To subscribe and receive the magazine, please visit here.
Secure Cloud Transformation: The CIO’s Journey tells the stories of how forward-thinking enterprises achieve scalable growth with direct, secure connectivity. For them, the internet has become the new corporate network.
The book covers a wide range of cloud-related topics from moving applications to the cloud, right through to security transformation and secure cloud transformation.
One unique section in the book is the part where Stiennon explores the perspectives of leading cloud providers, highlighting the importance of understanding the different abstraction levels in cloud computing. Stiennon included contributions from Scott Guthrie, EVP, Cloud & Enterprise Group, Microsoft, Stephen Orban, General Manager, Amazon Web Services, Tariq Shaukat, President, Partner & Industry Platforms, Google Cloud – amongst 13 other key IT leaders.
Operator and vendor revenues across seven key cloud service and infrastructure market segments passed the $150bn milestone, growing by 24% from the first hand of 2018, and it is no secret that AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have a huge part to play in that figure.
Data from Synergy Research Group found that in the cloud service segments, IaaS & PaaS had the highest growth rate at 44%, followed by enterprise SaaS at 27%, UCaaS at 23% and hosted private cloud infrastructure services at 20% – which the book also highlights.
Through interviews with 16 progressive IT leaders from industry, “Secure cloud transformation” reveals their transformation experience and journeys.
They are CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and architects from organisations that are blazing new trails as they transition their IT operations to the cloud.
In this first-hand anthology, they provide actionable guidance on what pitfalls to avoid and what steps to take for a smooth transition to the modern era of cloud computing.
The IT leaders in the book point out important facts about cloud adoption including the fact that it often happens organically.
Some of the contributors also revealed the phases of their cloud transformation journey, pointing out the fact that cloud transformation delivered solutions that helped to create a better experience for its users, and helped to reduce business risk on a whole.
Newsletter
Time is precious, but news has no time. Sign up today to receive daily free updates in your email box from the Data Economy Newsroom.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said: “The cloud is the greatest tech transformation of our time, and Secure Cloud Transformation documents the real-work narratives of progressive enterprise IT leaders. It’s a must-read for anyone embarking on their own cloud journey.”
5 Facts about Richard Stiennon:
Richard Stiennon
• He is Chief Research Analyst for IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 2,200 vendors that make up the IT security industry.
• He is a member of the advisory board at the Information Governance Initiative and sits on the Responsible Recycling Technical Advisory Board, the standard for electronic waste.
• He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and his MA in War in the Modern World from King’s College, London.
• He writes for Forbes, CSO Magazine, and The Analyst Syndicate.
• His previous roles include Chief Strategy Officer for Blancco Technology Group, the Chief Marketing Officer for Fortinet, Inc. and VP Threat Research at Webroot Software.
NetSuite has revolutionised business management software. Since 1998 it is entering a new age of growth together with its parent company Oracle. But where is it headed? Evan Goldberg, Founder and EVP of Oracle NetSuite speaks to João Marques Lima and gives all the insights.
This article originally appeared in the Dec/Jan 2020 Data Economy Magazine.
NetSuite had a modest start, typical to most Californian startups. The biggest difference is perhaps that the company was not born in a garage but in a small office above a hair salon.
The company, formerly known as NetLedger, was founded by Evan Goldberg and three Oracle colleagues who successfully built the first Web-based, completely integrated ERP and CRM suite for small and mid-sized companies.
The success of the business was palpable and led to its acquisition by Oracle in November 2016, in a transaction worth $9.3bn. Oracle NetSuite was then born.
Goldberg now shares his thoughts of how things happened back in 1998 and what the company is working for the next years, without forgetting about the social impact such a large brand can have on communities.
How did you go from being a small office above a hair salon into being this multi-billion dollar business?
Our vision has been consistent the whole way. Just right from the very beginning. I founded it with Larry Ellison with the idea of delivering a single unified system in the cloud to help businesses grow and entrepreneurs succeed. That’s been our constant vision the whole time and keeping a focus on fast growing businesses that outgrow their initial business management package.
