AWS reInvent keynote analysis - AWS enters the hardware business

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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Already in Las Vegas since two days, having the opportunity to attend AWS reInvent and getting briefed before hand by AWS on all announcement - a useful, different approach how to run these events.

 

So for the impatient ones - take a look at the video... 

 

 

Always tough to pick the key takeaways - but here you go - one slide summary:

 

First take - Day #1 Keynote AWS reInvent from Holger Mueller

 

 

 

Let's go through the details:

 

Lots of new Instance types - A little more than the usual innovation here, 4 brand new instance type family members. GPUs are becoming attachable, a good move but probably also making a virtue of a larger server install base that can be complemented by GPU capabilities. Also FPGAs, they can be programmed and the programs can be monetized on the marketplace. Not many enterprises will do that as Jassy admitted, still a good option. 

 

New AWS Instances

 

 

AI push - Lex most interesting - It's the fall of AI and AWS also announces new capabilities - on voice production and picture recognition. More interesting will be Amazon Lex - the Alexa toolkit made available to build bots. All good progress, but AWS is behind here and catching up.

 

Amazon Lex Capabilities

 

 

Workday chooses AWS for production loads - The race for enterprise load is on amongst the IaaS vendors, and Workday is a prime target. Good for AWS to get the Workday production load, IBM was earlier the partner for development and production instances. May create some DevOps headaches. But overall a win for customers of both AWS and Workday: AWS customers get more scale, Workday customers see their vendor spending less on CAPEX, which now can go into product.

 

Workday Plans with AWS

 

Greengrass and Edge Computing - AWS needs to bring its code closer to the end points, AWS Greengrass is a promising start for that. It needs to be in AWS Lambda, which allows to run on all Amazon S3 instances (see last year's event report on the kudos I gave for the wise foresight to make mini application servers out of 'dumb' storage servers. This is now a benefit from that decision.

And Snowball get smarter - hence my title with the hardware business. What AWS positioned last year as a portable disk storage to transfer data - is no becoming a server with compute (lambda) in the form of the AWS Snowball Edge. 

 

AWS Greengrass Capabilites

 

 

 

Snowmobile - AWS wants enterprise load and data, and transferring very large amounts of data takes time. The example was 1 Exebyte, that even through a speedy 10 GigaBit uplink would take 26 years to transfer. Enters AWS Snowmobile, a truck with a container that can store up to 100 PB. An interesting approach and a manifest of network speeds lacking industry progress that we see in compute and storage. 

 

Enters the AWS Snowmobile

 

 

MyPOV

A very good start for AWS for reInvent. The vendor keeps innovating, and growing  way to beyond the Venetian / Palazzo. The conference at times felt like the VMworld of the past - the more or less formal get together of the IT industry. And in the overall grab for load across the IaaS vendors, AWS is doing well - with the Workday partnership it lands another vendor with homogeneous load that will give it more load. With Workday starting in the new region in Canada - it gives right away load to that region. And extending more code execution capabilities at the edges and on devices gives AWS centered enterprise more reach and value for its software. Lastly moving data remains a challenge, AWS Snowball has been a success for AWS, we will see how many Snowmobiles are hitting the road in the next 12 monhts. 

 

AWS New Capability Growth

 

 

On the concern side, AWS has an issue of riches. With growing new capabilities from 700 to 1000 year over year - it is a lot for customers, prospects and partners to digest. I asked Jassy in Q&A and it is clear that AWS - at least for now - is not concerned about this. Architects help customers to walk through the challenge to find the right services for their use case is the answer. That is a common and proven approach in the industry - but in the past we have seen the architects at some point risking / starting to argue in front of the customer... then it will be too late. Simplification, packaging, repeatability are some of the areas to watch.

 

For now a great start for AWS reInvent, stay tuned for more. The inflection point - as mentioned in the headline, is AWS now shipping a server - the Snowball Edge is nothing else but that.... and with that AWS enters the hardware business. Never a dull moment. Stay tuned from more from AWS reInvent. 

 

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

 

 

More on AWS:

 

 

•  News Analysis - VMware has found AWS as its public cloud IaaS  - read here
• First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
• Event report - AWS Enterprise Summit 2016 Frankfurt - The German Road to Cloud adoption is ... long - read here
• News Analysis - Amazon Web Services Cloud now speaks… Hindi - Indian AWS Data Centers available - read here
• News Analysis - Salesforce selects AWS as preferred Public Cloud Infrastructure Provider - Good move - read here
• Event Report - AWS re-Invent - AWS lobbies for the enterprise - DB and IoT are the cheese - read here
• First Take - AWS reInvent Wednesday Keynote - Good start & AWS is going for the enterprise read here
• Event Preview - AWS re-Invent 2015 - watch / read here
• Event Report - AWS Summit Berlin - AWS spricht Deutsch - but when will the Germans speak cloud? Read here
• News Analysis - AWS learns Hindi - Amazon Web Services announces 2016 India Expansion - read here
• Event Report - AWS Summit San Francisco - AWS pushes the platform with Analytics and Storage [From the Fences] read here
• Event Report - AWS re:invent - AWS becomes more about PaaS on inhouse IP - read here
• AWS gives infrastructure insights - and it is very passionate about it - read here
• News Analysis - AWS spricht Deutsch - the cloud wars reach Germany - read here
• Market Move - Infor runs CloudSuite on AWS - Inflection Point or hot air balloon? Read here
• Event Report - AWS Summit in SFO - AWS keeps doing what has been working in the last 8 years - read here
• AWS  moves the yardstick - Day 2 reinvent takeaways - read here.
• AWS powers on, into new markets - Day 1 reinvent takeaways - read here.
• The Cloud is growing up - three signs in the News - read here.
• Amazon AWS powers on - read here.

 

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

5 lessons enterprise CxOs can learn from the US Elections

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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By now we have some weeks of distance to the recent US elections – so time to muse about the enterprise takeaways.

 

There are many repercussions, let’s look at the general themes, I may blog closer to Future of Work and Next Gen Apps implications sometime soon…

Disruption has reached Government – For half a year half of the country was not taking Trump seriously, for half a year half of the country and the media though he could not win… and now half of the country isn’t happy with the election outcome. When things happen that a lot of people did not expect – we talk about disruption: A political newbie like Trump has not only disrupted the Republican establishment (which amused half of the country) but also the best candidate the Democrats had with Clinton (with now half of the country unhappy).
In my lifetime, something similar has only been seen in Italy, when Silvio Berlusconi decided to run for prime minister, and won in about 6 months from that announcement in a general election... But that was a different time, and Berlusconi owned a substantial piece of the Italian media landscape. And it was before we knew what social media was. So now the political class is disrupted by an entrepreneur, who beat the best and brightest of both parties in the last 12 months through a primary and general election. What Trump will do as a president is something for the future - but if you consider that it is a key competence of the political class to get (re-)elected, certainly we can consider the political class to be disrupted. If that will happen to government, too, remains to be seen. 

Enterprise Lesson #1 – Disruption happens everywhere – likely more in the future – enterprises need to be ready for continuous disruption going forward. If government ‘best practices’ get disrupted we see more changes and possible disruption coming towards the enterprise, more than ever time to pay attention what is happening in Washington D.C.

Get more, even win with less – For a long time the conventional wisdom in US elections was that who spent more would win. Not this time, so an encouraging development for enterprises, who are challengers and don’t have the largest budgets. With the right message for an audience / market and working the amplification that media can give to anyone – Trump won with less campaign spend than Clinton. That it was some of its own funds may have changed some of the investment decisions. Enterprises give executives and employees stock to make them part of the decision making. It certainly may have played a role… the irony is that Trump even spoke openly about the strategy – and it still worked for him. 

Enterprise Lesson #2 – It does not have to be more and more all the time. Spend wisely and smart and you may overtake the bigger competitors with the right strategy. And it can be public, but can’t be imitated.

