Huawei Unveils Cloud Transformation Solution At TM Forum

Huawei unveils Cloud Transformation solution at TM Forum and proposed that “clouds” will be the new engine that drives carriers’ digital transformation. The cloud-and-network synergy solution brings carriers’ existing network advantages into full play so as to help them carry out digital transformation.

The Internet is a massive part of people’s lives and work, bringing today’s individual and enterprise users the urgent need for Internetized ROADS experience (Real-time and on-demand, all-online, DIY and social). Carriers are now under great pressure of increasing competition. However, they are still incompetent in terms of agile innovation and operational efficiency due to a rigid and closed IT infrastructure. In contrast, Internet companies’ cloud-based IT architecture is more agile for service innovation.

Huawei believes carriers should prioritize cloudification during digital transformation. Cloudification empowers carriers in two ways

1. Expanding the B2B Cloud Service Market and Enabling Agile Service Innovation
   With the Internetization of B2B and the maturing of cloud technologies, many forward-looking carriers such as DT, Telefonica and China Telecom have set their eyes on the government and enterprise cloud service market. Huge customer base, vast network resources and localized services are just some of the advantages carriers would need to exploit in order to gain a head start in the cloud service blue ocean market.
2. Smooth Evolution to Cloudified IT Architecture Improves Operational Efficiency and Reduces Management Costs
   Huawei helps carriers evaluate the cloudification maturity of their operational systems in three phases. In the Cloud 1.0 phase (virtualization), software and hardware are decoupled. In the cloud 2.0 phase (cloudification), virtualized resources are centrally managed and scheduled. In the cloud 3.0 phase (native clouds), software can be independently developed, deployed and managed on clouds. Most carriers are evolving from Cloud 1.0 to Cloud 2.0. Their greatest challenge is implementing unified management for heterogeneous virtual resources and datacenters scattered in different places to enable agile service provisioning and boost resource utilization.

Based on OpenStack’s unified open architecture, the integrated resource pool supports unified management in 4 aspects: unified management for multi-datacenters, cloud and non-cloud resources, heterogeneous virtual platforms, and unified O&M. The solution supports smooth network evolution and allows customers to use a variety of devices from different vendors. The solution can be deployed in a “geographically distributed, logically centralized, resource-sharing and on-demand service” way. It dynamically meets the customized service requirements of both government and industry customers, while adapting to their existing data centers, significantly boosting resource utilization.

With this solution, networks are reconstructed centered on datacenters and deployed in a hierarchical manner (within datacenters, between datacenters, from datacenters to terminal users). Carriers can offer customized networks to meet customer requirements. Network as a Service (NaaS) increases business revenue, enhances customer loyalty and brings the value of “cloud-and-network synergy” into full play.

Huawei’s cloud transformation solution has been successfully deployed in more than 200 cases by global carriers. It has built more than 10 open labs worldwide for joint innovation and fast commercial deployment of new services, thereby helping carriers excel through digital transformation.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: 57% of Organizations Lack Cloud Strategy

While the common assumption is that the cloud represents reduced costs and better application performance, many organizations will fail to realize those benefits, according to research by VMTurbo, the application performance control system for cloud and virtualized environments. A multi-cloud approach, where businesses operate a number of separate private and public clouds, is an essential precursor to a true hybrid cloud. Yet in the survey of 1,368 organizations 57% of those surveyed had no multi-cloud strategy at all. Similarly, 35% had no private cloud strategy, and 28% had no public cloud strategy.

“A lack of cloud strategy doesn’t mean an organization has studied and rejected the idea of the cloud; it means it has given adoption little or no thought at all,” said Charles Crouchman, CTO of VMTurbo. “As organizations make the journey from on-premise IT, to public and private clouds, and finally to multi- and hybrid clouds, it’s essential that they address this. Having a cloud strategy means understanding the precise costs and challenges that the cloud will introduce, knowing how to make the cloud approach work for you, and choosing technologies that will supplement cloud adoption. For instance, by automating workload allocation so that services are always provided with the best performance for the best cost. Without a strategy, organizations will be condemning themselves to higher-than-expected costs, and a cloud that never performs to its full potential.”

Above and beyond this lack of strategy, SMEs in particular were shown to massively underestimate the costs of cloud implementation. While those planning private cloud builds gave an average estimated budget of $148,605, SMEs that have already completed builds revealed an average cost of $898,508: more than six times the estimates.

Other interesting statistics from the survey included:

• Adopting cloud is not a quick, simple process: Even for those organizations with a cloud strategy, the majority (60%) take over a year to plan and build their multi-cloud infrastructure, with six percent taking over three years. Private and public cloud adoption is also relatively lengthy, with 66% of private cloud builds, and 51% of public cloud migrations, taking over a year.
• Growth of virtualization is inevitable and exponential: The number of virtual machines in organizations is growing at a rate of 29% per year; compared to 13% for physical. With virtualization forming a crucial platform for cloud services, it suggests that the technology will favor a cloud approach in the future.
• Organizations’ priorities are split: When asked how they prioritize workloads in their multi-cloud infrastructure, organizations were split between workload-based residence policies (27% of respondents), performance-based (23%), user-based (22%) and cost-based (13%). Ten percent had no clearly-defined residence policies.

“The cloud is the future of computing — increasingly, the question for organizations is when, not if, they make the move,” continued Charles Crouchman. “However, organizations need to understand that the cloud does not follow the same rules as a traditional IT infrastructure, and adapt their approach accordingly. For instance, workload priorities are still treated as static. Yet the infrastructure housing those workloads, and the ongoing needs of the business, are completely fluid. An organization using the cloud should be able to adapt its workloads dynamically so that they always meet the business’s priorities at that precise time. Without this change in outlook, organizations will soon find themselves squandering the potential the cloud provides.”

To download the full report, click here.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Fujitsu To Build Industry-First Maritime Big Data Platform For Nippon Kaiji Kyokai

Fujitsu Limited has announced that it has built a maritime big data platform for Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, an international ship classification society also known as ClassNK. The platform will be available from April, 2016.

Fujitsu has now built a platform with ClassNK that collects and accumulates machinery operational data from moving vessels, such as engine data, as well as marine weather information, as big data. This enables maritime businesses such as ship operators and shipyards to extract data about vessels under navigation, as needed. This will enable, for example, operations personnel to predict malfunctions using engine operations data, or to achieve more energy-efficient operations using voyage data and marine weather data.

This maritime big data platform, the first shared platform in the maritime industry, will be operated as a data center service by Ship Data Center Co., Ltd. (below, Ship Data Center), a subsidiary of ClassNK established in December 2015. Fujitsu will support the further effective use of ship data by expanding the functionality of this maritime big data platform, contributing to the further development of the maritime industry.

Background

With the development of broadband communications at sea, it has become possible to collect and monitor navigational information and information from sensors mounted on ship equipment and machinery. There has also been a focus on new efforts using data, such as energy-efficient operations and malfunction diagnosis. When these systems are built separately, however, their use is restricted to a few ships and maritime businesses due to the burden of cost and effort, such as data use agreements and strong security measures.

This new ship data center, operated by Ship Data Center, is the industry’s first effort that provides collected data as a shared platform to promote broad data use in the maritime industry.

System Summary

1. Able to build a data analysis and use system in a short time
The ship data center aggregates and stores navigational information sent from individual ships, such as from a VDR¹, operational and measurement information for engines and all manner of ship-mounted equipment (machinery data), and worldwide marine weather information. Previously, in order to use ship data, maritime businesses had to individually collect the necessary data and integrate it as unified data, but now, because a wide variety of data is all collected together in the ship data center, and is provided through a web API that can generate a specialized data format for each business, they no longer need to prepare their own system from scratch to make use of big data. In addition, all sorts of data, collected in a variety of formats, can be converted to a variety of easier-to-use formats, such as CSV or JSON, when provided to users.

2. Security that makes it safe to use as an industry-wide platform
Because ship data is collected, stored, and transmitted through the internet, the ship data center features security functionality, such as data virus checking and user authentication.
 

Future Plans

Fujitsu will continue to expand the functionality of the ship data center, such as through the use of AI-based data analysis technology. In addition, Fujitsu is currently working to support the regulations proposed as new international standards² for the handling of ship data as soon as possible.

1. Voyage Data Recorder. A device required for ships travelling through international waters, which records navigational information such as the ship’s position, speed and heading.

2. Regulations proposed as new international standards. ISO/PWI19847 is a new international standard regulation which defines the requirements for a data server on a ship for the purpose of sharing voyage, machinery and other maritime data in temporal sequence. ISO/PWI19848 is a data standard for ship machinery and equipment, proposed as a new international standard regulation in parallel with ISO/PWI19847, to standardize all types of data exchanged between ship-mounted devices or systems, and improve the connection-accessibility between devices and systems.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IMN's Provider Forum On Data Centers & Cloud Services Infrastructure Set For June

IMN’s Provider Forum On Data Centers & Cloud Services Infrastructure will be held June 9-10 at the Mandarin Oriental, Washington D.C.

Executives from Netflix, Facebook, Pinterest, Google, DuPont Fabros Technology, Oracle, Amazon and Geico are just some of those already confirmed to attend along with the former CIO of the Defense Information Systems Agency and the former CTO of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Focusing on the critical business issues that C-level executives face, attendees include enterprise end-users; public/private data centers; colocation, managed, and cloud service providers; and investors in the industry.

Issues addressed include The Future of Federal Procurement of Federal Data Center Infrastructure and Cloud Services; Edge Data Centers: Pushing the Boundaries into Non-Core Markets; Positioning for Competitive Advantage Within an Evolving Data Center/Cloud Environment; and Case Studies in Reducing Operating Costs.

Reserve your place by this Friday, May 13th, and save $200 with the early bird rate!

Register online http://bit.ly/1J9zfxq or contact Andy Melvin at amelvin@imn.org or (212) 901-0542.

Complimentary passes are available for qualified data center tenants (corporate enterprise users). The complimentary pass is limited to those corporate end-users who are exclusively data center tenants. Data center facility owners, colocation companies, web hosts and suppliers of services to data centers are not eligible. Please contact Oscar Salazar at oscar.salazar@imn.org to see if you qualify. All requests are subject to final IMN approval.
 

Source: CloudStrategyMag

ABB And TSO Logic Partner

ABB Inc. and TSO Logic have announced a new business alliance that will provide their joint clients with an in-depth view of data center facility infrastructure along with the physical and virtual compute that is running inside. The combined solution delivers critical insight necessary to better manage cloud infrastructure, such as interfacing with cloud delivery platforms, for improved capacity planning and deeper efficiency gains across the data center.

As the data center modernizes, the line of segmentation between compute, cloud and facility infrastructure has begun to dissolve. Professionals both inside and outside of data center operations are realizing that a holistic view of the data center is required to serve their business in the most cost effective manner, while also maintaining the strict levels of service agreements. The alliance between ABB and TSO Logic will assimilate real-time or near real-time data from across the various silos of data center operations to provide unparalleled efficiency gains with compute, cloud and facility infrastructure.  

 “For years the industry has been looking at the data center whitespace separately from the physical infrastructure that supports it,” explained Rich Ungar, ABB’s North America business manager for data center automation. “On top of that, cloud analytics have only recently entered the picture at all. With the TSO Logic platform, we now have combined analytics about what the physical and virtual infrastructure is doing. By using our two platforms we are providing an unprecedented level of insight and automation enabling more agile and efficient data center operations,” he added.

With the combined goal of delivering the most reliable, efficient and sustainable data center operations, ABB and TSO Logic can identify and resolve issues before they become bigger, costlier problems. For example, ABB Decathlon for Data Centers can identify critical events within a specific zone of the data center, such as a power threshold breech or hot spot. By layering this data with TSO Logic’s actionable analytics platform, it can quickly identify the applications and compute running inside that specific zone, along with proactive recommendations or automated processes to migrate workloads to a safer location. The key benefit with this partnership is bridging the gaps between what’s happening in the physical data center and connecting it with the applications and IT running inside.  

