Transforming Your Business Through Cloud Computing

Editor's Notes

• #3: How does AMD view the Industry? We see it as undergoing rapid change, right now… Tablets = new market, new usages Explosive growth of data Ecosystems drive increased competitiveness Disruptive Cloud enabling new business models Windows 8 opens PC platform to ARM processors
• #4: How does AMD view the Industry? We see it as undergoing rapid change, right now… Tablets = new market, new usages Explosive growth of data Ecosystems drive increased competitiveness Disruptive Cloud enabling new business models Windows 8 opens PC platform to ARM processors
• #6: We are getting very close to a new era of ubiquitous access to computing in the world. While there are still large gaps in underdeveloped portions of the world that need to be addressed, the trend lines are clearly headed in the right direction as computers become increasingly ubiquitous. Today, emerging markets are catching up, and over the next several years we anticipate the so called digital divide will be all but erased for most of the world. And we also expect people in the developing world will continue to increase the number of computing devices that they use, at home, at work, and at play. All of these devices make access to computing easier than every before. But they also present a challenge in terms of management and security, particularly for large enterprises and other organizations. Should enterprises allow employees to connect their own devices to their networks? Certain efficiencies can be achieved, but this practice also introduces vulnerabilities. But many employees will still use their personal devices for business communications even if companies refuse to allow them to connect to the corporate network. As a CIO, building a efficient and secure BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – policy is a tremendous challenge, and one that will only increase as the number of computing devices per person continues to increase.
• #7: Security in Mobile Platforms Protecting user data across multiple devices and platforms Securing corporate data in IT Consumerization scenarios Accelerating industry standards encryption/decryption algorithms Providing support for identity security and management features Security in Cloud Computing Providing a secure platform to protect data in a multi-tenant environment Enabling trusted applications for safe and secure ecommerce and other services Enhancing performance while optimizing security, virtualization, and manageability Meeting compliance requirements with govt. regulations and industry security practices (HIPPA,SOX,PCIDSS,FISMA)
• #9: The 2012 Future of Cloud Computing Survey results (released on June 20, 2012 at the cloud leadership dinner) reveal several important changes in respondents’ perceptions and plans regarding cloud implementation. http://northbridge.com/2012-cloud-computing-survey 2012 Survey Results by North Bridge - North Bridge invests in exceptional people whose ideas have the potential to disrupt the way we live and work. Our Seed, Venture and Growth Equity strategies help transform those ideas into companies and those companies into market leaders.
• #10: Cloud is the framework at AMD that we have chosen to support all of our R&D projects Back in 2009, AMD began an initiative called “Compute Anywhere” Our objectives were to: Centralize our datacenters Provide our users with appropriate connectivity tools Become more agile and break free of the limitations of the servers and storage from AMD’s various work sites
• #11: AMD runs a cloud today supporting 3000 engineers worldwide with 40 million tasks a month executed It’s also an agile cloud. In one instance last year when we were working on our “Bobcat” core design, the team needed to speed up the design process based on the changing market needs. AMD IT was able to dynamically allocate capacity and designate 42,000 cores. As a result of this, the team was able to achieve 2 months of testing in five days Scalability of our cloud really has to be attributed to the underlying technology. Opteron brings some really unique advantages to IT. I mentioned earlier that a good target utilization rate through the use of virtualization was about 60 percent To-date, AMD has been able to achieve an astounding 90 percent utilization rate – in terms of available servers and cores This is across 124,00 cores at work and counting Our strategic approach to the AMD Cloud has included a strong focus on standardization across platforms resulting in reduced investment costs for equipment upgrades, and basing the cloud entirely on AMD technology.  Lower data storage costs; because data is now available everywhere, redundant local copies of data sets are no longer required. AMD is able to leverage available engineers, regardless of location, to engage on any project as needed, using consolidated data sets. Consolidation also allows AMD to leverage existing, high-end design software that once sat idle in distributed sites. Specifically, our servers based on AMD Opteron ™ chips  offer a unique capability to swap out processors and achieve in-place upgrades, allowing us  to double our capacity without buying a single new server. Over $6 million in savings were realized with just an in-place upgrade from dual to quad-core chips, demonstrating a direct ROI that comes with the right IT investment. As you can tell, we get maximum use of our cloud but there are always times when servers will be idle; it’s a given any more with Cloud Computing. This is one of the reasons I’m very excited about the new AMD Opteron processor as it will significantly lower the idle power over what we have today as well as adding more server cores into our Cloud
• #13: 09/12/12 19:43 All of us have witnessed the amazing productivity gains IT delivers. Greater efficiency, improved quality and quantity of information and analysis, enhanced communications, ubiquitous access - virtually every major industry in the world has been transformed by IT, from financial services, to health care, manufacturing, agriculture – the list goes on. AMD’s technology is a fundamental component in the computing platform. Our products help define and drive the performance, dependability, security, manageability, and ultimately the value, that our customers and end-users derive from IT. Performance: performance is essential, and it needs to be matched to the intended workloads. AMD-powered clouds lead the industry in compute power per processor, providing superior throughput, performance, and scalability. Dependability: This is obvious. Users want predictable and consistent throughput to deliver reliable services. Manageability: AMD’s open standards approach to manageability features enables interoperability, as well as the ability to manage across multiple platforms, locations, and geographies while maintain control over costs, efficiency, and performance. Value: Going beyond a good return on investment by providing increased performance and with Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes acquisition cost, but also cost to own, operate, maintain, upgrade, and ultimately End-of-Life (EOL). Security: Secure computing begins at the foundation of computing – the processor. AMD technology includes strong security features that help protect system integrity and sensitive data. AMD technology also helps to optimize the performance of security features and applications at the system level and beyond. As in an system, the whole is only as good as it’s weakest link, and security is the key to protecting the weakest links in a system.
• #14: AMD’s secure computing platform is designed to address the essential aspects of the computing eco-system, from silicon, to system, to software (OS, applications, networking, etc.). Virtualization is key, particularly in terms of creating a silicon-based firewall between attackers and physical storage. Also protecting I/O operations by protecting memory and enabling secure access of peripheral devices. AMD’s support for cryptography continues to increase. Our products support the AES instruction set and allows fast and secure date encryption and decryption. We also support Bcypts and the Secure Hash Algorithm. Partnerships with IHV, ISV, and Standards bodies is another essential element to ensure that we are incorporating the right security features into our products, as well as optimizing or enhancing security features up the stack. We are also investing considerable time and effort in working with standards bodies and governments around the world to make sure we are keeping up with the latest types of attacks and vulnerabilities, as well as helping to develop secure solutions that address these vulnerabilities. (Secure BIOS is one example). Accelerators and Co-Processors. We’ll have more to say about this public tomorrow. Suffice it to say that our security strategy includes on-board security features like the ones I have described, as well as external accelerators and co-processors that can enhance security features and performance.
• #15: Virtualization is considered the on ramp to private cloud Gartner analysts emphasized that building a private cloud is more than just adding virtual machines to physical servers, which is already happening with dizzying speed in the enterprise. Gartner estimates about 45% of x86-based servers carry virtual-machine-based workloads today, with that number expected to jump to 58% next year and 77% by 2015. http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/232400150 http://www.gartner.com/id=2063415 http://blogs.gartner.com/thomas_bittman/2012/03/21/top-five-server-virtualization-trends-2012/