The Cloud Provider's Infrastructure - AND - Apple's New Data Center

Posted on June 11, 2011 by Sam Conforti

 

Once again Thomas Trappler has come up with a very informative piece and at a very opportune time (Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, just announced its iCloud featuring its state-of-the-art iDataCenter – more on that later in this posting). Trappler’s article in COMPUTERWORLD entitled “The Cloud Contract Adviser: Know your provider's infrastructure” deals with the importance of knowing your provider and their ability to meet your need for availability (i.e. “uninterrupted service”). As Trappler points out, Service Level Agreements are just part of the equation (see April 30, 2011 posting in this Blog entitled Importance of Service Level Agreements for the Cloud). What should really matter is the ability for the Provider to manage its Cloud and he ponders if perhaps the technology to provide Cloud Computing is ahead of the skill to manage the data center that will be providing the cloud services. In a nutshell Trappler lays out the complexity facing the operations management team:

“In addition to general computing components such as virtual machine monitors, data storage and associated middleware, a public cloud infrastructure has to deal with things like workload management, data replication and recovery, and resource metering. And to make matters worse, all of these have to interact effectively, while they change over time as feature improvements and bug fixes are continuously rolled out.”

Trappler suggests that you develop a set of questions to ask the Cloud Provider and he assists in this endeavor by positing a few vital points that need to be covered in order to educate yourself on the infrastructure of the Could Provider, such as:

* Capacity and resource planning

* Data replication, storage, distribution and recovery

* Change management policies and procedures

* Virtual server provisioning and management

* Asset inventory and management policies and processes

*Software development quality assurance

Apple’s iCloud and its Suite of Services

Derrick Harris reports in his article in GIGAOM entitled “Apple launches iCloud; here’s what powers it” that just this week, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, announced the launching of its iCloud and their infrastructure that will make it all happen.

Apple’s iDataCenter is in Maiden North Carolina:

It is 500,000 square feet, cost $1billion to build, uses clustering technology from IBM, Veritas and Oracle, and a second data center is planned for the same site:

Apple ordered 12 petabytes of Isilon file storage from EMC:

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Oracle's Financials Look Bright Ahead of "Oracle OpenWorld 2008" as the Acquisition of BEA comes to the Fore

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Sam Conforti

 

It is important to note that Oracle does not have the familiar 12/31 year end, but rather a 5/31 fiscal year end.  Ahead of their conference “Oracle OpenWorld 2008” held in San Francisco this year, Oracle released a wave of glowing financial successes for its first quarter for 2009.

·         Net Income increased 28% to $1.1 Billion

·         Revenues increased 18% to $5.3 Billion

The second quarter is more in question.

·         Non-GAAP revenues could fluctuate anywhere between a 12-15% increase or drop as low as only a 9% increase due to currency fluctuations

·         Non-GAAP EPS should be around 26¢ due to earnings split between higher and lower tax jurisdictions.

The forecast for new software license revenues are also susceptible to the fluctuating currency markets with estimates at 5% - 15% without fluctuations and 2% to 12% if fluctuations are taken into account.  Kenneth Chin, and analyst for Gartner, focused on this broad range and stated:

"Foreign currency had a plus seven percent impact on earnings this quarter, and they see a minus three percent impact for the next quarter, which can be fairly significant.  There's nothing to say that, if the dollar moves more quickly and becomes stronger, that the negative impact wouldn't hit five percent or more."

Fifty percent (50%) of Oracle’s business is license revenue and maintenance fees.  The fastest growing part of their business is middleware.  Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, is confident that they have or soon will replace IBM in this market space.  For a more complete commentary on the second quarter’s outlook and beyond see Richard Adhikari’s article Oracle Sees Tougher Days Ahead. 

With a broader portfolio of software products to bring to the market the emphasis this week at the San Francisco conference will be on the $8.5 billion purchase of BEA.  The BEA middleware products “are key to Oracle's service oriented architecture (“SOA”) strategy.”

Oracle’s next major release will be 11g, expected by the end of the 2009 fiscal year.  BEA will be an integral part of its latest Web and SOA platforms release. 

Also of note is Oracle’s Green Program and its virtualization initiative.  To read the details on the tremendous increase in savings on these two programs and the Integration of the BEA software products into Oracle’s latest offerings see Oracle's Big Show will be BEA's Coming Out Party.

  

 

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