The Linux Executive Report from IBM
November 20, 2013
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: November 20, 2013. A monthly summary of important trends and market research, case studies and information about IBM's Linux initiatives of interest to senior management.
Linux News
The Linux on Power Technical Symposium at IBM Hursley in the UK drew standing-room only audiences this week. More than 50 ISVs and IBM Business Partners attended the one-day event which included presentations, demonstrations and education, followed by two optional days of technical consultations and in-depth demos. The event placed strong emphasis on how companies can benefit from the latest innovations and tools available to help them port and optimize their Linux applications for the POWER platform.
For the first time, IBM is making IBM Watson technology available as a development platform in the cloud, to allow software application providers around the world to build a new applications benefiting from Watson's cognitive computing intelligence.
The OpenStack User Committee and Foundation staff conducted a survey of OpenStack cloud operators and end users and shared the results with the community during the recent OpenStack Summit Hong Kong. The survey generated 822 responses and catalogued 387 OpenStack cloud deployments across 56 countries.
An overwhelming majority of enterprise IT decision makers responding to a recent Red Hat survey say that OpenStack is part of their organization's future cloud infrastructure plans.The "2013 Path to an OpenStack-Powered Cloud" survey of 200 U.S. enterprise decision makers, commissioned by Red Hat through IDG Connect, found that the majority of organizations (51%) are on either their second or third implementation of private cloud, using internally developed solutions or alternative offerings from vendors.
Jim Wasko, Director, IBM Linux Technology Center, presented a keynote on the future of Linux and open computing at SUSECon 2013, held earlier this month in Florida. The world is changing as a new generation of big data, cloud, social and mobile applications rapidly emerges, placing new and challenging requirements on the IT infrastructure of organizations, Wasko told attendees. Linux and other open technologies, he said, are key to solving these challenges - by offering faster innovation, deeper integration, and greater choice - and are expected to play a major role in the future of computing.
At CloudOpen Europe in Edinburgh, the Linux Foundation released a new report "Understanding the Open Cloud: Open Cloud Projects Profiled." CloudOpen brings together all of the open source projects supporting the cloud in one place where developers, users and vendors can learn more about them and understand how best to collaborate.
Inside Linux at IBM
In a new blog, Mike Day, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Virtualization Architect, Open Systems, describe five important upstream KVM features that can be expected in future enterprise distributions.
Based in Zagreb, Croatia, Altus Information Technologies provides cloud computing and data center services for a variety of clients in many different industries. The company was founded in 2011 as a subsidiary of Markoja d.o.o. and specializes in helping its clients find the right mix of IT infrastructure services to meet their needs—and their budgets. Altus IT needed a flexible, scalable, cloud-computing infrastructure to help broaden its offerings for corporate customers, while also increasing efficiency within its own data center.
Founded in 1991, Brodos AG is one of the leading distributors of telecommunications hardware, software and services in Germany. The company maintains some 5,000 retail outlets, employs around 370 people, and in 2010 achieved revenues of approximately $330 million. However, as Brodos won new customers, the company found that existing IT systems proved unable to scale to meet its workload. This threatened to impact the company's ability to maximize new business opportunities. Brodos consolidated to IBM BladeCenter HS23 servers with Intel Xeon processors, running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with KVM, and an IBM Storwize V7000 Unified disk system. Brodos can scale up the IBM solution quickly and easily to provide for new customers.
A new video on YouTube spotlights North Carolina State University, one of the largest technical colleges in the Southeast. NCSU uses the PowerLinux platform to manage big data and IBM Content Analytic Studio on the cloud to develop a smarter computing environment that uses the appropriate technologies based on the questions they are trying to answer.
"KVM and open virtualization: Who's using it, how and why?" recently won an honorable mention in the MarCom 2013 Awards. The IBM thought leadership white paper examines the benefits to organizations of using KVM technology to virtualize their infrastructure, and describes use cases in which IBM clients have found success with KVM.
In a guest blog post on Linux.com, Adam Jollans, Program Director of Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy at IBM, writes about why open computing matters today more than ever.
IBM hosts Linux on System z Executive Council meetings in locations across the United States to provide education on Linux on System z. Check back frequently for information about educational opportunities coming to a city near you. Information is also available about Live Virtual Classes for z/VM and Linux.
Established at the end of 2012, Zetark is a specialist provider of cloud-based storage and infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. Zetark was founded to offer hosted data storage services to local and regional businesses of all sizes. As a start-up business, Zetark needed to create a scalable IT infrastructure rapidly and at low cost. Zetark chose IBM PureFlex System with Red Hat Linux, open source KVM virtualization technology, and FileTek StorHouse software to power its new strategic platform for enterprise cloud storage services.
IBM is active on all forms of social media, providing an easy way for customers and partners to stay up to date with the latest Linux and KVM information.
Inside IBM's Linux Partners
The 10th annual Red Hat Summit will be held April 14-17, 2014, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. With thousands of attendees, including Red Hat customers, partners, technology industry visionaries, and open source community members, Red Hat Summit is a premier open source event, bringing together a global audience to disucss innovations that are shaping the next generation of IT infrastructure.
The 10th annual Red Hat Summit will be held April 14-17, 2014, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. With thousands of attendees, including Red Hat customers, partners, technology industry visionaries, and open source community members, Red Hat Summit is a premier open source event, bringing together a global audience to disucss innovations that are shaping the next generation of IT infrastructure.