Outscale Opens New Data Center In Silicon Valley

Outscale has announced the opening of its new data center in San Jose, CA. The addition of a fourth data center in the U.S. will allow Outscale to support its customers’ increasing needs for cloud computing infrastructures. This new data center enables Outscale to offer enterprise customers access to its premium storage and compute services, delivering best-in-class performance, availability and customer support.

This latest infrastructure build-out in San Jose further demonstrates the company’s commitment to the U.S. market and better equips Outscale to address the cloud computing and Big Data requirements of its west coast customers. The cloud provider has once again selected Equinix to be its local partner and host of the point-of-presence (PoP) due to its certifications of SSAE 16, ISAE 3402 SOC 1 Type, SOC 2 Type and ISO 27001.

“Since we opened our doors in 2010, we have committed to helping our customers harness the power of cloud computing by providing a premium, enterprise-class IaaS and unparalleled customer support,” said Laurent Seror, founder and president, Outscale. “As the epicenter of technology innovation, Silicon Valley is a logical choice as we expand our presence in the United States to meet our customers’ needs.”

According to IDC, worldwide spending on public cloud services is expected to eclipse $203.4 billion worldwide in 2020, with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for public coud services to be 21.5% for the period 2015-2020. This is nearly seven times the overall growth rate of IT spending, signaling a clear demand for cloud services.

With the addition of the Silicon Valley location, Outscale now has nine data centers globally spread across Europe, North America, and Asia. Outscale delivers business agility through:

• Unparalleled performance – When it comes to building a cloud computing infrastructure to meet high performance computing demands, Outscale stands alone. The company has built its cloud with a highly reliable infrastructure based on Intel, NetApp and Cisco technologies, and holds the Cisco Managed Services Program (CMSP) Advanced Certification.
• Unsurpassed scalability – Outscale offers an automated and scalable cloud, designed to support complex IT projects, while controlling operational costs.
• Flexible pricing – Outscale offers a unique pricing model, one that allows its customers to pay by the year, month, hour or even second. Per hour and per second billing means customers only pay for the resources they use, potentially saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Outscale was founded in France in 2010, and was one of the first pure play cloud providers in the world. Today, the company delivers the cloud computing infrastructure for dozens of global brands, including strategic partner Dassault Systemes, Airbus, and OpenDataSoft. In addition, Outscale serves as the vendor of choice for ISVs, VARs and startups around the world.

“We pride ourselves as an innovative cloud provider, one that is there for our customers with superior 24/7 support,” said Rob Rosborough, U.S. CEO, Outscale. “The expansion to Silicon Valley allows us to get closer to many of our customers, as we help them embark upon their Cloud journeys and maximize their investments.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

SolarWinds Releases IT Trends Report 2017

SolarWinds has revealed the findings of its SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organization. Featuring insights from public sector IT practitioners, managers, and directors, this year’s annual state-of-the-industry study explores the variety of ways in which IT departments around the world are integrating the cloud, and the effect hybrid IT has had on their organizations and IT job roles.

Overall, North American public sector organizations are moving further into the cloud, with 96% of respondents reporting they have migrated critical applications and infrastructure over the past year. However, while nearly 60% say they have experienced the expected benefits of the cloud, hybrid IT is increasing the complexity of IT roles, and introducing challenges like a lack of visibility between on-premises and cloud infrastructure, as well as the need to develop new skillsets to keep pace with changing environments.

“No job is more affected by ongoing technology disruptions than the role of the IT professional, which is why we explore these dynamics year after year,” said Joe Kim, senior vice president and chief technology officer, SolarWinds. “By creating this portrait of today’s public sector hybrid IT organization, we get to the heart of the shifts occurring so we can better understand and cater to the unique needs of these government agencies. For today’s IT professionals, it’s absolutely critical not only to put the right solutions in place to best manage hybrid IT environments, but to prepare organizations — and themselves — for continued technology advancements, even as we move beyond cloud.”

