From Señior Wordpress. Link to original

From Señior Wordpress. Link to original

From Señior Wordpress. Link to original

Link to original

Link to original

Link to original

“In 2018, [Kroger] is rolling out a new service to 400 stores that will enable shoppers to scan and pay for their items without checkout lanes, registers, or cashiers.” Link to original

“In 2018, [Kroger] is rolling out a new service to 400 stores that will enable shoppers to scan and pay for their items without checkout lanes, registers, or cashiers.” Link to original

“In 2018, [Kroger] is rolling out a new service to 400 stores that will enable shoppers to scan and pay for their items without checkout lanes, registers, or cashiers.” Link to original

Getting jerks to do their job by having their peers manage them. Link to original

Getting jerks to do their job by having their peers manage them. Link to original

Getting jerks to do their job by having their peers manage them. Link to original

“About 103,000 for-hire vehicles operate in the city, more than double the roughly 47,000 in 2013, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Of those, 68,000 are affiliated with ride-hailing app companies, including 65,000 with Uber alone, though they may also provide rides for others. In contrast, yellow taxis are capped by city law at just under 13,600.” On the other hand, it’s probably easier to get around, even if slower.

“About 103,000 for-hire vehicles operate in the city, more than double the roughly 47,000 in 2013, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Of those, 68,000 are affiliated with ride-hailing app companies, including 65,000 with Uber alone, though they may also provide rides for others. In contrast, yellow taxis are capped by city law at just under 13,600.” On the other hand, it’s probably easier to get around, even if slower.

“About 103,000 for-hire vehicles operate in the city, more than double the roughly 47,000 in 2013, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Of those, 68,000 are affiliated with ride-hailing app companies, including 65,000 with Uber alone, though they may also provide rides for others. In contrast, yellow taxis are capped by city law at just under 13,600.” On the other hand, it’s probably easier to get around, even if slower.

Some advice on fixing up your technical debt and such to start off the new year right.

‘Datical automatically examines SQL scripts created by developers and aligns them with a common object model. “We create a package so you have an immutable artifact that goes from development to test to production just like your app code,” Reeves said. The software checks for inefficiencies, such as the use of multiple indices or joins, and flags them before changing the schema…. Datical’s containerized image can be run with Concourse as part of a testing pipeline to enable application development teams to push application and database changes through the release cycle at the same time.

‘Datical automatically examines SQL scripts created by developers and aligns them with a common object model. “We create a package so you have an immutable artifact that goes from development to test to production just like your app code,” Reeves said. The software checks for inefficiencies, such as the use of multiple indices or joins, and flags them before changing the schema…. Datical’s containerized image can be run with Concourse as part of a testing pipeline to enable application development teams to push application and database changes through the release cycle at the same time.

‘Datical automatically examines SQL scripts created by developers and aligns them with a common object model. “We create a package so you have an immutable artifact that goes from development to test to production just like your app code,” Reeves said. The software checks for inefficiencies, such as the use of multiple indices or joins, and flags them before changing the schema…. Datical’s containerized image can be run with Concourse as part of a testing pipeline to enable application development teams to push application and database changes through the release cycle at the same time.

“Serverless is all about giving developers the ability to execute code without requiring sysadmins.” Link

“Serverless is all about giving developers the ability to execute code without requiring sysadmins.” Link

“Serverless is all about giving developers the ability to execute code without requiring sysadmins.” Link

‘As a self-proclaimed Black “nerd” and active social media user, Moore also cites cultural differences as one of the main reasons tech companies don’t hire more people from underrepresented minorities groups. She herself remembers laughing awkwardly alongside white college peers and classmates to jokes she didn’t necessarily find funny due to cultural differences in social cues and communications styles: “If you weren’t friends with a Black woman in your class partly because there were no Black women in your class or partly because your interests, maybe her interests aren’t the same, if you’re not even friends with those people, you’re definitely not going to start a business with those people.

‘As a self-proclaimed Black “nerd” and active social media user, Moore also cites cultural differences as one of the main reasons tech companies don’t hire more people from underrepresented minorities groups. She herself remembers laughing awkwardly alongside white college peers and classmates to jokes she didn’t necessarily find funny due to cultural differences in social cues and communications styles: “If you weren’t friends with a Black woman in your class partly because there were no Black women in your class or partly because your interests, maybe her interests aren’t the same, if you’re not even friends with those people, you’re definitely not going to start a business with those people.

Link

Link

Link

“[B]y virtue of prioritizing emotions and personal happiness, in contexts like the U.S., we are creating a discrepancy between how we feel and how we are supposed to feel… In western societies, we don’t see enough adaptive strategies like reappraisal: learning to tell yourself a different story that would eventually lead to different emotions.” Link to original

“[B]y virtue of prioritizing emotions and personal happiness, in contexts like the U.S., we are creating a discrepancy between how we feel and how we are supposed to feel… In western societies, we don’t see enough adaptive strategies like reappraisal: learning to tell yourself a different story that would eventually lead to different emotions.” Link to original

“[B]y virtue of prioritizing emotions and personal happiness, in contexts like the U.S., we are creating a discrepancy between how we feel and how we are supposed to feel… In western societies, we don’t see enough adaptive strategies like reappraisal: learning to tell yourself a different story that would eventually lead to different emotions.” Link to original

“It’s not about productivity; it’s about value-tivity. Productivity represents the capacity to increase output for a given level of input. But this output can also be rubbish, which adds no value to the business." Link to original

“It’s not about productivity; it’s about value-tivity. Productivity represents the capacity to increase output for a given level of input. But this output can also be rubbish, which adds no value to the business." Link to original

“It’s not about productivity; it’s about value-tivity. Productivity represents the capacity to increase output for a given level of input. But this output can also be rubbish, which adds no value to the business." Link to original

‘I’ll tell you something that’s not fantasy. In the next few years, Red Hat will become the first billion-dollar-a-quarter open-source company, and that’s real money… Here’s how. First, as Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat CEO, said in the earnings call, “We anticipate exiting the fiscal year with an annualized run-rate of approximately $3 billion for total revenue."’ Link to original

Mirantis therefore thinks it can do a similar job for other combinations of open source software and that users will welcome such oft-updated bundles as anything that makes developers more productive, and infrastructure more secure, should be welcome. Source: Mirantis eyes continuous integration of all the things

Four years ago, in October 2013, 451 Research reported that OpenStack cloud revenues were approximately $600 million in 2013. In April 2016, 451 Research reported that 2015 OpenStack ecosystem revenues came in at $1.2 billion, with a forecast to grow to $3.37 billion by 2018. Now in November 2017, 451 Research is out with it latest OpenStack market sizing report, estimating 2017 OpenStack ecosystem revenue at $2.6 billion. Looking forward, 451 Research is forecasting that OpenStack market revenues will reach $6.

Introducing new technology in the workplace is making the majority of people - three in five - feel anxious while the same number have concerns over whether their job is safe when it comes to tasks being automated. And half of staff express such fears about change when businesses introduce any “digital transformation” projects, the study by Goldsmiths University and YouGov found and more than a quarter of business leaders said they meet "

Kevin Ichhpurani, executive vice president of global ecosystem and channels at GE Digital, and corporate officer of GE, told CRN during GE’s Minds and Machines conference in San Francisco last week that channel partners will have more success developing and selling applications around IoT, as opposed to grappling with the long and complex sales cycle of the GE Predix IoT platform itself. Source: GE Digital Pivots Industrial IoT Sales Focus From Platform To IoT Apps – And Looks To Partners As Sales Engine

This week, Big Blue rolled out its new IBM Cloud Private software platform that is designed to enable enterprises to develop on-premises private cloud environments to accelerate app development and allow for easier movement of workloads between their private clouds and public clouds – not only the IBM Cloud but also those from other vendors. Similarly, IBM is leaning on open and container-based technologies for enhanced integration and portability of workloads.

According to Telstra, in some cases, its software development time has decreased from 6-8 months to 10-12 weeks through its work with Pivotal, More on how widespread it is: Telstra has moved 100 of its internal teams to Pivotal’s agile software development platform since partnering with the enterprise software company two years ago, with the telco saying this accounts for around 25 to 30 percent of its business. Under the partnership, Telstra’s teams have been trained in Pivotal Labs to build software using agile methodologies on Pivotal Cloud Foundry, with an end goal of shifting 400 teams encompassing around 4,000 to 5,000 staff members to the cloud software-development platform.

Part of the problem, according to the General Services Administration’s Bill Zielinski, is that many agencies still try to scope out modernization projects with highly specific technical requirements. “We define not only the business outcome that we’re trying to achieve,” Zielinski said at the FCW-hosted IT modernization event, “but we have that tendency to say, ‘and this is explicitly how you’re going to do that.'” Such specific solicitations tend to produce near-identical proposals from industry, he noted, which forces agencies to select based on "

The cloud initiative combines Google’s de facto standard Kubernetes cluster orchestration platform for managing applications and services across hybrid infrastructure with Cisco’s networking and security expertise. It also leverages Cisco’s push into hyper-converged infrastructure. Along with extending security to application containers and other micro-services, the deal would allow users to monitor application behavior running on hybrid platforms, the partners said. The other pillar of the collaboration is Istio, another open source tool released earlier this year to help manage micro-services via what developers call a “service mesh network.

“The company builds its apps in Docker containers. Apps that need to stay on the company’s premises run on an OpenStack private cloud. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are used for public cloud. Fidelity uses a combination of cloud-native management tools like CloudFormation for AWS, Heat templates for OpenStack, and Terraforms, which runs across both public and private environments. It uses Cloud Foundry as a PaaS layer that spans both public and private clouds, too.

SLOs are objectives that your business aspires to meet and intends to take action to defend; just remember, your SLOs are not your SLAs (service level agreements)! You should pick SLOs that represent the most critical aspects of the user experience. If you meet an SLO, your users and your business should be happy. Conversely, if the system does not meet the SLO, that implies there are users who are being made unhappy!

The developer of cloud-agnostic solutions has raised $74 million in total since its founding in 2012. Source: HashiCorp Secures $40 Million In A Funding Round That Will Boost Its Channel Program

Oracle’s view is simple: SaaS suites win in the long term. Source: How is the big switch to the public cloud working out… for Oracle?

“One of the problems that we’ve got – it’s not the problem but it’s a problem – you develop a piece of technology, we don’t have the resourcing flexibility to buy it.” That means the Army is forced to buy a technology available today it thinks it will need in 2025, when what it truly needs hasn’t been developed yet. “[Say] you came up with something new that I really need on the battlefield based on a threat, I have no ability to integrate that into my platform.

The economics of attention markets focuses on three features. First it focuses on time as the key dimension of competition since it is what is being bought and sold. Second, it focuses on content since it plays a central role in acquiring time, embedding advertising messages, and operating efficient attention platforms. And third it focuses on the scarcity of time and the implications of that for competition among attention platforms. Source: The Economics of Attention

My column this month in The Register looks at “the skills gap” most hiring managers see when it comes to tech skill. The suggestions for fixing it are, of course, to fix the framing, expectations, and profile of people you’re looking for. As Andrew Clay Shafer put it: there is no talent shortage. Source: “You can’t find tech staff – wah, wah, wah. Start with your ridiculous job spec”

How all these unprofitable companies sustaining high valuations: bending reality today has three elements: a vision, fast growth, and financing. But: A few firms other than Amazon have defied the odds. Over the past 20 years Las Vegas Sands, a casino firm, Royal Caribbean, a cruise-line company, and Micron Technology, a chip-maker, each lost $1bn or more for two consecutive years and went on to prosper. But the chances of success are slim.

Between 1990 and 2010 the rate of economic convergence across American states slowed to less than half what it had been between 1880 and 1980. It has since fallen close to zero. Rich cities started pulling away from less well-off counterparts (see chart 1). According to the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, in the decade to 2015 productivity growth in American metropolitan areas was highest in the top 10% and the bottom 20% (where, by definition, the baseline was low).

The enterprise collaboration software vendor said it earned 12 cents a share, three cents ahead of the consensus estimate. Revenue climbed 41.7% year over year to $193.8 million, also above the $185.8 million analysts had forecasted. You know what they say: developers don’t pay for anything. Someone either needs to acquire Atlassian, it has to start acquiring companies, or if the private cloud thing becomes cemented, they need to work with the public cloud three to build out the private cloud toolchain.

Oracle reports its PaaS and IaaS revenue together, which makes understanding its IaaS growth difficult. FY16 to FY17 revenue increased from $0.9bn to $1.4bn, equivalent to 60% YoY growth. The company claims to have added 14,000 IaaS and PaaS customers to OCI since its inception, almost all of them existing customers of its licensed software. Oracle’s overall revenue in 2016 was $37bn, so IaaS and PaaS still represent a small slice of the pie.

