Category Archives: Cloud Servers
DigitalOcean releases its load balancer product – Computerworld
Every time Gartner or another analyst firm publishes a report detailing what is happening in the public cloud landscape, three names rise to the top. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is always in first place, and it is only the size of the gap between itself and the next place-getter that changes. The two perennial bridesmaids are Google, with its Cloud Platform offering, and Microsoft, with Azure.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that these are the only vendors playing in the public cloud, but in this assessment, you'd be wrong.
There are, you see, a plethora of different players. From existing large IT vendors (such as IBM) that want to carve out their own share of the public cloud space, to smaller vendors (many of which come from a traditional hosting background) that want to pivot into the cloud. And others, telcos most notably, looking for a fillip to prop up lost revenue from more traditional business lines.
One well-regarded alternative cloud vendor is DigitalOcean. I'm always a little stumped to explain how DigitalOcean has grown so rapidly -- the company came out of essentially nowhere. It was only founded in 2011, and despite battling some incredibly well-resourced vendors, has become (although, as I'll explain, you can take a grain of salt with some of these absolute measures) the second-largest and fastest-growing cloud computing platform in the total number of public-facing apps and websites, according to Netcraft.com.
Of course, sheer numbers of users -- or of websites being run on a platform -- is a very different metric from the amount of revenue a platform is generating. Under this metric, the real number of import is the enterprise customers committing to a platform. In this regard, AWS, Azure and Google are winning the race -- as Snap's recent S1 documentation and its multibillion dollar commitment to both Amazon's and Google's cloud shows.
Notwithstanding the statistics, however, the fact is that DigitalOcean has grown impressively well, this despite having a very simple product offering that misses out on many (most?) of the higher-value services that its more well-developed competitors offer.
So when Julia Austin, a former executive with VMware, was snapped up to fill the role of CTO at DigitalOcean, all eyes were on the changes she would make. VMware is, of course, one of the more important suppliers to most enterprise IT departments and, as such, Austin has a deep understanding of both customer requirements and, perhaps more importantly, what it takes to build a sustainable and viable technology vendor.
And today we see the first step in that change with the announcement that DigitalOcean is releasing its load balancing product offering. Load balancers are, according to DigitalOcean, the feature most often requested by customers, and that is an assertion that rings true. Beyond all but the smallest of workloads, organizations need to use load balancers to ensure that traffic across their infrastructure is distributed evenly. As DigitalOcean approaches more heavy customer use-cases, it needs to offer this functionality to avoid customers migrating to more mature cloud platforms as their needs increase.
In DigitalOcean's implementation, load balancers can be controlled from either a customer's control panel or alternatively programmatically via API. No additional installation or configuration is required. Using load balancers, organizations can distribute their traffic to only healthy Droplets -- DigitalOcean's own term for its cloud servers -- ensuring no single point of failure exists.
Load balancers are priced at $20 per month, following DigitalOcean's traditional cheap and simple pricing approach.
In commenting about the release, Austin hints at more developments to come. "We're quickly expanding the capabilities of our cloud to support larger scale-out applications," she said. "With "Load Balancers, we are providing developers and businesses with a simple service for maximizing the availability and reliability of applications without disrupting the end user experience. Load Balancers is the first major new product DigitalOcean has released this year. Over the coming year, you'll see us continue to release a number of important products and features to meet our customers' high availability, data storage, security and networking needs."
DigitalOcean is something of an enigma, the little engine that could (as it were). Load balancing will increase the level at which it "can," and the future will be interesting to watch.
This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?
See the original post:
DigitalOcean releases its load balancer product - Computerworld
Ivanti Expands Lineup of Data Center, Hybrid Cloud Security Products – Channel Partners
PRESS RELEASE RSA CONFERENCE 2017 SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2017 --Today at RSA Conference 2017,Ivanti, a leader in integrating and automating critical IT tasks, announced its expanded suite of solutions for data center and hybrid cloud security. This release marks the first in a series of Ivanti announcements to articulate the integrated strategic vision that includes products from LANDESK, Shavlik, AppSense, HEAT Software, Lumension and Xtraction. Together, this product portfolio offers the market's strongest mitigation fabric for server and hybrid cloud security and expands Ivanti's security solutions from the endpoint to the data center.
