Tag: softlayer

Business · Cloud

Oracle works toward capturing enterprise Cloud IaaS demand

Tim Crawford1 Comment

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The enterprise cloud market is still shows a widely untapped potential. A significant portion of this potential comes from the demand generated by the legacy applications that are sitting in the myriad of corporate data centers. The footprint from these legacy workloads alone is staggering. Start adding in the workloads that sit in secondary data centers that often do not get included in many metrics and one can quickly see the opportunity.

ORACLE STARTS FROM THE GROUND UP

At Tech Field Day’s Cloud Field Day 3, I had the opportunity to meet with the team from Oracle Cloud Infrastructureto discuss their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud portfolio. Oracle is trying to attract the current Oracle customer to their cloud-based offerings. Their offerings range from IaaS up through Software as a Service (SaaS) for their core back-office business applications.

The conversation with the Oracle team was pretty rough as it was hard to determine what, exactly, that they did in the IaaS space. There were a number of buzzwords and concepts thrown around without covering what the Oracle IaaS portfolio actually offered. Eventually, it became clear during a demo, in a configuration page what the true offerings were: Virtual Machines and Bare Metal. That’s a good start for Oracle, but unfortunate in how it was presented. Oracle’s offering is hosted infrastructure that is more similar to IBM’s SoftLayer(now called IBM Cloud) than Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWSor Google Cloud.

ORACLE DATABASE AS A SERVICE

Beyond just the hardware, applications are one of the strengths of Oracle’s enterprise offerings. And a core piece of the puzzle has always been their database. One of the highlights from the conversation was their Database as a Service (DBaaS)offering. For enterprises that use Oracle DB, this is a core sticking point that keeps their applications firmly planted in the corporate data center. With the Oracle DBaaS offering, enterprises have the ability to move workloads to a cloud-based infrastructure without losing fidelity in the Oracle DB offering.

Digging deeper into the details, there were a couple interesting functions supported by Oracle’s DBaaS. A very cool feature was the ability to dynamically change the number of CPUs allocated to a database without taking an outage. This provides the ability to scale DB capacity up and down, as needed, without impact to application performance.

Now, it should be noted that while the thought of a hosted Oracle DB sounds good on paper, the actual migration will be complicated for any enterprise. That is less a statement about Oracle and more to the point that enterprise application workloads are a complicated web of interconnects and integrations. Not surprisingly, Oracle mentioned that the most common use-case that is driving legacy footprints to Oracle Cloud is the DB. This shows how much pent-up demand there is to move even the most complicated workloads to cloud. Today, Oracle’s DB offering runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). It was mentioned that the other Oracle Cloud offerings are moving to run on OCI as well.

Another use-case mentioned was that of High-Performance Computing (HPC). HPC environments need large scale and low latency. Both are positive factors for Oracle’s hardware designs.

While these are two good use-cases, Oracle will need to do things that attract a broader base of use-cases moving forward.

THE CIO PERSPECTIVE

Overall, there seems to be some glimmers of light coming from the Oracle Cloud offering. However, it is hard to get into the true differentiators. Granted that Oracle is playing a bit of catch-up compared with other, more mature cloud-based offerings.

The true value appears to be focused on existing Oracle customers that are looking to make a quick move to cloud. If true and the two fundamental use-cases are DBaaS and HPC, that is a fairly limited pool of customers when there is significant potential still sitting in the corporate data center.

It will be interesting to see how Oracle evolves their IaaS messaging and portfolio to broaden the use-cases and provide fundamental services that other cloud solutions have offered for years. Oracle does have the resources to put a lot of effort toward making a bigger impact. Right now, however, it appears that the Oracle Cloud offering is mainly geared for existing Oracle customers with specific use-cases.

Business · CIO · Cloud

IBM Interconnect expectations, a CIOs perspective

Tim CrawfordLeave a comment

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This week is IBM’s annual cloud conference in Las Vegas. Quite a bit has changed in the past year for IBM and at this year’s IBM Interconnect there are a few things I’m looking for. Each of them centers in the mainstream of enterprise demand. Here’s the quick rundown:

IBM CLOUD CURRENT STATE AND DIRECTION

Over the past several years, IBM made strategic acquisitions that feed directly into IBM’s core cloud strategy. Those include Softlayer and Bluebox Cloud. Since last year’s Interconnect conference, I’m looking to hear how things have progressed and how it impacts their direction. Both are key attributes to enterprise engagement.