The company targets very large users, with 60% of its customers being MSPs, followed by enterprises at about 30%, and the rest coming from government agencies. It doesn’t report the number of direct customers, but its website boasts 47,000 organizations as users, many of them employing ScienceLogic via service providers. Average annual contract value for direct customers is $125,000. Source: ScienceLogic targets new use case aimed at frustrated CMDB users

Dave Bartoletti, an analyst with IT consultancy Forrester, said it’s clear that Kubernetes has won at the orchestration layer. “There’s too much mindshare around it,” he said in a phone interview with The Register. “There are too many developers who just want this.” Pretty much everyone has the sentiment that kubernetes has won. More details from Joseph Tsidulko at CRN: While some components of Enterprise Edition previously could be made to work with Kubernetes, the crucial control plane for managing the lifecycle of containerized applications was incompatible.

Ian Andrews explains and whiteboards out how all the cloud-native infrastructure fits together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DHCqRJIIpI Go to 7m21s if you want to skip right to the diagraming.

It happens to be the case that CF — because it’s an app platform and wants to let the user focus on their code — provides a way to convert code in to containers inside the platform without having to start messing around with Dockerfiles and the like. And this functionality even does some cool things for you like keeping your container OS automatically patched so you don’t have to build CI pipelines to monitor your base images and rebuild stuff.

I have an extra piece in The Register this month. I was asked to frame the history of software product theory between the Cluetrain, Andrew Clay Shafer’s agile infrastructure talk, DevOps, and the “we’re a software company now” trope.

You probably still want to know who actually built a given container and what’s running in it. Source: Google, IBM and others launch an open source API for keeping tabs on software supply chains

Try to go beyond hand waving and opinions and find out what really is happening. A good way to start is to ask people to picture what their scenario would look like if everything was perfect. This puts them into a positive frame and helps focus on great outcomes. Once you’re sure you’re working on an improvement opportunity that’s worth your time, try small time-bound experiments that you actually follow through on.

On overview of how Bloomberg is looking at the likes of Pivotal Container Services: “Many Kubernetes distributions are good on day one, when they’re first deployed,” said Andrey Rybka, technical architect in the office of the CTO at Bloomberg, the global finance, media and tech company based in New York. “But what happens on day two, when something fails? Kubernetes doesn’t [automatically] address things like failures at the physical node level.

Has everyone gone kubernetes crazy? It seems like most buyers and sellers at least want it as an option and are, if you prefer the word, capitulating to supporting it. In past weeks most all vendors - even Oracle! - have announced support and road-maps for using Google’s container orchestrator in their cloud-native stacks. Also, Chef and Puppet have new suites of tools, Docker sets its sites clearly on reducing VMware costs, and there’s some new momentum stats on the Cloud Foundry ecosystem.

Has everyone gone kubernetes crazy? It seems like most buyers and sellers at least want it as an option and are, if you prefer the word, capitulating to supporting it. In past weeks most all vendors - even Oracle! - have announced support and road-maps for using Google’s container orchestrator in their cloud-native stacks. Also, Chef and Puppet have new suites of tools, Docker sets its sites clearly on reducing VMware costs, and there’s some new momentum stats on the Cloud Foundry ecosystem.

From an interview with Jeffrey Hammond and Marc Cecere on developer skills gaps. Here, the trend to training with people in person and then (slowly) going back “home”: [Hammond:] One of the things I think you see is it– so many companies have used the words, partnering model, for years, and it’s been more or less lip service. But you do see a little bit more of a partnering and more highly tailored model.

Source: Chef Launches Habitat Build, a Cloud-Native Application Packaging Service

The single biggest one is the move to public cloud, and this is where Docker is focused today. This is the number one area that we are putting all our investment in. We have this great container platform that allows you to do a lot of things, but just like any company, we need to pick an area of focus and for us, helping customers take legacy apps, moving them to the Docker platform, and allowing them to run it on any infrastructure because it’s hybrid cloud world, does a couple of things — it drives massive savings for customers, typically 50 percent cost reduction in a cost structure, but it also opens up real opportunities for the customer and our partners to innovate within that environment Also, this is an insanely good example of a fluffy leather chair conference interview, plus, The Channel filter.

Oracle all over that public kubernetes service. Source: Oracle Emulates Google, AWS On Its Cloud

451 Research’s data points suggest that some workloads are likely to remain on private cloud regardless of any disruptor’s attack. And even with hungry cloud providers eyeing private workloads, growth is likely to continue across all cloud models, not just public cloud. Whole bunch of survey numbers tryin’ figure out how many workloads will stay on private cloud. Source: Private cloud: avoiding an existential crisis

The three new Puppet products based on Distelli’s technology are Puppet Pipelines for Apps, which automates key application development and delivery tasks; Puppet Pipelines for Containers, which enables users to build Docker images from a repository and deploy them to Kubernetes clusters; and Puppet Container Registry, which gives developers a comprehensive view of their Docker images across all repositories. Source: Puppet Launches Barrage Of Products To Enable ‘New Age’ Of Software Automation And DevOps

Consider the case of the connected cows. The grand unified, cloud/AI/IoT/serverless theory: That was the essence of the Build keynote: The cloud interprets IoT telemetry, in real time, with AI. And that AI can, in turn, instruct other IoT devices to do things based on its interpretation. Source: The Serverless Revolution Will Make Us All Developers

Paying premium bucks to hire influencers for the big cloud migration wars. Source: What is Microsoft Doing?

Lots of growth, it’s all just public cloud, though. Source: Public Cloud Doesn’t Dominate IT Quite Yet

Some momentum updates. Source: Starbucks CEO explains how company ties together a physical store experience with digital innovation

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we would be surprised if Cisco made back any of the $180m it paid for Composite Software in 2013. Cisco did at least manage to grow the data virtualization business during its ownership. The company told us in September 2016 that it had 250 paying customers for what was then Cisco Data Virtualization (up from 200 at the time of its acquisition of Composite Software).

“We’re seeing a big trend among customers to move cloud stacks inside customer’s data center for security, performance and governance,” Wang told TechCrunch. There’s not really any qualitative (market share, penetration, or surveys - all pretty easy to lmgtfy) bits here, but I’d take it more as a slightly eyebrow raising thing along the lines of “if even TechCrunch wiffs out private cloud, maybe there’s some fire there.”

twitter.com/valleyhac…

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

The $2.7 million contract involved in the program is between the Air Force and a Silicon Valley company, Pivotal Inc., that has often worked with large corporations such as Ford and Home Depot. The effort is expected to reach beyond the operations center in Qatar to eventually assist in similar U.S. military facilities across the world. It was a project to digitize refueling aircraft, from the previously analog approach:

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Some BOM’ing of Azure Stack: Azure Stack is made of two basic components, the underlying infrastructure that customers purchase from one of Microsoft’s certified partners (initially Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo) and software that is licensed from Microsoft.The software includes basic IaaS functions that make up a cloud, such as virtual machines, storage and virtual networking. Azure Stack includes some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application-development features including the Azure Container Service and Microsoft’s Azure Functions serverless computing software, plus MySQL and SQL Server support.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff: AWS added on-premises support to its CodeDeploy continuous-delivery service in 2015. AWS introduced the Snowball storage server companies could use to copy data and then ship it to the cloud in 2015. AWS added on-premises support to its EC2 Run Command tool for running shell scripts on many machines at once in 2016. AWS unveiled the Snowmobile truck for copying even larger supplies of data and then hauling it off to Amazon in 2016.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

The writing in this book is good, and I’m always a sucker for noir. But it gets tiresome after awhile, all the balls-out crazy stuff and topics. There’s a lot to study about fiction dynamics here though fueled by the picador plotting: lots of interesting characters, lots of mini-plots; paring characters; the weak male/strong female trope; unlimited budget; snarky, but weary direct address tone to the reader; maybe world building, but just as the back-story for the various characters you meet (the serial killer on the airplane, the Roanokes, but the Bob character is ignored/anemic in this respect); social commentary as asides (from Trix, often); sex for titilation.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

Turns out of course it’s not just Developer Time To Suck that is shrinking. Operations is heading the same way. Folks at Pivotal are saying that operating systems don’t matter, as we’ve moved further up the stack. Cloud Native is a proxy for saying much the same thing. But then, something is being written right now that will supplant Kubernetes. If we’re not running our own environments in house, operations disposability become increasingly realistic.

“Managed Pivotal Cloud Foundry is Rackspace’s first step into the managed platform space, as we move up the stack to solutions that customers want our help with,” wrote Brannon Lacey, vice president of applications and platforms at Rackspace, in today’s announcement. “It is a solution that helps customers get up and running on Pivotal Cloud Foundry quickly and stay up and running, with operational support and proactive monitoring. This way, in-house teams can focus on innovation and getting out to market quickly while Rackspace handles the backend.

Pivotal is at the epicenter of how enormous companies rediscover the art of software development. Source: Michael Dell Says Public Cloud is Important But It’s Not Everything

This week, news around Microsoft’s Azure Stack drove a lot of private cloud talk around these parts. Also, I’ve been trying to figure out what “Cloud-native Enterprise Architecture” means. Links and notes below. Also, if you’re into Software Defined Talk, we’ve created a Patreon account. One, if you just want to give us cash, hey, we’ll take it. And two, we’re trying to figure out member only content. I think we’ll try with some bonus episodes where we do extended/extra analysis of white papers, surveys, and other tech industries studies and things.

www.youtube.com/watch A recent rendition of one of my standard talks at the Austin DevOps Meetup. See the slides as well.

Application types: “The first result is that the airline will migrate to the IBM Cloud some of its critical applications, including the main website, its customer-facing mobile app and its global network of check-in kiosks. Other workloads and tools, such as the company’s Cargo customer website, also will be moved to the IBM Cloud.” Managed data-centers/cloud: “The airline will be able to utilize the global footprint of IBM Cloud, which consists of more than 50 data centers in 17 countries, in addition to a wide range of application development capabilities.

[O]ne well-publicized case in that vein, they said, was Home Depot directly working with Pivotal Software to introduce Pivotal Cloud Foundry to Google Cloud Platform. The home improvement retailer wanted to continue to use the popular development environment in the public cloud, but avoid giving business to Amazon’s largest profit-generating division. A Pivotal spokesperson told CRN that Home Depot, like other Fortune 500 retail customers using Pivotal Cloud Foundry for app development, prefer Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure above AWS.

It’s a short week, what with July 4th on Tuesday. There’s a few podcasts below and bit less than a handful of links. Podcasts Software Defined Talk: “Do I just need some better medication?” or, advertising, antitrust, and talking to strangers Without advertising, there would be no capitalism, and, if you’re not constantly afraid of the DoJ knocking at your door, you’re probably doing it wrong.

The 20th century was a graveyard for old, tested, and, yes, diverse belief systems and moral traditions that worked fairly well in steering lives for a long time despite their fatal flaws. Source: Trying to lead a valid life • DecodeDC

We had a two week vacation over at Gulf Shores, Alabama. Despite three days of rain, it was great. If you’re looking for a Gulf-beach vacation, it’s an excellent place to go - just about 10 hours from Austin if you drive fast and don’t have to stop a lot for kids to go pee. Well, and adults with tiny bladders too. Coté Content How to avoid getting hoodwinked by a DevOps hustler My column at The Register this month, how to find and rate a good consultant.

This month’s column is on finding and vetting consultants. Check out the piece!

Apple said today that it will be using (anonymized) data from the app to show podcasters how many people are listening and where in the app people are stopping or skipping. This has the potential to dramatically change our perception of how many people really listen to a show, and how many people skip ads, as well as how long a podcast can run before people just give up. Link

New types of software and delivery mechanisms (SaaS, mobile) mean new problems and scale: “We were so used to dealing with tens of servers and suddenly it was hundreds and thousands of servers,” which in turn created more work for the development teams. More: “The digital expansion of business equals more work and firefighting,” Cox said. Less time spent doing dumb-shit: employees used to spend the eight hours of the park closed every night, manually updating each server.

Eventually every advisor will be a robo-advisor, which means there will be convergence. Without some marketshare numbers, it’s tough to tell if the banking startups are making a dent against incumbent banks. Josh Brown suggests that banks are quick to catch-up and have nullified any lead that companies like Weathfront could have made: It wasn’t long before the weaker B2C robo-advisors folded, the middling players were acquired and the incumbents launched their own competing platforms.

Who doesn’t like a good what’s in bag/what I do each day post? I used to fax a lot, but people don’t have faxes anymore. In this routine, what’s remarkable is how much he avoids people, e.g.: I don’t go out that much because I’m always late, and I’m so busy and so pleased with what I’m doing that I’m not really ready for a social evening. That’s over—the people I was going out with are dead or don’t exist anymore.

Compensation is much cheaper if you can convince people to take an arbitrary number of lottery tickets in a lottery of unknown value instead of cash. Cash and known value is king. Something about discounted cashflows and such. Link

Good pointing out of needing some law and ethics to catch up to the Internet: The Internet brought us hyperconnectedness, but we’re really not ready to cope. We don’t have institutions and firewalls in place to prevent abuse of the system. The law can’t keep up, and doesn’t have the teeth in place anyway. Link

While department stores are sinking, sales of apparel and accessories on Amazon are skyrocketing, with $22 billion in clothing sales in 2016, or 6.6 percent of the market. Link

“Ansible, a DevOps automation engine that’s often used with Kubernetes deployments, was big, responsible for six of the quarter’s transactions of over $1 million. This included one deal valued at over $5 million – “our largest deal ever for Ansible,” according to Shander.” Also, updates on RHEL, OpenStack, and OpenShift. And Oracle. Link

Just a few updates and links this week. I don’t list them all below, but there’s several interviews from OSCON and DevOpsDays Austin in the Coté Show Variety Podcast as well. Programming languages XML, all alone on its own. The RedMonk programming language index is out, as always it’s interesting to see how things rank and read over their explanation. Also, if you’re interested in coming to Spring Days in NYC or Atlanta this summer, they have a $50 off discount code right at the start as part of Pivotal’s sponsorship.

There was some interesting container orchestration news this week which we discussed in Software Defined Talk. If you’re into Slack, I started a Slack channel for Software Defined Talk listeners. There’s other channels in there, of course, but if you’re into extremely low-traffic stuff - or want to make it higher traffic, send me a DM in Twitter or email me at sdt@cote.wtf and I’ll add you. It’s been two weeks since I sent this out, so pardon the bulk below.

Everyone always wants to know metrics. While the answer is always a solid “it depends - I mean, what are your business goals and then we can come up with some KPIs,” there’s a reoccurring set of technical metrics. Nicole lists some off: These IT performance metrics capture speed and stability of software delivery: lead time for changes (from code commit to code deploy), deployment frequency, mean time to restore (MTTR), and change fail rate.

Many quotes of HPE’s CEO, Meg Whitman, explaining the state of HPE, 18 months after all the hijinks. Also, notes on some further cost reductions in the works: “We believe we can take out another $200 million to $300 million in cost in just the second half of this year.” Stuart Lauchlan’s conclusion: No-one can doubt the ambition in play here, a corporate reinvention on a massive scale that was never going to be entirely without bumps in the road.

Casper had been out raising a large round of funding when the talks started, sources said. The startup generated around $200 million in sales in 2016 — its second full year in business — and was valued at around $550 million after its last private investment in 2015. And, as the headline says: “Target looked at buying the mattress startup Casper for $1 billion but will invest instead.”

There’s some good “how do I actually get my organization do all this unicorn stuff” comments in this interview with DreamWorks Animation’s Doug Sherman. Here’s one sample bit on winning people over to microservices. Instead of going into the lab for six months to work on a tool that they think will be useful, they do a lot more user-driven work upfront and then do (it sounds like) weekly small batches to keep the users apprised of the tools and, you’d guess, give continuous feedback:

From The Economist a few weeks back: The real difference is that Trumponomics (unlike, say, Reaganomics) is not an economic doctrine at all. It is best seen as a set of proposals put together by businessmen courtiers for their king. Mr Trump has listened to scores of executives, but there are barely any economists in the White House. His approach to the economy is born of a mindset where deals have winners and losers and where canny negotiators confound abstract principles.

Appian raised just $48m as a private company, compared with $163m for Alteryx, $220m for Okta, $259m for MuleSoft and more than $1bn for Cloudera. In fact, all four of the unicorn IPOs raised more in a single round of private-market funding than Appian did in total VC funding.Not having done an IPO-sized funding in the private market meant that Appian could come public with a more modest raise. (It took in just $75m, compared with this year’s previous IPOs that raised, on average, $190m for the four unicorns.

Since the late 2000’s, one of the cloud strategy theories was that existing telcos and network providers could become public cloud providers. Many, if not all have tried and/or trying. Thus far, it’s been a rocky road: few synergies seem to be sleeping on the ground, ready to roused up to go fight the giants, or, at least, carve out niche spaces. As summarized in a 451 report on CenturyLink:

It seems like all I do now-a-days is podcasts. So, here’s some down below, plus some links of interest. Recent PodcastsPivotal Conversations: The management perspective on transforming Allstate, with Opal Perry — soundcloud.com I talk with Allstate’s Opal Perry about how Allstate has been shifting how they do it, to a more cloud-native approach. It ain’t easy. Drunk & Retired Podcast: The arrogance of making sure you get what you want — cote.

Just a few podcasts and links today. I should have a The Registercolumn on OpenStack up by next issue (gotta write that next!). Cloud-Native Strategy Workshop, June 7th in D.C.Come check out a day-long workshop with me and Mark Heckler: You’d like to improve how your organization or agency writes and runs software. Like most large organizations, you’re expected to deliver software that delivers on ever evolving requirements while remaining stable and resilient.

I’ve been at OSCON this week and have a pile of video-cum-podcasts to edit and post, still from DevOpsDays Austin! The usual links and such below. Enjoy! PodcastsPivotal Conversations: User Account and Authentication (UAA), with Sree Tummidi — soundcloud.com For God’s sake, don’t write you own access and authorization services. Coté Show: John Willis on DevOps, inclusion, burn-out, and biz dev — www.cote.show Barton George and I talk with John Willis at DevOpsDays Austin 2017.

flic.kr/p/nJR5oK There’s a few stories out about Canonical, likely centered around some PR campaign that they’re seeking to IPO at some time, shifting the company around appropriately. Here’s some highlights from the recent spate of news around Canonical. Testing the Red Hat Theory, competing for the cloud-native stack Why care? Aside from Canonical just being interesting - they’ve been first and/or early to many cloud technologies and containers - there’d finally be another Red Hat if they were public.

