Big Data Gets a Boost from Amazon and Jaspersoft

Amazon Web Services has launched a public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables the processing of vast amounts of data utilizing the Hadoop framework. It runs on Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The benefits of Amazon Elastic MapReduce include easier and less time-consuming set-up and affordability. MapReduce is a software framework created by Google to more efficiently handle large data sets. Hadoop is the open source version of it. (For more detail check out the Wikipedia entry on it.) Amazon Elastic MapReduce puts the technology in the hands of more organizations by lowering the barrier to entry. A company can now “instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for distributed applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research.” It’s already being used by Netflix, among others.

Jaspersoft announced v3.5 of its business intelligence suite. It’s the industry’s first SaaS-enabled, multi-tenant BI platform. The new version promises “integrated data analysis for simple, powerful slicing and dicing of data” and “enhanced scalability for large deployments and data sets.” Jaspersoft says they have more than 50 customers, have incorporated their solution into their SaaS products. The company feels these new SaaS-enabled features make it far more easy for application vendors and enterprises to incorporate BI functionality into their solutions, rather than trying to “roll their own”.

Better Cloud Performance, Amazon for Enterprise Apps, and Nicholas Carr on “The Big Switch” (to the Cloud)

Michael Healey, CTO of IT integration company GreenPages, wrote a report that discusses a five-step process for improving the performance of cloud applications. It’s worth your time, but if you want a summary go here.

An article in InformationWeek  argued that Amazon EC2 was a “superior alternative to SaaS” for hosting enterprise applications. Pentaho was referenced as a  vendor taking this route when it launched it Cloud Computing Edition.

Nicholas Carr, the author of “IT Doesn’t Matter” and “The Big Switch” gave a very interesting interview to Tom Sullivan of InfoWorld. The key take-aways were:

- Make no mistake about it: cloud computing is a natural evolution of computing in general; it is real and it will result in it becoming more like a true utility.

- We’re at the beginning of a 10-15 year transition period; while the hype may be ahead of reality, “the uptake of cloud services over the last year has moved faster than I would have expected.”

- Economics will outweigh the social and political challenges that arise as an enterprises, and executive management in particular, weight the benefit of reducing IT costs and improving profitability against the disruption within the IT department.

- Cloud computing will enable a whole lot more experimentation and innovation because the previous constraints on IT — the upfront infrastructure costs — will be dramatically reduced.

- A handful of big companies are buying about 20 percent of the servers sold today.  The implication is two-fold: it represents a confirmation that “more and more computing is done in central datacenters”; and, it demonstrates how much activity happens in the cloud and the changing nature of how we access content and services.

- The most significant thing enterprise IT needs to realize is the things that accounted for most of their spending and hiring “are going to go away…[and]  move out to the utility model over time.”

Open Source ERP Goes Cloud; A Business Proposition You Gotta Love; and Don’t Forget the Channel

Let’s take a look at some interesting cloud-related offerings that have recently been announced.

Compiere, an open source ERP and CRM provider, has now moved into the cloud by offering these solutions through Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Compiere’s solutions have seen more than 1.4 million downloads. Teaming up with Amazon gives them a better way to turn those downloads into revenue by utilizing a joint value proposition that combines open source with cloud computing. They’ll be targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and it should prove lucrative for both parties. Again, it’ll be interesting to hear how this progresses.

As reported in InfoWorld: “The Compiere-Amazon combination might also apply to smaller sites within larger companies, says Bruce Richardson, chief research officer at AMR. “If you talk to SAP and Oracle, they’re only waking up to the need for cloud solutions. They just don’t have a good SaaS or cloud offering.” This is another example of the shift going on in enterprise computing. It’ll be interesting to track Compiere’s success as the year rolls on.

And how about a value proposition whereby you pay nothing if the solutions doesn’t prove it’s value? That’s exactly what eGain is offering with their “solution-as-a-service” (yes, another new acronym: SLaaS) called eGain SelfService SLaaS Edtition (and, branding be damned). Seriously, though it’s has a compelling business proposition. Ahsu Roy, eGain CEO, stated in a report by InfoWorld: “Success is judged by usage, [meaning] the number of self-service sessions conducted by their end-customers each month on the client’s Web site. The more the usage, the more the success.” It’s a great example creativity and a willingness to be aggressive with one’s solutions, all of which wouldn’t be possible the software or solution was delivered in a traditional way.

Meanwhile, USA.NET has teamed up with HP to offer a set of “email, messaging and collaboration solutions as a part of their software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering for HP channel partners” as reported in Channel Insider. It’s worth noting because it shows that sales coverage matters in the world of cloud computing and that using the words reseller channel and SaaS is not an oxymoron.

Mixed Signals for SaaS

I suppose it’s not surprising that uncertain times add up to mixed signals regarding just about everything. And the world of IT is no exception. Consider the following:

A recent report by EquaTerra showed that ERP outsourcing was on the rise. Their report shows that firms intend to outsource more in the first three quarters of 2009, even after a drop in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Similarly, an IDC report concludes “the harsh economic climate will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software as a service (SaaS) model” for 2009. It notes some very interesting survey findings, including one big splash of cold water: “cash-flow short falls” and “liquidity challenges” could put a dent in adoption.

Meanwhile, John Foley’s recent InformationWeek blog has the eye popping headline: “SaaS Growth Thrown Into Question.” This after it was reported that “Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer of Salesforce.com, has resigned, and two other execs are out.” Apparently, the conclusion to be drawn from this is that this may be a precursor to slowing sales at the SaaS juggernaut.