2017 Key Findings for the Public Sector

The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organization explores significant trends, developments, and movements related to and directly affecting IT and IT professionals. Key findings show that today’s public sector hybrid IT organizations are:

Moving applications, storage, and databases further into the cloud.

• In the past 12 months, IT professionals have migrated applications (73%), storage (51%), and databases (29%) to the cloud more than any other areas of IT.
• By weighted rank, the top three reasons for prioritizing these areas of their IT environments for migration were greatest potential for ROI/cost efficiency, availability, and increased reliability, respectively.

Experiencing the cost efficiencies of the cloud.

• Nearly all (96%) public sector organizations have migrated critical applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud over the past year, yet three-fourths (75%) spend less than 40% of their annual IT budgets on cloud technology.
• Two-fifths (40%) said their organizations spend 70% or more of their annual IT budgets on on-premises (traditional) applications and infrastructure.
• Nearly three in five (58%) organizations have received either most or all expected cloud benefits (such as cost efficiency, availability, or scalability).
• Cost efficiency is at times not enough to justify migration to the cloud: 29% migrated areas to the cloud that were ultimately brought back on-premises due mostly to security/compliance issues, poor performance, and technical challenges with the migration.

Building and expanding cloud roles and skillsets for IT professionals.

• Over three-fifths (62%) of IT professionals indicated that hybrid IT has required them to acquire new skills, while 11% said it has altered their career path.
• Nearly three-fifths (57%) of public sector organizations have already hired/reassigned IT personnel, or plan to do so, for the specific purpose of managing cloud technologies.
• The top two cloud-related skills IT professionals improved over the past 12 months were data analytics (40%) and monitoring/management tools and metrics (40%).
• Sixty-three percent said an IT staff skills gap was one of the five biggest hybrid IT challenges, while 47% said increased workload/responsibilities.
• More than a third (38%) do not believe that IT professionals entering the workforce now possess the skills necessary to manage hybrid IT environments.

Increasing in complexity and lacking visibility across the entire hybrid IT infrastructure:

• Nearly two-thirds (65%) said their organizations currently use up to three cloud provider environments, with the largest percentage using two to three; however, one out of every 10 (9%) use 10 or more.
• By weighted rank, the number one challenge created by hybrid IT is increased infrastructure complexity, followed by an IT skills gap and lack of control/visibility into the performance of cloud-based applications and infrastructure, respectively.

To explore and interact with all of the 2017 findings, please visit the SolarWinds IT Trends Index, a dynamic web experience that presents the study’s findings by region, including charts, graphs, socially shareable elements, and additional insights into the data.

The findings of this year’s North America public sector report are based on a survey fielded in December 2016, which yielded responses from 75 IT practitioners, managers, and directors in the U.S. and Canada from public-sector small, mid-size, and large organizations whose organizations are leveraging cloud-based services for at least some IT infrastructure (including applications).

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: Disconnect On Cloud Security And IoT

AlienVault® has released the results of a survey showing that cloud security remains a thorn in the side of security professionals, with many still struggling to monitor this environment effectively.

Conducted at RSA 2017, 974 conference participants weighed in on cloud security and IoT monitoring to provide an inside look at the challenges and concerns plaguing companies today, along with the opportunities and benefits associated with each technology.

Perhaps the most startling survey statistic is that one third of show attendees describe the state of security monitoring within their organization as “complex and chaotic.” Likely a significant factor in this outcome, survey results reveal a major disconnect between respondents’ beliefs and their actions when it comes to cloud security and IoT. For example:

Forty-two percent of respondents are less confident in their ability to detect threats in the cloud vs. on-premises, yet 47% would rather monitor a cloud environment than an on-premises network.

Sixty-two percent state that they are worried about IoT devices in their environment, yet 45% believe IoT benefits outweigh the risks. Frighteningly, 43% of respondents say their company does not monitor IoT network traffic at all, and an additional 20% aren’t even sure of the answer.

“The driving force behind cloud and IoT is the availability and analysis of information, but they must be managed and monitored in the right way. If data is misused, or inadequately protected, the consequences can be severe,” said Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienVault. “According to the survey findings, many companies are using these impacting technologies to reap the technological and business benefits they provide, but they are doing so without proper monitoring – leaving their company at greater risk of attack.”

When it comes to monitoring security threats in the cloud, an alarming number of respondents reported being left in the dark when decisions are made. According to the survey, 39% of respondents are using more than 10 different cloud services within their organization, and 21% don’t know how many cloud applications are being used. In addition, 40% state that their IT team is not always consulted before a cloud platform is deployed, meaning that they are unable to offer guidance and advice, or do due diligence on a platform or service.

The survey also asked participants what concerned them most about cloud security. While malware was rated as the highest concern, with 47% of respondents worrying about it, some of the other responses shed light on why so many security professionals view their environments as complex and chaotic. 42% of respondents are concerned about a lack of visibility in the cloud, and 21% are worried about the cloud-based services they use producing “too many logs.” This finding also points to the problems associated with auditing cloud environments in the event of an incident.

“Most organizations are drowning in ineffective preventative measures and draining resources with investments in expensive, disjointed solutions. This unfortunate combination is likely a tremendous factor in producing the chaos, complexity and confusion experienced by so many companies,” continued Malik. “It’s time for organizations to focus on what they do have control over – threat detection and incident response — and implement a unified solution that can monitor on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. Simplifying security in this way enables companies to immediately identify and respond to threats, and in today’s cybersecurity landscape, this is the best strategy to mitigate risk.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

451 Research Highlights IndependenceIT’s Ability To Simplify WaaS

IndependenceIT has highlighted a new 451 Research report on the company’s flagship software platform, Cloud Workspace® Suite (CWS) 5.1. The research report, titled, “IndependenceIT Aims to Ease Deployment for Microsoft CSP Partners with CWS 5.1,” provides an overview of new CWS features and points out the company’s strength in multi-platform App and WaaS automation and workflow.

CWS 5.1 provides automation and workflow for the purpose of simplifying administrative tasks from infrastructure management to end-user support. The cloud enablement and management platform combines application, end-user, and infrastructure oversight into a seamless, easy-to-manage platform with a unified control interface and robust API for ease of integration with existing systems, minimizing deployment time and controlling data center costs. The company recently discussed the solution with 451 Research and provided an overview of the software. This has resulted in a new report.

According to the report by 451 Research, “IndependenceIT has been on a mission to focus its development efforts on ease of use and manageability. A new UI that comprises a specific dropdown menu (for services/functions), color themes and icon graphics has been available since the release of CWS v.5.0. Instead of competing with other VDI and cloud platforms, the company has carved out a niche by facilitating workflow orchestration across multiple VDI and cloud environments. As it sees growing interest in Microsoft Azure, IndependenceIT has deepened its support for Microsoft ARM — a self-provisioning cloud portal for Azure (public cloud) and Azure Stack (private cloud) — in the latest version.”

“For system administrators, IndependenceIT has further invested in driving greater automation by creating an additional layer that enables system administrators to trigger the cloud workspace interface to perform a number of automated tasks such as server execution and application installation using scripting, rather than an API. The company notes that this can significantly speed deployments and reduce overhead costs, and points to the fact that not many system administrators can support full-blown development using an API,” said the report.

“IndependenceIT remains focused on demonstrating its strength in platform automation while being nimble when it comes to aligning its platform capabilities with partner requirements,” said Agatha Poon, research director, 451 Research. “With the availability of CWS 5.1, the company has enhanced the usability and manageability of the software when deployed on Azure cloud services using Azure Resource Manager (ARM). This should be a welcome call for Microsoft CSP partners.”

“With CWS 5.1, we are dedicated to driving greater automation for IT solution providers in order to streamline IT lifecycle management,” said Seth Bostock, CEO, IndependenceIT. “Many of the world’s leading IT service providers recognize these advantages and put them to work for their organizations. We appreciate the recent analysis performed by 451 Research on our latest generation software which showcases our efforts to help partners deliver best-in-class cloud based solutions.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Spacemetric Selects Interoute’s Cloud To Manage Space Data

Interoute has been selected by Spacemetric to support its data storage and distribution needs. Spacemetric is a Swedish software company which streamlines the transformation of raw data from satellite and airborne sensors into imagery products ready for analytics.

