devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: hertz

  • IBM Brings Cloud-native Environment to Private Clouds

    New IBM Cloud Private software – based on containers, microservices and APIs –bridges Public Cloud and traditional IT environments

    ARMONK, N.Y. – 01 Nov 2017: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new IBM Cloud Private software platform to help companies unlock billions of dollars in technology investment in core data and applications and extend cloud-native tools across public and private clouds.

    IBM Cloud Private software is designed to enable companies to create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds to accelerate app development. The new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud.IBM also announced new container-optimized versions of core enterprise software, such as IBM WebSphere Liberty, Db2 and MQ – widely used to run and help secure the world’s most business-critical applications and data. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across IBM Cloud private and public clouds and other cloud environments with a consistent experience.

    An airline, for example, could use IBM Cloud Private to bring a core application that tracks frequent flyer miles into a private cloud environment and connect it to a new mobile app in the public cloud. A financial services firm could use it to keep customer data in-house as it works to meet its security and regulatory requirements while taking advantage of new analytic tools and machine learning in the public cloud to quickly identify investment trends and opportunities.

    Enterprises to Spend More Than $50 Billion a Year on Private Clouds

    While public cloud adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace, organizations, especially in regulated industries such as finance and health care, are continuing to leverage private clouds as part of their journey to public cloud environments to quickly launch and update applications. IBM estimates companies will spend more than $50 billion globally starting in 2017 to create and evolve private clouds with growth rates of 15 to 20 percent a year through 2020, according to IBM market projections.

    “Innovation and adoption of public cloud services has been constrained by the challenge of transitioning complex enterprise systems and applications into a true cloud-native environment,” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President for IBM Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research. “IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernization to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform.”

    Hertz, Ilmarinen Transforming IT with Private Cloud

    The Hertz Corporation, one of the top car rental companies in the world, believes both public and private cloud is critical to achieving its technology objectives.

    “Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centers,” said Tyler Best, Hertz Chief Information Officer. “A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud are essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud. Hertz is an early adopter of both public and private IBM cloud and we could not accomplish our technology goals without private cloud as part of our overall cloud portfolio.”

    Ilmarinen, a Finland firm responsible for the pensions covering approximately 900,000 Finns, has started a pilot project with IBM Cloud Private and plans to be in production in early 2018.  “Ilmarinen is excited about the capabilities in IBM Cloud Private as a flexible, compliant cloud-native platform that it can deploy and manage behind our firewall for creating new applications and modernizing traditional workloads,” said Jani Itkonen, Production Manager, Ilmarinen.

    IBM Cloud Private Provides Flexible Platform with Support for Enterprise Developers

    Innovations used in IBM Cloud Private are designed to simplify cloud management, accelerate app develop and maintain security across cloud environments. Key features include:

    • Cloud Management Automation – Streamlined management across cloud environments to help launch, monitor and manage services and help ensure consistent security protocols.
    • Security & Data Encryption – Security Vulnerability Advisor to scan containers across the cloud to surface potentially serious issues and weaknesses; Ability to encrypt all data in flight and provide for strict access control by users within a cluster.
    • Core Cloud Platform – Includes a container engine, Kubernetes orchestration, Cloud Foundry and essential management tools surrounding developer runtimes, which are fully integrated and automated.
    • Infrastructure Choice – Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix software.
    • Data and Analytics – Integrations with database services, such as IBM Db2, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, to leverage data and gain business insights.
    • Application Support & DevOps Tools – Containerized versions of software and development frameworks, including IBM WebSphere Liberty, Open Liberty, MQ and Microservice Builder, as part of software bundles; Optimized management and DevOps tools, including APM, Netcool and UrbanCode, which can be added for a separate fee.

    IBM also offers cloud deployment, management, brokerage and storage services to help clients manage multiple clouds and can help clients with migration of applications to IBM Cloud Private. More details on Cloud Private can be found in the product overview.

    IBM Cloud Private Reinforces IBM Commitment to Open Source

    IBM Cloud Private is another significant step in IBM’s support for organizations to create, deploy and manage apps in the cloud environment of their choice. IBM and Google recently announced an effort to create and open source the Grafeas project to help developers with security of containers. Last month, IBM released Open Liberty, a new lightweight, open-source version of its WebSphere Liberty Java application server, to make it easier for developers to get apps up and running in any cloud environment.

    IBM also is a founding member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which hosts Kubernetes and Cloud Private is in compliance with its interoperability conformance tests. To get started with IBM Developer Journeys as they relate to Kubernetes, please visit: https://developer.ibm.com/code/journey/

    For more about IBM Cloud Private, visit here.

    For more about IBM Cloud, visit here.

