VMware tests v Sphere resilience with Cloud Foundry

September 1, 2011 in Business Page. Leave a Comment
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NEWS

VMware is using Cloud Foundry, its hosted platform-as-a-service, to spot flaws in its vSphere virtualisation suite.

Steve Herrod

VMware’s Stephen Herrod, pictured at VMworld, has revealed that the company is using Cloud Foundry to spot bugs in its vSphere software. Photo credit: Jay Greene/CNET News

By operating a self-hosted code automation, management and hosting service — a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) — at CloudFoundry.com, the company is able to seek out and fix obscure bugs in the underlying vSphere software, according to VMware’s chief technology officer Stephen Herrod.

VMware has encountered quirks in vSphere that “you would never dream of hitting in normal activity. It’s not until all of these lumps [of data] hit you that you can change upgrade tools and the diagnostic process”, Herrod told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

“We have a whole operations team that is taking that [Cloud Foundry data] and feeding it back to the [vSphere] product group,” he added. “We’re actually building some of our products on top of Cloud Foundry now.”

The setup means that VMware can see what it is like to be a consumer of the service, as well as an operator. This gives the company a broader perspective on vSphere and should help it make the software better, according to Herrod.

Cloud Foundry service

VMware launched the open-source Cloud Foundry service in April. The software is available in three variants: an open-source distribution; a downloadable ‘microcloud’ version that can be hosted offline on a single device; and a free commercial service operated by VMware at CloudFoundry.com. A fourth variant, designed for telecoms and enterprises, is expected to be released but no date has been set.

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The responsibility lies “upon our infrastructure — vSphere — to be the best placed to run Cloud Foundry”, said VMware’s product strategy chief, Bogomil Balkansky.

VMware is not looking to use the hosted service as a way to impose itself in the PaaS sector. According to the VMware executives, the company does not want CloudFoundry.com to become a major PaaS force to equal Google App Engine, Red Hat’s OpenShift or Microsoft’s Azure. Instead, it is aiming for the Cloud Foundry code distribution to be adopted widely and hosted on other infrastructures.

“The goal here is not to be a cloud of our own,” Herrod said. In fact, the company hopes that the open-source distribution of Cloud Foundry code will be used mostly to run separate instances of the service, hosted on top of other infrastructure operators.

“We don’t expect, over the long haul, to be the primary operator of Cloud Foundry,” Balkansky said. “For the time being, our strategy is to partner with service providers and stick to our core competencies.”

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The 3rd Generation

September 1, 2011 in Business Page. Leave a Comment
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Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are spurring smartphone adoption in the UK, as people increasingly turn to their handsets for both work and personal use, Ofcom has revealed.

Mobile adictiveness chart

People are increasingly turning to their handsets for both work and personal use, Ofcom has revealed. Image credit: Ofcom

More than a quarter (27 percent) of UK adults own a smartphone, with nearly 60 percent of those saying they had started using one in the past year, the regulator said in its Communications Market Report. Among teenagers, 47 percent have a smartphone.

The annual report, published on Thursday, found that 37 percent of adult smartphone users polled in March admitted to an ‘addiction’ to their handsets. The figure rose to 60 percent among teenagers.

“Compared to users of ‘traditional’ mobile phone handsets, smartphone users use their phone more and claim to be more addicted to their phone, leaving it switched on for longer and displaying different social behaviours and work-life balance,” Ofcom said.

In addition, the line between the working and private lives of smartphone users is becoming blurred. Thirty percent acknowledged they regularly made personal calls on their smartphone while at work, while 35 percent said they regularly used it for work outside office hours.

On the personal side, the impetus is coming partly from use of social-networking services. Among people who access the internet on their phones, 57 percent visit sites such as Facebook, making it the most popular activity among the group. On the work side, 53 percent of people said they wrote or read emails on their handset.

Ofcom found that the proliferation of smartphones was changing peoples’ habits and routines. 82 percent of adult owners carry their handsets with them at all times, 51 percent use them when socialising with other people, and nearly a quarter have used one during a meal with other people present.

Overall, the most popular smartphone brand was the Apple iPhone, but this was usurped by BlackBerry devices among younger consumers.

Broadband and mobile data

The report also noted that 74 percent of people in the UK now have broadband, an increase of three percentage points on the previous year. There was also a rise in people signing up for mobile broadband access, moving from 15 to 17 percent.

With so much data flying across mobile networks, we’re starting to see ‘digital traffic jams’ appear at busy periods.

– George Wareing, Virgin Media Business

“During the last decade, the UK’s communications market has been totally transformed. The fast emergence of digital technology has changed the way that communications services work for consumers and has had a major impact on businesses and networks,” Ofcom said.

According to the regulator, the volume of data moving across mobile networks rocketed by 67 percent during 2010. George Wareing, head of mobile at Virgin Media Business, said that network providers need to invest in their own backhaul capabilities to avoid sluggish speeds for users as subscriber bases grow.

“With so much data flying across mobile networks, we’re starting to see ‘digital traffic jams’ appear at busy periods, causing mobile internet speeds to decrease,” Wareing said. “With more businesses starting to rely on smartphones and mobile connectivity, network operators need to make sure that their network speeds will not be affected by the UK’s insatiable appetite for data.”

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Flat revenue

Despite UK consumers and businesses embracing new technologies, and the growth of mobile usage, Ofcom noted that industry communications revenue has remained essentially flat since 2000. For example, adjusting for inflation, the sector generated £53.4bn in revenue in 2010, in comparison with £54.3bn in 2000.

“One moment we’re given to marvel at the fact that the communications landscape has changed so vastly as to be unrecognisable from what it was only a decade ago. The next, we are reminded that the industry revenue for communications in 2010 was the same as it was in 2000 — essentially proving the old adage that technology changes but the share of wallet for this sector stays the same,” Nick Wright, customer research and marketing manager at Bill Monitor, said in a statement.

“It’s equally… surprising to realise that fixed-line calling minutes still outnumber mobile minutes, despite the fact fixed lines have been declining each year throughout the past decade,” Wright added.

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Business As Usual

June 25, 2011 in Business Page. 1 Comment
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NEWS

Sony has revealed more details about its first two tablets, the Sony Tablet S and Sony Tablet P, and set out launch dates for the Android devices.

Sony Tablet S

The Sony Tablet S has a 9.4-inch touchscreen display and runs Android Honeycomb. Photo credit: CNET UK

The Wi-Fi-only versions of the Tablet S will arrive in mid-September, while the 3G version and the Tablet P should appear on shelves in November, the electronics manufacturer said on Wednesday. Both devices were first shown off in April, under the codenames S1 and S2.

The electronics giant is launching its tablets several months, or in the case of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, at least a generation behind some rivals. This leaves it playing catch-up — a fact alluded to by Sony’s chief executive Howard Stringer in a speech at the IFA show in Berlin.

“It’s not who makes it first that counts, but who makes it better,” Stringer said on Wednesday.

Sony Tablet S

The Tablet S is the more conventional of the two, with a 9.4-inch touchscreen display. However, it has an asymmetrical design that “shifts the centre of balance to one side”, Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony’s consumer products and services group, told the IFA audience. The Tablet P is a more unusual clamshell device, with folding dual 5.5-inch touchscreen displays that can be used separately or together as a single large screen.

Sony are late to the party, but considering the others have not had much fun so far, I do not think it really matters.

– Carolina Milanesi, Gartner

The different form factor of the Tablet P could help Sony lure users away from competing Android devices or the iPad, according to Gartner mobile device analyst Carolina Milanesi.

“They are late to the party, but considering the others have not had much fun so far, I do not think it really matters,” Milanesi said. “They at least came to market with a different approach in design, especially with the Sony P, and they made the effort to create a Sony experience on top of the basic Honeycomb one.”

The Tablet S will be released in three configurations: a 16GB and a 32GB model with Wi-Fi only, and a 16GB model with Wi-Fi and 3G. The Wi-Fi-only versions come with Android 3.1, while the 3G-equipped device will run Android 3.2. It has an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and front- and rear-facing cameras.

Sony Tablet P

Sony plans only a single version of the Tablet P, which comes with similar specs to the S series, with both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. It provides less storage space than S-series devices, with 4GB, but this can be bolstered using a microSD card.

Sony Tablet P

The Sony Tablet P has a folding screen, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, and 4GB of storage, and is set to retail at £499. Photo credit: CNET UK

Both devices can also be used to control and share content to other DLNA-compatible TV sets and devices. For example, people can wirelessly stream a film from the device to the TV, or employ the infrared technology to use the tablet as a remote control for other Sony devices.

Sony’s ability to easily tie its tablets to other products and services gives it an advantage over its mobile device rivals, according to Stringer.

“Apple makes an iPad, but does it make movies?” Stringer asked the IFA audience. “Warner Bros and Fox produce fine movies, but what about their cameras and smartphones? Sony is where art meets technology.”

Milanesi suggested the Sony brand name could sway some buyers. However, she noted that pricing will be the key to wooing would-be iPad purchasers, something that other manufacturers have struggled with.

“I think that they might have overestimated the value that all these points bring to the devices and have priced them too close to the iPad, which at the moment is not really working out well for other players,” she said.

The Tablet S will cost £399 for the 16GB, Wi-Fi only version, going up to £499 for the 16GB, 3G-equipped model. The Tablet P is also priced at £499. Both are available to pre-order from the

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