They’ll buy something off the shelf sometimes or use a small business accounting package. As their business grows their operations get more complex, and they need something to give them better visibility into everything going on in the business, as well as more control as they lose the direct control that they have, initially, when they start their company. That’s been the animating principle the whole time. It was a long process, but again, we were consistent in what we’re trying to do.
Did you ever think in 1998 that this would grow to be this big?
Larry had more confidence than I did. He was sure of it. I was more cautiously optimistic. We started running our little business on QuickBooks because we hadn’t built our system yet. When our system got to the point where we could run our own business’ business on it, I imported our QuickBooks file and saw our business in a browser at home.
I was at home looking at all the key metrics of how we were spending, and how we were growing, and who our employees were, all there in the browser. That’s when I was sure it was going to work because I knew we were first to do that. I felt that with Larry’s strong backing we’d be able to reach a lot of companies, and that’s what happened.
He was sure from the very beginning. It really was his idea to do it as a web-based application. He was the pioneer, and this was before Salesforce.com started, which he was also involved with. He wanted to do accounting, and I encouraged us to move beyond just accounting, and together we came up with this concept of the suite, and thus the name of the company, ultimately, became NetSuite.
Once we built out the whole suite, we realised we needed to call it NetSuite.
At that point I knew we were going to succeed to some level. However, I probably didn’t envision it being as big as it is now with 18,000 companies, and hundreds of thousands of people using it all the time.
What is the infrastructure story behind NetSuite, especially the recent move into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)?
We built our own data centre, and then it expanded to multiple sites. We opened two data centres in Europe, several years ago. When we were independent that was the strategy we were considering pursuing. We were looking at how companies like us were starting, and they were doing it differently. They were starting on Amazon, or Azure.
We knew that Oracle was going to be moving to offer these services, and those looked like a good fit for us, but we weren’t ready to do it yet, and I don’t know if Oracle was ready for us either. The good fit being the heart of our application is run on Oracle database.
Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure should be custom tailored to being the best to run Oracle databases, so that has proven itself out. Once we got to be part of Oracle, we got to look under the covers, so to speak.
As they built up their infrastructure as a service offering, we could see that it was going to be a good fit. Our team has worked closely with the OCI team to make sure that NetSuite runs better than it did when we were independent. We’re live out of Frankfurt and also in London through OCI.
We’re going to go to 18 OCI data centres over the next couple of years.
Newsletter
Time is precious, but news has no time. Sign up today to receive daily free updates in your email box from the Data Economy Newsroom.
What is NetSuite’s role beyond the product?
It’s super important to us that we’re doing good for the community, and the world. It always has been. We have employees doing pro bono work and sometimes getting outside their daily job duties. We give away NetSuite to charities, and social enterprises, small businesses, and at high discount for larger ones.
We have a fast-growing successful business in selling to the not-for-profit segment. It starts with these donations, and 1,500 organisations are now using NetSuite for free. These are organisations that are doing good all over the world in all kinds of capacity.
The biggest way that we think we can give back is by helping these organisations do good better. It doesn’t just encompass giving them the software, but we use employees to help them implement, and use the software more effectively. Those employees sometimes are, for example, in our product development team; they’ll go out to a charity, maybe the one that they’re particularly passionate about, and work with them to help them use NetSuite.
We’re super proud of the work that we’ve done, and it’s now called the Oracle NetSuite Social Impact. We have had around 900 employees in the last year who have done this pro bono work, and we’re going to expand that even further.
What advice would you have for young tech entrepreneurs wanting to start their own tech business?
Always maintain your focus on your vision. There’ll be distractions along the way, but you always need to think, how does this get me closer? It might not get me directly there, but at least it’s not moving, perpendicular, or worse yet, backwards from where I want to go.
