Examining the Cloud – Private, Public, Hybrid
As Google and Amazon race to the price leadership bottom in the grab-customers-at-all-cost push, one wonders if a “Cloud Bubble” isn’t forming. Over the past year, both Amazon and Google have announced price drops in excess of 50% for select services in an attempt to capture cloud share. Microsoft, not be outdone, has announced a … Continue reading Cloud Bubble? – Defining the burst!
To shamelessly hack the phrase “it’s the economy stupid”, most hardware vendors don’t get it. It’s not about your spinning disk, your compute density, or your software defined everything. It’s not even about your solutions; especially when those solutions highlight your hardware. It’s about how you can enable customers application. CXO’s don’t care about … Continue reading IT Marketing – Duh, It’s The Applications Stupid
Most progressive CIO’s want out of the IT market, at least the IT market as we have known it for the past few decades. CIO’s desire the autonomous data center; a data center that effectively operates without the constant supervision of storage managers, network managers, database managers, and outlook managers. They want what the public … Continue reading The Autonomous Data Center – CIO’s End Goal
Many of you are aware of Gartner’s Hype Cycle and its relevance to technology trends. I’ve been speaking with analyst, researchers, and customers trying to understand where private cloud should be positioned. After a lull in private cloud development in 2014, we’re seeing the potential beginnings of the “Slope of Enlightenment” for 2015. For reference, … Continue reading Private Cloud – Entering the “Slope of Enlightenment”?
In building your private cloud, there are many trade-offs and determinants that must be considered. In working with customers, I’ve identified the main five that go into any companies decision criteria: Agility, Efficiency, Standards, Governance, and Security. Agility – Key to all decisions is “how do I create agility for the organization”. How empowered do … Continue reading Private Cloud Levers
Private Cloud OS – Fundamental Shift? In speaking with a number of customers lately about their intention on Private Cloud OS, the beginning of a fundamental shift may be occurring. Customers are considering moving away from VMware, moving to either Microsoft or OpenStack for their cloud OS. The resounding theme is either based around a … Continue reading Private Cloud OS – Fundamental Shift?
Trend: The momentum generated by Cloud, and more specifically OpenStack, has gained the interest of IT leadership due to the premise of being built on an open standards platform and the promise of significantly reduced licensing fees in the data center. OpenStack nomenclature however can be confusing to the uninitiated and downright a second … Continue reading OpenStack for the CXO
Cloud expansion is being driven not by IT, but by everyone but IT. Gartner predicts that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. Therefore, in looking at how to speak Cloud, it’s important to recognize that you have three very different and distinct customer segments to communicate with (and sell to): Organizational … Continue reading Segmenting the Enterprise Cloud User
In the quest to build a private cloud, it’s important to note how the individual parts fit. Designed well, and you’ve created an automated, cloud optimized data center allowing the enterprise to respond to the dynamic pace of the changing business landscape. Designed poorly, and you’ve added another layer of data center controls further emphasizing … Continue reading Designing the Private Cloud – Top Down or Bottom Up
I recently sat through a Gartner presentation “Automation: The Linchpin for Cloud and Data Centers” where I believe they hit upon something profound. “Future Data Centers are built for Change, Not Built to Last”. I’ve brought this up with a few large enterprise business leaders and positioned it in this way; if there was a … Continue reading Future Data Centers are Built for Change, Not Built to Last – Gartner
Enterprise Cloud 