UNDERSTANDING THE IBM CUSTOMER

IBM is well known for catering to their existing customer base. As enterprises evolve, I’m looking for indications on how non-IBM enterprise customers are choosing to engage IBM. Is most of the demand still coming from existing IBM customers? Or have others started to gravitate toward IBM…and why?

In addition, how has the recent partnership announcement with Salesforce changed this engagement? Granted, the ink is still wet on the agreement, but there may be a few tidbits to glean here.

PORTFOLIO HALO EFFECTS

IBM’s Watson provides an interesting opportunity for enterprises looking to engage analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Watson, along with the strides IBM has made with Internet of Things (IoT) provides some interesting opportunities for both existing and prospective IBM customers. I’m looking to see if these are creating a halo effect into IBM’s cloud business…and if so, how and where.

LEADERSHIP CHANGES

Finally, IBM is changing up the leadership team. Longtime IBM’er Robert LeBlanc has departed from leading the IBM Cloud division and changes are afoot in marketing. How will these changes impact how IBM approaches cloud and how IBM is perceived in the broader enterprise market?

 

Overall, IBM is clamoring to be a leader in the enterprise cloud space, but faces some stiff competition. Cloud has been a key element in IBM’s enterprise portfolio for some time. This week should provide greater insights on their current state and path moving forward.

Cloud · Data · IoT

IBM and Weather Company deal is the tip of the iceberg for cloud, data and IoT

Tim Crawford1 Comment

Technology and how we consume it is changing faster than we know it. Need proof? Just look at the announcement last night between IBM & Weather Company. It was just a short 4.5 months ago that I was sitting in the Amazon AWS re:Invent keynote on Nov 13, 2014 listening to Weather Company’s EVP, CTO & CIO Bryson Koehler discuss how his company was leveraging Amazon’s AWS to change the game. After the keynote, I had the opportunity to chat with Bryson a bit. It was clear at the time that while Amazon was a key enabler for Weather Company, they could only go so far.

The problem statement

Weather Company is a combination of organizations that brings together a phenomenal amount of data from a myriad of sources. Not all of the sources are sophisticated weather stations. Bryson mentioned that Weather Company is “using data to help consumers gain confidence.” Weather Company uses a number of platforms to produce weather results including Weather Channel, weather.com and Weather Underground. Weather Underground is their early testbed for new methods and tools.

Weather Company produces 15 billion forecasts every day. Those forecasts come billions of sensors across the globe. The forecasts for 2.2 million locations are updated every four hours with billions more updated every 15 minutes. The timeliness and accuracy of their forecasts is what ultimately builds consumer confidence.

Timing

The sheer number of devices makes Weather Company a perfect use-case of leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) powered by Cloud, Data and Analytics. Others may start to see parallels between what Weather Company is doing with their own industry. In today’s competitive market, the speed and accuracy of information is key.

IBM’s strategy demonstrated leadership in the cloud and data/ analytics space with their SoftLayer and Watson solutions. Add in the BlueMix platform and one can see how the connection between these solutions becomes clear. Moving to IoT was the next logical step in the strategy.

Ecosystem Play

The combination of SoftLayer, BlueMix and Watson…plus IoT was no accident. When considering the direction that companies are taking by moving up the stack to the data integration points, IoT is the next logical step. IoT presents the new driver that cloud and data/ analytics enable. BlueMix becomes the glue that ties it all together for developers.

The ecosystem play is key. Ecosystems are everything. Companies are no longer buying point solutions. They are buying into ecosystems that deliver direct business value. In the case of Weather Company, the combination of IBM’s ecosystem and portfolio provides key opportunities to producing a viable solution.

Next Steps…

That being said, the move by IBM & Weather Company should not be seen as a one-off. We should expect to see more enterprises make moves like this toward broader ecosystems like IBM’s.