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The following is an interview with Lynda Stadtmueller, vice president of cloud services at research firm Frost & Sullivan.
Thoughts on Cloud (ToC): Frost & Sullivan recently surveyed more than 260 senior IT key decision makers and influencers who have evaluated the use of managed cloud services for SAP or Oracle workloads. What were the most interesting outcomes?
Lynda Stadtmueller (LS): The most interesting topics were the value that leaders place on human expertise in managed cloud services and the high percentage of SAP users who have already adopted HANA. We also gained some insight into how leaders view costs and the widespread adoption of managed cloud services.
ToC: What surprised you the most?
LS: The most surprising insight was the value that managed cloud services users place on expertise and advice from their providers.
Sophisticated analytics have essentially led to “hands-off” managed services, but 82 percent of managed cloud services users consider the advice they receive from technology partners as either very important or extremely important. This expertise is something machines can’t give, such as how to develop business cases, build strategies and optimize legacy workloads.
Automated platforms can introduce tremendous value for complex workloads. But once the environment runs like clockwork, there remains the question of whether you’re doing the right thing. Are you effectively planning for the future? What are the trends and the challenges going on in your industry and the technology industry?
That’s the vision a good provider can offer as a thought leader.
ToC: Were there any other insights from the study that you did not expect?
LS: I was surprised by how many SAP users who have adopted HANA are using managed cloud services to help them run their new SAP environments.
SAP developed a wonderful, cloud-based HANA platform and businesses want to use it, but leaders recognize that they might not have the in-house skills to optimize these HANA workloads. To gain more value on their investment, they’re turning to skilled managed specialists help them manage their SAP HANA environments.
ToC: You also asked leaders about potential concerns and challenges around managed cloud services. Was there anything about their responses that you did not anticipate?
LS: Cost has always been a major consideration when deciding whether to move to managed services, but our results showed that the majority of users considered predictability of costs as more beneficial than reduced costs. In fact, predictable costs ranked fourth in overall benefits of managed services at 68 percent, while 54 percent of users cited reduced capital expenditures as a major benefit.
It’s a matter of knowing of knowing what you’re spending, where it’s going and how much value it’s generating for the business. This helps ensure that you’re investing in the right places and can tightly manage costs. To that end, predictably managing costs and resources for SAP and Oracle workloads was among the top five benefits reported by managed cloud services users.
ToC: The study also found that only 3 percent of the leaders surveyed believe that they will never migrate to managed cloud services. Did you expect that number to be so low?
LS: It didn’t surprise me. These workloads are critical, but can also be very complex. 86 percent of leaders are either already using managed cloud services or plan to adopt it in the next 18 months. They understand the value of working with specialists who manage these workloads every day for a wide variety of businesses.
ToC: Are there any other insights from the study that you want to share?
LS: There are several. I recommend reading the whitepaper in which we share the expectations, concerns, benefits and, more importantly, lessons learned when moving to managed services.
Read the Frost & Sullivan whitepaper to learn more about the six concerns of IT decision makers when moving SAP workloads to a cloud environment and the benefits that managed cloud services can provide.
The post IT leaders’ expectations, benefits and challenges when moving SAP to the cloud appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

13. Oktober 2017

da Agency

HiThing! uses Bluemix to help people and machines communicate

“HiThing!, it’s too cold in here – can you turn up the heat?”
“HiThing!, where is the pallet with the shipment I’m looking for?”
“HiThing!, when is the next train leaving the station?”
If a device or machine is automated, people can ask HiThing! from Proasistech about it the same way they’d talk to (or text) their family and friends, using a simple mobile interface. People can also see how machines are talking to each other.

Connecting people and devices with HiThing!
The initial idea for HiThing! was a simple, human-machine interface for use around the home with various smart technologies. However, soon, Proasistech business leaders realized the chatbot solution was bigger than they initially imagined and could be put to use across industries.
That’s when Proasistech began looking for a technology partner. The company wanted a cloud provider with global reach and a solid reputation, which it found in IBM.
HiThing! is hosted on IBM Cloud. The Bluemix platform connects an artificial intelligence bot on one end, and people using mobile devices on the other. The bot can be integrated with existing systems and people communicate with them using natural language. For example, a user can assess and control lighting with a cell phone.
As a small Spanish startup without a lot of personnel, Proasistech appreciated a close personal relationship with IBM and the agility to speed the development process. The solution was deployed four months faster than expected at two-thirds of the projected cost.

A social network of intelligent devices
HiThing! provides the intelligence that makes machines almost human. Users can ask the machine in their own language, and HiThing! converts the conversation to the device’s natural language. A machine can tell users if there is something wrong before it breaks down. It can ask users about their preferences and needs proactively. Any human and non-human intelligence, algorithms, robots, things or machines of any nature or level can communicate among themselves.
With the global reach of IBM, Proasistech can grow geographically and bring HiThing! to more markets. The technology could be put to work in a range of different fields, including electrical appliances, research labs, industry, health, elder care, care for the disabled and clinical equipment.
Proasistech is confident that as it grows, it will benefit from additional IBM Cloud services – not only the secure Bluemix infrastructure, but also the corporate capacity to support different activities as the company evolves. That was one of the most important factors in choosing to work with IBM.
Read the case study for more details.
The post HiThing! uses Bluemix to help people and machines communicate appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

12. Oktober 2017

da Agency

Container Management with CloudForms – Service Health

This blog is part 3 of our series on Container Management with CloudForms.

A second area of concern identified when managing a containerized environment is service health. We need to operate our containers with good performance, reliability, and ensure high enough utilization ratios. In this post, we focus on the container based infrastructure, its on-going resource consumption, and how we can monitor and optimize its health.

Container environments are highly dynamic and can grow quickly. It is important to keep an eye on resource capacity and usage and get notified when the environment is at risk of running out of resources, so that we can prevent unexpected service degradation. These performance issues can occur at any layer of the stack, and we need to be notified uniformly.

We also need to make sure that our infrastructure is sized correctly. This way we can prevent performance issues, but also prevent over-provisioning, which leads to higher costs.

And finally, in order to guarantee a reliable service, we want to make sure that our configurations are correct and stay stable over time.

CloudForms can help improve and maintain the health of those environments.

CloudForms can monitor resource consumption at all layers of the stack, from hypervisors and virtual machines, to storage and networks, but also containers themselves. CloudForms can also discover usage trends, and tells us when we need to add extra capacity.

Secondly it can alert us based on performance thresholds, or events, or based on a combination of events at different layers in the stack.

CloudForms provides right-sizing recommendations based on normal operating ranges for the underlying infrastructure. This allows us to make sure we have enough resources to cover the environment needs, as well as our projected growth. This also ensures high utilization ratios and an efficient use of the infrastructure.

And finally CloudForms automatically detects configuration changes at all layers of the stack with Smart-State analysis. This feature provides the ability to inspect hosts, virtual machines or containers to collect information. It can even look at file contents and other settings, without the use of an agent. This configuration data can then be compared to a master image or tracked over time, and CloudForms can alert if settings are changed.

The following video demonstration highlights these capabilities in CloudForms:

Capacity & Forecasting
Alerts & Notifications
Resource Right-Sizing
Configuration Health-Check and Drifting

Quelle: CloudForms

11. Oktober 2017

da Agency

People-search engine powered by IBM Bluemix verifies identities

Who is Mike Johnson? If you perform a Google search for the name, you’ll get 10 pages of results. Is it Mike Johnson the congressman, the animator, the guitarist, the singer, or the hockey player? Or any one of the other Mike Johnsons on the remaining nine pages of search results.
PIPL (pronounced “people”) can help you figure it out.
A people-search engine
PIPL is a people search company that has online and offline data about more than 3 billion people in the world. You can search for information about a person using an email, a name, a social profile or a phone number and get back any kind of public information about them, including contact, social, demographic and professional information.

Powered by the IBM Cloud
PIPL’s solutions are hosted on the IBM Bluemix cloud platform. The company headed in the direction of cloud to keep the company as lean as possible. The cloud is convenient for system administration, and IBM has so many data centers worldwide makes it easy to balance workloads.
Initially, PIPL used all bare metal servers to achieve the performance needed for data analytics and deliver the information customers search for in a timely manner. Now they have begun to incorporate virtual servers for other workloads and have begun to look at Bluemix container services for additional flexibility and speed.
Helping verify identities
Individuals use the search engine to find old friends, get in touch with long-lost family members and re-connect with loved ones.
For businesses, PIPL offers a standalone search offering as well as an API that integrates invisibly with other software, such as CRM systems, making them more robust.
PIPL is used by all of the top 10 e-commerce sites in the US, nine of the top 10 banks and eight of the top 10 insurance companies. They are using it for everything from identity verification, investigations, recruiting and data enrichment.
An e-commerce company would use the professional version of the PIPL search engine to verify orders where there’s suspicion of credit card theft. The company could check the information submitted in the order and see if it matches up with the real cardholder. Banks and insurance companies use the search engine to verify identity and ensure that claims are legitimate.
PIPL returns the specific information needed rather than requiring the user to wade through pages and pages of search results to try to figure out if Mike Johnson is who he says he is. See for yourself.
Read the case study for more details.
The post People-search engine powered by IBM Bluemix verifies identities appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud