Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011

Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011

Sweden and Singapore continue to top the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011, Transformations 2.0, released by the World Economic Forum, confirming the leadership of the Nordic countries and the Asian Tiger economies in adopting and implementing ICT advances for increased growth and development. Finland jumps to third place, while Switzerland and the United States are steady in fourth and fifth place respectively. The 10th anniversary edition of the report focuses on ICT’s power to transform society in the next decade through modernization and innovation.

The Nordic countries lead the way in leveraging ICT. With Denmark in 7th and Norway in 9th place, all are in the top 10, except for Iceland, which is ranked in 16th position. Led by Singapore in second place, the other Asian Tiger economies continue to make progress in the ranking, with both Taiwan, China and Korea improving five places to 6th and 10th respectively, and Hong Kong SAR following closely at 12th.

With a record coverage of 138 economies worldwide, the report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) featured in the report examines how prepared countries are to use ICT effectively on three dimensions: the general business, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; the readiness of the three key societal actors ? individuals, businesses and governments ? to use and benefit from ICT; and their actual usage of available ICT.

Under the theme Transformations 2.0, this 10th anniversary edition explores the coming transformations powered by ICT, with a focus on the impact they will have on individuals, businesses and governments over the next few years.

http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-information-technology-report-2010-2011-0

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2011.pdf [9.95MB]

Cisco throws networking into OpenStack cloud

by Dave Rosenberg

Open Stack: NaaS

(Credit: Cisco/OpenStack)

Cisco Systems, one of the world's largest technology companies, signaled last week that it has more than a passing interest in cloud infrastructure by submitting a design for OpenStack: Network as a Service (NaaS).

Cisco's proposal is not the first for NaaS, but I believe it signifies an important acceptance not just of a change to the way that we consume compute and networking but a shift in how big companies will make OpenStack both the literal and metaphorical Apache Web server for cloud services.

The networking component of both public and private clouds has been woefully underserved, either because big networking vendors see it as a risk--after all, they can't easily monetize a virtual network the way they could a physical one--or because the pace and mores of open-source development don't fit with their own development models.

The OpenStack: NaaS proposal provides a network abstraction layer and set of APIs to enable a broader set of services and APIs than is currently available.

• Requesting and acquiring network connectivity by OpenStack:Compute for interconnecting two VM instances, both single virtual network (single vnic) or multi vnics to different virtual networks.
• Network Services (e.g. firewall, load balancers, Wide Area Acceleration Services) insertion at the appropriate virtual networks; and dynamically request "adaptive" network resources.
• Monitoring and management or resources that require visibility or consumption, such as: disaster recovery, network health, chargeback /billing services etc.
• A wealth of new networking capabilities, including the potential for new services such as SLA management.

OpenStack has enjoyed some substantial success as well as one notable disgruntled community member thus far--very common to important open-source projects. But the strength of a project is demonstrated by its community, which to become mainstream requires adoption and participation from not just individuals but from companies that see the project as an important part of future infrastructure. We saw this happen with Apache and Linux, and I believe we'll see it with OpenStack as well.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20052564-62.html

The Evolution of Cloud Computing Into an Essential IT Strategy

Cloud computing is moving from a new idea to the next big strategy for optimizing how IT is used. We'll establish the reality of cloud computing for enterprises and consumers, and examine the maturity of cloud computing, its direction and the markets it affects.

IBM to battle Amazon in the public cloud

IBM has opened the door on a public cloud Infrastructure as a Service offering for the enterprise.
The company has quietly added the Smart Business Cloud - Enterprise to its Smart Business Cloud
product line. SBC - Enterprise is a pay-as-you-go, self service (for registered IBM customers) online
platform that can run virtual machines (VMs) in a variety of formats, along with other services from
IBM.
IBM stepped into the cloud early, but the market has been very dynamic the past two
years.
Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Interarbor Solutions
The Smart Business Cloud - Enterprise is a big step up from IBM's previous pure Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS) offering, the Smart Business Development and Test Cloud. Users can provision stock
VMs running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Microsoft Windows
Server, or they can choose from an arsenal of preconfigured software appliances that IBM, in part,
manages and that users consume. These include Industry Application Platform, IBM DB2, Informix,
Lotus Domino Enterprise Server, Rational Asset Manager, Tivoli Monitoring, WebSphere
Application Server, Cognos Business Intelligence and many others.
In what may tell the back story of IBM's own cloud computing development path, all of the images
and applications being offered from SBC - Enterprise presently run in Amazon's Elastic Compute
Cloud environment. Not all of the announced IBM cloud applications run in the IBM compute
environment.
Screenshots and a video demo show a familiar sight by now for cloud users: a point-and-click
provisioning system in a Web interface. Apparently sensitive to its enterprise audience, IBM has
taken some pains to offer higher-end features, including access and identity management control,
security and application monitoring tools, and VPN and VLAN capabilities, as well as VM isolation.
IBM technical support will also be available.
IBM has been a consistent supporter of open source software for the enterprise market and the
inclusion of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux are indications that IBM feels those
products have the chops for big customers running Linux. Being based on Linux (Blue Insight) also
makes it easy for IBM to port its technology into an Amazon-type network.
Analyzing IBM's entrance into public cloud
Some industry observers say they believe the cloud-based product disclosure is overdue, and a step
in the right direction. The move is a natural one if IBM wants to extend the lofty position it currently
holds in on-premises application integration.
"IBM needs to start talking about integration as a service (in the cloud)," said Dana Gardner,
principal with Interarbor Solutions in Gilford, N.H. "They are a market leader in enterprise apps
integration in the physical space, so the next step is to be a leader in the cloud space. They seem to
be going in the right direction."
IBM looks for cloud computing projects in unlikely places
Gardner, along with other analysts and IT pros, have criticized IBM's overall cloud strategy as
"scattershot" the past couple of years. After getting off to a promising start through a number of key
acquisitions and technology introductions, the company's efforts appear to have lost momentum and
focus.
"IBM stepped into the cloud early, but the market has been very dynamic the past two years,"
Gardner added. "When people think of the cloud now, they think about mobile, big data and
analytics, along with cost reductions and simplifying. IBM hasn't stepped up to the latest zeitgeist
around cloud to take all this on."
Other analysts said they believe IBM's delivery of its SBC - Enterprise is coming in the nick of time.
It fully anticipates that fast-moving competitors, such as Salesforce.com, Google and Amazon, will
debut much more capable products and services in areas where IBM still hasn't ventured.
"[IBM] is still looking at a pack of hungry competitors who have little trepidation about moving their
cloud initiatives forward, moving way beyond the Infrastructure as a Service level offering things
like run-time support and tools," said one analyst who requested anonymity. "Services are going to
get a lot more sophisticated from the Googles of the world."
Competitive pricing disclosed
An official IBM Charge Schedule lays out price per instance in four tiers: Copper, Bronze, Silver
and Gold. A Copper RHEL instance costs $0.19 per hour, and Gold is $0.46 per hour. Windows
instances start at $0.10 per hour.
IBM needs to start talking about integration as a service (in the cloud).
Dana Gardner
IBM will also sell reserved capacity, just as Amazon Web Services (AWS) does, for those looking
for a long-term discount. Reserved Capacity is significantly cheaper, although a six-month
commitment will cost a minimum of $1850 per month.
A Reserved Capacity RHEL instance costs $0.0154 per hour and a Gold instance will run you $0.30
per hour. Windows pricing starts at $0.064 per hour. Licensing is either determined by the
application you consume or bring-your-own-licensing (BYOL). The pricing appears to be in line
with other public cloud services like AWS and Rackspace.
IBM makes its entrance to the public cloud market in a big way. The service is apparently live and
available to order right now. SearchCloudComputing.com recently put IBM in its top ten list of
cloud providers based just on the strength of its success with the Smart Business Test and
Development Cloud, a $30 million business after little more than a year in operation.
With its long history of delivering IT services, software and support to the Global 2000, some
believed it was only a question of time until IBM made a decisive move into the cloud computing
marketplace. It's too early to say if it will dominate the public cloud space, but it has everything it
needs to do so, including global data centers, connectivity, service delivery capabilities, and the allimportant
enterprise user base.
Ed Scannell is an Executive Editor and Carl Brooks

VmWare Launches CloudFoundry : VmWare PaaS webcast

Today, VMware introduced Cloud Foundry, the industry’s first Open Platform as a Service (PaaS) during a live webcast.
Cloud Foundry represents a new generation of application platform, architected specifically for cloud computing environments and delivered as a service from enterprise datacenters and public cloud service providers. As part of today’s announcement, VMware is introducing a new VMware-operated developer cloud service, a new open source PaaS project and unique “Micro-Cloud” solution; Cloud Foundry will be offered in multiple delivery models:
 
•         New VMware Operated Developer Service – Available today, www.CloudFoundry.com is a full function public cloud PaaS service, operated by VMware, enabling developers to access Cloud Foundry and providing a test bed for new services and operational optimization of the software.
•         Open Source, Community PaaS Project – Available today at www.cloudfoundry.org, this open source project and community under Apache 2 license enables developers to inspect, evaluate and modify Cloud Foundry software based on their own needs, while also minimizing the risk of lock-in.
•         New Cloud Foundry Micro Cloud - Available Q2 2011, Cloud Foundry Micro Cloud is a complete, downloadable instance of Cloud Foundry contained within a virtual machine on a developer’s desktop, enabling simplified development and testing of applications.
•         Cloud Foundry for the Enterprise and Service Providers – In the future, VMware will offer a commercial version of Cloud Foundry for enterprises who want to offer PaaS capabilities within their own private clouds and for service providers who want to offer Cloud Foundry via their public cloud services.  This commercial solution will enable enterprises to integrate the PaaS environment with their application frameworks and services portfolio. Service provider solutions further deliver on the promise of portability across a hybrid cloud environment, enabling freedom to deploy internally or migrate to one of VMware’s nearly 3,500 vCloud partners.

