In Part I we discussed consideration of a multicloud strategy. Pricing and product transparency were the themes for part II. In part III we address the last in this series: Application Portability. To see all three in our Multicloud eBook, please visit here. The enterprise’s application processing workloads must be compatible to portability between Cloud providers, including technology stacks that are common across all Cloud provider platforms, such as the use of application microservices and open stack services such as containers and Kubernetes. It is also important to consider how you'll integrate data and applications residing in ...
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If you missed Part I - start here. Is a Cloud Broker right for you? A Cloud Broker by definition is an entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services may be too complex for Cloud consumers to manage alone. A Cloud Broker can also be in a unique position to collect, analyze and conduct opportunity assessments on pricing that will be key to a multicloud or Cloud Arbitrage strategy. Generally, cloud arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more ...
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Many enterprises adopt a multicloud strategy out of a desire to avoid Cloud supplier lock-in or to take advantage of innovative solutions with a certain Cloud provider. There are many rationales for using multiple clouds, as they each have different strengths and weaknesses for performance and functionality, different pricing schemes, and some workloads simply run better on one cloud platform versus another. Although neither provide a financial breakdown of their cloud business, AWS continues to dominate the cloud infrastructure market, but its lead is starting to wane as Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine make significant inroads. ...
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NET(net) advises all clients to strive to “lock down” every escalating cost of Oracle’s annual maintenance and support services by negotiating a maintenance freeze for as long as possible. What is a maintenance freeze? It’s a provision in the contract to ensure that Oracle doesn’t increase the annual maintenance service and support costs year over year; and on a compounding basis. Why is it needed? Across our experiences, Oracle often charges a 9% annual increase, which compounds year-over-year, and fundamentally Diminishes the Inclusive Value of the annual maintenance & support services Equation: the DIVE phenomenon). A cost increase of ...
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The votes are counted, and Oracle yet again wins for being perhaps the most tyrannical of all technology suppliers. The standard Oracle Terms and Conditions are legendary for being one-sided. What’s worse, Oracle has gained an equally reviled reputation for leveraging those terms and conditions to their full and unilateral benefit at the great expense of their customers. If you are renewing your annual maintenance with Oracle, buying new Oracle software, engaged in or concerned about an Oracle audit, considering Cloud solutions or having them forced upon you, or just thinking about how to mitigate cost and risk and improve the realization of ...
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I’m sure your organization is used to fifty calls per week from Oracle. You likely have thirty sales reps calling everyone from custodial services to the Chief Executive Officer to gain more information from you: What’s your IT roadmap? Do you know we have a 'cloud' for everything? What is your cloud migration strategy? What is your budget? Can we have more of it? From the cold callers to the executives, Oracle sales are trained in tactics to acquire as much information about your organization as possible. Their endgame is simple: force you into a sale (probably cloud) or catch you out of compliance. And of course, your being out of ...
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We are still waiting for the great IBM turnaround led by Ginny Rometty since her installment as CEO in 2012. IBM has pinned its turnaround on Watson AI, Blockchain and now “Hybrid Cloud” with the RedHat acquisition. IBM’s “turnaround” has resulted in 22 out of 25 quarters of declining earnings. To be fair, it’s the last three quarters that have shown growth, not driven by its strategic imperatives but rather has been provided by (drum roll please) – mainframe. Yes, the good old mainframe, with upgrades and increased storage needs driving strong revenue in Q2 and Q3. How the mighty have fallen, or better said, continue to fall as we have been ...
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‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...
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You may recall from our alert in July, Microsoft has substantial changes to their pricing due to take effect October 1, 2018. This pricing will cascade globally from Redmond product managers. As a result, we anticipate an incredibly busy September as customers try to understand what the impact will be and how best to optimize their agreements. The actual pricing is due to be available to resellers on September 1, 2018 and will likely become widely available soon after. In addition to the changes we previously communicated (see below), here are a few of the latest updates that have come to our attention: “Level A” is going away. Any Microsoft ...
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Its been a long time since HCM solutions were primarily used for ‘counting noses’. Companies large and small understand the strategic value in their workforce and are aggressively using HCM solutions to support their investment, and HCM providers know it. Between emerging technology, disruptive companies, mergers and acquisitions, changing licensing models, cloud migrations, and much more, to say today’s HCM software market is under rapid change would be a massive understatement. Unfortunately, none of us really have the luxury of ignoring these changes lest we be left in the wake of overpaying for a non-compliant, underperforming, and ...
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