Structure News: First And Ten at Structure, IBM's Progress, and Mmm, Dog Food

Where It's Always Mostly Cloudy August 7th, 2015 / by Tom Krazit As we get closer and closer to Structure 2015, this week we'll talk about the continuing (but slow) evolution of IBM, the potential for EMC's complicated corporate structure to become simpler, and whether public cloud providers should practice what they preach. STRUCTURE NEWS WELCOME BACK! DIANE BRYANT OF INTEL One of my favorite sessions from Structure 2014 was meeting and sparring with Intel's Diane Bryant, head of the iconic chip maker's Datacenter Group. We're happy to have Diane back this November, and we'll look for an update on the FPGA chip she announced last year as well as the state of the datacenter. INTRODUCING MICHELLE MCKENNA-DOYLE, CIO OF THE NFL We're thrilled to welcome Michelle McKenna-Doyle (above) to Structure for the first time. She's in charge of modernizing the IT infrastructure of one of the most popular sports on the planet, and should have some interesting insights to share on how to get 32 separate departments (I mean, franchises) on the same IT page. Register for Structure 2015 here INDUSTRY NEWS EMC CONSIDERS A BUYOUT BY ITS OWN SUBSIDIARY VMWARE EMC and VMware have been rivals and partners and colleagues in a confusing corporate structure, but that might be about to get a lot simpler. Recode reported this week that EMC is considering orchestrating a "downstream merger" in which VMware (80 perent of which is owned by EMC) would acquire EMC. Actually, that sounds confusing. AS ITS LEGACY SOFTWARE STALLS, IBM CLOUD SERVICE REVS ENGINE It's an all too familiar challenge IBM has faced over the decades: finding a way to adjust to a new wave of computing before that new wave eats its existing businesses. Ed Scannell over at TechTarget takes a look at how IBM is doing in its quest to stay relevant amid the cloud revolution. IS THERE ANY STOPPING THE AWS JUGGERNAUT? It will probably be a long time (if ever) before IBM is overtaken by AWS, but the financial performance of AWS over the last year is definitely impressive. Has that growth left AWS open to disruption itself, from other cloud players? Ben Kepes makes the case that the folks running AWS have a plan for a more competitive future. FLASH DISRUPTION COMES TO SERVER MAIN MEMORY Flash memory is everywhere these days in the consumer market, but it's been a little slower to infiltrate the main memory slots of the server world because of concerns about speed. Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Platform reviews a new product from Diablo that could change that equation for workloads that depend on memory capacity more than speed. BIG PICTURE "Public Cloud Über Alles!" has been the mantra for much of the cloud computing industry for a very long time, crowding out those who would prefer to sell private clouds their customers can personally control or at least some sort of hybrid mix. But as public cloud vendors grow beyond their initial success with greenfield startups opting for 100 percent public cloud and start calling on bigger, more established companies, that might have to change.   Fortune and the Wall Street Journal both highlighted this evolution in separate pieces this week. Fortune noted that Google, which trails Amazon by quite a bit in the cloud market, is touting its friendliness with private or hybrid clouds as a selling point that Amazon can't yet match. And The Journal noted that even though Amazon runs "the vast majority" of its massive online store on Amazon Web Services, there are still a few things the retailer would prefer to keep on private servers.   This evolution of the cloud market might be overstated by those who are trying to dent Amazon's still-growing cloud business, because, face it: they've got to try something. The whole cloud concept is still pretty new to a lot of CIOs outside of Silicon Valley who worry about breaking a system that doesn't necessarily need fixing, and some degree of comfort that they can control their own destiny (as well as ensure a little job security) is welcome.   One way to overcome those objections is to employ that delightful old tech industry phrase and "eat one's own dog food" by showing potential cloud customers that if Amazon is willing to entrust its entire operation to AWS, then what are you waiting for? However, it seems more and more likely that there is going to be a bigger market than some might have expected for companies that just want to dabble in the cloud. That could give hope to some legacy players and should continue the product-development evolution of the public cloud toward features that accommodate existing infrastructure, not just price cuts. Photo Credit: NeoSpire via Compfight cc     DISCOVER MORE   Unsubscribe subbusmr.enjoyment@blogger.com from this list. Our mailing address is: Structure 702 Oak Grove Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 Add us to your address book Copyright (C) 2015 Structure All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile