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Secondly, when evaluating new IT hardware and software assets for potential adoption, you need to institute a much stronger requirement for programmability and open APIs. Complete automation of your infrastructure requires programmatic access, and it’s simply insufficient to only have control via graphical interfaces. This isn’t just about provisioning and configuration support via such APIs, you also need to ensure that vendors are providing reliable APIs to get sufficiently detailed status. A core tenet of DevOps is the ability to measure the state of your infrastructure for future improvement and this really needs to be automated programmatically. Ideally these APIs for automation and measurement are simple, easy to adopt, and accessible to people who aren’t full-time software engineers. Thus, beware of complex, language-specific APIs, and strongly lean towards vendors using simple HTTP or REST APIs and standard, easily parsable data formats like JSON.

–Nigel Kersten, Puppet Lab’s CIO. Also, see this interview I did with Nigel way back in 2008 when Nigel was using Puppet to manage the Mac desktops (!) at Google.

Mirantis navigates changing OpenStack market, growth with 4.0 release (451 Report)

My team has a new report up on Mirantis, with updates on their momentum and an overview of what’s in their 4.0 OpenStack distro release. Here’s the 451 take, our brief opinion on the news: Mirantis reported more bookings in the last quarter of 2013 than all of 2012 – its growth by revenue, employees and overall business highlights the company as a leader among OpenStack pure-play vendors. Mirantis seems well positioned for an evolving OpenStack ecosystem and market, but the transition from services and support, which has been its specialty, to product subscription models may be challenging.
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Mirantis navigates changing OpenStack market, growth with 4.0 release (451 Report)

My team has a new report up on Mirantis, with updates on their momentum and an overview of what’s in their 4.0 OpenStack distro release. Here’s the 451 take, our brief opinion on the news: Mirantis reported more bookings in the last quarter of 2013 than all of 2012 – its growth by revenue, employees and overall business highlights the company as a leader among OpenStack pure-play vendors. Mirantis seems well positioned for an evolving OpenStack ecosystem and market, but the transition from services and support, which has been its specialty, to product subscription models may be challenging.
Continue Reading →

Mirantis navigates changing OpenStack market, growth with 4.0 release (451 Report)

My team has a new report up on Mirantis, with updates on their momentum and an overview of what’s in their 4.0 OpenStack distro release. Here’s the 451 take, our brief opinion on the news: Mirantis reported more bookings in the last quarter of 2013 than all of 2012 – its growth by revenue, employees and overall business highlights the company as a leader among OpenStack pure-play vendors. Mirantis seems well positioned for an evolving OpenStack ecosystem and market, but the transition from services and support, which has been its specialty, to product subscription models may be challenging.
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For those who don't have 3.5 hours, some highlights from #TheAppGap

As I mentioned, a few weeks back I was in a recorded “think tank” put on by Dell which was, largely, about the changing nature of IT and how CIOs could go about managing it. For those who don’t want to nuzzle up to a 3.5 hour recording (perhaps with a six pack and some chips?), Dell has pulled some highlights: “What do customers expect in an application today?” IT is facing competition for the first time ever The Web Of C-Level Relationships The Willy-wonky of Servers talks about “persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era” And check out Barton’s omnibus overview.
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Profile of Icahn as a tech raider

Over the last decade, through a series of successful moves, Icahn has become the sole force behind Icahn Enterprises LP, a diversified holding company that puts him in command of roughly $24 billion in capital. “As essentially the wealthiest individual hedge-fund manager of all time, he is in an extremely rare position,” explains Brown. “Nobody can tell him what to do or what not to do.” … “Tech companies have gotten away for far too long with far too much cash on their balance sheets,” says Kedrosky.
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Nice piece on the hard work ahead for Microsoft & assets they have

From El Reg’s Gavin Clarke: Let’s begin by saying money was not the problem that needed solving: on that, the world’s largest software company is printing cash. … That means everything Nadella does now is about execution, not innovation. That makes Nadella’s story as CEO one of sales and expanded market share. We, 451, have a quick piece from the day of and I just submitted a longer piece yesterday (along with Carl Brooks), hopefully published soon.
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