Pund-IT Review

IBM: Solving the Cloud + Analytics Equation

IBM’s push into cloud services was sparked by its acquisition of SoftLayer in early 2013, a privately-held cloud and web SP whose 21,000+ corporate clients included a large majority of global S&P 500 companies. Combining its own data centers with SoftLayer’s gave IBM over two dozen hosting facilities worldwide, a number it has steadily grown since then (there are over 40 as of this writing, with more planned for specific overseas markets). The company uses those data centers to deliver numerous public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, including infrastructure-, platform- and software-as a service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS). Not surprisingly, last year IBM was ranked #1 in IDC’s first market research study of enterprise cloud vendors. The survey asked representatives from more than 400 companies with 1000+ employees to rank Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud vendors according to their quality of service/availability, speed of provisioning, simplicity and overall costs. IBM garnered 35% of first place votes, placing it well ahead of competitors, including Amazon, Cisco and Google. How about analytics? Over the past decade, IBM has invested over $25 billion in analytics and big data via acquisitions of key companies, like Cognos, SPSS, Coremetrics, Netezza, StoredIQ and Cloudant. Plus, the company has developed notable related projects, including its Watson Analytics systems and BlueMix development platform, and made continuing investments in analytics-related open source efforts, like Hadoop and Apache Spark. To read the complete article, CLICK HERE NOTE: This column was originally published in the Pund-IT Review. Share this:MoreEmailPrintShare on...

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1995: The Year the Internet Transformed Business

There have been numerous news stories lately considering Amazon’s 20th anniversary, and with good reason. Since its inception in 1995, the company has been a pioneer in online shopping, initiating or driving many of the changes that we take for granted today. Along the way, Amazon has singularly impacted and changed retail organizations from Mom and Pop shops to multi-national corporations. Book sales were certainly the company’s first and highest-profile success, but its ambitions extended far beyond the best seller list. However, Amazon wasn’t the only company in 1995 that leveraged the Internet to disrupt conventional business practices. In fact, two others that launched that year – craigslist.org and eBay – have arguably had as great an effect in altering the way that consumers and businesses regard and use online resources. In essence, 1995 saw all these companies help move the Internet from being a medium for exchanging information to one for exchanging goods and services. To read the complete article, CLICK HERE NOTE: This column was originally published in the Pund-IT Review. Share this:MoreEmailPrintShare on...

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Cisco Announces New IoT System and Solutions

Cisco announced a new IoT (Internet of Things) System which it said is designed to address the complexity of digitization with an infrastructure that is designed to manage large scale systems of diverse endpoints and platforms and the data deluge they create. Cisco noted that to capitalize on the opportunities presented by this wave of digitization, companies and cities are increasingly deploying IoT solutions. However, that process is complex and often involves connecting devices and objects – or converging unrelated networks – at previously unprecedented scales. To read the complete article, CLICK HERE NOTE: This column was originally published in the Pund-IT Review. Share this:MoreEmailPrintShare on...

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Oracle Cloud Backstory: Is Ellison An Asset Or A Liability?

I attended the Oracle Cloud event at their headquarters in Redwood City this week and I found it rather fascinating. This was the first time I’d seen Larry Ellison present in person but I had watched streamed events in the past. Watching him brought to mind three things: One; that the power a company founder wields with a firm of Oracle’s scale is incredible. Two; that top executives can retire in place and become impediments rather than assets. And three; that finding people that have the balls to tell someone like Larry Ellison he needs to bring it up a notch are in short supply (likely because they tend to get shot). To read the complete article, CLICK HERE NOTE: This column was originally published in the Pund-IT Review. Share this:MoreEmailPrintShare on...

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Oracle Expands/Extends its Cloud Portfolio

At a live event, Oracle’s Larry Ellison announced new additions to the company’s Cloud Platform. The 24 new cloud services include, Oracle Database Cloud – Exadata, Oracle Archive Storage Cloud, Oracle Big Data Cloud, Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Mobile Cloud and Oracle Process Cloud. According to the company, the Oracle Cloud Platform helps customers build new applications, extend existing ones, and easily move existing on-premises workloads to the cloud with no application changes. The services are designed to maximize end user experience and productivity; enable developers to manage and analyze data, rapidly develop, test and deploy applications; allow architects to quickly integrate across on-premises and cloud applications; and enable business users to drive rich business insights and enterprise collaboration. To read the complete article, CLICK HERE NOTE: This column was originally published in the Pund-IT Review. Share this:MoreEmailPrintShare on...

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