“Successfully delivering a reliable and efficient data center requires detailed analytics on how the facility and compute work together. You can’t just have a physical view, and you can’t just have an application view”, said Aaron Rallo, chief executive officer at TSO Logic. “With our partnership with ABB, customers can now quickly capture and analyze tens of thousands of data points from across the entire data center. With this robust view, the operation of data centers will be closely aligned with the applications and workloads that the facilities are ultimately designed to support,” Rallo added.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Invenias Appoints Jim Duddy As VP Americas

Invenias has announced today that it has appointed Jim Duddy to head up its operations in the Americas. As VP Americas, Duddy will be responsible for ensuring that the company continues its impressive growth trajectory in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, and growing the Invenias team located on both the East and West Coasts.

Duddy has over two decades of experience in building high performing sales teams capable of transforming market growth and share. He brings with him six years’ experience of working at LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network. Prior to joining Invenias, Duddy worked with several early-stage companies in various sales-leadership roles. Most recently he was the VP of Sales for Pittsburgh-based start-up Nowait, a technology platform that helps eliminate the wait at busy restaurants.

Duddy has also worked at Jibe, a recruitment-marketing platform designed to transform the client and candidate experience. He started his career at Allegis Group, the largest privately held staffing company in the US. He will report directly into David Grundy, CEO and co-founder, of Invenias.

“What attracted to me to the role at Invenias was the company’s mindset of continuous innovation – it’s always looking to strive forward, ensuring that its platform remains one step ahead of the competition. But perhaps most importantly it does all of this by collaborating with its customers. The Invenias platform solves real customer problems because that’s the company’s starting point. It’s a unique and refreshing approach that’s really resonating within the market place and is the cornerstone of our growth. My remit is to build on that good work and help take the company to the next stage,” said Duddy.

Duddy’s appointment comes after Invenias recently announced a further $2.8 million in funding to be invested in the company’s infrastructure, scaling its core platform and supporting aggressive growth within the US market.

“Jim’s appointment underlines how serious we are about growing Invenias across the Americas. We see a massive opportunity for our platform within the region and Jim has the skills, focus and energy to help us realize our vision. His track record in being able to bring together people, technology, market knowledge and best practices means that in all his previous roles he’s been able to make a significant, positive impact on company performance. Without question I believe he has all the attributes to help Invenias sustain its rapid growth,” said David Grundy, CEO, Invenias.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

LockPath Joins Cloud Security Alliance

LockPath® has announced that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

LockPath’s Keylight® GRC Platform is used to manage IT and enterprise risk and demonstrate regulatory compliance. With its fully integrated suite of applications designed to manage all facets of GRC programs, including compliance frameworks, risk assessments and control libraries, Keylight brings order to information governance, risk management and IT security.

“LockPath offers a comprehensive approach to GRC in the cloud,” said Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA. “We look forward to the company’s contributions to our initiatives and research, as we continue on CSA’s mission to promote secure computing, both in and by leveraging the cloud.”

LockPath will work with CSA to provide the Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), a controls framework that gives detailed understanding of security concepts and principles. The CCM is designed to guide cloud vendors and to assist prospective cloud customers in assessing the overall security risk of a cloud provider. The CCM is based on industry security standards, regulations, and controls frameworks, such as the ISO 27001/27002, ISACA COBIT, PCI, NIST, Jericho Forum and NERC CIP. As a framework, the CSA CCM provides organizations with the structure, detail and clarity required for tailoring information security to the cloud industry.

LockPath will also provide CSA’s Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ), which was launched to perform research, create tools and create industry partnerships to enable cloud computing assessments. This initiative is focused on providing industry best practices for documenting security controls in IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings, providing security control transparency.

“As one of the industry’s most respected organizations, the Cloud Security Alliance is making strides in establishing and promoting best practices for security in cloud computing,” said Chris Caldwell, LockPath CEO and founder. “LockPath is proud to collaborate with the CSA on developing cloud security best practices to further the cloud computing industry.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Unisys Releases Enhanced Enterprise Cloud Platform

Unisys Corporation has announced that it has added new consulting and advisory services to its suite of service management offerings. The new services better enable its clients to deploy and manage the popular ServiceNow® enterprise cloud as the linchpin in automated, analytics-backed solutions that enable delivery of new business and IT services and serve as drivers of digital-business transformation.

The new Unisys services — available in any combination relevant to the client’s requirements — include:

• Launch – Unisys installs and configures the ServiceNow enterprise cloud platform, creates a service catalog and dynamic end-user portal for service access, transfers operational data, trains end users on new features and functionality, and prepares the support organization for the solution going live; 
• Optimization –  Unisys formally reviews and benchmarks the maturity of the client’s current  delivery and support processes, as well as the technical implementation of the current service-management platform, to drive a “maturity jump” from reactive help desk to proactive service desk, improve service desk productivity and streamline team resources;
• Management – Using the ServiceNow ServiceWatch suite for dynamic discovery and mapping of the relationships among IT components for specific business services, Unisys rationalizes the client’s current investments and creates a software-defined support framework to manage new digital services and related cloud-based infrastructure;
• Integration – Unisys accelerates  enterprise-wide connectivity between the ServiceNow platform and additional systems through either standard application program interfaces (APIs) or Unisys’ custom enterprise messaging bus; and
• Analysis – Unisys sets up real time collection of service delivery and usage data for dashboards and reports that help streamline operational efficiency.
•  

These new services complement the previously announced Unisys platform management service for ServiceNow, a subscription-based offering in which Unisys takes on the management and maintenance of an organization’s service-management environment to streamline and simplify operations.

“Service management solutions are a key enabler for digital business because they aggregate and integrate key elements – service catalog, data analytics, delivery channels and more — for successful deployment and management of a digital business model,” said Paul Gleeson, vice president, service integration and management, Unisys. “In our new services Unisys applies the expertise in consulting, management, analytics and cloud implementation that we have gained in hundreds of engagements to extend the value of the powerful ServiceNow platform for our clients. Our solutions enable organizations to integrate and manage IT assets from mobile to cloud so they can deliver increasingly automated services to their workers quickly and cost-efficiently.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: IT Fighting The Good Fight

SolarWinds has released the findings of a new survey that highlights significant improvements in IT security preparedness and effectiveness, including steps the most successful IT departments have taken to improve their security posture, but also demonstrates that the threat and consequences of security breaches remain.

“The most surprising finding of the survey is just how many organizations are less vulnerable today than they were a year ago, and, on a related note, how many have implemented security technologies and better security training,” said Mav Turner, director, business strategy, SolarWinds. “While this is a sign the industry is trending in the right direction, it’s important for IT professionals to never get too confident in their organizations’ security posture, which could potentially result in overestimating one’s defenses. After all, the findings also illustrate how high the stakes are — while less than one-third of organizations experienced a security breach in 2015, of those, almost 72% store potentially sensitive customer data.”

Fielded between December 2015 and March 2016 in conjunction with Penton Research, the survey yielded responses from 221 IT practitioners, managers, directors and executives in North America from small, midsize and enterprise companies.

“Given the heightened international media attention on IT security breaches, it was a pleasant surprise to see that 55% of respondents did not experience any security breaches in 2015, and only 24% believe a security breach is likely in 2016,” said Dr. Kristin Letourneau, director of research at Penton. “The survey data seems to reflect a shifting focus from fear of cyberattack, to the implementation, maintenance and refinement of established and effective security systems.”

Key Findings

While challenges to improving IT security remain, there is a trend towards better security preparedness and effectiveness.

More than half (55%) of IT professionals surveyed said their organizations did not experience any security breaches in 2015, compared to 29% who did.

Fifty percent said their organizations are less vulnerable now than they were a year ago, compared to 12% who said they are more vulnerable. Furthermore:

o   Nearly one-third (30%) said the number of IT security incidents their organizations experienced decreased in 2015 vs. one-fifth (20%) who said they increased.

o   More than one-third (36%) said their time to respond to a threat decreased in 2015 vs. roughly a quarter (28%) who said it increased.

·        Approximately half or more said it typically takes mere minutes for their organizations to detect the following threats:

o   SQL injection attacks (47%)

o   Exploitation of known vulnerabilities (50%)

o   Misuse/abuse of credentials (47%)

o   Rogue network device (52%)

o   Security policy violations (47%)

Organizations whose security posture improved over the past year found success by implementing a handful of vital security technologies and best practices.

Among those who said their organizations are now less vulnerable than they were a year ago, the top five reasons reported were:

• Adoption of intrusion detection and prevention systems
• Introduction or expanded the use of data encryption
• Improved patch management
• Implementation of log analysis, such as security information and event management (SIEM) tools
• Improved or increased security training for company personnel

Endpoint security software topped the list of the most important technologies or practices for ensuring IT security, with 83% identifying it as critical or very important, followed by patch management software (75%) and identity and access management tools (71%) to round out the top three.

More than half also identified configuration management software (60%) and SIEM software (54%) as critical or very important to ensuring IT security.

Despite these positive developments, IT departments must still be vigilant against the threat and consequences of security breaches.

Of those whose organizations experienced a security breach in 2015, 52% said the breaches were of medium to major severity.

Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the organizations breached in 2015 store customer data, with more than one-third (36%) of those storing data on at least 100,000 customers.

While just a quarter (24%) expect their organizations to suffer from a security breach in 2016, three-fourths (75%) of them store customer data, including 45% that store customer social security numbers.

The increasing sophistication of attacks is the number one factor most commonly thought to make an organization more vulnerable (28%).

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Internap Joins The Equinix Channel Partner Program and Cloud Exchange

Equinix, Inc. has announced that  Internap Corporation has joined the Equinix Channel Partner Program as well as the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ to expand its global reach and provide high-performance connectivity to its portfolio of cloud services.  As part of this partnership, Internap will be offering its China Performance IPTM solution via Equinix data centers in Hong Kong.  China Performance IP leverages Internap’s patented Managed Internet Route OptimizerTM (MIRO) technology to identify the fastest route into China across multiple carriers. By offering this solution via Platform Equinix, Internap is able to deliver latency improvements of 2-10X over traditional IP.

With more than 688 million Internet users (according to a China Internet Development Statistics report), China has more than double the amount of users than the United States.  Companies doing business in this burgeoning region face a significant problem in ensuring how to deliver applications to this vast audience in a high-performing, low-latency manner.  Specifically, performance-sensitive applications — including those common to e-commerce, ad tech and financial services industries — can face numerous technological hurdles. Without a direct connection into mainland China, latency issues will arise.  By partnering with Equinix, Internap addresses these issues and provides its customers a low-latency solution via direct connection to multiple Chinese network service providers.

By providing direct, route-optimized connection between Hong Kong and China, Equinix and Internap enable enterprises to gain low latency access to mainland China’s fast-growing markets, removing the complexity, cost and time required to set up operations on the mainland or engage directly with China’s Internet providers. Latency improvements of 2X over Internap’s traditional Hong Kong IP offering is typical, and some mainland China destinations experience latency improvements of up to 10X.

A long-term customer of Equinix, Internap will now be joining the Equinix Channel Partner Program as a Gold Reseller. As part of this arrangement, Internap will leverage Equinix’s global platform to help its enterprise clients quickly and confidently deploy multi-site IT solutions, build cloud infrastructure, and expand into new markets. Internap will deliver best-in-class colocation and cloud solutions across Equinix’s 40 markets in 15 countries. And via the Equinix Cloud Exchange, Internap can offer its customers direct access to its cloud services, enabling multi- and hybrid-cloud deployments.

Source: CloudStrategyMag