Cloud Technology Partners Achieves AWS IoT Competency

Cloud Technology Partners (CTP) has announced that it has achieved the AWS IoT Competency designation from Amazon Web Services (AWS). CTP is one of a select number of AWS Consulting Partners to earn this competency, highlighting the value of its offerings that help clients build IoT solutions for a variety of use cases such as intelligent factories, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, precision agriculture, and personalized health care.

Achieving the AWS IoT Competency differentiates CTP as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that has proven success delivering IoT solutions seamlessly on AWS. To receive the designation, APN Partners must demonstrate expertise in the AWS platform and undergo an assessment of the security, performance, and reliability of their solutions.

“CTP is proud to have been named a charter launch partner for the AWS IoT Competency,” said Scott Udell, vice president of IoT Solutions at Cloud Technology Partners. “Our team is dedicated to helping clients leverage the power of IoT and the agility of the AWS platform to achieve their business goals.”

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the IoT Partner Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with broad industry experience.

CTP recently completed an IoT engagement for RailPod, the leading manufacturer of railroad maintenance drones. CTP helped RailPod build a highly scalable IoT solution capable of ingesting massive quantities of real-time and batched data to ensure safer railroads.

“Cloud Technology Partners helped us build an enterprise-class IoT solution on AWS that enables RailPod to be a global leader in infrastructure information production to ensure safer railroads across the global railroad market,” said Brendan English, Founder and CEO of RailPod.

CTP’s IoT Practice and Digital Innovation teams are helping clients leverage the power of the cloud with the real-time knowledge learned from analyzing sensor data to help clients save millions in preventative maintenance on locomotives and railways, improve crop yields while saving money with intelligent irrigation, connect doctors and patients with medical devices and avoid accidents with autonomous vehicles.

CTP is a Premier AWS Consulting Partner and has achieved a number of competencies with AWS. In addition to the AWS IoT Competency, CTP holds the AWS Migration Competency, AWS DevOps Competency and is a member of AWS Next-Generation Managed Services Program.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

SolarWinds Recognized As Market Leader In Network Management Software

SolarWinds has announced the company has been recognized as the global market share leader in Network Management Software by industry analyst firm, International Data Corporation (IDC) in its latest Worldwide Semi-Annual Software Tracker. The tracker measures total market size and vendor shares based on each vendor’s software revenue, including license, maintenance, and subscription revenue.

“SolarWinds was founded on the premise that IT professionals desire IT management software that is more powerful, yet simpler to buy and much easier to use,” said Kevin B. Thompson, president and chief executive officer, SolarWinds. “IDC’s recognition of SolarWinds’ market share leadership validates that core value proposition inherent in all of our solutions, while also underscoring the incredible adoption rate we continue to see among customers in organizations of all sizes, in all parts of the world.”

According to the IDC  Worldwide Semi-Annual Software Tracker 1H 2016 release, SolarWinds® leads the network management software market with more than a 20 percent share of total market revenue for the first half of 2016. Strong demand for its Network Performance Monitor and Network Traffic Analyzer products fueled 14.2% year-over-year revenue growth during the same period.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: Enterprises Prefer Microsoft Azure, SMBs Favor Google Cloud Platform

A new survey by Clutch found that enterprises strongly prefer Microsoft Azure, while small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) gravitate toward Google Cloud Platform. The survey was conducted in order to gain more knowledge on the “Big Three” cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure.

Nearly 40% of Azure users surveyed identified as enterprises. In comparison, only 25% identified as SMBs and 22% identified as startups/sole proprietorships. Conversely, 41% of GCP users surveyed identified as SMBs.

The trends among enterprises and SMBs reflect the strengths of each platform. “It goes back to the trust and familiarity issues,” said Nicholas Martin, principal applications development consultant at Cardinal Solutions, an IT solutions provider. “Windows Server and other Microsoft technologies are prevalent in the enterprise world. Azure provides the consistency required by developers and IT staff to tightly integrate with the tools that Microsoft leaning organizations are familiar with.”

Meanwhile, Dave Hickman, vice president of global delivery at Menlo Technologies, an IT services company, said that “small businesses tend to lean more on pricing than security or toolsets.” Thus, GCP’s lower pricing can be more palatable for an SMB.

Clutch’s survey also investigated the primary reasons respondents selected one of the three providers. The largest percentage of users (21%) named “better selection of tools/features” as their top reason, while “familiarity with brand” and “stronger security” nearly tied for second place.

Experts emphasized how users will choose a provider based on the selection of tools or features it offers. “Infrastructure-as-a-service will reside mainly on AWS, cloud services will be on Microsoft’s side, while Google will dominate analytics,” said Brian Dearman, solutions architect at Mindsight, an IT infrastructure consulting firm. “Even though every platform offers each type of service, people will want the best.”

The survey included 85 AWS users, 86 GCP users and 76 Microsoft Azure users. While these totals do not reflect each platform’s market share, the nearly even number of respondents using each provider allowed Clutch to analyze opinions and behaviors more equally.

Based on the survey findings, Clutch recommends that companies consider the following:

• If your business is an enterprise, requires Windows integration, or seeks a strong PaaS (platform-as-a-service) provider, consider Microsoft Azure.
• For heavy emphasis on analytics or if you are an SMB with a limited budget, look into GCP.
• If service longevity, IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) offerings, and a wide selection of tools are important to you, AWS may be your best option.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: 2016 Review Shows 8 Billion Cloud Market Growing

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that across six key cloud services and infrastructure market segments, operator, and vendor revenues for the four quarters ending September 2016 reached $148 billion, having grown by 25% on an annualized basis. IaaS & PaaS services had the highest growth rate at 53%, followed by hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 35% and enterprise SaaS at 34%. 2016 was notable as the year in which spend on cloud services overtook spend on cloud infrastructure hardware and software. In aggregate cloud service markets are now growing three times more quickly than cloud infrastructure hardware and software. Companies that featured the most prominently among the 2016 market segment leaders were Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, HPE, Cisco, IBM, Salesforce, and Dell EMC.

Over the period Q4 2015 to Q3 2016 total spend on hardware and software to build cloud infrastructure exceeded $65 billion, with spend on private clouds accounting for over half of the total but spend on public cloud growing much more rapidly. Investments in infrastructure by cloud service providers helped them to generate almost $30 billion in revenues from cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, hosted private cloud services) and over $40 billion from enterprise SaaS, in addition to supporting internet services such as search, social networking, email and e-commerce. UCaaS, while in many ways a different type of market, is also growing steadily and driving some radical changes in business communications.

“We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream and I’d say that 2016 is the year that cloud started to dominate many IT market segments,” said Synergy Research Group’s founder and chief analyst Jeremy Duke. “Major barriers to cloud adoption are now almost a thing of the past, especially on the public cloud side. Cloud technologies are now generating massive revenues for technology vendors and cloud service providers and yet there are still many years of strong growth ahead.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: OpenStack’s Global Traction Expands

According to a newly released Forrester Research Report titled, OpenStack’s Global Traction Expands For Its Newton Release, OpenStack® has “grown into a de facto standard platform for the private cloud market and now serves as the foundation for public clouds, particularly in Europe and China.”

OpenStack® is the most widely deployed open source cloud computing software. The December 2016 report analyzes the state of OpenStack at the time of the October 2016 Barcelona Summit, which was convened to showcase Newton, the latest release of OpenStack software, and plan for the 14th release of the software, codenamed Ocata and expected in February 2017. The report also details important next steps for infrastructure and operations leaders investing in the OpenStack platform.

“In the past year, telcos like CableLabs, SK Telecom, and Verizon have shelved their previous objections to the Neutron networking project and flocked to the OpenStack community, contributing features like Doctor,” the report states. “Leading I&O professionals, application developers, and CIOs at firms like American Express, Disney, and Walmart have embraced OpenStack for their digital businesses. It’s the foundation of many private (and, increasingly, of many public) cloud services that give your company the agility it needs to respond to customer demand, from core systems to the mobile apps that deliver differentiated customer experiences.”

The report from Forrester Research also examines:

• OpenStack growth among public cloud providers, which now includes 21 self-reported public providers globally. (Note: OpenStack Foundation data adds that these clouds are located in a combined 66 datacenters across 53 cities globally.)
• How, “for some, OpenStack underpins a bigger effort to transform the network with network function virtualization (NFV).”
• How “the Newton release focuses on container support and simple network requests. Magnum has expanded its scope to offer other orchestration cluster tools, including Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and Mesos with either VM or bare metal.”
• How, for those outside the Fortune 100 and high-tech, “the OpenStack ecosystem wants your participation and will be willing to provide you with ‘above and beyond’ support.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

6 Big Data Predictions For 2017

The market has evolved from technologists looking to learn and understand new big data technologies to customers who want to learn about new projects, new companies, and most importantly, how organizations are actually benefitting from the technology. According to John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies, Inc., the acceleration in big data deployments has shifted the focus to the value of the data. 

John has crystallized his view of market trends into these six major predictions for 2017: 

1 – Artificial Intelligence is Back in Vogue

In the 1960s, Ray Solomonoff laid the foundations of a mathematical theory of AI, introducing universal Bayesian methods for inductive inference and prediction. In 1980 the First National Conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) was held at Stanford and marked the application of theories in software. AI is now back in mainstream discussions and the umbrella buzzword for machine intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and cognitive computing. Why is AI a rejuvenated trend? The three V’s come to mind: Velocity, Variety, and Volume. Platforms that can process the three V’s with modern and traditional processing models that scale horizontally providing 10 to 20X cost efficiency over traditional platforms. Google has documented how simple algorithms executed frequently against large datasets yield better results than other approaches using smaller sets. We’ll see the highest value from applying AI to high volume repetitive tasks where consistency is more effective than gaining human intuitive oversight at the expense of human error and cost.

2 – Big Data for Governance or Competitive Advantage

In 2017, the governance vs. data value tug of war will be front and center. Enterprises have a wealth of information about their customers and partners. Leading organizations will manage their data between regulated and non-regulated use cases. Regulated use cases data require governance; data quality and lineage so a regulatory body can report and track data through all transformations to originating source. This is mandatory and necessary but limiting for non-regulatory use cases like customer 360 or offer serving where higher cardinality, real-time and a mix of structured and unstructured yields more effective results.

3 – Companies Focus on Business- Driven Applications to avoid Data Lakes from becoming Swamps

In 2017 organizations will shift from the “build it and they will come” data lake approach to a business-driven data approach. Today’s world requires analytics and operational capabilities to address customers, process claims and interface to devices in real time at an individual level. For example any ecommerce site must provide individualized recommendations and price checks in real time. Healthcare organizations must process valid claims and block fraudulent claims by combining analytics with operational systems. Media companies are now personalizing content served though set top boxes. Auto manufacturers and ride sharing companies are interoperating at scale with cars and the drivers. Delivering these use cases requires an agile platform that can provide both analytical and operational processing to increase value from additional use cases that span from back office analytics to front office operations. In 2017, organizations will push aggressively beyond an “asking questions” approach and architect to drive initial and long term business value.

4 – Data Agility Separates Winners and Losers

Software development has become agile where dev ops provides continuous delivery. In 2017, processing and analytic models evolve to provide a similar level of agility as organizations realize data agility, the ability to understand data in context and take business action, is the source of competitive advantage not simply have a large data lake. The emergence of agile processing models will enable the same instance of data to support batch analytics, interactive analytics, global messaging, database and file-based models. More agile analytic models are also enabled when a single instance of data can support a broader set of tools. The end result is an agile development and application platform that supports the broadest range of processing and analytic models.

5 – Blockchain Transforms Select Financial Service Applications

In 2017, there will be select, transformational use cases in financial services that emerge with broad implications for the way data is stored and transactions processed. Blockchain provides a global distributed ledger that changes the way data is stored and transactions are processed. The blockchain runs on computers distributed worldwide where the chains can be viewed by anyone. Transactions are stored in blocks where each block refers to the preceding block, blocks are timestamped storing the data in a form that cannot be altered. Hackers find it impossible to hack the blockchain since the world has view of the entire blockchain. Blockchain provides obvious efficiency for consumers. For example, customers won’t have to wait for that SWIFT transaction or worry about the impact of a central datacenter leak. For enterprises, blockchain presents a cost savings and opportunity for competitive advantage.

6 – Machine Learning Maximizes Microservices Impact

This year we will see activity increase for the integration of machine learning and microservices. Previously, microservices deployments have been focused on lightweight services and those that do incorporate machine learning have typically been limited to “fast data” integrations that were applied to narrow bands of streaming data. In 2017, we’ll see development shift to stateful applications that leverage big data, and the incorporation of machine learning approaches that use large of amounts of historical data to better understand the context of newly arriving streaming data.

“Our predictions are strongly influenced by leading customers who have gained significant business value by integrating analytics into operational use cases,” said Schroeder. “Our customer use of the MapR converged data platform provides agility to Devops where they can use a broad range of processing models from Hadoop to Spark, SQL, NoSQL, files and message streaming — whatever is required for their current and future use cases in private, public and hybrid cloud deployments.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Hyperscale Data Center Count Passes The 300 Milestone In December

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that the number of large data centers operated by hyperscale providers hit the 300 mark in December, after a flurry of year-end data center openings by Amazon, Google, and Alibaba. One notable feature of the global footprint is that despite a major ongoing push to locate new operations in countries around the world, the U.S. still accounts for 45% of major cloud and internet data center sites. The next prominent locations are China and Japan, with 8% and 7% respectively. The three leading countries are then followed by the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Germany, and India, each of which accounts for 3% to 5% of the total. The research is based on an analysis of the data center footprint of 24 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social networking, and e-commerce.

On average each of the 24 firms had 13 data center sites. The companies with the broadest data center footprint are the leading cloud providers — AWS, Microsoft, and IBM. Each has 40 or more data center locations with at least two in each of the four regions — North America, APAC, EMEA, and Latin America. Google and Oracle also have a notably broad data center presence. The remaining firms tend to have their data centers focused primarily in either the U.S. (Apple, Twitter, Salesforce, Facebook, eBay, LinkedIn, Yahoo) or China (Tencent, Baidu). Previously Alibaba also was focused mainly in China but it has now opened data centers in the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and the UAE. 

“Hyperscale growth goes on unabated and we are forecasting that hyperscale operators will pass the 400 data center mark by the end of 2018,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group. “What is remarkable is that the US still accounts for nearly half of all hyperscale data centers, reflecting the US dominance of cloud and internet technologies. While other countries are now featuring more prominently due to either their scale or the unique characteristics of their local markets, the major players continue to invest heavily in U.S. data center operations.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

HPE & Cisco Maintain Lead In Cloud Infrastructure

New Q3 data from Synergy Research Group shows that HPE maintained a narrow lead over Cisco in the strategically important cloud infrastructure equipment market, while Dell EMC is now challenging the top two after the completion of their historic merger. Meanwhile, ODMs (contract manufacturers) in aggregate continue to increase their share of the market, driven by continued heavy investments in data centers by hyperscale cloud providers. Microsoft and IBM round out the group of top cloud infrastructure vendors. HPE and Cisco have been in a closely contested leadership battle in this market for the last sixteen quarters, over which time their total revenues are virtually identical. Across the different types of cloud deployment, Cisco continues to hold a commanding lead in public cloud infrastructure while HPE has a clear lead in private cloud.

Total cloud infrastructure equipment revenues, including public and private cloud, hardware and software, are poised to reach $70 billion in 2016 and continue to grow at a double-digit pace. Servers, OS, storage, networking and virtualization software combined accounted for 94% of the Q3 cloud infrastructure market, with the balance comprising cloud security and cloud management. By segment, HPE has a clear lead in the cloud server segment and is a main challenger in storage, while Cisco is dominant in the networking segment and also has a growing server product line. Dell EMC is the second-ranked server vendor and has a clear lead on storage. Microsoft features heavily in the ranking due to its position in server OS and virtualization applications, while IBM maintains a strong position across a range of cloud technology markets.

