Google’s Vint Cerf on Private Clouds v. Public Clouds
The debate about private clouds continue as the traditional heavyweight enterprise software providers make their big and glossy pitches for their vision of a private cloud. So, it may come from Google, but still, it is refreshing to hear the intellectual tone that a scholar like Vint Cerf provides. Cerf is Google’s chief technology evangelist but his reflections give a sound bearing on how private and public clouds do interact. Sponsor He spoke last week at the Google Atmosphere Conference. We came across one of the discussions he had with fellow Google innovators. He repeats what we hear him say a lot. It comes down to interoperability. Private clouds are tools. Google develops tools that are distributed on the Internet. The question is how do clouds interact? It’s a contrast to what we see with Microsoft or Oracle in its quest to sell cloud computing environments into the enterprise. In the meantime Amazon continues its own quest to dispel private cloud computing as a myth, not a reality. In an interview with eWeek , Adam Selipsky, vice president of AWS outlined their views: “….Moreover, Selipsky said what people are calling private clouds come with the following drawbacks, where the customer will: · Still own the capex…and they’re very expensive (big fixed investments) · Not pay for what you use · Not have true elasticity…when groups relinquish their servers, the company still owns the datacenter space and servers…and will also find that managing this supply chain will present a dilemma…will either have to significantly overprovision which is wasteful or become really expert at managing just-in-time supply-chain so there are no long waits for servers…managing a supply chain like this is really hard and takes a lot of effort and refining and keeping the status quo of long time to market is not so appealing either · Still own the headache of managing the undifferentiated heavy lifting” And so, the debate continues. Discuss
Hitachi’s Unified Compute Platform Goes for the Endzone
Yesterday, Hitachi took the wraps off their Unified Computing Platform by introducing its open data center platform. It is aimed at consolidating the enterprise functions of networking, storage, and compute into an orchestration layer. Virtualization is still guiding the evolution of the data center, in this case all the way to the physical form. If you like consolidating your systems into big iron with lots blinking lights, Hitachi has you covered. And if you like open systems that connect to your existing infrastructure, Hitachi believes that playing nice with others is in the domain of unified computing. Sponsor If you’re interested in this idea, check out the video summary of the platform . The company shares us a deeper view of this product line and the problems it is intending to solve. Many of the opportunities targeted address budgets, for example, how to remove operating expense through the orchestration of resources. Orchestration is the Huddle on Third Down Orchestration merges network, system, and storage resources as a single unit to be managed and reported in. An analogy might be found in football. In the huddle, the quarterback might call “the slant 6″ and all eleven members of the team interpret that play and perform their respective jobs. Orchestration, as Hitachi describes it behaves in a similar way. It will respond to plays like “scale up for product launch”. All the members of the team (disk, server, and network) go to their respective places and do the jobs needed. And, if needed, adjust appropriately to the conditions on the field. Hitachi leverages a partnership with Microsoft’s System Management tools to closely align the plan and reality to bring more intelligence into the equation. The Computing Stack is the Team This product is also about abstracting systems through software. The company is betting that the coordination of the tasks of operating systems, storage and networking within a single framework provides a lot of value to the business. Hitachi takes the point of view that it is best to harmonize existing assets though open standards and looks at computing as a utility to be shared in the organization. Some of the features the product contains make it easier for organizations to achieve scale across functions and environments. It is designed to support this modern data center principles: Multi-tenancy Charge back for resources Distributed physical data centers Public cloud resources through open APIs Hitachi Unified Compute Platform looks like an impressive physical device. It brings together resources normally held in separate racks and hosts them in a single location and reduces a lot of the work of wiring up data centers. As we unfold another chapter in computing, Hitachi is leveraging its strength in consolidation to meet the trend of massive growth of data. At a glance, there are a lot of reasons why IT managers might choose unified computing products: cost, ease, agility. Looking out a few years, it is easy to imagine growth in this category overall. Is Hitachi well positioned for aggregation of data center resources with its Unified Computing products? How will EMC, Cisco, IBM, and HP fare in the movement towards unified computing? Photo credit: idovermani Discuss
People on the Move in the Social Business Industry: April 18, 2010
In an effort to recognize the changes in the social media space, I’ve started this post series ( see archives ) to both track and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks: Also, my submission form has changed to a new URL, the former Google form was giving me problems, so please use this one going forward . Lots of movement in the social business category, including a few key hires at firms that get the social business landscape and quite a few submissions continuing to come in on the form. Bruce Tempkin , top blogger at Forrester and Analyst departs Forrester, you can find his blog announcement . I’ve admired Bruce’s commitment and quality of work as a fellow colleague, and wish him luck on his next ventures. He really is one of the Star Analysts out there, be sure to connect with him and clinch his sage advice early before he gets totally booked. Dr Natalie Petouhoff “Dr Nat”, is a former colleague at Forrester covering the customer experience and knows the Social CRM landscape and social support. She’s also moved on, you can find her blog , and you should connect with her as she launches her consulting career. Dion Hinchcliffe joins the Dachis Group, one of the leading consulting firms that gets social business. The Dachis Group is poised to become the next system integrator vendor and consulting firm, and I expect them to give the ‘big’ consulting firms a run for their money as they continue to hire talent, thought leaders, and stay nimble and flexible. Steve Gillmor, famed Techcrunch IT editor (and former colleague of mine at PodTech) j oins Salesforce in the strategy team . This is an extremely