That’s a big challenge when you grow businesses. Opportunities arise that may get you off strategy, and some of them are okay, and useful. You need to fundamentally look at how it is helping you get to where you want to go as a leader, as an entrepreneur, and that vision.
Certainly, for non-profits it’s typically not financial, but for profit companies it’s more that you want to make, like Steve Jobs said, ‘a dent in the universe’.
You have a great idea, and you’ve invented something, or you’ve developed a new business model. You’re providing a service that makes things better for your constituent customers, and you want to see that thing scale, and have the world take advantage of your idea.
Do you have any plans to start a new venture to pick up on all the advice you just gave?
My day job remains 100% NetSuite. I love the team at NetSuite. We have so much more to do. We are retooling the underpinnings of NetSuite.
We’re as vibrant in 20 years from today as we are now. I’m really excited to be part of that and working with most of the same people I’ve been working with over the past two decades. That’s absolutely my focus.
NetSuite also has a big part to play in Oracle’s transformation in the cloud space.
As 2019 comes to an end, what do you envision for the 2020s?
We’re going to see a transformation in business applications similar to the transformation we’ve seen in consumer use of technology. Not necessarily that it will become all mobile because obviously a lot of business users have to work on their desktop, but that there will be a transformation in how users interact to make it something that you want to use.
This next generation of employees that grew up with great technology, great UI and user experience, they have a right to expect that in what they’re doing most of every workday. Those are some big things, these extraordinary user experiences that live up to the expectations of the next generation of users.
Then leveraging all the data to deliver intelligent insights, automation interactions, in a way that we never could before. AI is also going to play a big role in every part of our life, and it’s going to assist us in every part of our life.
The 2020s are here and this is the decade when data centres are expected to take over the world. Predicting just a year in the hyperscale, colocation and edge ecosphere is a conundrum to many, but Data Economy’s João Marques Lima and Abigail Opiah take on the challenge of demystifying the next 120 months for the sector.
2020
This article originally featured in the Dec/Jan 2020 edition of the Data Economy Magazine.
The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17% in 2020 to total of $266.4bn, which is up from $227.8bn in 2019, according to findings from research firm Gartner.
Gartner also says Software as a service (SaaS) will remain the largest market segment, which is forecast to grow to $116bn in 2020 due to the scalability of subscription-based software.
The second-largest market segment is cloud system infrastructure services, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which will reach $50bn in 2020, according to the firm’s prediction.
The global colocation market is expected to continue to grow considerably across all regions, especially in the US where new data centre capacity in the primary US markets is set to increase these markets’ total inventory by 17.3% this year, and increase competition among providers in certain markets in 2020.
According to CBRE, the integration of 5G and Edge deployments into data centre users’ portfolios in 2020 may result in an uptick in demand in secondary and tertiary data centre markets.
Several data centre projects are announced for 2020, including Turkcell’s $350.5m hub in Turkey, NTT’s data centre in Indonesia, STT’s Thailand facility, CyrusOne’s Ireland data centre and Oracle’s new 20 cloud regions.
2021
Increasing data traffic arising from a multitude of devices is driving the growth of data centres. This also implies the need for secured connectivity for critical data and confidential information.
According to Cisco, Global cloud data centre traffic is likely to reach 20.6 zettabytes (ZB) per year by 2021, up from 6.0ZB per year in 2016. They expect to see 628 hyperscale data centres globally in 2021, compared to 338 in 2016.
Regionally, a lot of attention is being paid to South East Asia this year, when the market is predicted to grow to revenues of $11.8bn, up from $6.28bn in 2016, according to Technavio.
According to Vanson Bourne, by 2021, three-quarters of Singapore companies say they will outsource the majority of their IT infrastructure, of which half will move their infrastructure to the cloud. The top three cost savings, they say, will come from reducing IT infrastructure costs, implementing a cloud and virtualisation strategy as well as standardising their IT infrastructure.
