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Posts Tagged ‘Cloud’

Millions of new jobs to be created in the cloud, study finds

March 6th, 2012

Businesses stand to save more than US$1-trillion per year by outsourcing their IT to remote “cloud” computing providers by 2015, says a Microsoft Corp. study released Monday, allowing them to spend more on new hires.

“Efficiencies gained from cloud are applied to innovation broadly (not just IT), such as hiring more sales, finance, production, marketing people and more,” reads an excerpt from the study, conducted by International Data Corp. on behalf of the world’s largest software firm.

“In this way, cloud computing differs from traditional outsourcing.”

Nearly 14 million new jobs will be created around the world by 2015 as a result of growing cloud computing adoption, the study found. Canada in particular can look forward to cutting itself a very large slice of that economic pie.

Canadian businesses have been adopting cloud computing services at a rapidly accelerating rate in recent years and the IDC data found North America at large was leading the world in cloud adoption rates. Nearly 36,000 new jobs will be created in Canada as a result of could computing by the end of this year, the study said.

By the end of 2015, Microsoft expects that figure to double beyond 70,000.

Projected levels of IT spending, relative degrees of automation and workforce size were among the factors IDC used to determine its results. The researchers created a sophisticated economic impact model to determine “a little money spent up front to reach for the cloud leads to impressive returns down the line.”

So as the debate over widespread cloud adoption rages on, it appears the pro-cloud cost-savings argument may soon have millions of new supporters.

Source:http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Millions+jobs+created+cloud+study+finds/6252999/story.html

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Xerox Launches IAAS Cloud for Power Systems, Intel Servers

February 28th, 2012

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Xerox is the latest company to roll out an infrastructure as a service (IAAS) cloud offering that includes support for IBM i workloads. Unveiled last month, Xerox Cloud Services enables small and midsized businesses to run their IBM i, AIX, Windows, and Linux applications on servers owned and managed by Xerox and its IT services arm, formerly called ACS. The $21 billion IT services and printing giant is also allowing partners to white label the cloud offering to their own clients.

Most IBM i professionals know Xerox as a printer manufacturer, but the company has a much broader array of offerings today thanks to its $6.5 billion acquisition of Dallas, Texas-based Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) in February 2010. Founded in 1998, ACS was a big provider of business process outsourcing (BPO) across several major industries, and as such it had developed expertise in managing the big servers that Fortune 500 companies have traditionally used to run their businesses, including IBM iron like AS/400s, RS/6000s, System/390s, as well as larger servers from Hewlett-Packard, the former Sun Microsystems, and others. With around 3,000 AIX images, more than 50,000 MIPS of mainframe capacity, and around 400 IBM i LPARs under its management, ACS has plenty of experience in IBM environments.

Now Xerox is tapping into ACS’ big server expertise and its multiple North American data centers to launch Xerox Cloud Services. The new cloud offering differs from ACS’ traditional BPO model in the typical way that clouds differ from outsourcing. That is, cloud customers can easily spin up new IBM i, Windows, AIX, or Linux images, and pay by the month, as opposed to the longer, multi-year contracts that are typical in the BPO world.

“It provides more flexibility,” Rob Schilperoort, vice president of product management for Xerox Cloud services, tells IT Jungle. “They can turn up and turn down capacity as they need it, when they need it, and adjust the capacity to their business needs. Customers pay for the use of that equipment as they need it, and they can also pay us to do the operating system management and the application and data management, but those are optional items.”

Xerox is hosting its cloud hardware in six data centers, with a seventh to come online soon. The company currently has two pairs of Power Systems 770s, with plans for another pair soon, which will host the IBM i and AIX environments. The Intel cloud runs on Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System Xeon-based blade servers. The company is also ramping up HP Superdome capacity on its infrastructure cloud, and is exploring offering IBM mainframe capacity, Schilperoort says.