    Contact(s) information

    Joe Guy Collier
    IBM Media Relations
    1 (248) 990-4707
    jgcollie@us.ibm.com

  • When Automation Predictions Come To Be: Transportation as a Service

    When Automation Predictions Come To Be: Transportation as a Service

    Back in December of 2016 I wrote an article for devopsy.kinsta.cloud titled, “What Do We Do When Everything is Automated?” in which I made a prediction:

    Also, think about this: As Uber and Lyft mature in the business landscape and self-driving cars become commonplace, the ride-share companies will replace human-driven vehicles with self-driving vehicles. Then, Uber or Lyft will start to offer a pricing model that is a flat fee for 24/7 service with unlimited mileage.”

    Pretty brazen prediction, huh? Well not really. I thought and still do think that such a situation is inevitable. You just have to think things through to arrive at the conclusion I made above. However, my thinking was that, until yesterday, this sort of inevitability is about five years out. Then this news flash come in from Bloomberg: “Apple Is Working With Hertz to Manage Its Self-Driving Car Fleet”

    This caught my eye. Hertz stock went up 14 percent that day. Upon further inspection, I learned that Apple is leasing a small fleet of cars from Hertz to test self-driving vehicles. Turns out the Alphabet Inc., a.k.a., Google, has a similar deal with Avis Budget Group Inc., a competitor to Hertz in the car rental space. Now granted, I thought that Uber or Lyft would extend the scope of their activity by working directly with automobile manufacturers making self-driving vehicles. That the service provider might be a current automobile rental company was a bit unanticipated. But, as I explored further, it gets interesting.

    I turns out that Hertz previously was owned by Ford Motor Company, which sold the company to a private equity group in 2005 for $15 billion, a tidy sum. Hertz acquired Dollar Thrifty in 2012. Avis Budget Group, a competitor to Hertz, owns Zipcar as well as the New Zealand rental company, Apex Car Rental and Maggiore Group, the fourth largest car rental company in Italy. There’s a lot going on in the auto rental space.

    As I reflect upon events, things become clearer. It makes sense that those non-automotive companies working to create driverless vehicles are attracted to car rental companies. Car rental companies are not in the automobile business. They are in the transportation service business. Few people go to Hertz to rent a Chevy. They go to rent a way to get around. If a customer shows up at the Hertz counter only to find out that there is no Chevy to be had, most people will take the Nissan alternative. They don’t care about the car. They care about the service the car provides.

    Now imagine this: Let’s say you are a vehicle manufacturer, new to the marketplace. You finally figure out how to make a driverless vehicle that satisfies the needs of consumers under most driving conditions. Given current trends, when it comes time to make a profit from your investment, are you going to open showrooms with the hope of selling your new automotive brand to consumers? Or, are you going to buy an existing company that has a proven record success and infrastructure for providing transportation services on demand to the masses? In other words, what’s easier to imagine, Apple setting up showrooms throughout the world to sell autonomous vehicles to consumers accustomed to buying Ford, Toyota, Nissan or Tesla? Or, rather, Apple going directly into the autonomous transportation-on-demand business by buying Hertz? Or maybe Hertz will just buy driverless cars from Apple. (Hertz buying from Apple is hard to imagine; Apple is a company that likes to think big. Selling cars to Hertz is thinking small.)

    My take? Well, two things: First, as autonomous vehicle technology matures, transportation as a service is going to grow on the landscape. Vehicle manufacturers need to survive. They will adapt. How the actual selling of vehicles fits into it all is still working itself out. I think we’re going to see a lot of vehicles being made to provider of service, not as a property to own. Second, maybe it’s time to buy some stock in Hertz, maybe Avis too, for that matter.

    What do you think?

    — Bob Reselman

  • Webinar: Adopting DevOps @ Scale: Lessons learned at Hertz, Kaiser Permanente and lBM

    Webinar: Adopting DevOps @ Scale: Lessons learned at Hertz, Kaiser Permanente and lBM

    DevOps has become a major enabler of business innovation that can drive digital transformation at an enterprise level if done well. Challenges remain, however. Crossing the chasm from successful DevOps pilots with “two-pizza” teams to full enterprise adoption, including cultural transformation, best practices and tools remains a challenge.

    Join Alan Shimel as he hosts a panel discussion with Hertz’ John LaFreniere, Kaiser Permanente’s Raghunath Raman and IBM’s Sanjeev Sharma on how traditional enterprises are accelerating innovation by adopting DevOps practices at scale across their organizations.

    Find out how: Hertz is accelerating transformation of their platforms, business process and operating models with Cloud, DevOps and Agile.
    Kaiser Permanente is managing the cultural, process and integration challenges of multi-speed IT.
    IBM has embarked on a DevOps transformation that has engaged over 10,000 developers already — including becoming one of the world’s largest users of GitHub Enterprise.

    Watch to learn how to assess your organization’s readiness for scaling DevOps, and to identify next steps.

     

    RECORDING

    SLIDES

    [slideshare id=69695263&doc=adoptingdevopsatscalewebinarnov29final-161130194249]

     

    — Jules Louis