Putting 3rd party middleware into Google Cloud:
“Among the commercial applications included in the marketplace are big data, database and machine learning applications along with developer tools. Meanwhile, open source applications range from WordPress and the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database to Apache Spark cluster computing.”
Original source: Google Banks on Kubernetes in Cloud Wars
‘Rollout of the partnership will occur in two phases, with Azure support for OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure and Azure Stack available now. The jointly managed OpenShift on Azure project is slated to go into its preview phase “in the coming months.”’
Original source: Microsoft sees Red …Hat for OpenShift-on-Azure public cloud offering
Also contains a chronology of IBM/RedHat partnerships.
Original source: IBM, Red Hat couple containers for hybrid cloud deployments
“the bots will give users the ability to approve expense reports right from Slack, upload expense receipts, search for and book flights, and create basic expense reports from within a bot chat”
Original source: Slack/Concur integration
“the bots will give users the ability to approve expense reports right from Slack, upload expense receipts, search for and book flights, and create basic expense reports from within a bot chat”
Original source: Slack/Concur integration
Finally, an explanation of that Cisco/Google partnership:
“CloudCenter is key to the hybrid cloud partnership that Cisco and Google recently announced, where CloudCenter will be used to integrate Google Cloud Platform services with on-premises datacenters. The integrated offering includes Cisco’s Hyperflex hyperconverged infrastructure and Nexus 9k networking. Cisco is also leveraging its networking (CSR) and security (Stealthwatch Cloud) portfolio to ensure a consistent environment across the hybrid cloud. Google’s Kubernetes container runtime uses Apigee to consume and manage APIs, as well as Google’s range of cloud services, including machine learning and visual recognition. The open source Istio service management platform is key to the offering, supported in CloudCenter, providing traffic management, observability, policy enforcement and service identity and security for microservices. There will also be integrations to AppDynamics. Solution engineering efforts are underway, and Cisco and Google are working on predefined statements of work that can be executed by both companies’ direct sales teams and by the partner channels. The joint offering will be fully supported by the Cisco Technical Assistance Center. The Cisco-Google partnership on hybrid cloud is non-exclusive, but Google is working closely with Cisco on the joint engineering work around open hybrid cloud.”
Original source: Cisco is strengthening its ‘cloud first’ posture
‘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. The company’s will cross-sell each other products, although the arrangement isn’t exclusive, Reeves said.’
Link to original
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.” Working with Kubernetes, Istio aims to provide a uniform means of connecting and managing micro-services.
And, more here:
The companies will offer the joint solution to a limited number of customers during the first part of 2018 with generally availability coming later in the year.
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. It comes with Azure Active Directory for user authentication.Customers also have access to a wide range of third-party apps from the Azure Marketplace, including OS images from companies like Red Hat and SuSE, and templates that can be installed to run programs like Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes and Mesosphere.On the hardware side, Azure Stack runs on a hyperconverged infrastructure stack that Microsoft and its hardware vendors have certified. The smallest production-level Azure Stack deployment is a four-server rack with three physical switches and a lifecycle management server host. Individual racks can scale up to 12 servers, and eventually, multiple racks can be scaled together. Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo are initial launch partners. Cisco plans to offer a certified Azure Stack platform based on its UCS hardware line by the end of 2017 and Huawei will roll out Azure Stack support by the end of 2018.IDC Data Center Networking Research Analyst Brad Casemore says he believes customers will need to run at least a 10 Gigabit Ethernet cabling with dual-port mixing. Converged network interface cards, support for BGP and data center bridging are important too. Microsoft estimates that a full-sized, 12-rack server unit of Azure Stack can supply about 400 virtual machines with 2 CPUs and 7 GB of RAM, with resiliency.
And Lydia explains the “people want private cloud ¯_(ツ)_/¯” angle:
“This is definitely a plus in the Microsoft portfolio,” says Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Lydia Leong, but she says it’s not right for every customer. “I don’t think this is a fundamental game-changer in the dynamics of the IaaS market,” she notes, but “this is going to be another thing to compel Microsoft-centric organizations to use Azure.”
Leong expects this could be beneficial for customers who want to use Azure but some reason such as regulations, data sensitivity, or location of data prevents them from using the public cloud. If a customer has sensitive data they’re not willing to put in the public cloud, they could deploy Azure Stack behind their firewall to process data, then relatively easily interact with applications and data in the public cloud.
Good round-up of AWS’s private cloud stuff:
Source: AWS talking with VMware about building on-premises software: report
