Cloud UCC Stacks coming soon to a VoIP device near you.

The UC Forecast Calls For More And More Clouds

by Wes Durow

Oct 17, 2013

Attributes of Cloud UC and Associated Models

Recently Infonetics issued their 2013 UC Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey and the report brought to light the fast growth emerging in the Cloud-based Unified Communications (aka Hosted VoIP, Cloud Telephony, UCaaS) segment.  

Specifically, 22% of their survey respondents already have implemented portions of their UC architecture in a private cloud, and 19% have done so in a public cloud.   Further, their VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report forecast a 32% growth of hosted PBX/UC seats in North America in CY13.  

While the Cloud UC segment represent singles digits as part of the overall market the report from Infonetics calls for continued growth in double digits while premise-based solutions remain flat.  Frankly, I'm surprised that the Cloud UC market hasn't taken off even faster.

The traditional pushback has been that telephony features are way too important to put into the Cloud. That is nonsense, what makes telephony any more important than personnel data, customer data, or financial data?  My belief is that companies like Success Factors, salesforce.com and NetSuite have paved the way for the emergence of a new Cloud-based model to take hold in the communications space.  

e most common driver in moving to Cloud UC is typically cost savings.  Early adoption has been driven by the smallest of small businesses as their barriers to transition are relatively low and the immediate impact of cost savings can be substantial versus traditional premise-based solutions.  As the market has matured over the last couple of years you now see more midsize and large enterprises starting to trial and deploy Cloud UC in controlled environments.  Sonus has a unique vantage point from which to observe the emerging Cloud UC phenomenon.  

Specifically, we enable many of the markets leading Cloud UC providers - whether they are leveraging a BroadSoft platform, a Microsoft Lync platform, or an open source/Asterisk type platform.  My own career has spanned across Cloud UC as well as traditional enterprise PBX vendors so I will share my fair and biased opinion on the state of the Cloud UC market.  This is a large topic so I will break my blog post into four separate entries. 

With today's entry, I will focus on attributes of Cloud UC and primary deployment models. In a few days, I will cover the cost savings component followed shortly thereafter by the added capabilities that Cloud UC solutions typically deliver. And finally, my final post on this topic will cover the common myths, mistakes and challenges of moving to Cloud UC.
 

Attributes Of Cloud UC

So what is Cloud UC?  Much like established cloud computing models, I believe Cloud UC is characterized by four key attributes:

1. SHARED RESOURCES - The first attribute is that the physical resources (e.g. network infrastructure, real estate, support) are shared.
2. ENDLESS ENDPOINTS - The second attribute is that network access will come through a seemingly endless spectrum of endpoints ranging from desk phones, computers, smartphones, tablets and so on.
3. DEPLOYED DYNAMICALLY - The third attribute is that resources are deployed and provisioned in a dynamic manner.  This approach allows for effective expansion and contraction of services as needed.
4. METERED USAGE - And finally, the fourth attribute is the notion that usage is metered, reported and billed in such a manner that customers have a clear view as to how much they're using and how much they will be charged, allowing them to manage expenses accordingly.

FULL STORY :

http://www.sonus.net/company/blog/2013-10-17/uc-forecast-calls-for-more-clouds-part1

S O N U S    N E T W O R K S

CLOUD 3.0 - VMWorld 2013 Presentations - VMware 5.5 & The Road to SDN Everywhere

VMworld 2013: The Road to SDN Everywhere
- 
What's New in VMware 5.5

This presentation will take a high level look into the latest release of VMware vSphere. Every release of vSphere delivers over 100 new capabilities so it is important to understand the most important elements that may impact or improve your vSphere environment.

VMworld 2013: Session NET7388-S - Network Virtualization

When server virtualization first came to market, few understood the implications of its disruptive nature. Now, with tens of billions of dollars in customer savings achieved, and over 80 percent of all workloads virtualized, it's clear server virtualization has fundamentally changed the way the IT operates, and in turn, transformed our industry. Network Virtualization promises the same transformative impact to change data center economics.


To date, the network virtualization conversation has focused on well-documented and customer-proven benefits of agility, flexibility and cost improvements. This is the story of the last few years. In this talk, Martin Casado will outline the next horizon for network virtualization.


He will detail how network virtualization will enable advanced capabilities such as network visibility and troubleshooting, security and network-wide policy. Attendees will leave with the knowledge and understanding of how this next chapter in the evolution of virtualization technology will unfold.

