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Comcast Business announced Thursday it now offers direct, dedicated network links to the IBM Cloud global network.

The move positions Comcast Business, a unit of Comcast, to compete against AT&T, Verizon, Bell Canada and telecom service providers already offering IBM Cloud Direct Link services.

Comcast Business already claims to be the nation's biggest cable provider to small and mid-sized businesses. The IBM partnership could be a way for Comcast Business to grow, especially among larger businesses and enterprises.

Enterprises will have "more choices for connectivity so they can store data, optimize their workloads and execute mission-critical applications in the cloud, whether it be on-premise, off-premise or a combination of the two," said Jeff Lewis, vice president of data services at Comcast Business, in a statement. Customers can select speeds up to 10 gigabits/second.

Other than the price of connectivity and the ability to potentially offer lower prices than AT&T and Verizon, analysts said they aren't sure what Comcast is providing enterprise customers that is distinct. Neither Comcast nor IBM announced pricing.

"Business services is the only area of substantial growth at Comcast right now," said Bill Menezes, an analyst at Gartner. "It makes sense for Comcast to align with as many major partners as possible so their customers see Comcast as a significant, broad player who can meet their requirements across major regions and services. Cloud is a major demand item for the enterprise right now and Comcast doesn't want to miss out on business by having too few customer options.''

The same can be said for IBM as well. "IBM is trying to connect with all the major carriers and network connectors to ensure that they are not shut out of the enterprise cloud business," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. "IBM sees this partnership as potential leverage, particularly against the likes of Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS, which have a larger share of the enterprise cloud market than IBM does."

Gold said IBM also wants to appeal to mid-sized companies that are less likely to have their own dedicated networks and more likely to outsource that capability to carriers and cable providers. "This is a potentially easier path for such businesses when they go to the cloud," he said.

IBM is saying to their customers that "we are making the connection part of cloud really easy for you," Gold added.

Some enterprise customers can be expected to buy the Direct Link service from Comcast Business, Gold said. "Enterprises definitely need help with cloud implementations and anything that can make it easier for them is a good thing," he said.

Still, the bigger question is whether IBM can be the cloud provider of choice "given that so many enterprises are Microsoft-centric and have Azure on their minds as the preferred path," Gold added. Microsoft has made the transition to Azure easier with its Azure Stack, an on-premises version of Azure cloud.

"Also, Google is pushing hard in the enterprise area now," Gold said.

An IDC survey recently showed that 73% of businesses in that survey have developed a hybrid strategy, compared to only 13% that said they have all the skills and processes in place to execute on that strategy. IBM said a secure and dedicated connection to its cloud service, like what Comcast Business is offering, will allow enterprises to easily preserve their existing IT investments while transitioning to a hybrid cloud environment. There, they can build next-generation cognitive computing and services around the internet of things.

IBM has a global network of more than 50 data centers across 19 countries, while Comcast Business boasts that its network connects to nearly 500 data centers and cloud exchanges for access to multiple cloud providers.

Comcast Business and IBM said a direct connection to the cloud will help with better performance, security and availability, especially compared with doing business over the open internet. Comcast Business, like many others, offers customers a service level agreement -- a contract that states such things as the level of network reliability, up-time and other factors.

Most companies are evaluating how to get to the cloud and for the next few years will build hybrid approaches that rely on both on-premises and public cloud servers, Gold said. "Comcast and all the carriers and internet service providers want to jump on the bandwagon that is cloud," he added.

More here:
Comcast Business offers direct connection to IBM Cloud network - Computerworld

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Technology, like everything else, has trends or cycles. Cloud started more than 10 years ago and was the hot, new tech trend. But noware things starting to shift again? Are organizations thinking twice before automatically moving essential workloads to the public cloud?

The answer is yes and for a variety of reasons. A few born-in-the-cloud companies have now moved from the public cloud back to on-premises data centers DropBox is a high-profile example. And the public cloud performance (or lack thereof) was a big reason why.

Letting the cat out of the bag: Public cloud is all about capacity, not performance

When businesses choose to put their applications in the public cloud, they are sharing infrastructure with a lot of other people. Of course, this can be a good solution because it means that you only pay for what you need when you need it. Public cloud also gives businesses the ability to scale up or down based upon demand.

But dont forget the whole business model of public cloud: time-sharing. The provider is giving everyone a slice of the timeshare pie, which means that the provider is promising capacity not performance. I am not the first person to let this particular cat out of the bag. I just want to reiterate it yes, public cloud providers do place performance limits on the services they provide.

Of course, for workloads you deploy on premises, you get to decide what the performance slice should be. Having this choice is imperative for applications that require reduced latency, such as those for big data and financial services.

Are new technologies making data centers new again?

Looking forward, two new technologies are now available that can boost performance for all applications. These technologies are containers and composable infrastructure. Running containers on composable infrastructure can ensure better performance for all applications.

Containers are open source software development platforms that share a common lightweight Linux OS and only keep the different pieces that are unique to that application within the container. This type of OS-level virtualization means you can hold a lot more containers on a particular server compared to virtual machines (VMs).

A big benefit of containers is increased performance. And when you run containers on bare-metal, performance is increased even more! This is because containers running on bare-metal dont require a hardware emulation layer that separates the applications from the server.

HPE and Docker recently tested the performance of applications running inside of a single, large VM or directly on top of a Linux operating system installed on an HPE server. When bare-metal Docker servers were used, performance of CPU-intensive workloads increased up to 46%. For businesses where performance is paramount, these results tell a compelling story.

Yet, some companies have hesitated to move containers out of virtual machines and on to bare-metal because of perceived drawbacks of running containers on bare-metal servers. These drawbacks, such as difficulties with managing physical servers, are definitely relevant when considering yesterdays data center technologies. Composable infrastructure helps overcome these challenges by making management simple through highly automated operations controlled through software.

Composable infrastructure consists of fluid pools of compute, storage, and fabric that can dynamically self-assemble to meet the needs of an application or workload. These resources are defined in software and controlled programmatically through a unified API, thereby transforming infrastructure into a single line of code that is optimized to the needs of the application.

Because composable infrastructure is so simple to deploy and easy to use, it removes many of the drawbacks you would traditionally encounter when deploying containers on bare-metal. The end result is better performance at lower costs within your own data center. The combination of containers and composable infrastructure is a marriage made in heaven.

A hybrid IT cloud strategy solves the performance problem of public cloud

When considering where to deploy, first consider the performance needs of your application. Then compare those performance needs against the service levels offered by public cloud vendors and what you can deliver on premises. As I wrote in a previous article, businesses need to determine which workloads should be in the public cloud and which ones should remain on traditional IT or a private cloud. And thanks to todays new technologies, containers and composable infrastructure, staying with traditional data-center deployments may just be the better choice.

To learn more about containers running on HPE bare-metal servers, click here. To read about the benefits of HPEs first composable infrastructure, HPE Synergy, readHPE Synergy for Dummies. To find out how HPE can help you determine a workload placement strategy and how to best meet your service level agreements, check outHPE Pointnext.

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Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: Public Cloud has Latency Issues! - InfoWorld