Larry Carvalho

Cloud computing is fundamentally changing the IT ecosystem in many ways, forcing related changes in business models.  Other than customers (who are always “king” and make buying decisions), the IT ecosystem players being affected by cloud includes technology providers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs).   One of the battles being fought right now by technology providers is to develop end-to-end cloud platform stacks attractive to ISVs.  IBM announced additions to their recently launched PureSystems family at Impact 2012 with more than 125 ISVs supporting this family with patterns. Although the primary focus of this cloud platform stack is on ISVs, there is also a need for SIs to adapt to these changes, especially as it relates to custom software development and maintenance capabilities. Similar to what is happening in the IT ecosyste... (more)

Who Benefits from the CloudStack vs OpenStack Battle?

Citrix moving CloudStack to Apache is old news now but there are some interesting aspects about this move that have not quite been noted from an enterprise point of view.   This post summarizes my opinion of some potential winners from this news. There are three major points from the announcement: OpenStack is not (yet) technically mature Citrix with CloudStack and Eucalyptus seems Amazon friendly Big names already jumped on the OpenStack bandwagon with RedHat/IBM sounding they will soon climb aboard too After this announcement, there are three biggest beneficiaries: Amazon, VMware... (more)

Leveraging Innovative Cloud Solutions in State and Local Governments

A lot has been spoken about cloud technology for government use and it is especially important for a large percentage of governments facing budgetary constraints. Tech America released “A Comprehensive Guide for Best Practices in Cloud Computing for State and Local Governments”.  While the report highlights big data, social media and mobility it does not dive into practical examples of how the intended audience can use these technologies.  Another video released by Sandy Carter talks about benefits of social business in the cloud for government agencies that could be used as a gu... (more)

Next Generation Integrated IT Platforms

An announcement today by IBM is trying to solve an IT development and delivery problem that has been perpetually vexing CIOs.  It is similar to what the automotive industry has been trying for years – self-driving cars(a.k.a. automation in IT) that also give great gas mileage (a.k.a. optimization in IT). IBM’s PureSystems promises automated tools as well as efficiency on the network and storage level speeding the delivery time of IT solutions.  It came at the heels of a similar announcement by HP called Converged Cloud. Why is IBM doing this?  The challenge from public clouds is p... (more)

How Should You Follow Up on a Cloud Computing Lead?

Over the past year I have listened to many vendor webinars talking about their cloud computing solution story. After the call I always get an e-mail or phone call trying to see my needs. This follow-up is very good as the purpose of these webinars is to obtain leads and the follow up process is to qualify these leads. Until yesterday, none of these calls were of any value to me. Some vendors called and promised to connect me to their product folks to give me more information but nobody ever contacted me. I replied to some vendors e-mails but they do not follow up. Other vendors ... (more)