Joyent has been a provider of cloud services for the past five years, longer than the term cloud itself has been around. Today at a press conference in San Francisco, Dell announced the availability of the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications which offers the software from Joyent as a turnkey platform-as-a-service offering. This private cloud offering is offered on Dell’s specialized cloud servers and is targeted at IT service providers, hosting companies and telcos.
Up and running
One of the first customers to pick up and run with this offering is Uniserve, a Canadian Internet services provider. Uniserve has adopted the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications to offer on-demand access to a high-performance Internet application and consumer delivery platform, for customers to develop iPhone apps to commercial storefronts, to hosting and delivering Software-as-a-Service.
Thoughts from the top
Joyent CEO, David Young is featured in the short video above addressing the following questions about the Dell/Joyent solution:
As we announced today at a press conference in San Francisco, the Dell Cloud Solutions are now available. Included in that group is the Dell Cloud Solution for Data Warehousing. This offering combines Dell PowerEdge C servers and Greenplum Database 4.0 enabling the building of enterprise data warehouses and the consolidation of data marts into massively parallel processing environments.
On Monday of this week I stopped by the Greenplum offices in San Mateo, CA. I sat down with Bill Cook, SVP of EMC’s Data Computing Division, and former CEO of Greenplum (EMC acquired Greenplum this past summer). Above is a short interview we did.
Some of the ground Bill covers
What Bill sees as the main advantages to partnering with Dell in this space.
How Greenplum’s software works with Dell’s hardware to solve customer problems.
How customers are looking to data to help drive their businesses.
More to come: Stay tuned for a more in depth look at the Greenplum/Dell architecture.
Today at a press conference in San Francisco we announced the general availability of our Dell cloud solutions. One of the solutions we debuted was the Dell Cloud Solution for Data Analytics, a combination of our PowerEdge C servers with Aster Data’s nCluster, a massively parallel processing database with an integrated analytics engine.
Earlier this week I stopped by Aster Data‘s headquarters in San Carlos, CA and met up with their EVP of marketing, Sharmila Mulligan. I recorded the video above where Sharmila discusses the Dell and Aster solution and the fantastic results a customer is seeing with it.
Some of the ground Sharmila covers:
What customer pain points and problems does this solution address (hint: organizations trying to manage huge amounts of both structured and unstructured data)
How Aster’s nCluster software is optimized for Dell PowerEdge C2100 and how it provides very high performance analytics as well as a cost effective way to store very large data.
(2:21) InsightExpress, a leading provider of digital marketing research solutions, has deployed the Dell and Aster analytics solution and has seen great results:
Up and running w/in 6 weeks
Queries that took 7-9 minutes now run in 3 seconds
Back in March we announced Dell’s cloud solutions. Today at a press conference in San Francisco we announced their general availability along with some examples of customers who are employing them. (Woohoo!)
What’s the big idea
The idea behind these offerings has been to leverage the experience we in the DCS group have gained over the last several years providing custom systems to some of the world’s largest cloud providers. These new solutions are targeted at organizations the next tier down (the “next 1,000″) from the hyperscale customers we have been working with.
Who’s using these solutions, a couple of examples
Uniserve, a Canadian Internet services provider, has adopted the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications to offer on-demand access to a high-performance Internet application and consumer delivery platform, for customers to develop iPhone apps to commercial storefronts, to hosting and delivering Software-as-a-Service.
InsightExpress, a leading provider of digital marketing research solutions, has deployed the Dell Solution for Data Analytics. The solution combines analytic platform software from Aster Data with Dell PowerEdge C servers with joint service and support, enabling InsightExpress to measure the effectiveness of advertising and brand communications for clients to drive high performing marketing campaigns.
How we got here
We started our expansion by creating a line of specialized PowerEdge C servers patterned after the custom systems we have been designing for the “biggest of the big.” What we realized though is that, unlike the biggest players who write their own software, the next 1000 don’t just want servers, they want solutions that also include software and services as well.
The three integrated solutions that are available today are:
Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications: A turnkey platform-as-a-service offering targeted at IT service providers, hosting companies and telcos. This private cloud offering combines Dell’s specialized cloud servers with fully integrated software from Joyent.
Dell Cloud Solution for Data Analytics: A combination of Dell’s PowerEdge C servers with Aster Data’s nCluster, a massively parallel processing database with an integrated analytics engine.
