Companies, today, are migrating to cloud in order to minimize the cost and efforts. This means shifting from on-premises system to cloud. More companies are adopting Iaas or PaaS model. Companies have to refactor or re-write the pieces of application for cloud platform. In this process companies may fail to assess, whether do they even need these models? Or will it offer any value to the company? One more model “SaaS’’which was the original cloud (introduced 15 years back) is overlooked by IT. SaaS is better, more efficient and less costly. There more than 2000 SaaS offerings with a large range, those are easier to deal with. Companies can use the mixture of Iaas and SaaS in the cloud. To read more, please click on the following link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3055849/saas/dont-overlook-saas-the-original-cloud-option.html

Businesses today are going through a fundamental change. Now IT sector has taken the center stage. It has become an essential part of all business processes. The state is such that all technology platforms and application architectures which were being used till now are becoming obsolete and there’s an urgent need to revamp them.

In their place, a new platform is emerging, called as The Third Platform or SMAC i.e.

• Social Media
• Mobile
• Analytics
• Cloud

According to IDC, the analyst firm that coined the Third Platform term, the platform will disrupt one-third of top incumbent firms in every industry.

Bernard Golden, Vice President, Strategy for ActiveState Software, in his article at informationweek.com has explained Third Platform innovation with the help of an example of Airbnb. He further explains that this isn’t a unique situation; every company has to work on this. For this, DevOps (integrating application development and operations, with automation throughout the application lifecycle) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) are coming into picture. They will help companies to deliver world-class applications with end-to-end automation.

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.informationweek.com/interop/paas-devops-and-the-third-platform/d/d-id/1320114

Cloud Services is one of the fastest growing market segments. Be it SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, cloud solutions are offering a lucrative opportunity for growth and innovation. But, is innovation, just in the cloud service enough for customer satisfaction and retention? The answer to this question is NO. For, consistent growth, innovation in other aspects of the cloud business is also required. One of these aspects is the billing and pricing model.

Currently, many pricing models are there in existence, such as, Freemium, flat rate, subscriptions, perpetual , multi-tier packages based on functionality, per user per click and CPU power / storage used etc. And the billing models are in the form of monthly, quarterly, annual, pay as you go and pay for what you use models.

But, what these models lack is flexibility, especially in SaaS segment. This is because cloud vendors do not want to change their cash flow models from a big full pie at a time to pieces of the pie in installments i.e. by taking customer payments from fully up front license bills to smaller usage bills split down to monthly fees. Also, in flexible cloud billing and delivery, there are a lot of complexities involved like in telecom billing.

There is a need for innovation in this segment as this is what the customers desire. This need has been identified and successfully catered to by Kahootz, a British cloud collaboration vendor. More such initiatives, leading to greater transparency and comparability will be the future of cloud pricing and billing in years to come.

To know more, please read the following article by Ian Moyse, Board Member, Eurocloud UK and Governance Board Member, Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), at business2community.com:

http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/cloud-promised-world-utility-billing-01221718

Red Hat aims to reduce the search time &solution search cost for customers with its OpenShift Marketplace. Customers will be able to easily find the information, tools and community they need to discover and procure the right solution. They will be able to securely access and manage leading OpenShift application technologies from a single location. Customers and developers will be able to easily search for third-party OpenShift solutions and add-on productivity offerings, including database, email delivery services, messaging queues, application performance monitoring, all managed from a central location.As more developers use enterprise PaaS for an increasing array of applications, a key to their success is a vibrant and robust partner ecosystem. OpenShift’s current partner ecosystem uses the OpenShift Cartridge specification method to link key technologies and services into applications built on OpenShift, giving customers access to a variety of offerings from cloud industry leaders.Will Shulman, CEO and co-founder, MongoLab, said "We're extremely excited to offer fully-managed MongoDB through the OpenShift Marketplace. Red Hat users will be able to quickly integrate MongoDB into their application and focus on product development instead of operations."

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/141770/

Since its debut a year ago, Red Hat flagship application container Docker has generated much interest among technology professionals. It assists in packaging of applications in a virtual container so that it can be run across different Linux distributions. Docker containers can be easily moved across different Linux servers without the need for reconfiguration.Red hat is planning to release a variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution that is customized to run Docker with maximum efficiency. It has also initiated two community projects to help Docker make better use of new technologies in the Linux kernel and ecosystem.  One- Project Atomic, will concentrate on simplifying maintenance, reducing the footprint, adding additional layers of verification and control to Docker containers. The second community project, called GearD, will integrate Docker into its PaaS hosting software, OpenShift Origin.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/543014/red_hat_adds_muscle_docker_container_technology/