be needed in an IoT era.

At this year’s Cisco Live! EMEA event, Cisco demonstrated the extent to which it’s transforming from being predominantly a hardware supplier into a provider of software and services that help enterprises grasp opportunities in IoT.  Ruba Borno, Vice President of Growth Initiatives and Chief of Staff to Cisco’s CEO, expounded on the different elements of this transformation and Cisco’s vision of positioning itself further up the technology stack to become a complete solutions provider for enterprise IoT initiatives. In order to fully realize this vision, Cisco is embracing a more comprehensive and layered approach to security, as well as increased infrastructure automation, the use of analytics to optimize application and infrastructure performance, and the full utilization of multi-cloud environments. Read more of this post

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VMware Reports Strong 2016 Growth and Dismisses HPE Threat, but Needs a Plan to Protect New Businesses

January 30, 2017 Leave a comment

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • VMware has emphasized the importance of emerging businesses such as hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure to its 2016 revenue performance.
  • In order to safeguard future growth, VMware must pay attention to the rapidly changing competitive dynamics within these emerging business segments.

Presenting his company’s Q4 and full-year results for 2016, VMware CFO Zane Rowe noted the important contribution of emerging businesses such as hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) to VMware’s overall performance. In Q4, hybrid cloud and SaaS revenue – a category that includes vCloud Air and SaaS offerings such as vRealize as a Service – experienced double-digit growth and accounted for 8% of total revenue. VMware has emphasized the importance of its Cross-Cloud Services initiative – commercially availability in mid-2017 – for the future of its hybrid cloud strategy. Another key element of this strategy is Cloud Foundation, a software-defined data center platform based on NSX, vSphere and vSAN for building private clouds and extending them to the public cloud. Read more of this post

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Partnering with Competitors Will Remain Central to Dell EMC’s Converged and Hyper-converged Solutions Strategy in 2017

December 28, 2016 Leave a comment

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• The market for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) will be a major battleground for solutions jointly engineered by Dell Technologies group businesses.

• Dell EMC will maintain partnerships with competitors in relation to specific converged and hyper-converged solutions as long as customer demand for these solutions continues.

The launch in December of a new VxRack solution based on Dell EMC’s PowerEdge servers and VMware’s software-defined data center platform, gives us only a partial indication of how Dell EMC’s HCI will evolve in 2017. For a fuller understanding, it is necessary to look at the broader range of decisions and announcements the company has made both prior to and since its September merger. It can be argued that the launch of a new HCI solution based entirely on infrastructure provided by Dell Technologies group businesses – together with a move to drop the VCE brand for all of Dell EMC’s converged and hyper-converged solutions – points to a change of strategy for the vendor. They also note the way in which Dell’s PowerEdge servers have been steadily incorporated into several EMC solutions since the completion of the merger – including the company’s VxRail hyper-converged appliance. Read more of this post

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The Demise of Intercloud Services Provides an Opportunity for Cisco’s Cloud Strategy

December 23, 2016 Leave a comment

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

  • With the termination of its Intercloud Services, Cisco will now focus on helping enterprise customers build and manage their own hybrid environments.
  • Cisco stands to benefit from the closure of Intercloud, which provides it with an opportunity to streamline and redefine its cloud strategy.

The announcement by Cisco that it plans to terminate its Intercloud Services (CIS) public cloud on March 31, 2017 has been widely criticized as a failure of Cisco’s attempt to compete against hyper-scale public cloud providers and further evidence of the comparative weakness of public cloud offerings based on OpenStack open source technology. However, the decision by Cisco to put to bed an initiative which it launched in September 2014 can also be seen as a positive move by the vendor to realign its resources and refocus its cloud business, the latter having been historically criticized for being disjointed, lacking clarity and failing to deliver momentum. Read more of this post

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Although HPE Announces a Milestone for Its “Machine” Project, Future Success is Far from Certain

December 14, 2016 Leave a comment

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• HPE announced a major milestone for The Machine research project, which promises to transform future computing and data center architectures.

• Despite real achievements, it remains to be seen whether HPE can make a success of The Machine in the way the vendor originally envisaged.

Of the various announcements Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) made at its recent Discovery Event in London, November 2016, one of the most interesting related to “The Machine”, a Hewlett Packard Labs research project that was inaugurated in 2014 and which aspires to revolutionize the way computers are built and data centers of the future are architected. At the London Discovery event HPE announced that it had reached a major milestone for The Machine project, having built and successfully tested a prototype of the “world’s first memory-driven computing architecture”.

Read more of this post

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As HPE Builds Momentum with its IoT Strategy, Rivals Such as Cisco, IBM and Dell EMC Need to be Equally Clear about their Approach to IoT

December 13, 2016 Leave a comment

C. Drake

C. Drake

Summary Bullets:

• HPE’s IoT strategy focuses on converged systems at the network edge, along with security, analytics and partnerships with key industry players.

• The latest initiatives, solutions and solution enhancements announced by HPE at its London Discovery event add significant momentum to this multi-faceted IoT strategy.

At its Discovery Event in London, November 2016, HPE announced a number of new innovations that are intended to advance the vendor’s IoT infrastructure strategy and help enterprises tap opportunities in, what HPE refers to as, the “industrial internet.” Innovations announced in London include several enhancements to the HPE Universal IoT Platform – including support for a wider range of LoRa gateways, as well as the ability to manage both subscriber identify module (SIM) and non-SIM devices, and a new portal for simplifying IoT device management. Other solutions announced in London include new switches and device profiling tools from HPE business Aruba, to help enterprises identify, secure and manage IoT devices at the edge of their network, and the HPE Mobile Virtual Network Enabler, which is aimed at fostering the emergence of new, specialized IoT mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). Read more of this post

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