Moving to the all-cloud company

7 September 2011 Last updated at 23:03 GMT It's in the clouds: Making the move to the all-cloud enterprise is the next challenge, according the Rackspace's chief information officer (CTO) Each week we ask high-profile technology decision-makers three questions.

John Engates of Rackspace

This week it is John Engates, chief technology officer (CTO) of Rackspace.

Rackspace is a global hosting and cloud computing specialist. Founded in 1998, the company has 152,000 customers. Net revenue for the second quarter of the year was $247.2m up 32% year-on-year and 7.5% from Q1 2011.

What's your biggest technology problem right now?

For Rackspace I think our biggest challenge is the shift going on to cloud computing.

Everything we've done over the last 10 or so years is having to be re-engineered and re-thought as we move into the era of cloud computing.

I think consuming things over the internet, consuming applications over the web requires a lot of different technology than before, and I think that technology is not readily available. Writing software that powers the cloud is the number one thing that is really challenging us today.

We're spending a lot of time writing new software, inventing new architecture, and helping drive standards within the industry.

We've actually collaborated on this software with a number of commercial and other entities in the form of a software project called OpenStack.

This is an open source cloud infrastructure software project. That's been something that's really helped us go faster and do more in this cloud era

What's the next big tech thing in your industry?

I think the next big thing is moving all applications to the cloud.

We are looking forward to an era where people don't necessarily have to have on-premises computing anymore.

They don't need to have their own data centres, and they can really consume applications and consume IT services from the internet or from the cloud. That's a big shift, it's a lot of work to move applications.

We have this concept here at Rackspace that we call the all-cloud enterprise.

Someone who has every application in the cloud. Today only small companies have that, I think long-term the ambition would be for any company of any size to have that all-cloud approach to their IT infrastructure

What's the biggest technology mistake you've ever made - either at work or in your own life?

I think that the biggest mistake we've made, and we've made it a number of times, is not thinking big enough in terms of the scale or the scope of the services we're going to offer, the number of customers that are going to consume it or the pace of the growth.

That has happened internally here at Rackspace with software that we've deployed for use by our own employees.

When you deploy a new product or software package, you have to decide how many users you're going to support. On a number of occasions we've estimated too small.

I think the same thing goes on as we move to the cloud.

We have to think about the massive growth that's going on and the pace of that adoption. We have to multiply by two, three, five sometimes 10 times what we estimate just so we can stay ahead of the growth that's actually occurring.

It's a good problem to have, but it can be costly in terms of writing software or refactoring architecture to support that growth, and that certainly is difficult to manage once you're in the middle of it.

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Libya's rebel government moving to Tripoli to head off power vacuum (The Christian Science Monitor)

Benghazi, Libya – Libya's rebel leaders are moving to establish political control in Tripoli in anticipation of Muammar Qaddafi's fall, seeking to prevent a power vacuum and establish themselves as the sovereign government of a new Libya.

“We have to be there at the moment of liberation,” says Joma Sayehi Eltayef, who has been coordinating preparations for securing Tripoli from the eastern city of Benghazi. “We can’t leave any opportunities for remnants of the regime, or a vacuum. We need a strong grip so that we don’t have chaos. As soon as the regime falls, we have an alternative ready to take over.”

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

The move poses a major test of the leadership's coordination as it prepares to expand its responsibility from the rebel-controlled east to the entire nation, and make the transition from the battlefield to the task of running a vast, oil-rich country.

Rebel leaders flying to Tripoli todayAfter rebels' swift takeover of the capital on Sunday night, Qaddafi loyalists began fighting back intensely today, indicating that the push to take the capital may yet be a bloody and drawn-out battle. The rebels' National Transition Council, as well as local councils under its umbrella, is now activating plans it has been preparing for months.

The NTC is sending government ministers to Tripoli today to begin coordinating executive control as well as security, and aims to implement its transition plan as soon as possible.

Mr. Eltayef, a Tripoli native from a prominent family and leader of the local Tripoli council, says he will try to fly to the capital today. Once there, he plans to activate what he calls an extensive network of Tripoli residents he has been preparing over the past few months to secure the capital once rebel fighters took control.

He plans to ensure the security of the capital by deploying his network to man checkpoints, secure government buildings, commercial centers, bakeries, and streets, and allow civil services to continue, he says.

The hundreds of people he has cultivated over recent months, first in person and then via satellite phone after he fled to Benghazi early in the uprising, have already begun to step into their roles as their neighborhoods have been freed. When Qaddafi falls, they will be in full force, he says.

“This is of course in harmony with what the NTC is doing, under the National Transitional Council umbrella,” says Eltayef, whose brother is an NTC minister.

Credibility concerns in BenghaziYet even as the council begins to extend its reach to the capital, it is facing doubts in Benghazi. Initial reports that rebels captured two of Qaddafi’s sons fell apart when one was reported to have escaped and the other appeared at a hotel where foreign journalists are staying in the capital.

The leader of the NTC “has lost his credibility by repeatedly lying to the press,” said a woman who asked to remain anonymous while criticizing the rebel leader because she came from a prominent family in Benghazi. A spokesman for the council refused to talk when contacted by phone today and then turned off his phone.

These latest developments have compounded local doubts about the NTC in the wake of the July 29 assassination of rebel military commander Abdel Fatah Younis.

"These things have been happening because the basic foundation of the council is not well organized because they have a lack of experience about how to deal with national matters," says Mohamed El Obeidi, a political science professor at Garyounis University in Benghazi. "They're not that politically experienced in these things. On this basis there have been gaps on the NTC, the biggest and hardest is the assassination of Younis."

Qaddafi forces retreating from BregaThe rebels’ military spokesman in Benghazi, Ahmed Bani, said in the early morning hours of Tuesday that 95 percent of Tripoli was under rebel control, but that pockets of resistance were fighting back fiercely.

Qaddafi’s forces are barricaded in his compound of Bab Al Aziziyah and are using their position to indiscriminately bomb neighborhoods, he said. He added that Qaddafi was using Grad missiles to bomb civilian areas, and said Qaddafi’s son Khamis, commander of a feared military brigade, was likely inside Bab Al Aziziyah.

In the east, rebels were still fighting for the oil refinery in the city of Brega, Mr. Bani said, though some of Qaddafi’s forces are retreating from the area and heading to his hometown, Sirte. Rebels have been fighting for months for the oil facilities, which under normal operation bring in $35 million per day. They have been wary of allowing the facilities to be bombed, and he said that was why the rebels have still not taken control of them.

Al Jazeera also reported that the oil town of Ras Lanuf had fallen to rebels as well.

Qaddafi himself is still on the loose, his whereabouts a mystery, and Sirte still under control of his troops. Bani said rebel troops will not attack Sirte, but will wait for residents to rise up against the colonel. Electricity to the city has been cut for more than a week.

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

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Moving IT beyond the firewall

20 July 2011 Last updated at 21:12 GMT Beyond the firewall: Aruba Networks chief technology officer Keerti Melkote says companies are struggling to secure corporate data on employees' personal devices Each week we ask high-profile technology decision-makers three questions.

Aruba Networks CTO Keerti Melkote founded the company with partner Pankaj Manglik in 2002

This week it is Keerti Melkote, founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Aruba Networks.

Aruba Networks is a provider of network access technologies, including wireless LAN (local area network) and edge access networking equipment, as well as virtual networking technology.

The company is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has more than 500 employees. Aruba Networks had revenues of $267m (£165m) in 2010.

What's your biggest technology problem right now?

We're a technology company so the problems our customers face are our problems.

For our customers it's directly tied to the influx of mobile devices into the enterprise, especially since Apple introduced the iPad.

Most corporations are having a very tough time trying to figure out how to deal with this. They're struggling with the security considerations of these devices - how do they retain control of confidential corporate data?

I have a firewall on the internet that protects my corporation from hackers, everything that is inside the firewall is protected.

But this personal device comes along and blurs the line, and says the firewall is irrelevant. I am bringing in my personal device and making it part of the corporate network, it becomes a pretty difficult problem to control the security of the corporate information.

I would say that is the number one challenge that most corporations are facing today.

What's the next big tech thing in your industry?

It's directly related to the introduction of the iPad.

What we've seen is a complete shift in how corporations are going to eventually think about employee computing and communications.

Today this essentially translates to providing a PC at somebody's desk and a phone. And maybe a mobile and maybe a laptop.

When you think about these new devices, it's not just the iPad, it's the iPhones, and Android phones, and all the other smartphones that are coming into the market.

So you extend this model and say, why don't we enable the 'bring your own device' model to include them.

Your own personal computer, personal tablet PC or iPad and smartphone can be used for corporate computing and communications.

At the same time the next generation office environment is going to change dramatically. Instead of cubical farms, you'll be sitting at this desk with this mobile experience, so you can basically take your work with you wherever you go.

The way that offices are going to be built is going to be more collaborative and open, rather than the traditional desk-bound workplaces that we are used to seeing.

What's the biggest technology mistake you've ever made - either at work or in your own life?

When we moved our corporate headquarters from the previous location to the current location, because we're a fundamentally wireless company we believed from a technology perspective that we didn't need to wire the building, for telephone and internet etc.

This was about three or four years ago. Our internal IT department said it was too risky, and they still wanted to spend the money on cabling the building which we did.

A few years later we find ourselves essentially not using any of that investment, or very little of it.

I think that was a very significant mistake as far as corporate IT decisions go.

The second one is more to do with personal networking use.

Like most of us I have a TV, both cable and internet TV, I have three types of phone, I have a landline at home, a mobile phone for my family, and I have Voip (voice over internet protocol - internet telephone) from Vonage. Of course I use the internet not only for personal entertaining but for work as well.

I was going through the bills I was paying to maintain this totally connected lifestyle I think most of us have today. I was pretty staggered at the amount of money I was spending.

I decided to simplify my life. What I found was that the most important things for me were my internet connection and my mobile connection.

I decided to go with a bundled plan to save money with one provider, only to find that these guys were not net neutral, and were monitoring content. That's something I absolutely despise.

So I'm back on the market shopping for a provider for my internet and mobile. I want to buy an internet connection from someone who can at least give me the semblance of net neutrality.

Bundled plans - they're not all that they're cracked up to be.

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