We’re starting to see predictions about what’s going to be hot in enterprise technology in 2017. Cloud (yet again), Blockchain, Big Data / Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) are all among the top of the list. However, it was Krish Subrumanian’s humorous tweet that started me thinking about what will be the single most important contribution from the enterprise technology community in 2016. While all the aforementioned technologies will certainly see a lot of interest and growth, they’re all enabled by a Web platform.
“Maturity models” can be very useful. Every analyst firm and most vendors have created some sort of maturity model. Not only can a maturity model benchmark where you are with respect to your cohorts, but good maturity models also provide a roadmap to help organizations advance along the maturity model. But different maturity models measure different things, and what the maturity model measures is critically important because you are what you measure.
Like other industries did before it, retail banking is riding a bucking bronco of digital transformation. While customer satisfaction levels drop and government rules and regulations continue to expand, retail banking seeks new ways to adapt to the massive changes in how consumers interact and use financial products and services. However, unlike other industries such as book publishing that have been rocked by the tsunami of digital changes in the marketplace, companies in the banking sector also have to comply with extensive regulations intended to protect consumers. In confronting this new landscape, banks are looking at better ways to use their existing data in real-time to improve customer experience and loyalty, comply with a growing number of government rules and privacy laws, and consolidate disparate IT systems in their current infrastructure. Banks must provide a seamless experience for customers no matter which product or service they choose.
As good Venn diagrams always show it's the intersection areas that offer the sweet spot for trends and markets, and an especially potent one is the intersection of Cloud computing, with the blockchain and also digital identity, particularly when considered within contexts such as Digital Democracy. Given the diversity of each field alone there are multiple perspectives to this, more the start of a conversation rather than a definitive design.
DevOps and microservices are permeating software engineering teams broadly, whether these teams are in pure software shops but happen to run a business, such Uber and Airbnb, or in companies that rely heavily on software to run more traditional business, such as financial firms or high-end manufacturers. Microservices and DevOps have created software development and therefore business speed and agility benefits, but they have also created problems; specifically, they have created software security issues.
SYS-CON Events announced today that MobiDev, a client-oriented software development company, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and the 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place October 31-November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. MobiDev is a software company that develops and delivers turn-key mobile apps, websites, web services, and complex software systems for startups and enterprises. Since 2009 it has grown from a small group of passionate engineers and business managers to a full-scale mobile software company with over 200 developers, designers, quality assurance engineers, project managers in house, specializing in the world-class mobile and web development.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Academy will exhibit at SYS-CON's 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Cloud Academy is the industry’s most innovative, vendor-neutral cloud technology training platform. Cloud Academy provides continuous learning solutions for individuals and enterprise teams for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and the most popular cloud computing technologies. Get certified, manage the full lifecycle of your cloud-based resources, and build your knowledge based using Cloud Academy’s expert-created content, comprehensive Learning Paths, and innovative Hands-on Labs.
We call it DevOps but much of the time there’s a lot more discussion about the needs and concerns of developers than there is about other groups. There’s a focus on improved and less isolated developer workflows. There are many discussions around collaboration, continuous integration and delivery, issue tracking, source code control, code review, IDEs, and xPaaS – and all the tools that enable those things. Changes in developer practices may come up – such as developers taking ownership of code and pulling pager duty. We also talk about culture a great deal in the context of developers and DevOps. About touchy-feely topics like empathy, trust, learning, cooperation, and responsibility. It can all be a bit kumbaya.
The unique combination of Amazon Web Services and Cloud Raxak, a Gartner Cool Vendor in IT Automation, provides a seamless and cost-effective way of securely moving on-premise IT workloads to Amazon Web Services. Any enterprise can now leverage the cloud, manage risk, and maintain continuous security compliance. Forrester's analysis shows that enterprises need automated security to lower security risk and decrease IT operational costs. Through the seamless integration into Amazon Web Services, Raxak Protect automates security for any workload running on traditional IT, private clouds, and public clouds. A line of business user with no security experience can now provision a VM on Amazon Web Services with a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) defined security profile (e.g., PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FFIEC, FISMA).