“Growth in private cloud infrastructure is slowing down as enterprises shift more attention and workloads to the public cloud, but that means that there is a continued boom in shipments of infrastructure gear to public cloud providers,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group. “For traditional IT infrastructure vendors there is one fly in the ointment though — hyperscale cloud providers account for an ever-increasing share of data center gear and many of them are on a continued drive to deploy own-designed servers, storage and networking equipment, manufactured for them by ODMs. ODMs in aggregate now control a large and growing share of public cloud infrastructure shipments.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Faction Releases Internetwork eXchange (FIX)

Faction has released its Faction Internetwork eXchange (FIX), allowing enterprises to easily and cost-effectively connect private cloud and colocation resources into public clouds privately and securely. This extends Faction’s patent-pending “bring your network as-is” private cloud networking to hybrid cloud designs, allowing enterprises to easily add the use of public cloud to their private clouds without complex networking changes.

“IT managers today want to take advantage of new technologies, but find connecting private cloud workloads to public clouds to be a difficult and costly proposition,” comments Matthew Wallace, VP of Product for Faction. “Our patent-pending SDN technology allows our customers to bring their existing networks to our private cloud without any reconfiguration. Faction Internetwork eXchange now extends that capability to public clouds, giving them the security, cost savings, and simplicity they need to take full advantage of public cloud resources now, without costly migrations or complicated new tools. The FIX is also designed to be a more cost-effective way to connect to the public cloud than a dedicated connection or using the public Internet.”

Faction Internetwork eXchange allows organizations to quickly add private, secure connectivity to hundreds of other networks over their existing infrastructure. No additional hardware or software is needed to create many virtual circuits to different networks, all over their existing ports. This allows customers to easily pursue hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies without spending money up front on hardware, tools, and training. Among the hundreds of available connection endpoints, Faction can easily connect customers into popular public cloud destinations, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Softlayer, and many others.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IBM Receives Cloud Company Of The Year Award From Frost & Sullivan

IBM has announced that it has received the 2016 Cloud Company of the Year Award from leading independent technology market research firm Frost & Sullivan. The Award acknowledges IBM’s market leadership in delivering a complete and fully integrated stack of cloud services including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Particularly important to CIOs and IT managers, Frost & Sullivan highlights IBM’s ability to support hybrid environments via the company’s extensive portfolio of connectivity tools and capabilities that allow enterprises to easily create, deploy, and manage a flexible range of applications and microservices.

“This award recognizes the extraordinary range and depth of IBM’s cloud services portfolio,” said Don Boulia, VP of Cloud Strategy and Portfolio Management at IBM. “IBM Cloud provides clients with flexibility and choice when embracing hybrid solutions. They can continue driving value from their existing investments, while also gaining access to public, scalable infrastructure and services across our global footprint of data centers, including IBM Watson.”

According to Lynda Stadtmueller, vice president of cloud services, Stratecast|Frost & Sullivan, “IBM’s cloud platform supports the concept of ‘hybrid integration’ — that is, a hybrid IT environment in which disparate applications and data are linked via a comprehensive integration platform, allowing the apps to share common management functionality and control.” These capabilities enable customers to leverage Watson and analytics functionality made available through application programming interfaces (APIs) on Bluemix.

Stadtmueller also commented on the economic benefits of IBM Cloud, noting, “IBM Cloud offers a price-performance advantage over competitors due to its infrastructure configurations and service parameters—including a bare metal server option; single-tenant (private) compute and storage options; granular capacity selections for processing, memory, and network for public cloud units; and all-included technical support.”

Competitors in the cloud market do not offer such a broad portfolio of integrated infrastructure, software, and platform solutions, according to Frost & Sullivan.

To win the Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award a company must demonstrate excellence in growth, innovation, and leadership. This kind of excellence typically translates into superior performance in three key areas: demand generation, brand development, and competitive positioning. These areas serve as the foundation of a company’s future success and prepare it to deliver on the two criteria that define the Company of the Year Award—Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact.

Source: CloudStrategyMag