Structure News: Salesforce's party, Pinterest hits 100 million, HP's fight for relevance

Where The Party's On Howard Street September 18th, 2015 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about Facebook's big video transformation, Salesforce.com's spectacle in SoMa, and what could be the last shot for HP. STRUCTURE NEWS WHY ELLEN RUBIN AND CLEARSKY DATA ARE BETTING ON THE HYBRID CLOUD For the second addition to our new Medium publication, I had a chance to speak with Ellen Rubin, co-founder and CEO of ClearSky Data, a new startup with an interesting approach to cloud storage. ClearSky's "global storage network" is a mix of an on-premises storage appliance, metro-area cached storage, and "cold" Amazon S3 storage. Ellen will be speaking at Structure 2015 and she had some pointed and pragmatic things to say about the current state of the cloud services market, so check out the interview here. Remember, Structure 2015 takes place November 18th and 19th in San Francisco. Buy your tickets here. INDUSTRY NEWS HOW FACEBOOK IS PREPARING FOR THE VIDEO BOOM Facebook kicked off the week at the @Scale conference by revealing some interesting details about how it is building the next generation of its infrastructure to handle an explosion in video content. Fortune got a behind-the-scenes look at the process with Facebook's Jay Parikh, who will be speaking at Structure 2015. ACCENTURE ACQUIRES CLOUD SHERPAS TO ENHANCE CLOUD CONSULTING CHOPS, ESPECIALLY AROUND SALESFORCE.COM As bigger and bigger companies contemplate moving their workloads to the cloud, they're turning to their old consulting friends to help them make the leap. Techcrunch reports that Accenture's cloud team grew a little stronger this week with the pickup of Cloud Sherpas, a 1,100-person strong consulting company born of the cloud era. EVERYTHING ANNOUNCED AT DREAMFORCE 2015 SO FAR Speaking of Salesforce.com, it took over a city block in downtown San Francisco this week (much to the annoyance of the locals) for Dreamforce 2015. While the event is mostly a commercial for Salesforce and a party for its customers, Venturebeat compiled a list of the product news and interesting talks showcased during the week. PINTEREST CROSSES USER MILESTONE OF 100 MILLION Little did I know back when I talked to Pinterest's Raj Patel (a Structure 2015 speaker) a few weeks ago that he had already been putting plans in place to scale Pinterest from 76 million users as of July to 100 million as of Wednesday. The New York Times interviews Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann about the milestone, noting that the company still needs to grow to live up to its valuation. ORACLE SEES LIGHT AT THE END OF CLOUDY TUNNEL     While Dreamforce attendees were partying with Stevie Wonder, Oracle was releasing an earnings report that wasn't exactly an excuse to party. Fortune reports that while Oracle's revenue was lighter than analysts had expected, it is rapidly shifting its attention to the cloud software world, and even expects to produce margins akin to its Good Old Days. We shall see. WHY WHATSAPP ONLY NEEDS 50 ENGINEERS FOR ITS 900M USERS Few companies have scaled as quickly and smartly as WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging app that connects the planet. Wired looks at some of the secrets behind that rise, which includes the Erlang programming language and a cultural focus on simplicity. AWS RE:INVENT TO FOCUS ON CLOUD MANAGEMENT, SECURITY While we like to think you can get everything you need to know about the cloud world at Structure, Amazon's Re:Invent conference is obviously a must-attend event on your calendar. David Linthicum (who will be moderating a session at Structure 2015) has four predictions for what you can expect to hear at Amazon's big show.   BIG PICTURE At this point, it's a bit cliché to wonder what Bill and Dave would think of the fine mess that Hewlett-Packard has turned out to be over the last decade. Dysfunctional boards and an ongoing game of CEO musical chairs have allowed HP to miss out on most of the big transitions of the 21st century, including the explosion in mobile computing, the rise of cloud computing, and, amazingly, 3-D printing, a market which you'd think the company nearly synonymous with printing could have owned. But after an analyst meeting this week in which HP CEO Meg Whitman shed a little more light on the company's plans to split itself in two next year (and announced plans to lay off 30,000 people), it seems pretty clear this is HP's last shot. I've always loved this Lou Gerstner quote: "No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive." The new Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will make its debut just a few weeks before Structure 2015 kicks off, and it's sure to be a topic of conversation during the event. One thing in HP's favor? The world might be more accepting of hybrid cloud than we once thought. Our interview with Ellen Rubin this week (see above) underscored that as cloud computing evolves, there won't necessarily be a one-size-fits-all model for large corporations with unique workloads that are starting to embrace the public cloud where it makes sense. This is HP's bet, that its years of selling and installing servers for the datacenters of the world will help it find a niche in a new world with fewer datacenters but more complexity. "Hybrid" is a dirty word in a lot of cloud circles, and it's on HP to prove that the strategy involves more than stoking fear in the hearts of CIOs about a migration to cloud computing. But one benefit of being a smaller organization is that HP Enterprise might find the breathing room to catch up to the cloud companies that stole its lunch while it was busy fighting the battles of the last century.  Here's hoping: the tech industry is better when there are multiple strong competitors advancing into the future, and HP hasn't quite turned into the 21st-century version of Digital Equipment Corp. just yet.       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

Structure News: A Pinteresting interview, Docker gears up, and why frenemies are the future

Where Summer's End Means It's Structure Season September 11th, 2015 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about how two cloud natives -- Pinterest and Airbnb -- plot their infrastructure strategy, what Docker plans to do with its new money man, and why thinking outside the Box is no longer a cliche (maybe). STRUCTURE NEWS HOW PINTEREST IS PREPARING FOR ITS FUTURE IN THE CLOUD - OR ON ITS OWN We published an interview this week with Pinterest's Raj Patel (left), which I teased in this space a few weeks back, on the challenges of scaling a consumer-facing web company based entirely in the public cloud. Check it out: it's a good preview of what Patel and I will be talking about in November at Structure 2015, and if it gives any of you ideas for specific things we should talk about, let us know. Structure 2015 will take place November 18th and 19th at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco. There's a lot more information here, and you can buy your tickets here. Also, follow our new Medium publication, which will highlight Structure speakers and themes over the next few weeks, here. INDUSTRY NEWS MICROSOFT ACQUIRES ADALLOM TO ADVANCE IDENTITY AND SECURITY IN THE CLOUD We're getting more and more interest in security-related topics for Structure 2015, and that will probably only increase as more and more businesses sign up for cloud services. Microsoft bolstered its security story this week with the purchase (for a reported $250 million, according to Techcrunch) of Adallom, a startup that helps companies protect their data as employees use multiple cloud services. FORMER TWITTER CFO MIKE GUPTA ON WHY HE JOINED THE STARTUP DOCKER When a company brings in a big-time money manager, it's a sign they're planning to get big. The Wall Street Journal interviews Mike Gupta, who took Twitter public, on his plans for Docker's revenue growth and the inevitable successful exit for its investors. OKTA IS NOW A UNICORN AFTER $75 MILLION FUNDING ROUND Speaking of investors, Okta hit up its existing investors for another $75 million, pushing its valuation into that mythical $1 billion "unicorn" territory. Recode reports that Okta, which helps IT departments manage access to internal applications across desktop and mobile devices, has now raised $230 million. ALIBABA'S CLOUD BUSINESS HAS BUILT A DATA CENTER COOLED BY LAKE WATER Cooling a data center is an expensive task (Facebook even built one near the Arctic Circle), but Alibaba has come up with an interesting way of cooling a data center using lake water. Fortune's Derrick Harris (who, ICYMI, is back in the Structure fold and planning Structure Data for next year) takes a look at Alibaba's technique, which the company says allows it to eliminate 90 percent of its data center cooling costs. SALESFORCE LAUNCHES APP CLOUD, PUTS DEVELOPER RESOURCES UNDER ONE ROOF Things might have gotten a little simpler for Salesforce customers now that they can log into several different Salesforce products all at once. ZDNet reports that the "overdue" App Cloud will make it easier for Salesforce users to see all their app data in one place, rather than logging into separate things like Heroku or Lightning. AIRBNB SHARES THE KEYS TO ITS INFRASTRUCTURE Along the lines of the Raj Patel interview noted above, The Platform has a similar but more in-depth look at Airbnb's infrastructure strategy with Mike Curtis, vice president of engineering at the company. It also touches on how Airbnb handles all its data and machine-learning techniques employed at the company.   BIG PICTURE It's been a rough year for Box: once a darling of the cloud startup scene, life as a public company has been a little trickier for CEO Aaron Levie (above). But after reporting revenue growth this week that made Wall Street a little more forgiving of Box's still quite-large losses, Levie expanded on a theme we've been hearing more and more from the Structure community: the future of cloud services has to involve interoperability. "Vendors realize that to stay relevant to customers, they have to open up to others, even if they compete in other ways,” Levie told financial analysts Wednesday, as reported by Forbes. “That’s how you get the head of Microsoft Office on stage with Apple. Everybody has to compete for customer value, which means you can’t win by closing off your technology.” Until Wednesday's earnings report, Box's stock price had fallen below its IPO price in January, a sign that investors aren't totally sure that Box will ever make money. And as I've noted in this space before, the notion that cloud enterprise software companies might have to struggle to match the margins of older enterprise software companies -- who loved to lock you into their playgrounds -- could have interesting ramifications down the road for the future of this movement. But this push is great for cloud users. True cloud interoperability will make it easier and less expensive to manage workloads across different vendors, and will give CIOs the ability to piece together different products for app development, payroll, storage, and hosting without having to buy everything from a single vendor that does a few of those things well, but not all of those things. And if Levie (and many of our Structure speakers) are right that a second era of cloud services is dawning in which big enterprise companies, rather than startups, will provide growth as they choose the right service provide for the right problem, there will be plenty of money to go around. (Photo courtesy Techcrunch/Flickr via Creative Commons 2.0.)       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

Best price expires + 3 reasons to attend

There are only 10 weeks before Structure, and we’ve got a lot going on. Here are three reasons you need to nab your ticket today. The SPEAKERS We’ve confirmed 45+ speakers from companies ranging from The Walt Disney Company to Google and Facebook. The top names in the cloud industry will be there to answer your questions about what’s in store for 2016 and beyond. The CONTENT The agenda broaches everything from security to container strategy to pricing models. Check out 5 of the trends we’ll be talking about. The AUDIENCE Structure attracts tech buyers and decision makers from global enterprise companies. The networking breaks are as valuable as the main stage sessions. Be a part of the conversation. BONUS We’re also happy to announce Derrick Harris, Stacey Higginbotham, Barb Darrow, Janko Roettgers, David Linthicum, George Gilbert and many more familiar faces will be back on stage moderating and interviewing our guests. Ticket prices go up this Friday (coincidentally, Reason #4).  I'm ready to get my ticket >>   SPEAKERS     DIANE BRYANT Intel Corporation     ADRIAN COCKROFT Battery Ventures     URS HÖLZLE Google     VINOD KHOSLA Khosla Ventures     MICHELLE MCKENNA-DOYLE NFL     JAY PARIKH Facebook

 

SPONSORS

HEADLINE

PRIMETIME

SHOWTIME

PARTNERS

NOVEMBER 18 – 19, 2015 SAN FRANCISCO, CA REGISTER NOW

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

Structure News: The ABCs of SLAs, cloudy skies for the FAA, and VMware's world

Where Virtualization Is Real September 4th, 2015 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about ways to avoid getting screwed on a cloud deal, the domination of Ubuntu Linux in the cloud, and the questions answered and unanswered by VMworld. STRUCTURE NEWS I HOPE YOU'RE READY FOR AN AMAZING YEAR OF STRUCTURE SHOWS Former Gigaom writer Derrick Harris has been involved with Structure for years, orchestrating themes, planning sessions, and interviewing important guests with such aplomb that it allowed us to grow the Structure Series events each year. We're more than thrilled to announce that Derrick, now at Fortune, is also going to be involved with Structure this fall, and heavily involved with the resurrection of the Structure Data event in March 2016. Derrick is one of the primary thinkers and writers when it comes to the evolution of "big data," and we're lucky to have his talents at our disposal.   Remember, Structure 2015 takes place November 18th and 19th in San Francisco. Buy your tickets here.   INDUSTRY NEWS AWS: WELCOME TO OUR NEW COLLEAGUES AT ELEMENTAL Amazon Web Services said it acquired a Portland cloud startup, Elemental, Thursday afternoon for a reported $500 million in cash (according to The Information, subscription required). Elemental focuses on software for streaming video, which could help AWS attract and retain video companies as cloud customers. CLOUD PROVIDERS SLAS: WHAT TO LOOK FOR We spend a lot of time talking about the servers, networking, and processors that enable the public cloud, but if you're a public cloud customer you should really focus your attention on one thing: your service-level agreement. Datamation has some good pointers to