Monday, July 20, 2015

Video: Building Interconnects to the Big Cloud Providers

The cloud ecosystem is expanding at an astonishing pace and  Tata Communications is right in the middle it, says Mike Galvin, Vice President, Next Gen.

Tata Communications is focusing on the building blocks for hybrid clouds, including direct connectivity via MPLS or Ethernet to the major public cloud providers. The carrier is also enhancing its global IP backbone to make it fit for business with better predictability and reduced latency.

This video interview also highlights Tata's new partnership with Salesforce and existing interconnects with AWS, Microsoft and Google.

See 3-minute video: https://youtu.be/chTg3v09MR8


Tata Communications Provides Interconnect to Salesforce

Tata Communications, which operates one of the most advanced and largest submarine cable networks and a Tier-1 IP network, announced plans to provide direct MPLS and Ethernet connections to Salesforce's cloud CRM solutions.

Through this global partner interconnect agreement, Tata Communications’ IZO Private platform will connect businesses to Salesforce’s Customer Success Platform, giving customers access to a one-stop-shop for end-to-end management that offers exceptional network performance and end-user experience. The carrier said its private network connections will deliver fast provisioning, increased productivity, and better privacy and data protection.

Denzil Samuels, Senior Vice President of Alliances, Salesforce, says, “Companies are transforming the way they connect with customers, partners and employees to thrive in today’s connected world. Tata Communications is accelerating this shift for its customers with the addition of Salesforce to the IZO™ network platform.”

Julie Woods-Moss, CMO and CEO of NextGen Business at Tata Communications, says, “Tata Communications’ partnership with Salesforce represents another milestone around our IZO™ cloud enablement platform. Our recent, independent research confirms that organisations are experiencing benefits they didn’t expect from cloud services and realizing competitive advantages from cloud deployments. We are committed to creating a global ecosystem that harnesses our extensive global network and enables global organisations to meet the needs of their businesses and drive customer success by adopting the cloud confidently and securely.”

Tata Communications' IZO ecosystem currently consists of over 20 network providers covering 34 countries and serving 85% of the world's GDP. It connects four of the largest cloud platforms, including Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and over 50 data centers across the globe.

http://www.tatacommunications.com/izo


OpenStack Marks its Fifth Anniversary

The OpenStack Foundation marks the fifth anniversary of this initiative of open source software for building clouds.

OpenStack was launched in 2010 as a joint project between Rackspace and NASA to orchestrate virtual machines and object storage. It has evolved into dozens of projects tackling a broad range of use cases, from accelerating software development to reducing the cost of big data analytics to helping large telco providers roll out Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and next generation network services. The community of OpenStack supporters has grown to include more than 500 organizations and 30,000 individual members across 166 countries. There have been 4,000 contributors to date producing nearly 4 million lines of code.

“Five years ago, the idea that massively scalable cloud infrastructure should be open and driven by a community of developers and users was a vision hindered by the reality of the engineering hurdles in the way. Today, hundreds of companies rely on OpenStack to deliver a stable core of cloud services to their app developers, surrounded by a vibrant ecosystem for technology innovation. The OpenStack community is powering the software-defined economy,” stated Jonathan Bryce, chief executive officer, OpenStack Foundation.

The next release of the software, codenamed Liberty, will be available on October 15, 2015.

The next OpenStack Summit will be held in Tokyo, Japan, October 27 - 30.

https://www.openstack.org/


IBM Cites $8.7 billion in Annual Cloud Revenue

IBM reported declines in core services, software and hardware businesses, offset somewhat by growth in cloud services, big data analytics and its legacy mainframe business.

For the second-quarter of 2015, IBM reported consolidated net income of $3.4 billion or $3.50 of diluted earnings per share, including operating net losses in discontinued operations related to the Microelectronics business. Second-quarter net income from continuing operations was $3.5 billion compared with $4.3 billion in the second quarter of 2014, a decrease of 17 percent.

"Our results for the first half of 2015 demonstrate that we continue to transform our business to higher value and return value to shareholders. We expanded margins, continued to innovate across our portfolio and delivered strong growth in our strategic imperatives of cloud, analytics and engagement, which are becoming a significant part of our business," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.

Revenues from the company’s strategic imperatives --- cloud, analytics, and engagement --- increased more than 20 percent year-to-date (more than 30 percent adjusting for currency and the divested System x business). Total cloud revenues increased more than 50 percent (more than 70 percent adjusting for currency and the divested System x business) year-to-date, and is $8.7 billion over the last 12 months, adjusted for the divested System x business. The annual run rate for cloud delivered as a service -- a subset of the total cloud revenue -- increased to $4.5 billion from $2.8 billion in the second quarter of 2014. Revenues from business analytics increased more than 10 percent (more than 20 percent adjusting for currency) year-to-date. Revenues from mobile more than quadrupled, and social revenues increased more than 30 percent (more than 40 percent adjusting for currency), both year-to-date.

Global Technology Services segment revenues were down 10 percent (up 1 percent adjusting for currency and the divested System x business) to $8.1 billion. Global Business Services segment revenues were down 12 percent (down 3 percent adjusting for currency) to $4.3 billion.

Revenues from the Software segment were down 10 percent to $5.8 billion (down 3 percent adjusting for currency) compared with the second quarter of 2014. Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Workforce Solutions and Rational products, were $4.0 billion, down 7 percent (flat adjusting for currency) year-to-year. Operating systems revenues of $0.4 billion were down 17 percent (down 9 percent adjusting for currency) year-to-year.

Revenues from the Systems Hardware segment totaled $2.1 billion for the quarter, down 32 percent (up 5 percent adjusting for currency and the impact of the divested System x business) year-to-year. Revenues from z Systems mainframe server products increased 9 percent compared with the year-ago period (up 15 percent adjusting for currency). Total delivery of z Systems computing power, as measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 24 percent. Revenues from Power Systems were down 1 percent compared with the 2014 period (up 5 percent adjusting for currency). Revenues from System Storage decreased 10 percent (down 4 percent adjusting for currency).

Dell Packs 90 TB of 3D NAND SSDs in 2U Array

Dell Storage introduced new Mainstream Read-Intensive (RI) SSDs, based on Triple Level Cell (TLC) 3D NAND technology, boasting up to 24x performance improvement at the same price for capacity as 15K hard disk drives. This enables Dell SC Series storage arrays to pack up to 90 terabytes of raw flash capacity in a 2U shelf -- twice the data density as before.

In terms of pricing, the company said it now can offer Dell Storage SC4020 enterprise-class all-flash solutions for as low as $1.66 (US) per gigabyte street price and as low as 58 cents (US) per gigabyte for typical hybrid flash configurations.

“As the first array vendor to announce support for this latest flash technology, Dell continues to redefine the economics of enterprise storage and tear down cost barriers to flash adoption,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/press-releases/2015-07-20-dell-flash-drive-storage-tchnology

Wind River Joins KDDI R&D Lab Tests

Wind River will participate in a proof-of-concept (PoC) led by KDDI R&D Laboratories for automated operation for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) test beds. The PoC will utilize Wind River Titanium Server as its foundation for demonstrating the deployment of virtual network function. Titanium Server is a carrier grade NFV infrastructure software solution that meets the stringent requirements of the telecom industry.

"Delivering virtualized services at carrier grade levels of reliability and performance is essential as the industry is transitioning to NFV infrastructures,” said Paul Senyshyn, vice president and general manager of networking solutions at Wind River. “Wind River Titanium Server provides a NFV infrastructure that delivers the carrier grade reliability that meets strict telecom requirements and enables service providers to more easily and quickly find NFV success.”

http://www.windriver.com/markets/networking

Open Networking User Group Adds to Board

The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) has added Morgan Stanley, Intuit, and Yahoo to its Board.

Pablo Espinosa, formerly Director of Network Infrastructure at Gap, moves to Intuit as Director of Network Engineering to oversee strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations. Despite Pablo’s new affiliation, Gap will retain a seat on the board, with a new representative to be appointed by Pablo and approved by the ONUG Board.

Meanwhile, Lane Patterson has recently transitioned out of his role as Vice President of Global Network at Symantec into the same role at Yahoo, where he is responsible for overall architecture and DevOps and reports to Yahoo Co-Founder and Chief Yahoo, David Filo.

“We are excited to welcome Intuit and Yahoo to the ONUG Board,” said Nick Lippis, Chairman and Co-Founder of ONUG. “We look forward to expanding our reach and gaining new insight from a wider variety of industry sectors.”

Moreover, the ONUG Board has appointed John Storm, Executive Director within Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Securities division, as its newest member. John Storm joins other IT leaders in overseeing the strategy and direction of ONUG to assist IT executives as they transition toward open cloud infrastructure. In addition to being represented on the ONUG Board, Morgan Stanley will co-host ONUG Fall 2015 with NYU, and a representative from the company will deliver a keynote address at the fall event.

ONUG Fall 2015, hosted by Morgan Stanley and NYU, will be held at the NYU Kimmel Center. The event will begin with ONUG Academy on November 3rd, followed by the two-day ONUG Conference, November 4th and 5th. Early bird registration will run through September 4th.

htttp://www.OpenNetworkingUserGroup.com