"Our defense-in-depth approach to security is focused on the prevention, detection and remediation of security threats, regardless of where they may penetrate the IT landscape," said Duane Newman, Vice President of Product Management, Ivanti. "Our expanded suite of data center security solutions further extends our protection reach across today's enterprise, from desktops to servers, so that customers can have confidence that their environment is secure."
The integrated portfolio of Ivanti solutions for data center security includes products that offer the following:
This expanded portfolio of data center security solutions for servers and hybrid cloud environments joins ...
Read the original:
Ivanti Expands Lineup of Data Center, Hybrid Cloud Security Products - Channel Partners
How serverless computing is turning the cloud on its head – Computer Business Review
Add to favorites
Cloud computing is the new normal, businesses no longer wish to run or maintain their infrastructure and the clouds elastic capability means they only pay for what they need.
As cloud adoption and trust grows, so does the breadth of services available for consumption. There are well-known services such as Amazons Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for compute, Simple Storage Service (S3) for storage and the eponymous Amazon Relational Database Service. Microsoft have their equivalents to these services in Azure. Some solutions offered through the cloud are decidedly more niche the Elastic Transcoder for transcoding videos on demand for example and there are a huge number of SaaS solutions that can replace many common business applications.
IaaS is probably the most flexible way of running compute in the cloud. With complete control over your virtual machine, you can install exactly the software you require and set up the virtual machine precisely how you wish. However, there are significant overheads involved, both in its set-up and ongoing operation; even with the adoption of infrastructure as code and other deployment services such as Chef.
With IaaS you have a number of decisions to make at the outset. What size and type of machine do you require? What resources does it need? When its up and running, the virtual machines need to be monitored and maintained. With finite control over everything from the operating system to memory, CPU and storage available it adds complexity, especially when all you want to do is run your application in the cloud.
There have been moves towards simplifying the infrastructure Containerisation for example. Containerisation is a lightweight alternative to full machine virtualisation where the application is encapsulated in a container. This container-led approach cuts down a huge amount of duplication and wasted resources because multiple containers can run on a single operating system, in their own securely-segregated area, as opposed to virtualisation which requires each virtual machine to have its own operating system.
The cloud presents an opportunity to rearchitect an application. It is no longer a case of plan, develop, test, release in a so-called waterfall approach. Developers are now looking for continuous improvement agility. However technical debt, the technology deficit that can accrue in software development when businesses focus on quick wins over long-term strategy, is difficult to pay off. The cloud offers businesses a blank sheet of paper to start afresh.
There is now the opportunity with the cloud to go one step further and remove the management of servers entirely from the equation its call serverless computing or Function as a Service and its gaining a following.
Of course, its a misnomer that no servers are involved. What serverless computing provides is another layer of abstraction on top of traditional cloud infrastructure. Developers no longer need to worry about servers virtual or physical. Instead, serverless computing allows you to run code directly in the cloud, without provisioning or managing servers.
It is often described as event-based architecture. An event initiates a function a piece of code that responds to the event. The event could be a click of a button on your website, machine-to-machine communication or third-party call your application. It means you only pay for the execution time of your code it and it removes all the overheads of an Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) cloud setup.
A number of cloud providers are now offering serverless computing. Amazons AWS Lambda and Microsofts Azure Functions are two of the better-known services available.
There are a number of benefits to this approach:
On the flip-side, as businesses are billed for execution time, code optimisation is crucial. It is a completely new and different way of thinking about the cloud; the well-established cloud concept of pay-as-you-go evolves into pay-per-use.
Given the right use cases, a serverless approach can be a very cost effective way of operating in the cloud. Examples might include cases where developers handle tasks that respond to events for instance, such as in the growing area of the Internet of Things. Another use case is a serverless back end to a mobile client, such as an app. There are still some challenges to complete serverless operation, as the tools and techniques used to manage and control play catch-up, but the reasons to not consider serverless are rapidly reducing.
With many companies adopting a microservices-based architecture, there is the additional opportunity that the serverless approach can replace one or many of these microservices modules.
