Good morning, everyone!
Google Launches Managed Service For Running Docker-Based Applications On Its Cloud Platform
“Google today announced the alpha launch of Google Container Engine, a new managed service for building and running Docker container-based applications on its cloud platform. Docker is probably the hottest technology in developer circles these days — it’s almost impossible to have a discussion with a developer without it coming up — and Google’s Cloud Platform team has decided to go all in on this technology that makes it easier for developers to run distributed applications. In essence, this new service is a “Cluster-as-a-Service” platform based on Google’s open source Kubernetes project. …And remember, because this new service is officially in alpha, it isn’t feature-complete and the whole infrastructure could melt down at any minute.” Via Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch
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Google does Docker better with Kubernetes-powered Container Engine
“When Google announced its Kubernetes project for orchestrating Docker containers, it was only a matter of time before a cloud provider, Google or otherwise, decided to make it into a feature and charge for it. Sure enough, Microsoft Azure added Kubernetes support in short order. Now, Google has made Kubernetes a full-blown — and perhaps, eventually, for-pay — part of Google Cloud Platform with Google Container Engine. …To top it all off, Google threw in a round of price cuts across the board for Cloud Engine services…” Via Serdar Yegulap, InfoWorld
Google has been laying the foundation of its cloud platform for years
“…Speaking on a panel at the AppDynamics user conference in Las Vegas, Allan Naim, global product lead for the Google Cloud Platform, told the audience about how the company has been laying the groundwork for these new capabilities for years. … so far, Google has been among the fastest cloud providers at turning its infrastructure and internal practices into products. For better or worse, the company has a very distinctive view of the way applications should be built, deployed and managed, and it shows in its cloud.” Via Derrick Harris, GigaOM
Albany Business Review to honor Achievers today
“The Albany Business Review will honor three companies and four business leaders at its Achievers event tonight. … The Business Review has been recognizing businesses and leaders for their achievements since 1983. Each of the honorees has contributed to the growth and transformation of the Capital Region business community. The winners are… Apprenda, a Troy software developer, is the 2014 Most Promising Company…” Via Krystle Morey, Albany Business Review
The Harsh Reality Of The New Enterprise World
“It’s getting harder in the B2B world. That’s the bottom line. …Every SaaS CEO should be rolling their eyes at this point. In the cloud world, most of us have “never seen a million-dollar deal in the flesh” to paraphrase Lorde, let alone a nine-figure one. … And technology isn’t the only industry that’s getting harder. …A lot of the great legacy business models depended on customers getting stuck… In contrast, in the new world, your competitors are only an electronic signature, a DNS change or an API call away…” Via Nick Mehta, TechCrunch
2015 Outlook For Enterprise Cloud Adoption
“…In 2012 and 2013, a lot of the conversations where focused on “what is cloud computing,” “help us build a cloud strategy” or “how do we automate our infrastructure.” As we near the end of 2014 these conversations have changed drastically. Most progressive enterprises are knowledgeable about all of the different cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), have researched the major vendors, have started executing on their cloud strategy, and have become experts at managing the IaaS layer. The focus now appears to be moving up the stack towards the application layer. …I believe that 2015 will be the coming out party for PaaS… 2015 is going to be a make or break year for many enterprise cloud initiatives. Enjoy your time off in this holiday season because the real hard battles start next January. Make sure those IT budgets have some big line items for organizational and process transformation.” Via Mike Kavis, Forbes
IT budgets going up: where’s the money going?
“By all accounts, IT budgets will be the best that can be expected in the year ahead. But, no matter how much more robust, resources always have their limits. So IT executives and planners need to fund projects that deliver the greatest potential for results to their businesses. … Of course, since 75 percent of IT budgets go to routine maintenance, it can be hoped that the additional 13 percent budget boost will go to innovative initiatives that will grow businesses, and just help to keep the lights on. Here are the five top priority areas identified in the survey…” Via Joe McKendrick, ZDNet
IT Losing the Battle for Security in the Cloud
“A majority of IT organizations are kept in the dark when it comes to protecting corporate data in the cloud, putting confidential and sensitive information at risk, according to a Ponemon Institute study commissioned by data security specialist SafeNet. Nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of IT professionals confirmed that cloud computing is very important today, and more than three quarters (78 percent) believe it will be over the next two years. …” Via Nathan Eddy, eWeek
Microsoft partners with Dropbox for online file-sharing
“Microsoft said it teamed up with online file-sharing company Dropbox to allow Office software users to manage and share files through Dropbox’s website and mobile app. Microsoft said the functionality would be included in the next updates to the Office iOS and Android apps, to be rolled out in the next few weeks, and online accessibility would be available in the first half of 2015. Users will be able to edit Office files via Dropbox as well as access Dropbox files via the Office app and share Dropbox links from within Office. …” Via CRN
Dropbox partners up with Microsoft
“Dropbox has announced a new partnership with Microsoft. Ilya Fushman of Dropbox notes that over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are stored in Dropbox today, and the two companies clearly would like to turn that reality into a better experience. As a result, soon users will be able to edit Office files from Dropbox, and access Dropbox files from Office. Here’s a screenshot of Dropbox files in the iPad Office app. … If Microsoft is becoming so open to partnering, maybe it’s intending to have many partnerships like this…” Via Stowe Boyd, GigaOM Research
Dell Bolsters Analytics Software, Taps Microsoft Azure ML
“Dell Software advanced its push into the big data world on Wednesday by integrating formerly separate analytics capabilities and by partnering with Microsoft to use its cloud-based Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) service. Before Wednesday’s announcement at Dell World, the vendor had two separate analytics products. The foundation is Statistica, which was acquired in March along with the vendor Statsoft. Statistica is a lower-cost competitor to the likes of SAS and IBM SPSS. The on-premises software handles data mining, predictive analytics, machine learning, and analytics workflows from data modeling to scoring, to business-rules development and deployment into predictive applications. …” Via Doug Henschen, InformationWeek
Red Hat and Dell join forces in DevOps
“Open-source specialist Red Hat has announced a collaboration with Dell to create a DevOps solutions starter pack. The pack is made up of Red Hat’s OpenShift enterprise, Dell’s PowerEdge R420 server and certified partner services. Certified Red Hat and Dell channel partner Vizuri will be the first to resell the pack. The Wahington, DC-based partner will provide complementary services in order to facilitate customers’ building of DevOps solutions. In today’s announcement, Red Hat said that the combination of the three firms will enable customers who are building hybrid clouds to leverage the “unique expertise and strength” offered by each company. …” Via Jessica Meek, Channelnomics
Red Hat, Dell Tackle PaaS, DevOps with ‘Starter Pack’ Solution
“…One of the partners involved in providing related services is Vizuri, a certified Red Hat and Dell partner. Vizuri is the first reseller to sign on for the devops solution, and it will also provide complementary services to enable its customers to build devops solutions. … According to Red Hat and Dell, as more enterprises turn to devops to streamline IT processes and better enable both developers and administrators, they are combining “trusted hardware and software resources.”…” Via Chris Talbot, Talkin’ Cloud
Coming from Amazon Web Services: Better (but unspecified) Docker support
“…Containers are an emerging alternative to virtualized machines (VMs), and AWS is pretty much founded on the heavy use of VMs, so this could raise eyebrows… Over the past year, Docker support has become table stakes for almost every tech company with a cloud play. And many of those companies, including Microsoft, IBM and Red Hat, have likewise embraced Kubernetes, the Google-backed open-source container management tool. No one really expects Amazon to bless Kubernetes — AWS sees Google Cloud Platform as a direct threat — but it does need to do something about Docker. … This week Google, next week Amazon: let the cloud games continue.” Via Barb Darrow, GigaOM
It’s the Real (Internet of) Things- Software is Drinking The World.
“I recently had a jam-packed week in San Francisco, attending Dreamforce and running IOT at Scale. …the Internet of Things space in the Developer Zone was really solid. Salesforce doesn’t do things by halves, and IoT Pied Piper Reid Carlberg nailed it again. …The example outlined above however does show a world beyond wearables with a very clear business case, bridging traditional enterprise transaction services with image recognition running on a PaaS. If I was Salesforce this is exactly the kind of example I would encourage, bridging as it does the Force.com and Heroku worlds. If you’re a traditional ERP company customer on the other hand, this kind of deployment would be a significant structural challenge.” Via James Governor, Redmonk
Software is entering a new “Golden Age,” say Forrester analysts
“Software is in a “new Golden Age” that’s “cloud based [and] cloud fueled,” said John Rymer, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. His colleague, Dave Bartoletti, Principal Analyst at Forrester, added that current trends in IT are “coming from the customer.” Rymer agreed, adding that now that companies interact with customers through software, they’re pressed to create and deploy software at a more rapid pace than ever before in order to remain competitive…” Via Rachel Schramm, SiliconANGLE
Have a wonderful day!
Yesterday’s Marketwatch
The post Another Day, Another Docker. – Apprenda Marketwatch appeared first on Platform as a Service Magazine.