Oracle’s strange bedfellows

You can tell when a technology is becoming increasingly important – when old adversaries suddenly start working together to exploit the opportunity. The old proverb “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” certainly came to mind when Oracle recently announced agreements with long-time protagonists Microsoft and Salesforce.com.

Before you think the world has stopped turning, or this is a late April fool’s joke, these are very specific agreements concerned with expanding Oracle’s Cloud offerings but also provide significant benefit the other way.

 

Microsoft

The Microsoft partnership seems to be in response to the threat being posed to both organisations traditional business by newer, Internet-focused operations that can offer more responsive and less expensive services than the more established computing giants.

Under the agreement both companies are working together to make their solutions more compatible. In particular, it will enable organisations to run Oracle software (Java, Oracle database, WebLogic server and Oracle Linux) on 2 specific Microsoft solutions: Windows Azure – the cloud computing platform and infrastructure, and Windows Server Hyper-V – platform virtualisation. This will be backed up by new certifications for resellers and expanded support by both parties.

Salesforce.com

The separate deal with Salesforce.com, commits them to standardising their offerings on the Oracle Linux OS, database, Java middleware platform and Exadata database appliance. In return Oracle is going to integrate Salesforce.com with its Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud,

While these alliances are generally viewed as a win-win scenario, there are a few more sceptical analysts who think Microsoft will be the big winners as it will help them in their battle with VMware. Time will tell who is right!

Cisco uses Microsoft technology to reduce complexity

Cisco recently announced a range of new joint technologies and integrated solutions for data centres that utilise Microsoft Cloud technologies. It combines Cisco Unified Data Center architecture with Microsoft Fast Track architecture solutions to help reduce complexity, improve IT productivity and enhance business agility.

Architecture

The Cisco Unified Data centre architecture platform combines compute, storage, network and management into a platform designed to automate IT as a service across physical and virtual environments, resulting in increased budget efficiency, more agile business responsiveness, and simplified IT operations.

Combined with Microsoft Fast Track it delivers a pre-configured solution that will help channel partners who resell both Cisco and Microsoft technologies to grow their data center business. These:

  • Lessen the complexity of the data centre
  • Help to enable simplified deployment, operations and increase productivity

The technology

The technology combines the Cisco Nexus 1000V series, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Extensible Switch and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2012 to allow the virtualisation of certain aspects of data center networks alongside physical networking and cloud computing infrastructure.

While the VSPEX Solution for Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track 3.0 offers a simple, fully integrated, rapidly deployable Microsoft-based private cloud upon which customers can easily manage the applications that run their businesses.

cisco-microsoft

Finally, FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud offers a turnkey platform, designed jointly by NetApp and Cisco, and built on a defined set of hardware and software for IaaS environments based on Microsoft platforms.

The solution features management, automation and orchestration capabilities integrated with Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 and PowerShell for the efficient and accelerated deployment of services and applications.

The Digital Universe – how will it impact your business?

A new study by IDC has revealed some interesting facts about what it terms the “digital universe”. This is defined as a measure of all digital data created, replicated and consumed in a single year.

Starting with data collected in 2005 and extending it to 2020, IDC believe that:

  • From 2005 to 2020 the digital universe will grow from 130 exabytes to 40 trillion gigabytes – a factor of 30
  • The investment in the infrastructure of the universe (hardware, software services etc) will grow by 40% between 2012 and 2020
  • 68% of the information in 2012 is created and consumed by consumers yet enterprises have responsibility for nearly 80% of the information. This leads to issues like copyright, privacy and compliance with data moving through their networks even though it is consumed by others.
  • By 2020 almost 40% of the information in the digital universe will be stored or processed in a cloud somewhere on its journey from creation to disposal
  • Much of the digital universe is transient – e.g. phone calls not recorded etc

Despite the rapid growth of big data, IDC believes that only a tiny fraction of it has been explored. By 2020 they estimate as much as 33% of the digital universe will contain information that might be valuable if analysed. From patterns in social media usage to medical information and security footage to scientific data, the potential for the extraction of value is high.

So, what are the implications for us all? Well, there is certainly increasing interest in areas like automatic tagging algorithms, real-time analytics, social media data mining and new storage technologies. How will it impact your business?

Are self-healing chips the future?

Research work by a team at the California Institute of technology (Caltech) has brought about the possibility of an intriguing future with self-healing chips. These are not some new potato-based snack but computer components with the ability to heal themselves, making even more reliable hardware available in the very near future.

By building tiny amplifiers for the chips they are capable of withstanding major damage, dealing with transistor failures and even coping with battery problems. It is also believed that it could lead to faster chips with much improved performance.

Coping with changing circumstances

The power amplifiers Caltech built were minute (76 fitting on a 1 cent piece) and had sensors that monitor critical factors like temperature, current, power and voltage. This information is then passed to a custom application-specific integrated circuit on the amplifier that analyses the performance and decides if it needs to adjust any of the changeable parts of the processor to cope.

This ability to cope with changing circumstances is akin to the human brain, which will automatically compensate and look for an optimum state.

Useful in extreme and remote sites

Although in its early state the technology is already being looked at for many possible uses. It is thought it would be most beneficial in products where dependable performance is important. This would mean things like servers that support processes in remote areas and also military applications. They could also be used in extreme conditions such as satellites and remote weather stations.

The self-healing process will also extend Moore’s law by improving the process yield in smaller feature size processes. So, look out for self-healing chips appearing in your computers soon.

What do you do about BYOD?

Like it or not BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is becoming increasingly important to mainframe sites. BYOD is the policy of allowing employees to bring their own mobile devices (laptops, tablets and Smartphones) into work and use them to access corporate applications and data.

Research group Ovum has found that whereas 79% of employees in the high growth markets (Brazil, Russia, India etc) are more likely to embrace BYOD, this figure reduces to 44% in the more mature developed markets like the UK. This still means that nearly half of organisations in the UK are likely to be embracing BYOD as a policy.

BYOD management vital

Worryingly, Ovum also discovered that there is a distinct lack of BYOD management everywhere. On average only 20% of employees who use personal devices have actually signed a policy that governs their behaviour. With there now being a high level of acceptance and encouragement in the UK for BYOD the need for a policy to manage this is vital.

With many mainframe sites now wanting to make data available to other platforms, it is important to take stock of your position and ensure that you put in place the necessary controls to prevent future problems. Logicalis, who commissioned the research by Ovum, recommend the following steps are taken by all organisations that encourage BYOD:

  1. Draw up a BYOD policy if you have not already done this
  2. Communicate that policy to your workforce
  3. Ensure all employees have signed a BYOD behaviour policy and draw attention to any relevant clauses in their employment contracts

BYOD can help improve collaboration and productivity but, like any process, it needs to be managed properly. Make sure you do.