The cloud now offers so many variants and services that it has something to offer every business. In fact, it is no longer really about one particular cloud solution the cloud now touches many aspects of the business from simple file storage through to CRM or ERP systems and on to core business infrastructure.
Serverless computing in the right scenario and with the right support is another option that could be perfect for many businesses and a great reason to consider the cloud.
Go here to see the original:
How serverless computing is turning the cloud on its head - Computer Business Review
Cloud and virtualization dent the server market – ChannelWorld.in
The shift to cloud and adoption of virtualization are slowing down the growth of the server market.
Newer technologies such as cloud, analytics, and virtualization that promise to change the dynamics of enterprise IT threaten most legacy infrastructure and technologies. Traditional servers are under the onslaught of new and smoother functionalities that are increasingly being demanded by the customers.
According to a recent Gartnerreport, in the third quarter of 2016, worldwide server revenue declined 5.8 percent YoY, and shipments declined 2.6 percent from the third quarter of 2015.
It also states that HPE, Dell, and Lenovo have experienced declines in both server revenue and shipments. A deeper look says that the market for Dells x86 servers has declined by 2.3 percent in shipments and 1.6 percent in revenue in the third quarter of 2016.
Jeffrey Hewitt, Research Vice President at Gartnerstates that due to the conservative spending plans by the IT leaders, the server market got impacted during the third quarter of 2016. He says, This down drift was due to the increasing ability of customers to leverage additional virtual machines on existing servers, without new hardware, to meet their server application needs.
He suggests that the server providers should reinvigorate and improve their value propositions to help businesses justify server hardware replacements and growth if they hope to drive the market back into a positive state.
According to IT leaders and partners, the major reason for this downward sloping demand curve is the adoption of cloud-based technologies and applications. While SMEs find the advantages of the cloud too tempting to refuse, this is still adding to the demand for large-scale deployment by cloud service providers. While the general market for servers is slowing down, according to reports, the demand for cloud-based users is far outpacing that market.
Despite a decline of 11.8 percent, HPE continued to lead in the worldwide server market, based on revenue, with 25.5 percent market share. Dell declined 7.9 percent but maintained the second spot in the market with 17.5 percent market share, and Lenovo secured the third spot with 7.8 percent of the market.
Lenovo Director Enterprise Business Group, Siddesh Naikmentioned in one of his recent interviews that the company is expecting to get about 20-25 percent of their revenues from the government initiated projects. The company has launched the ThinkServer brand in India with two modelsThinkServer TS140 and ThinkServer RD450.
He says, We aim to add ThinkServer to our robust server portfolio, right from entry-level to high-end servers.
The shadow of the cloud is certainly hovering over the server market. And therefore big players like HPE have prepped their market strategy to match the changing demand.
Vikram K, Director, Servers at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Indiasaid in a companyreleasethat businesses are demanding more services, innovation, speed and flexibility from servers and data centers, along with less energy consumption, infrastructure cost, and operations.
He says, Our mission is to make IT simple for customers. We are providing a complete software ecosystem into our server portfolio that will allow customers to protect critical information and deliver new applications and services at a faster pace.
Channel players are also seeing the wind blowing in a different direction.Manu Mehta, Director at Fore Solutionssays that cloud is changing the direction of the server market. He says, Although the market isnt dead it is definitely being impacted. With the increasing computing and virtualization power, and decreasing prices, three servers can now be replaced with a single virtual server.
Mehta adds, To survive in this revolutionary market, channels need to look for different ways to deal with the customers and change their business models according to requirements. An aggressive focus on storage and virtualization is required, which would help in compensating on what we were losing on servers.
Mehta suggests OEMs put effort on arranging proper training sessions, certifications, workshops and awareness programs for channels.
Neel Shah, Chairman at INSIGHT Business Machinespoints out that the server market is not completely lost as there are still some core applications and critical data that need a proper old fashioned server to execute, and hence will not move away from the on-premise model.
He says, In the trade-off, customers are planning to adopt hybrid mechanisms, where they have their own set of servers to store the critical info and data. Shah believes that cloud is good for a short period, but for long term businesses require on-premise structures, because of the ease of manageability and ease of security.
Although people say that cloud is wiping out the on-premise infrastructure concept, in reality, it is going to take a long time for the entire market to switch to the cloud, points outRajesh Mathkar, Director at Wysetek Systems Technologists.
To gain the full value of cloud, businesses need on-premise hardware infrastructure, says Mathkar. Channels are taking help from their OEMs and technology partners for enablement in terms of sales, pre-sales and most importantly deployment training.
Although this will change the direction, it wont make servers obsolete, concludes Mathkar.
The essential Android business applications
Has Cisco broken out of the network hardware box?
Finding the right payment service for your e-com business
Top SECURITY Stories from our new site
Signup for our newsletter and get regular updates.
See the original post:
Cloud and virtualization dent the server market - ChannelWorld.in
Now Available: Bare Metal Cloud Market – Global Forecast to 2021 – Digital Journal
Fast Market Research announces the availability of the new Markets and Markets report, "Bare Metal Cloud Market - Global Forecast to 2021", on their comprehensive research portal
This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire
Boston, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/13/2017 -- Bare Metal Cloud Market by Service Type (Compute, Networking, Database, Identity & Access Management, Volume & Object Storage, Professional, and Managed), Professional Service Type, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021
"Critical need for reliable load balancing of data-intensive and latency-sensitive operations is driving the bare metal cloud market"
The bare metal cloud market size is expected to grow from USD 0.87 billion to USD 4.71 billion, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 40.1% from 2016 to 2021. The technological advancements and the proliferation in smart devices and complex customer data are driving the need for reliable balancing of data-intensive and latency-sensitive computing operations in the commercial enterprises. These multifaceted operations create heavy load on the traditional storage devices causing latency and thereby resulting in a low throughput. Moreover, it becomes critical to manage and cope with the associated computing, networking, and database needs required for processing the heavy workloads on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based model. Load balancing improves the distribution of additional workloads across the bare metal cloud servers to enable smooth functioning and allocation of resources to multiple processes. In these scenarios, it is critical to manage load balancing on cloud for its smooth operations, and to enhance enterprises' business operations and to boost revenue growth.
Get More Details on this Report and a Full Table of Contents at Bare Metal Cloud Market - Global Forecast to 2021
"Implementation services to gain maximum traction during the forecast period"
Implementation of bare metal cloud servers is a critical process, as these servers are powerful, high performing, and complex in nature. It plays the vital role of offering various associated services such as compute, database, and networking to the commercial customers in the bare metal cloud. Implementation services initiate with the process of critical examination of business requirements and end with monitoring or maintaining of the deployed services or solutions.
"Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period"
North America is expected to hold the largest market share during the forecast period. The major bare metal cloud vendors in this region, such as IBM Corporation, Oracle Corporation, CenturyLink, Inc., Internap Corporation, and Rackspace Hosting, Inc., offer a number of reliable and enhanced bare metal services to cater to the various needs of the enterprises and their commercial clients. Asia-Pacific (APAC) is expected to witness an exponential growth and is projected to be the fastest-growing region for the bare metal cloud market. The region has a competitive advantage over other regions with many players providing local cost-efficient solutions, easy availability of trained labors, and flexible regulations & policies. In addition, these countries are taking aggressive initiatives to upsurge the IT infrastructure, thus enabling the commercial users to adopt the cutting-edge technology. The growing adoption of trending technologies such as SaaS-based application, rising demand for fabric virtualization & DevOps application, and the critical need for reliable load balancing of data-intensive and latency-sensitive operations in this region is also promoting the bare metal cloud market.
In the process of determining and verifying the market size for several segments and subsegments gathered through secondary research, extensive primary interviews were conducted with key people. The break-up profile of the primary participants is as follows:
-By Company: Tier 1 - 30%, Tier 2 - 40%, and Tier 3 - 30% -By Designation: C level - 72%, Director level - 14%, Others - 14% -By Region: North America - 57%, Europe - 14%, APAC - 29%
The bare metal cloud ecosystem comprises major vendors such as IBM Corporation (U.S.), Oracle Corporation (U.S.), CenturyLink, Inc. (U.S.), Internap Corporation (U.S.), Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (U.S.), Packet (U.S.), Bigstep (U.K.), Dell Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Scaleway Corporation (France), Spotinst (Israel) , Joyent Corporation (U.S.), and Strom (U.S.).