IMHO there is no doubt that cloud and object storage are in your future, what are some questions? Granted, what type of cloud and object storage or service along with for work or entertainment are some questions. Likewise, what are your cloud and object storage concerns (assuming you already have heard the benefits)? Some other questions include when, where for different applications workload needs, as well as how and with what among others. Keep in mind that there are many aspects to cloud storage and they are not all object, likewise, there are many facets to object storage.
The healthcare industry is not immune from today’s relentless wave of cyberattacks. Cyber theft of protected health information (PHI) is on the rise, and health organizations understand that 100 percent prevention of attacks is not realistic. According to Ponemon Institute’s Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & Security of Healthcare Data report, nearly 90 percent of all healthcare organizations have suffered at least one data breach in the last two years. According to another report, 88 percent of ransomware attacks in Q2 2016 were on healthcare entities.
What are the successful IoT innovations from emerging markets? What are the unique challenges and opportunities from these markets? How did the constraints in connectivity among others lead to groundbreaking insights? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Carmen Feliciano, a Principal at AMDG, answered all these questions and shared how you can apply IoT best practices and frameworks from the emerging markets to your own business.
In the next five to ten years, millions, if not billions of things will become smarter. This smartness goes beyond connected things in our homes like the fridge, thermostat and fancy lighting, and into heavily regulated industries including aerospace, pharmaceutical/medical devices and energy. “Smartness” will embed itself within individual products that are part of our daily lives. We will engage with smart products - learning from them, informing them, and communicating with them. Smart products will accumulate information and data wherever they go and will be able to recount this information on command when needed.
Once again, we find ourselves at the dawn of a new year. And many would say, not a moment too soon. With a series of tumultuous elections around the world and an unusual number of celebrity passings, it's been a rough year. But there is at least one bright spot from 2016: Intellyx's digital transformation prognostications were close to spot on! As is our tradition, each year we review last year's predictions and make all new fresh ones! This year, it is my turn to review Jason's 2016 predictions and let you know what I see happening in the coming year.
Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), our world is more automated and connected than ever before. Just about everything, from cars to refrigerators, to coffee machines, has the ability to connect to the Internet, allowing us to micromanage each individual device. This type of automation is an exciting direction for the world to be moving in and the benefits it brings to businesses are huge.
The best problem solver avoids being reactive. Instead, the goal is to remain proactive and ahead of a potential problem. This is where preventative maintenance software plays a substantial role. The primary benefit is being able to nip a problem in the bud as the saying goes. Instead of letting a problem fester and simmer, it's better to get rid of it early. This is possible with a preventative solution, which can spot what is going on and alerts the owner. Many problems are okay until things fall apart and the system fails. Instead of letting this happen, it's better to focus on the right preventative maintenance software.
Adam Smith wrote about rational self-interest, which posits we work together for the greater good when it benefits ourselves. Does this concept translate to robots, automation and employment? I think it does. I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier civilization or vibrant economy; therefore, it is not in our best interest..
As cloud and storage projections continue to rise, the number of organizations moving to the cloud is escalating and it is clear cloud storage is here to stay. However, is it secure? Data is the lifeblood for government entities, countries, cloud service providers and enterprises alike and losing or exposing that data can have disastrous results. There are new concepts for data storage on the horizon that will deliver secure solutions for storing and moving sensitive data around the world. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Sobhani, CEO and cofounder of Cloud Constellation Corporation and the SpaceBelt, Information Ultra-Highway, attendees learned about new best practices to bypass the Internet.
It wasn’t that long ago when the first smartphone came out, and we saw the pace of connected devices and associated mobile applications accelerate beyond what anyone could have imagined. Shortly after that, something incredible happened, we reached the point where there were more connected devices than people on the planet. Since then, we’ve used this to measure the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). Research predicts there will be as many as 50 to 100, and possibly even 200 billion connected devices by 2020. Some businesses are already set up for IoT, like operators of large networks of devices such as self-service kiosks and vending machines. These devices are communicating information back to the enterprise and for those that aren’t, installing the proper hardware and software to do so is more cost efficient today than ever before. Any business that is going to scale is going to look for opportunities to automate its processes. We’ve seen history repeat itself from the Industrial Revolution to the automotive industry and more recently with Netflix automating the distribution of those little red envelopes. Netflix transformed their operations through the success of their streamlined mail business, becoming the premier provider of streamed digital media into the home. Anything that has successfully scaled has used automation effectively. Furthermore, we are seeing traditional retail and brick-and-mortar stores look for ways to combat increasing wages, and costs to maintain a physical environment. For many, that is through the implementation of kiosks and vending technology. We see this in hospitality with self-service ordering. Businesses are finding ways to automate through technology while improving the customer experience. An operator needs a central place to monitor and manage their business—one-time, real-time. The Perfect Storm The reality of increasing wages and rising costs of real estate, combined with the decreasing cost of sensors, computation, and storage has created the perfect storm for our next technology revolution. As a result, automation through the implementation of IoT is becoming more desirable and achievable. When taking a closer look at the specific drivers of these trends, it’s clear that the economics of IoT are very compelling. It is much less expense now to automate than before due to the decreasing costs of micro-electronics (examples: microcontrollers and sensors). The cost of data processing and computation is also reducing at a pace that we’ve never seen before. Additionally, the ability to now process and persist data in the cloud has helped alleviate concerns about rapid growth, through the dynamic, on-demand, scaling nature of cloud infrastructure. These technology drivers are a few of the many signs that IoT can help solve real business problems. Economic headwinds and more affordable technology have created the perfect storm for IoT to transform traditional physical environments through automation. Automation is just the tip of the IoT iceberg Once you’ve automated your operations, the next step is having the right set of management tools for your business. If you are operating a vast network of devices, having the ability to
With artificial intelligence and big data making prominent waves in industries everywhere, IBM is offering several new cloud services that will pair with their BlueMix service. It will offer better organization, smoother data generation, and accelerated migration to the cloud. Ultimately, businesses can experience greater effectiveness in every department.
Video experiences should be unique and exciting! But that doesn’t mean you need to patch all the pieces yourself. Users demand rich and engaging experiences and new ways to connect with you. But creating robust video applications at scale can be complicated, time-consuming and expensive. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Zohar Babin, Vice President of Platform, Ecosystem and Community at Kaltura, discussed how VPaaS enables you to move fast, creating scalable video experiences that reach your audience anywhere, in an enterprise grade secured environment, low-level video ingestion, processing, management, distribution, and playback. And experience microservices, the Big Data analytics to answer all your end-user consumption and behavior questions.
The U.S. Presidential election is finally over. The protests are winding down, they’ve stopped burning cars in Oakland (for now), and the talks of California succession are waning. But I am struggling to return to “normal” because in this election, truth got hammered. Many candidates treated opinions as “truth” and a large portion of the American public grabbed a hold of these “truths” as gospel. It may have been a good time to be in the “fact checking” business, but I’m not sure how effective even the fact checkers could be given the spontaneous nature of “opinions as facts” being thrown around, not to mention the people who create fake news intentionally.
JavaScript redefined web applications ushering in a new era of dynamic websites with fluid responsive designs. It has gained a strong following among developers, popular libraries and frameworks like JQuery and Angular JS are all built with JavaScript. The endless design possibilities that JavaScript provides coupled with the numerous libraries available today makes it an indispensable part of web application development.
Like the daily newspaper that many thought would be dead by now, on-premise business process management tools are probably here to stay for the foreseeable future because a lot of enterprise IT directors are not convinced that their enterprise data is ready to transition to the cloud. Many enterprises prefer on-premise BPM software because it is tangible, visible, and exists within the enterprise boundaries. IT leadership feels that they have to have datacenters within their ‘jurisdiction' in order to keep their corporate data safe.
Developing software for the Internet of Things (IoT) comes with its own set of challenges. Security, privacy, and unified standards are a few key issues. In addition, each IoT product is comprised of (at least) three separate application components: the software embedded in the device, the back-end service, and the mobile application for the end user’s controls. Each component is developed by a different team, using different technologies and practices, and deployed to a different stack/target – this makes the integration of these separate pipelines and the coordination of software updates for IoT more problematic. How do you coordinate the diverse moving parts that must come together when developing your IoT product or updating each of its components?