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” →

Summary Bullets:

• 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” →

Summary Bullets:

• 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” →

Summary Bullets:

• 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” →

Summary Bullets:

• Google announced the general availability of Cloud Functions, but are enterprises ready for serverless computing?
• • The Google Cloud Build app development environment supports the increased demand for CICD among enterprises.

Google announced general availability of its serverless platform, Cloud Functions, during last week’s Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco. The growing phenomenon of serverless computing pits Google most squarely against cloud rivals AWS Lambda and Microsoft Azure Functions. Google’s serverless solution, founded on App Engine, runs alongside its Cloud Services Platform and offers new runtimes, additional languages, and enhanced performance, networking, and security features. Continue reading “Google Cloud Next: Google Finally Joins the Serverless Ranks, but Enterprises Aren’t Interested Yet” →

Summary Bullets:

• Just as multi-cloud usage is recognized as a necessity, IT suppliers are keen to help enterprises reduce its inherent complexity.
• Fujitsu is strengthening its multi-cloud integration and operations services by partnering with key platform vendors and training thousands of service professionals to achieve relevant certifications.

Starting in the second half of last year, the focus on hybrid cloud implementations shifted towards the need to accommodate concurrent management of workloads running on multiple cloud platforms, and this has emerged as one of the biggest themes in cloud computing. Whether it is the case of central IT looking for some level of control over enterprise-wide consumption or the equally common justification for the same organization using, say, Amazon EC2 for one set of workloads while using Azure and/or VMware for others, ‘hybrid’ management solutions now need to support this multi-cloud usage. Continue reading “Multi-Cloud Services: Fujitsu’s Take” →