Research Coverage:
The report analyzes the opportunities in the market and the details of the competitive landscape for stakeholders and market leaders. In addition, the research study analyzes competitive developments, such as mergers & acquisitions, new partnerships, new contracts, key strategies, and new product developments in the bare metal cloud market. The research report segments the bare metal cloud market by service type, organization type, vertical, and region.
Reasons to buy the Report
About Fast Market Research Fast Market Research is a leading distributor of market research and business information. Representing the world's top research publishers and analysts, we provide quick and easy access to the best competitive intelligence available. Our unbiased, expert staff is always available to help you find the right research to fit your requirements and your budget. For more information about these or related research reports, please visit our website at http://www.fastmr.com or call us at 1.800.844.8156.
Browse all Computers and Semiconductors research reports at Fast Market Research
You may also be interested in these related reports: -Cloud ERP Market - Global Forecast to 2021 -Telecom Cloud Billing Market - Global Forecast to 2021 -Cloud Computing in Education Market - Global Forecast to 2021 -Finance Cloud Market - Global Forecast to 2021 -Multi Cloud Management Market - Global Forecast to 2021
For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/now-available-bare-metal-cloud-market-global-767279.htm
Continue reading here:
Now Available: Bare Metal Cloud Market - Global Forecast to 2021 - Digital Journal
Red Hat Stock Could Get Boost From More Cloud Disclosure – Investor’s Business Daily
After a December sell-off, Red Hat stock is back on the upswing this year. (Red Hat)
Red Hat (RHT) stock has rebounded after disappointing current-quarter guidance sent shares in the Linux software provider down in late 2016, and a William Blair analysts says the company is gaining traction in cloud computing.
Red Hat stock is up 13% in 2017, moving above it's 50-day moving average last month and approaching a technical buy point of 82.83 out of a 20-week consolidation.
Shares of Red Hat traded in the 70s most of last year but plunged 14% on Dec. 22, to an 11-month low, after theenterprise software provider forecast current-quarter sales well below consensus estimates. Red Hat stock was unchanged in morning tradein the stock market today, after closing Friday at 79.25.
Jason Ader, a William Blair analyst, says Red Hat should disclose more metrics related to its cloud business. Red Hat, along with Microsoft (MSFT) and VMware (VMW), aims to leverage its existing customer base as cloud computing gains momentum.
IBD'S TAKE:Red Hat has the second highestComposite Rating, a CAN SLIM investing metric, of the eight companies in IBD's Computer Software-Desktop group, which also includes Microsoft and Adobe Systems. The group ranks only No. 119 out of 197 industry groups. Adobe has a CR of 89 out of a possible 99, while Red Hat's CR is 79.
"The reality check from our perspective is that Red Hat's strategic positioning appears firmly intact, midteens revenue growth looks sustainable, operating leverage is around the corner, and management seems aware of the need for greater disclosure on hot-button topics that could shift the narrative in the near term," Ader said in a research report Monday.
Ader, who says he met recently with company management, maintains an outperform rating on Red Hat stock.
Red Hat's Linux software runs computer servers in corporate data centers. The company'sbiggest revenue generator is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Analysts have been looking for traction in Red Hat's public cloud business as customers shift computing workloads to cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, part ofAmazon.com and a Red Hat partner.
Red Hat's cloud revenue mainly comes from customers using RHEL software on a "pay as you go," or software-as-a-service, basis. It also aims to sell customers a broader set of software for managing application servers and data storage.
"Management believes that public cloud RHEL revenue and market share is significantly higher than meets the eye, as the cloud access piece of the business is larger than the transactional, on-demand piece," Ader said in the report. "While management is unable to track and quantify the cloud access component, steady RHEL growth in the midteens supports the conclusion that the public cloud is currently more of a tailwind than a headwind to the business."
