TechCruch: IBM is getting into the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market by standardizing on Cloud Foundry, originally developed by VMware and now part of Pivotal, the EMC spin-off.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today
Tag Archives: Cloud Foundry
IBM Throws Its Weight Behind Cloud Foundry
IBM and Pivotal announced at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) that the two would collaborate on development of the popular Cloud Foundry development platform. The partnership will be make it easier for developers to deploy and manage cloud applications, and will be great for businesses looking to take advantage of the cloud.
The Cloud Foundry website describes it as an open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that gives developers the freedom to choose the cloud services, developer frameworks, and application services that meet their needs. According to the Cloud Foundry About page, “Cloud Foundry makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications.”
IBM may not have the clout it once carried before the rise of Microsoft, but Big Blue is still a powerful name in IT, and recently it has been a driving force behind open source cloud projects. IBM has been a leading supporter of OpenStack, an open source cloud infrastructure initiative. By working with Pivotal to foster development of the Cloud Foundry platform, IBM is now expanding its support for both open source, and the cloud.
Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst focused on application development software, shared some thoughts on the Cloud Foundry news. “Given this announcement, I expect to see IBM invest in this project and help drive its governance forward to really achieve critical mass. Cloud Foundry has already garnered significant support from many players and has built up an ecosystem, but putting IBM’s imprimatur and resources behind it will be felt in the industry.”
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
These Are Pivotal Times for EMC
By Richard Saintvilus, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Investors of storage giant EMC were not pleased after management came out with lower guidance for fiscal 2013. I felt this was more the result of potential struggles with VMware , which is 80% owned by EMC, than it was with EMC itself. But it didn’t matter. The Street reacted, and the stock got punished.
However, given the state of the hardware market, EMC‘s outlook wasn’t really that bad. And there was plenty of evidence that the company was winning the storages war despite recent pricing pressure from rivals such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. But, following a recent “strategy day” with analysts, EMC seems poised for stronger growth down the road. And patient investors will be rewarded.
Change we can believe in
Bears remain fearful that the storage/cloud market will remain turbulent for at least 2013. In many respects, they’re right. But EMC has never gotten its due credit for its ability to quickly adapt to changing trends. A perfect example was the company’s recent announcement to spin-off areas of the business that, while strong in performance, were getting lost in the shuffle. By creating a separate entity, EMC feels that more value can be realized.
The company calls it “the pivotal initiative,” which is, essentially, a group of assets that includes data analytics, cloud computing, and Bid Data. Although management has not fully disclosed how the new company will be structured, it did say that Paul Maritz, who is VMware’s former CEO and has been running the Pivotal inside of EMC, will remain at the helm following the spin-off. The company also said that Pivotal will be jointly owned with VMware, which will take up 31% of Pivotal, while EMC will absorb the 69% majority.
EMC‘s Greenplum and Pivotal Labs assets will be the major contributors of the operation, while VMware will put in its Cloud Foundry, Cetas, Spring, and Gemfire groups. Analysts love the idea. Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets, who has a buy rating on EMC with a $30 price target, said that Pivotal is expected to have $300 million in revenue this year. He also projected that the total available market for Big Data, which is currently $6 billion this year, can grow to $17 billion by 2016. In other words, although EMC doesn’t look like a stock that can ring in sizable gains this year, there is still plenty to love with the company in the long-term.
How much better will this make EMC?
While there is no doubt that EMC is the dominant force in storage, it’s not as if the competition is just going to roll over. And I think management understands this. To that end, EMC projected just 8% revenue growth for fiscal 2013. Management also warned that revenue growth for the first half of this year will arrive slightly below 8%, while the second half will make up the difference.
However, that’s not to suggest that management was down on its capabilities. Much of the downbeat guidance …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance