Daniel Newman

Author Archives: Daniel Newman

IDG Contributor Network: Dell Tech’s PowerOne approach to hybrid cloud

Hyper Converged Infrastructure is going through a period of dynamic shifts and disruption, hybrid and multi cloud architectures are also transforming how people think about infrastructure. And with this I am watching the vendor landscape go through a period of significant transformation.For most traditional IT vendors, established norms and product roadmaps are in a state of flux as product lifecycles are being compressed. And new mega trends – AI, ML, containers and 5G, to name a few – are disrupting how IT is provisioned, managed and consumed.We are also entering a market cycle of increased “coopetition,” where traditional on-premises vendors such as IBM, Dell Tech, HPE and Cisco (among others) are having product roadmaps and revenue projections upended by hyperscale cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft with Azure and Google Cloud Platform. While these companies are continuing to work together strategically, it’s also easy to recognize that market conditions are yielding an increased level of competition among these same organizations. These shifts are driving the incumbent infrastructure vendors to make bold moves to stay relevant and continue to drive the growth so craved by shareholders and the innovation desired by their largest customers and users.To read this Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Microsoft’s vision for the multi-cloud future

We are seeing it from all sides now. From the usual suspects in OEM to HCI to virtualization to public cloud, everyone is out to address the growing demand to shift legacy IT workloads to agile, cloud native, consumption-based, hybrid-friendly, modernized IT environments. A mouthful perhaps, but that doesn’t make it any less true. We have entered a multi-cloud world, and the competition is going to be abundant.The question that’s top of mind for many is which company or companies will emerge as the market leader. This week at Ignite, Microsoft’s annual customer conference, the company made a number of announcements around its Azure Cloud. Based on those announcements and the company’s existing platform of services, I wanted to break down how I see Microsoft’s Azure strategy evolving and share what business and IT leaders need to be thinking about when they are looking at modernizing their IT to support the growing multi-cloud initiative.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: JEDI award signals a critical ‘perception of parity’ in the cloud wars

AWS, Amazon’s cloud business, has enjoyed a long run as undisputed heavyweight champion of the cloud wars. With revenue run rate nearing 36 Billion and continuous double-digit market growth it was difficult to see anyone catching up. Until just like that, in the blink of an eye, a $10 Billion Federal cloud contract for the DoD known as JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) was awarded to Amazon’s crosstown rival, Microsoft. With this award, I believe the game has changed, and the market perception of such a substantial win will provide Microsoft the opportunity to apply significant pressure to AWS’s number one market position.This week’s earnings may have been the first domino Microsoft has been on an unparalleled run, and this past week the company delivered well above expectations on earnings coming in at $1.38 per share vs. $1.25 expected while also substantially beating revenue targets by nearly $800 million at $33.06 Billion. The cloud business, Azure, grew 59%*, which was actually viewed as a mooted result compared to previous quarters in the 60-70% range, but with margins up, revenues up and earnings up, Microsoft is flying high.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Red Hat and the IBM play in hybrid cloud

Clear battle lines are emerging between the various hybrid cloud market participants. For both vendors and enterprises, the stakes are high and there will be clear winners and losers in the years ahead as cloud moves from hyperbole to an operating model.On one side, we have the hyperscale cloud providers fighting it out for market share in public cloud, but with a noticeable increase in focus on offering on-prem solutions and then we have the server vendors on the other side, bridging from their installed base of on-premises infrastructure into cloud via hybrid models using open source as well as legacy virtualization platforms as the pathway to modernized IT architecture.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Nutanix and HPE’s new hybrid partnership

The hybrid cloud and hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) markets have become an important discussion as more and more companies are looking at cloud as an operating model. This also means more new products set to hit the market to support the growth in Hybrid Cloud and HCI adoption, which will raise a series of questions for enterprises as to which solutions and tools it will adopt, consume and use to deploy workloads, both on-prem and utilizing public cloud infrastructure.  As digital transformation, customer experience, and business outcomes take center stage, we are seeing the infrastructure itself become an enabler, but where the infrastructure is placed has been more fluid. With hyperscalers like AWS moving workloads on-prem, and IT vendors like Cisco, Dell/VMware, and HPE (who traditionally built solutions for on-prem), ramping up offerings for the cloud, we have most certainly reached a tipping point. The phase we are now entering is the phase where infrastructure moves to the background and the market shifts to the need for compute that is charged on an ‘as used,’ or consumption model.  To read this article in full, please click here