RELATED:
Amazon Snags Snap Pact As Cloud Battle With Microsoft, Alphabet Grows
Could Google Bid For Salesforce.com Despite Amazon Cloud Pact?
Alphabet and Amazon shares are climbing, but their charts show several reasons to be cautious. (Alphabet)
11:19 AM ET Alphabet and Amazon regained recent buy points in the latest week. but their stock charts have some worrisome qualities.
11:19 AM ET Alphabet and Amazon regained recent buy points in the latest...
Read this article:
Red Hat Stock Could Get Boost From More Cloud Disclosure - Investor's Business Daily
Intel’s Growth Strategy Is Decent, But Could Create Openings for AMD and Qualcomm – TheStreet.com
Much like Cisco Systems (CSCO) , Intel (INTC) has few illusions about the long-term pressures facing some of its largest and most profitable businesses, and is using a mixture of M&A, re-structurings and internal investments to position itself better in the years to come. Also like Cisco, Intel's transformation efforts have a financial price attached to them, and involve making trade-offs that can create openings for rivals.
During Thursday's Investor Day, Intel spelled out its ambitious plans to offset the long-term declines expected in the PC and enterprise server CPU markets by targeting opportunities in cloud servers, non-CPU data center products, solid-state drives (SSDs), and IoT and autonomous driving platforms. It also provided a set of short-term and long-term targets for its main reporting segments.
In line with the outlook shared during its fourth-quarter earnings call two weeks ago, Intel predicted its Client Computing Group (CCG), which supplies PC CPUs and mobile chips, will see revenue decline at a mid-single digit clip in 2017 due to PC weakness. It also forecast CCG will decline at a low-single digit annual rate over the next three years, while adding that its margins will be boosted by spending cuts.
Relative to 2015 levels, PC CPU R&D spend is expected to be down about 5% in 2017, and mobile R&D spend (had previously contributed to giant mobile division losses) about 55%. Some of these spending cuts have already been made, courtesy of Intel's 2016 job cuts. CCG was responsible for 54% of Intel's 2016 sales.
Intel's Data Center Group (DCG), which towers over the server CPU market, is still expected to grow at a high-single digit clip this year. But Intel still expects low-double digit growth in subsequent years, as enterprise server weakness is offset by strong orders from cloud giants and carriers, as well as by the growth of non-CPU products such as Ethernet chips, the Omni-Path interconnect fabric, deep learning ASICs and silicon photonics transceivers.
But this growth is going to come at a price. DCG's R&D spending is expected to grow by 25% from 2015 to 2017. That, along with manufacturing process investments, will result in a 2017 margin hit. And thanks to both its investments and the fact that some non-CPU parts carry lower margins, Intel is now aiming for a long-term DCG margin in the low-40% range from a prior target range of 45% to 50%.
That's a big deal, given DCG and CCG currently produce nearly all of Intel's profits between them. The former had a $7.5 billion operating profit last year on revenue of $17.2 billion; the latter had a $10.6 billion operating profit on revenue of $32.9 billion.
See more here:
Intel's Growth Strategy Is Decent, But Could Create Openings for AMD and Qualcomm - TheStreet.com
Microsoft unveils new offering to combat patent trolls in the cloud – Cloud Tech
(c)iStock.com/RonBailey
Microsoft has announced the launch of the Azure IP Advantage program to help protect intellectual property from patent trolls in the cloud.
Patent trolls, defined by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as companies or people who use patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas, are becoming an increasing problem with code and products hosted on cloud servers.
As a result, Microsoft is making 10,000 of its patents available to customers who use Azure services as something of a protection racket; the patents are broadly representative of Microsofts overall patent portfolio and are the result of years of cutting-edge innovation, according to the company.
Picture credit: Microsoft
Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, cited in a company blog post a Boston Consulting Group article which argued that there was a 22% rise in US cloud-based IP lawsuits over the past five years.
Our goal is to help foster a community that values and protects innovation and investments in the cloud, Smith wrote. We want software developers to be able to focus on coding, and businesses and enterprises to be able to respond to the changing needs of their customers with agility without worrying about lawsuits.
Its a goal that we believe deserves more attention than it has received to date, Smith added.
This naturally comes at a price, however; Azure customers eligible for patent protection must be spending more than $1,000 per month over the past three months and have not filed a patent infringement lawsuits against another Azure customer for their Azure workloads over the past two years. Only patent litigations after February 8 are part of the package, meaning companies currently fighting lawsuits and who see this as a get out of jail card are out of luck.
We take seriously our responsibility to make sure the cloud is used for good, and we stand with our customers to protect them against intellectual property risk, added Smith. In partnership with our customers, we are committed to creating an ecosystem where developers, entrepreneurs, enterprises and customers can innovate with confidence.
You can find out more here.
Link:
Microsoft unveils new offering to combat patent trolls in the cloud - Cloud Tech
Cattle that fail, not pets that purr the future of servers – The Register
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, others all telling us to move server loads to the cloud. Most of us with on-premise servers haven't designed things in a cloud friendly way and - call us old sentimentalists - have heaped time, love and workloads on our tin.
Thus, today, we talk of such servers as pets while cloud providers talk of cattle, the great, unloved mass of machines, nameless and easily replaced in the event of loss.
Why, after years of work, would you send your pets to the cloud and suffer the potential accompanying grief of losing loved ones?
Here's one way it might go down:
Son: Daddy, where did Spot01 go?
Father: Son, he's gone to a better place, the cloud.
Son: Daddy, Will I ever see Spot01 again?
Father: Son, that's not how the cloud works. Spot01 is now mixing bytes with lots of other pets, but in a highly secure and encrypted fashion. You see, it's the economy of scale...
Son: Can we get another Spot then, Spot02?
Father: I don't think you're getting the concept here Son, we will never have a pet on premise again and that's my final word on it.
Fifteen years later, the son became a printer technician to spite his father.
Historically, servers have HAD to be pets. That's what made you a good sys admin. Knowing that Benji02 was the file server for the east cost of the US, and that if users in that area had a network disk space issue, you could react quickly by going to the right location on the right server and delete the Linux distros downloaded by the work experience kid, who was using his dad's login. Knowing your environment this way made you a digital ninja.
In the 1990s, it was commonplace for the single IT guy to name their servers after planets, or even characters of a TV show. Replacing BartSimpson for NedFlanders was a major event in itself.
Infrastructure resources were also very limited. Doubling the amount of servers you needed was often seen as an unnecessary expense, and if it was needed, only those systems deemed business critical by the high-ups had any sort of high availability infrastructure as part of the solution.
Thus, this has bred farms of servers all unique in many ways, each a pet being the sole performer of a particular task.
Putting aside the cloud marketing that's been shoved down our throats, there's a lot of benefits that apply to both public and private cloud already widely debated and discussed. Lets just take it as a given, as this particular point.
Rather, lets talk how: the move to cloud can be approached in a few different ways. One option is to move all your VMs to an Infrastructure as a Service. In this scenario, you'll still have your pets - and you probably won't even need to learn any new names.
The two big players Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure both have native and third-party methods of moving virtual machines. Although there will be caveats and gotchas at its most basic youre only swapping out your tin hosting for someone elses. Taking a bigger step into cloud cattle is going to require a much larger investment of time and resources enough to make most techs shudder with fear. Beyond redesigning how everything is currently set up youll discover all the issues that have been swept under the rug weird, undocumented solutions to problems you never even knew existed.
Simple things like moving a SQL database into an Azure PaaS instance might work technically but your third-party vendor of choice may require the use of some small utility that sits on the same box that hosts the SQL database. You might be able to hack your way around some issues, but expect the worst and be as thorough as possible to find these roadblocks early on.
These other approaches beyond lift and shift are where you no longer need to remember the names or faces of your creatures. Think of yourself as a rancher, overseeing your vast investment in the lucrative cow market. PaaS and SaaS are what you live by, where these services are not reliant on an operating system that you installed. There'll still be cases for IaaS, but designed in such a way that an outage should not occur. Randy Bias's blog covers the pets versus cattle analogy quite clearly. To quote part of the Cattle? explanation:
"Arrays of more than two servers, that are built using automated tools, and are designed for failure, where no one, two, or even three servers are irreplaceable."