consider before signing your next headache-as-a-service deal. UBUNTU LINUX CONTINUES TO RULE THE CLOUD The impact of Linux on the development of the public cloud can't be understated, and it turns out that Canonical's Ubuntu is the most dominant flavor of that operating system used by public cloud providers. ZDNet looks at a study by The Cloud Market that analyzed AWS instances, and that report sets up Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth's upcoming talk at Structure 2015 quite nicely. THE FAA STARTS MOVING TO THE CLOUD The puns almost write themselves: The Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to start putting some workloads in the cloud (AWS and Microsoft's Azure were singled out) through government contractor CSC. Techcrunch reports that it's a ten-year $109 million deal, and while the wheels of government bureaucracy turn far slower than the tech industry, it's a start when it comes to modernizing government IT infrastructure (which we pay for, after all). ICONIQ LEADS $75 MILLION ROUND FOR NETSKOPE TO SECURE CLOUD APPS  Looking for the next cloud gold rush? Security startup Netskope just raised another $75 million in a Series D funding round led by Iconiq Capital, according to the Wall Street Journal. Netskope helps companies secure cloud apps that employees start using on their own, which can leave sensitive data exposed. BIG PICTURE   San Francisco's population decreased significantly this week thanks to Burning Man, but VMware managed to offset that somewhat by bringing in 23,000 people for its annual developer conference. However, it was likely a tumultuous week for the company behind the scenes, with two prominent tech executives leaving just last week and CEO Pat Gelsinger (above) facing more questions about the long-term survival of the EMC federation than about his company's products.   There certainly were products to announce: vCloud Air has some new upgraded features, according to Fortune, but CRN reported on the eve of VMworld that the company is taking its foot off the gas when it comes to future product developments, which would make some sense if a big corporate shift is in the company's future. It announced support for Docker containers inside a new version of vSphere, but VMware's core virtualization technology is precisely what is threatened by the rise of Docker and containers in general.   I'm looking forward to two things this fall when it comes to VMware: corporate clarity around its future, because the market for cloud services will be better off by having as many strong, focused companies as possible, and a talk from Bill Fathers, executive president and general manager of VMware's Cloud Services Business, at Structure 2015. Fathers is expected to talk about team-building during his session, and I'm particularly curious to hear about how VMware is keeping its people focused during what might be a abrupt change this fall.   "We're entering the professional era of the cloud, leaving the experimental era behind," Gelsinger said this week. An awful lot of VMware customers are starting to wonder how the company plans to handle the professional era.     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