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Greatresponder.com on Dec 06, 2012: (Reuters) published that EMC Corp, the world’s leading maker of corporate data storage equipment, and its publicly-traded subsidiary, software maker VMware Inc, are planning to merge their data analytics and cloud computing application assets, EMC refered on its website.

EMC said on Tuesday the companies expect to combine a number of divisions into the new group – called the Pivotal Initiative – by the second quarter of 2013 and said the specific operational structure will be determined then and Paul Maritz, EMC’s Chief Strategy Officer, will head the group.

The new group of EMC and VMwarewill will provide an update on the details of the plans in the first quarter of next year, EMC said. The move will combine EMC’s data analytic division Greenplum and its Pivotal Labs group with VMware’s vFabric, SpringSource and Gemstone units as well VMware’s data analytic company Cetas and CloudFoundry, a cloud computing platform as a service. This will affect about 600 employees from VMware and 800 employees from EMC.

Analysts said the realignment may eventually result in a spin-out of the new group. “This is a very good move,” said Kaushik Roy, a longtime EMC watcher who is a principal with Hercules Technology Growth Capital. “Both companies have applications that are overlapping,” he said, adding that “if things go well they may spin it off”.

Tech analyst Alkesh Shah at Buckingham Research Group said the companies could decide on a partial spin-out of the unit in 2014/2015. “This realignment should enable EMC to position itself more as a Cloud enabler while VMware can concentrate on its expanded strategy of the software-defined data center,” Shah said.

Rackspace Hosting Improves the Quality of Services for Their Open Cloud Platform

Greatresponder.com on Dec 03, 2012: For more than 10 years, Rackspace Hosting has served customers who needs partner to help them reduce the complexities of building, deploying, optimizing, maintaining and troubleshooting complex web applications. Rackspace Hosting is now offering that same Fanatical Support to customers across its entire portfolio, including the company’s new open cloud platform, through Managed and Critical Application Services. Rackspace Hosting today announced new features and enhanced service offerings for open cloud platform customers.

“Providing the highest level of service in the industry is central to our values as a company,” said Rackspace President Lew Moorman. “Cloud computing customers tell us they want good pricing and exceptional service, and offering one without the other simply won’t cut it in today’s environment.”

“Rackspace’s reliability gives Acquity Group the freedom to focus on creating great apps and onboarding customers without worrying about infrastructure,” said Kevin Ellenwood, Vice President of Shared Services at Acquity Group, a leading e-commerce and digital marketing company. “It’s unacceptable for us to have any type of outage, and quite frankly, our support team at Rackspace has the same attitude. That’s why we’re here.”

Critical Application Services allows companies to focus on their core business while Rackspace keeps their vital applications running smoothly. To provide this service level, Rackspace uses a unique combination of web-scale engineers, on-going consultation, and performance monitoring. Every environment is tailored to the customer’s specific business needs. Critical Application Services (Advanced) is backed by Fanatical Support, and by Rackspace’s 100 percent Production Platform Uptime Guarantee.

These services include help for tasks such as capacity planning, scaling architecture, configuration, patching, monitoring, security guidance, database tuning and optimization, troubleshooting for infrastructure and certain operating systems, database engines and application platforms.

Managed Cloud Services support the entire Rackspace Open Cloud including:

• Cloud Servers and Cloud Databases, powered by OpenStack;
• Cloud Files and Cloud Block Storage, powered by OpenStack;
• Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Backup
• Cloud Load Balancers, Cloud DNS and Cloud Networks.

“Managed Cloud really allows us to focus specifically on our app, and not all the IT stuff around it. Not that we can’t do it, but I have code to write,” said Chris Le, Lead Developer, Seer Interactive, an industry leader in SEO, SEM, and analytics.

Rackspace open cloud gives customers true choice and control without the fear of being locked-in to the closed, proprietary technologies of any one vendor. “We believe customers ought to be able to move anytime they see another provider offering better features, service or value,” said Moorman.

Greatresponder.com on Nov 30, 2012: Cloud computing may represent the beginning of a shift of control of business technology away from information technology departments into the hands of managers and professionals from other parts of the business; business owner looking for this technology to decreasing expenses and increase their revenue. 

This was published by Forbes Survey said that While a third of executives responding to a recent survey (32%) agree that the IT department is currently the main driver of cloud adoption, another 45% report that individual business units are ultimately responsible for cloud adoption strategies. At the same time, the cloud is assuming a great deal of strategic value, says Capgemini’s said Ron Tolido, “The initiative for driving cloud solutions is shifting from the IT department to the business unit as companies focus more on tangible business value,”  he says.

These are some of the findings from a new survey of 460 IT leaders and senior business managers conducted by Capgemini. However, just because cloud computing is in more of the hands of the business doesn’t mean it’s run as effectively as possible. For example, the board of directors is seen as both a driver (29%) and a blocker (28%) of cloud initiatives. This suggests that in many cases, “benefiting from the cloud is still being hindered by a lack of appropriate senior level understanding and commitment,” the report states.  “It is safe to conclude that by now the benefits of the cloud are clear and widely understood.”

Most enterprise cloud projects are still mainly private cloud implementations, driven by concerns around the security, manageability, quality of service and regulatory compliance associated with using public cloud services.  Still, many organizations are comfortable with a trusted partner hosting their cloud services — 40% of organizations cited their preference for off-premise and partner-hosted private cloud solutions, and 26% cited a preference for on-premise private cloud solutions. The cloud still hasn’t made significant inroads into core mission-critical systems — yet. The survey also finds current migrations to the cloud to be  largely focused on new applications that support ‘cutting edge’ areas of business — cited by 78% of executives — rather than legacy applications.

What does this tell us?  That business managers may be in charge of cloud, but they still want their IT departments to make it all happen. That’s why IT managers and professionals are quickly evolving from coders and administrators to active consultants to the business on selecting and managing technology deployments. Applications may be run by somebody else, but leadership and guidance is still required to make the best technology choices for the business.  No other decisions are more critical in today’s digital-driven business world.