Structure News: Downstream mergers, ARM in China, and cloud tips from Pinterest

Where We Welcome Clouds in Summer August 28th, 2015 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about the continuing saga of the EMC "federation," the surprising return of the server market, and how even cloud-native companies can struggle to implement cloud infrastructure. STRUCTURE NEWS NEW FOR STRUCTURE 2015: WORKDAY’S DAVID CLARKE Scaling is hard: it's probably one of the most consistent problems that Structure attendees have described throughout the years and it's made even harder by the unique workloads used across different companies. We're pleased to announce that Workday's David Clarke will be joining Structure for the first time to speak about these and other problems on stage. Remember, Structure 2015 will take place November 18th and 19th at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco. You can find more information about the show, including the newly released schedule, at our site. And you can buy tickets here. INDUSTRY NEWS BOARD TAKES SERIOUS LOOK AT VMWARE-LED TAKEOVER OF EMC This notion surfaced a few weeks ago, but now it appears to have legs. Recode reports that EMC's board is seriously considering a proposal by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger for a "downstream merger," in which VMware would actually acquire its parent company. Another tidbit from the report: EMC's board has apparently decided that it's time for EMC CEO Joe Tucci to step down by the end of this year, a move he has postponed several times in the past.   VMWARE CTO BEN FATHI DEPARTS AS EMC FEDERATION EXECUTIVE EXODUS CONTINUES   Something is definitely going on inside the EMC-VMware-Pivotal federation. After Pivotal CEO Paul Martiz decided it was time to step down last week, CRN reports that two prominent VMware executives -- Chuck Hollis and Ben Fathi -- are also moving on. Hollis is going to Oracle, while Fathi is keeping his future plans close to the vest.   INSIDE CHINA'S HOMEGROWN 64-CORE ARM BIG IRON CHIP   Despite running away with the mobile chip market, ARM-based chips have had a much harder time making progress against Intel in the server market. The Platform takes a detailed look at the 64-bit 64-core server processor announced this week by little-known Phytium Technology of China that, assuming it can actually get the ARM-based chip into the market, might make Intel pay closer attention.   REPORTS SAY WORLDWIDE SERVER SALES INCREASED IN THE SECOND QUARTER   Speaking of servers, the cloud may not have eroded the traditional server vendors just yet. Fortune reports that server sales were stronger than expected in the second quarter, with HP and Dell leading the way at IBM's expense. OPENSTACK COMPANY MIRANTIS TAKES ON $100M ROUND LED BY INTEL CAPITAL   Intel's interest in OpenStack continues to build this year. Venturebeat notes that the chip maker has put $100 million into Mirantis after teaming up with Rackspace on the OpenStack Innovation Center earlier this year.   GOOGLE HOPES OPEN SOURCE WILL GIVE ITS CLOUD A PATH TO THE ENTERPRISE   If Google really wants to compete against AWS and Microsoft in the public cloud market, it's going to have to get better at courting enterprises. Techcrunch reports that Google's Craig McLuckie (love that name) discussed the situation quite candidly at an OpenStack event this week, believing that open sourcing more of Google's infrastructure software could help. BIG PICTURE I had a chance this week to catch up with Raj Patel, the man in charge of infrastructure for Pinterest (and Structure 2015 speaker), and talk shop about the state of the public cloud and Pinterest's challenges in scaling its infrastructure to handle its growth. Pinterest is a relatively shy company compared to the "unicorns" that have emerged over the last few years, but it has plenty of compelling projects and challenges to talk about later this year. Over the course of our conversation, one thing Patel said particularly stuck with me. Pinterest is a native cloud company, built on AWS and it still runs entirely on AWS. We were talking about the challenges a lot of older companies face in transitioning workloads to the cloud, and Patel pointed out that even Pinterest found itself having to retrain some engineers and develop clear procedures for operating in a cloud-first environment, simply because old habits die hard as you bring more veteran infrastructure people into an organization. That thought gave me pause: if even cloud-native companies like Pinterest have to continually re-orient themselves around making sure they are developing infrastructure and apps with the cloud in mind, then it's going to take an awful lot of time and education for older companies with established workflows to make the shift. And cloud vendors might have to find ways to work better together to let IT organizations gradually shift their workloads into this new era of enterprise computing. I'll be back soon with a more detailed account of our conversation, which touched on containers, open source projects, and the datacenter tipping point. For now, Raj advised keeping two things in mind if you're plotting a transition to the cloud: Understand what you can't control, and develop apps under the assumption that infrastructure is ephemeral. (Photo Credit: ShardsOfBlue via Compfight cc)     DISCOVER MORE   Unsubscribe subbusmr.enjoyment@blogger.com from this list. Our mailing address is: Structure 405 El Camino Real, #215 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