Elsewhere, projects in the pipeline for data centre openings in 2021 include Frist Brick’s five new facilities in Africa and DEAC’s hub in Latvia. According to Host in Ireland, 2021 is also the year when Ireland is expected to ramp up €8bn in aggregate data centre construction projects between 2009 and 2021.
2022
Frost & Sullivan reports that the demand for data transfer and storage has significantly increased over the past few years and is expected to continue to do so till 2022, driving data centre expansion and investment. Escalating Internet and mobile data traffic has led to data growth; global Internet IP traffic is likely to rise from 6.8 ZB (zettabyte) in 2016 to 24.6 ZB by the end of 2022, representing nearly a four-fold increase over six years.
Meanwhile, the rapid adoption of smart phones has led to greater mobile Internet penetration, which is anticipated to increase from nearly 50 percent of the total mobile users in 2017 to more than 70 percent in 2022.
The company forecasts the edge data centre market to grow at a CAGR of 36.3% from $768m in 2017 to $3.6bn in 2022.
Elsewhere, a report released by IHS Markit and sponsored by the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) predicts that by 2022 open computing merchandising is going to break the $10bn revenue barrier. 2022 non-board OCP revenue share is expected to climb to more than 5%.
2022 is also the year by when Google expects its data centre infrastructure to be able to beat rival Amazon in the race to be the world’s largest public cloud operator, according to Diane Greene, former Google’s senior vice president.
2023
The global data centre market size is poised to grow by $284.44bn during 2019-2023, according to a new report by Technavio, progressing at a CAGR of more than 17% during the forecast period.
A lot of attention will be paid to the cloud vertical, where spending is forecasted to hit the $500bn mark by this year, according to SoftwareONE.
Software as a Service (SaaS) will be the largest category of cloud computing, capturing more than half of all public cloud spending in throughout the forecast. SaaS spending, which is comprised of applications and system infrastructure software (SIS), will be dominated by applications purchases.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), comprised of servers and storage devices, will be the second largest category of public cloud spending throughout the forecast, followed by Platform as a Service (PaaS).
PaaS spending will grow nearly as fast led by purchases of data management software, application platforms, and integration and orchestration middleware.
When it comes to expansion projects, Brazil is set to have a jubilant year as 2023 is the goal for Digital Realty’s Ascenty to triple its portfolio by through an investment of $276m that will see the operator expand eight existing facilities nationwide and build six other.
2024
The global colocation market will by 2024 have almost doubled in value when compared to 2018. Global revenues topped $39.461BN in 2018, a value that in the next five years will have grown to $69.76bn, according to Structure Research.
In terms of regional market share, APAC is projected to become the world’s largest market in 2021, when it will overcome North America at $19.88bn vs $19.58bn respectively. From then one, the gap between the regions is only expected to grow and by 2024, APAC will amount to $27.95bn, North America to $23.47bn, EMEA is projected to reach $17.21bn and Latin America will break the $1bn barrier for the very first time in history in 2024, when it is expected to close the year at $1.12bn.
This all translates into a global CAGR average of 9.9% for the period of 2018-2024 (Latin America – 18.2%; APAC – 12.2%; EMEA – 11.1%; North America – 6.4%).
Although expected to grow at a faster rate of 15.7% CAGR of 15.7%, the wholesale market will continue to fall behind the retail market, projected for a CAGR of 6.3%. In 2019, the retail sector is projected to close the year on $28.8bn, which will have grown to $39.2bn by 2024.
In comparison, the wholesale colocation market will by December 31, 2019, top around $14.7bn and grow to $30.6bn by midnight on December 31, 2024.
2025
With the data centre market continuing to change and consolidate through the first half of the decade, the hosting monopoly is expected to have been reshuffled by 2025.
By this year, it is expected that data centre M&A will have created a much bigger company than the current largest operators. Activity across mid and emerging markets is also more than expected to be in full swing, especially across Africa where by 2025 it is predicted that the world’s major data centre operators and public cloud operators will be running large operations.
Edge data centres are forecasted to be a common development practice amongst the sector by 2025, with Vertiv predicting edge sites to triple by this year.
The company also predicts that 34% of data centre power will come from solar and wind sources. However, a paper published by US researchers alerts that by 2025, data centres worldwide could be responsible for as much as 1/5 of the global carbon emissions if the industry fails to adopt climate friendly alternatives to their hungry power needs.
Interestingly, 2025 is also the year where a major shit in data centre workforces is expected to be noticeable, with 16% of today’s staff lined up for retirement.
Cloud infrastructure company Apcera predicts that in 2025 the total percentage of enterprise workloads remaining in company data centres will have dropped to less than 35%.
The global data centre networking market size is expected to reach $40.3bn by 2025, rising at a market growth of 12.3% CAGR during the forecast period. Elsewhere, the Global Data Centre Transformation Market is expected to reach $15.92bn by 2025, from $5.86bn in 2017 growing at a CAGR of 13.2% during the forecast period to 2026.
According to “The Data Economy Report” by Digital Realty, by 2025, UK-based data centres will be responsible for the storing of data worth just over $135bn annually. The figure represents a rapid growth from 2018’s $104.7bn.
Southeast Asia’s online economy will be worth more than $240bn by the year 2025 according to a report by Singapore private investment company Temasek Holdings and Google.
And in the Nordic region, a report commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers projects envisaged a sharp growth for the Nordic data centre market by 2025 – with expected annual construction investments in the order of $2-4.5bn.
Newsletter
Time is precious, but news has no time. Sign up today to receive daily free updates in your email box from the Data Economy Newsroom.
2026
The global data centre market is predicted to hit the $193bn valuation mark by this year, with colocation revenues hitting $105bn, according to Zion Market Research.
As the fight against Climate Change gains pace towards the targets set for the end of the decade, the green data centre market is forecasted to reach $35bn by 2026, up from $6.5bn in 2018, says Global Market Insights.
The think tank also predicts that the market valuation of data centre networking will cross $45bn by 2026 and the market valuation of data centre UPS will surpass $5bn by 2026.
Green data centres will be common practice, especially across in the US and Europe as renewable power sources rapidly overtake other energy resources. Government initiatives are also expected to speed up data centre companies’ green strategies.
Industry Research forecasts that the global data centre cooling market to reach $20.84bn by 2026, at a CAGR of 13.63% between 2017 and that year.
Hyperscale data centres are predicted to witness an explosive growth in some of the world’s fastest growing economies, especially in China, India and Mexico, with South America also expected to experience an expanding data centre ecosystem.
2027
The year of 2027 will start the countdown towards the end of the decade with markets across Asia, Africa and Latin America gaining further traction as businesses expand their colocation footprints. The big question arising by then is about who will be the world’s top providers and in which order.
According to Credence Research “Software-defined Data Center Market – Growth, Future Prospects, and Competitive Analysis, 2019 – 2027”, the global software-defined data centre market is set to reach a market value of $165.3bn in 2027 and is expected to have a significant CAGR of 16.4% over the forecast period from 2019 to 2027.
The global data centre construction market accounted for $45.1bn in 2018 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.4% over the forecast period 2019-2027, to account for $89.9bn in 2027, according to Market Study Report.
2028
The global modular data centre market is expected to register a global CAGR of 22.3% during 2018 – 2028, with Western Europe and North America accounting for approximately 60% market value shares by the end of the forecast period, according to Future Market Insights. Eight years into the future, the market is forecasted to be worth nearly $36bn.
The global data centre security market is estimated to exhibit a CAGR of 11.1% during 2018 to 2028, also according to research by Future Market Insights.
One of the key trends governing the growth of the global data centre security market according to the study is the increasing number of initiatives undertaken by several regional governments in collaboration with a variety of Tier-1 and Tier-2 companies.
According to analysis, in addition to joint initiatives of governments and key players, the data centre security landscape has been witnessing a surge in the frequency of introduction of virtualised data centre security solutions via collaborations between multiple channel partners.
And in the US, the rapid expanding cloud economy is projected to deliver a cumulative $2tr economic boost to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2028.
The figure, based on 2016’s Dollar value, represents the value cloud will deliver by enabling accessibility to technologies such as blockchain, AI, cognitive computing, machine learning, and intelligent automation to a wider range of businesses and consumers.
The findings were published in a report titled “Intelligent Finance: How CFOs Can Lead the Coming Productivity Boom”, and authored by Dr. Michael Mandel, senior fellow at the Mack Institute of Innovation Management at the Wharton School and commissioned by Oracle.
2029
The global hosting infrastructure services market is estimated to reach a value of $28.07bn by 2029 as operational efficiency along with low cost and enhanced security are identified as key factors behind the spike in adoption of hosting infrastructure services.
The research, published by Future Market Insights, anticipates a CAGR of 8% from 2019’s expected $13bn market value all the way to 2029. In 2018, the market value was calculated at $11bn.
In addition to operational efficiency and enhanced security, robust developments in small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are being captured by market vendors as dynamic opportunities to gain higher traction, therefore, speeding up the growth of the hosting infrastructure segment.
Researchers also point that the emergence of highly advanced technologies such as machine learning and AI has led to “tectonic shifts” in end-user preferences as well as services offered.
By 2029, it is predicted that AI, IoT, Blockchain and 5G will generate $721bn in revenue per year to 60 of the largest cities in the world, according to a report released by data centre giant Digital Realty.
Overall, 451 Research predicts a steady growth in the global colocation market through 2029, averaging in the high single digits. Some regions will grow by larger percentages, including Asia Pacific and Latin America, which will be closer to 10%. The U.S. and Europe will grow by around 3% to 4%.
2030
The year that will end the climate change fight. Well at least that is the narrative that is being portrayed in the industry with tech giants and data centre leaders all guaranteeing a better tomorrow for the planet with its sustainability pledges.
Companies across the globe have unveiled its absolute carbon reduction targets for 2030 in a unison-like fashion. With the 10-year room to become green and renewably powered, data centre and telco companies have announced the adoption of an array of techniques to aid the big transition that will help to tackle climate change.
Twenty-eight tech companies with a combined market capitalisation of $1.3tn announced its collective plans to set a new level of climate ambition, backing the UN’s Save the Planet call to action. The companies have committed themselves to climate targets aligned with limiting global temperatures reaching net-zero emissions by no later than 2050, but plan to be as close to zero as possible by 2030.
The likes of Schneider Electric has committed to 100% renewable electricity by 2030, with an intermediary objective of 80% by 2020. Rethink Technology Research concluded that Floating Wind platforms will begin to deliver multiple Gigawatts of electrical power by 2024, and will accelerate to as much as 18.9 GW of capacity by 2030.
When it comes to data centres, Research Gate expects data centres to be using as much as 2,967 TWh of electricity, with other projections topping highs of 7,933 TWh and a lows of 1,137 TWh.
EdgeConneX explains the evolution of data center services and how important meaningful Edge deployments should be customer led.
A lot has been made of the ‘Edge’ as a concept and working model in recent years. As the conversation intensifies, the concept seemingly, well… mystifies. The Edge has inevitability been delivered for many years. We need only look to the past to see how things have evolved and how we can ultimately predict and turn technological corners to better prepare for those future technological advancements – in real time.
For example, we can see how industry and technology have been motivated in large part by bringing goods and services to the consumer – inching toward the end user – inching, you might say, to the Edge. Which brings us to the current day, dominated by the Internet of Everything, which requires an Internet of Everywhere – which fundamentally is bringing network and data processing power right to the end-user’s front door, the ubiquitous Edge.
This is what appears to be mystifying to many. The Edge is that thin layer of demarcation between service and consumption. It changes in size and location relative to the services being delivered and devices wishing to consume – a change based on unique customer requirements.
Demystifying the Edge
This is where meaningful Edge deployment must happen. The Edge isn’t a place where consumers must go. Meaningful Edge deployment means physically bringing the Edge to the consumer. Although latency issues are a major driver of Edge network deployment, it’s not just to provide a smoother graphical rendering to gamers or for a more seamless binging of Game of Thrones. No, the impact can be seen, quite literally, everywhere.
Processes are changing exponentially across a number of verticals. Let’s take an example. In manufacturing, manual and digital processes that once lived on their own are now an amalgamation of digital and physical bringing siloed manual tasks and digital analysis of those tasks together to optimize the entire process. In the existing evolving model, we’re seeing, a merger of the digital and physical worlds, a digital model fits inside the manufacturing model.
On the physical side, the use of human and robotic abilities combine to create the next widget. Optimization of that process only occurs capturing all the logistics, analytics, syncing of all machines, processes and modeling into a digital stream to be analyzed (big data) to immediately identify and optimize issues with the process – in real time. This type of optimization and enablement can only happen if the networking and data processing happens as close to the physical process as humanly (ironic, I know) possible.
If each physical asset has a ‘digital twin’, that data must be stored, processed and analyzed in real time in order to have any material impact on productivity. This cannot be done with disparate data centers handling the network or data processing. This must be done at the Edge. On-premises or near premises Edge for those applications with the lowest latency requirements.
Newsletter
Time is precious, but news has no time. Sign up today to receive daily free updates in your email box from the Data Economy Newsroom.
What you need at the Edge:
Network neutral, data center solutions that are proximate and connected to your customers, scalable to your needs, and agile enough to support your capacity requirements
Why the Edge Matters:
Performance & QoS, User satisfaction & QoE, network, security, cost and flexibility
Where is the Edge?
Wherever you need to deploy and connect to your customers
There is an infinite number of applications that require the lowest possible latency in order for their users’ expectations to be realised.
EdgeConneX collaborates with its customers to define and enable solutions by identifying where their Edge needs to be deployed or built, selecting optimal locations, designing premium facilities and the rapidly deploying infrastructure, while also solving for their scalable power and connectivity requirements.
As a forefather in Edge definition and advancement, EdgeConneX has been busy delivering meaningful Edge data centre deployments and low-latency application enablement for many years. We’ve made it our business to bring the Edge-enabled applications their customers demand.
Our market focus and expansion will continue as customer demand drives the company to particular markets.
From a small town in India to the world’s stage, Google Cloud’s CEO Thomas Kurian unveils the cloud giants’ next decade of transformation set to turn the tables upside down in the sector. Abigail Opiah Reports.
Migration. The topic that has undoubtedly come up in any company boardroom where data is concerned.
Google Cloud has chosen to be one step ahead of the game carrying its digital transformation strategy in a sack over the company’s shoulder, ready to distribute across the globe like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
“Thousands of Googlers are working hard every day to give you this platform to help you innovate,” Kurian says.
“We give you this platform to paint a new vision for your company — to imagine what was once considered impossible, and to transform the way you serve customers in every industry.
“We’re investing very aggressively to ensure that you have the right sales resources, customer service resources, as well as product innovations, to take your organisation into the future.”
“Our mission at Google Cloud is to enable organisations around the world to transform their business using digital technology and to do so by offering the best infrastructure, a digital transformation platform and industry-specific solutions to help you transform your organisation as well as to infuse you with our expertise and our culture to help you create that magic,” he says.
“We do so by offering you three important key components. First, Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Second, our digital transformation platform and third, industry solutions.
“Our foundation is Infrastructure as a Service. We look at it as offering you six important capabilities: compute, storage, Network as a Service protected by new offerings that we’re introducing today in the security area, deployable either in Google’s cloud regions, or in your premise – hybrid – or increasingly out in the telecommunications network – the edge.”
Kurian added that the foundation of all of the components is its regions. As it stands, Google Cloud is currently live in 20 regions around the world and 61 availability zones.
Six of those are in Europe, and the cloud giants’ are set to introduce five new regions (under previously announced plans to open data centres in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Warsaw, Jakarta and Seoul).
Join the Debate
Time is precious, but news has no time. Join Data Economy’s LinkedIn debate page today and get access to content in real-time.
“Our regions are not only very powerful and capable, but also built on a foundation that advances renewables energy,” adds Kurian.
“Our CEO, Sundar Pichai, recently announced that Google has been a carbon-neutral company since 2007.
“When you move workload to our cloud, you’re moving workload onto a backbone that is built by the largest corporate renewable energy company in the world: Google.
“So not only are you moving workloads to an amazing platform, but you’re also doing good for the planet.”
The acquisition of CloudSimple demonstrates the tech giant’s commitment to providing solutions to its enterprise customers for the modernisation of their IT infrastructure.
“We’re announcing a number of new offerings in compute, new compute VMs (virtual machines) optimized in both AMD and Intel processors, faster storage offerings and two really great network offerings – network intelligence that lets you look at global traffic patterns on the network accessing your systems, and packet mirroring that will allow you to get better reliability in the infrastructure,” he continues.
“They’re all part of our commitment to give you a secure, reliable, high-performance infrastructure to run both our application workloads as well as partner applications.
“If you’re running VMware on your premise, we’re announcing a new offering to allow you to move VMware workloads to the cloud.
“You can migrate your VMware workload as is to the cloud. You can use your existing VMware tools, processes and operational practices to run these workloads in the cloud. Not only does it allow you to migrate applications unchanged, you can also do so while maintaining business continuity.
Newsletter
Time is precious, but news has no time. Sign up today to receive daily free updates in your email box from the Data Economy Newsroom.
“And we’re doing this through an acquisition we announced. CloudSimple is now part of Google Cloud. They’re recognized worldwide as experts in running VMware, and they have proven technology to let you move VMware workloads to our cloud.”
New Beginnings
Amongst other things, Kurian reveals that Google Cloud are not short of announcements and new developments as the industry becomes flooded with start-ups and enterprises that are ready to compete with the giants.
“Another workload that we’re announcing a solution for today is NetApp. NetApp offers a new service: the Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud Platform,” he adds.
“We’re announcing general availability, including in London. So if you run NetApp storage on your premise, Cloud Volumes is a full hybrid cloud storage solution.
“You can move data from NetApp storage on your premise to our cloud. You can migrate applications that run on NetApp without any change to the cloud. You can run them in production, and you can do so while maintaining business continuity.”
He also unveils the company’s new bare metal offering (Bare Metal Solution) to run raw servers running SAP, VMware and Oracle.
“You can migrate existing enterprise licenses to the cloud, and you get great performance and scalability. This is a new offering we’re introducing in partnership with Atos,” he says.
“They’re also offering a broad set of services, including Database as a Service, a new offering called Workplace as a Service (Google Edition, inclusive of G Suite and Chromebooks) and running SAP, as well as doing data centre exits.”
Lastly, Kurian takes the audience on a journey to discover the hidden gems of Explainable AI to make it easier for the company’s customers to adopt artificial intelligence.
“There are people who use our data management infrastructure for AI and machine learning. We offer four important capabilities: a platform, AI building blocks, an AI Hub, which provides one-click deployment of models, and AutoML, which makes it much easier for people to build AI models,” he concludes.
“Explainable AI allows you, a customer, who is using AI in an enterprise context or an enterprise business process, to understand why the AI infrastructure generated a particular outcome.
“So for instance, if you’re using AI for credit scoring, you want to be able to understand why the model didn’t reject a particular credit application and accept another one. Explainable AI provides you with the ability to understand that.”