The future of the hybrid data center : NSX

 

       Interview with Bruce Davie about VMware NSX at VMworld 2013

VMWARE 5.5 CONFIGURATIONS MAXIMUMS

CLOUD 1.0 Part Deux - The 3 Dimensional Architect - BigData vs BigMemory

The Revenge of Client Server Two Phase Commit


"...one approach is to problem of big data is a dispersed database like HADOOP  or any of the mainstream NoSQLs another approach is large powerful  in memory database like SAP HANA.  

Although it obvious that dispersed database will eventually win out. 

There exist  business scenarios where in memory database like SAP HANA is not only desirable - but extremely profitable for system integrators and MSP...." 

In Memory Databases 101
----
 Vishal Sikka on How to Architect 

for SAP HANA

5 part series from SAP TechEd. During the ASUG pre-conference seminar.

How to Architect for SAP HANA, Dr. Vishal Sikka provided some sneak peeks into SAP HANA

and took questions from the audience.

Rest of the series - http://www.youtube.com/user/ASUGtv

SAP HANA 1.0 Architecture By Shabbir Khan
.

CLOUD 3.0 - IT Skunk Works Project

CLOUD "SKUNK WORKS" PROJECT

CLOUD 1.0  - Publiic PaaS IaaS SaaS

CLOUD 2.0 - Hybrid PaaS IaaS SaaS (Where U are now ...)

CLOUD 3.0 - SDN Everywhere

CLOUD 3.0 - Part Deux - Secure SDN Everywhere ( Where I am... )

A revolution as big as the Switch from DC to AC current....


More : http://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/Question-of-the-Day-for-103013.html

Founded 10/31/13 in Toronto  a division of CSNA

CLOUD 3.0 - Making the Case for Dispersed Storage

 "...Todays world of compute anywhere with access to all  my data and social interactions, will drive storage demand  exponentially.  

The  recent availability cost SATA and soon SSD storage installed in commodity servers will require a rethink of  enterprise storage architecture. 

Legacy vendors look out here comes DISPERSED STORAGE... " 

-  Karl Preddie

Article by George Grump Storage Analyst

Traditional storage systems ( SAN, NAS,  DASD)  leverage traditional RAID architectures to maintain data availability which, unfortunately, are not particularly well suited for PB-scale environments. This is especially true when configured with the highest capacity hard drives possible to keep cost per-GB low. And even with these high capacity drives, there is still the requirement to support hundreds (or thousands) of spindles.

Unfortunately, hundreds of high capacity hard drives creates the ‘perfect storm’ for RAID. With this many drives the cloud storage provider has to work under the assumption that there will always be a hard drive failure (the laws of probability). When there is a failure to a hard disk in a RAID group, the RAID controller logic must rebuild the entire disk, sector by sector, even if the drive is mostly empty. The larger the drive gets, the more time it takes to perform this rebuild; with disk capacities of up to 4TBs this can stretch into days.

Long rebuild times plus the likelihood of constant rebuild efforts creates additional challenges for these large scale data centers. First, the longer the rebuild the longer the period of time that the applications or users connected to that array have to endure the degraded performance caused by I/O intensive rebuild traffic. Second, and more importantly, the longer the rebuild time the longer the data center is vulnerable to complete data loss caused by a second or third drive failure (depending on whether RAID 5 or RAID 6 is deployed).

These factors encourage storage designers to create highly redundant RAID systems with powerful controllers. The problem is that doing so leads to reduced hard drive efficiency, increased costs and poor space utilization. Despite these extra steps the systems are still not completely trusted and storage managers will often augment them with disk backup systems, replication and tape. In the highly competitive cloud or service provider market the combination of all of these problems has driven storage managers to find new alternatives.

The Object Storage Solution

The first attraction of object storage is its ability to deal with millions upon millions of objects or files. Object based storage allows providers to overcome a key weakness of traditional file systems which can have file count restrictions due to their limitations with handling metadata. These metadata problems often force large infrastructures to add storage systems prior to using all the capacity available with current systems. Object storage solves this problem with its ability to support a nearly unlimited number of objects.

When it comes to data protection, object storage systems also have the advantage of being granular to the object or file level. This means that a user can control the number of copies of data that are made on a per-object (or group of objects) basis. This is typically done via a replication policy that simply copies objects to other storage nodes in the environment.

With a dispersed storage system, if a disk fails, the system uses another copy of the object stored on a separate node/disk. It then replicates this data to another device in the system to bring the object to full reliability. Performance is also improved because dispersed storage requires no complex XOR function, like RAID has, in order to identify lost files.

The Object Storage Challenge

While a replication based strategy enables simple protection with rapid recovery it does present several challenges to the storage designer. First, this type of “1: X” protection scheme, with X being the desired number of redundant copies, is very capacity inefficient. Assuming that a data center would like to keep three copies so it can still access data even if two nodes have failed, their storage capacity requirements would triple. Further levels of protection only exacerbate the problem.

The second challenge is performance. Since each object copy is uniquely contained on a storage node, performance is limited to the capabilities of that node. In other words per-object performance will not scale as more nodes are added to the environment.

The Dispersed Storage Solution

To solve these problems companies like Cleversafe have leveraged data erasure coding and dispersal algorithms that parse data into multiple segments and then distribute these segments across multiple nodes in the storage cluster. In the case of Cleversafe these nodes can be self-contained, all in one building or data center, or can be geographically distributed.

At a high level erasure coding is similar to RAID except that the parity calculations are applied at the file (or object) level instead of at the disk level. When a rebuild is necessary, the segments that compose a file can be reproduced much more easily than having to rebuild an entire disk drive.

This level of protection can be dialed up or down by increasing the delta between the number of segments generated and the minimum number of segments required to reconstruct the data, which can be based on attribute policies such as age, data type, popularity, etc. The result is a level of protection or an effective redundancy much higher than even the two-drive-failure protection provided by RAID 6, with far less capacity overhead.

Also, multiple storage nodes can deliver their data segments in parallel, which helps with read performance. And, the system has the intelligence to provide data from the closest or fastest set of nodes.

The Dispersed Storage Advantage

Another significant advantage with dispersed storage is that the storage manager is now managing just one copy of data that is fully protected. The algorithm automatically makes sure that enough segments are dispersed both locally and remotely to provide the level of protection it’s configured for.

Compare this to legacy storage where data has to be stored with especially inefficient RAID algorithms, like RAID 10, copied to a secondary local disk backup system, then replicated via a separate process to a remote facility and finally copied to tape for the "restore of last resort" copy.

Dispersed storage simplifies management and data protection all while reducing cost, space, power and cooling requirements. In the cost-competitive provider market, this is exactly what’s required to meet demands, while enabling providers to continue on-boarding new customers without escalating costs.

CLOUD 2.0 - Last Tango in Redmond, Ballmer Farewell speech

Microsoft's Ballmer 

Gives Tearful Farewell 

In Last Company Meeting

By Rob Wright
September 30, 2013    4:13 PM ET

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, long known for his boisterous and passionate personality, gave the masses yet another memorable video performance on his way out the door.

In his last company-wide meeting before he officially retires, Ballmer took the stage to give an emotional goodbye to the company he's worked for since 1980. Ballmer was showered with applause from thousands of Microsoft employees, whom he thanked for their years of service and support as part of "the greatest company in the world."

"This isn't about any one person. This about this company," Ballmer said. "It's about a company that's important, that's forward-thinking, that's innovative, that's ethical, that hires great people and lets them lead great lives, that helps people around the world realize their full potential."

FULL  URL : http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/240162003/microsofts-ballmer-gives-tearful-farewell-in-last-company-meeting.htm

FULL URL : http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/steve-ballmer-watch-microsoft-ceos-2323238

CLOUD 3.0 CASUALTY - Steve Ballmer Resigns...Sadly the end of an Legendary Era

But today, the day Ballmer announced he'd be retiring within a year as Microsoft's CEO, I got my (most likely last) 15 minutes with Ballmer to interview him.

By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | August 23, 2013 

I asked the usual questions that most might. And I asked a couple of the thousands of questions I have saved up over the years, hoping against hope I'd be granted an audience with SteveB.

Here's what we talked about (from our transcript, which I've edited for length):

Q: What was today like for you? After all, you've been one of the most public faces of Microsoft since 1980.

Ballmer: Somebody said congratulations to me this morning, and I've got to say that surprised me, probably shouldn't. When you retire, it's a perfectly reasonable thing. But, of course, my mind's been all around this notion of it never really being perfect time. ...

So I guess it's congratulations. On the other hand, this is my life. I love Microsoft. I love everything about Microsoft. I own a lot of Microsoft stock. I'm going to continue to own a lot of Microsoft stock. But given that my personal plans wouldn't have had me here forever, this seemed like an appropriate time to me to move forward with retirement.

