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I’ll state the obvious:  The last five years have seen incredible changes in IT, including the rise of new cloud operating models and the spread of virtualization into production data centers. A new generation of upstarts has captured the imagination of the IT industry by unleashing new software and service-centric solutions, including private and public clouds, new devices and operating systems, all leading to a larger and grander software-defined IT era.

Now the not so obvious: Software-defined IT is only a stepping stone to a much larger, service-defined IT era, enabled by the rise of hybrid cloud automation.

We are not there yet when it comes to hybrid cloud, despite the plethora of hybrid cloud announcements based on, of all things, virtualization lock-in.  Why?  The notion of migrating a virtual app and its critical services from a rack of x86 servers only to be stranded within yet another set of racks in a public cloud is not a hybrid cloud operating model.  It is simply an early form of cloud migration.

Cloud migration will ultimately evolve into hybrid cloud integration within a true hybrid cloud operating environment.  It isn’t the ability to move a virtual app once from one environment to another that is hybrid cloud, but rather the ability to move physical and virtual apps and services on demand, as needed between environments. Hybrid cloud is all about control for both the enterprise and the service provider.

Migrating VMs from cloud to cloud is a tactical payoff; integrating existing and virtual apps with clouds is a strategic game changer: control with agility.

First Gen Cloud Drawbacks

Virtually all of the cloud operating models in use today involve significant tradeoffs, often with control and security or unplanned downtime risks. >>Read more

Source: http://gregness.wordpress.com/

As 2013 begins, it's a natural time to explore where cloud brokering is headed

Hopefully you watched Forrester's Stefan Ried present his webinar on cloud brokering and the many opportunities for different kinds of companies to exploit this technology. Part of Stefan's conversation included an explanation of the evolution to a unified cloud broker. If you missed it, you can catch up with it here. As 2013 begins, it's a natural time to explore where cloud brokering is headed. A cloud broker is the intersection of infrastructure, software and consultancy. Naturally, technology is a key enabler for a service provider adopting the broker role but it also impacts business models and consultancy. This diagram summarizes concept into the high-level architecture discussed above:

In the blue is a proposed "Unified Cloud Broker Platform." This shows how a cloud broker can take existing applications, SaaS and IaaS, and create customer value and a new cloud portfolio from them. This isn't necessarily a single product but shows the elements needed to offer the component parts that a cloud broker would need in their "stack" to offer compelling cloud offerings to ISVs, SMEs, enterprises and cloud ecosystem partners: >>Read more

Source: Cloud Computing Journal

Over the last four years Archimedius has tracked the evolution of VMware from server virtualization leader to private cloud leader and the rise of Amazon as a public cloud leader.  Earlier in December I predicted the rise of the hybrid cloud in 2012, and later discussed the implications in greater detail in Top Five Cloud Predictions.  In short, I think that hybrid cloud promises to transform the way that enterprises and service providers deliver IT services, and the way that vendors develop and bring to market their products and services.

Over the next five years we will watch IT move from a feudalistic, hardware-bound model to a service and software-driven model, thanks in large part to the transformation of public and private clouds into hybrid clouds.  That will shift enterprise investment into cloud computing and shift tech market valuations from the stable and hardware-enabled to the nimble, service and software-driven. Trillions in market capitalizations are at stake, based on the timing and breadth of this transformation.

VMware as a Tech Leader
One could certainly make the case that this recent transformation started with VMware and the advent of server virtualization, unless you want to go further back to the days when IBM introduced time sharing on mainframes.  In late 2010 I speculated that VMware could be the Next Microsoft (or Netscape).
Yet 2013 promises to be a watershed year for several tech companies, from VMware, Cisco, Juniper, and Amazon to a wide range of service providers who have been traditionally viewed as niche or segment specialists.  Let's start with VMware, who perhaps fueled the march toward software and service-defined IT.

VMware has been architecting itself deeper into the enterprise data center thanks to its powerful server virtualization technology and a series of smart partnerships, acquisitions and internal development strategies that have been paying off consistently since its 2007 IPO.  Early last year VMware acquired SDN(software-defined networking) startup Nicira for more than $1 Billion. The rationale apparently offered by VMware execs to a respected analyst I dined with in November 2012: "engineering expertise." >>Read more

Source: Cloud Computing Journal

A new SkyDrive app for Microsoft's Xbox 360 allows users to upload content to Microsoft's cloud storage service from PCs and mobile devices, and then view it on the game console.

The application allows users to view images, videos and documents on the TV that is connected to the Xbox, Microsoft said in a blog post on Tuesday.

SkyDrive is Microsoft's cloud-based storage service, and it competes with Dropbox, Google's Drive and Apple's iCloud, and a number of other applications and services in an increasingly competitive area.

The SkyDrive app for Xbox 360 also increases the integration between the console and other devices based on Microsoft's operating systems. For example, photos taken with a Windows Phone-based smartphone can pop up on the user's TV automatically, Microsoft said.

The app is compatible with Kinect voice controls and gestures as well as the remote and game controller. The users interface consists of folders for sorting the content and it has four menu options:

photos and videos, all files, shared and settings.

A video demonstrating the app shows a user opening it by saying SkyDrive, and another person sharing a folder of images using a smartphone and also taking a picture that shows up on the TV.

In addition to the Xbox and Windows Phone-based smartphones, SkyDrive also works on Windows desktops and tablets, including ones based on Windows RT. >>Read more

Source: NetworkWorld

IBM has its eyes set on enterprise level end-user cloud services. The IT deployment and consultancy giant has recently sprinkled the essentials to its cloud arsenal with one core intent - to take out similar offerings from Google and Microsoft once and for all. This time over, its a novel cloud-based software suite studded with office productivity applications.

Dubbed the IBM SmartClouds Docs, the compendium provides online environment for collaborative (plus solo) creation, editing, sharing of word, spreadsheet and presentation documents – stuff you’re probably used to getting done via Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365.

The offering sits at a flat rate of $3 per user per month, and comes as an additive module on top of the Big Blue’s (IBM’s alias coined by security analysts) SmartCloud Engage Standard. “We feel like our portfolio in the collaboration space is now very complete,” boasted Ed Brill, director of product line

management for Collaboration Solutions at IBM.

Advanced users of SmartCloud Docs will get to experience a single-click integration with social sharing channels. The social gel-in has primarily been fueled by IBM’s commitment to morph office productivity product model from document-centric to people-centric.

A mobile variant of the product is also in the conceptualization phase. It would be interesting to note which mobile platform IBM would principally target. iOS is going to taste the goodness for sure. Android, again, too big of a market share to ignore. Windows Phone should join the party too. Forgetting something? Big Blue has been in good terms with RIM for quite some time now; the intrinsic availability of SmartCloud synchronization with BlackBerry devices is a clear indicative of the blossoming love story. So, we can safely count BlackBerry devices in as well.

IBM plans of no longer sticking with the SmartCloud Docs as merely being another SaaS platform. Instead, an on-premise version for ventures committed to having the suite run and managed in their private cloud, is in the works. IBM even demonstrated a proof-of-concept for the said private approach by validating their proposed design for a German financial services company. >>Read more

Source: CloudTweaks