Well, this is definitely a harbinger of things to come. The question is: which way is the needle going to move? Will the economic climate push more companies to embrace SaaS and all its variants? Or, will organizations think twice and maybe focus elsewhere, like data center consolidation and the like?

Good questions indeed.

Clouds are in the News; so is SaaS

There’s been a bevy of interesting news in the cloud and SaaS fronts. Let’s check them out:

• Cloud vs. SaaS for Small Business — A new survey shows small business is shy of the cloud. At the same time, a SaaS provider that focuses on SMBs is growing fast. Does SaaS resonate more than “cloud”?
• Oracle takes on Salesforce.com with CRM Demand Upgrade — Offering both multitenant and single-tenant versions in the hopes of attracting customers who may be leary of the former approach.
• Cloud Storage Matures — When it comes to storage, cloud computing continues to evolve and show real sustainability. HP and EMC have lent more legitimacy to the concept, which helps the trailblazers like Bycast, Cleversafe, and Amazon.
• You can also listen to the David Linthicum discuss SOA and private clouds…very well worth your time…
• Finally, check out all the Cloud Computing events for 2009 by going here…

So, until next time…

Going Green, Rethinking Middleware, and Cloud Predictions

So, as you can tell I took a bit of a break for personal reasons but now I’m back and scouring the Web for the most interesting Enterprise IT stories that will have a real impact on you and your business. These are the things you need to know because they will impact IT in fundamental ways. Let’s get started.

A recent article in Baseline with the title “Obama: Hope and Change for IT?” caught my eye. It’s an educated guess on how the stimulus package will effect IT in 2009. Aside from the fact that the White House will forever change the way we–the citizens–interact with government via the Web (a huge change to be sure) there were a few other very likely implications.

But, Beyond security and privacy and the issue of IT jobs, the one that really hit me was the convergence of IT and the Green Revolution. For instance, “Obama’s New Energy for America will seek a $150 billion investment over 10 years to encourage development of technologies that reduce energy.” And that means server vitualization and consolidation “Topic A on the green front among IT purchase decision makers, as the technology can significantly reduce energy consumption and costs.” Keep that in mind as you plan your priorities, especially if you’re a vendor trying to survive in this market. Go where the money’s going to be.

In “The Dawn of Middleware as a Service” it was posited that we’ll be seeing a lot more activity in the middleware space as a matter of course.  That’s because developers are already there building apps in the cloud and “middleware as a service will eventually turn the Internet into a mega-service bus for enterprise applications.” Pretty cool. I think this has incredibly big implications if organizations can make the leap and providers can deliver an acceptable level of security and performance. If it comes to fruition, then we’ll truly see the benefits of a services oriented architecture running across the Web.

Finally, InformationWeek put out an interesting set of “10 Cloud Computing Predictions For 2009“. For example:

• The Cloud Market Will Grow Steadily…to the detriment of traditional software, hardware and other parts of the IT market.
• Google Will Remain a Niche Player…because developers using Google App Engine tend to congregate around the startup and Web 2.0 space. Hmm, we’ll see…
• Big Companies Will Embrace the Cloud…just like I’ve been saying…
• Enterprise-Class management Tools Will Emerge…starting with Amazon EC2 management, monitoring and load balancing tools with IBM’s Tivoli not far behind…
• We’ll See Public-Private Clouds…using platforms like Elastra’s Cloud Server to devise cloud-like environments in their own data centers that work seamlessly with public cloud services…and that is very, very cool…

Hey, until my next post…have a great day…!

What You Can Learn from HP’s IT Transformation

HP just released the results of its three-year IT transformation and they’re impressive and instructive. The transformation focused on five key initiatives: next generation global data centers, portfolio management, workforce effectiveness, building a world-class technology organization, and building a next generation enterprise data warehouse.

And the results are in: IT operating costs cut in half; cost savings of more than $1 billion; more reliable and better availability of information; the creation of a more simplified and dependable IT infrastructure. Oh, and they did this while adding more than $25 billion in revenue over the same three year period.

Randy Mott, HP executive vice president and chief information officer, ran the show after previous stints at Wal-Mart and Dell. As he says, “HP’s IT transformation was not just a technology initiative within the IT organization, it was a business strategy adopted throughout the company.”  The goal of course is to make HP more nimble in responding to business opportunities, while doing a better job of investing in IT where it matters—in the area of innovation and new projects targeted at the bottom line. It was essentially a dramatic shift to literally get revenue out of IT, by changing the focus to new project development, rather than support and maintenance.

If you’re interested there’s more detail in an InfoWorld article with on Mott’s strategy, results, and the implications for enterprise IT. Mott went “all in” and felt there was no other way to do it. He didn’t feel he could “pick-and-choose” because, as he warns, “the parts you don’t do will undermine the parts you do.”  He quickly cautions that executive support is paramount to success and without it you’re likely to miss your goals or fail. There’s also a bit more on the importance of revenue of IT and it shows how those “figures have credibility with execs because they’re based on a cost-benefit analysis agreed to by business unit leaders and their controllers, so they’re finance numbers, not IT department numbers.”

Of course, it’s great to see HP succeeding and leading by example. But you do have to wonder how likely it is for other companies to take such an all-or-nothing approach. Careful planning and commitment are what’s really needed to shift IT’s strategic value. I would’ve like to see a little more detail into alternative paths that could be taken to lighten the load as projects are reprioritized. Perhaps, this is where things like cloud computing and pay-as-you go infrastructure and software will have a bigger role to play. In the end, it is all about becoming more valuable and more nimble. HP looks to be on their way to setting a new benchmark.