But today, the day Ballmer announced he'd be retiring within a year as Microsoft's CEO, I got my (most likely last) 15 minutes with Ballmer to interview him.

I asked the usual questions that most might. And I asked a couple of the thousands of questions I have saved up over the years, hoping against hope I'd be granted an audience with SteveB.

Here's what we talked about (from our transcript, which I've edited for length):

Q: What was today like for you? After all, you've been one of the most public faces of Microsoft since 1980.

Ballmer: Somebody said congratulations to me this morning, and I've got to say that surprised me, probably shouldn't. When you retire, it's a perfectly reasonable thing. But, of course, my mind's been all around this notion of it never really being perfect time. ...

So I guess it's congratulations. On the other hand, this is my life. I love Microsoft. I love everything about Microsoft. I own a lot of Microsoft stock. I'm going to continue to own a lot of Microsoft stock. But given that my personal plans wouldn't have had me here forever, this seemed like an appropriate time to me to move forward with retirement.....

FULL STORY : http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-ballmer-on-his-biggest-regret-the-next-ceo-and-more-7000019810/#!

FORBES   HEADLINE WAS COLDEST...

23 Aug. Steve Ballmer Announces Resignation, Microsoft Stock Soars And No It Won't Be Bill Gates

Since Ballmer took the reins Microsoft shareholders have had a negative total return of nearly 20%, with the stock down 36%, according to data from FactSet. While some of that decline can be attributed to the tech sector’s rapid descent from the heights of the dot-com bubble, Microsoft has frustrated investors for years with its inability to translate a massive cash generation machine into stock market performance.

It’s not all Ballmer’s fault, by any means, but the announcement has led to Microsoft stock soaring:

BIG CHANGES AHEAD : WALL STREET JOURNAL

he software giant on Friday said Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, a central figure at the company for 33 years, has decided to retire within the next 12 months.

Microsoft's surprise announcement Friday follows a broad reorganization that had appeared to solidify his power at the software giant as head of a new team of leaders.

The company said Mr. Ballmer, 57, would depart after a successor is chosen. The company's board has appointed a special committee—including Chairman Bill Gates—to consider external and internal candidates, Microsoft said.

Investors cheered, pushing Microsoft 7%, or $2.36, higher to $34.75, in 4 p.m. trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market NDAQ +1.21% .

The announcement follows years of criticism about the waning growth and stagnant stock price of Microsoft, a key force in the personal computer era whose power was once so great that U.S. government regulators sought to break up the company. But Microsoft has failed to keep pace in a new era of technology, as PC sales ebbed and growth has shifted to makers of mobile devices like Apple Inc. and Web services likeGoogle Inc. GOOG -0.40%

Mr. Ballmer, who took the reins from Mr. Gates in January 2000, has responded to the changes by recently overhauling its Windows software to be used with touch commands and introduce a Microsoft-designed tablet computer called Surface.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324165204579030611858818656.html

CLOUD 3.0 - On Premise Chaos and Anarchy resolved with IaaS Orchestration

What was good  (^See Above^)  for the  on-premise consulting business 

.... Is now the new bad 

The new good and the rage 'du jour' is  Iass- PaaS - SaaS  with DR

using   Pods from EMC, NetApp ,Violin  and of course Nimble

Orchestrated Cloud White Papers :

Citrix CloudPortal™ Business Manager is a cloud services delivery platform for self-service IT, that unifies and 

simplifies the delivery, operational, commerce and user management aspects of a cloud. Organizations can 

aggregate infrastructure, cloud, IT and value add services and deliver them to users through a simple, selfservice catalog of cloud services. Users can shop for cloud services and manage their account without calling 

tech support or waiting for services to be manually provisioned. 

READ MORE --> HERE

The federal Cloud-First policy asks agencies to migrate three ―must move‖ services to cloud solutions 

within 18 months. The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative requires agencies to downsize to a 

more manageable, affordable, and sustainable number of computing facilities. 

Even where compliance is not a primary consideration, agencies are looking toward shared solutions to 

help them simplify and lower the cost of providing data and application services. They want cloud benefits 

such as agility, speed, reliability, and flexibility. However, many agencies see a very large obstacle in the 

way the same attributes of the cloud that should deliver expected benefits also raise significant security 

concerns. 

Jointly designed by NetApp, Cisco, and VMware, the FlexPod™ data center solution is a complete, 

integrated cloud architecture consisting of leading storage, networking, and server technologies. It was 

designed to reduce the cost and complexity of implementing the federal Cloud-First policy and other cloud 

initiatives, with a secure, pretested, shared infrastructure solution that has been validated in a lab 

environment.

Security and isolation in the FlexPod data center solution are provided by enhanced secure multi-tenancy 

(SMT) architecture. Also designed jointly by NetApp, Cisco, and VMware, the SMT architecture is a labvalidated solution for achieving availability, secure separation, service assurance, and resource 

management. This means that the FlexPod data center solution functions with the SMT architecture as a 

security solution, not just a cloud platform. This white paper provides a detailed overview of the secure 

cloud architecture. It shows how FlexPod and SMT work as a single solution to address common security 

concerns...

READ MORE ---> HERE 

My Own Private Amazon EC2 and S2 :

All this is leading to something big the Consumer  IAAS alternative for  IT hosted at Co-Location provider like Equinix, Telehouse or CoreSite and managed by boutique service providers.  Allow  IT to become a OPEX service and not a CAPEX cost to the modern agile corporation... 

None other the John Hopkins and the US Gov't are leading the charge. Who would of think it the FEDs ahead of the curve... Not I

READ MORE -->   HERE

FORBES - Microsoft Re-Org is Steve Ballmers Last Stand

"...Is this Steve Ballmers Little Big Horn or the moment when Microsoft rises from the ashes of  Organizational Stagnation? 

It was not Windows or Office that hurt MSFT, its was the motivation zapping internal politics - http://minimsft.blogspot.com/

 Only time will tell if this Industry titan can recover. But if anyone can do it is Microsoft..."  -  KPreddie, Torrance CA

Article By

John Furrier,  www.forbes.com Contributor

Today I was interviewed by NPR Marketplace for a comment on the Microsoft MSFT -0.04% reorganization announced by Steve Ballmer. I’ve been following Microsoft since the 80s.  This will be the company’s and CEO Steve Ballmer’s biggest test yet.  Included below are my unedited comments.

According to NPR,

“Microsoft is essentially admitting in this reorganization that the fragmentation of their products and their strategy has failed,” says John Furrier, editor-in-chief of SiliconAngle. “He’s been under pressure to perform…and it’s clear from this reorganization, this is Steve Ballmer’s last stand.”

Full Unedited Interview

Interviewer:  What did you think about the big reorganization announcement by Microsoft.
Today we saw a very corporate PR, corporate speak on essentially a major direction change from Microsoft.  M my first reaction was the stance of Steve Ballmer in his aggressive in the leadership. I thought that he wouldn’t be around long as CEO. This reorganization was his big push to transform the company.  In my opinion this is his last stand.

Interviewer:
You said he would not be around? What do you mean by that?

John:

He’s been under pressure to perform and the question was will he remain as the CEO and leader of Microsoft, and it’s clear from this reorganization this is Steve Ballmer’s last stand, his last effort to turn the company around.

Interviewer:
You mention in your blog post (on SiliconANLGE.com), which is what caught my eye, you said that this amounts to an addition of failure on Microsoft’s part. Can you elaborate what you meant?

John:
Exactly. Microsoft essentially is admitting in this reorganization that the fragmentation of their products and their strategies failed. They failed in search over the years and they have some success in Cloud now, but fundamentally this monolithic PC focus is over. The monolithic PC is now the Cloud and the edge of the network is mobility and the internet of things or industrial internet. That is clearly a fundamental change for their product strategy and how they their organizing their engineering teams.

Interviewer:
Did you read the entire thing?

John:
Yes.

Interviewer:
As you were going through, what kind of words and bits of information caught your eye?

John:
They were mentioning that other people (companies) have a fragmented approach and they’re obviously referring to Apple AAPL -0.23%.  Obviously, Apple has had a lot of success with the iPhone and having a closed architecture as a device focus. They also talk about others doing well in areas that they weren’t and so that was obviously a sign; obviously the mobility piece was key. They’re saying devices and devices really is about hardware and not so much software. They’ve been a software company so that caught my attention. The trend right now in the world is about software; Mark Andreessen wrote a blog post recently about software “eating the world” and here, yes a software company saying they’re device (hardware) centric. That is clearly telegraphing that it’s a cloud and mobile direction for Microsoft.

Interviewer:
Do you think it’s going to work?

John:
I’m optimistic. I think, as I said in my post, they’re like an aircraft carrier; they move really slow, they have a lot of assets, they have an ecosystem, they have a business market that’s hot its becoming more consumerized. I think, like HP, it’s going to be a long road but they have the tools and ultimately it’s going to be on Ballmer if he can turn this around and move the company in this direction and be successful, we’ll see what the performance of their products. Ultimately, that’ll be the telling sign.

Interviewer:
Do you think that they needed 2,697 words to get its message across or was that over the top?
John:
I think this is more of an internal communication than a public communication. Microsoft’s very employee focused, a very HR centric company, and I think this is more about herding the cats internally to move this company into a direction that it needs to go, otherwise it’s doomed.

Interviewer:
Anything else you feel is important to add on this?
John:
What’s interesting is the Skype integration; Tony Bates is now in a different position. He was a leader of Skype; I thought that was an interesting perspective. We’ll see how that plays out. Skype obviously is really one of the cooler products along with xBox that’s relevant in terms of the new social and connected web that is really driving a lot of the marketplace growth.

Interviewer:
When you say the Skype thing is interesting, it’s not something I follow very much, so what is interesting about the person whose going to be running it and the shift involving Skype?

John:
Essentially, Skype was obviously a great product for people communicating and that’s also becoming a primary communication tool, and since Microsoft really doesn’t have a phone presence really compared to the other players, Skype was a key point in this (unification) communication. Tony Bates was in charge of the Skype and now looks like they’re integrating Skype across all the other parts of Microsoft. That’s different from the messaging they’ve had before but as a standalone entity, so that’s interesting and that’s a big asset. Skype and xBox are two major assets for Microsoft; if they can lever those two, they will do well.


Interviewer:
Anything else that caught your eye?

FULL STORY :

 " Microsoft entering on of the MOST exciting times in its storied history. Good Luck former Comrades " - KPreddie

  http://www.forbes.com/sites/siliconangle/2013/07/11/steve-ballmers-last-stand/

MORE LIKE THIS:

 http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57593289-75/steve-ballmer-remakes-microsoft-one-more-time/

 http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-12/steve-ballmer-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-microsofts-wearable-computers

RELATED:

  http://winsupersite.com/, 

 http://redmondmag.com/Home.aspx ,

 http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/

 

 You know a CEO could retire nicely in Brazil, very nicely.

CLOUD 2.0 - Perhaps OpenStack is on Life Support and CloudStack the hier apparent

"What if Gartner was right in 2012? "  -KP

----

NETWORK WORLD:Gartner report threw cold water on uber-hyped OpenStack project 

A scathing report about OpenStack from research firm Gartner warns businesses to beware of considerable hype and says misconceptions about the open source cloud computing project are leading to "dangerous myths" that are impacting IT adoption and investments. 

  

 

OpenStack is a nascent technology driven by a group of self-serving vendors who are pushing their own agendas over the usability of the cloud management platform, argues Lydia Leong, the author of the report and a research VP at Gartner who focuses on cloud computing. As OpenStack hype continues to build, she says vendors are associating themselves with the project for marketing reasons, but are reticent about contributing significant resources to the broader goals of the project. Fragmentation created by the amalgamation of various interests undermines the interoperability among OpenStack-powered clouds and the ability of third-party support groups to manage OpenStack distributions. 

OpenStack backers, in response, disagree. They specifically point to the project's momentum in recent weeks, including its launch of the OpenStack Foundation, the release of the latest OpenStack code, named Folsom, and organizers gearing up for the project's semi-annual OpenStack Summit this month to plan future development of OpenStack. Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, says the report "touches on a lot of different points," and said many of the criticisms could apply broadly to other cloud computing projects. "We're early on in this technology shift," he says. 

Below are some of the assertions that Leong makes and the responses by OpenStack officials.

 

Leong: "Hype around open-source CMPs (cloud management platforms) is causing some customers to make unfounded assumptions that may lead to poor sourcing decisions when they are choosing a CMP to build a private cloud, or when buying cloud IaaS from a service provider. Some people have been led to believe that because OpenStack is open source, it is an open and widely-adopted standard, with broad interoperability and freedom from commercial interests. In reality, OpenStack is dominated by commercial interests, as it is a business strategy for the vendors involved, not the effort of a community of altruistic individual contributors." 

OpenStack: OpenStack officials say "hype" is in the eye of the beholder. "We prefer to think of it as excitement," says OpenStack Foundation COO Mark Collier, who's also held the title of Rackspace VP of business and corporate development. Standards, he says, is a "loaded word," and a project like OpenStack could only achieve such as a status through adoption, which he says is one of the OpenStack Foundation's primary focuses. The recently formed Foundation will serve as a uniting body that will bring the various interests within the project together for the good of OpenStack, he adds. 

FULL STORY (2012) -  http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/100112-openstack-gartner-262925.html

Stack wars: OpenStack v. CloudStack v. Eucalyptus(2013)

 

 OpenStack has the buzz, CloudStack has the bucks, Eucalyptus has the bonds with Amazon

 Network World - OpenStack -- co-founded by Rackspace and NASA in 2010 --  certainly has the buzz, what with partnerships with AT&T, HP and IBM, to name a few, all of which have promised to use OpenStack as the base for their private cloud offerings.  

How to build a private cloud 

5 tips for avoiding private cloud failures 

CloudStack boasts $1 billion worth of business transactions annually running across their clouds since Citrix released the code (Citrix picked up the technology in its 2011, $200 million purchase of Cloud.com) into the Apache open source realm in April 2012.  
And Eucalyptus -- the longest-standing open source project of the three -- is banking on its very tight technical ties to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to convince enterprises to go the hybrid route, running their private clouds on the Eucalyptus stack and seamlessly bursting into the Amazon public cloud when necessary.
Those are the strategic battle cries as the factions spar for positioning as the open source infrastructure as a service (IaaS) stack most tapped into for building enterprise private clouds.  
According to a study on data center expansion plans by Campos Research & Analysis and paid for by data center solution provider Digital Realty Trust, three in five respondents -- 300 IT decision makers at large corporations in North America were interviewed for the study – said that building a private cloud was a primary impetus for their future data center build-out plans.  
According to a new forecast report by IDC, worldwide spending on hosted private cloud (HPC) will grow to be more than $24 billion by 2016.

FULL STORY :  http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2013/enterprise3/060313-ecs3-open-stack-269899.html

 SLIDE DECK:

http://www.bizalgo.com/2012/10/09/cloudstack-vs-openstack-vs-eucalyptus-iaas-private-cloud-comparison/

CLOUD 2.0 - Theory Building HA Private CloudStack clouds using Citrix, VMware & EMC/NetApp

Why the switch to CloudStack, VMware and SDN

• -speed
• -agility
• -OPEX model
• -shortage of skilled staff
• -focus in on core business competences 

Private CloudStack

 using Cisco  or Dell and  EMC/NetApp Storage

DR and HA - DesignCloud Stack

CLOUD STACK LECTURES 

Cloud Stack 3.06 Architecture - Lecture 1

Apache CloudStack Architecture - part 2

Alex Huang talks about CloudStack architecture


VMware for CloudStack Reference Architectures Documentation

MAPPING MODEL CS ->VMware :

https://cwiki.apache.org/CLOUDSTACK/mapping-model-for-cloudstack-zone-and-vmware-datacenter.html#MappingmodelforCloudStackzoneandVmwaredatacenter-Hypervisorsupport

CLOUD 0.0 - Why I left the Microsoft Fold

Well the house that Bill Gate built has become a failed organization for its employees  (ask them about their options ) and partners  alike.

An dysfunctional organization powered by a stack ranking system that turned 'the house of Remond' into cabal of warring tribes.

Not a pretty picture

Steve Ballmers course correct:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2013/07/15/this-is-the-organization-that-steve-ballmer-is-trying-to-change/

You can read the sordid background tale of ho things got to his point ( note not safe for work )

http://minimsft.blogspot.com/

I wish it wasn't ;but, sometimes change  is necessary and good. For one thing it forces us to adapt to better perhaps than what we were before.

Silver Linings:

We all can learn. Microsoft has a few gleaming nuggets in the sands of   a wind swept by change beach.
For instance Windows 8.1, Office  2007-2013 ( consumer lock in!) , Office 365, XBox 4.0 ( ;) ) and the embrace of other platform devices.  System Center 2012 and Hyper-V of Windows also are promising in the short term for consultants!

All  of the above hints at new, leaner,  much smaller  smarter Microsoft one that can not only compete...but win. 

Now SteveB execute!

FINIS

Best wishes to all those I left behind in Redmond...