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A year of healthy progress along Microsoft strategic ambitions

July 24, 2016 11:45 am / Leave a comment

Microsoft Stock Price for the last 5 years — July 22, 2016:Microsoft Stock Price for the last 5 years -- 22 July, 2016 My earlier posts related specifically to this 3 years overall transition history:
– Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform as of July 10, 2013
– Microsoft reorg for delivering/supporting high-value experiences/activities as of July 11, 2013
– An ARM-focussed Microsoft spin-off could be the only solution to save Microsoft in the crucial next 3-years period as of August 24, 2013
– Opinion Leaders and Lead Opinions: Reflections on Steven Sinofsky’s “Era of Continuous Productivity” vision as of September 1, 2013
– The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years as of September 15, 2013
– Microsoft could be acquired in years to come by Amazon? The joke of the day, or a certain possibility (among other ones)? as of September 16, 2013
– Sinofsky’s ‘continuous productivity’ idea to be realised first in Box Notes as of September 21, 2013
MS FY15 NEW STRATEGIC SETUP– Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers as of April 25, 2014
– Satya Nadella on “Digital Work and Life Experiences” supported by “Cloud OS” and “Device OS and Hardware” platforms–all from Microsoft as of July 23, 2014
– Steve Ballmer on leaving Microsoft, relationship with Bill Gates: “We’ve dusted-up many times”, on His Biggest Regret: “doing hardware earlier [for being] more effective in phone business” AND on Amazon: “They Make No Money.” as October 25, 2014
– The Empire Reboots — Can C.E.O. Satya Nadella Save Microsoft? | Vanity Fair, Oct 27, 2014

WPC Day 1: The Digital Transformation Opportunity from Microsoft Partner Network UK Blog as of July 11, 2016:

“Empower every person and every
organisation on the planet to achieve more”
The Microsoft Mission

At the core of today’s opening Worldwide Partner Conference keynote was ‘Digital Transformation’ aka the desire of CEO’s to use technology to change business outcomes – whether it be how they:

  • Engage their customers,
  • Empower employees to make better decisions,
  • Optimise their operations,
  • Build up the predictive power within their organisations so that every operation is intelligent,
  • Transform their products and services.

Digital Transformation = An Unprecedented Partner Opportunity

Every customer of every size business (startup to Enterprise) is not only looking to use digital technology, but to build digital technology for their own.

Digital-transformatoin-all-partner-types1-1024x530[1]

Businesses are looking to drive greater efficiency – automating processes and enhancing productivity, particularly in those areas where there are operating expenses. This poses an unprecedented opportunity for you no matter what partner type you are.

Digital Transformation Opportunity by Microsoft and Partners -- July 11, 2016Microsoft Ambitions to Drive Digital Transformation

Microsoft has three core ambitions which play a fundamental part in digitally transforming businesses:

  • Re-inventing Productivity and Business process
  • Building the Intelligent Cloud
  • Create more Personal Computing

These will be covered in more detail over the next two days keynotes, however, Satya provided some great examples of what these 3 ambitions entail.

1) Re-inventing Productivity and Business Process

This is all about removing the barriers between productivity tools and business applications. Satya focused on two key areas:

  • ‘Conversations as a Platform’: Using human language understanding personal assistants and Bots (conversational interfaces) which augment our connection with technologies. (Watch the demo 48 minutes into Day 1 Keynote)

2) Building out the intelligent Cloud

To showcase how intelligent cloud is helping transformation, Satya invited General Electric CEO, Jeff Immelt, on stage to discuss how he has digitally transformed the GE business.

Considering GE is over 140 years old, it’s a company that has embraced transformation and digital transformation. You can read more about their story and find out about Microsoft’s new partnership with GE to bring Predix to Azure, accelerating digital transformation for industrial customers.

Satya then went on to talk about ‘The next phase of building the Intelligent cloud’ with ‘Cognitive services’.  We’re seeing the beginnings of a new platform for cognitive services. Microsoft has taken decades of research from Microsoft Research encapsulating speech, computer vision, natural language text understanding, and made these available as API’s. These API’s are being used to infuse perception into apps – the ability for Apps/Bots to understand speech and see i.e. computer vision. These cognitive capabilities are capable of transforming business by bringing productivity gains. A great example of this is how Macdonalds are creating efficiency in their Drive Thru’s with speech/order recognition (Watch the demo 1 hour 10 minutes into the Day 1 keynote).

3) Create More Personal Computing

Create more personal computing was the third and final ambition covered. Satya discussed Windows 10 – an OS system spanning multiple devices from Raspberry PI to Hololens and bringing centralised infrastructure benefits and cost savings to business.

It was on the topic of Hololens, he discussed how personal computing is shaped by category creation moments. Moments where input and output change. ‘Mixed Reality’ is that moment. With Hololens its created an interface changing moment – Mixing real with virtual, enabling us to be anywhere and everywhere – fully untethered and mobile.

What followed was a great demo showcasing how Japan Airlines are using Microsoft HoloLens to change how they train flight crews and mechanics (Watch the demo 1 hour 17 minutes into the Day 1 keynote)

Mixed reality offers huge opportunities for partners with so many applications across so many sectors.

Expect more details on Digital Transformation and Microsoft’s three ambitions in WPC Day 2 and 3 keynotes.

News From WPC2016 Day 1

The three ambitions announced a year ago and the proof-points of healthy progress along them in FY16:

  1. Office 365, Dynamics 365, AppSource, and LinkedIn as all being part of one overarching strategy in Productivity and Business Process:
    – core part of an overarching strategy
    – digital transformation both for us and our partnerships with customers
  2. Significant differentiation vs. Amazon AWS in Intelligent Cloud:
    – enterprise cloud leadership
    – every customer is also an ISV
    – hyperscale-plus-hybrid approach with annuity focus enabling cloud lead conversation with customers
    – meeting cloud needs of customers where they are
  3. Windows strategy to achieve progress in More Personal Computing:
    – deliver more value and innovation, particularly for enterprise customers
    – grow new monetization through services across our unified Windows platform
    – innovate in new device categories in partnership with our OEMs

The Q1FY16 progress was presented in my Microsoft is ready to become a dominant force in cloud computing with superior cloud offerings, a Windows ecosystem under complete renewal, first signs of Surface-Lumia-Xbox successes on the market, and strong interest in technology partnerships by other industry leaders as of October 24, 2015.

“Reinvent Productivity and Business Processes“, “Build the Intelligent Cloud” and “Create More Personal Computing” were the original 3 “interlocking ambitions” the Microsoft CEO talked about at Microsoft Iginite held on May 4-8, 2015 in Chicago. The proof-points of FY16 progress are shown along that list, and explained in detail by remarks from Microsoft (MSFT) Satya Nadella on Q4 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript as of July 18, 2016.

For more information see also:  Q4 2015 Earning Call Transcript, the 2015 Annual Report or—even better—my earlier posts indicated here under each ambition. For a deeper strategic intent underlying these ambilitions see my earlier post Julia Liuson: “Microsoft must transform from a company that throws a box with software into the market … into a company that offers pure services” published on October 25, 2015. These ambitions also became reporting segments in FY16. See Earnings Release FY16 Q1 as of October 22, 2015. The major corporate groups were also organised along these line: ASG = Application & Services Group for “Reinvent productivity and business processes” ambition, C&E = Cloud & Enterprise for “Build the intelligent cloud platform” ambition, and OSG= Operating Systems Group for “Create more personal computing” ambition.

Note that the overall strategic approach was developed 2 years ago and it was described in my post Satya Nadella on “Digital Work and Life Experiences” supported by “Cloud OS” and “Device OS and Hardware” platforms–all from Microsoft of July 23, 2014:

image.png

Here are the remarks from Microsoft (MSFT) Satya Nadella on Q4 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript as of July 18, 2016. for details

1. Office 365, Dynamics 365, AppSource, and LinkedIn as all being part of one overarching strategy in Productivity and Business Process:

For initial and additional details available earlier see my earlier posts:
– The first “post-Ballmer” offering launched: with Power BI for Office 365 everyone can analyze, visualize and share data in the cloud as of February 10, 2014
– OneNote is available now on every platform (+free!!) and supported by cloud services API for application and device builders as of March 18, 2014
– An upcoming new era: personalised, pro-active search and discovery experiences for Office 365 (Oslo) as of April 2, 2014
– Microsoft Azure: Marketable machine learning components capability for “a new data science economy”, and real-time analytics for Azure HDInsight service as of October 22, 2014

In fact, this last quarter, some of the most strategic announcements were all around our application platform. At our partner conference, there was a significant amount of excitement with the tools that we announced like PowerApps and Power BI, Azure functions and Flow. These are tools that our developers and system integrators and solution partners will use in order to be able to customize applications around Azure. And so to me that’s another huge advantage and a competitive differentiation for us.

1.1 Core part of an overarching strategy

The move to the cloud for our customers and for us is not just about a new way of delivering the same value just as a SaaS service. It’s really the transformation from having applications that are silos to becoming more services in the cloud where you can reason about the activity and the data underneath these services to benefit the customers who are using these services. So that’s what this notion of a graph [by Microsoft Graph] represents.

So when somebody moves to Office 365, their graph [by Microsoft Graph], their people, their relationships with other people inside the organization, their work artifacts all move to the cloud. You can connect them with all the business process data that’s in Dynamics 365, but not just in Dynamics 365 but all the applications in AppSource because business process will always be a much more fragmented market as opposed to just one market share leader by industry, by vertical, by country. And so that’s our strategy there.

And now the professional cloud or the professional network helps usage across all of that professional usage. Whether it’s in Office 365 or whether you’re a salesperson using any application related to sales, you want your professional network there. Of course, it’s relevant in recruiting, it’s relevant in training, it’s relevant in marketing. So that’s really our strategy with LinkedIn as the professional network meeting the professional cloud. And these are all part of one overarching strategy, and ultimately it’s about adding value to customers.

1.2 Digital transformation both for us and our partnerships with customers

This past year was a pivotal one in both our transformation and in our partnerships with customers who are also driving their own digital transformation. Our progress is best captured in the results of our three ambitions, starting with Productivity and Business Process. In a world of infinite information but finite attention and time, we aim to change the nature of work with digital technology. In pursuit of this ambition, we continue to add value to our products, grow usage, and increase our addressable market. Along these lines, let me start with Office 365 and then move to Dynamics 365.

In the last quarter, we advanced our collaboration tools. We launched Microsoft Planner, which helps teams manage operations, as well as Skype Meetings, which is aimed at helping small businesses collaborate. In June, we further strengthened our security value proposition with the release of Advanced Security Management.

Lastly, we continue to add intelligence in machine learning to Office to help people automate their tasks and glean insights from data. These advancements helped to drive increased usage across enterprises, small and medium businesses, and consumers. In the enterprise, Office 365 Commercial seats grew 45% year over year, and revenue grew 59% in constant currency. Also 70% of our Office Enterprise agreement renewals are in the cloud. Innovative companies like Facebook, Hershey’s, Discovery Communications, Cushman Wakefield all adopted Office 365 and now see how transformative this service can be for their own business.

We are enthusiastic about the early feedback and growth opportunity from companies using our newly released Office 365 E5, which includes powerful security controls, advanced analytics, and cloud voice. These customers tell us that they love the simplification that comes with standardizing across all of our productivity workloads.

We will continue to grow our install base and drive premium mix through offers like Office 365 E5, but they’re very, very early days of E5. And E5 value proposition across all three of the areas, whether it’s cloud voice or analytics or security are all three massive areas for us. And I would say if anything, the initial data from our customers around security is gaining a lot of traction. But at the same time, one of the things that customers are looking for is making an enterprise-wide architectural decision across all of the workloads.

We see momentum in small and medium businesses, with a growing number of partners selling Office 365, now up to nearly 90,000, a 25% increase year over year. We continue to grab share and adding over 50,000 customers each month for 28 consecutive months.

We also see momentum amongst consumers, with now more than 23 million Office 365 subscribers. Across segments, customers increasingly experience the power of Office on their iOS and Android mobile devices. In fact, we now have more than 50 million iOS and Android monthly active devices, up more than four times over last year.

Now let’s talk about progress with the other pillar of this ambition, Dynamics 365. We are removing any impedance that exists between productivity, collaboration, and business process. This month we took a major step forward with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource. Dynamics 365 provides business users with purpose-built SaaS applications. These applications have intelligence built in. They integrate deeply with communications and collaboration capabilities of Office 365.

Dynamics 365 along with AppSource and our rich application platform introduces a disruptive and customer-centric business model so customers can build what they want and use just the capabilities they need. The launch of Dynamics 365 builds on the momentum we’re already seeing in this business. Customers around the globe are harnessing the power of Dynamics in their own transformation, including 24 Hour Fitness and AccuWeather. Overall, Dynamics now has nearly 10 million monthly paid seats, up more than 20% year over year, and Q4 billings grew more than 20% year over year.

Overall, Business Processes represent an enormous addressable market, projected to be more than $100 billion by 2020. It’s a market we are increasingly focused on, and I believe we are poised with both Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource to grow and drive opportunity for our partners.

Across Office 365 and Dynamics 365, developers increasingly see the opportunity to build innovative apps and experiences with the Microsoft Graph, and we now have over 27,000 apps connected to it. Microsoft AppSource will be a new way for developers to offer their services and reach customers worldwide.

Lastly, with Office 365 and Dynamics 365, we have the opportunity to connect the world’s professional cloud and the world’s professional network with our pending LinkedIn deal. Overall, the Microsoft Cloud is winning significant customer support. With more than $12 billion in Commercial Cloud annualized revenue run rate, we are on track to achieve our goal of $20 billion in fiscal year 2018. Also, nearly 60% of the Fortune 500 companies have at least three of our cloud offerings. And we continue to grow our annuity mix of our business. In fact, commercial annuity mix increased year over year to 83%.

2. Significant differentiation vs. Amazon AWS in Intelligent Cloud 

For initial and additional details available earlier see my earlier posts:
– Windows Azure becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market as of June 28, 2013
– Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform as of July 10, 2013

– 4. Microsoft products for the Cloud OS [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, as of Dec 18, 2013, but published only on Feb 14, 2014] (was separated from the next “half bakedness” post because of its length)
– 4.5. Microsoft talking about Cloud OS and private clouds: starting with Ray Ozzie in November, 2009[‘Experiencing the Cloud’, as of Dec 18, 2013, but published only on Feb 14, 2014] (was separated from the next “half bakedness” post because of its length)
– Microsoft’s half-baked cloud computing strategy (H1’FY14) as of February 17, 2014 Note that this “half bakedness” ended by the facts published in Microsoft is ready to become a dominant force in cloud computing with superior cloud offerings, a Windows ecosystem under complete renewal, first signs of Surface-Lumia-Xbox successes on the market, and strong interest in technology partnerships by other industry leaders as of October 24, 2014
– Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers as of April 25, 2014
– Microsoft BUILD 2014 Day 2: “rebranding” to Microsoft Azure and moving toward a comprehensive set of fully-integrated backend services as of April 27, 2014
– Scott Guthrie about changes under Nadella, the competition with Amazon, and what differentiates Microsoft’s cloud products as of October 2, 2014
– Sam Guckenheimer on Microsoft Developer Division’s Journey to Cloud Cadence as of October 19, 2014
– Microsoft Azure: Marketable machine learning components capability for “a new data science economy”, and real-time analytics for Azure HDInsight service as of October 22, 2014
– Microsoft Cloud state-of-the-art: Hyper-scale Azure with host SDN — IaaS 2.0 — Hybrid flexibility and freedom as of July 11, 2015
– Microsoft’s first quarter proving its ability to become a dominant force in cloud computing with superior cloud offerings as of Januar 27, 2015
– DataStax: a fully distributed and highly secure transactional database platform that is “always on” as of February 3, 2016
– Microsoft chairman: The transition to a subscription-based cloud business isn’t fast enough. Revamp the sales force for cloud-based selling as of June 6, 2016

Cloud Growth Helps Microsoft Beat Street in Q4 from TheStreet as of July 19, 2016 

… [0:34] and Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility [Suite]
customers nearly doubled YoY to 33,000. [0:40] …

Note that the Q1FY16 report was that “Enterprise Mobility [Suite] customers more than doubled year-over-year to over 20,000, and the installed base grew nearly 6x year-over-year“. Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) is a service available in the CSP (Cloud Solution Partner program) along with Windows Intune, Office 365, Azure and CRM Online. The reason for that very impressive growth was given by Satya Nadella in the much earlier Q2FY15 report as:

Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite is one key of product innovation that I would like to highlight given the growth and uniqueness of our offering. Microsoft offers a comprehensive solution that brings together mobile device management, mobile application management, hybrid identity management and data protection into a unified offering via EMS.

Office 365 now includes new app experiences on all phones and tablets for mobile productivity.  Further, we have released completely new scenarios. This includes Office Sway for visualizing and sharing ideas; Delve, to help search and discover content; Office 365 Groups to make it easier to collaborate; andOffice 365 Video for secure media streaming for businesses.

Finally, we continue to invest in enterprise value by integrating MDM and the Enterprise Mobility Suite into Office 365; new encryption technologies and compliance certifications; and new eDiscovery capabilities in Exchange.

…

Overall at the highest level, our strategy here is to make sure that the Microsoft Services i.e. cloud services be it Azure, Office 365, CRM Online or Enterprise Mobility Suite are covering all the devices out there in the marketplace. So that, that way we maximize the opportunity we have for each of these subscription and capacity based services.

2.1 Enterprise cloud leadership

Now let’s get into the specifics of the Intelligent Cloud, an area of massive opportunity, as we are clearly one of the two enterprise cloud leaders. Companies looking to digitally transform need a trusted cloud partner and turn to Microsoft. As a result, Azure revenue and usage again grew by more than 100% this quarter. We see customers choose Microsoft for three reasons. They want a cloud provider that offers solutions that reflect the realities of today’s world and their enterprise-grade needs. They want higher level services to drive digital transformation, and they want a cloud open to developers of all types. Let me expand on each.

To start, a wide variety of customers turn to Azure because of their specific real-world needs. Multinationals choose us because we are the only hybrid and hyperscale cloud spanning multiple jurisdictions. We cover more countries and regions than any other cloud provider, from North America to Asia to Europe to Latin America. Our cloud respects data sovereignty and makes it possible for an enterprise application to work across these regions and jurisdictions. More than 80% of the world’s largest banks are Azure customers because of our leadership support for regulatory requirements, advanced security, and commitment to privacy. Large ISVs like SAP and Citrix as well as startups like Sprinklr also choose Azure because of our global reach and a broad set of platform services. Last week GE announced it will adopt our cloud for its IoT approach.

Next, Azure customers also value our unique higher-level services. Now at 33,000, we nearly doubled in one year the number of companies worldwide that have selected our Enterprise Mobility Solutions. The Dow Chemical Company leverages EMS along with Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics to give its thousands of employees secure real-time access to data and apps from anywhere.

Just yesterday, we announced Boeing will use Azure, our IoT suite, and Cortana Intelligence to drive digital transformation in commercial aviation, with connected airline systems optimization, predictive maintenance, and much more. This builds on great momentum in IoT, including our work with Rolls-Royce, Schneider Electric, and others.

This is great progress, but our ambitions are set even higher. Our Intelligent Cloud also enables cognitive services. Cortana Intelligence Suite offers machine learning capabilities and advanced predictive analytics. Customers like Jabil Circuit, Fruit of the Loom, Land O’Lakes, LIBER already realize the benefits of these new capabilities.

Lastly, central to our Intelligent Cloud ambition is providing developers with the tools and capabilities they need to build apps and services for the platforms and devices of their choice. We have the best support for what I would say is the most open platform for all developers. Not only is .NET first class but Linux is first class, Java is first class. The new Azure Container service cuts across both containers running on Windows, running across Linux. So again, it speaks to the enterprise reality. .NET Core 1.0 for open source and our ongoing work with companies such as Red Hat, Docker, and Mesosphere also reflects significant progress on this front. We continue to see traction from open source, with nearly a third of customer virtual machines on Azure running Linux.

So those would be the places where we are fairly differentiated, and that’s what you see us gaining both for enterprise customers and ISVs.

On the server side, premium server revenue grew double digits in constant currency year over year. New SQL Server 2016 helps us expand into new markets with built-in advanced analytics and unparalleled performance. More than 15,000 customers, including over 50% of the Fortune 500, have registered for the private preview of SQL Server for Linux. And we’re not slowing down. We will launch Windows Server 2016 and System Server 2016 later this year.

2.2 Every customer is also an ISV

One of the phenomena now is that pretty much anyone who is a customer of Azure is also in some form an ISV, and that’s no longer just limited to people who are “in the classic tech industry” or the software business. So every customer who starts off consuming Azure is also turning what is their IP in most cases into an ISV solution, which ultimately will even participate in AppSource. So at least the vision that we have is that every customer is a digital company that will have a digital IP component to it, and that we want to be able to partner with them in pretty unique ways.

That’s the same case with GE. It’s the same case with Boeing. It’s the same case with Schneider Electric or ABB or any one of the customers we are working with because they all are taking some of their assets and converting them into SaaS applications on Azure. And that’s something that we will in fact have distribution agreements with.

And AppSource is a pretty major announcement for us because we essentially created for SaaS applications and infrastructure applications a way to distribute their applications through us and our channel. And I think it makes in fact our cloud more attractive to many of them because of that. So we look – I think going forward, you’ll look to see – or you’ll see us do much more of this with many other customers of ours.

2.3 Hyperscale-plus-hybrid approach with annuity focus enabling cloud lead conversation with customers

The focus for us is in what I describe as this hyperscale-plus-hybrid approach when you think about the current approach, which is pretty unique to us. Overall, I believe this hyperscale plus hybrid architecturally helps us a lot with enterprise customers because we meet them where their realities are today and also the digital transformation needs going forward, so that’s one massive advantage we have.

And the way we track progress is to see how is our annuity growth of our server business, and how is our cloud growth. And if you look at this last quarter, our annuity grew double digits and our cloud grew triple digits. And that’s a pretty healthy growth rate, and that’s something that by design both in terms of the technical architecture as well as the traction we have in the marketplace and our sales efforts and so on are playing out well, and we are very bullish about that going forward.

The Transactional business is much more volatile because of the macro environment, IT budgets, and also the secular shift to the cloud. The question again that gets asked is about the cannibalization. But if you look at Boeing or you look at any of the other examples that I talk about when it comes to the cloud, our servers never did what these customers are now doing in our cloud. So at a fundamental long-term secular basis, we have new growth, new workloads, and that’s what we are focused on, and that’s a much bigger addressable market than anything our Transactional Server business had in the past.

[Amy E. Hood – Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President:]
The first thing really that I think Satya and I both focus on every quarter, every month, is how much of our business are we continuing to shift to annuity and specifically to the cloud. We structure all of our motions at this company, from how we engineer to how we do our go-to-markets to how we think about sales engagement to how we do our investments, fundamentally toward that long-term structural transition in the market.

In terms of server products and services, I tend to think of it as the all-up growth. It’s really about growing the cloud, growing the hybrid, and then whatever happens in the Transactional business happens.

And so to your question on Transactional performance, there were some deals that didn’t get done in Q3 that got done in Q4, and there were some deals done in Q4 on the Office side with large companies that I’m thrilled by. But at the same time, we still will focus on those deals moving to the cloud over time. And so this volatility that we are going to see because of macro and because of budget constraints, especially on Transactional, we will focus on because we expect excellent execution and have accountability to do that in the field. But our first priority, every time, is to make sure we are focused on annuity growth and digital transformation at our company, which is best done through that motion.

In terms of the sales motion they are absolutely incented more towards cloud versus Transactional going into this year.

I do believe that every conversation that we’re having with customers is cloud-led. That cloud-led conversation and making a plan for customers to best change and transform their own business certainly is a far more in-depth one than on occasion is required by long-time Transactional purchasers, especially in Office, as an example, because what we’re talking about now is really pivoting your business for the long term.

And so I’m sure there are examples where that has elongated the sales cycle, for good reason. But I would generally point back and say most of these are driven at the structural level, which is – structurally over time, on-premises Transactional business will move to the cloud or to a hybrid structure through an annuity revenue stream.
[END BY Amy E. Hood]

2.4 Meeting cloud needs of customers where they are

The position that we have taken is that we want to serve customers where they are and not assume very simplistically that the digital sovereignty needs of customers can be met out of a fewer data center approach. Because right now, given the secular trend to move to the cloud across all of the regulated industries across the globe, we think it’s wiser for us and our investors long term to be able to meet them where they are. And that’s what you see us. We are the only cloud that operates in China under Chinese law, the only cloud that operates in Germany under German law. And these are very critical competitive advantages to us.

And so we will track that, and we will be very demand driven. So in this case we’re not taking these positions of which regions to open and where to open them well in advance of our demand. If anything, I think our cycle times have significantly come down. So it will be demand-driven, but I don’t want to essentially put a cap because if the opportunity arises, and for us it’s a high ROI decision to open a new region, we will do so.

3. Windows strategy to achieve progress in More Personal Computing

For initial and additional details available earlier see my earlier posts:
– Windows Embedded is an enterprise business now, like the whole Windows business, with Handheld and Compact versions to lead in the overall Internet of Things market as well as of June 8, 2013
– How the device play will unfold in the new Microsoft organization? as of July 14, 2013
– With Android and forked Android smartphones as the industry standard Nokia relegated to a niche market status while Apple should radically alter its previous premium strategy for long term as of August 17, 2013
– Windows [inc. Phone] 8.x chances of becoming the alternative platform to iOS and Android: VERY SLIM as it is even more difficult for Microsoft now than any time before as of August 20, 2013
– Leading PC vendors of the past: Go enterprise or die! as of November 7, 2013
– Xamarin: C# developers of native “business” and “mobile workforce” applications now can easily work cross-platform, for Android and iOS clients as well as of November 15, 2013
– Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers as of April 25, 2014
– Microsoft Surface Pro 3 is the ultimate tablet product from Microsoft. What the market response will be? as of May 21, 2014
– Windows 10 Technical Preview: Terry Myerson and Joe Belfiore on the future of Windows as of October 1, 2014
– The Era Of Sub-$90 Windows 8.1 Phones in U.S. as of October 3, 2014
– Windows 10 is here to help regain Microsoft’s leading position in ICT as of July 31, 2015
– Microsoft and partners to capitalize on Continuum for Phones instead of the exited Microsoft phone business as of June 5, 2016

We have increased Windows 10 monthly active devices and are now at more than 350 million. This is the fastest adoption rate of any prior Windows release. While we are proud of these results, given changes to our phone plan, we changed how we will assess progress. Going forward, we will track progress by regularly reporting the growth of Windows 10 monthly active devices in addition to progress on three aspects of our Windows strategy:

3.1 Deliver more value and innovation, particularly for enterprise customers

We continue to pursue our goal of moving people from needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows. In two weeks, we will launch Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which takes a significant step forward in security. We are also extending Windows Hello to support apps and websites and delivering a range of new features like Windows Ink and updates to Microsoft Edge. We expect these advances will drive increased adoption of Windows 10, particularly in the enterprise, in the coming year. We already have strong traction, with over 96% of our enterprise customers piloting Windows 10.

3.2 Grow new monetization through services across our unified Windows platform

As we grow our install base and engagement, we generate more opportunity for Microsoft and our ecosystem. Bing profitability continues to grow, with greater than 40% of the search revenue in June from Windows 10 devices. Bing PC query share in the United States approached 22% this quarter, not including volume from AOL and Yahoo!. The Cortana search box has over 100 million monthly active users, with 8 billion questions asked to date.

We continue to drive growth in gaming by connecting fans on Xbox Live across Windows 10, iOS, and Android. Just this quarter we launched our Minecraft Realm subscription on Android and iOS. Overall engagement on Xbox Live is at record levels, with more than 49 million monthly active users, up 33% year over year. At E3 we announced our biggest lineup of exclusive games ever for Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. And we announced Xbox Play Anywhere titles, where gamers can buy a game once and play it on both their Windows 10 PC and Xbox One. We also announced two new members of the Xbox One console family, the Xbox One S and Project Scorpio.

The Windows Store continues to grow, with new universal Windows apps like Bank of America, Roku, SiriusXM, Instagram, Facebook, Wine, Hulu, and popular PC games like Quantum Break.

3.3 Innovate in new device categories in partnership with our OEMs

Our hardware partners are embracing the new personal computing vision, with over 1,500 new devices designed to take advantage of Windows 10 innovations like Touch, Pen, Hello, and better performance and power efficiency.

Microsoft’s family of Surface devices continues to drive category growth, and we are reaching more commercial customers of all sizes with the support of our channel partners. We recently announced new Surface enterprise initiatives with IBM and Booz Allen Hamilton to enable more customer segments. Also in the past year, we grew our commercial Surface partner channel from over 150 to over 10,000.

Lastly this quarter, more and more developers and enterprise customers got to experience two entirely new device categories from Microsoft Surface Hub and Microsoft HoloLens. While we are still in the early days of both of these devices, we are seeing great traction with both enterprise customers and developers, making us optimistic about future growth.

The Next Revolution: 3D XPoint™ non-volatile memories with speed and performance close to DRAM

May 19, 2016 7:45 pm / Leave a comment

UPDATE

June 20, 2017, Intel Online: How fast is Intel® Optane™ Memory? Performance results
Comparing two identical NUCs – one with Intel® Optane™ memory.

28%

14x

2x
Overall system performance is
up to 28% faster6 7 8		 Increase system performance for hard drive access
by up to 14x faster 9 7 8		 Improve everyday task responsiveness
by 2x 6 7 8

(more…)

DataStax: a fully distributed and highly secure transactional database platform that is “always on”

February 3, 2016 7:32 am / Leave a comment

When an open-source database written in Java that runs primarily in production on Linux becomes THE solution for the cloud platform from Microsoft (i.e. Azure) in the fully distributed, highly secure and “always on” transactional database space then we should take a special note of that. This is the case of DataStax:

July 15, 2015: Building the intelligent cloud Scott Guthrie’s keynote on the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2015, the DataStax related segment in 7 minutes only 

Transcript:

SCOTT GUTHRIE, EVP of Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise:  What I’d like to do is invite three different partners now on stage, one an ISV, one an SI, and one a managed service provider to talk about how they’re taking advantage of our cloud offerings to accelerate their businesses and make their customers even more successful.

First, and I think, you know, being able to take advantage of all of these different capabilities that we now offer.

Now, the first partner I want to bring on stage is DataStax.  DataStax delivers an enterprise-grade NoSQL offering based on Apache Cassandra.  And they enable customers to build solutions that can scale across literally thousands of servers, which is perfect for a hyper-scale cloud environment.

And one of the customers that they’re working with is First American, who are deploying a solution on Microsoft Azure to provide richer insurance and settlement services to their customers.

What I’d like to do is invite Billy Bosworth, the CEO of DataStax, on stage to join me to talk about the partnership that we’ve had and how some of the great solutions that we’re building together.  Here’s Billy.  (Applause.)

Well, thanks for joining me, Billy.  And it’s great to have you here.

BILLY BOSWORTH, CEO of DataStax:  Thank you.  It’s a real privilege to be here today.

SCOTT GUTHRIE:  So tell us a little bit about DataStax and the technology you guys build.

BILLY BOSWORTH:  Sure.  At DataStax, we deliver Apache Cassandra in a database platform that is really purpose-built for the new performance and availability demands that are being generated by today’s Web, mobile and IOT applications.

With DataStax Enterprise, we give our customers a fully distributed and highly secure transactional database platform.

Now, that probably sounds like a lot of other database vendors out there as well.  But, Scott, we have something that’s really different and really important to us and our customers, and that’s the notion of being always on.  And when you talk about “always on” and transactional databases, things can get pretty complicated pretty fast, as you well know.

The reason for that is in an always-on world, the datacenter itself becomes a single point of failure.  And that means you have to build an architecture that is going to be comprehensive and include multiple datacenters.  That’s tough enough with almost any other piece of the software stack.  But for transactional databases, that is really problematic.

Fortunately, we have a masterless architecture in Apache Cassandra that allows us to have DataStax enterprise scale in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters, and yet at the same time remain operationally simple.  So that’s really the core of what we do.

SCOTT GUTHRIE:  Is the always-on angle the key differentiator in terms of the customer fit with Azure?

BILLY BOSWORTH:  So if you think about deployment to multiple datacenters, especially and including Azure, it creates an immediate benefit.  Going back to your hybrid clouds comment, we see a lot of our customers that begin their journey on premises.  So they take their local datacenter, they install DataStax Enterprise, it’s an active database up and running.  And then they extend that database into Azure.

Now, when I say that, I don’t mean they do so for disaster recovery or failover, it is active everywhere.  So it is taking full read-write requests on premises and in Azure at the same time.

So if you lose connectivity to your physical datacenter, then the Azure active nodes simply take over.  And that’s great, and that solves the always-on problem.

But that’s not the only thing that Azure helps to solve.  Our applications, because of their nature, tend to drive incredibly high throughput.  So for us, hundreds of millions or even tens and hundreds of billions of transactions a day is actually quite common.

You guys are pretty good, Scott, but I don’t think you’ve changed the laws of physics yet.  And so the way that you get that kind of throughput with unbelievable performance demands, because our customers demand millisecond and microsecond response times, is you push the data closer to the end points.  You geographically distribute it.

Now, what our customers are realizing is they can try and build 19 datacenters across the world, which I’m sure was really cheap and easy to do, or they can just look at what you’ve already done and turn to a partnership like ours to say, “Help us understand how we do this with Azure.”

So not only do you get the always-on benefit, which is critical, but there’s also a very important performance element to this type of architecture as well.

SCOTT GUTHRIE:  Can you tell us a little bit about the work you did with First American on Azure?

BILLY BOSWORTH:  Yeah.  First American is a leading name in the title insurance and settlement services businesses.  In fact, they manage more titles on more properties than anybody in the world.

Every title comes with an associated set of metadata.  And that metadata becomes very important in the new way that they want to do business because each element of that needs to be transacted, searched, and done in real-time analysis to provide better information back to the customer in real time.

And so for that on the database side, because of the type of data and because of the scale, they needed something like DataStax Enterprise, which we’ve delivered.  But they didn’t want to fight all those battles of the architecture that we discussed on their own, and that’s where they turned to our partnership to incorporate Microsoft Azure as the infrastructure with DataStax Enterprise running on top.

And this is one of many engagements that you know we have going on in the field that are really, really exciting and indicative of the way customers are thinking about transforming their business.

SCOTT GUTHRIE:  So what’s it like working with Microsoft as a partner?

BILLY BOSWORTH:  I tell you, it’s unbelievable.  Or, maybe put differently, highly improbable that you and I are on stage together.  I want you guys to think about this.  Here’s the type of company we are.  We’re an open-source database written in Java that runs primarily in production on Linux.

Now, Scott, Microsoft has a couple of pretty good databases, of which I’m very familiar from my past, and open source and Java and Linux haven’t always been synonymous with Microsoft, right?

So I would say the odds of us being on stage were almost none.  But over the past year or two, the way that you guys have opened up your aperture to include technologies like ours — and I don’t just say “include.”  His team has embraced us in a way that is truly incredible.  For a company the size of Microsoft to make us feel the way we do is just remarkable given the fact that none of our technologies have been something that Microsoft has traditionally said is part of their family.

So I want to thank you and your team for all the work you’ve done.  It’s been a great experience, but we are architecting systems that are going to drive businesses for the coming decades.  And that is super exciting to have a partner like you engaged with us.

SCOTT GUTHRIE:  Fantastic.  Well, thank you so much for joining us on stage.

BILLY BOSWORTH:  Thanks, Scott.  (Applause.)

The typical data framework capabilities of DataStax in all respects is best understood via the the following webinar which presents Apache Spark as well as the part of the complete data platform solution:
– Apache Cassandra is the leading distributed database in use at thousands of sites with the world’s most demanding scalability and availability requirements.
– Apache Spark is a distributed data analytics computing framework that has gained a lot of traction in processing large amounts of data in an efficient and user-friendly manner.
– The joining of both provides a powerful combination of real-time data collection with analytics.
After a brief overview of Cassandra and Spark, (Cassandra till 16:39, Spark till 19:25) this class will dive into various aspects of the integration (from 19:26).
August 19, 2015: Big Data Analytics with Cassandra and Spark by Brian Hess, Senior Product Manager of Analytics, DataStax

September 23, 2015: DataStax Announces Strategic Collaboration with Microsoft, company press release

  • DataStax delivers a leading fully-distributed database for public and private cloud deployments
  • DataStax Enterprise on Microsoft Azure enables developers to develop, deploy and monitor enterprise-ready IoT, Web and mobile applications spanning public and private clouds
  • Scott Guthrie, EVP Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft, to co-deliver Cassandra Summit 2015 keynote

SANTA CLARA, CA – September 23, 2015 – (Cassandra Summit 2015) DataStax, the company that delivers Apache Cassandra™ to the enterprise, today announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft to deliver Internet of Things (IoT), Web and mobile applications in public, private or hybrid cloud environments. With DataStax Enterprise (DSE), a leading fully-distributed database platform, available on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, enterprises can quickly build high-performance applications that can massively scale and remain operationally simple across public and private clouds, with ease and at lightning speed.

Click to Tweet: #DataStax Announces Strategic Collaboration with @Microsoft at #CassandraSummit bit.ly/1V8KY4D

PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEWS

“At Microsoft we’re focused on enabling customers to run their businesses more productively and successfully,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft. “As more organizations build their critical business applications in the cloud, DataStax has proved to be a natural  Azure partner through their ability to enable enterprises to build solutions that can scale across thousands of servers which is necessary in today’s hyper-scale cloud environment.”

“We are witnessing an increased adoption of DataStax Enterprise deployments in hybrid cloud environments, so closely aligning with Microsoft benefits any organization looking to quickly and easily build high-performance IoT, Web and mobile apps,” said Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax. “Working with a world-class organization like Microsoft has been an incredible experience and we look forward to continuing to work together to meet the needs of enterprises looking to successfully transition their business to the cloud.”

“As a leader in providing information and insight in critical areas that shape today’s business landscape, we knew it was critical to transform our back-end business processes to address scale and flexibility” said Graham Lammers, Director, IHS. “With DataStax Enterprise on Azure we are now able to create a next generation big data application to support the decision-making process of our customers across the globe.”

BUILD SIMPLE, SCALABLE AND ALWAY-ON APPS IN RECORD SPEED

To address the ever-increasing demands of modern businesses transitioning from on-premise to hybrid cloud environments, the DataStax Enterprise on Azure on-demand cloud database solution provides enterprises with both development and production ready Bring Your Own License (BYOL) DSE clusters that can be launched in minutes on theMicrosoft Azure Marketplace using Azure Resource Management (ARM) Templates. This enables the building of high-performance IoT, Web and mobile applications that can predictably scale across global Azure data centers with ease and at remarkable speed. Additional benefits include:

  • Hybrid Deployment: Easily move DSE workloads between data centers, service providers and Azure, and build hybrid applications that leverage resources across all three.
  • Simplicity: Easily manage, develop, deploy and monitor database clusters by eliminating data management complexities.
  • Scalability: Quickly replicate online applications globally across multiple data centers into the cloud/hybrid cloud environment.
  • Continuous Availability: DSE’s peer-to-peer architecture offers no single point of failure. DSE also provides maximum flexibility to distribute data where it’s needed most by replicating data across multiple data centers, the cloud and mixed cloud/on-premise environments.

MICROSOFT ENTERPRISE CLOUD ALLIANCE & FAST START PROGRAM

DataStax also announced it has joined Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Alliance, a collaboration that reinforces DataStax’scommitment to provide the best set of on-premise, hosted and public cloud database solutions in the industry. The goal of Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Alliance partner program is to create, nurture and grow a strong partner ecosystem across a broad set of Enterprise Cloud Products delivering the best on-premise, hosted and Public Cloud solutions in the industry. Through this alliance, DataStax and Microsoft are working together to create enhanced enterprise-grade offerings for the Azure Marketplace that reduce the complexities of deployment and provisioning through automated ARM scripting capabilities.

Additionally, as a member of Microsoft Azure’s Fast Start program, created to help users quickly deploy new cloud workloads, DataStax users receive immediate access to the DataStax Enterprise Sandbox on Azure for a hands-on experience testing out DSE on Azure capabilities. DataStax Enterprise Sandbox on Azure can be found here.

Cassandra Summit 2015, the world’s largest gathering of Cassandra users, is taking place this week and Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie, DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth, and Apache Cassandra Project Chair and DataStax Co-founder and CTO Jonathan Ellis, will deliver the conference keynote at 10 a.m. PT on Wednesday, September 23. The keynote can be viewed at DataStax.com.

ABOUT DATASTAX

DataStax delivers Apache Cassandra™ in a database platform purpose-built for the performance and availability demands for IoT, Web and mobile applications. This gives enterprises a secure, always-on database technology that remains operationally simple when scaling in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters and clouds.

With more than 500 customers in over 50 countries, DataStax is the database technology of choice for the world’s most innovative companies, such as Netflix, Safeway, ING, Adobe, Intuit and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners. For more information, visit DataStax.com or follow us @DataStax.

September 30, 2014: Why Datastax’s increasing presence threatens Oracle’s database by Anne Shields at Market Realist 

Must know: An in-depth review of Oracle’s 1Q15 earnings (Part 9 of 12)

(Continued from Part 8)

Datastax databases are built on open-source technologies

Datastax is a California-based database management company. It offers an enterprise-grade NoSQL database that seamlessly and securely integrates real-time data with Apache Cassandra. Databases built on Apache Cassandra offer more flexibility than traditional databases. Even in case of calamities and uncertainties, like floods and earthquakes, data is available due to its replication at other data centers. NoSQL and Cassandra are open-source software.

Cassandra database was developed by Facebook (FB) to handle its enormous volumes of data. The technology behind Cassandra was developed by Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOGL). Oracle’s MySQL (ORCL), Microsoft’s SQL Server (MSFT), and IBM’s DB2 (IBM) are the traditional databases present in the market .

datastax[1]The above chart shows how NoSQL databases, NewSQL databases, and Data grid/cache products fit into the wider data management landscape.

Huge amounts of funds raised in the open-source technology database space

Datastax raised $106 million in September 2014 to expand its database operations. MongoDB Inc. and Couchbase Inc.—both open-source NoSQL database developers—raised $231 million and $115 million, respectively, in 2014. According to Market Research Media, a consultancy firm, spending on NoSQL technology in 2013 was less than $1 billion. It’s expected to reach $3.4 billion by 2020. This explains why this segment is attracting such huge investments.

Oracle’s dominance in the database market is uncertain

Oracle claims it’s a market leader in the relational database market, with a revenue share of 48.3%. In 2013, it launched Oracle Database 12C. According to Oracle, “Oracle Database 12c introduces a new multitenant architecture that simplifies the process of consolidating databases onto the cloud; enabling customers to manage many databases as one — without changing their applications.” To know in detail about Database 12c, please click here .

In July 2013, DataStax announced that dozens of companies have migrated from Oracle databases to DataStax databases. Customers cited scalability, disaster avoidance, and cost savings as the reasons for shifting databases. Datastax databases’ rising popularity jeopardizes Oracle’s dominant position in the database market.

Continue to Part 10

Browse this series on Market Realist:

September 24, 2014: Building a better experience for Azure and DataStax customers by Matt Rollender, VP Cloud Strategy, DataStax, Inc. on Microsoft Azure blog

Cassandra Summit is in high gear this week in Santa Clara, CA, representing the largest NoSQL event of its kind! This is the largest Cassandra Summit to date. With more than 7,000 attendees (both onsite and virtual), this is the first time the Summit is a three-day event with over 135 speaking sessions. This is also the first time DataStax will debut a formalized Apache Cassandra™ training and certification program in conjunction with O’Reilly Media. All incredibly exciting milestones!

We are excited to share another milestone. Yesterday, we announced our formal strategic collaboration with Microsoft. Dedicated DataStax and Microsoft teams have been collaborating closely behind the scenes for more than a year on product integration, QA testing, platform optimization, automated provisioning, and characterization of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) on Azure, and more to ensure product validation and a great customer experience for users of DataStax Enterprise on the Azure cloud. There is strong coordination across the two organizations – very close executive, field, and technical alignment – all critical components for a strong partnership.

This partnership is driven and shaped by our joint customers. Our customers oftentimes begin their journey with on-premise deployments of our database technology and then have a requirement to move to the cloud – Microsoft is a fantastic partner to help provide the flexibility of a true hybrid environment along with the ability to migrate to and scale applications in the cloud. Additionally, Microsoft has significant breadth regarding their data centers – customers can deploy in numerous Azure data centers around the globe, in order to be ‘closer’ to their end users. This is highly complementary to DataStax Enterprise software as we are a peer-to-peer distributed database and our customers need to be close to their end users with their always-on, always available enterprise applications.

To highlight a couple of joint customers and use cases we have First American Title and IHS, Inc. First American is a leading provider of title insurance and settlement services with revenue over $5B.  They ingest and store the largest number (billions) of real estate property records in the industry. Accessing, searching and analyzing large data-sets to get relevant details quickly is the new way they want to do business – to provide better information back to their customers in real-time and allow end users to easily search through the property records on-line. They chose DSE and Azure because of the large data requirements and because of the need to continue to scale the application.

A second great customer and use case is IHS, Inc., a $2B revenue-company that provides information and analysis to support the decision-making process of businesses and governments. This is a transformational project for IHS as they are building out an ‘internet age’ parts catalog – it’s a next generation big data application, using NoSQL, non-relational technology and they want to deploy in the cloud to bring the application to market faster.

As you can see, we are enabling enterprises to engage their customer like never before with their always on, highly available and distributed applications. Stay tuned for more as we move forward together in the coming months!

For Additional information go to http://www.datastax.com/marketplace-microsoft-azure to try out Datastax Enterprise Sandbox on Azure.

See also DataStax Enterprise Cluster Production on Microsoft Azure Marketplace

September 23, 2015: Making Cassandra Do Azure, But Not Windows by  Co-Editor, Co-Founder, The Next Platform

When Microsoft says that it is embracing Linux as a peer to Windows, it is not kidding. The company has created its own Linux distribution for switches used to build the Azure cloud, and it has embraced Spark in-memory processing and Cassandra as its data store for its first major open source big data project – in this case to help improve the quality of its Office365 user experience. And now, Microsoft is embracing Cassandra, the NoSQL data store originally created by Facebook when it could no longer scale the MySQL relational database to suit its needs, on the Azure public cloud.

Billy Bosworth, CEO at DataStax, the entity that took over steering development of and providing commercial support for Cassandra, tells The Next Platform that the deal with Microsoft has a number of facets, all of which should help boost the adoption of the enterprise-grade version of Cassandra. But the key one is that the Global 2000 customers that DataStax wants to sell support and services to are already quite familiar with both Windows Server in their datacenters and they are looking to burst out to the Azure cloud on a global scale.

“We are seeing a rapidly increasing number of our customers who need hybrid cloud, keeping pieces of our DataStax Enterprise on premise in their own datacenters and they also want to take pieces of that same live transactional data – not replication, but live data – and in the Azure cloud as well,” says Bosworth. “They have some unique capabilities, and one of the major requirements of customers is that even if they use cloud infrastructure, it still has to be distributed by the cloud provider. They can’t just run Cassandra in one availability zone in one region. They have to span data across the globe, and Microsoft has done a tremendous job of investing in its datacenters.”

With the Microsoft agreement, DataStax is now running its wares on the three big clouds, with Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine already certified able to run the production-grade Cassandra. And interestingly enough, Microsoft is supporting the DataStax implementation of Cassandra on top of Linux, not Windows. Bosworth says that while Cassandra can be run on Windows servers, DataStax does not recommend putting DataStax Enterprise (DSE), the commercial release, on Windows. (It does have a few customers who do, nonetheless, and it supports them.) Bosworth adds that DataStax and the Cassandra community have been “working diligently” for the past year to get a Windows port of DSE completed and that there has been “zero pressure” for the Microsoft Azure team to run DSE on anything other than Linux.

It is important to make the distinction between running Cassandra and other elements of DSE on Windows and having optimized drivers for Cassandra for the .NET programming environment for Windows.

“All we are really talking about is the ability to run the back-end Cassandra on Linux or Windows, and to the developer, it is irrelevant on what that back end is running,” explains Bosworth. This takes away some of that friction, and what we find is that on the back end, we just don’t find religious conviction about whether it should run on Windows or Linux, and this is different from five years ago. We sell mostly to enterprises, and we have not had one customer raise their hand and say they can’t use DSE because it does not run on Windows.”

What is more important is the ability to seamless put Cassandra on public clouds and spread transactional data around for performance and resiliency reasons – the same reasons that Facebook created Cassandra for in the first place.

What Is In The Stack, Who Uses It, And How

The DataStax Enterprise distribution does not just include the Apache Cassandra data store, but has an integrated search engine that is API compatible with the open source Solr search engine and in-memory extensions that can speed up data accesses by anywhere from 30X to 100X compared to server clusters using flash SSDs or disk drives. The Cassandra data store can be used to underpin Hadoop, allowing it to be queried by MapReduce, Hive, Pig, and Mahout, and it can also underpin Spark and Spark Streaming as their data stores if customers decide to not go with the Hadoop Distributed File System that is commonly packaged with a Hadoop distribution.

It is hard to say for sure how many organizations are running Cassandra today, but Bosworth reckons that it is on the order of tens of thousands worldwide, based on a number of factors. DataStax does not do any tracking of its DataStax Community edition because it wants a “frictionless download” like many open source projects have. (Developers don’t want software companies to see what tools they are playing with, even though they might love open source code.) DataStax provides free training for Cassandra, however, where it does keep track, and developers are consuming over 10,000 units of this training per month, so that probably indicates that the Cassandra installed base (including tests, prototypes, and production) is in the five figures.

datastax-momentum[1]

DataStax itself has over 500 paying customers – now including Microsoft after its partner tried to build its own Spark-Cassandra cluster using open source code and decided that the supported versions were better thanks to the extra goodies that DataStax puts into its distro. DataStax has 30 of the Fortune 100 using its distribution of Cassandra in one form or another, and it is always for transactional, rather than batch analytic, jobs and in most cases also for distributed data stores that make use of the “eventual consistency” features of Cassandra to replicate data across multiple clusters. The company has another 600 firms participating in its startup program, which gives young companies freebie support on the DSE distro until they hit a certain size and can afford to start kicking some cash into the kitty.

The largest installation of Cassandra is running at Apple, which as we previously reported has over 75,000 nodes, with clusters ranging in size from hundreds to over 1,000 nodes and with a total capacity in the petabytes range. Netflix, which used to employ the open source Cassandra, switched to DSE last May and had over 80 clusters with more than 2,500 nodes supporting various aspects of its video distribution business. In both cases, Cassandra is very likely housing user session state data as well as feeding product or play lists and recommendations or doing faceted search for their online customers.

We are always intrigued to learn how customers are actually deploying tools such as Cassandra in production and how they scale it. Bosworth says that it is not uncommon to run a prototype project on as few as ten nodes, and when the project goes into production, to see it grow to dozens to hundreds of nodes. The midrange DSE clusters range from maybe 500 to 1,000 nodes and there are some that get well over 1,000 nodes for large-scale workloads like those running at Apple.

In general, Cassandra does not, like Hadoop, run on disk-heavy nodes. Remember, the system was designed to support hot transactional data, not to become a lake with a mix of warm and cold data that would be sifted in batch mode as is still done with MapReduce running atop Hadoop.

The typical node configuration has changed as Cassandra has evolved and improved, says Robin Schumacher, vice president of products at DataStax. But before getting into feeds and speeds, Schumacher offered this advice. “There are two golden rules for Cassandra. First, get your data model right, and second, get your storage system right. If you get those two things right, you can do a lot wrong with your configuration or your hardware and Cassandra will still treat you right. Whenever we have to dive in and help someone out, it is because they have just moved over a relational data model or they have hooked their servers up to a NAS or a SAN or something like that, which is absolutely not recommended.”

datastax-table[1]

Only four years ago, because of the limitations in Cassandra (which like Hadoop and many other analytics tools is coded in Java), the rule of thumb was to put no more than 512 GB of disk capacity onto a single node. (It is hard to imagine such small disk capacities these days, with 8 TB and 10 TB disks.) The typical Cassandra node has two processors, with somewhere between 12 and 24 cores, and has between 64 GB and 128 GB of main memory. Customers who want the best performance tend to go with flash SSDs, although you can do all-disk setups, too.

Fast forward to today, and Cassandra can make use of a server node with maybe 5 TB of capacity for a mix of reads and writes, and if you have a write intensive application, then you can push that up to 20 TB. (DataStax has done this in its labs, says Schumacher, without any performance degradation.) Pushing the capacity up is important because it helps reduce server node count for a given amount of storage, which cuts hardware and software licensing and support costs. Incidentally, only a quarter of DSE customers surveyed said they were using spinning disks, but disk drives are fine for certain kinds of log data. SSDs are used for most transactional data, but the bits that are most latency sensitive should use DSE to store data on PCI-Express flash cards, which have lower latency.

Schumacher says that in most cases, the commercial-grade DSE Cassandra is used for a Web or mobile application, and a DSE cluster is not set up for hosting multiple applications, but rather companies have a different cluster for each use case. (As you can see is the case with Apple and Netflix.) Most of the DSE shops to make use of the eventual consistency replication features of Cassandra to span multiple datacenters with their data stores, and span anywhere from eight to twelve datacenters with their transactional data.

Here’s where it gets interesting, and why Microsoft is relevant to DataStax. Only about 30 percent of the DSE installations are running on premises. The remaining 70 percent are running on public clouds. About half of DSE customers are running on Amazon Web Services, with the remaining 20 percent split more or less evenly between Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure. If DataStax wants to grow its business, the easiest way to do that is to grow along with AWS, Compute Engine, and Azure.

So Microsoft and DataStax are sharing their roadmaps and coordinating development of their respective wares, and will be doing product validation, benchmarking, and optimization. The two will be working on demand generation and marketing together, too, and aligning their compensation to sell DSE on top of Azure and, eventually, on top of Windows Server for those who want to run it on premises.

In addition to announcing the Microsoft partnership at the Cassandra Summit this week, DataStax is also releasing its DSE 4.8 stack, which includes certification for Cassandra to be used as the back end for the new Spark 1.4 in-memory analytics tool. DSE Search has a performance boosts for live indexing, and running DSE instances inside of Docker containers has been improved. The stack also includes Titan 1.0, the graph database overlay for Cassandra, HBase, and BerkeleyDB that DataStax got through its acquisition of Aurelius back in February. DataStax is also previewing Cassandra 3.0, which will include support for JSON documents, role-based access control, and a lot of little tweaks that will make the storage more efficient, DataStax says. It is expected to ship later this year.

 

HP split into two–HP Enterprise and HP Inc. (devices and printers)–for the growth phase of its turnaround

October 12, 2014 2:08 pm / Leave a comment

HP share price -- Sept 2011 - Oct 2014

HP share price — Sept 2011 – Oct 2014. Meg Whitman was named CEO on September 22, 2011. As well as renewing focus on HP’s Research & Development division, Whitman’s major decision during her first year as CEO has been to retain and recommit the firm to the PC business that her predecessor announced he was considering discarding (see the August 2011 post on this blog). After such “stabilization and foundation year” on October 03, 2012 she announced an ambitious 5-year turnaround strategy that promised new products by FY14 and finally growth by 2015.  This plan promised changes in HP’s four primary businesses. Enterprise Services got an entirely different operating model. Likewise the Enterprise Group planned to further utilize the cloud. The operating model of the Printing and Personal Systems Group was simplified by reducing its product line. A new cloud-based consumption model was implemented for the Software Group. With the split now  Meg Whitman writes  that “Hewlett-Packard Enterprise … will define the next generation of infrastructure, software, and services for the New Style of IT” while “HP Inc. will be extremely well-positioned to leverage its impressive portfolio and strong innovation pipeline across areas such as multi-function printing, Ink in the office, notebooks, mobile workstations, tablets and phablets, as well as 3-D printing and new computing experiences”. By separation into two they will “be able to accellerate the progress” they’ve made to date, “unlock additional value”, and “more aggressively go after the opportunities in front” of them.

Also seeing total 55,000 job cuts this year, with 45,000-50,000 cuts already done in Q2. CEO Meg Whitman (age 58) is enjoying huge bonus payments via those job cuts, and then she will lead HP Enterprise as CEO, as well as will become the non-executive Chairman of HP Inc.’s Board of Directors.

Detailed information on this blog about the new direction set up for Personal Systems Group part of HP Inc. (very few):

Latest news from HP Personal Systems Group:
– Revamped Z desktop and ZBook mobile workstations [Sept 10, 2014]
– HP Stream series of skinny Windows 8.1 laptops and tablets targeted for the holidays [Sept 29, 2014]
– HP 10 Plus 10.1-Inch 16 GB Android Full HD IPS Tablet with Allwinner A31 quadcore 1.0 GHz on Amazon and elsewhere for $280  [July 13, 2014]
– HP Slate 21 – 21.5″-k100 All-in-One Full HD IPS Android PC with NVIDIA Tegra 4 for $400 [Sept 28, 2014] a 17″ version of which, HP Slate 17 will be hitting stores by New Year

Note that such large screen All-in-One Full HD IPS strategy for both desktop replacements as well as great home devices + complete flat tabletop mode for using an application that’s maybe multi-orientational was started with Windows 8-based HP ENVY Rove [June 23, 2013], using Intel® Core™ i3-4010U and now selling for $980.

Detailed information on this blog about the new direction set up for HP Enterprise (quite extensive and deep):


* Note here that as of now Microsoft Windows Server is not available (even the upcoming Windows Server 10 for “the Future of the datacenter from Microsoft“) on the emerging 64-bit ARM. See: Intel: ARM Server Competition ‘Imminent,’ But Not Yet There, Says MKM [Barrons.com, Oct 2, 2014], in which the current state characterized as:

ARM highlighted progress in servers by citing two data center end-customers (sharing the stage with Sandia Labs but not Paypal) that use HP blades for their Moonshot server chassis based on 64-bit Applied Micro (AMCC, NR, $6.90) and 32-bit Texas Instruments silicon.

HP Moonshot program and the 1st 64-bit ARM server (ARM TechCon 2014, Oct 1-3)

HP’s ARM-powered ProLiant m400 (Moonshot) is ready for DDR4 [ARM Connected Community, Oct 8, 2014]

AppliedMicro and Hewlett-Packard recently introduced the first commercially-available 64-bit ARMv8  server. Dubbed the ProLiant m400, the cartridge is specifically designed to fit HP’s Moonshot server framework. The new server – targeted at web caching workloads  – is based on AppliedMicro’s X-Gene System-on-a-Chip  (SoC) and runs Canonical’s versatile Ubuntu operating system.

… One of the key advantages of the X-Gene based m400? The doubling of addressable memory to 64GB per cartridge. … “You put 10 of these enclosures in a rack and you have 3,600 cores and 28 TB of memory to hook together to run a distributed application,” … “The m400 node burns about 55 watts with all of its components on the board, so a rack is in the neighborhood of 25 kilowatts across 450 nodes.” …

Loren Shalinsky, a Strategic Development Director at Rambus, points out that each ProLiant m400 cartridge is actually a fully contained server with its own dedicated memory, which, in the default launch version, carries a payload of DDR3L DIMMs.

“However, future generations of the cartridges can be upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4, without affecting the other cartridges in the rack. This should allow for even higher memory bandwidth and lower power consumption,” he added. “Our expectation is that DDR4 will ramp on the server side – both in terms of x86  and ARM – before finding its way into desktop PCs, laptops and consumer applications like digital TVs and set-top boxes.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press , DDR4 memory delivers a 40-50 percent increase in bandwidth, along with a 35 percent reduction in power consumption compared to DDR3 memory, currently in servers. In addition, internal data transfers are faster with DDR4 , while in-memory applications such as databases – where a significant amount of processing takes place in DRAM – are expected to benefit as well.

Compare the above to what was written in Choosing chips for next-generation datacentres [ComputerWeekly.com, Sept 22, 2014]:

HP CEO Meg Whitman has high hopes for the company’s Moonshot low-energy server family as a differentiator in the commodity server market. Moonshot is based on Intel Atom and AMD Opteron system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors, optimised for desktop virtualisation and web content delivery applications. These servers can run Windows Server 2012 R2 or Red Hat, Canonical or Suse Linux distributions.
…
Semiconductor companies Cavium and Applied Micro are taking two different approaches to the ARM microserver market. Cavium is specialising in low-powered cores, while Applied Micro is taking a high-performance computing (HPC) approach.
…
AMD is building its chips based on the ARM Cortex-A57 core. … Servers with AMD’s Seattle [Opteron A-Series] ARM-based chip are not expected to ship until mid-2015.

Note here as well that AMD’s Seattle, i.e. Opteron A-Series strategy is also serving the company’s own dense server infrastructure strategy (going against HP’s Moonshot fabric solution) as described here earlier in AMD’s dense server strategy of mixing next-gen x86 Opterons with 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 based Opterons on the SeaMicro Freedom™ fabric to disrupt the 2014 datacenter market using open source software (so far) [Dec 31, 2014 – Jan 28, 2014] post.

“HP has supported ARM’s standardization effort since its inception, recognizing the benefits of an extensible platform with value-added features,” said Dong Wei, HP fellow. “With the new SBSA specification [Server Base System Architecture from ARM], we are able to establish a simplified baseline for deploying ARM-based solutions and look forward to future HP [server] products based on the ARM architecture.”

 

Scott Guthrie about changes under Nadella, the competition with Amazon, and what differentiates Microsoft’s cloud products

October 2, 2014 12:03 pm / Leave a comment

Scott Guthrie Microsoft

Scott Guthrie Executive Vice President Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group As executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group, Scott Guthrie is responsible for the company’s cloud infrastructure, server, database, management and development tools businesses. His engineering team builds Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, System Center, Visual Studio and .NET. Prior to leading the Cloud and Enterprise group, Guthrie helped lead Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud platform. Since joining the company in 1997, he has made critical contributions to many of Microsoft’s key cloud, server and development technologies and was one of the original founders of the .NET project. Guthrie graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Duke University. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children. Source: Microsoft

From The cloud, not Windows 10, is key to Microsoft’s growth [Fortune, Oct 1, 2014]

  • about changes under Nadella:

Well, I don’t know if I’d say there’s been a big change from that perspective. I mean, I think obviously we’ve been saying for a while this mobile-first, cloud-first…”devices and services” is maybe another way to put it. That’s been our focus as a company even before Satya became CEO. From a strategic perspective, I think we very much have been focused on cloud now for a couple of years. I wouldn’t say this now means, “Oh, now we’re serious about cloud.” I think we’ve been serious about cloud for quite a while.

More information: Satya Nadella on “Digital Work and Life Experiences” supported by “Cloud OS” and “Device OS and Hardware” platforms–all from Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 23, 2014]

  • about the competition with Amazon:

… I think there’s certainly a first mover advantage that they’ve been able to benefit from. … In terms of where we’re at today, we’ve got about 57% of the Fortune 500 that are now deployed on Microsoft Azure. … Ultimately the way we think we do that [gain on the current leader] is by having a unique set of offerings and a unique point of view that is differentiated.

  • about uniqueness of Microsoft offering:

One is, we’re focused on and delivering a hyper-scale cloud platform with our Azure service that’s deployed around the world. …

… that geographic footprint, as well as the economies of scale that you get when you install and have that much capacity, puts you in a unique position from an economic and from a customer capability perspective …

Where I think we differentiate then, versus the other two, is around two characteristics. One is enterprise grade and the focus on delivering something that’s not only hyper-scale from an economic and from a geographic reach perspective but really enterprise-grade from a capability, support, and overall services perspective. …

The other thing that we have that’s fairly unique is a very large on-premises footprint with our existing server software and with our private cloud capabilities. …

Satya Nadella on “Digital Work and Life Experiences” supported by “Cloud OS” and “Device OS and Hardware” platforms–all from Microsoft

July 23, 2014 2:53 pm / 1 Comment on Satya Nadella on “Digital Work and Life Experiences” supported by “Cloud OS” and “Device OS and Hardware” platforms–all from Microsoft

Update: Gates Says He’s Very Happy With Microsoft’s Nadella [Bloomberg TV, Oct 2, 2014] + Bill Gates is trying to make Microsoft Office ‘dramatically better’ [The Verge, Oct 3, 2014]

This is the essence of Microsoft Fiscal Year 2014 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call(see also the Press Release and Download Files) for me, as the new, extremely encouraging, overall setup of Microsoft in strategic terms (the below table is mine based on what Satya Nadella told on the conference call):

image

These are extremely encouraging strategic advancements vis–à–vis previously publicized ones here in the following, Microsoft related posts of mine:

I see, however, particularly challenging the continuation of the Lumia story with the above strategy, as with the previous, combined Ballmer/Elop(Nokia) strategy the results were extremely weak:

image

Worthwhile to include here the videos Bloomberg was publishing simultaneously with Microsoft Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call:

Inside Microsoft’s Secret Surface Labs [Bloomberg News, July 22, 2014]

July 22 (Bloomberg) — When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defined the future of his company in a memo to his 127,100 employees, he singled out the struggling Surface tablet as key to a future built around the cloud and productivity. Microsoft assembled an elite team of designers, engineers, and programmers to spend years holed up in Redmond, Washington to come up with a tablet to take on Apple, Samsung, and Amazon. Bloomberg’s Cory Johnson got an inside look at the Surface labs.

Will Microsoft Kinect Be a Medical Game-Changer? [Bloomberg News, July 22, 2014]

July 23 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft’s motion detecting camera was thought to be a game changer for the video gaming world when it was launched in 2010. While appetite for it has since decreased, Microsoft sees the technology as vital in its broader offering as it explores other sectors like 3d mapping and live surgery. (Source: Bloomberg

Why Microsoft Puts GPS In Meat For Alligators [Bloomberg News, July 22, 2014]

July 23 (Bloomberg) — At the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, scientists track animals and map climate change all on the off chance they’ll stumble across the next big thing. (Source: Bloomberg)

To this it is important to add: How Pier 1 is using the Microsoft Cloud to build a better relationship with their customers [Microsoft Server and Cloud YouTube channel, July 21, 2014]

In this video, Pier 1 Imports discuss how they are using Microsoft Cloud technologies such as Azure Machine Learning to to predict which the product the customer might want to purchase next, helping to build a better relationship with their customers. Learn more: http://www.azure.com/ml

as well as:
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 vs. MacBook Air 13″ 2014 [CNET YouTube channel, July 21, 2014]

http://cnet.co/1nOygqh Microsoft made a direct comparison between the Surface Pro 3 and the MacBook Air 13″, so we’re throwing them into the Prizefight Ring to settle the score once and for all. Let’s get it on!

Surface Pro 3 vs. MacBook Air (2014) [CTNtechnologynews YouTube channel, July 1, 2014]

The Surface Pro 3 may not be the perfect laptop. But Apple’s MacBook Air is pretty boring. Let’s see which is the better device!

In addition here are some explanatory quotes (for the new overall setup of Microsoft) worth to include here from the Q&A part of Microsoft’s (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Seeking Alpha, Jul. 22, 2014 10:59 PM ET]

…

Mark Moerdler – Sanford Bernstein

Thank you. And Amy one quick question, we saw a significant acceleration this quarter in cloud revenue, or I guess Amy or Satya. You saw acceleration in cloud revenue year-over-year what’s – is this Office for the iPad, is this Azure, what’s driving the acceleration and how long do you think we can keep this going?

Amy Hood

Mark, I will take it and if Satya wants to add, obviously, he should do that. In general, I wouldn’t point to one product area. It was across Office 365, Azure and even CRM online. I think some of the important dynamics that you could point to particularly in Office 365; I really think over the course of the year, we saw an acceleration in moving the product down the market into increasing what we would call the mid-market and even small business at a pace. That’s a particular place I would tie back to some of the things Satya mentioned in the answer to your first question.

Improvements to analytics, improvements to understanding the use scenarios, improving the product in real-time, understanding trial ease of use, ease of sign-up all of these things actually can afford us the ability to go to different categories, go to different geos into different segments. And in addition, I think what you will see more as we initially moved many of our customers to Office 365, it came on one workload. And I think what we’ve increasingly seen is our ability to add more workloads and sell the entirety of the suite through that process. I also mentioned in Azure, our increased ability to sell some of these higher value services. So while, I can speak broadly but all of them, I think I would generally think about the strength of being both completion of our product suite ability to enter new segments and ability to sell new workloads.

Satya Nadella

The only thing I would add is it’s the combination of our SaaS like Dynamics in Office 365, a public cloud offering in Azure. But also our private and hybrid cloud infrastructure which also benefits, because they run on our servers, cloud runs on our servers. So it’s that combination which makes us both unique and reinforcing. And the best example is what we are doing with Azure active directory, the fact that somebody gets on-boarded to Office 365 means that tenant information is in Azure AD that fact that the tenant information is in Azure AD is what makes EMS or our Enterprise Mobility Suite more attractive to a customer manager iOS, Android or Windows devices. That network effect is really now helping us a lot across all of our cloud efforts.

…

Keith Weiss – Morgan Stanley

Excellent, thank you for the question and a very nice quarter. First, I think to talk a little bit about the growth strategy of Nokia, you guys look to cut expenses pretty aggressively there, but this is – particularly smartphones is a very competitive marketplace, can you tell us a little bit about sort of the strategy to how you actually start to gain share with Lumia on a going forward basis? And may be give us an idea of what levels of share or what levels of kind unit volumes are you going to need to hit to get to that breakeven in FY16?

Satya Nadella

Let me start and Amy you can even add. So overall, we are very focused on I would say thinking about mobility share across the entire Windows family. I already talked about in my remarks about how mobility for us even goes beyond devices, but for this specific question I would even say that, we want to think about mobility not just one form factor of a mobile device because I think that’s where the ultimate price is.

But that said, we are even year-over-year basis seen increased volume for Lumia, it’s coming at the low end in the entry smartphone market and we are pleased with it. It’s come in many markets we now have over 10% that’s the first market I would sort of say that we need to track country-by-country. And the key places where we are going to differentiate is looking at productivity scenarios or the digital work and life scenario that we can light up on our phone in unique ways.

When I can take my Office Lens App use the camera on the phone take a picture of anything and have it automatically OCR recognized and into OneNote in searchable fashion that’s the unique scenario. What we have done with Surface and PPI shows us the way that there is a lot more we can do with phones by broadly thinking about productivity. So this is not about just a Word or Excel on your phone, it is about thinking about Cortana and Office Lens and those kinds of scenarios in compelling ways. And that’s what at the end of the day is going to drive our differentiation and higher end Lumia phones.

Amy Hood

And Keith to answer your specific question, regarding FY16, I think we’ve made the difficult choices to get the cost base to a place where we can deliver, on the exact scenario Satya as outlined, and we do assume that we continue to grow our units through the year and into 2016 in order to get to breakeven.

…

Rick Sherlund – Nomura

Thanks. I’m wondering if you could talk about the Office for a moment. I’m curious whether you think we’ve seen the worst for Office here with the consumer fall off. In Office 365 growth in margins expanding their – just sort of if you can look through the dynamics and give us a sense, do you think you are actually turned the corner there and we may be seeing the worse in terms of Office growth and margins?

Satya Nadella

Rick, let me just start qualitatively in terms of how I view Office, the category and how it relates to productivity broadly and then I’ll have Amy even specifically talk about margins and what we are seeing in terms of I’m assuming Office renewals is that probably the question. First of all, I believe the category that Office is in, which is productivity broadly for people, the group as well as organization is something that we are investing significantly and seeing significant growth in.

On one end you have new things that we are doing like Cortana. This is for individuals on new form factors like the phones where it’s not about anything that application, but an intelligent agent that knows everything about my calendar, everything about my life and tries to help me with my everyday task.

On the other end, it’s something like Delve which is a completely new tool that’s taking some – what is enterprise search and making it more like the Facebook news feed where it has a graph of all my artifacts, all my people, all my group and uses that graph to give me relevant information and discover. Same thing with Power Q&A and Power BI, it’s a part of Office 365. So we have a pretty expansive view of how we look at Office and what it can do. So that’s the growth strategy and now specifically on Office renewals.

Amy Hood

And I would say in general, let me make two comments. In terms of Office on the consumer side between what we sold on prem as well as the Home and Personal we feel quite good with attach continuing to grow and increasing the value prop. So I think that’s to address the consumer portion.

On the commercial portion, we actually saw Office grow as you said this quarter; I think the broader definition that Satya spoke to the Office value prop and we continued to see Office renewed in our enterprise agreement. So in general, I think I feel like we’re in a growth phase for that franchise.

…

Walter Pritchard – Citigroup

Hi, thanks. Satya, I wanted to ask you about two statements that you made, one around responsibly making the market for Windows Phone, just kind of following on Keith’s question here. And that’s a – it’s a really competitive market it feels like ultimately you need to be a very, very meaningful share player in that market to have value for developer to leverage the universal apps that you’re talking about in terms of presentations you’ve given and build in and so forth.

And I’m trying to understand how you can do both of those things once and in terms of responsibly making the market for Windows Phone, it feels difficult given your nearest competitors there are doing things that you might argue or irresponsible in terms of making their market given that they monetize it in different ways?

Satya Nadella

Yes. One of beauties of universal Windows app is, it aggregates for the first time for us all of our Windows volume. The fact that even what is an app that runs with a mouse and keyboard on the desktop can be in the store and you can have the same app run in the touch-first on a mobile-first way gives developers the entire volume of Windows which is 300 plus million units as opposed to just our 4% share of mobile in the U.S. or 10% in some country.

So that’s really the reason why we are actively making sure that universal Windows apps is available and developers are taking advantage of it, we have great tooling. Because that’s the way we are going to be able to create the broadest opportunity to your very point about developers getting an ROI for building to Windows. For that’s how I think we will do it in a responsible way.

Heather Bellini – Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you so much for your time. I wanted to ask a question about – Satya your comments about combining the next version of Windows and to one for all devices and just wondering if you look out, I mean you’ve got kind of different SKU segmentations right now, you’ve got enterprise, you’ve got consumer less than 9 inches for free, the offering that you mentioned earlier that you recently announced. How do we think about when you come out with this one version for all devices, how do you see this changing kind of the go-to-market and also kind of a traditional SKU segmentation and pricing that we’ve seen in the past?

Satya Nadella

Yes. My statement Heather was more to do with just even the engineering approach. The reality is that we actually did not have one Windows; we had multiple Windows operating systems inside of Microsoft. We had one for phone, one for tablets and PCs, one for Xbox, one for even embedded. So we had many, many of these efforts. So now we have one team with the layered architecture that enables us to in fact one for developers bring that collective opportunity with one store, one commerce system, one discoverability mechanism. It also allows us to scale the UI across all screen sizes; it allows us to create this notion of universal Windows apps and being coherent there.

So that’s what more I was referencing and our SKU strategy will remain by segment, we will have multiple SKUs for enterprises, we will have for OEM, we will have for end-users. And so we will – be disclosing and talking about our SKUs as we get further along, but this my statement was more to do with how we are bringing teams together to approach Windows as one ecosystem very differently than we ourselves have done in the past.

Ed Maguire – CLSA

Hi, good afternoon. Satya you made some comments about harmonizing some of the different products across consumer and enterprise and I was curious what your approach is to viewing your different hardware offerings both in phone and with Surface, how you’re go-to-market may change around that and also since you decided to make the operating system for sub 9-inch devices free, how you see the value proposition and your ability to monetize that user base evolving over time?

Satya Nadella

Yes. The statement I made about bringing together our productivity applications across work and life is to really reflect the notion of dual use because when I think about productivity it doesn’t separate out what I use as a tool for communication with my family and what I use to collaborate at work. So that’s why having this one team that thinks about outlook.com as well as Exchange helps us think about those dual use. Same thing with files and OneDrive and OneDrive for business because we want to have the software have the smart about separating out the state carrying about IT control and data protection while me as an end user get to have the experiences that I want. That’s how we are thinking about harmonizing those digital life and work experiences.

On the hardware side, we would continue to build hardware that fits with these experiences if I understand your question right, which is how will be differentiate our first party hardware, we will build first party hardware that’s creating category, a good example is what we have done with Surface Pro 3. And in other places where we have really changed the Windows business model to encourage a plethora of OEMs to build great hardware and we are seeing that in fact in this holiday season, I think you will see a lot of value notebooks, you will see clamshells. So we will have the full price range of our hardware offering enabled by this new windows business model.

And I think the last part was how will we monetize? Of course, we will again have a combination, we will have our OEM monetization and some of these new business models are about monetizing on the backend with Bing integration as well as our services attached and that’s the reason fundamentally why we have these zero-priced Windows SKUs today.

…

Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers

April 25, 2014 2:45 pm / 1 Comment on Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers

Quartely Highlights (from Earnings Call Slides):

Cloud momentum helps drive Q3 results

  • Outstanding momentum and results in our cloud services; total Commercial Cloud revenue more than doubled again this quarter
  • Office 365 Home currently has 4.4 million subscribers, adding nearly one million new users this quarter
  • Windows remained the platform of choice for business users, with double-digit increases in both Windows OEM Pro and Windows Volume Licensing revenue
  • With focus on spend prioritization, we grew our operating expenses only 2%, contributing to solid earnings growth

Microsoft CEO offer bright future [‘Saxo TV – TradingFloor.com’ YouTube channel, April 25, 2014]

Willing to change, that was the message new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was pushing as the firm released third quarter earnings.

Microsoft beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations, driving the company’s stock price up 3 percent on Thursday after earnings were released. Growth came from the company’s surface tablet sales and commercial business sector, according to Norman Young, Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar. Results were also aided by a less severe decline in the PC industry.

Young believes the company has already demonstrated continued growth for the fourth quarter and remains optimistic about the company’s new direction.

Nadella is shifting the traditionally PC focused company towards more mobile and cloud based technology. On the quarterly call with Wall Street he said, “What you can expect of Microsoft is courage in the face of reality; we will approach our future with a challenger mindset; we will be bold in our innovation.” Analysts are excited about the company’s future trajectory as he continues to push Microsoft’s business into the mobile and cloud computing world.

The company’s stock has increased 8 percent since Nadella assumed the role of CEO in February.

From Earnings Release FY14 Q3 [April 24, 2014]

“This quarter’s results demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We are making good progress in our consumer services like Bing and Office 365 Home, and our commercial customers continue to embrace our cloud solutions. Both position us well for long-term growth,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “We are focused on executing rapidly and delivering bold, innovative products that people love to use.”

…

Devices and Consumer revenue grew 12% to $8.30 billion.

  • Windows OEM revenue grew 4%, driven by strong 19% growth in Windows OEM Pro revenue.
  • Office 365 Home now has 4.4 million subscribers, adding nearly 1 million subscribers in just three months.
  • Microsoft sold in 2.0 million Xbox console units, including 1.2 million Xbox One consoles.
  • Surface revenue grew over 50% to approximately $500 million.
  • Bing U.S. search share grew to 18.6% and search advertising revenue grew 38%.

Commercial revenue grew 7% to $12.23 billion.

  • Office 365 revenue grew over 100%, and commercial seats nearly doubled, demonstrating strong enterprise momentum for Microsoft’s cloud productivity solutions.
  • Azure revenue grew over 150%, and the company has announced more than 40 new features that make the Azure platform more attractive to cloud application developers.
  • Windows volume licensing revenue grew 11%, as business customers continue to make Windows their platform of choice.
  • Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange, our productivity server offerings, collectively grew double-digits.

From Microsoft’s CEO Discusses F3Q 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Seeking Alpha, April 25, 2014]

From the prepared comments: “This quarter we continued our rapid cadence of innovation and announced a range of new services and features in three key areas – data, cloud, and mobility. SQL Server 2014 helps improve overall performance, and with Power BI, provides an end-to-end solution from data to analytics. Microsoft Azure preview portal provides a fully integrated cloud experience. The Enterprise Mobility Suite provides IT with a comprehensive cloud solution to support bring-your-own-device scenarios. These offerings help businesses convert big data into ambient intelligence, developers more efficiently build and run cloud solutions, and IT manage enterprise mobility with ease.”

Satya Nadella – Chief Executive Officer:

As I have told our employees, our industry does not respect tradition, it only respects innovation. This applies to us and everyone else. When I think about our industry over the next 5, 10 years, I see a world where computing is more ubiquitous and all experiences are powered by ambient intelligence. Silicon, hardware systems and software will co-evolve together and give birth to a variety of new form factors. Nearly everything we do will become more digitized, our interactions with other people, with machines and between machines. The ability to reason over and draw insights from everything that’s been digitized will improve the fidelity of our daily experiences and interactions. This is the mobile-first and cloud-first world. It’s a rich canvas for innovation and a great growth opportunity for Microsoft across all our customer segments.

To thrive we will continue to zero in on the things customers really value and Microsoft can uniquely deliver. We want to build products that people love to use. And as a result, you will see us increasingly focus on usage as the leading indicator of long-term success.

…

  • advancing Office, Windows and our data platform
  • continue to invest in our cloud capabilities including Office 365 and Azure in the fast growing SaaS and cloud platform markets
  • ensuring that our cloud services are available across all device platforms that people use
  • delivering a cloud for everyone on every device
  • have bold plans to move Windows forward:
    – investing and innovating in every dimension from form-factor to software experiences to price
    – Windows platform is unique in how it brings together consistent end user experiences across small to large screens, broadest platform opportunity for developers and control and assurance for IT
    – enhance our device capabilities with the addition of Nokia’s talented people and their depth in mobile technologies
  • our vision is about being going boldly into this mobile-first, cloud-first world

…

So this mobile-first cloud-first thing is a pretty deep thing for us. When we say mobile-first, in fact what we mean by that is mobility first. We think about users and their experiences spanning a variety of devices. So it’s not about any one form factor that may have some share position today, but as we look to the future, what are the set of experiences across devices, some ours and some not ours that we can power through experiences that we can create uniquely. …

… When you think about mobility first, that means you need to have really deep understanding of all the mobile scenarios for everything from how communications happen, how meetings occur. And those require us to build new capability. We will do some of this organically, some of it inorganically.

A good example of this is what we have done with Nokia. So we will – obviously we are looking forward to that team joining us building on the capability and then execution, even in the last three weeks or so we have announced a bunch of things where we talked about this one cloud for everyone and every device. We talked about how our data platform is going to enable this data culture, which is in fact fundamentally changing how Microsoft itself works.

We always talked about what it means to think about Windows, especially with the launch of this universal Windows application model. How different it is now to think about Windows as one family, which was not true before, but now we have a very different way to think about it.

…

[Re: Microsoft transition to more of a subscription business]

The way I look at it … we are well on our way to making that transition, in terms of moving from pure licenses to long-term contracts and as well as subscription business model. So when you talked about Platform-as-a-Service if you look at our commercial cloud it’s made up of the platform itself which is Azure. We also have a SaaS business in Office 365.

Now, one of the things that we want to make sure we look at is each of the constituent parts because the margin profile on each one of these things is going to different. The infrastructure elements right now in particular is going to have different economics versus some of the per-user applications in a SaaS mode have. It’s the blending of all of that that matters and the growth of that matters to us the most in this time where I think there is just a couple of us really playing in this market. I mean this is gold rush time in some sense of being able to capitalize on the opportunity.

And when it comes to that we have some of the best, the broadest SaaS solution and the broadest platform solution and that combination of those assets doesn’t come often. So what we are very focused on is how do we make sure we get our customer aggressively into this, having them use our service, be successful with it. And then there will be a blended set of margins across even just our cloud. And what matters to me in the long run is the magnitude of profit we generate given a lot of categories are going to be merged as this transition happens. And we have to be able to actively participate in it and drive profit growth.

…

From the prepared comments: “Office Commercial revenue was up 6%, driven by Office 365 as customers transitioned to our cloud productivity services. Office 365 revenue grew over 100%, and seats nearly doubled as well. Our productivity server offerings continue to perform well, with Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange, collectively growing double-digits.”

… to me the Office 365 growth is in fact driving our enterprise infrastructure growth which is driving Azure growth and that cycle to me is most exciting. So that’s one of the reasons why I want to have to keep indexing on the usage of all of this and the growth numbers you see is a reflection of that.

[Background from him in the call:] Office 365 I am really, really excited about what’s happening there, which is to me this is the core engine that’s driving a lot of our cloud adoption and you see it in the numbers and Amy will talk more about the numbers. But one of the fundamental things its also doing is it’s actually a SaaS application and it’s also an architecture for enterprises. And one of the most salient things we announced when we talked about the cloud for everyone and every device and we talked about Office 365 having now iPad apps, we also launched something called the enterprise mobility suite which is perhaps one of the most strategic things during that day that we announced which was that we now have a consistent and deep platform for identity management which by the way gets bootstrapped every time Office 365 users sign up, device management and data protection, which is really what every enterprise customer needs in a mobile-first world, in a world where you have SaaS application adoption and you have BYOD or bring your own devices happening.

…

[Re #1: about the new world in terms of more usage and more software driven rather than device driven, and the reengagement with the developer community in that world]

Developers are very, very important to us. If you’re in the platform business which we’re on both on the device side as well as on the cloud side, developers and their ability to create new value props and new applications on them is sort of likes itself. I would say couple of things.
…
… on the cloud side, in fact one of the most strategic APIs is the Office API. If you think about building an application for iOS, if you want single sign-on for any enterprise application, it’s the Azure AD single sign-on. That’s one of the things that we showed at Build, which is how to take advantage of list data in Sharepoint, contact information in Exchange, Azure active directory information for log-on. And those are the APIs that are very, very powerful APIs and unique to us. And they expand the opportunity for developers to reach into the enterprises. And then of course Azure is a full platform, which is very attractive to developers. So that gives you a flavor for how important developers are and what your opportunities are.

…

From the prepared comments: “Devices and Consumer Other revenue grew 18% to $1.95 billion, driven by search advertising and our Office 365 Home service. Search revenue grew 38%, offset by display [advertising] revenue which declined 24% this quarter. Gross margin grew 26% to $541 million. The combined revenue from Office 365 Home and Office Consumer, reported in the Devices & Consumer Licensing segment, grew 28%. … Office Consumer revenue increased 15% due to higher attach and strong sales in Japan, where we saw customers accelerate some purchases ahead of a national sales tax increase. Excluding that estimated impact, Office still outpaced the underlying consumer PC market.”

[Re: how you could potentially make what has been traditionally a unit model with Windows OEM revenue into something potentially more recurring in nature?]

… the thing I would add is this transition from one time let’s say licenses or device purchases to what is a recurring stream. You see that in a variety of different ways. You have back end subscriptions, in our case, there will be Office 365, there is advertising, there is the app store itself. So these are all things that attach to a device. And so we are definitely going to look to make sure that the value prop that we put together is going to be holistic in its nature and the monetization itself will be holistic and it will increase with the usage of the device across these services. And so that’s the approach we will take.

From the prepared comments: “Zero dollar licensing for sub 9-inch devices helps grow share and creates new opportunities to deliver our services, with minimal short term revenue impact”

[Re: the recent decision to offer Windows for free for sub 9-inch devices and its impact of Microsoft share in that arena, about Windows pricing in general, the kind of play in different market segmentations, and how Windows pricing is evolving]

Overall, the way I want us to look at Windows going forward is what does it mean to have the broadest device family and ecosystem? Because at the end of the day it’s about the users and developer opportunity we create for the entirety of the family. That’s going to define the health of the ecosystem. So, to me, it matters that we approach the various segments that we now participate with Windows, because that’s what has happened. Fundamentally, we participated in the PC market. Now we are in a market that’s much bigger than the PC market. We continue to have healthy share, healthy pricing and in fact growth as we mentioned in the enterprise adoption of Windows.

And that’s we plan to in fact add more value, more management, more security, especially as things are changing in those segments. Given BYOD and software security issues, we want to be able to reinforce that core value, but then when it comes to new opportunities from wearables to internet of things, we want to be able to participate on all of this with our Windows offering, with our tools around it. And we want to be able to price by category. And that’s effectively what we did. We looked at what it makes – made sense for us to do on tablets and phones below 9 inches and we felt that the price there needed to be changed. We have monetization vehicles on the back end for those. And that’s how we are going to approach each one of these opportunities, because in a world of ubiquitous computing, we want Windows to be ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean its one price, one business model for all of that. And it’s actually a market expansion opportunity and that’s the way we are going to go execute on it.

From the prepared comments: “Our universal app development platform is a big step towards enabling developers to engage users across PCs, tablets, and phones with a common set of APIs”

[Re #2: about the new world in terms of more usage and more software driven rather than device driven, and the reengagement with the developer community in that world]

Developers are very, very important to us. If you’re in the platform business which we’re on both on the device side as well as on the cloud side, developers and their ability to create new value props and new applications on them is sort of likes itself. I would say couple of things.

One is the announcements we made at Build on the device side is really our breakthrough worked for us which is we’re the only device platform today that has this notion of building universal apps with fantastic tooling around them. So that means you can target multiple of our devices and have common code across all of them. And this notion of having a Windows universal application help developers leverage them core asset, which is their core asset across this expanded opportunity is huge. There was this one user experience change that Terry Myerson talked about at Build, which expands the ability for anyone who puts up application in Windows Store to be now discovered across even the billion plus PC installed base. And so that’s I think a fantastic opportunity to developers and we are doing everything to make that opportunity clear and recruit developers to do more with Windows. And in that context, we will also support cross platforms. So this has been one of the things that we have done is the relationship with Unity. We have tooling that allows you to have this core library that’s portable. You can bring your code asset. In fact, we are the only client platform that has the abstractions available for the different languages and so on.

From the prepared comments: “Server product revenue grew 10%, driven by demand for our data platform, infrastructure and management offerings, and Azure.”

  • “SQL Server revenue grew more than 15%, and continued to outpace the data platform market; we continue to gain share in mission critical workloads”
  • “Windows Server Premium and System Center revenue showed continued strength from increased virtualization share and demand for hybrid infrastructure”

[Re: about the factors that have enabled Microsoft to continue growing server business well above its peers, and whether that kind of 10% ish growth is sustainable over fiscal 2015]

It’s a pretty exciting change that’s happening, obviously it’s that part of the business is performing very well for a while now, but quite frankly it’s fundamentally changing. One of the questions I often get asked is hey how did Windows server and the hypervisor underneath it becomes so good so soon. You’ve been at it for a long time but there seems to have something fundamentally changed I mean we’ve grown a lot of share recently, the product is more capable than it ever was, the rate of change is different and for one reason alone which is we use it to run Azure. So the fact that we use our servers to run our cloud makes our servers more competitive for other people to build their own cloud.

So it’s the same trend that’s accelerating us on both sides. The other thing that’s happening is when we sell our server products they for most part are just not isolated anymore. They come with automatic cloud tiering. SQL server is a great example. We just launched a new version of SQL which is by far the best release of SQL in terms of its features like it’s exploitation of in-memory. It’s the first product in the database world that has in-memory for all the three workloads of databases, OLTP, data warehousing and BI. But more importantly it automatically gives you high availability which means a lot to every CIO and every enterprise deployment by actually tiering to the cloud.

From the prepared comments: “Commercial Other revenue grew 31%, to $1.90 billion, driven by Commercial Cloud revenue which exceeded our guidance as customers transitioned to our cloud solutions faster than expected; Gross margin increased 80% as we realized margin expansion through engineering efficiencies and continued scale benefits; Enterprise services revenue grew 8%”

So those kinds of feature innovation which is pretty boundary less for us is breakthrough work. It’s not something that somebody who has been a traditional competitor of ours can do if you’re not even a first class producer of a public cloud service. So I think that we’re in a very unique place. Our ability to deliver this hybrid value proposition and be in a position, where we not only run a cloud service at scale, but we also provide the infrastructure underneath it as the server products to others. That’s what’s driving the growth. The shape of that growth and so on will change over time, but I feel very, very bullish about our ability to continue this innovation.

64-bit ARM (ARMv8-A) outlook: full smartphone penetration by 2018, volume start in servers next year, plus strong presence in enterprise networking

April 24, 2014 7:53 pm / Leave a comment

Previous ‘Experiencing the Cloud’ posts on the subject:

From: ARM Holdings plc, Q1 2014 Roadshow Slides [April 22, 2014]

Licensing Drives Market Share

ARM gains share by winning designs at leading semiconductor companies:

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    • imageWith choice of suppliers, OEMs are innovating with new types of products
      • ARM technology can be used for applications processing, connectivity and storage
      • Standard software is available today and enables all form factors to connect to the internet and display all the web pages, play videos, network with friends …

Mobile computers include handheld computers, tablets, and laptops

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Assumptions in Smartphones
– 100% penetration of Cortex-A processors
– 100% penetration of big.LITTLE in mid-range and premium
– 30% to 50% penetration of Mali graphics

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ARMv8-A Opportunity:

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The first quarter of 2014 saw particularly strong uptake of ARM’s most advanced ARMv8 processor technology with five licenses signed by four semiconductor companies. These customers are planning to develop chips for automotive infotainment systems, carrier networks and high performance computing. During the quarter we saw announcements from Marvell, Mediatek and Qualcomm on how they are developing multicore ARMv8 based processors for use in mid-range and premium smartphones and tablets. There were also announcements from Broadcom and Freescale, they plan to deploy ARMv8 based chips into data centers and enterprise networking equipment. ARMv8 is now the computing platform of choice for future chip designs not just in mobile computing but increasingly in consumer electronics, the data center and networking infrastructure.
…
We have had very strong licensing as you’ve seen in the numbers here and we have seen a number of exciting products announcements from some of our licensees. At Mobile World Congress recently we saw three key announcements from Qualcomm, from Marvell, from Mediatek talking about ARMv8 based chips for mid-range and high-end smartphones and tablets. Now those devices will take time to conclude, they will take time to get into products, take time to ship. But I think we’re in good track in generally in terms of the deployment of those version 8 of the architecture.
…
I think it’s worth pointing out that the v8 licensing cycle is in its relatively early stages. We have done sort of 30 licenses plus [out of the total 43 at the moment] compared with well over a 100 in v7.
…

ARM Progress in Servers:

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I don’t have the exact numbers on the top of my head but certainly there were more architecture licenses earlier in the lifetime of v8 than there were in v7, that was driven more about the addressing different markets. So most of the early architecture licensees for v8 in fact all the architecture licensees for v8 have been looking at markets that hasn’t traditionally served with our own base products and when it gets to market very early as some of the early guys took an architecture license, companies like Cavium, companies like Applied Micro, who really wanted to target the enterprise space, the data center, high end networking which wasn’t where ARM had traditionally played and that was a vehicle to enable them to get into that market using ARM technology. So that’s been a great vehicle for us because it has allowed us to broaden the penetration of the ARM architecture into new markets and we see that as part of our strategy for long term growth.
…
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In terms of SBSA [ARM Server Base System Architecture covering operating systems from Linux to Microsoft] the main purpose of that work was to accelerate the deployment of SoCs into the data center. The great beauty of our model is that every customer of ours can design a chip that’s different from any other customer and when it comes to enterprise software though there is great benefit in having some of the system architecture that is actually not differentiating, standardized, so it’s easier for software developers to write code that’s going to run on these chips. So SBSA was all about standardizing the right points of the chip to accelerate software development and hence accelerate deployment of real systems. So it’s less so about SoC development as it was about software development. We have seen the uptake of SBSA in the SoC architecture by a number of our licensees. Those chips are coming to market now and with a more clearly defined target architecture for software developers the work to we should see more on deployments in ARM based service sooner. But that’s what that’s all about.
…
Re: Can you give us an update on the server market? Where are you in terms of the ecosystem? And roughly by when do you think we can see commercial shipments of ARM-based servers? Is that something we can see before the end of this year, or is that likely to be more a 2015 phenomenon?

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So let me just briefly talk about servers, I think progress there is good. We’re starting to see silicon devices, we’re seeing a lot of effort go into software development for ARM based servers. I mean recently as an example we just saw Oracle introduce Java SE, which brings Java to many ARM-based devices and that’s very important technology for servers but again SBSA as a vehicle for accelerating software development, it is also very important and I think we will start to see commercial deployments later this year. I have been saying that sometime I still think that’s on track to happen and we will start to see volume start to take off I think probably next year but I do expect to see commercial deployment this year.

Re: … enterprise networking … since that’s quite a wide market, which goes from low-end stuff, like network interface cards, all the way up to base stations, routers, et cetera., the growth that you’re seeing, where is it coming from? …

ARM in Enterprise Networking:

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On enterprise networking you mentioned there is a whole wide range of end markets that could be targeted and where are we seeing success. It really is across the range, I mean we have been in routers for a long time, more kind of commercial grade. We’re starting to see use of ARM is switches, in base stations, big base stations, small base stations. It really is across the board and in that enterprise space that is something that’s very positive for our blended average royalty rate and we’re seeing effects of that. I mean a lot of the bigger chips that I was saying are using multiple-cores. There are large numbers of Cortex-A15 is being used for example in some of the bigger chips today and that obviously has a positive impact on the royalty rate per chip on average but again given the volumes this is one of those things where every little helps and makes a small change.

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ARM for the Datacenter – Ian Drew [Open Compute Project YouTube channel, Jan 31, 2014]

OCP Summit V – January 29, 2014 – San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California ARM for the Datacenter – Ian Drew, Chief Marketing Officer, ARM

ARMv8-A Licensee Fact Sheet [April 23, 2014]

ARMv8-A

  • Over 25 companies have licensed ARMv8-A technology
  • Over 40 licenses signed for ARMv8-A technology
  • Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Mediatek and Marvell have announced ARMv8-A chips for mobile devices
  • LG, Rockchip and Samsung have stated their intentions to release ARMv8-A chips for mobile
  • The first 64-bit mobile devices were based on ARM and shipped in 2013
  • ARMv8-A 64-bit kernel and tools are available today

ARMv8-A Public Licensees

  • Altera Altera’s FPGA with an embedded Cortex-A53 processor will be manufactured on Intel 14nm process.
  • AMD AMD’s Opteron A1100 server chips comes in two variants: 4x or 8x Cortex-A57 processors.
  • AMCC AMCC’s X-Gene server chip will feature in HP Moonshot systems this year.
  • Broadcom Broadcom will release a 3Ghz 16nm ARMv8-A chip optimized for Network Function Virtualisation.
  • Cavium Project Thunder SOCs will target the cloud and datacenter markets.
  • Huawei Lead partner on Cortex-A57
  • LG Lead partner on Cortex-A50 family and next-generation Mali GPUs. For LG devices.
  • Marvell Armada PXA 1928 contains a quad-core Cortex-A53 with integrated LTE modem. Sampling Mar 2014.
  • Mediatek MT6732 contains quad-core Cortex-A53 and Mali-T760.
  • Nvidia The 64-bit Tegra K1 contains a dual-core ARMv8-A processor. Mobile and automotive.
  • Rockchip Licensed Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processors. Mobile internet and smart home markets.
  • Samsung Samsung has said its first 64-bit chip for mobile devices will be based on an ARM-designed processor.
  • STMicro The Sti8K range of SOCs for the Digital Home is based on Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 technology.
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 410, 610 and 810 chips contain Cortex-A50 processors; the 810 uses big and little cores.

Accelerating ARMv8-A Powered Server Adoption Through Collaborative Platform Standardization (SBSA) [Jeff Underhill in Smart and Connected Blog of ARM, Jan 29, 2014]

When we saw the very first silicon based on the ARMv8-A architecture appear from ARM partner Applied Micro last year, I said the server world would never be the same again!

And why did I say that? I said it because as a partnership, we’re disrupting the data center market which is now in a period of unprecedented innovation. It may not be obvious but the ARM partnership has been disrupting the data center for years, as the architecture at the heart of the majority of mobile devices and many smart connected devices we’ve been indirectly impacting how hyper scale data centers are architected to address these new classes of cloud and web based workloads.

When the data center is fundamental to operating your business, as opposed to just providing supporting functions, cost savings become extremely important as they directly impact your bottom line. That’s why companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon and many more are laser-focused on reducing their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). However, early adoption of new innovation must be balanced with deployment and management costs since the ‘T’ in TCO represents ‘Total.’ Standards are fundamental to ensure ease of deployment and cross-platform portability in the data center, and that’s why we’re excited to announce a new foundational specification that we’ve been collaborating on for a while – the Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) specification.

For those of you wanting to jump right in and read the specification you can download it here.

Competition is good; Choice fosters competition

A few years ago several ARM partners set about revisiting server design to better meet these new classes of workloads in a way that would provide the next step function efficiency improvements and, ultimately, TCO. The ARM partnership showed the world what was possible when you challenge convention and empower engineers with innovative, enterprise-grade technology building blocks whose DNA is strongly rooted in the power-efficient mobile world. Collectively we’ve already changed the industry as incumbent players have taken note and adjusted their roadmaps in favor of system-on-chip (SoC) designs.

While we’ve seen initial server success with 32-bit ARMv7 architecture-based solutions from Marvell & Texas Instruments, the arrival of 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture-based solutions marks a significant increase in the number and diversity of solutions. In addition to Applied Micro, AMD, Broadcom and Cavium have all made 64-bit announcements. Choice gives data center operators the opportunity to select best-of-breed solutions that enable them to meet their TCO goals. As a result, there is clear and growing demand for more workload-optimized solutions by a server market that was largely devoid of choice for the past 20+ years. However, as mentioned earlier data center operators are responsible for managing complex environments, and they must balance new technology adoption with any potential complexities (that a heterogeneous environment may bring).

Standards accelerate time-to-market and ease deployment

Imagine for a moment that you have a data center with thousands of existing servers. You may have a single OS running throughout your data center or you may have multiple OS’s, but either way you will likely have a single variant of each OS that deploys across all servers in your data center. Having to adopt a new and unique OS in order to roll out new and innovative hardware is not acceptable. It would quickly become unwieldy to manage and cause significant maintenance overhead (especially managing updates and patch sets to fix major bugs or security issues).

With multiple ARMv8-A architecture-based server solutions coming to market this year, it’s important to ensure that OS, firmware and software developers can rapidly develop and deploy on ARM-based servers, especially since there will be more choice and a broader diversity of solutions. The ARM partnership worked together to help ensure this would be the case when ARMv8-A architecture-based servers became a reality, and this is why the release of the ARM Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) specification is such an important milestone. The SBSA specification has been in development for some time (as evidenced by compliant silicon already existing), and represents close collaboration across the ARM partnership from software companies, OEMs and silicon partners, including: AMD, Applied Micro, Broadcom, Canonical, Cavium, Citrix, Dell, HP, Linaro, Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE and Texas Instruments.

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A large part of the ARM value proposition stems from a licensing model that empowers partners with technology building blocks on which they can innovate and develop compelling solutions. This means standardization efforts must strike a balance to avoid diluting or eliminating innovation. As owners and stewards of the ARM architecture, we are pleased to collaborate with other industry leaders to drive standards that help strike that balance and enable OS, firmware and software developers to rapidly develop and deploy on ARM-based servers.

The SBSA is a foundational specification that will evolve over time; encompassing additional capabilities such as live migration of virtual machines between different ARMv8-A architecture-based systems. It is a hardware specification that firmware, OS and virtualization companies will use to target a logical progression of platforms to accelerate development and ensure cross-platform portability.

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SBSA standardizes low-level CPU and SoC attributes such as timers, interrupt controllers, watch dog timers, performance counters and also specifies minimum hardware requirements that firmware and OS vendors expect to be present. It stipulates adherence to industry standards for boot devices so that they can be managed in a consistent manner, and requires all hardware be describable or discoverable, to eliminate the need for explicit platform knowledge baked into the OS kernel. In order to provide a logical platform progression over time, the specification defines levels of standardization.  This provides a common language for the ecosystem to describe SoC and software capabilities, and ensure they intersect. In the example below, each level introduces additional requirements and is a superset of the previous level (unless explicitly documented). Silicon vendors are permitted to support capabilities beyond a given level as long as software created for that level is able to run unmodified. OS vendors are able to develop support for multiple levels in a single OS offering, thereby accelerating time-to-market and reducing maintenance by ensuring they can run across all ARMv8-A architecture-based server platforms:

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The ARM partnership has consistently demonstrated its ability to collaborate and address common challenges that benefit the ecosystem at large. Linaro, a not-for-profit engineering organization founded 3.5 years ago, is another great example of this.  More specifically, the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG) is focused exclusively on the development, test and up streaming of server-specific open source software. Linaro, through close collaboration with the open source community, is helping to implement some of the key software components in support of the SBSA specification. Linaro is also identifying potential areas for additional standardization that will benefit the open source community and improve software development and long-term maintainability. It’s a symbiotic relationship that will help ensure good software support exists in the Linux upstream:

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ARM is excited to reach this important milestone, especially with the support of a vibrant and growing ecosystem, and we also realize there is still much work ahead to achieve the goals we’ve set for ourselves. This year represents an important inflection point for the ARM partnership as ARMv8-A architecture-based server solutions emerge and significantly extend our reach across a broader set of data center workloads representing a much broader market opportunity. The SBSA is the first of multiple specifications we expect to publicly release … so watch this space!

In the meantime, “you are now free to move around the ARM-based server ecosystem!”

ARM Ecosystem Collaborates to Deliver Initial Server Platform Standard [press release, Jan 29, 2014]

Accelerates data center software development for ARM-based servers

Cambridge, UK – 29 January 2014 – ARM® today announced the collaborative development and immediate availability of a platform standard for ARMv8-A based (64-bit) servers, known as the ARM ‘Server Base System Architecture’ (SBSA) specification. This effort included input and support from software companies such as Canonical, Citrix, Linaro, Microsoft, Red Hat and SUSE, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) including Dell and HP along with a broad set of silicon partners. This specification provides a framework for the deployment of innovative ARM architecture-based solutions in data center applications, and it will help accelerate software development and enable portability between ARM-based platforms. This specification is focused on aligning the ARM partnership around key system elements; empowering the ecosystem to build differentiated, value-added solutions that accelerate innovation and choice in the marketplace.

Data centers demand standards-based software and hardware offerings to ensure ease of deployment and manageability. Releasing the SBSA specification marks the beginning of a broader standardization activity that will simplify the development and deployment process for the entire developer ecosystem – from silicon to software, and all the way through to end-users. This initiative will accelerate the software ecosystem for ARM-based servers by providing operating system vendors (OSVs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) the ability to deliver technology that addresses the entirety of the ARM server community, featuring a rich, broad set of devices and platforms in a common way.

“As ARM’s data center ecosystem continues its rapid growth, this milestone enables partners to focus on their innovation while building on standards that help simplify their development and accelerate their time-to-market,” said Mike Muller, chief technology officer, ARM. “As owners and stewards of the ARM architecture, we are pleased to collaborate with other industry leaders to drive standards that enable OS, firmware and software developers to rapidly develop and deploy on ARM-based servers.”

“We are extremely pleased to see ARM take these steps, which we believe are very much in line with the principles of the Open Compute Project,” said Frank Frankovsky, president and chairman, Open Compute Project Foundation. “These standardization efforts will help speed adoption of ARM in the datacenter by providing consumers and software developers with the consistency and predictability they require, and by helping increase the pace of innovation in ARM technologies by eliminating gratuitous differentiation in areas like device enumeration and boot process.” Mobility and the Internet of Things (IoT) are driving the rapid adoption of cloud-based services, and data center operators have to adapt to the shifting characteristics of these new workloads. In order to efficiently meet these demands, the industry is seeking a richer choice of targeted solutions where software portability and standardization are key deployment considerations.

ARM Partner Quotes

AMD:
“Adopting industry standards and defining base platforms are essential for creating a healthy ARM-based 64-bit server ecosystem,” said Dr. Leendert van Doorn, corporate fellow and corporate vice president, AMD. “AMD is excited to have worked with ARM on the Server Base System Architecture requirements, and the public release of this specification will accelerate the adoption of ARM-based 64-bit servers.”

AppliedMicro:
“With X-Gene as the first product in the industry to be SBSA compliant, AppliedMicro is in full support of the ARM server standardization efforts,” said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, president and chief executive officer, AppliedMicro. “Bringing together OS vendors, server OEMs and silicon providers to work cohesively is providing a fully inter-operable standard platform at the same time fostering innovation resulting in compelling server solutions.”

Broadcom:
“Broadcom strongly believes in the value of standardization and ensuring software interoperability for the long-term success of the 64-bit ARM architecture,” said Ron Jankov, senior vice president and general manager, Processors and Wireless Infrastructure, Broadcom. “With the ARM 64-bit architecture, Broadcom is uniquely positioned to provide leadership in the 64-bit ARM ecosystem with server-class CPUs, best-in-class hardware acceleration, and data-center networking expertise.”

Canonical:
“ARM-based servers have the potential to transform the datacenter ecosystem back into a dynamic, innovative market,” said Christian Reis, vice president, Hyperscale Computing, Canonical. “We see the SBSA effort removing barriers to adoption by providing a framework for system implementation that any technology supplier can easily understand and follow. Canonical fully supports this effort and is committed to SBSA compliance for our Ubuntu Server product family.”

Cavium:
“Cavium’s Project Thunder will provide a family of multicore ARMv8 64-bit server-class processors for the cloud and data centers,” said Gopal Hegde, vice president and general manager, Data Center Processor Group, Cavium. “Working closely with ARM and the ecosystem, the Thunder product offering will provide a comprehensive workload optimized portfolio solution that will be interoperable across multiple management and orchestration standards. We applaud ARM’s leadership in spearheading the Server Platform Standard that will accelerate the adoption of the ARM architecture in the data center and cloud environment.”

My insert here: CAVIUM 64bit SoCs for Base Stations at MWC 2014 [Charbax YouTube channel, Feb 28, 2014]

Cavium talks about and shows their latest enterprise, data center, wired and wireless networking OCTEON and OCTEON Fusion SoCs based on ARMv8 64bit and MIPS, making customized optimized core designs for each in use for cloud servers and base stations among other. CAVIUM claims that their ARMv8 64bit enterprise/server design, due to be released later this year, provides more performance at lower power consumption than Intel´s x86.

Citrix:
“Citrix is the cloud company that enables mobile workstyles. Citrix is committed to open standards and has been recently engaged in the Server Base System Architecture discussion. We see the publication of the document as a positive move for the industry,” said Ahmed Sallam, vice president and chief technology officer, Hardware, Security, Emerging Solutions and IP, Citrix Systems. “The SBSA will foster the ARM-based server ecosystem and will act as a foundation for the coming years. Citrix will remain engaged in SBSA discussions and we will continue to provide our input based on what benefits our industry, partners and customers.”

DELL:
“Open and standards-based technologies have been a cornerstone of Dell’s philosophy for 30 years,” said Brian Payne, executive director of server solutions for Dell. “As multiple ARMv8 server system-on-chips become available, it’s important that we can effectively deliver new innovations and freedom of choice to our customers. A well-defined, standards-based platform is instrumental in providing OS portability and a familiar user experience to our customers seeking to deploy these new classes of server offerings. We are pleased with the progress the ARM ecosystem has made towards achieving this significant goal.”

HP:
“HP has supported ARM’s standardization effort since its inception, recognizing the benefits of an extensible platform with value-added features,” said Dong Wei, HP fellow. “With the new SBSA specification, we are able to establish a simplified baseline for deploying ARM-based solutions and look forward to future HP products based on the ARM architecture.”

Linaro:
“The ARM architecture and business model is unique in enabling rapid innovation from multiple ARM licensees. Many companies are now building innovative and differentiated solutions for the next generation low-power data center,” said David Rusling, chief technical officer, Linaro. “ARM’s SBSA is a critical component of enabling technology to standardize the common part of these solutions, and we look forward to working with ARM and ARM’s licensees on utilizing this technology to accelerate the deployment of a broad range of ARMv8-based server products.”

Red Hat:
“Today’s announcement of ARM Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) underscores the importance of having standards for the successful adoption and deployment of modern computer architectures, such as ARMv8,” said Jon Masters, Chief ARM Architect, Red Hat. “Red Hat’s support for standards via our participation in the Linaro Enterprise Group, our unique insight as the world’s leading supplier of Open Source server technologies and the collaborative ecosystem effort led by ARM, has enabled us to contribute to the creation of a unified common platform capable of supporting the ARM Architecture at Hyperscale”.

SUSE:
“SUSE has worked on and supported development around ARM processors for several years, and we anticipate ARM processor adoption in cloud, big data and high-performance computing applications,” said Ralf Flaxa, vice president of engineering, SUSE. “SUSE welcomes the SBSA standardization efforts and is proud to contribute to the server platform standard’s development. As the market emerges, this standard will become a key factor determining success in the enterprise ecosystem, and we look forward to working with platforms that implement it.”

Texas Instruments:
“As an early innovator of unique server-grade KeyStone SoCs that combine digital signal processors, ARM Cortex processors, packet processing, security acceleration and Ethernet switching, TI applauds the ARM ecosystem for its collaboration on delivering the SBSA specification, ” said Bill Mills, chief technologist for open source, Texas Instruments. “Standardizations, such as SBSA, enable software simplification without impacting the innovation our heterogeneous compute elements bring to high-performance compute customers.”

To download a copy of the Server Base System Architecture specification, go to: http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.den0029/index.html.

SBSA: The Right Level of Server Standardization [Ian Ferguson on Smart and Connected Blog of ARM, Jan 29, 2014]

At the January Facebook OpenCompute Project event in San Jose, ARM announced the public release of the system base architecture specification (SBSA). Jeff Underhill [see earlier] has gone into some detail in his blog about the details included in this document. As one of the renegades that started the ARM server program several years ago, I felt it appropriate to share some thoughts as to why Jeff and I initiated this work and how it fits into the server program that ARM and its partners are feverously working on.

About a year ago, I moved out of the server marketing program to lead a number of other vertical market initiatives. I have continued to monitor (some may say I have “separation anxiety issues”) the excellent progress being made by those that have taken over the reins, including Lakshmi Mandyam who now leads this initiative.

In any market initiative, the success of ARM technology is achieved by finding the right balance between standardization and innovation. Standardization enables a software ecosystem to coalesce. To quote my business friend Frank Frankovsky, the pioneer and visonary behing the OpenCompute Project at Facebook, we need to avoid “gratuitous differentiation”; namely differences between devices that offer limited differentiation at the platform level yet cause challenge for the software ecosystem. Innovation enables silicon partners to integrate functionality that will provide specific benefits for the particular application or a set of applications. This approach encourages multiple companies to enter a particular application, giving end users and platform builders a choice of solutions from which to select. Competition is good. The pace of innovation continues at an incredible pace.

From the outset, the goal of server initiative was to bring the level of innovation seen in the mobile world to a market devoid of disruption and change for so long. This sounds easy. However achieving this balance is challenging, especially as ARM’s model is to agree on these specifications with a consensus driven culture across the partnership as opposed to mandating and imposing a particular direction. It is important for our partners to feel there are areas of system functionality that they can implement while remaining compliant with the SBSA. A reader of this specification will soon realize that the document does not prescribe the functionality of an ARM based server down at the connector or form factor level. To this end, Jeff Underhill started this standardization work when I was leading the server initiative. It is fantastic to see it coming into the public domain today.

As the press release indicates, a number of companies have come together to work on this specification. Beyond the companies that have made public announcements about their activities in the ARM server domain, little should be implied about commitments by the companies list here to build ARM products for this domain. Merely that through partnership, there is a “recipe” for ensuring a 64-bit server operating system will boot in a standard way irrespective of the ARMv8-based SoC that a platform is based on.

As I mentioned above, ARM believes that it is important to have many silicon partners pursuing a specific application domain. It fuels innovation and enables companies further down the value chain to select the device that best meets their requirements. The emergence of cloud computing has changed the mix of compute, memory and IO in the workloads. I expect this to change even more with the plethora of connected sensors that will start to communicate with hosted services. As Mike Muller, ARM’s CTO states, “Big Data starts with Little Data”. When it comes to infrastructure equipment, one size does not fit all. As many press and market analysts observed, Calxeda ceased operations last month. Calxeda was a strong pioneer in this domain and it is disappointing to seem them close their doors. That said, as evidenced at OCP with the product announcement by AMD of their Opteron™ A1100 Series based on the Cortex-A57 processor and the demonstrations of the X-Gene product in platforms by Applied Micro, there are several others rising up to carry the torch. I expect other semiconductor companies that have publically declared their intent to pursue this domain such as Broadcom & Cavium to share progress updates in the coming months and quarters.

It is perfectly fair (and indeed natural) for some industry analysts, end customers and system builders to remain skeptical. It is down to the ARM Ecosystem to demonstrate the benefits promised for server applications to shift the opinions of the doubters. Icebergs have about 90% of their mass under the surface. Just like the SBSA announcement did today, additional elements of the program will start to rise above the surface and become visible in the public domain in the coming months and years that will also help crystalize the direction of the program. I remain incredibly confident of the value proposition and the vector on which ARM and its partners are headed.

OCP Summit V 2014 kicks off the year of ARM servers [Lakshmi Mandyamon Smart and Connected Blog of ARM, Feb 15, 2014]

The last week in January was a great week for the ARM server ecosystem and we had a great week at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit. My OCP summit week started with an interview with my friends at ‘theCUBE’ lakshmi mandyan – YouTube. We talked about how much OCP summit had grown with attendance almost doubling from 2013 to 2014. The other conversation we had was about how OCP summit was creating a voice for “hobbyists” or the “maker movement”. Well at ARM we have been feeding the maker movement across the spectrum right from our Cortex M0 based MBED to Arduino to Rasberry Pi and now with some of the OCP platforms that were announced at the show from partners like AMD and Applied Micro the momentum continues.

The morning of OCP summit featured a “group hug” in the guise of AMD, Applied Micro and Intel all going one after the other with keynotes. Andrew Feldman of AMD delivered a great presentation on how the world has changed and the implications that change has for the data center Disruptive Technologies for the Datacenter – Andrew Feldman – YouTube he also announced that the Opteron A1100 chip, featuring 8 Cortex-A57 processors and a plethora of other integration, will be sampling in March and that they made an OCP contribution based on this processor.

Paramesh Gopi CEO of Applied Micro also shared his vision on where the X-GENE product line is evolving [with next gen X-Gene and X-Weave] to with FinFet, 16+ cores [on a die], RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE [240G I/O]) continuing to drive higher integration that will drive down TCO Paramesh Gopi, Applied Micro – YouTube

OCP Summit V – January 28, 2014 – San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California Paramesh Gopi, Applied Micro

On day2 our CMO Ian Drew delivered a great key note titled “ARM in the Data Center”  ARM for the Datacenter – Ian Drew – YouTube [was included earlier into this post] where he announced the collaborative creation and public release of the Server Base System Architecture (SBSA). My colleagues Jeff Underhill and Ian Ferguson have already blogged about that announcement in detail the links to their blogs can be found here and here respectively.

There were several articles published about the SBSA launch. A couple of my favorite quotes were:

    • “We can only applaud these efforts: it will eliminate a lot of useless time investments, lower costs and help make ARM partners a real option in servers. With the expected launch of many ARM Cortex-A57 based server SoCs this year, it looks like 2014 can be a breakthrough year for ARM servers.” – Johan De Gelas, AnandTech
    • “The more powerful, 64-bit designs are a threat to Intel Corp., which controls more than 95 percent of the market for chips in servers that use personal-computer processors. ARM, whose designs are found in chips that run Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, is betting that the regulated designs will be cheaper to use and create a wider market for the chips.” – Amy Thomson, Bloomberg News

During the fireside chat following Ian’s keynote, Marc Andreessen was bullish on ARM in the Data Center http://youtu.be/O-gENvy0F-w . He shared how he believed that the cost burden that data centers were under was demanding a broader supply chain including players in the current smartphone supply chain. He talked about the grand unification of the data center and smart phone supply chain and how ARM based chips would be the first case study.

The momentum has continued beyond OCP summit. Dell was one of the first OEM partners for ARM when they announced their Dell Copper platform. They are continuing to invest in ARM programs, a great example being the recently announced proof of concept with Applied Micro for Hyperscale development Dell offers 64-bit ARM microserver proof-of-concept for hyperscale on the heels of Open Compute Summit momentum – Dell4… .

Last week I was doing a number of press and analyst briefings in Europe with our partner AMD on their announcement and people are clearly excited about the history AMD brings to the ARM party in terms of being a credible vendor of server technologies. It has also been fun watching them share their story about why ARM will win in the long run!
2014 is the year of ARM servers!

Microsoft cloud server designs for the Open Compute Project to offer an alternative to the Facebook designs based on a broader set of workloads

January 30, 2014 10:45 pm / Leave a comment

… while neither Amazon nor Google publicize their server designs yet

Designing Cloud Infrastructure for 1m+ Server Scale [“cloud scale”] – Kushagra Vaid (General Manager, Cloud Server Engineering, Microsoft) [Open Compute Project YouTube channel, Jan 29, 2014]

OCP Summit V – January 28, 2014 – San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California Designing Cloud Infrastructure for 1m+ Server Scale [“cloud scale”]- Kushagra Vaid, General Manager, Cloud Server Engineering, Microsoft For more information about OCP go to:http://www.opencompute.org/

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“The chassis can take 24 servers”

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Microsoft Contributes Cloud Server Specification to Open Compute Project [Microsoft Data Centers Blog, Jan 27, 2014]

Today Microsoft  announced that it will be joining the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) and will be contributing hardware specifications, design collateral (CAD and Gerber files), and system management source code for Microsoft’s cloud server designs. These specifications apply to the server fleet being deployed for Microsoft’s largest global cloud services, including Windows Azure, Bing, and Office 365. This significant contribution demonstrates our continued commitment to sharing our key learnings and experiences from more than 19 years of operating online services with the industry.

Microsoft manages a global portfolio of datacenters across all continents, has an installed base of over one million servers, and delivers more than 200 services for 1+ billion customers and 20+ million businesses in 90+ markets. Deploying and operating a huge cloud-scale [Cloud-Scale Data Centers, Feb 11, 2013; see also Microsoft Cloud-Scale Data Center designs [Microsoft Data Centers Blog, March 26, 2013]] infrastructure requires careful attention to several system design principles:

  • Simplicity of the design is essential, since at cloud-scale the smallest issues can get magnified and potentially cause unexpected availability issues for customers.
  • Efficiency gains across cost, power, and performance vectors are required to deliver the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).
  • Modular system design provides flexibility to accommodate hardware changes necessary for evolving workload requirements, plus it helps streamline the integration of new technologies.
  • Supply chain agility is essential for adapting to rapid variations in server capacity demand signals.
  • Ease of operations is key to ensuring system management at scale and cost effective servicing for hardware failures in the datacenter.
  • Environmental sustainability is an important part of our cloud strategy. This includes minimizing material use and ensure re-use of components wherever possible across the server lifecycle.

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Based on these guiding principles, Microsoft has designed an innovative system architecture that we believe will drive design and operational efficiency beyond the conventional commodity servers currently available in the market. The key design features include:

Chassis-based shared design for cost and power efficiency

  • EIA rack mountable 12U Chassis leverages existing industry standards
  • Modular design for simplified solution assembly: mountable sidewalls, 1U trays, high efficiency commodity power supplies, large fans for efficient air movement, management card
  • Up to 24 commodity servers per chassis (two servers side-by-side), option for JBOD storage expansion
  • Optimized for mass contract manufacturing
  • Up to 40% cost savings and 15% power efficiency benefits vs. traditional enterprise servers
  • Estimated to save 10,000 tons of metal per one million servers manufactured

Blind-mated signal connectivity for servers

  • Decoupled architecture for server node and chassis enabling simplified installation and repair
  • Cable-free design, results in significantly fewer operator errors during servicing
  • Reduction of ‘No problem found’ incidents from loose cables
  • Up to 50% improvement in deployment and service times

Network and storage cabling via backplane architecture

  • Passive PCB backplane for simplicity and signal integrity risk reduction
  • Architectural flexibility for multiple network types such as 10Gbe/40Gbe, Copper/Optical
  • One-time cable install during chassis assembly at factory
  • No cable touch required during production operations and on-site support
  • Expected to save 1,100 miles of cable for a deployment of one million servers

Secure and scalable systems management

  • X86 SoC-based management card per chassis
  • Multiple layers of security for hardware operations: TPM secure boot, SSL transport for commands, Role-based authentication via Active Directory domain
  • REST API and CLI interfaces for scalable systems management
  • Support for server diagnostics and self-health checks
  • Up to 75% improvement in operational agility vs. traditional enterprise servers

The Microsoft cloud server is a revolutionary design that brings the benefits of commoditization and cloud-scale operations to the industry. The specifications we’re contributing to OCP embody our long history and deep experience in datacenter architecture and cloud computing, and our commitment to sharing our cloud infrastructure best practices with the industry since 2007. As part of joining OCP, Microsoft will be making the following contributions for our Microsoft cloud server design and manufacturing collateral:

  • Hardware specifications
    • Server, mezzanine card, tray, chassis, and management card
    • Management APIs and protocols (for chassis and server)
  • Mechanical CAD models
    • Chassis, server, chassis manager, and mezzanines
  • Gerber files
    • Management card, power distribution board, and tray backplane
  • Source code for Chassis infrastructure
    • Server management, fan and power supply control, diagnostics and repair policy

Microsoft will also be engaging in the OCP community via active participation in the various sub-committees and engineering forums. I am pleased to announce that Mark Shaw, Director of Hardware Development on my team, has been appointed as the Chair of the Server committee via the OCP community voting process. Additionally, MS Open Tech is  releasing an open source implementation of the Chassis Manager specification [“As part of this effort, MS Open Tech is releasing an open source reference implementation of the Chassis Manager specification. Today, this code, is available on GitHub, and implements functions such as server management, and fan and power supply control.”]. We would like to help to build an open source software community for this project within OCP.

Our hardware partners are developing products for Microsoft based on these specifications and we look forward to availability of commercial offerings from our partners in the near future.

We are excited to share our cloud infrastructure learnings and operational experiences with the broader community to help drive the industry efficiencies forward, reduce the cost of hardware for all participants, and accelerate the adoption of cloud computing. You can find more information about the Microsoft cloud server specification via my customer discussion video, our white paper and at www.opencompute.org. 

Compare this to the current (certified) and upcoming (new) boards from Intel based on current OCP specification (Decathlete for financial services, and Windmill the Facebook design with Intel for the dense servers) particularly designed by Facebook, as well as the upcoming Leopard being the next-generation compute module for Facebook): 

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But keep in mind Intel’s advanced interest in:  

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All from Designing the Datacenter of the Future – Eric Hooper (Director, Cloud Service Provider Optimization, Intel Corporation) [Open Compute Project YouTube channel, Jan 29, 2014] video:

OCP Summit V – January 28, 2014 – San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California Designing the Datacenter of the Future – Eric Hooper To find out more about OCP go to: http://www.opencompute.org/

In that video there is also a testimonial part from Goldmann Sachs using the jointly developed Decathlete design (code named “Swiss Army Knife”).

Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 v2 Family (Brickland Platform)

January 15, 2014 9:25 am / Leave a comment

Update: as Introducing the new IBM System x3850 X6: High performance and mission critical! with “Processing power, thanks to the latest Intel Xeon E7-4800 v2 and E7-8800 v2 processors” happened (albeit on [IBM System x Blog, Jan 16, 2014]) Intel cancelled its own videos already available on its YouTube channel.

IBM System x3850 X6 video walk-through [IBMRedbooks YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

The IBM® System x3850 X6 server is the sixth generation of the IBM Enterprise X-Architecture®, delivering innovation with enhanced scalability, reliability, availability, and serviceability features to enable optimal performance for mission-critical databases, enterprise applications, and virtualized environments. The x3850 X6 pack numerous fault-tolerant and high-availability features into a high-density, rack-optimized lid-less package that helps to significantly reduce the space needed to support massive network computing operations and simplify servicing. An x3850 X6 supports up to four Intel Xeon processor E7-4800 v2 or E7-8800 v2 high-performance processors and up to 6 TB of memory.

The reason became obvious when  came the announcement that Lenovo Plans to Acquire IBM’s x86 Server Business [IBM press release, Jan 23, 2014] with “This includes System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations.” More than a month was needed to rearrange the focus of Intel’s announcement. Finally an even stranger announcement came out with Microsoft totally missing on the announcement stage despite the record results with its groundbreaking SQL Server 2014. End of the update

OR Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800/2800 v2
OR Intel® Xeon® “Mission Critical Expandable” v2
More information (not yet v2): www.intel.com/xeonE7
– Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 v2 Family Delivers Industry’s Most Advanced Technology for In-Memory Analytics to Accelerate Major Business Transformations [press release, Feb 18, 2014]

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

  • Introduces new Intel® Xeon® processor E7 v2 family designed for mission critical computing, featuring the industry’s largest memory support1 to enable large data sets to be analyzed rapidly and deliver real-time insights based on a vast amount of diverse data.
  • Delivers up to 80 percent more performance and up to 80 percent lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than alternative RISC architectures2.
  • The new processor family achieves twice the average performance and has four times the I/O bandwidth of the previous generation3.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 18, 2014 – To help companies in a variety of industries from retail and healthcare to banking and transportation turn data into actionable insights, Intel Corporation today introduced the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 v2 family.

Using analytics enables businesses to make decisions that improve top-line and bottom-line results. The Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family delivers new capabilities to process and analyze large, diverse amounts of data to unlock information that was previously inaccessible.

“Organizations that leverage data to accelerate business insights will have a tremendous edge in this economy,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “The advanced performance, memory capacity and reliability of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family enable IT organizations to deliver real-time analysis of large data sets to spot and capitalize on trends, create new services and deliver business efficiency.”

Big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are providing enormous opportunities for many organizations to grow as they create revenue-generating services from the information they are able to derive. The big data technology and services market is expected to grow 27 percent annually through 2017 to reach $32.4 billion4. A leading driver of this growth is the immense amount of data coming from connected devices making up the IoT, which is projected to grow to 30 billion devices by 20205. Investments in the highest performing technologies and analysis solutions can also deliver significant cost savings. For example, Intel’s IT organization expects to achieve cost savings and increased bottom-line revenue of nearly half a billion dollars through use of analytics solutions by 2016.

New Big Data Processing and Analytics Capabilities with Relentless Reliability
The Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family has triple the memory capacity of the previous generation processor family, allowing much faster and thorough data analysis. In-memory analytics places and analyzes an entire data set – such as an organization’s entire customer database – in the system memory rather than on traditional disk drives. This method is gaining in popularity due to the increased need for more complex analytics. Industry analyst firm Gartner expects 35 percent6 of mid- to large-sized companies will adopt in-memory analytics by 2015, up from 10 percent in 2012 and predicts at least 50 percent of Global 2000 companies will use in-memory computing to deliver significant additional benefits from investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP).

eBay, one of the world’s largest and most complex online marketplaces, handles massive data sets of more than 50 petabytes (PB) for more than 100 million users. Based on initial testing of the new Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 and SAP’s HANA* in-memory analytics software, eBay has seen greater performance7 and understanding of larger data sets that will help drive additional revenue opportunities for its customers.

Built for up to 32-socket8 servers, with configurations supporting up to 15 processing cores and up to 1.5 terabytes (TB) of memory per socket, the new processor family achieves twice the average performance of the previous generation3. These enhancements help businesses that run mission critical applications including business support systems (BSS), customer relationship management (CRM), and ERP to operate more efficiently, at lower cost and with faster response times2. For example, a sales team with these capabilities can maximize revenue by pinpointing the best time to sell a product, or let an oil and gas company better predict when its platforms require preventative maintenance.

To reduce data bottlenecks, the Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 family features Intel® Integrated I/O, Intel® Data Direct I/O and support for PCIe 3.0*, achieving up to four times the I/O bandwidth over the previous generation9 and providing extra capacity for storage and networking connections.

System uptime and reliability also remains a key requirement for mission critical applications. The Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 family continues Intel’s tradition of delivering world-class reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS). Intel® Run Sure Technology10 is designed for “five nines” solutions essential for business-critical data by reducing the frequency and cost of planned and unplanned downtime.

Extensive Industry Support
Starting today, 21 system manufacturers from around the world will announce more than 40 Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family-based platforms. These manufacturers include Asus*, Bull*, Cisco*, Dell*, EMC*, Fujitsu*, Hitachi*, HP*, Huawei*, IBM*, Inspur*, Lenovo*, NEC*, Oracle*, PowerLeader*, Quanta*, SGI*, Sugon*, Supermicro*, Unisys* and ZTE*. Numerous analytics software vendors also support Xeon processor E7 v2 family-based platforms, including Altibase*, IBM*, Microsoft*, Oracle*, Pivotal*, QlikView*, Red Hat*, SAP*, SAS*, Software AG*, Splunk*, Sungard*, Teradata*, TongTech*, Vertica* and YonYou*.

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Source: Transforming Business with Advanced Analytics: Diane Bryant – Intel [Intel’s launch presentation, Feb 18, 2014]

The Microsoft software platforms especially well suited for it:
– Satya Nadella’s (?the next Microsoft CEO?) next ten years’ vision of “digitizing everything”, Microsoft opportunities and challenges seen by him with that, and the case of Big Data [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 13, 2013]
– From IBM x3850 X6 Breaks World Records in Performance Benchmarks [IBM System x Blog, Feb 18, 2014]

IBM System x3850 X6 achieves world-record performance on TPC-E benchmark

IBM® has published the best performance result ever on the TPC-E benchmark.  This new result showcases the ability of IBM x3850 X6 to deliver industry-leading OLTP performance results.

The IBM System x3850 X6 server achieved 5,576.27 tpsETM (transactions per second E) at $188.69 USD / tpsE. This is at least 73% faster than the results published on previous-generation 4-processor systems, and in fact is faster than all the results published on 8-processor systems.

The TPC-E benchmark is designed to enable clients to more objectively measure and compare the performance and price of various OLTP systems.  The TPC-E benchmark uses a database to model a brokerage firm with customers who generate transactions related to trades, account inquiries, and market research. The brokerage firm in turn interacts with financial markets to execute orders on behalf of the customers and updates relevant account information.

The x3850 X6 achieved this record level of OLTP performance using Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Windows Server® 2012 Standard Edition. The x3850 X6 was configured with four Intel Xeon E7-4890 v2 processors at 2.80GHz with 37.5MB shared L3 cache per processor (4 processors/60 cores/120 threads) and 2 TB of memory.

Results referenced are current as of February 18, 2014. For the latest TPC-E benchmark results, visit: http://www.tpc.org/tpce/

The London Stock Exchange finds lower latency & avoids risk with IBM & Intel [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

How does the London Stock Exchange process thousands of transactions at near real time and stay reliable to avoid risk? Findout how as they and IBM explore the benefits of the enw IBM X6 platform powered by the Intel Xeon E7 V2 Processor. Learn more: http://intel.ly/1bMR8Hg

“We are very excited about the E7,” said Moiz Kohari, the vice president at the London Stock Exchange. “The access times matter heavily to us. We run multiple stock exchanges and clearing and settlement services on the backend.”

Speaking at Intel’s press conference, Kohari said that the exchange’s computing needs have a lot of variety, with dense platforms, lots of memory needs, and high levels of availability. The exchange can’t tolerate “latency jitter,” or unreliable server uptime.

“We don’t look at a database or processor,” Kohari said. “We have to look at the whole system.”

– HP Delivers Record-breaking Performance and Dramatic Efficiencies with HP ProLiant Servers [press release, Feb 18, 2014]

Offerings enable rapid business results with a reliable infrastructure for large-scale data analytics and business processing workloads

HP today announced the new HP ProLiant DL580 Generation 8 (Gen8) server and upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 servers for its scale-up x86 portfolio.

As part of the industry’s broadest scale-up portfolio, these servers deliver breakthrough performance for mission-critical, data-intensive workloads with advanced reliability and a return on investment as low as three months.(1)

The overwhelming volume of information driven by the growth in mobility, cloud and social media is changing the way organizations do business. Organizations must deliver more transactions in less time at a lower cost, while leveraging big data analytics to turn information into insight. As a result, IT must change and scale to address the need for extremely fast business application performance and drive better business decisions.

The new generation of HP ProLiant scale-up x86 platforms delivers the optimal combination of compute performance, efficiency and reliability for business processing and complex data analytics.

Unleashing the power of business data with HP ProLiant scale-up x86 solutions
The new HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server, based on the Intel® Xeon® E7-8800/4800 v2 processor, offers the highest levels of performance and availability for demanding database workloads. Combined with unique HP ProLiant Gen8 innovations, the HP DL580 Gen8 server delivers:

  • Record-breaking performance, leveraging in-memory technology that accelerates business transactions up to 30 times faster.(2)
  • Efficiency improvements through infrastructure consolidation and intelligent management to provide a 45 percent reduction in total cost of ownership.(3)
  • Advanced system resiliency using HP Advanced Error Recovery for proactive fault isolation and HP Memory Quarantine for up to 30 percent greater memory and processor reliability.(4)

“With the increased performance and higher memory capacity of HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 servers, we can provide our customers with cutting-edge solutions to dissolve big data bottlenecks,” Christopher O’Malley, chief executive officer, Velocidata. “This technology reduces capital and operational costs, allowing us to continue building the world’s fastest data transformation, data quality and data simplification appliance-based solutions.”

My inserts here:  Velocidata Brings In-Memory (HP & Intel) [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

How did Velocidata help a customer go from 16 hours to process to 1 minute? Findout as they breakdown the value of in-menmory analytics powered by HP & the new Intel Xeon E7 V2 Processor. Learn more: http://intel.ly/1bMR8Hg

Critical Success Factors for Big Data and Traditional BI [Veloci Data YouTube channel, Dec 11, 2013]

Interview with VelociData founder, Ron Indeck on ‘The Briefing Room’ with Robin Bloor.

End of my inserts

HP also is announcing upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 versatile rack and blade optimized servers that offer best-in-class performance density for demanding application environments and data-intensive workloads. HP will be updating these platforms in the coming weeks with new performance and scalability features that will further extend their capabilities.

Extending the HP ProLiant scale-up x86 portfolio
The HP ProLiant DL580, DL560 and BL660c Gen8 servers leverage unique HP ProLiant Gen8 innovations, including a range of embedded automation and intelligent management features for integrated life cycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration and automated energy optimization. Powered by the HP ProActive Insight architecture, HP ProLiant Gen8 servers continuously analyze thousands of system parameters to enhance application performance and proactively improve uptime.

HP ProLiant Gen8 servers take advantage of HP’s Serviceguard for Linux, a high-availability clustering software, offering an industry-leading failover time that could be as low as four seconds.(5) These servers also feature HP Proactive Care, a flexible, comprehensive and cost-effective service that improves the availability and stability of industry-standard, converged, virtualized environments.

Today’s news, along with future DragonHawk and NonStop on x86 solutions, demonstrate HP’s commitment to provide customers with unparalleled choice to confidently support their critical applications.

“Organizations demand extremely fast business application performance in order to keep up with today’s hyper connected world,” said Ric Lewis, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Server Business, HP. “Two years ago, HP announced Project Odyssey to meet these challenges and redefine the future of mission-critical computing with a development roadmap that makes mission-critical on x86 a reality while furthering the company’s investment in established mission-critical solutions. Today’s announcement continues to build on this promise of dramatic performance improvements at substantial efficiencies.”

“The rapid growth of big data and analytics driven by the mobile, cloud and social megatrends is creating new opportunities for a mission critical compute infrastructure that can satisfy the stringent application performance requirements in a highly reliable, secure and efficient manner,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president and general manager, Enterprise Platform Group, IDC. “The ideal platform would be one designed expressly for business applications and decision support workloads to address these needs.”

Pricing and availability

  • The HP ProLiant DL580 Gen 8 is available for order worldwide starting at $13,079.(6)
  • Enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 servers are planned for next month.
HP’s premier Americas client event, HP Discover, takes place June 10-12 in Las Vegas.
(1) Based on internal HP testing and calculations on HP ProLiant DL560 Gen8 servers compared to HP ProLiant DL380 G5 and G6 servers. ROI on the HP DL560 in 2.9 months, up to 85 percent reduction in monthly operating expenses and overall three-year TCO savings of 77 percent. ROI, operational costs and TCO may vary due to country-specific costs.

(2) Testing conducted by Bwin.party Digital Entertainment running Bwin application. Performance increased to 450,000 requests per second with HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 using Microsoft SQL Server 2014 with in-memory technology vs. the previous maximum of 15,000 with Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

(3) Based on HP internal testing and calculations comparing 20 HP ProLiant DL580 G7 servers to 11 HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 servers. ROI, operational costs and TCO may vary due to country-specific costs.
(4) HP internal reliability simulations results using HP Advanced Error Recovery and HP Memory Quarantine. Compared to other server platforms based on Intel Xeon E5 architecture. January 2014.
(5) Based on HP internal testing of failover recovery of a packet or application on a local area network using HP ProLiant DL380 G7 server (2 Intel Xeon processors, 4 computing cores each) with Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 5.7 running HP Serviceguard 11.20.00. Configuration excludes cluster reformation time.
(6) Estimated U.S. street prices. Actual prices may vary.

The Open software platforms (so not the Moonshot HW) especially well suited for it:
– Disaggregation in the next-generation datacenter and HP’s Moonshot approach for the upcoming HP CloudSystem “private cloud in-a-box” with the promised HP Cloud OS based on the 4 years old OpenStack effort with others [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 10, 2013]
– <more announcements to come here>

The Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 v2 Family Maximizes Server Uptime [channelintel YouTube channel, Jan 14, 2014]

Animation: the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 v2 family delivers the leadership performance, world-class reliability and uptime, and scalability to handle virtually any workload.

After being taken off, the same video appeared as Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 v2 Family Overview Animation [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

The Intel® Xeon® processor E7 v2 family delivers the leadership performance, world-class reliability and uptime, and scalability to handle virtually any workload. Maximize Server Uptime

As of Sept 3, 2016 this video is available only on Intel in Deutschland YouTube channel:

From: Intel® Public Roadmap: Desktop, Mobile & Datacenter – Expiration Q1 2014 [Intel, 2H 2013]

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Intel® Xeon® Processor E7 v2 Family — In-Memory Technology [channelintel YouTube channel, Jan 14, 2014]

New animation highlights Increasing your competitive advantage through improved business intelligence and analytics with the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 v2 family.

After the above video had been taken off, on Feb 18, 2014 came this infographic:

image

As of Sept 3, 2016 the original video is available only on Intel in Deutschland YouTube channel:

Predictive Analytics & Real-time Processing with the Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

How can a possible 130x performance increase save up to $200K? Intel’s Ryan Rodman demonstrates the new 4-socket Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 ability to process 4TB of data from thousands sensors providing real time avoiding costly downtime. Learn more:http://intel.ly/1eZ9K5O

Transforming Business with Advanced Analytics – The Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 18, 2014]

How can real time analytics lead to business insight that can drive your business – faster? Find out how with the latest presentation on the new Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 Family.

Intel Xeon E7 SKUs to launch in Q1 2014 [CPU World, Oct 21, 2013]

Earlier this month we published some details on Intel Xeon E7 microprocessors, coming in Q1 2014. The processors for 2-way, 4-way and 8-way systems will be branded as Xeon E7-2800 v2, E7-4800 v2 and E7-8800 v2, and will be built on Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Besides new architecture, the CPU will feature up to 15 cores, up to 37.5 MB of last level cache, and support for larger amounts of physical memory. They will also add DMI 2.0 and PCI-Express 3.0 interfaces. All in all, Intel is going to release 19 standard-power and frequency optimized E7 SKUs, along with two low-power Xeon E7 processors.

Upcoming basic SKU is Xeon E7-4809 v2, and it will replace Xeon E7-2803 and E7-4807. New standard models are E7-2850 v2, E7-4820 v2, E7-4830 v2, E7-4850 v2 and E7-8850 v2, and they will take place of Xeon E7-x820, E7-x830 and E7-x840. Advanced Xeon E7-x850, E7-x860 and E7-x870 microprocessors will be succeeded by E7-2870 v2, E7-2880 v2, E7-2890 v2, E7-4860 v2, E7-4870 v2, E7-4880 v2, E7-4890 v2, E7-8870 v2, E7-8880 v2 and E7-8890 v2. Additionally, Intel is going to introduce 4 segment optimized versions, Xeon E7-8857 v2, E7-8880L v2, E7-8891 v2 and E7-8893 v2. There will be also low power Xeon E7-8888L v2 CPU for ultra dense servers. Unfortunately, we do not have specifications of these processors yet.

The CPUs will be released in Q1 2014, and will work with C602J chipset, coupled with C102/C104 SMBs (Scalable Memory Buffers).

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