The New Stack Analysts

On this episode of TNS Analysts, Adrian Cockcroft of Battery Ventures and Christian Gheorghe, CEO of Tidemark, joined co-host Michael Coté and Alex Williams to discuss how executives are adopting the cloud and SaaS platform in particular. Noteworthy: their conversation about the rise of data science in the executive wing and what services management are adopting.

Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/the-new-stack-analysts-show-11-saas-in-the-executive-wing-with-adrian-cockcroft-and-christian-gheorghe/

A lot of organizations have adopted SaaS, having moved past from their issues with cloud.

Marketing and Sales were early SaaS users, and now the CIO has become an end-user of SaaS-based tools for monitoring, app dynamics, etc.

Mainstream IT is not only trying to keep up but also is struggling to remain relevant. Previously, IT departments provided bulk of research, procurement, installation, testing and integration of on-premises applications. The cloud-enabled stack elevates the user experience and transparency at the edge of the organization, driving value. Agile IT departments will shift focus to customizing this new software to suit enterprise goals, as enterprises have crossed over to SaaS en masse within the past year.

Adrian observes that a few interesting companies are doing "business process as a service," or, a SaaS for building SaaS applications, providing "building blocks" to build custom applications with different data sources around the enterprise — Finance, HR, etc. (Michael suggests that another mini-singularity is coming where computer-literacy screening becomes a core management tool.)

Christian sees these new services as resolving the "problem with context" - executives are seeing more data than ever, but most of the things that matter to the business don't live inside the general ledger, rather they live in data streams outside the walls of the enterprise. How to bring this into the context of planning activities, which are traditionally mired in quarterly documentation and annual forecasting?

With context enabled at the edge of the organization, the end user can now assemble analytic processes rapidly, directly in an application, through modeling and collaboration, without going through a central command such as legacy systems required. These services could also lead to the demise of "Excel Hell" and "Powerpoint Hell."

Traditional information services were concerned with careful curation and the quality of data that feeds into reporting. The new services quickly leverage and analyze data, helping executives harness those streams in order to pose unstructured questions that produce high-value answers.

Many of these unstructured questions can be put into narratives for easier understanding and discussion. Also, it's not only about getting to the answer quickly but also it's about what can be done about what is learned.

Michael sees the next step as a cultural shift away from performance- and presentation-mastery and toward better data analysis. Adrian sees hypotheses as the essence of testable ideas to meet the overwhelming volume of data. Christian agrees that making sense of the data that exists will empower enterprises into subsequent data-driven decisions.

Adrian's research shows that while primary SaaS investment among startups goes to data and data analytics, but is most recently going toward talent management, which may suggest a shortage of data scientists.

Christian says that the very popular SaaS application areas include profitability and workforce planning, as well as talent management, forecasting and asset management. Adrian notes that traditionally conservative departments such as Finance are actively looking at SaaS applications, due to simplicity and price considerations.

SAP wants to make its APIs as easy to consume for developers as Twitter or Facebook do for their communities. In this interview with SAP's Joav Bally and Apigee's Ed Anuff, we discuss a new partnership between SAP and Apigee and why marketing and all aspects of a business really have to transform if it wants to play in the API economy.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlMWgexbmG8

Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/the-new-stack-analysts-show-10-what-is-sap-in-the-context-of-an-api/

SAP is adopting Apigee's API management platform. SAP's goal: make its APIs as easy to consume as those offered by Facebook or Twitter.

At the Black Hat conference last week, TNS Founder Alex Williams sat down with Adallom's vice president of marketing, Tal Klein; EMC's senior director of trust, Davi Ottenheimer; and Ryan Potter, Fortinet's senior director of strategic alliances, to discuss the security features of Docker.

We used this discussion as the starting point for a larger conversation about the rise of application development, the context of trust, and the industry’s overall flawed fascination with making things easy to use.

Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/the-new-stack-analysts-show-9-dockers-inherent-lack-of-security-the-black-hat-view/

In contrast with the news that Rackspace has left the IaaS provider market, the recent earnings reports from Microsoft and Amazon show that these two major players are further settled into this market. But how comfortably? Based on what they reveal about those earnings It's hard to tell, but we can look at their histories. While numerous contenders vie for market share, it seems that Google, Azure and AWS may be settling in for a long, slow, triple duel. Or a stalemate. However it may unfold, it makes for fascinating discussion.

Alex Williams and co-host Michael Coté talked with Nancy Gohring about Microsoft Azure's success, what it might mean for AWS, and what it might mean to Apple and other competitors in the cloud.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kWdNcRacs2k

Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/the-new-stack-analysts-show-8-aws-v-azure/

How Docker is viewed by security experts is a far cry from what developers say about the lightweight container technology.

Alex Williams and co-host Michael Coté talked with Nancy Gohring about Microsoft Azure's success and what it means for AWS and Google.

For reference please see Nancy's post.

Neither Microsoft not Amazon break out their numbers very well, so it's mostly guesswork as to performance of specific sectors. Both are reporting growth in the cloud market.

Microsoft is seeing growth in both cloud services as well as server sales, upholding its "hybrid" story-line that customers are both growing internal data centers and expanding cloud utility.

Microsoft may have the upper hand for now, as Amazon is relatively new to higher-level services such as Desktop as a Service.

Amazon's reported 90% growth in cloud services was raw usage, not necessarily revenue; price cuts must affect revenue, and Wall Street seems to have green-lighted Amazon to play the long game on pricing, which is to Amazon's advantage.

What are people deploying on these cloud services - custom applications, general storage, old VMware? Amazon wants to be the generic vendor, whereas Microsoft thrives on perpetuating its legacy ware. Wild card is Google, presumably a pure developer cloud.

Long-term, non-storage composition of the cloud? Depending on how long packaged software hangs on, SaaS takes over completely maybe within 10 years. Between Azure, AWS and Google it will come down to developer devotion, and to tactics.

It may be a long, slow battle among these giants, and lest we ignore Apple's recent moves. The IBM/Apple deal may involve desirable business apps, but bigger companies are going to custom develop in-house.

Desktop as a Service sounds great, but is not as satisfying to end-users. Several large installs exist but they're suited for managing (constraining) lower-tier users. High-quality virtual desktops are about as expensive as actual desktops. Value of Desktop as a Service is in ability to tie in peripheral resources.

Desktop as a Service seems unwilling to die but where are the advocates? Is this AWS hedging its bets? Amazon is spending a lot on infrastructure, which means low-cost barrier to deployment and to consumer entry; but marketing and support is inadequate, so who's buying what they offer?

VMware and Citrix are both encouraging the market for Workspace as a Service, but they are both long-term stakeholders.

AWS trying to go deep on back-end and middleware. Market can't support all of the big and small vendors. AWS and Azure are building these services themselves rather than buying smaller companies.

Trend of smaller companies remaining privately held, which may give them more staying power to complete with bigger companies long-term. As ever, Cloud security is still a concern to many.

Apparently, Microsoft's customer loyalty is paying off in this stage, while AWS customers are having sticker-shock, and smaller players are trying to offer enterprise deals.

Despite the awarding of gold stars, Michael is still depressed often, and clings to the notion of purity of the public cloud.

Docker sold DotCloud to a German company today, shedding its vestiges of the company's origins as a PaaS provider. The sale follows the acquisition of Orchard, the maker of Fig, a multi-host Docker orchestration technology. Docker is already serving as a core to several new PaaS providers. But orchestrating containers for purposes of portability and communication between multiple hosts is what truly could be a critical shift, impacting the basic workflows of companies that for years have used virtual machines for moving and orchestrating applications.

In a New Stack Analyst recording last month at DockerCon, there were sure signs that Docker and many other companies see orchestration as significant in the future of the container technology.

Joining us were Docker's James Turnbull; Brandon Philips, CTO at CoreOs; Paul Showalter of New Relic; and Lucas Carlson of CenturyLink Labs.

Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/the-new-stack-analysts-dockers-future-is-in-the-orchestration/

Orchestration is the hot topic when it comes to Docker. Lots of good nuggets here.