Facebook shares cloud computing expertise

Social networking behemoth Facebook is set to share its experiences of cloud computing as it bids to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) get the most out of their IT infrastructures.
Facebook hopes that the Open Compute Project will boost the energy efficiency of the world's ever-expanding data centres.

The company claims that its new infrastructure can deliver a 38 per cent increase in energy efficiency and has lowered Facebook's operating costs by 24 per cent.

Jonathan Heiliger, vice-president of technical operations at Facebook, said: "Facebook and our development partners have invested tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to build upon industry specifications to create the most efficient computing infrastructure possible."

"These advancements are good for Facebook, but we think they could benefit all companies," he added.

The Open Compute Project revolves around a user-led forum, which allows companies to share infrastructure designs and, in the words of Facebook, "demystify the biggest capital expense of an online business - the infrastructure".

Iron Mountain To Kill Public Cloud Storage Services

By Andrew R Hickey

Iron Mountain will shutter its public cloud storage services, making it the third storage player to deep six its public cloud play in the last year.

According to research firm Gartner, Iron Mountain will eliminate its Virtual File Store service and its Archive Service Platform offering no sooner than the first half of 2013, and the Boston-based company has stopped taking on new customers for the services as of April 1.

"On April 8, 2011, Iron Mountain confirmed that it is sunsetting its public cloud storage business," Gartner wrote in a research note on Iron Mountain ditching the public cloud. In the note, Gartner wrote Digital Services Executive Vice President David Jones that "profitability pressures" played a role in Iron Mountain leaving the public cloud.

In a statement e-mailed to CRN, Iron Mountain wrote: "Iron Mountain did recently notify customers of our Virtual File Store and Archive Service Platform that we are retiring these two commodity cloud-storage solutions. This decision only affects those using Virtual File Store, a low-cost cloud storage option for inactive files, and technology partners who use the Archive Service Platform as a general purpose cloud for storing their customers' data. As the Gartner report notes, public cloud service offerings like these have seen modest levels of adoption."

Iron Mountain said it will still offer services to its current cloud storage customers, help them migrate to another provider or return the data, Gartner wrote.

"Virtual File Store customers that stay with Iron Mountain will be transferred to a higher-value offering, File System Archiving (FSA) in 2012. The new offering will be a hybrid that leverages policy-based archiving on site and in the cloud with indexing and classification capabilities," Gartner wrote, adding that "Archive Service Platform customers have no migration path and are being terminated or moved to an alternative service provider."

Iron Mountain launched Virtual File Store in February 2009. As part of its Digital Archiving and Storage-as-a-Service portfolio under the Iron Mountain Digital umbrella, the service was billed as an enterprise-class, cloud-based storage archiving service designed to cut the costs of storing and managing static data files and was for the archival of inactive file data.

In October 2009, Iron Mountain opened its Archive Service Platform up to application providers like corporate developers and ISVs, enabling them to offer cloud storage with their applications. The platform let software vendors integrate the Iron Mountain API to leverage its cloud architecture.

Iron Mountain is the third public cloud IaaS provider in less than a year to bow out of the public cloud storage race, which Gartner said jibes its 2009 prediction that said less than one-third of cloud investments would reach ROI by this year.

"Iron Mountain is the third vendor to drop out of the public cloud storage market to concentrate on other technology areas," Gartner wrote.

Iron Mountain follows startup Vaultscape, which launched a public cloud storage service in 2009 and shut it down a year later, Gartner wrote. And in July 2010 EMC axed its Atmos Online public cloud storage offering, which it launched in 2009. At the time, EMC (NYSE:EMC) said conflicts with service providers prompted the Atmos Online shutdown.

Iron Mountain abandoning the market now leaves only a pair of pure-play public cloud providers of network attached storage, Nirvanix and Zetta.

In its research note, Gartner recommends that Iron Mountain public cloud storage customers accept Iron Mountain's offer to assist with migrating to alternate providers, as no incremental costs will be associated with the move. Gartner also advised that the company negotiate with new cloud storage service providers to wave ingestion charges or negotiate with Iron Mountain to pay them, and investigate the new FSA offering to see if it offers value for the company.

source: crn.com