SAP HANA with more cloud options

Since my last blog post on SAP's innovation spree about SAP HANA and then SAP HANA on AWS, SAP continues to further expand its strong application service portfolio by joining hands with more cloud vendors. After launching its HANA cloud services on Amazon Web Services (AWS), SAP now provides SAP HANA One Developer edition on KT ucloud, CloudShare and Portugal Telecom’s SmartCloudPT. And these service providers seems to be providing the SAP HANA as a Service (sounds interesting !!) even at lower price marks than AWS.

The detailed list of provided services and charges are available here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31722

But for a quick reference, a summary of cloud service offerings (taken from above mentioned link) are provided in below table:

Cloud Partner	Description	Instance Types	Price
Amazon Web Services	Amazon provides a secure, scalable, and highly elastic cloud infrastructure for running SAP HANA. With AWS there is no need to procure IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance, but it can be done within minutes. It can also be scaled based on workload or on-demand, and pay only for the resources used. There is no SAP charge for the SAP HANA One developer edition license, only AWS account usual charges apply. The AWS flexible and open platform supports a wide variety languages and operating systems so you can choose the development platform or programming model that best suits your needs. Utilize other AWS cloud infrastructure services as well as a host of other third-party development tools already available on AWS. AWS provides a massive global cloud infrastructure that allows you to quickly innovate, experiment and iterate.	2 vCPU's, 17.1GB RAM 154GB disk 4 vCPU's, 34.2GB RAM 154GB disk 8 vCPU's, 68.4GB RAM 154GB disk	starting from $0.55 / hour
CloudShare	Get SAP HANA One, developer edition in the cloud – with CloudShare. Flat $137 per month cost - no overages, no time limits Includes SAP HANA Server and pre-configured developer environment (24 GB RAM). No IT, no VPN are required	4 vCPU's, 22 GB, 150 GB disk Plus one remote desktop with Windows 7, 1 vCPU, 2 GB, 20 GB disk (HANA studio, client, additional tools)	$137 / month
SmartCloudPT	SAP HANA One, developer edition in SmartCloudPT provides simple and immediate access to a configured SAP HANA development environment, with community support from SAP, running on the enterprise-grade SmartCloudPT infrastructure. The service fee is prepaid using a credit card and can be renewed at the end of each month. Fixed monthly pricing for the service starts at 159€/month for a 16GB RAM cloud instance. Unlike other public clouds, pricing is fixed per month and fully inclusive, with no hidden costs or surcharges! All environments run on the latest, enterprise-grade infrastructure and come with 24/7 instance availability.	4 vCPU's, 16GB RAM, 200GB disk 6 vCPU's, 32GB RAM, 300GB disk	starting from €159 / month
KT ucloud biz	Take a personal SAP HANA One, developer edition on kt ucloud within 5 minutes Can be accessible all over the world, geographically very close to east and south east Asia On-demand provisioning of HANA VM instance to the maximum size of 16vcore/128G Both hourly and monthly payment can be available as requested 4VM-clustered HANA landscape as well as 1VM (16vcore/120G) on one physical host is now available	2 vCPU's, 16GB RAM, 90GB disk 4 vCPU's, 32GB RAM, 140GB disk 8 vCPU's, 64GB RAM, 230GB disk 16 vCPU's, 128GB RAM, 420GB disk 16 vCPU's, 120GB RAM, 420GB disk on dedicated server	starting from $0.286 / hour

 

Also,  very good comparison of pricing between SAP HANA appliance vs SAP HANA service on AWS cloud is made by Bill Ramos in his interesting blog post here.
This comparison is based on the fact that SAP HANA One Developer edition is provided FREE of charge by SAP for 1 month trial basis. So there are no charges for using SAP HANA on cloud, only the standard cloud usage charges applies.

SAP HANA on AWS.

In previous few blogs, there are very quick introductions about the SAP, one of the world’s largest vendors of independent enterprise software, and its latest innovation marvel for enterprises, SAP HANA.
Now they have brought this effort one step more forward, by bringing SAP HANA on Cloud.
Yes, SAP's  in-memory database and platform capabilities are now available in form of a pay-as-you-go commodity by Amazon Web Services.

What it means: So now if some organization has need of fast processing power, but is hesitant in making huge investments in purchasing the entire in-house solution (SAP HANA appliance is really costly !!), then they can opt for this option and use it for the desired time. It like, just pay the rent of a Huge Villa, and enjoy living there for the time you want.

Advantages: Enterprises seeking some fast processing solutions for its regularly recurring (but not frequently  occurring ) tasks, like processing the payrolls for all employees at end of every month, or analyzing the sales trends to prepare for a specific event, can take advantages of this time based solution.

At first looks, this idea seems to be a fast, stable and reliable business solution, but things from far as just visible nice. There may be potential factors like massive data transfers, additional hidden charges/add-ons required, that might be involved. But all factors apart, This solution provides some promising future for the Software as a Service (SaaS) market.

The pricing details are available here.
For more in-depth technical details, visit SAP's website here.

Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises: Web Short: The Mathematics of Cloud Optimization

Really nice blog: wanted to share with everyone.

Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises: Web Short: The Mathematics of Cloud Optimization: How do you minimize the cost of running your large mission critical application on a public cloud? Do you focus on finding a low cost cloud or ...

Issue/resolution for Google Play Store in Samsung Galaxy S Plus-GT-I9001

Presently, many users of Samsung Galaxy S Plus (including myself) reported a bug with their Google Market Place. The device can not update or download anything from Google Play Store. Its giving a downloading error-905 after completing 100% download, and the applications do not get installed or updated from the Google Play. Downloads and installs from other sources are working fine. (I tried installing true caller while this issue resided on my phone, it worked fine).

After some trials, i found some way to resolve this.

Here is what i did:


1) Go to "Application" (lower bottom right hand corner on the home screen) > Settings > Applications > Manage applications

2)Select the "All" tab

3) Scroll down and select Google Play Store

4) Select "Uninstall updates"


This will uninstall the Google Play Store, taking it back to older Market place.
After few minutes, it automatically gets updates, and resumes back to Google Play Store (yes, automatically).

But now when i download anything from Google Play, it works fine for me.
Please try this out and let me know if this works for you as well.

Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization

Introduction

Along with the growth of any organization, its IT infrastructure also grows, becoming more complex, and difficult to maintain. In order to control and manage this growth, some guidelines or pathway is needed. “Infrastructure Optimization” (or IO) refers to the optimization of IT infrastructure of any organization to support and improve its business i.e. turning its IT Infrastructure from ’cost center’ to ‘business center’ for the organization.

Microsoft in IO

In 2010, Microsoft had released details about 3 models as guidelines for Infrastructure Optimization of any organization:

1) Core Infrastructure Optimization Model

2) Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization Model

3) Application Platform Optimization Model

Each of these models focuses on different set of IT attributes (called Capabilities) used within the organization, depending on level of use of IT made by the organization. These capabilities provide guidelines for scaling and optimizing the IT infrastructure of the organization. In any organization, all the three models will be applied simultaneously. Details of these models are provided in a section in this document.

Note:* The organization implementing the IO model should have a basic setup of IT department and good number of staff to maintain it. Also, the level of optimization achieved (basic, standardized, rationalized or dynamic) also depends on organization policies and convincing capabilities of salesperson.

Competitors in IO

IBM: IBM offers IBM Infrastructure Optimization Services with cloud computing, which focuses on addressing the testing of current infrastructure for efficiency and determining its capacity for change and responsiveness. Through its Testing Center of Excellence, test plans for introducing technologies such as service-oriented architectures can be made, and user can perform integration, performance and scalability testing. These services can help speed implementation and time to value with reduced risk, helping them build an infrastructure that is designed to Support business flexibility, improve resource utilization and thus help reduce overall IT costs and lower complexity.

Benefits of implementing IO Models

These IO Models helps its customers understand, scale and gradually improve the current state of their IT infrastructures in terms of cost, security, risk, and operational agility. Dramatic cost savings can be realized by moving from an unmanaged environment (i.e. ‘Basic’ level) toward an environment of fully automated management and dynamic resource usage (i.e. ‘Dynamic’ level). Security improves from highly vulnerable in a Basic infrastructure to dynamically proactive in a more optimized infrastructure. IT infrastructure management changes from highly manual and reactive to highly automated and proactive. Thus it results in an overall benefit to the organization.

Bibliography:

1) ‘Infrastructure Optimization at Microsoft’, available at http://www.microsoft.com/optimization/about/overview.mspx .

2) ‘Infrastructure optimization services’, available at http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offerfamily/gts/a1027697 .

3) ‘Infrastructure Optimization’, available at http://www.tcs.com/offerings/consulting/infrastructure-optimization/Pages/default.aspx 

4) 'Offerings: Infrastructure Optimization' available at http://www.infosys.com/microsoft/offerings/pages/infrastructure-optimization.aspx

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is now System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is now System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection !!!


Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010 was closely tied to System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) through the infrastructure. Though was beneficial for organizations which had already adopted SCCM, but was a challenge for ones without it implemented.

Now in 2012, the Endpoint protection is a part of the System Center family and takes the name System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) 2012.

The new features of System Center Endpoint Protection 2012 includes:

• Support for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RC, including integrated setup, management, and reporting
• Role-based management across security and operations
• Improved alerting and reporting, with real-time and user-centric data views
• More efficient delivery of signature updates using new automatic software deployment model 

 The integration of SCEP with SCCM allows central management of all endpoints. Now users can scan the endpoints for both updates and viruses via a single product family (System Center). 

When this was released, there was simply word to express the reaction.....WOW !!!

Good articles on Qlik View

Good Articles on QlikView

Microsoft's new PowerPivot from a QlikView standpoint (bit old, but interesting content, specially the comments below the article)

http://www.qlikpower.com/blog/bid/30751/Microsoft-s-new-PowerPivot-from-a-QlikView-standpoint

A Microsoft guy does QlikView (QlikView from Microsoft’s guys’ perspective).

http://performancepointblog.com/2011/01/a-microsoft-guy-does-qlikview/

In-memory BI is not the future. It’s the past. (comparison between in-memory and traditional disk-based technology).

“The success of QlikTech and the relentless activities of Microsoft’s marketing machine have managed to confuse many in terms of what role in-memory technology plays in BI implementations. And that is why many of the articles out there, which are written by marketers or market analysts who are not proficient in the internal workings of database technology (and assume their readers aren’t either), are usually filled with inaccuracies and, in many cases, pure nonsense.”

http://elasticube.blogspot.in/2010/09/in-memory-bi-is-not-future-its-past.html