This secure storage solution will be integrated with the web-based SWEA (Swedish Earth data Access) platform, developed by Spacemetric on behalf of the Swedish National Space Board. The platform is part of the existing EU earth observation program Copernicus managed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The data is collected and used to support environmental and humanitarian research. The ESA’s archive of images is available to scientists and businesses across the world via the cloud. The archive, hosted by Interoute’s private cloud network, is shared widely – from governments to entrepreneurs looking for ways to turn the data into business opportunities. SWEA can now ensure the availability of data with specific relevance to Swedish users.

Interoute Virtual Data Centre zone in Stockholm launched six months ago and is one of 17 global zones that make up Interoute private networked cloud.

“We chose Interoute as they could offer an efficient hybrid solution combining physical storage with the Interoute Virtual Data Centre in Stockholm. As a result, we are guaranteed secure storage of local data as well as superior access due to low latency. It also means that the development process is more agile, making it possible to quickly and easily scale our efforts up or down depending on demand”, said Mikael Stern, CEO at Spacemetric.

Matthew Finnie, Interoute CTO, commented, “It’s fantastic to be selected by Spacemetric for this exciting project supporting the EU earth observation program for environmental and humanitarian research. Interoute was the first global cloud provider to launch a zone in the Nordic region that offers both public and private cloud on one platform. And our Stockholm cloud zone is one of 17 global zones that make up our private networked cloud. This new project is validation that the ‘local presence, global reach’ approach to cloud is key to meeting the needs of the market in Europe.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Equinix Cloud Exchange Expands In Europe

Equinix, Inc. has announced that it will be significantly expanding the availability of the Equinix Cloud Exchange™, bringing the innovative solution to three new markets including Dublin, Milan, and Stockholm. Bringing direct, private access to multiple cloud providers to these new markets supports European businesses who are undergoing digital transformation and enables global enterprises to simultaneously orchestrate hybrid and multi-cloud solutions across multiple locations and gain the global scale, performance and security they need to compete. These new markets also provide additional flexibility with where enterprises locate their cloud workloads and data across the region depending on their business needs and local regulations.

“When Equinix introduced Cloud Exchange, businesses were just beginning to leverage the cloud but there was still serious scepticism around performance and security. Over the last few years however, global business adoption of cloud has been tremendous and now we see customers securely connecting to many clouds and across multiple regions all on the Equinix Cloud Exchange. We believe these three new markets will make Cloud Exchange that much more appealing for enterprises looking to distribute their cloud infrastructure across Europe,” said Eric Schwartz, president, Equinix EMEA.

Equinix data centers house a growing cloud ecosystem of over 500 Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and SaaS solutions globally. The Equinix Cloud Exchange offers direct, private connections to more than 50 leading CSPs including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, IBM SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, and Office 365, Oracle Cloud and Salesforce. This interconnected approach allows companies to boost cloud application performance, reduce latency, scale and improve network control and visibility — delivering a quality cloud experience to end users.

Equinix Cloud Exchange is an advanced interconnection solution that enables seamless, on-demand and direct access to multiple clouds and multiple networks across the globe. By bringing together cloud service providers with enterprises consuming cloud and enabling them to establish private, high-performance connections, the Equinix Cloud Exchange gives enterprises direct access to the services they need to build sophisticated hybrid cloud solutions inside Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers.

Since its initial launch in 2014, more than 625 businesses have connected globally to the Equinix Cloud Exchange including Aon, Beeks Financial Cloud, CDM Smith, Ellie Mae, Hathaway Dinwiddie, and Walmart. Equinix has continued to see strong demand for cloud connectivity — year-over-year growth of Equinix Cloud Exchange more than doubled from 2015 to 2016.

The addition of Cloud Exchange in three new markets in addition to the five existing European markets (London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and Zurich) means extending companies’ ability to access low-latency, private cloud connectivity without going over the public internet or a WAN. More Europe-based businesses can now leverage the performance, security and a consistent quality of experience that only direct, private connectivity can deliver.

Equinix Cloud Exchange offers software-defined direct connections to multiple cloud services from a single physical port at both Layer 2 and Layer 3, so enterprises can easily access cloud-based services. Real-time provisioning of connections gives enterprise the flexibility to ramp up and down services according to their changing business requirements.

The European Commission states, “The huge potential of the digital economy is underexploited in Europe, with 41% of enterprises being non-digital, and only two percent taking full advantage of digital opportunities.”1 As European businesses undergo digital transformation, many will turn to cloud-based technologies, as the cloud has been a catalyst for global IT transformation. To support this shift, Equinix will roll out Cloud Exchange in the following key European metros, making Cloud Exchange available in 24 markets by the end of 2017:

• Dublin (available March) – At a time when global volumes of data are mushrooming, that presents both indigenous and foreign direct investment (FDI) companies with an abundance of opportunity, unique to Ireland. Coupled with the country’s favorable corporate tax structure, data privacy laws and potential for mining big data, Ireland continues to be an attractive destination for digital business infrastructure.
• Milan (available September) – Milan is the economic and financial heart of Italy and is the country’s second largest city, playing a vital role in the Italian economy which is the third largest in the Eurozone. Furthermore, Italian enterprises use of cloud computing (40%) is more than double the Eurozone average (19%).2
• Stockholm (available September) – Stockholm’s status as a key international business and technology hub is growing dramatically. The city has been ranked as a top “future region” by the Financial Times, as well as Europe’s best region in terms of prospects for inward investment and for economic and business expansion.

Equinix’s interconnection and data center platform has become the home of the interconnected cloud globally, with more than 150 colocation facilities located across 41 markets. According to a recent report by Gartner – Deliver Data Center Modernization Using Three Cloud-Complementary Approaches (February 2017) – digital businesses should, “Enhance data center interconnection capabilities with cloud providers and digital business partners by building colocation network hubs.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Fujitsu Develops Database Integration Technology to Accelerate IoT Data Analysis

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has announced the development of technology to integrate and rapidly analyze NoSQL databases, used for accumulating large volumes of unstructured IoT data, with relational databases, used for data analysis for mission-critical enterprise systems.

NoSQL databases are used to store large volumes of data, such as IoT data output from various IoT devices in a variety of structures. However, due to the time required for structural conversion of large volumes of unstructured IoT data, there was an issue with the processing time of analysis involving data across NoSQL and relational databases.

Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology that optimizes data conversion and reduces the amount of data transfer by analyzing SQL queries to seamlessly access relational databases and NoSQL databases, as well as a technology that automatically partitions the data and efficiently distributes execution on Apache Spark(1), a distributed parallel execution platform, enabling rapid analysis integrating NoSQL databases to relational databases.

When this newly developed technology was implemented in PostgreSQL(2), an open source relational database, and its performance was evaluated using open source MongoDB(3) as the NoSQL database, query processing was accelerated by 4.5 times due to the data conversion optimization and data transfer reduction technology. In addition, acceleration proportional to the number of nodes was achieved with the efficient distributed execution technology on Apache Spark.

With this technology, a retail store, for example, could continually roll out a variety of IoT devices in order to understand information such as customers’ in-store movements and actions, enabling the store to quickly try new analyses relating this information with data from existing mission-critical systems. This would contribute to the implementation of one-to-one marketing strategies that offer products and services suited for each customer.

Details of this technology were announced at the 9th Forum on Data Engineering and Information Management (DEIM2017), which was held in Takayama, Gifu, Japan, March 6-8.

Development Background

In recent years, IoT and sensor technology are improving day by day, enabling the collection of new information that was previously difficult to obtain. It is expected that connecting this new data with data in existing mission-critical and information systems will enable analyses on a number of fronts that were previously impossible.

For example, in a retail store, it is now becoming possible to obtain a wide variety of IoT data, such as understanding where customers are lingering in the store by analyzing the signal strength of the Wi-Fi on the customers’ mobile devices, or understanding both detailed actions, such as which products the customers looked at and picked up, and individual characteristics, such as age, gender, and route through the store, by analyzing image data from surveillance cameras. By properly combining this data with existing business data, such as goods purchased and revenue data, and using the result, it is expected that businesses will be able to implement one-to-one marketing strategies that offer products and services suited for each customer.

Issues

When analyzing queries that span relational and NoSQL databases, it is necessary to have a predefined data format for converting the unstructured data stored in the NoSQL database into structured data that can be handled by the relational database in order to perform fast data conversion and analysis processing. However, as the use of IoT data has grown, it has been difficult to define formats in advance, because new information for analysis is often being added, such as from added sensors, or from existing sensors and cameras receiving software updates to provide more data, for example, on customers’ gazes, actions, and emotions. At the same time, data analysts have been looking for methods that do not require predefined data formats, in order to quickly try new analyses. If, however, a format cannot be defined in advance, the conversion processing overhead is very significant when the database is queried, creating issues with longer processing times when undertaking an analysis.

About the Technology

Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology that can quickly run a seamless analysis spanning relational and NoSQL databases without a predefined data format, as well as technology that accelerates analysis using Apache Spark clusters as a distributed parallel platform. In addition, Fujitsu Laboratories implemented its newly developed technology in PostgreSQL, and evaluated its performance using MongoDB databases storing unstructured data in JSON(4) format as the NoSQL databases.

Details of the technology are as follows:

• Data Conversion Optimization Technology
  This technology analyzes database queries (SQL queries) that include access to data in a NoSQL database to extract the portions that specify the necessary fields and their data type, and identify the data format necessary to convert the data. The query is then optimized based on these results, and overhead is reduced through bulk conversion of the NoSQL data, providing performance equivalent to existing processing with a predefined data format.
• Technology to Reduce the Amount of Data Transferred from NoSQL Databases
  Fujitsu Laboratories developed technology that migrates some of the processing, such as filtering, from the PostgreSQL side to the NoSQL side by analyzing the database query. With this technology, the amount of data transferred from the NoSQL data source is minimized, accelerating the process.
• Technology to Automatically Partition Data for Distributed Processing
  Fujitsu Laboratories developed technology for efficient distributed execution of queries across multiple relational databases and NoSQL databases on Apache Spark. It automatically determines the optimal data partitioning that avoids unbalanced load across the Apache Spark nodes, based on information such as the data’s placement location in each database’s storage.

Effects

Fujitsu Laboratories implemented this newly developed technology in PostgreSQL, and evaluated performance using MongoDB as the NoSQL database. When evaluated using TPC-H benchmark queries that evaluate the performance of decision support systems, application of the first two technologies accelerated overall processing time by 4.5 times that of existing technology. In addition, using the third technology to perform this evaluation on an Apache Spark cluster with four nodes, a performance improvement of 3.6 times that of one node was achieved.

Using this newly developed technology, it is now possible to efficiently access IoT data, such as sensor data, through an SQL interface common throughout the enterprise field, which can flexibly support frequent format changes in IoT data, enabling fast processing of analyses including IoT data.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Woolpert Earns Google Cloud 2016 Fastest Growing Company Award

Woolpert has been awarded the Google Cloud 2016 Fastest Growing Company Award for Maps Customer Success for North America. This award recognizes Woolpert for its demonstrated sales, marketing, technical, and support excellence to help customers of all sizes transform their businesses and solve a wide range challenges with the adoption of Maps.

Woolpert helps customers navigate the Google Maps for Work licensing process and advises them on the proper implementation of the Google Maps API within their Cloud solutions.

The national architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm saw its Google sales grow 250% in 2016, as compared to 2015. The firm’s sales were $3.25 million for its Google division and just shy of $150 million overall last year.