In a brief write-up of HPE/Micro Focus from Paul Kunert: Shareholders will also be asked to approve a $500m return of value, approximately $2.09 per share," the statement to the City added. Well, who doesn’t like money? That said, performance is declining: The [HPE Software?] business has shrunk in recent years, with turnover dropping from $4.06bn in fiscal 2012 ended 31 October to $3.19bn in fiscal 2016. Profit before tax during that period slipped too.

A brief note, from William Fellows at 451, on HSBC’s use of Google Cloud’s big data/analytical services: They have lot of data, that’s only growing: 6PB in 2014, 77PB in 2015 and 93PB in 2016 What they use it for: In addition to anti-money-laundering workloads (identification and reducing false positives), it is also migrating other machine-learning workloads to GCP, including finance liquidity reporting (six hours to six minutes), risk analytics (raise compute utilization from 10% to actual units consumed), risk reporting and valuation services (rapid provisioning of compute power instead of on-premises grid).

Thus far, it seems like the large banks are fending off digital disruption, perhaps embracing some of it on their own. The Economist takes a look: “Peer-to-peer lending, for instance, has grown rapidly, but still amounted to just $19bn on America’s biggest platforms and £3.8bn in Britain last year” “last year JPMorgan Chase spent over $9.5bn on technology, including $3bn on new initiatives” From a similar piece in the NY Times: “The consulting firm McKinsey estimated in a report last month that digital disruption could put $90 billion, or 25 percent of bank profits, at risk over the next three years as services become more automated and more tellers are replaced by chatbots.

The miniature culture wars fought between cities and states—such as North Carolina’s tussle with Charlotte over its anti-discrimination rules—are well known. The financial tensions between them are quieter but as important. “Money is usually the main problem,” says Larry Jones of the United States Conference of Mayors, and especially divisive in lean times. Link

I’m at DevOpsDays Austin this week. This must be the 4th or 5th one, and I’ve been to all of them. It’s a good show, put on by good people. Next week I’ll be at OSCON in Austin (find a discount code over in this week’s show-notes). There’s mucho links this week, I even left some out! To find them all in real-time, go over to cote.io. It’s a WEBLOG, so you can even subscribe to the RSS if one of my fellow olds.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

So says Ben Thompson in his newsletter today: This is why Twitter’s increased focus on securing these video deals feels like such an admission of failure: the company is basically admitting that, despite the fact it contains some of the best content — given to it for free — in the world, it simply can’t figure out how to make that into a business, so instead it is (presumably) paying to create content that it can monetize more easily.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Brian Gracely of Red Hat (and formally an analyst who did some of the best “cloud-native”/cloud platform work early on) has a momentum post on Open Shift. Here’s my highlights: Sizing up revenue and deal-size: [Q3, FY 2017] Also of note, we closed our second OpenShift deal over $10 million and another OpenShift deal over $5 million. And significantly, we actually had over 50 OpenShift deals alone that were six or seven figures, so really strong traction.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

Free food, during a limited, half-hour window, both saves people some hassle and gets them to show up at the same time to kick off the workday. To understand why this is so important, picture Pivotal without free breakfast. Let’s start with the obvious. Most developers would sleep late if it were up to them. They’d roll into the office around 10 or 11 AM. Which means they’d grab a coffee, maybe respond to a few emails, and then sync up with the team.

I’m doing a podcast with Comcast in a few weeks, so I’ve been going over all their public talks on their cloud-native efforts. They’ve been working with Pivotal since around 2014 and are one of the more impressive customer cases with over a 1,000 applications now on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Here are some highlights from the talks I’ve been watching. As always, things I put in square brackets are my own comments, the rest are quotes or summaries of what people said:

There’s lots of opinions on Cloudera’s IPO today. Here’s some that I’ve collected in my notebook. Not valued high enough? Despite the share-price being up 20% at close, some negative commentary focuses on their valuation dropping from Intel’s funding round, e.g., from Brenon at 451: The chipmaker paid up for the privilege, putting a ‘quadra unicorn’ valuation of $4.1bn on Cloudera. Altogether, Cloudera raised more than $1bn from private market investors, making the $225m raised from public market investors seem almost like lunch money.

Hello, as I like to do every six or so months, I moved some publishing infrastructure around. This time, back to Revue from the fully automated Mailchimp. Yay me. Links Here’s a mix of things I’ve done recently and other items I liked. The Frontside Podcast: 10 Pounds of Dirt in a 5 Pound Sack Charles and I talk about the job I do, how industry analysts work, and other tech marketing tactics.

An airport is a time pause. It’s an excuse to not stress or try. You’re trapped in the system and will eventually get there. You can’t leave or you’ll have to re-humiliate yourself through security. Airports are even powerful enough to make you cancel meetings if your flight is late, canceled…or you pretend it is. Your wedding could be delayed because of the airport and no one would really fault you.

With DockerCon this week, there’s no end of Docker quotables and items. Here’s my collection General momentum Once landed in an account, Docker usage grows their CEO says: There has also been expansion within customers, with organizations that start with Docker expanding their usage on average by five times within six months Way back in 2015, the (now annual?) DataDog study of Docker usage among their customers said that 2/3 of companies that try Docker adopt it.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

Silver Lake plans to announce on Tuesday that it has closed its fifth buyout fund at $15 billion, one of the biggest ever dedicated to technology deals. That exceeds the $12.5 billion fund-raising target that the firm had previously aimed for and brings the firm’s total assets and committed capital to about $39 billion. They seem to get good returns: Silver Lake’s fourth fund, with $10.5 billion under management, currently boasts returns of nearly 31 percent, according to the data provider PitchBook.

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

In contrast to agile, private-sector companies, the public sector does not face any pressure from competition. When it comes time to renew your license, there is only one place for you to do that: and, unfortunately for Americans, that’s the DMV. With no competitive forces, government agencies do not have to innovate or take bold risks when it comes to digital. And, as ever, being smart about using updated tools and new methods yield huge productivity results:

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

MuleSoft’s IPO kicks up some interest and, here, a brief check-in with SnapLogic and Liaison. Including some market-sizing: The iPaaS market is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2021, which Consoli said is a fraction of the overall integration market, which stands at about $12 billion today Link

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. (This figure also includes related professions such as actuaries and statisticians, but the vast majority are programmers.) Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that’s about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Since May 2016, DIUx has completed 21 contracts using other transaction (OT) authority and the average time is 78 days, Shah said at the New America Foundation Future of War summit in Washington. The mission of DIUx, he said, “is to do agile culture change.…We are never going to be the acquisition arm of the Department of Defense, we’re not the R&D arm of the department.” DIUx has so far comprised $42 million in program funding, which Shah characterized as a “rounding error of a rounding error” of the DOD budget.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s second-largest carrier, said it expects that its American Express partnership will yield $4 billion in revenue per year by 2021, rising by more than $300 million annually until then. Those sums translate to a very high margin of profit, Delta executives have acknowledged, but they’ve decline to specify further. At an investor presentation on March 29, Alaska Air Group Inc. said its Mileage Plan relationship with Bank of America will account for $900 million in annual cash flow, once the airline has fully combined with Virgin America Inc.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for instance, replaced its core banking platform in 2012 with the help of Accenture and software company SAP SE. The job ultimately took five years and cost more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($749.9 million). Being conservative, multiply $500m across the top 20 banks, and you’ve got $10bn, using $749.8m directly, you get much closer to $15bn. Better start planning. Source: Banks scramble to fix old systems as IT ‘cowboys’ ride into sunset

Having something to sell is always key to a profitable business. We explore this life-hack of the business world in discussion Twitter and then Amazon licensing Thursday night football. There’s also some brief talk of Akamai buying SOASTA, Cloudera filing to IPO, and the lost dichotomy of agent/agentless. Also see full show notes.

Having something to sell is always key to a profitable business. We explore this life-hack of the business world in discussion Twitter and then Amazon licensing Thursday night football. There’s also some brief talk of Akamai buying SOASTA, Cloudera filing to IPO, and the lost dichotomy of agent/agentless. Also see full show notes.

The Register closes out it’s reporting on the rumor that Oracle was considering buying Accenture: …spokeswoman Deborah Hillinger has since denied that an acquisition will take place, claiming: “The Accenture rumour is completely untrue. Never even considered it.” Meanwhile, Dennis covers the many reasons why the deal wouldn’t make sense in the first place. The margin argument is always a good, quick one: …consultants are not normally selling software solutions, but are selling the bodies and expertise needed to make the chosen solution work, the second part of this model.

Predicting data storage requirements of 200PB by 2021 – growing from today’s 13PB – Ford chief exec Mark Fields said in a canned statement that the new bit barn “will increase the ability of Ford’s global data insights and analytics team to transform the customer experience, enable new mobility products and services, and help Ford operate more efficiently.” Link

On March 27, 2016, Dell entered into a definitive agreement with NTT Data International L.L.C. to sell substantially all of Dell Services for cash consideration of approximately $3.0 billion. On June 19, 2016, Dell entered into a definitive agreement with Francisco Partners and Elliot Management Corporation to sell substantially all of Dell Software Group for cash consideration of approximately $2.4 billion. Link

Pivotal had a pretty major milestone this last quarter, over a quarter-billion dollars in 2016 bookings, up 130 percent year-over-year. The momentum with Pivotal in terms of digital transformation is white hot. Pivotal is now engaged in a third of the Fortune 100, and I would say the strategy so far has been to only go after the tallest buildings in the city. The opportunity to take Pivotal Cloud Foundry into Fortune 2000 and beyond is enormous.

In 2014, more than 93% of our transactions took place in stores, less than 7% digital. That season we had just started shipping from a small number of stores. In 2015, that same timeframe, digital sales reached almost 10% of our total sales. We more than doubled our ship-from store-capability to nearly 500 stores. We fulfilled 41% of all our digital orders inside of a store. For 2016, just a few months ago, just last year, digital sales climbed to 14%, more than twice what we did two years earlier.

Now that they don’t have to compete with AWS, they have an extra $300m floating around in the spreadsheets: “Ultimately now it’s about how are we going to build a stronger company. If we don’t have to go spend $300 million a year in capital competing against Amazon, building computing storage and networking, where should we go put that? In things like managed cybersecurity and professional services,” said Rhodes. On OpenStack, finding the product/market for for private cloud:

Nicely moderated by Bridget. Some of my notes and highlights: Amy talks about pace of change, sustaining it in the beginning, etc. The amount of time it took us to get going was a surprise - was longer. If you can start to show results early, it helps build up momentum. “Having enough wins, like that, really helped us to keep the momentum going while we were having a culture change like DevOps.

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Delivery teams are now able to build services faster and easier. In July 2016, DTA had 14 apps in production and 50 apps in development. In October 2016, the numbers increased to 47 apps in production and 225 apps in development. Australian Government Cuts Release Time with Cloud Foundry, Iterates Faster - Cloud Foundry Live

Corporate departments outside of the IT department, globally, are forecast to spend $609bn in 2017: A new update to the Worldwide Semiannual IT Spending Guide: Line of Business from the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide corporate IT spending funded by non-IT business units will reach $609 billion in 2017, an increase of 5.9% over 2016. The Spending Guide, which quantifies the purchasing power of line of business (LoB) technology buyers by providing a detailed examination of where the funding for a variety of IT purchases originates, also forecasts LoB spending to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.

Video: “In 2017 Amazon is expected to spend $4.5bn on television and film content, roughly twice what HBO will spend. But it has a big payoff.” Prime momentum: “Mr Nowak reckons the company had 72m Prime members last year, up by 32% from 2015.” Cloud: “Last year AWS’s revenue reached $12bn, up by more than 150% since 2014.” Anti-trust, in the US: “If competitors fail to halt Amazon’s whirl of activities, antitrust enforcers might yet do so instead.

Breaking up the monolith with good, old fashioned, OO-think: Instead, Vanguard has begun a journey to break apart our monolithic legacy systems piece-by-piece by replacing them with microservices over time. With a microservices architecture, we remove the business logic and data logic from our applications and replace it with a set of re-usable modules of code that are built and deployed as independent entities. We then compliment this architecture by chunking out our user interfaces into modular purpose-built components.

From 451’s report on Google Next: Google believes that a hybrid architecture will persist in the coming years as enterprises continue to migrate workloads to various clouds. Its hybrid cloud architecture revolves around its virtual private cloud. Google VPC is an instantiation of GCP that can dedicate compute, storage and network resources to an enterprise. It is built upon Google’s proprietary private global network designed for high reliability, low latency and hardened security.

Can we take that governance and work with the platform team to codify, to automate that which they were doing on a per application basis - that’s, quiet frankly slowing down the delivery of the software - can we take that governance and can we have them work with the platform team to codfiy, to actually automate on a per application basis, have them expose that as a service on the platform -Cornelia Davis on governance and cloud-native, “Who Does What?

If there’s one complaint that I hear consistently in my studies of IT in large organizations, it’s that government IT, as traditionally practiced, is fucked. Compared to the private sector, the amount of paperwork, the role of contractors, and the seeming separation between doing a good job and working software drives all sorts of angst and failure. Mark Schwartz’s book on figuring out “business value” in IT is turning out to be pretty amazing and refreshing, especially on the topic of government IT.

I started a new booklet project, the Cloud Native Cookbook. The premise is this: The premise of this book is to collect specific, tactical advice transitioning to a cloud-native organization. The reader is someone who “gets it” when it comes to agile, DevOps, cloud native, and All the Great Things. Their struggle is actually putting it all in place. Any given organization has all of it’s own, unique advantages and disadvantages, so any "

In a report giving advice to mainframe folks looking to be more Agile, Gartner’s Dale Vecchio and Bill Swanton give some pretty good advice for anyone looking to change how they do software. Here’s some highlights from the report, entitled “Agile Development and Mainframe Legacy Systems - Something’s Got to Give” Chunking up changes: Application changes must be smaller. Automation across the life cycle is critical to being successful.

My colleague Richard has a nice post suggesting the new functions enterprise architects can play in a cloud-native organization. I like this one in particular, help make the change: Champion new team organization patterns. As an architect, you can bring developers and operations teams together. Recognize that functional silos slow down delivery. A DevOps-type approach really works. Architects are perfectly positioned to pioneer new team structures that increase velocity and customer attentiveness.

Earlier this month I did a webinar with Nick at 451. He does a great job summarizing all the digital hoopla going around and I finish up with, predictably, why and how Pivotal can help out there, along with a few customer examples. Check it out!

The San Francisco-headquartered business revealed it pulled in $187.7m last year, up 170 per cent from its $110.3m in revenue in 2015. Gross profits were just over $138m from $78m, and net losses decreased to a piddling $49.6m, down from $65.4m the year before. Another take from Barb Darrow, inc.: Mulesoft has raised $1.5 billion in venture funding from such backers as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hummer Winblad, and New Enterprise Associates.

It’s a sore point for many shoppers, who are ready and eager to spend more on designer clothes if only they were available: 78% of respondents in a recent survey of plus-size shoppers said that they’d be willing to spend more money if designers offered more options, and 80% said they’d likely purchase an item from their favorite designer if that designer made plus sizes. File under “if anything, more money.

From Snap’s S-1, via Ben: In a world where anyone can distribute products instantly and provide them for free, the best way to compete is by innovating to create the most engaging products. That’s because it’s difficult to use distribution or cost as a competitive advantage—new software is available to users immediately, and for free. We believe this means that our industry favors companies that innovate, because people will use their products.

At first, you’re like, “oh, another piece where someone makes fun of us nerds and misunderstands our damagingly sarcastic way of saying everything that belies the privilege we all live under.” Then you’re like, “oh, this is actually a good piece.” E.g.: Human rights work attempts to prevent the abusive deployment of power against those who have little of it. While technology might disrupt some power structures, it might also reinforce them, and it is rarely designed to empower the most vulnerable populations.

Less than 5% of white men surveyed said they considered a lack of diversity a top problem. Three-out-of-four respondents were unaware of any initiatives to make their companies or portfolios more diverse. And 40% of male respondents were sick of the media going on and on about it. Meanwhile, in political land: the more privileged you are, the less that oppression personally affects you, the less urgency you perhaps have to get involved in the fight.

Today, nearly 45 percent of trading is done electronically, according to Coalition, a U.K. firm that tracks the industry. Pay: Average compensation for staff in sales, trading, and research at the 12 largest global investment banks, of which Goldman is one, is $500,000 in salary and bonus, according to Coalition. Seventy-five percent of Wall Street compensation goes to these highly paid “front end” employees, says Amrit Shahani, head of research at Coalition.

Worldwide revenues for information technology (IT) products and services are forecast to reach nearly $2.4 trillion in 2017, an increase of 3.5% over 2016. In a newly published update to the Worldwide Semiannual IT Spending Guide: Industry and Company Size , International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that global IT spending will grow to nearly $2.65 trillion in 2020. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.3% for the 2015-2020 forecast period.

Some intersting history of how Facebook grew users. Of course, this the case study is for a free service, that focuses on a high volume of users. I.e.: not an enterprise sales business that charges $3m+ per user-cum-customers. Contextualizing aside, there’s some good product thinking: Better know what your product is good for: Knowing true core product value allows you to design the experiments necessary so that you can really isolate cause and effect.

“In the drone industry, it seems counterintuitive, but we actually want regulation. And not having regulations is putting a halt to the growth of this industry,” says West. As ever: don’t make blanket assumptions about complex systems, here: all the regulations put in place by the federal government. Link

A few weeks back my book review of two “the robots are taking over” came out over on The New Stack. Here’s some responses, and also some highlights from a McKinsey piece on automation. Don’t call it “automation” From John Allspaw: There is much more to this topic. Nick Carr’s book, The Glass Cage, has a different perspective. The ramifications of new technology (don’t call it automation) are notoriously difficult to predict, and what we think are forgone conclusions (unemployment of truck drivers even though the tech for self-driving cars needs to see much more diversity of conditions before it can get to the 99%+ accuracy) are not.

With a flurry of M&A over the past few weeks, we discuss some of the more popular ones: AppDynamics, Trello, and Apiary. These kind of buys are all about what the acquirer plans to do with the new “asset” and the financial health of the company being acquired. We discuss these recent acquisitions, including who the “losers” are. Also, the low-down on CostCo in Australia! Also see full show notes.

With a flurry of M&A over the past few weeks, we discuss some of the more popular ones: AppDynamics, Trello, and Apiary. These kind of buys are all about what the acquirer plans to do with the new “asset” and the financial health of the company being acquired. We discuss these recent acquisitions, including who the “losers” are. Also, the low-down on CostCo in Australia! Also see full show notes.

I reviewed two books on automation and digital transforming this month: The Wealth of Humans and Silicon Collar. These two books go well together because the first describes how automation is lowering the need for labor, leading, likely, to less jobs, while the second provides a compendium of examples of such software-driven labor change. Vinnie’s book has the optimism of a technologist, while Avent’s is much more fraught. Both accurately describe how IT is optimizing and replacing “analog” labor and businesses, leaving the core problem of devaluing human labor, perhaps to the point of eliminating millions of jobs, permanently.