Life and Tech #28: The Switzerland of Cloud

This is a reprint of my weekly email newsletter. You can get yours every Thursday evening by subscribing here: https://eepurl.com/bjalx5

I don’t usually talk much about Rackspace online. Some might wonder why that is. I often focus on innovations taking place outside the company, to show you where they’re taking the future. After all, how can you be great if you don’t keep up on what other great things companies and people are doing?

Lately you might have noticed a shift in Rackspace’s strategy. We’ve invested in providing support for all sorts of different clouds, from Microsoft Azure to Amazon Web Services to OpenStack (which we developed, together with NASA, and offered as an open source platform to the world).
 
This is why I love working for Rackspace. We are now helping customers where they are on the technologies they want to use (not the ones we want to push them onto). I tell friends, "we're the Switzerland of the cloud,” and we can now take a real customer-centric approach to businesses trying to figure this technology out.
 
That all said, we’re still investing a TON in tooling on top of these clouds. Like ScaleFT for security, that you can see here: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/vb.501319654/10153663982584655/
 
We’re also continuing to invest in OpenStack itself, and two days ago we announced a major OpenStack simplification initiative, Carina.
 
Let's dig into Carina for a second. https://getcarina.com/ It simplifies OpenStack for the enterprise by bringing the container magic that Docker brought to the world, but here it’s deeply built into OpenStack. Read Scott Crenshaw's blog where he explains how and why Carina makes OpenStack simpler for enterprises to use:https://blog.rackspace.com/rackspace-simplifies-openstack-for-the-enterprise/
 
For the technical look, check out Adrian Otto's post at https://blog.rackspace.com/tech-deep-dive-with-carina-magnum-containers/
(Adrian’s one of the smartest people I’ve met either inside or outside of Rackspace, by the way).
 
Companies from Comcast to Nike rely on OpenStack, so this will be welcomed by many of you.
 
OpenStack is KEY to our ability to help customers innovate, even as we support other clouds and the innovation they bring. Another example of this investment is the Intel partnership we announced in July: https://blog.rackspace.com/newsarticles/rackspace-collaborates-with-intel-to-accelerate-openstack-enterprise-feature-development-and-adoption/
 
As cloud becomes more complex, thanks to companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon and others bringing new capabilities to the market, you'll want a partner who can help you not only navigate those, but someone who will answer the phone when you need help (you'd be shocked at how hard that is at some of these companies).
 
You’ll want a partner who hasn’t only invested in tooling, opinions, education or services, but someone who can and will be an accountable partner in building the future of your business. Someone who can fill in the gaps in the other clouds with innovation both on top of them, in tooling, as well as investment in a competitive cloud itself, OpenStack.
 
Here is Techcrunch's writeup of the news: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/27/rackspace-launches-carina-a-hosted-container-environment-for-running-docker-containers/
 
Other things I saw this week, which was a busy one, included traveling to Australia to meet Rackers and our customers, along with speaking at the Telstra Digital Summit and the Pivot Summit in Geelong.

The latter was aimed at helping think through how to build an innovation zone in a place that has been rocked by some major manufacturing plant closures (they flew me over a Ford plant that’s closing early next year to show the problems this community is facing, but also the opportunities it has in turning this into a place supportive of technology startups). More on that next week.

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A new kind of smart travel lock: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/vb.501319654/10153678376779655/

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What’s the future of IoT? A week ago I asked my readers what the future of IoT is and today Cédric Bollag put together the 230 answers here:https://www.facebook.com/bollag/posts/10156071456920161
 
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When I was in Australia, Atlassian’s developer advocate Chris Mountford told me about how Atlassian develops software. It should know, its tools are used by developers all over the world. We talked about everything from methodology to Blockchain in this two-part conversation:

Part I: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/10153674573339655/
Part II: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/10153674658934655/

I visited a few other startups and will get those up on Facebook over the weekend and will include them in next week’s newsletter.

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We are entering a post mobile era. I told 1,100 business executives and founders at the Telstra Digital Summit this week in Sydney, Australia. Watch my speech here:https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/10153672637234655

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As just a little evidence of this post-mobile era, here is a new kind of bot. It’s a conversational messaging platform and uses a bunch of text based platforms.https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/videos/10153666853419655/
 
I’m seeing more and more evidence that we’ll soon have a radically new user interface thanks to not just glasses like Magic Leap, but things like Amazon Echo.

Business is going to be forced to build new conversational “bot” systems and Rackspace will be first there to help businesses build the future. That’s when our “Switzerland” strategy will make sense to everyone. Until then, keep building and hope you have a great weekend!
 
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As a Rackspace futurist, I keep my finger on the pulse of Silicon Valley and global trends, to offer insights into what’s coming next in tech and why it’s important to you.
 
Since 2009, I’ve traveled near and far, meeting with startups, innovative companies and visionaries, as well as evangelizing the Rackspace managed cloud story.
 
I read all my email at [email protected] and anything done in response to this newsletter goes to the top of my inbox. I’m also at +1-425-205-1921 or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble.
 
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And props to Hugh Macleod and team for creating art each week. Find more athttps://www.gapingvoid.com