Woolpert, which has been a Google for Work Partner since March 2015 and a Google for Work Premier Partner since last summer, also was named a Premier Partner in the Google Cloud Program for 2017.

Jon Downey, director of the Google Geospatial Sales Team at Woolpert, said he is honored by this recognition and excited to see dynamic growth.

“This award represents our continued commitment to our Google partnership, and our ability to steadily grow in this market,” Downey said. “What sets Woolpert apart in the Google Cloud ecosystem is that approximately half of our firm’s business is geospatial, so this extension of our work makes sense. We’re not a sales organization and we’re not here to push software. We’re here to help.”

This extensive geospatial background enables Woolpert to add value and dimension to its Google Cloud services.

“We don’t just have the knowledge related to the Google data and deliverables, but we have a professional services staff capable of elevating that data,” he said. “We’re able to offer consultation on these services and that takes the relationship a step further, benefitting all involved.”

Bertrand Yansouni, vice president of global partner sales and strategic alliances, Google Cloud, said partners are vital contributors to Google Cloud’s growing ecosystem.

“Partners help us meet the needs of a diverse range of customers, from up-and-coming startups to Fortune 500 companies,” Yansouni said. “We are proud to provide this recognition to Woolpert, who has consistently demonstrated customer success across Maps.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Interoute Launches Managed Container Platform At Cloud Expo Europe

Interoute will announce the integration of its global cloud infrastructure platform with Rancher Labs’ container management platform, Rancher, at Cloud Expo 2017. This new innovative approach enables enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation and infrastructure investments.

The advent of containers has revolutionised the way enterprises can build, and deploy software applications, bringing greater agility, quicker deployment times and lower operational costs. In the past, enterprise operations and infrastructure teams building new applications and software services had to manage all cloud infrastructure building blocks (the virtual server, OS, and application libraries) necessary to create their application development environment. Using a container based approach enterprise developers can now focus on writing applications and deploying the code straight into a container. The container is then deployed across the underling Interoute cloud infrastructure dramatically improving the time to develop and launch new applications and software.

The Interoute Container platform is part of the Interoute Enterprise Digital Platform, a secure global Infrastructure that combines a Software Defined Core Network integrated into a global mesh of 17 cloud zones, to optimise applications and services. Interoute makes it possible for organisations to integrate legacy, third party and digital IT environments onto single, secure, privately-connected global cloud infrastructure, creating the foundation for Enterprise Digital Transformation.

By integrating Rancher software, Interoute is now able to provide access to a full set of orchestration and infrastructure services for containers, enabling users to deploy containers in any of Interoute’s 17 cloud zones across the world. Rancher is an open-source container management platform that makes it simple to deploy and manage containers in production.

“Enterprises developing and building apps in the cloud and those on a path to Digital Transformation need Digital ICT Infrastructure that allows them to build, test and deploy faster than ever before. The integration of Rancher software with Interoute Digital Platform gives developers access to a managed container platform, that sits on a global privately networked cloud, enabling true distributed computing,” said Matthew Finnie, Interoute CTO.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Interoute and provide users of the Interoute Enterprise Digital Platform with a complete and turn-key container management platform. We look forward to seeing those users accelerate all aspects of their software development pipeline, from writing and testing code to running complex microservices-based applications,” said Louise Westoby, VP of marketing, Rancher Labs.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CloudVelox Releases One Hybrid Cloud™ 4.0

CloudVelox has announced new enterprise-grade automated cloud workload mobility and optimization capabilities with enhanced management and control features for its One Hybrid Cloud™ (OHC) software. Through automation, OHC accelerates workload mobility and optimization in the cloud by matching data center environments with optimal cloud services to deliver cost savings or improved application performance, without requiring specialized cloud skills. New features for cloud optimization include: application-centric instance tagging, placement groups, multiple security groups, Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. New features for managing workload mobility include comprehensive system reporting and alerts for the successful completion of workload migrations to the cloud. With the new powerful suite of OHC features, enterprises are able to accelerate time to value, are further equipped to meet regulatory and compliance requirements and reduce IT effort while enhancing system visibility, management and control.

According to an IDC study1, nearly 68 percent of organizations are using some form of cloud to help drive business outcomes; however, only three percent have optimized cloud strategies in place today. Businesses are challenged by unexpected cloud costs, the complexity of mapping security and data policies from the data center to the cloud, a scarcity of skilled cloud engineers, and a lack of visibility into monitoring the status of mass workload migrations.

Enterprises want to benefit from the advantages of the public cloud, but without optimization they risk paying for services they don’t need, or not provisioning enough of the services they do need to support the availability and performance required for mission critical applications. Automation is the key to addressing these challenges, by enabling accelerated workload mobility and optimization at scale and completing “mass migrations” successfully in a matter of weeks, instead of up to 12 months.

“’Lift and Shift’ alone to the cloud has provided limited business value and control,” said Raj Dhingra, CloudVelox CEO. “When enterprises migrate brownfield applications to the cloud there can be dramatic inefficiencies if they are not optimized for the new environment. Now businesses can execute migrations with an unprecedented, automated ‘Lift and Optimize’ approach that ensures they receive the full benefits of the public cloud, whether that means reduced costs or improved performance. By matching the application environment in the datacenter to the optimal cloud compute and storage infrastructure whether based on cost or performance, and mapping data center network and security policies to cloud services — One Hybrid Cloud enhances management and control over applications without sacrificing cloud agility and accelerates the payback for even the most complex environments.”

In addition to automated workload migration to the cloud, CloudVelox is the industry’s first automation solution to combine workload mobility and workload optimization. CloudVelox approaches workload optimization in three phases of the cloud optimization lifecycle including pre-migration optimization — available now — and will build on the initial phase with additional features in the second continuous optimization phase and third fully optimized phase later this year:

• Pre-migration optimization –leverages CloudVelox’s automated application blueprinting capabilities, matching the application’s data center infrastructure characteristics to the appropriate cloud compute, storage, network and security services prior to migrating the workloads to the cloud
• Continuous Optimization (available summer 2017) — enables continuous optimization of migrated workloads by monitoring key areas such as instance, storage, availability and security policy to deliver actionable insights that can yield cost savings, better performance and availability as well as compliance with regulatory requirements
• Fully Optimized (available summer 2017) — fully optimized approach further leverages cloud native services to deliver additional agility, cost savings and higher availability. For example, future features in the company’s cloud optimization roadmap include support for autoscale, RDS (MySQL and Oracle) and automated ELB across multiple instances

The One Hybrid Cloud 4.0 include new application-centric security groups, and application-centric placement groups along with comprehensive status reporting and alerts. Security groups can be assigned to a single system or a group of systems to control flow of traffic between and to apps in the cloud, and enable security policies to be mapped from the data center to the cloud to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. An app or a group of systems can be assigned to a placement group in a selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) region to enable performance optimization for applications requiring high performance compute, low latency and lots of network I/O. Automating the assignment of placement groups prior to migration also reduces IT effort in migrating and re-hosting these apps in the cloud.

New features to offer comprehensive reporting, alerts and enhanced management and control include:

• An inventory of selected applications for replication with cloud characteristics such as CPU, RAM, instance type, storage type and other variables
• An application launch report of currently replicating applications showing infrastructure services used by each app
• Application launch status reports providing current status and time taken since launch and other information
• A Sync report that lists the various systems that have synced and their consistency point.
• System connect or disconnect alerts to proactively report on disconnected systems
• Replication alerts indicating if a replication has started, not started or stopped
• Application launch activity alerts indicating successful, failed, or suspended “launch” and “migration successful” alerts.

Application-centric instance tagging and IAM roles. Instance tagging allows single systems or a group of systems to be assigned tags to classify and categorize the migrated workloads. Tags can specify type of application, line of business, owner and up to 50 other categories that can be used for billing, reporting, utilization analysis and creating policies for cost and performance optimization

Source: CloudStrategyMag