Dell Cloud Solution for Data Warehousing: PowerEdge C servers and Greenplum Database 4.0 for building enterprise data warehouses and consolidating data marts in massively parallel processing environments.
Yesterday morning at the Web 2.0 summit out in San Francisco I sat in a session led by RackSpace‘s CTO John Engates. After the session finished I grabbed some time with John to learn more about his thoughts on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform that Rackspace, along with NASA helped kick off.
Some of the ground John covers:
How OpenStack directly addresses some of the most common reservations people have about the cloud.
The beginning of this week I attended the Web 2.0 summit out in San Francisco. Dell was a sponsor and it turned out to be a great event with speakers like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Robin Li founder of Baidu, Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, Eric Schmidt of Google and the list goes on.
While at the conference I ran into Social Media guru, author and founder of the Altimeter group, Charlene Li. I was able to grab sometime with Charlene and get her thoughts on a few topics. Here is the result:
Some of the ground Charlene covers:
How social media efforts are transitioning from tools and tactics to a strategic and holistic approach.
(3:01) Charlene’s thoughts on Monday’s Facebook announcement (Facebook Messages) and what she finds most interesting about the move
(4:22) What Charlene thinks of Dell’s social media efforts, what have we done well and where can we improve.
Last week, Tier5 who has taken over an old Mitsubishi facility in Adelaide was the first company globally to deploy Dell’s third generation Modular Data Center. Tier5 is an eight-person start up that is turning the former auto plant into a state-of-the-art data center park to be leased by wholesale tenants including managed service providers, resellers and large users.
Instead of building out a traditional data center Tier5 went with Dell’s Modular Data Center (MDC) which snaps together like ginormous Legos allowing systems to be up and running in as little as a week. The MDC’s modular nature also allows capacity to be added incrementally as needed.
For a great overview, check out the short video that ITNews did at the opening press conference on Tuesday.
Hand-in-hand
To get Tier5 exactly what they wanted Dell’s DCS team worked collaboratively with the Tier5 engineers over a period of nine to 10 months to nail down the exact specs. As Tier5 founder Marty Gauvin said, “Our engagement with Dell DCS was enormously collaborative. We were able to achieve our objectives in a very collaborative way, and then go beyond them.”
So what is this thing?
The shell of Dell’s MDC solution is formed by a steel frame, rather than a standard rigid shipping container. As a result of this design, Dell can deploy modules with different configurations to meet the needs of different customers. Each module houses up to 12 standard server racks and up to 2,500 servers. The design gives Tier5 the flexibility to mix and match hardware components within a module to better serve the specific needs of its customers.
The MDC solution contains two rows of custom-built racks with a center hot aisle, a design that allows easy access to components for servicing and maintenance. The module offers an easily accessible connection point for power and cooling as well as IT management. It also offers multiple cooling options, including chilled water, evaporative cooling and outside air. This enables users to choose the cooling option that works best for the site and the climate.
Keepin’ it green
Besides allowing Tier5 to be agile and not having to tie up capital until right before its needed, the MDC also saves on a tremendous amount of power. Tier5 estimates a best in class power usage efficiency (PUE) of 1.18 for the Adelaide modular data center. This in turn will result in their customers saving approximately AUD $8 million in power costs per year.
Where to next?
So the first third-generation Dell MDC has surfaced down under. Stay tuned to see where in the world the next one will pop up.
Last not but least in my series of videos from the OpenStackdesign summit, is an interview I did with David Lemphers of Price Waterhouse Coopers. David recently joined PWC as their director of cloud computing after spending six years at Microsoft, most recently as one of the principle engineers on the Windows Azure platform.
I talked with David to get his thoughts on OpenStack and here is what he had to say:
Some of the ground Dave covers:
Dave’s background
What he’s doing at PWC as the cloud director
Why decided to attend (and present at) the OpenStack summit and why he’s so bullish on the platform.
Today the OpenStackdesign summit wrapped up down in San Antonio. The summit featured close to 300 attendees representing 90 different companies. One of the key partners since the project kicked off back in July has been Citrix. On Wednesday I caught up with Gordon Mangione, Vice President of cloud at Citrix to get his thoughts on the project and this week’s summit. Here’s his enthusiastic response:
Continuing in my series of videos from the OpenStack design summit this week in San Antonio, here is an interview I did yesterday with Eucalyptus systems co-founder Graziano Obertelli.