Xerox’s midrange customers (i.e., those running IBM i, AIX, and HP-UX) will pay primarily by the amount of RAM they are running on Xerox’s cloud every month, starting with a minimum of 4 GB of RAM up to 2 TB; disk-based storage for customer application data (above and beyond what the OS needs) is charged at a standard industry rate, Schilperoort says. This means that customers can run as many IBM i LPARs or AIX images as they want across their memory allocation, and thanks to IBM’s dynamic virtual machine management, they can move resources around as they please. Xerox did not disclose pricing, but confirmed that customers will pay more for IBM i than AIX environments. Intel environments, which are priced a different way, will obviously be even less.

Xerox has tried to make signing up for its cloud as easy as possible. “If you’re a customer and you need a 2 TB AIX image for a month, you go to our website, say you want 2 TB of AIX, get a quote, hit the ‘buy it’ button, and you’ve got 2 TB of AIX for a month,” Schilperoort says. “That’s about as flexible as it gets. And at the end of the month, you turn it off. You get billed for that period and nothing more.”

The cloud offering has been available as a “soft launch” since last year, and Xerox already has customers who have made the jump from traditional outsourcing. On the midrange side of things, AIX is proving to be quite a bit more popular than IBM i at this point, which is a bit puzzling to Schilperoort, whose first job coming out of college was working on System/36s.

“I thought there would be more interest in that environment,” he says. “It’s not always easy to find resources to manage those [IBM i] environments, and the capital outlay is pretty expensive. And it’s of course a great way for customers to contain their costs and to drive competitiveness.”

Xerox is currently ramping up its marketing and advertising efforts, and is ready to stack its midrange cloud up against the plain-vanilla cloud providers who only do Windows or Linux. “We see a lot of cloud providers do Intel only, and we think there’s a demand for more mature or more robust systems to be consumed in that same model,” Schilperoort says.

The Xerox Cloud Service includes backup and recovery–and high availability for those who need it. Later this year the company plans to flesh the program out with more application-specific functions. And owing to Xerox’s history in the printer world, there will likely be tie-ins to the company’s bureau- and cloud-printing services, as well as a unique offering called Mobile Print.

Resellers and system integrators who service the IT needs of SMBs in certain geographies and industries will also have a role to play in the Xerox Cloud Service. “We are offering those local or industry providers the capability to white label our cloud portal and resell our services,” Schilperoort. “So maybe a JD Edwards application expert can sell our iSeries cloud services it with their own label.”

With the launch of Xerox Cloud Services, the company joins a fairly exclusive club of IT firms who provide IBM i cloud services. In fact, the list is so short it can be listed right here: Datanational, First National Technology Solutions, Logicalis, Mainline Information Systems, mindSHIFT Technologies, and NSPI.

IBM has made it a point to not compete with its partners who provide IBM i cloud services to its IBM i customers. In lieu of some kind of IBM i cloud program from IBM (or any kind of cloud program for IBM i, really), the entry of a large and trusted firm like Xerox into the ranks of IBM i cloud providers should help solidify and stabilize the marketplace–and maybe even jostle a few CFOs at IBM i shops into doing a cost-benefit analysis to see if a move to the cloud makes sense.

Source:http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh022712-story02.html

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Tags: Cloud Intel Xerox

Latisys Rolls Out Cloud Services to Channel

February 22nd, 2012

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IT outsourcing company Latisys is set to launch its cloud services, and with a rebranded channel initiative, Pathways Partner Program.

The company’s new cloud services will be commercially available April 2, but will debut at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 26-29, in Las Vegas, along with the new channel program.

Latisys’ cloud services are the newest addition to the company’s IT outsourcing services continuum, which starts with colocation, managed services (e.g., load balancing, firewall, security, storage, etc.), managed hosting and ends with infrastructure-as-a-service.

Mark Mercado, director of the partner program, said the portfolio enables Latisys to engage customers at multiple levels from colo to cloud, including hybrid offers where some assets are dedicated, some are virtualized and some are in the cloud. The Pathways Partner moniker is emblematic of Latisys’ approach to IT outsourcing, Mercado said. “It’s not about selling colo or cloud,” he said. “It’s about empowering partners to take a solutions focus.”

While many other colo providers offer cloud services, what makes Latisys unique is that it actually conforms to the definition of a cloud service, said Jonathan Sharp, Latisys’ vice president of marketing. That means it’s provisioned on-demand, it’s elastic (it can be spun up or down), it’s pay-as-you-go — all through self-service. But, he added, its unlike a public cloud offer with these qualities in that it’s private (members only) and includes the security and performance businesses require for production environments.

In addition, the service offers three levels of QoS assigned to different resource pools so that customers can choose the level required for each application. Premium, for example, is always reserved and available.

Mercado and Sharp are evangelizing an integrated approach to IT outsourcing, including cloud, that they think will resonate with the channel “The idea of an end-to-end-solution is critical for [partners],” Sharp said. “Our ability to help them check multiple boxes without engaging another vendor is a win-win.”

Latisys’ channel program started in 2009 — about the same time the company rebranded from Managed Data Holdings. Mercado said the program was operated off the radar, selectively recruiting partners that were “ahead of the curve” in moving from a transaction-based to solutions-based model. Presently, it supports 75 partners — about a third telecom agents and the rest systems integrators and IT VARs.

After a few years working the kinks out, Latisys is prepared for a more public recruitment effort. It has invested in three additional channel managers to support agents on a regional basis — West, East and Midwest.

The program is built around channel integration with the direct sales team. Mercado said the company is behind the “sell with” model, providing the same pre- and post-sales support to direct and indirect. In addition, it requires partners to register opportunities to avoid conflict with other partners.

Partners can opt to be referral partners and receive a one-time payment equal to a percentage of the contract value. To earn recurring payments, partners must dedicate personnel to selling Latisys resources, become certified and engage in quarterly planning.

Source:http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/news/2012/02/latisys-rolls-out-cloud-services-to-channel.aspx

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Dell Builds on Cloud Plan with Washington Data Center

February 17th, 2012

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Tech giant Dell recently unveiled its latest data center in Quincy, Washington.

Offering redundant network connectivity, the facility is set to provide cloud solutions to the company’s North American customers. In addition to that, IT outsourcing will also be provided for.

Discussing the matter in a press release, Dell Services executive director Partrick Mooney said his company was “proud to be listed as one of the top Green IT companies in the world.”

“Our efforts to optimize the Power Usage Effectiveness at our Western Technology Center appeals to customers who want to consider the impact to the environment when configuring their IT solutions and to our environmentally conscious team members who participate in green initiatives across Dell,” Mooney continued.

Specific services of the facility include data storage, disaster recovery, private and hybrid clouds, enhanced security and management.

According to a report from Data Center Knowledge, the data center itself encompasses 40 thousand square feet which is just part of the project’s first phase. Dell says the facility offers “backup-up emergency power generation” and relies on an “uninterruptable power supply.”

The data center’s opening follows an April 2011 announcement by the company in which Dell revealed that it would be investing $1 billion towards tech solutions.

Included among the company’s plans was the construction of twenty two Global Solution Centers throughout 2011 and 2012. At the time, Dell advertised the initiative as offering virtualization and data management at affordable rates.

Washington State has proven a popular market for the construction of data centers by top companies. Among others forming a data center presence in the Quincy area are tech giants Microsoft and Yahoo!.

In the past, the state has offered data center tax incentives in hopes of attracting businesses to the area. The last initiative passed by the state’s legislature expired at the end of June 2011. For more information regarding Dell’s new data center, view a press release by the company here (content.dell.com).

Source:http://www.thehostingnews.com/dell-builds-on-cloud-plan-with-washington-data-center-23092.html

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Moves to the Cloud Can Spark Turf Wars

February 13th, 2012

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The decision to migrate company information-technology functions to the cloud or elsewhere is usually broken down as a set of specific cost-benefit calculations. However complicated the weighing of the startup savings and the longer-term returns involved in outsourcing IT, it at least appears to be a rational process.

But for sure, turf battles and human egos also enter the picture. And they receive the focus in a study by Subrata Chakrabarty of the University of Nebraska and Dwayne Whitten of Texas A&M, recently revised.

For their research they break company executives into two camps: On the one hand are IT executives like the CIO and head of IT; and often opposing them, “business executives” – aka CEOs, CFOs and COOs.

“Though business executives tend to attribute success to their own personal qualities, they tend to attribute failure to other causes,” they write in their paper, published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. “Under pressure due to their firm’s poor performance, business executives often blame IT executives by labeling in-house IT as a cost burden.”

They go on to argue: “A firm’s poor performance makes its business executives insecure. This fuels power politics, whereby the CFO and COO ally with the CEO and defend their grouping.”

But once the decision to outsource has been taken, the companies in which the business executives triumph over IT, in terms of decision-making power, were found to get the lowest performance from their outsourced systems.

Of the 163 firms studied, only 26.7% of those where IT had been completely sidetracked reported having outsourced product quality above the mean. Companies where power is shared scored 63.5% on this basis, while those where the business executives had delegated all power to IT reported superior outsourcing results 70.6% of the time.

“When it comes to the ‘outsourcing of IT work, the business executives might find reasons to justify increasing their own power and reducing the power of IT executives, even though this can ultimately be detrimental to the outsourcing activity,” Chakrabarty and Whitten write.

This power play may also prove detrimental to the business plan of a financially troubled company. Facing the gun, business executives shy away from the “tougher route of modifying the external environment (such as by developing new customers or a new market), and instead prefer the easier route of modifying the organization’s internal structure and decision-making roles.”

Source:http://www.cfoworld.com/collaborationteaming/31389/when-moving-cloud-sparks-turf-wars

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Outsourcing the IT Department to the Cloud: Does It Make Sense for SMBs?

February 1st, 2012

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Cloud computing–it’s been the buzzword around technology markets of all types for the past several years and is finally starting to deliver on promises made. In many ways a more efficient reworking of the centralized data concept, cloud computing promises more for less by allowing a small or midsize business (SMB) to outsource any part of or all of their IT department. But while “as-a-service” options all offer greater ease of use and supposedly lower costs, does letting a cloud provider take full IT control really make sense?
The Great IT Debate
For SMBs, the cloud represents two things: lower cost and improved agility. Many businesses love the idea of having no in-house servers, which should cut power costs and end the need for upgrades over time. In addition, the cloud’s promise to deliver almost any app and run on multiple operating systems makes many SMBs eager to buy in. Limited patching and downtime and always-on access sounds great to most business owners.
In a recent ZDNet article, Josh Gingold talks about the “great debate” the site is currently running, which centers around the use of cloud computing as an SMB’s only IT department. Arguments on the pro side are that small businesses need little enough IT. The rebuttal is that SMBs shouldn’t shunt all their data elsewhere and should have at least one member on staff to offer advice about cloud strategies and getting best deals from cloud providers.
The Cost/Agility Dichotomy
One of the most significant arguments in favor of the cloud is that it is less expensive than a local server, but some experts maintain that agility is what really sets the technology apart. Detractors say that the cloud can’t be both cost-effective and agile, and therefore isn’t the best option for enterprise-level business, much less SMBs. NetworkWorld recently examined this dichotomy, and made the case that cost and agility can, in fact, coexist in cloud computing.
The analogy used by the NetworkWorld piece is that of automation: Cloud computing essentially comprises stacks of virtualized servers with greater computer control over a larger data area. And that automation not only lowers costs but increases agility. The first automated assembly lines both reduced the cost per item produced and increased the speed at which a company could produce it; cloud computing may well offer the same benefit. With an increased reliance on pre-defined scripts rather than direct monitoring, the cloud should be able to more quickly complete any tasks a business sets out, and with lower labor costs. The price of off-premise IT should decline.
To IT or Not to IT?
An IT budget is often the most bloated in a company, and reducing it down to a single payment per month has many companies ready to hand over the virtual keys. The market is young, however, with performance standards still in flux, and many SMBs unsure of what to pay for services. Some movement to the cloud makes sense as technology evolves, but putting every mission-critical egg in one basket isn’t necessary yet. While a full IT department may not be required for SMBs, in-house IT knowledge is invaluable in a changing market.

Source:http://www.theinfoboom.com/articles/outsourcing-the-it-department-to-the-cloud-does-it-make-sense-for-smbs/

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