Recently, Nutanix has announced Project Beacon, a multi-year effort to deliver a portfolio of data-centric Platform as a Service (PaaS) level services available natively anywhere – including on Nutanix or on native public cloud. With a vision of decoupling the application and its data from the underlying infrastructure, Project Beacon aims to enable developers to build applications once and run them anywhere. In an e-interview, with the Associate Editor, Channel360MEA, Mohammed Abulhouf, Senior Director & GM EMEA Emerging Markets, Nutanix shared howProject Beacon aims to be a game changer. Below are the excerpts…
How is the concept of hybrid multi-cloud taking off in the MEA region?
Although there is no research data for the whole of the MEA region, the results of the Saudi findings of Nutanix’s annual Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey gives a good indication of the interest in and adoption of a hybrid multi-cloud strategy by regional enterprises. The study shows that organizations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia plan to move their hybrid multi-cloud deployments from 7% penetration today to 51% penetration in three years. Increased infrastructure diversity, along with a heightened emphasis on data storage, management, security, and services, is driving all IT pros to seek hybrid operations that transcend private and public infrastructure. There is a strong desire to have a single place to see and manage the many aspects of their diverse infrastructures. As these capabilities emerge, respondents will gain access to unified tools that provide visibility into where all data resides, allow IT teams to holistically manage their applications and data, and let them make adjustments as needed to meet ever-shifting requirements for cost, performance, data protection, and compliance.
Throw light about your recently announced Project Beacon. Any specific reason for naming the Project Beacon?
Project Beacon is a multi-year effort by Nutanix to deliver a portfolio of data-centric Platform as a Service (PaaS) level services available natively anywhere – including on Nutanix or on native public cloud. With a vision of decoupling the application and its data from the underlying infrastructure, Project Beacon aims to enable developers to build applications once and run them anywhere.
Data-centric platform services, such as Database-as-a-Service, are extremely popular with developers and operations teams alike. They enable easy, fast access to powerful data processing capabilities needed to support modern applications without the hassle of managing and maintaining the services themselves. The result is improved developer productivity, simpler database and data services management, and faster time-to-market for new software products and features.
Beacon signifies a guiding light and this is exactly the thinking behind the Beacon Project. It is our vision for enabling developers to write applications once and run them anywhere by delivering data-centric PaaS level services that are no longer tied to a single infrastructure provider. We hope to enable enterprises to fully embrace the benefits of hybrid multicloud, not only at the infrastructure layer but also at the application data layer.
How will this Project enable enterprises to fully embrace the benefits of hybrid multi-cloud?
Most enterprises also have or plan to adopt hybrid multi-cloud architectures. They are doing so for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important ones is to provide the flexibility to run different workloads and applications in different operation environments – on-premises, in colo facilities, in public clouds, and at the edge – based on cost, compliance, latency or other factors.
In short, enterprises want both ease of application portability and access to powerful data-centric platform services, but today they can only have one or the other. Containers and Kubernetes have made applications portable across environments, but the platform services used to manage, process, and analyze the data associated with applications are tied to specific clouds. As a result, you can run your applications in whatever operating environment you want, but you’ll need to adopt a variety of disparate services, software, and processes to provide the required data services.
But what if the same data-centric platform services were available in all of the major public clouds as well as in your private data center and colo facilities? And you can manage them all from a single control plane? Then you would be able to run your applications wherever you deem most appropriate AND have ubiquitous access to the simple but powerful data services you need to empower developers and make your applications sing, no complicated application rewriting required. That’s what Nutanix has set out to achieve with Project Beacon.
Any specific target figures in mind to decide on the success of the Project?
Project Beacon is a multi-year effort by Nutanix and outlines our vision to enable organisations to build applications once and run them anywhere. As we have more information to share, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Besides targeting Developers, what kind of benefits does the project carry for the market as a whole?
According to the Enterprise Cloud Index, 75% of IT teams expect to leverage more than one IT infrastructure 一 including on-premises, in public cloud or at the edge 一 in the next one to three years. Moving applications to a different environment is currently possible at the infrastructure layer. However, the PaaS services that many organizations use to help developers build and ship applications faster cause lock-in as they are tied to specific public clouds. This leads to high switching costs when looking to move applications to an environment that is more suitable, whether it’s due to cost, compliance, latency or other factors. Project Beacon aims to change that.
What is Nutanix Database Service (NDB)?
Today database administrators spend most of their time on important but tedious database management tasks and not enough time focused on higher value tasks like database architecture and performance optimization. Developers wait days, weeks and even months for new databases to support application development, which stifles innovation. And IT and business leaders struggle to keep database costs and complexity under control.
Nutanix Database Service is the only database-as-a-service that simplifies and automates database lifecycle management across on-premises, colocation facilities, and public clouds for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB databases. Database administrators can efficiently manage hundreds to thousands of databases, quickly and easily provision new databases, automate important but tedious administrative tasks like patching and backups, and choose the right operating systems, database versions and database extensions to meet application and compliance requirements.
