Gartner: "The public cloud market is to grow 18.5% in 2013"

Gartner has released some research that suggests the global public cloud computing market is set to grow by 18.5% in 2013 which will see it rise from a $111bn market last year to $131 this year.  Yet the big news is that the public cloud market is set to total $677bn over the next three years.

The largest contributors are North America and Western Europe, but areas such as APAC and Eastern Europe are quickly growing with opportunities around cloud computing services.  To quantify that to percentages, Gartner suggests that North America will be responsible for 59% of new cloud computing spend through to 2016 with Western Europe accounting for 24%.

Gartner's research breaks down the cloud computing segments as follows:

• Business Process as a Service: 28%
• Software as a Service: 14.7%
• Infrastructure as a Service: 5.5%
• Management, Security and Automation: 2.8%
• Platform as a Service: 1%
• Cloud Advertising: 48%.

Clearly there are cloud services that have not been created yet that will be relevant in 2016,but this should give you a good idea of where things are heading.  If you need help on your cloud strategy and transitions contact us.

VMware Horizon Mirage adds app layering for a more flexible desktop

For years we have heard that this will be the year of VDI and those years have come and gone, and in that year there has been some sizable VDI deployments, but it is fair to say that the hype has not lived to the reality.  VDI is a great technology, but it isn't the only way to deploy desktops and VMware with their recent GTM of Horizon Mirage 4.0 allows IT departments to be more modular when architecting and deploying centrally managed desktop images using application packages.

VMware have View at the heart of their EUC proposition, but as IT departments have continued to deploy desktops in a traditional way VMware have had to take this in their stride and hence acquired Wanova allowing them to centralise the management of desktop images but allow them to be executed on the physical device.

Contained within the latest release (Horizon Mirage 4.0) is application layering which is a key technology in this release.

The process for building the image is straight forward, you create the base layer including commonly used applications across the business.  Once this layer is complete you configure additional layers containing applications only, these layers are then delivered independent of the base layer to managed desktops.   Prior to this applications were all part of the base layer, but the addition of the application layers allow IT departments to be more granular, and deliver a flexible work environment.  Each layer can be migrated, updated, or restored independently of the others.

Mirage is part of VMware's Horizon Suite end-user computing proposition which also includes Workspace and View.

Version 5.2 of View -- which is used to remotely access desktops running on a server, including bandwidth improvements, hardware accelerated 3D graphics and the platform can now understand native iOS and Android gestures.

A view from above

So here I am sat above the clouds circling London with a great View, and I ask myself what can I do to kill some time. So I decide a blog about VMware Horizon Suite is in order given that both Clouds and View are included it seemed appropriate.

For those of you who don't know VMware last week announced a new suite of end-user computing products called the Horizon Suite.

The suite bundles a numberof products from VMware and is part of the vision which VMware already detailed during the VMware Forum in May last year.

The suite consists of VMware’s View which is now called Horizon View, Horizon Mirage and Horizon Workspace. The suite delivers a complete solution for delivering a consistent workspace across different devices. Among View, Mirage and Workspace also the technologies of Project Octopus and AppBlast, Project AppShift, VMware ThinApp and Horizon Mobile are included too.

Horizon Mirage is centralised management for physical desktop images over the cloud. VMware acquired the Mirage product when it acquired Wanova in May last year.

Horizon Workspace is a new product name containing both Horizon Application Manager and Horizon Data, which we used to know as Project Octopus. Horizon Application Manager offers an Enterprise Application Store capable of presenting Windows-based applications in addition to both public and private cloud based applications. Project Octopus, which is now called Horizon Data provides on- and off-premise enterprise data sharing functionality.

Horizon View is updated to version 5.2 with a raft of new features.

The Horizon Suite will be licensed per named user.

Great move by VMware in what is a very hot topic in most CIO's agendas. Need help, contact us at Equanet.

HaaS or Hadoop on Premise Your Choice thanks to Microsoft

An area of great interest to many of our clients is understanding how to make sense of the ever increasing volume of data they hold to understand sales opportunities, e-commerce, infrastructure management or patient data for example. A technology that is on top of many CIO's agendas is Hadoop and that comes with it a new skill set, architecture and cost base. The concept of Hadoop as a Service has excited many of our clients and this is what Microsoft is working towards with Azure and also Windows Server allowing you to choose where to run your platform.

Microsoft and Hortonworks has made available for download a beta of the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) for Windows.

The new Windows platform is 100 percent open source and provides the same Hadoop experience as is available for Linux.

In 2011, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Hortonworks to create both a Windows Azure and Windows Server implementations of the Hadoop big data framework.

Some of the key elements are SQL Server 2012 which supports structured data on scalable relational database and data warehouse offerings, and unstructured data on an Enterprise-ready Hadoop distribution. You can now move data between Hadoop and SQL Server with bidirectional Hadoop connectors for SQL Server 2012 and Parallel Data Warehouse. And with HCatalog analysts can be provided SQL-like access to Hadoop so that customers can enhance their insights

HDP is a Hadoop distribution and includes high-availability, security, data services and management tools and interfaces.  The HDP offering is the foundational layer for Microsoft's HDInsight offerings.

Microsoft has made this simple and with HDInsight, Hadoop is both simple to install and manage. It demystifies the Hadoop distribution so you don’t need to choose and test the right combination of Hadoop projects to deploy. And with Windows Azure HDInsight Service deployment is simplified so much that 16-node Hadoop cluster can be live in only 10 minutes.