Eucalyptus allows enterprises to set up open source infrastructure-as-a-service private clouds. Eucalyptus is also one of the key ingredients in the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud that is being certified to run on Dell’s PowerEdge C systems as part of our cloud ISV program.
Here is what Graziano had to say:
Some of the ground Graziano covers:
What goals do the Eucalyptus team have for the summit
They’ve recently hired a community manager – Mark Atwood
Yesterday, near the end of day two of the OpenStack design summit, I caught up with Rick Clark, chief architect of the OpenStack platform. I wanted to get Rick’s thought’s on how the four-month old open source cloud computing project and the summit were going.
Here’s what he had to say:
Some of the ground Rick covers:
The goal of the summit as well as the goal of the next two releases.
Another of yesterday’s featured speakers at the OpenStack design summit was Accenture partner, Joe Tobolski. Joe is part of Accenture labs which looks at emerging technologies and he is responsible for assets and architecture as part of Accenture’s global cloud program.
I sat down with Joe in the cafe downstairs and got his thoughts on why OpenStack would be attractive to enterprises as well as how the Accenture team was participating in the summit.
One of the featured speakers during the kick off of the OpenStack design summit yesterday was NASA CTO of IT, Chris Kemp. OpenStack is an open source cloud platform and the compute side of the project is based on code from NASA’s Nebula cloud.
I got some time with Chris and learned about NASA’s involvement in the project:
Some of the ground Chris covers:
Nebula and the cloud computing platform code base
NASA’s huge data needs and what they do with the data
Serendipity: NASA’s cloud engine + Rackspace’s file system engine
How NASA is working with the project: a two-way street
Yesterday morning I made the drive down to San Antonio for OpenStack’s second design summit (and first open to the public). If you’re not familiar with OpenStack, its an open source cloud platform founded on contributed code from Rackspace and NASA’s Nebula cloud. The project was kicked off back in July at an inaugural design summit held in Austin.
The project has picked up quite a bit of momentum in its first four months. Attending this week’s 4-day conference are close to 300 people, representing 90 companies, from 12 countries. The event is broken into a business track and design track (where actual design decisions are being made and code is being written).
Powering the Install Fest
For the project Dell has sent down a bunch of PowerEdge C servers which have been set-up upstairs on the 5th floor. OpenStack compute has been installed on the two racks of servers and are up and running. Tomorrow, coders will get access to these systems during the install fest. During the fest attendees will each be given a virtual machine on the cloud to test and learn about installing and deploying OpenStack to the cloud.
I got Bret Piatt, who handles Technical Alliances for OpenStack, to take me on a quick tour of the set-up. Check it out:
Featuring: Brett Piatt, PowerEdge C1100, C2100, C6100 and C6105
Ironically when Dell, the company that built its success around supply chain management excellence, started the Data Center Solutions group to serve the “biggest of the big,” supply chain and procurement were just bit players.
I recently sat down with Chris Thompson who heads up the DCS supply chain and procurement organization and learned how this changed and the importance of his group in meeting the needs of this very unique customer set.
Some of the topics Chris tackles:
How his group helps customers get to revenue faster.
To what extent the DCS supply chain org is independent of Dell “normal” processes and procedures and to what extent it leverages them.
How has Chris’ group affected traditional Dell supply chain practices.
Last week I attended and presented at Dell’s analyst summit, “Dell Services and Solutions for the Virtual Era.” Besides sharing Dell’s cloud strategy with analysts I also captured their thoughts on the event.
Here is an interview I did on the first day with Redmonk analyst and founder, Stephen O’Grady.
The questions Stephen addresses:
[0:10] Based on the talks given by Dell execs and customers, what are Stephen’s key take aways?
[0:58] As the follow on to the press and analyst event in San Francisco in March, to what extent has Dell delivered on the promises we made at that time and to what extent might we have fallen short?
[1:50] What progress would Stephen hope to see at another event six months from now?
[2:30] Bonus question: Dell talks about making the transformation into a solutions company, to what extent is Stephen seeing this happening?
As I mentioned in my previous entry, last week in Boston we held the “Dell Services and Solutions for the Virtual Era” analyst summit. During the first day of this two-day event we interviewed a few analysts to get their take on the message Dell was delivering.
Posted by Barton George 
