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Red Hat Acquires Makara, Cisco Acquires LineSider, Which IT Jobs are on the Endangered Species List? And More…
Feature Article
As cloud computing changes IT roles, which IT jobs are on the ‘endangered species list’?
By Jay Fry, CA Technologies
During my recent Cloud Expo presentation titled ‘How Cloud Computing is Changing the Role of IT and What You Can Do About IT,’ I took the opportunity to ask the audience which IT job titles were or were not going to exist any longer as a result of cloud computing. There was no shortage of opinions. Here’s a summary of the presentation I gave, plus a few comments from the audience thrown in for color. Read the full article.
Cloud News
- Red Hat is acquiring Makara, maker of cloud-based application management products. Red Hat intends to integrate Makara with the JBoss application server in order to offer a more comprehensive PaaS product for public and private clouds, according to this ZDNet article. In June, Red Hat had announced its Cloud Foundations platform to enable companies to deploy private cloud environments; Makara provides Red Hat with a complete vertical open-source cloud stack including OS, middleware and virtualization. This move makes Red Hat a stronger competitor to VMware.
- Cisco announced the acquisition of LineSider Technologies, which provides a network service virtualization platform. Cisco believes the technology will enable it to offer faster and more efficient provisioning of network services in a virtual environment, according to this CRN article.
- Microsoft announced Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), a direct competitor to VMware’s vCloud Director. Microsoft currently plans to release the software in the second half of 2011. SCVMM will support the Citrix XenServer platform and will include a self-service portal for IaaS, automated provisioning of server, network and storage hardware, and the ability to load balance across virtual machines, according to this Search Server Virtualization article.
- Google introduced a plug-in for Microsoft Office called Cloud Connect, that would enable Office users to access and share documents through GoogleDocs for free and without leaving the Office interface, according to this LA Times article. This PCWorld article discusses the security implications of this new capability.
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Cloud Views
- This article in CSO by Gregory Machler explores the security questions that $1 billion+ companies should think about when considering outsourcing a portion of their infrastructure to a cloud provider.
- Network World columnist John Dix explores whether IT organizations need to restructure themselves in order to gain the most value from virtualization; he cites Cisco’s IT organization as a group that has successfully done this.
- In this Computerworld article, Forrester analyst Liz Herbert explores 5 key considerations for SaaS implementations, including recommended strategies for price negotiation and how governance should be structured.
- CRN published a recap of what it considers the top 10 cloud stories from 2010. Included in the list are CA Technologies more than $1 billion investment in cloud acquisitions, Larry Ellison changing his tune on cloud, Rackspace launching OpenStack, the Enomaly SpotCloud clearinghouse and the launch of GoogleApps Marketplace.