Know your customers – Well this maybe a stretch – but ultimately voters are ‘one time’ customers of a sort. The risk is that many executives and decision makers – especially when based, raised and risen on the coasts – don’t know the customer in the middle of the country anymore. There is probably only very few research where outcomes are more polled and researched than a US federal election. Still the political establishment, the media, pundits all got surprised. Certainly, they need to do a trip to understand the Trump voters and ‘sell’ to them better at the next occasion. 

Enterprise Lesson #3 – Never hurts to know your customer. Elites and closed clubs lose touch of the rest of an economy and socienty easily, has happened before and will happen again. Understand the market holistically and maybe drive across the US next time (and plan a few stops) to get re-connected with the whole market.

Social Matters – It is unlikely that Trump may have won without usage of social media, mostly Twitter. Let’s stay away from the content – but as an amplification tool it has worked and was likely the reason that the Trump campaign could win with a lower spend than the Clinton campaign. Authenticity matters on social media – compare any x Trump vs Clinton tweets and you know who wins in this category. Remember that authenticity does not mean you need to like the content of the tweet. In the long debate between Facebook vs Twitter – for this election Twitter clearly won. 

Enterprise Lesson #4 – Social media matters, when it can be a key contributor to win elections in a country like the US. If you don’t have a social media strategy, time to get one. If you are Facebook heavy, bolster Twitter. Make sure messages are authentic, and resonate with the goal of amplification. The tweet to media connection is one that not only works in politics, but also in business. See e.g. Elon Musk, Mark Andreesen (now on Twitter hiatus) et al.


Don’t take a stake – CxOs are voters, too and entitles to an opinion like everybody. But taking side in any election, particular a close election will always create winners or losers. CxOs need to rethink what side they want to be on, how to deal with the aftermath if they took a side and compare to a general position of neutrality, sparkled e.g. with encouraging employees to vote and other general, pro election themes. 

Enterprise Lesson #5 – Tight elections are always hard. But consider what it means for prospects, customers, partners and employees when a CxO takes a side. Always budget for ample room to rebuild relationships and focus on what matters – growing and protecting the enterprise a CxO is in charge off.

MyPOV

A few weeks out it still is hard to write a blog post on enterprise lessons learnt from this election. Probably not easy to read either… what are your lessons learnt from the last US election that matter for the enterprise? Looking forward to hear from you.


 

More Musings

• Musings - What is your Twitter Persona? Read here.
• Musings - Quo vadis Twitter? Who could, should buy Twitter - and what is Twitter really? Read here.
• Musings - The Bots are coming to your conversation - what are the implications? - read here
• Musings - We are entering the age of the Über Super Computer - read here
• Musings - Retail is the breeding ground for NextGen Apps - read here
• Musings – Time to re-invent email – for real! Read here
• The Dilemma with Cloud Infrastructure updates - read here
• Are we witnessing the Rise of the Enterprise Cloud? Read here
• What are true Analytics - a Manifesto. Read here
• Is TransBoarding the Future of Talent Management? Read here
• How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here. 

 

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Monday's Musings: Secrets Behind Building Any AI Driven Smart Service

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation…...

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GE an update on IoT progress from Minds and Machines

Andy Mulholland

Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Andy Mulholland is Vice President and Principal Analyst focusing on cloud business models. Formerly the Global Chief Technology Officer for the Capgemini Group from 2001 to 2011, Mulholland successfully led the organization through a period of mass disruption. Mulholland brings this experience to Constellation’s clients seeking to understand how Digital Business models will be built and deployed in conjunction with existing IT systems. Coverage Areas Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite: BYOD, Internet of Things, IoT, technology and business use Previous experience: Mulholland co authored four major books that chronicled the change and its impact on Enterprises starting in 2006 with the well-recognised book ‘Mashup Corporations’ with Chris Thomas of Intel. This was followed in…...

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GE is probably the global business most strongly associated with demonstrating not just a strategic commitment to IoT, but also for leading business driven implementations. The GE annual Minds and Machines event in San Francisco has become an Industrial Internet showcase for Business IoT. Packed with case studies demonstrating millions of dollars of business benefits, together with GE announcing its own next plans to derive business value from IoT adoption.

Minds and Machines has examples of real business strategic transformation case studies that are the game changes to industry sectors. Here GE, and other major Global Industrial Players, show how in Industrial Manufacturing IoT with Connectivity, Cloud Provisioning, and now AI delivers on major projects. Minds and Machines is not about ‘pilots’, or small Enterprise projects, it’s about how real Strategic Transformation has delivered millions of dollars of benefits.

As with Salesforce Dreamforce some weeks ago the manner of the event itself is significant. Technology wide support from speakers, sponsors and exhibitors demonstrates strong moves towards engagement and adoption of the approaches. Minds and Machines follows the trend towards events focusing on understanding the use of Technology in Business rather than product release hyping. As this is an event primarily about Industrial IoT the following sponsors from an IT background, (in addition to the expected Industrial players), says much about the merging of the technology market within IoT;

Highest Level;                     Accenture, Deloitte, Microsoft, HP, Intel

Second Level;                       Capgemini, E&Y, PWC

Third Level;                          Dell, Infosys

Only a year ago the different technology worlds didn’t seem to be aware of each others moves into IoT as detailed in the blog; IoT - where two or even three possibly four worlds collide or operational technology meets information technology. Now as deployments move to Enterprise scale the understanding of the need for broader integration into Enterprise IT systems has become clear. The list of technology sponsors is in fact a list of major SIs. However what used to be known as Systems Integration, or SI, would be better termed ‘Solutions Integration’ to match the widening of skills required across multiple disciplines.

So the answer to the question posed in the blog IoT – where are the Integrators, or more particularly who are the Integrators? seems to be arriving. The global SI players who have grasped the need are making themselves known at key IoT events that enable them to demonstrate their case studies. (As are an increasing number of small-specialized players who have chosen to specialize in IoT integration).

As ever the challenge remains as the number of skilled staff available at any of these companies, so there is a necessity for a high degree of focus in the activities of any of the SI players. As Solution Integration of IoT carried out by specialized units within the overall Systems Integration business it is difficult via the usual sales and account management channels access the level of information that will help find the right SI for your requirement.

Large scale specialized IoT exhibitions, such as Minds and Machines, have come into their own during this last year. When it’s difficult to pinpoint what you want and, frustrating to try to get access to the real skilled staff, the simplicity of an exhibition has become appealing. The IoT market is laid out for physical browsing with the benefit that you can walk onto stands of interest to question knowledgeable staff, usually in the presence of a full-scale demonstration. It’s pretty easy to see why exhibitions are back in favor with remarkably high attendances are being reported at the prime events!

Minds and Machines delivers on this promise, as a showcase for the Industrial Internet, leading the way in show casing the development of Industrial Automation and Operational Technology. The case studies and presentations, particularly by GE themselves, all reflected on their premise of the 1% Improvement in five selected Industry sectors through IoT led Business Transformation.

A Brief Overview on the progress of GE Predix and GE Software;

These five Industry sectors are core markets for GE where many years of involvement have built up expertise in all aspects of the Industry sector. Each has similar characteristics of complex, sophisticated products, operated at scale, with large costs, making the simplicity of the focus and target of 1% costs saving a clear business strategy that would be understood by Boardroom executives.

The result has been considerable Boardroom interest with the resulting Industrial Internet collaboration in the USA, and in Europe the similar but slightly different parallel establishment of Industrie 4.0 .

It is difficult to overview the many case studies presented, (here are some from GE website), but there can be little doubt that the goals of ‘The Power of 1% Percent’ are on their way to being realized. (For more information see MIT Sloan’s review on GE strategic bet and Industrial Internet Case Studies from members). The next stage after the highly target improvement of GE products performance in the 1% strategy is to address the operation of their products as an ecosystem. The Rail Industry was one of the first targets for this level of Industry Transformation of overall operations as described in a GE Report dated March 2016.

GE strategy to achieve Industry Transformation across five key sectors rests on GE Predix its own in-house development using the expertise gained in the design and production of Industrial machinery. GE defines Predix as an operating system, or Platform for machinery. Predix combines the standard IoT ingredients; the connectivity of the Internet, the sensing of IoT, with Cloud provision; with the specialized characteristics of required for Operational Technology and specialized Modeling of industrial products and systems. Achieving the 1% savings goal across five major Industry sectors is big target so signing Predix alliances to train significant numbers of staff in the deployment of GE Predix in the big SIs that were in attendance is a critical success factor.

Predix has not surprisingly attracted a lot of attention, not always completely favorable with Fortune Magazine sounding a cautionary note in July 2016. Describing GE Software as a ‘baby startup’ Fortune pointed out as that in common with other startups the product wasn’t always as complete or robust as the marketing made it sound. In particular the article drew attention to the relatively poor ‘final mile’ connectivity, though these are the aspects that a Solution Integration partner should deliver.

In addition to its own considerable efforts to add capabilities GE has also been strengthening Predix by acquisitions; Asset Management expert Meridium in September, Machine Learning startup specialist Wise.io in October and now Field Service Manager ServiceMax in November. These moves taken with the final and all important fact of significant success in real deployments all suggest Predix has enough maturity to deliver commercial value.

In any Industrial Internet, or Industrie 4.0, event that relates to manufacturing, servicing, and operation of complex machinery, the topic of Digital Twins will be on the agenda. The extension of computer based design processes through 3D preproduction models to test expected performance, economy and maintenance operation into acting as an ongoing reference model, or Digital Twin, is becoming a reality. GE originally played a leading role in the definition and use of Digital Twins, though today there it is a widely accepted and supported concept.

Linking a Digital Twin model by means of IoT sensing to the real physical machine provides both a direct comparison between the predicted behavior, and actual experience. The feedback to improve design, predictive maintenance and continuous operational optimization is a huge game change to the capabilities of Product Lifecycle Management, PLM, and will be the subject of a separate blog.

Minds and Machines is a unique view on how manufacturing and Service operation is and will be changed in the Digital Services economy. To fully understand the GE point of view of IoT and associated technologies impact on GE and its business then there is a copy of Bill Ruh SVP & Chief Digital Officer GE, and CEO GE Digital presentation here.

3 Must-Reads for Enterprise Leaders Starting with @RealDonaldTrump Era

Director of Customer Programs, Constellation Research
Constellation Research

Carole oversees the Constellation Executive Network, an executive community for innovative senior leaders who value strategic guidance from trusted advisors who understand the power of disruptive technologies. Carole brings over 15 years of marketing, strategic account management, and operations experience, specializing in high technology and professional services. She holds a BA from Santa Clara University and a MBA from Thunderbird, School of Global Management.     ...

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Chris Kanaracus

Managing Editor, Constellation Insights
Constellation

Chris Kanaracus is managing editor of Constellation Insights.  Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members.  Prior to joining Constellation, Kanaracus spent seven years covering the enterprise software industry for IDG News Service, where he frequently broke exclusive stories with a focus on end-customer issues. Kanaracus has also held various managerial and reporting roles at newspapers in New England since 1998. Twitter: @chriskanaracus , Title: Big IdeasConstellation Insights Insights delivers exclusive, daily analysis of breaking news across Constellation’s eight business research themes to Constellation Executive Network members. ...

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If you're an enterprise business leader, not a day goes by where you don't see content everywhere. The real issue rests on which content is mission-critical to helping you run your business better? Take a look at these 3 quick posts of premium Constellation Insights content recommended by our managing editor, Chris Kanaracus, that reveal what is valuable to know, given today's political, economic, and societal environment now that we've initiated the unexpected installation of our latest POTUS, Donald Trump. 

Chris K's Top 3 Must-Reads for November 2016

1. News Analysis: America in a @RealDonaldTrump Era – Everything International Clients Need to Know PESTEL Part 1
2. What's Next? Household IoT Devices Used as Path to Hack Smartphones
3. Oracle Closes Its $9.3 Billion NetSuite Acquisition: Now What?

Why Is This Important? 

1. News Analysis: America in a @RealDonaldTrump Era – Everything International Clients Need to Know PESTEL Part 1

Analyst: R "Ray" Wang, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: Ray's post is a sterling example of the type of in-depth, yet rapid turnaround analysis Constellation can deliver on topics of the utmost importance that fall outside core advisory proficiencies on topics such as digital transformation. 

Constellation can not only advise you on technology strategies but also give a 360 degree view of the bigger picture. Also, while the post was targeted at international clients, there's plenty of insights in it for U.S. companies as well.

2. What's Next? Household IoT Devices Used as Path to Hack Smartphones

Analyst: Andy Mullholland, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: It's almost absurd—researchers managed to use Belkin WeMo smart home devices, everything from coffee pots to light bulbs, to tap into users' smartphones and control many aspects of them. How'd they do it? Through Belkin's WeMo app. 

Our VP and principal analyst Andy Mulholland, who leads Constellation's research into IoT, says it's time for a call to action. As he puts it, "Let's not fool ourselves by pretending each of these stories is evidence of an individual product failure when the reality is that the rules have changed, exposing a huge number of devices to wholly unexpected conditions."

If your company has an IoT strategy in the works—and who doesn't—you can work with Andy on both highly technical aspects of it, as well as to develop a sound governance framework. 

3. Oracle Closes Its $9.3 Billion NetSuite Acquisition: Now What?

Analysts: Holger Mueller, R "Ray" Wang, Chris Kanaracus (Insight author)

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?: Relatively few large enterprises are planning to rip and replace their core ERP systems. It's just too expensive and time-consuming. But many are considering two-tier ERP strategies as a path to innovation, using modern systems typically aimed at small and midmarket customers in new divisions and subsidiaries, then tying them back to the core.

That's one reason Oracle spent so much money to buy NetSuite. It also wants to go after the SMB business it hasn't really had in ERP. Growth companies are investing in ERP for their primary solution and Oracle wants to get in on the ground floor. 

There are many good choices for midmarket ERP, however, from the likes of Microsoft, Infor and to an extent, Workday. That's going to make future selections more complicated affairs. Our analysts can help you make those selection from both a technology and contract negotiation standpoint.

New IBM Bluemix Services Help Organizations Accelerate Data Migration to the Cloud

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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IBM has been more quietly and less loudly build out its BlueMix PaaS platform, the press release from earlier in the week is a good reminder on the progress that IBM has made.

 

 

So time to dissect the press release in our customary style (it can be found here):

ARMONK, N.Y. - 18 Nov 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced several cloud data services and features on Bluemix designed to help organizations accelerate the migration of their data to the cloud and more easily generate business insights.

MyPOV – Data is the true sticky factor in all IT. True on premises and true for cloud. Moving it from on premises to cloud (and later between clouds) is a key success factor for all IaaS and PaaS players.

Organizations look to the cloud as a powerful engine to collect and interpret vast amounts of data. However, many are struggling to move their already existing datasets to the cloud, as well as retain control of where they reside and how they are accessed. Without the right tools in place, the problem will only get worse as the amount of data continues to grow. According to […], the amount of high-value data worth analyzing will double by 2020, and much of this data will be in the form of complex, unstructured information.

MyPOV – The unpredictability of the data grown couple with the inability to size the deployments is what is attractive for enterprise to move to IaaS.

 

Now available on Bluemix, IBM Decision Optimization, Bluemix Lift and dashDB for Transactions can help organizations overcome this challenge and make more informed business decisions by enabling them to more easily aggregate, ingest and analyze expanding workloads.
“Cloud is the platform that enables cognitive intelligence,” said John Murphy, Vice President, IBM Watson Data Platform. “We’re continuing to grow our catalog of cloud data services on Bluemix so that we can help developers and data scientists better manage and more quickly interpret data for business innovation.

MyPOV – Ok – the cat is out of the bag – we know what this press release is about – three new capabilities coming to Bluemix, and a good quote from Murphy.
 

The services include: IBM Decision Optimization on Cloud (including the CPLEX engines) is now in beta on Bluemix. It can ingest large amounts of data including predictions, master and transactional data, business goals, and business rules to prioritize and rank business decisions such as plans and schedules. Applicable across all industries, including manufacturing, utilities, finance and retail, this powerful tool offers the ability to trade-off conflicting business goals while balancing resource limitations to make more informed decisions. This offering includes the CPLEX Optimizer Engines and can run as a standalone, embedded in applications using a Rest API, or be used in Jupyter Notebooks within IBM's Data Science Experience.

MyPOV – Data Scientists and developers experienced with CPLEX will rejoice. The proven C library (yes it has C#, Java and Python options, too) is a prime example how assets from the traditional on premises world can create value in the cloud. Python will get particular interest a the language of choince for many data scientists.
 

For example, consider a major clothing retailer in need of restocking its winter coat supply. Local warehouses might be very low in stock, and shipping and transferring supplies from international locations could incur costly fees. Using Decision Optimization, a retail planner could automatically get recommendations and choose the most cost-effective replenishment plan, considering all possible suppliers, warehouses, shipping lanes, and costs, without having to do a potentially time-consuming manual "what-if" analysis or manual comparison of options.

MyPOV – Always good to see a showcase in a press release. The mostly linear programming usage of CPLEX makes it easier to move to cloud, as only the platform changes not the algorithm.. and enterprises like it when not too many things get changed at the same time… they have a business to run.
 

IBM Bluemix Lift is a data migration tool to quickly, securely and reliably migrate databases from existing on-premises data centers to IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson Data Platform. Bluemix Lift encrypts data being transferred, helping to securely move it at a rate of up to ten times faster than traditional offerings. The technology is also designed to minimize downtime, so that applications using the source database can run uninterrupted during migration. In addition, Lift has been designed to be highly reliable, enabling data transfers to keep flowing even during a connectivity loss.

MyPOV – To run analytics in the cloud – you need to get the data there… good to see a Bluemix service that scales, is secure etc. Key services to get adoption of Bluemix.
 

IBM dashDB for Transactions is a fully managed SQL database service on IBM Bluemix, optimized for transactional and web workloads to help developers fuel cloud-based applications. It offers high availability on selected plans, as well as pay-per-use units. It is part of IBM’s dashDB portfolio, offering a workload-optimized database environment designed to meet both the data warehousing and transactional needs of applications.
To get started with these services, visit the Bluemix Developers Catalog for IBM Bluemix Lift,Decision Optimization, and dashDB for Transactions.

MyPOV – A lot of the relevant load for enterprises remains in SQL databases… and transferring from on premises production to in the cloud analysis is slow and expensive. So vendors need to convince enterprises that they can run production SQL loads in the cloud, and therefore dashDB for Transaction is important for IBM.
 

Bluemix, IBM's Cloud platform, has grown rapidly to become one of the largest open, public cloud deployments in the world. Based in open standards, it features over 150 advanced technologies and services, including 35 cloud data services and a roster of others spanning categories of cognitive computing, blockchain, Internet of Things, DevOps and security.

MyPOV – Good summary of the Bluemix progress. Customer count / active deployments would be good to see here, too.
 

Overall MyPOV

The race for cloud load is in full swing and PaaS is a key offering for vendors to get enterprises on their respective cloud infrastructures. Coupled with the need of building their own applications to take advantage of the new best practices in the 21st century, PaaS is likely to make a difference which cloud / IaaS to choose. But at the end of the day it is all about the data, that comes from production systems. Making it easier to transfer the data, analyze the data and monitor it once in the cloud is key – and IBM has made three key steps with the offerings of this press release – IBM Decision Optimization, IBM Bluemix Lift and IBM dashDB for Transactions.

On the concern side, IBM has now show traction with enterprises to use these new services. Being able to leverage existing, proven and trusted algorithms with CPLEX (all the way to pre ILOG days) is an asset – as it takes concerns and costs out of the move to cloud. And to be fair – every new offering needs its first customers.

For now, good move by IBM to make Bluemix and IBM Cloud more attractive to enterprises.


More on IBM:
 

 

 

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