Consumerisation of IT through 2013

The Consumerisation of IT has been a phrase encapsulating business IT for around 3/4 years and refers to the speed of pace which consumer focused IT is released and far outpaces the traditional speed of adoption associated with business IT. Ultimately ensuring the consumer has a better IT experience at home than when in the office.

Rather than thinking of this trend as a mobility issue, it should be thought of as an innovation and opportunity.

Over the past two years there has been much interest in BYOD but it’s important to remember this is only the start when it comes to the Consumerisation of IT.

The past two years has seen a big increase in the adoption of BYOD. This is not going to go away; there will be more BYOD and more usage within the enterprise. Organisations need to be prepared for more non-corporate devices accessing their networks.

Organisations that take this innovation opportunity seriously will realise that mobility/BYOD is not just about MDM. A new holistic approach to mobility will be about managing data and information wherever it maybe stored.

With increase of adoption comes increases in legal cases as corporate and personal data becomes blurred by the device. Organisations will need to weigh up the risk of privacy beaches against productivity gained as a result of Consumerisation of IT.

IT departments driven by thought leading CIO's will need to assess themselves. A shift towards providing IT consultancy and services for the business will be imperative.

Going to adopt BYOD or whatever you are calling it and don't know where to start? Contact Us for advice.

Whats on your 2013 Techmap?

So that's 2012 done and dusted with, which always brings about the questions what is going to be big this year and what was a hit last year.  So we thought we would have a quick punt on what 2013 might bring to businesses in the shape of technology.  

Over the years we have had a pretty good guess and what was coming down the line from VDI, through to ESN and Cloud.  The following tops the bill for us on what is going to be on your techmap at some point this year:

• Expect to see a significant rise with cloud built on Openstack, the project has gained fantastic momentum and shows no signs of slowing down.  Private Cloud built upon Public Cloud processes can only be a good thing
• Keeping on the opensource theme, expect Bigdata to become more strategic with Hadoop taking the lead.  Once tier 1 cloud providers position Hadoop as a Service the technology will become more accessible to the SMB market place
• Cloud services will be consumed with greater velocity meaning technology needs to be provided to aggregate these cloud services from personal through to private into a single pane of glass such as Citrix Cloud Gateway
• Symantec O3 should make a name for itself this year providing a sensible framework for SSO, Content and Security services again becoming a single pane of glass for cloud services
• Windows 8 was launched with Gusto in 2012 and expect it to make an appearance on a desk near you soon either through Windows XP desktop replacement or through BYO strategies
• Mobility will morph into Enterprise Mobility Management consuming BYO with it as the industry accepts its inevitable. Consumer choice will be delivered through Digital Allowance schemes and hopefully HMRC will provide clarity around tax implications.
• Another area of growth we expect to see happen over the next year [largely fuelled by BYO is the interest in Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP), no longer is a single way of developing applications acceptable or affordable for businesses to adopt.  There has been significant promise of HTML5 being the development architecture of choice but this has yet to come to fruition.  It is clear that this is an opportunity within the market place to provide one framework to all devices, the browser maybe the right approach but that is yet to be seen.  There will still be a huge demand for native applications as they provide the most rich user experience to date.  The approach of mobilising applications will largely be driven through improved development skills as they need to adopt new design skills to deliver touch-optimised applications that operate across a range of devices
• In 2013 we also expect to see the main network operators roll out 4G networks. With continuous streaming of high speed data the move to mobile will change the world of screens at home and work as we know it.
• Certified cloud architectures such as Flexpod will continue to gain market share
• Office 365 will gain further momentum fuelled largely by the plethora of new Microsoft Workloads due for launch in 2013
• If you don't adopt cloud in your strategy then you can expect your users to circumnavigate the IT department and spin services up through AWS or Rackspace for example
• The software defined datacentre will get a lot of airtime this year largely driven by network vitualisation
• Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market with specific verticals being key adopters of the technology.
• We also expect to see business and industry drive their mobility proposition to the next level of maturity. On top of the considerable benefits seen from native iOS apps, companies are now investing strategically in business process re-engineering projects that drive savings and efficiency through native app development.  Links to ERP and CRM systems will give organisations access to core data and the functionality to operate from wherever they chose.

So that's what we think will be in your Techmap for 2013 but we know there will be more lurking around the corner.  It would be great to hear what solutions you are looking into.

Charles Barratt | Solutions Development Manager | Equanet

Citrix Releases VDI in a Box 5.2

Citrix has released version 5.2 of VDI-in-a-box. The VDI solution doesn’t require shared storage or dedicated load balanced connection brokers. It consists of a single virtual appliance that provides all the functionality needed to create, provision, manage, and load balance virtual desktops. The VDI-in-a-Box appliance, known as VDI-in-a-Box Manager runs as a virtual machine on a hypervisor. vdiManager creates and manages virtual desktops on the local physical server by communicating with the local hypervisor.

Besides supporting the latest hypervisors in this release, Citrix is integrating the VDI-in-a-box product more and more with its existing products, like introducing support for Cloud Gateway and the ability to export images for use with XenDesktop.

Version 5.2 provides the following new features:

• Support for the hypervisors available in Windows Server 2012, XenServer 6.1 and vSphere 5.1 
• Support for StoreFront services provided by Citrix Cloud Gateway 
• Support for Microsoft Lync 
• Support for exporting of published images for use with Citrix XenDesktop 
• Licensing Management using Citrix License Server. 
• Support for multiple data stores 
• Support for virtual desktops running Windows Server 2012 (accessible using RDP only) 
• Automated desktop agent upgrade 
• Citrix Desktop Lock support.