Cloud Enable examines the options available to IT departments considering adopting or managing cloud-based architectures in their business environment.
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms
Summary Bullets:
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) augments leading serverless LAMBDA solution with an innovative operational solution, Firecracker
• AWS announcement prompts Microsoft Azure to respond with numerous portfolio updates
At last week’s developer conference, re:Invent, AWS made the case for why the time is ripe for enterprises to take a serverless computing architectural approach to application development. The cloud giant rolled out new technologies that promise to make DevOps teams more operationally prepared for the heavy lifting needed to deploy emerging serverless and microservices apps. Continue reading “AWS re:Invent Highlights Bold Serverless Strategy, Prompting a Swift Microsoft Response”→
Diane Greene led the Google Cloud enterprise charge, helping the provider make up lost ground with an ambitious agenda that included significant acquisitions, investments in AI, and new strategic partnerships.
But, for all of Google’s forward momentum, the provider still hasn’t closed the gap with IaaS leaders AWS and Microsoft Azure.
As Google Cloud chief Diane Green gets ready to hand over the reins to her successor, former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian, the industry is taking a moment to reflect on the progress and conflicts that marked her term. When Greene joined Google in 2015, despite the company’s status as an Internet titan, the organization was an underwhelming performer in the enterprise cloud. Continue reading “CEO Diane Greene Prepares to Exit Google with Its Enterprise Cloud Play Still Incomplete”→
CenturyLink expands and enhances its portfolio in Asia-Pacific to challenge other carriers and grab the growing opportunity.
However, there are still gaps with its competitors, especially in portfolio and presence in the region.
At the TM Forum Digital Transformation Asia 2018 in Malaysia earlier this month, CenturyLink shared its direction to strengthen its presence and expand the business in Asia-Pacific. The move is in line with its global expansion strategy announced this year at its annual Analyst Forum. In Asia-Pacific, CenturyLink has over 2,000 employees, on-net presence in 12 countries and sales presence in six key markets (i.e., Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore). With the existing resources in the region, the carrier plays to its strength by focusing on inbound MNCs as well as Asian-based enterprises expanding beyond the region. It focuses in certain verticals, including OTT/content, media, entertainment, financial services, energy and utilities, retail and manufacturing sectors. Continue reading “TM Forum Digital Transformation Asia 2018: CenturyLink Strengthens Asia-Pacific Business”→
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms
Summary Bullets:
• MuleSoft’s ability to provide integration with non-Salesforce applications and systems keeps Salesforce Platform relevant
• Salesforce continues to build on Einstein momentum, providing developers with new voice opportunities in AI
Now that the dust has settled in downtown San Francisco and the 170,000-strong mob of Dreamforce attendees have gone home, enterprise developers and DevOps teams can reflect upon Salesforce’s latest platform strategy and announcements. With that in mind, we’ve honed in on the top three developer takeaways from last week’s mega conference.
1. MuleSoft’s ability to provide integration with non-Salesforce applications and systems keeps Salesforce Platform relevant.
At the forefront of Salesforce’s developer news last week are ambitious plans to integrate MuleSoft into its SaaS and PaaS offerings. Salesforce acquired the mature integration vendor earlier this year to serve as the integration layer to its newly consolidated Salesforce Platform. Such a move ensures that Salesforce remains competitive and relevant by providing enterprises with continuous delivery capabilities and the ability to access disparate apps and systems as customers forge ahead with business transformation projects. Continue reading “Enterprise Developer Takeaways from Salesforce Dreamforce”→
• Ultra broadband access will drive enterprise digital transformation, forcing requirements for more agile telco network services including cloud access and multi-cloud connectivity.
• The key factor is the decoupling of service and network management through the use of overlay/underlay networks, resulting in more flexible solutions that can be deployed quickly.
Huawei hosted UBBF 2018 in Geneva last week, bringing telcos, enterprises, and analysts up to date on its efforts in ultra broadband access (i.e., technology capable of 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps bandwidth). Curiously, the program also included significant time and content dedicated to B2B services with a focus on cloud-network synergy and the benefits to service provider and user. At times, the message wasn’t completely clear on which clouds Huawei was including in its vision (e.g., telco network clouds, telco public clouds, OTT clouds), but eventually, the vendor’s ideas for using a cloud management system to offer enterprises a one-stop shop for network and cloud services using SD-WAN for multi-cloud connectivity came through in several proposed use cases. (For more detail on this topic, see the full advisory report, “UBBF 2018: Cloud-Network Synergy High on Agenda at Huawei’s Ultra Broadband Forum,” published by GlobalData on September 17, 2018. Continue reading “Huawei UBBF: Cloud-Network Synergy Can Drive Managed Cloud Services for Telcos”→
Microsoft has released Azure DevOps, a rebranding of VSTS, but also tools serving as its APLM contribution.
Modern application development architectures (microservices) and requirements (CICD) are driving the need for APLM.
Striving for a digital environment, enterprises are challenged to exploit the full benefits of cloud-enabled innovations, assembling solutions that combine and orchestrate both the business software and the infrastructure on which that software runs. While technology providers of switches, servers, cloud services, et al. have certainly set the stage for unified management, automation, and optimization, no single vendor is yet capable of managing the entire lifecycle of this amalgamation. Continue reading “Microsoft Azure DevOps Touches on the Larger APLM Trend”→
Just as multi-cloud usage is recognized as a necessity, IT suppliers are keen to help enterprises reduce its inherent complexity.
IT, hosting, and network service providers have rolled out specific offers over the last year to address the demand.
As multi-cloud consumption becomes the reality for transforming enterprises, solutions are now appearing from service providers as well as platform vendors (beyond their initial solutions for hybrid cloud). Each player has its own take – with varying levels of focus placed on self-service tools, automated operations, and good old-fashioned managed services. Continue reading “Multi-Cloud Services: Service Provider and Vendor Approaches Keep Coming”→
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms
Summary Bullets:
• Having laid out its private cloud management and strategy, VMware needs to set its sights on easing microservices and multi-cloud deployment complexities next.
• Articulating its DevOps roadmap, including microservices, service mesh, and serverless computing, would go a long way instilling confidence among customers.
A year after rolling out new cloud services including visibility, cost monitoring, analytics, and security, VMware released during VMworld SaaS-based automation tools, but this is only the tip of the iceberg in helping address customers’ app modernization plans.
Enterprises are now seeking private/hybrid cloud solutions addressing APLM (application and platforms lifecycle management) issues around new development architectures such as microservices and eventually serverless computing. VMware is well positioned through its vSphere enterprise and SP customer base to provide services to enterprises moving to provision containers with security, storage, and networking. While VMware is focused on providing private and hybrid cloud management around early containerization projects involving monolithic applications, it must now turn its attention towards supporting IT operations teams through important product integrations of key technologies such as Istio service mesh and Knative.
During this week’s VMworld, within VMware’s Cloud Services division there was little context in the way of DevOps strategy, including updates on its containerization strategy which centers around Pivotal Container Service (PKS), VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE), VMware Integrated Container (VIC), and Photon (microservices) portfolio. VMware needs to ratchet up efforts in coming months to move further up the cloud stack and address enterprise IT operations teams’ APLM issues. This blog post provides five crucial moves VMware needs to make to remain competitive with rival application platforms and hybrid cloud rivals. Continue reading “VMworld 2018: Five Things VMware Needs to Do to Support an Enterprise DevOps Model”→
Microservices will get a boost from growing vendor adoption of Istio (service mesh), Envoy (distributed proxy), and MicroProfile (microservices portability).
Serverless computing is receiving more attention stemming from vendors’ OSS projects, including Knative and CloudEvents.
This summer has seen a raft of activities in OSS projects aimed at easing configuration complexity and furthering adoption around emerging DevOps architectures including microservices and serverless computing. The most notable OSS technologies shoring modern application development/deployment methods are Istio (service mesh) and Knative (serverless), projects spearheaded by Google and others. Yet, rival projects are emerging, promising to throw a wrench into the mix, such as Oracle’s efforts around CloudEvents, now backed by CNCF. Another competitive threat lies in the potential for disruption brewing among little-known startups offering their own pure-play versions of service mesh and serverless technology to developers and software engineers in the form of easy-to-use SaaS offerings. Continue reading “Vendors’ Private Cloud Offerings Hinge on Microservices and Serverless Success”→