Like a T-1000 unit, your systems need to be able to heal rapidly with little to no user impact. Netflix is a great example of the extreme a company can go to. Its Chaos Monkey goes around breaking stuff to prove that your self-healing design actually self-heals.
Tools now exist in the mainstream that make this self-healing easier to achieve - for example, Chef and PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), which let you specify the exact configuration you require and are a key part of redesigning your pets to be cattle. Infrastructure as code is mostly self-documenting too, and much more fun to write than a 120-page Word document on how to create VMs in your environment. Without this self-healing, youre going back to manual processes of repeatable tasks that have room for human error the whole point of automation.
What all this comes down to is the two big technical benefits that cloud offers. Firstly, the elastic style of resourcing so you dont have to worry about how much RAM to buy. A box will let you adjust your RAM requirements on the fly, or go up and down on demand. Servers, networking, firewalls and other infrastructure become almost pure software, where you won't need to worry about the cleaner pulling the plug to vacuum at night.
The second main benefit is really the crux of sending your pets to the cloud and forgetting their names: designing for a fully self-managed herd in day-to-day operations.
As ever in tech, though, theres no one size fits all" option. The cloud provides a huge amount of benefits, but youre working with someone elses plan on how things should be done. That isnt going to work for everyone in all scenarios, and cloud vendors have the ability to change services in a way that you may not like, and have no control over.
It might be that the cloud is a more stable platform than what you had before, but you're still stuck with old Fido who's 12 years old, has a bung leg and has the occasional fit. It's a good start though, and may still get you out of coughing up a briefcase full of unmarked bills for new servers, storage and related infrastructure.
The person who knows your environment best is you, so - at the end of the day - it may well be that you have pets and they need the kind of special love and attention that cant be found in the greenest of cloudy fields. Those pets, though, will become rarer and rarer as the inevitable financial benefits that the scale of cloud provides makes for very inexpensive cattle.
See the original post here:
Cattle that fail, not pets that purr the future of servers - The Register
Forcepoint acquires Skyfence in cloud security push – ZDNet
Imperva has agreed to sell the Skyfence business to Forcepoint in a deal designed to improve Forcepoint's cloud security and IP protections portfolio.
Austin, Texas-based Forcepoint announced the buyout on Wednesday.
According to a SEC filing, the deal is worth approximately $40 million in cash.
The company says the agreement "plays a pivotal role" in Forcepoint's business strategy to "deliver cybersecurity systems that help customers understand peoples' behaviors and intent as they interact with data and IP wherever it may reside, including fast-growing cloud applications."
Skyfence, acquired by Imperva in 2014 for $60 million, is a cloud access security broker (CASB) which offers services to corporations seeking ways to protect intellectual property as well as adhere to data protection standards enforced by organizations such as the European Union, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) -- US legislation designed to protect investors from fraudulent accounting activities.
In order to assist businesses in this manner, Skyfence provides software and solutions for increased visibility into cloud servers and cloud applications such as Dropbox, Salesforce apps, NetSuite and Microsoft Office 365. By analyzing content and employee activities in the cloud, the enterprise is granted the chance to prevent malicious, unauthorized, or unintentional data leaks.
When the deal closes, Skyfence technologies will be added to Forcepoint's web security and data loss prevention (DLP) portfolio and the firm's employees will join the Forcepoint team but will continue to be based in Israel.
Forcepoint says the merger will also give "customers greater flexibility in deploying web security via on-premise, hybrid, and cloud-based solutions."
"As cloud applications become more pervasive, customers are trying to strike a balance between the benefits these services offer and the risks that exist," said Kris Lamb, general manager of the Cloud Security business at Forcepoint. "Integrating Skyfence with Forcepoint's cloud security platform will offer the best of both worlds."
"Businesses will feel comfortable providing the productivity benefits cloud services offer, while not jeopardizing the security of critical data and improving their overall governance and compliance posture," Lamb added.
The acquisition is subject to closing conditions and is expected to be finalized during the first quarter of 2017.
The rest is here:
Forcepoint acquires Skyfence in cloud security push - ZDNet