smart move for Benioff as Salesforce knows success of the chatter and appxchange platform is to connect with the web startups. Steve is a direct and indirect influencer over the startup ecosystem and this lays a big bridge down for Salesforce to take marketshare in the developer ecosystem. Mona Nomura joins MySpace as a social media marketing manager , her online presence will match with the youthful and active MySpace community, a key hire in the regrowth and build of MySpace. Sanjay Dholakia former CMO at Lithium is now heading up Crowd Factory as the CEO , I’ve worked closely with Sanjay and am looking forward to see the next successes he does in the future. Uwe Hook launches BatesHook focusing on business transformation agency by integrating Social Media initiatives. Maria Ogneva joins Biz360 as Director of Social Media Propel and manage online buzz for Biz360, a social media monitoring and measurement platform. Greg Hollings joins FreshNetworks as Head of Community Management Manages and heads up the community management team at busy social media agency. Glenn Conradt joins CoreMedia as Vice President of North American Marketing, Sales and Operations. Dean McBeth joins Wieden + Kennedy as the Old Spice Community Manager focused on using social media to maximize the positive perception of the brand and the effectiveness of campaigns. Ryan Turner joins ZAAZ as Director, Social Media Lead the social media practice at ZAAZ, part of the WPP network. Brett Goodwin joins MyWebGrocer as Senior Account Director focused on sales. Sabrina Suares joins MyWebGrocer as Director, Eastern Sales Talented Bob Garfield joins Fizz as Consultant in Residence, I look forward to the work he does, find his announcement blog post . Ben Grossman joins Oxford Communications as Interactive Strategist Launch concerted social communications group and serve as interactive strategy lead for digital projects from an integrated standpoint. Ariel Sasso joins DataXu as Marketing Communications Manager Growing DataXu’s reputation and presence with integrated marketing, communications and social media initiatives. Tom Edwards joins Red Urban as VP, Digital Strategy & Emerging Technology Digital & Social Media Strategy How to connect with others (or get a job): Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how you can too: Submit an announcement If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, submit to this form Seeking Social Media Professionals? If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals . Job Resources in the Social Media and Web Industry Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting) Read Write Web keeps announcements flowing at Jobwire , although is broader than just social media jobs Facebook group for community manager group in Facebook Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community Teresa has a few jobs, some around community New Media hire has an extensive job database Social Media Headhunter Social media jobs Jobs in social media Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies Social Media Strategists and Community Managers for 2010 Hiring? Leave a comment If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, please)
Coming Soon: Multi-Tasking on the iPad with Many-Device Apps
Virtualization is a star – at least in the big stage of the iPad. Since the device launched, Citrix Receiver has been one of the top ranked business apps in the store. Chris Fleck, mobility leader on the Citrix team shares this demonstration showing a Citrix Receiver application enabled with four applications running side by side on iPad. He goes further to show the same apps running on a host of other devices. Sponsor Born to Multitask Citrix Receiver uses HDX, the name of the remoting technology Citrix has innovated based on the ICA Protocol (Independent Computing Architecture) the company has been developing on for over 15 years. Fleck tells us that HDX is conceptually similar to RDP/VNC but it includes significant optimizations for WAN performance, Multimedia, and user experience across multiple devices and OS’s. Here is a clip from the demonstration video showing four side-by-side apps running on iPad. Citrix Receiver is able to zoom on in each application to make it full screen, or display all four simultaneously. Many Apps – Many Devices The demonstration continues showing each device in this picture, from Mac to PC, iPhone to Android, all running the same applications. At one point, Fleck goes on to demonstrate how to “flick” multiple applications on the iPhone. This demonstrates one app showing full screen and the four other applications are swipable, like photos in your photo library. This seems like a natural extension of the iPhone and really could be useful for building larger enterprise applications or portals. This demonstration reminded us of one thing, the apps matter. When we see an iPhone application on Android, or Windows 7, it still looks pleasing to navigate. Perhaps there is room in the enterprise for a Apple’s Mobile Human Interface Guidelines . Enterprise designers, maybe it’s your time to build insanely great apps for the enterprise that follow patterns of the iPhone and iPad. Whether new, or old, Citrix Receiver is breathing life into applications and iPad is getting down to business. The company plans to release this capability with its partner SoftwareFX at the Citrix Synergy event next month. Do you think Citrix Receiver become a default way to connect iPad in the enterprise? Discuss
Sonoa Broadens Twitter API Management Service
How do you connect to Twitter and understand its value and performance? That’s part of the challenge for any enterprise considering how to adopt social technologies to connect with customers. This week at Sugarcon we heard a lot about how to manage a social CRM envrionment. Increasingly, companies are turning to API’s for integrating third-party applications like Twitter to better connect and interact with customers. Sponsor Sonoa Systems calls it an API economy with Twitter serving as the most applied API on the planet. To manage API’s, Sonoa offers Apigee , a free self-service for developers working with API’s. This week at the Chirp conference, Sonoa broadened Apigee by providing analytics, monitoring, debugging and testing tools. For example, with API Analytics a customer may monitor usage levels, review usage patterns, see the geo-location and look at performance metrics like response time. The service now also allows users to share messages with other developers to help with troubleshooting and community learning. API management will become a major requirement for the enterprise, especially as more applications integrate into CRM environments. As Paul Greenberg stated in his keynote at Sugarcon, the focus is no longer about controlling the customer contact but interacting with the customer in the fashion they wish to communicate. [Disclosure: SugarCRM paid for a plane ticket for Alex Williams to attend SugarCon in San Francisco.] Discuss