Today’s software defined and driven business requires fast changes in business models, this permeates successful businesses. What this means is that almost every company is learning how to make small rapid changes and adjustments within their business, especially within software systems. The result of this is that IT is feeling immense pressure to evolve, the net result is a major uptick of private cloud (especially Apprenda, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, RedHat OpenShift) and public clouds (especially Amazon and Microsoft) within our install base of large enterprises. These new platforms enable faster development, testing, and releasing of software. Enterprise customers are getting much smarter, by using automation to drive the software lifecycle including continuous integration, and even experimenting and beginning to use continuous release processes. This is no longer a startup scenario, it’s a strategy for our large enterprise customers. These companies trying to build agile development and operations teams, by changing people, process, and technology to enable a DevOps feedback loop:
The traditional, on-premise computing model has established processes, accreditations, certifications, governance and compliance rules - FISMA, NERC CIP, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, IRS 1075. While the security industry is aggressively addressing the technical security gaps in cloud-driven services, many organizations using cloud services are struggling to implement and adapt strategic processes, procedures, and controls for cloud governance and due diligence.
According to a study, 82 percent of federal IT professional respondents reported that they were using the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) cybersecurity framework to improve their security stance. The survey also demonstrated that the document is being used as a stepping stone to a more secure government. When I first read this, my immediate reaction was a resounding, “So what!” These results tell me that US Federal Government agencies are using US Government guidance to do their US Government job. Isn’t that what you would expect? Making an impression on me would require a study across multiple industry verticals. If other industries were voluntarily using the NIST Framework, that would be saying something!
The application performance monitoring industry underwent a lot of big changes in 2015. And 2016 won't be any different. From changing consumer behavior to new tools and developments in the application performance space - there's a lot to keep an eye on in the New Year. Here are five ways application performance monitoring will change in 2016: Changing consumers and the device mesh
Happy 2016. To help you think about the Environment Management year ahead, we've assembled a collection of resolutions for you to try out. Resolution #1 - I will plan ahead for environment requirements. Many environment managers operate in a reactive mode. They make some wildly inaccurate forecasts about future demand and they sit on excess capacity throughout the year. When a project needs a new environment they dole out VMs or physical machines to projects, but they rarely think ahead and they rarely base estimates on easily predictable demand.
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In the Gartner white paper Taming the Digital Dragon, they define the Hybrid Cloud model as an enabling blueprint for digital transformation and leadership. They give it such an elaborate name because their definition goes far beyond the normal industry use of the term, a mix of on-premise and public Cloud computing, whereas Gartner instead defines a Hybrid Cloud business model.
The Microservices architectural pattern promises increased DevOps agility and can help enable continuous delivery of software. This session is for developers who are transforming existing applications to cloud-native applications, or creating new microservices style applications. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Jim Bugwadia, CEO of Nirmata, introduced best practices, patterns, challenges, and solutions for the development and operations of microservices style applications. He discussed how application container solutions can be used to efficiently deploy and operate these applications in a highly scalable and flexible manner. He also included a live demonstration of how microservices applications, packaged in Docker containers, can be deployed and managed across public and private clouds in a fully automated manner.
Containers have changed the mind of IT in DevOps. They enable developers to work with dev, test, stage and production environments identically. Containers provide the right abstraction for microservices and many cloud platforms have integrated them into deployment pipelines. DevOps and containers together help companies achieve their business goals faster and more effectively. In his session at DevOps Summit, Ruslan Synytsky, CEO and Co-founder of Jelastic, reviewed the current landscape of DevOps with containers and the benefits. In addition, he discussed known issues and solutions for enterprise applications in containers.
Looking back at 2015, this past year saw significant changes in the software industry. Increasingly, software is more and more pervasive in nearly all aspects of our everyday lives, from business, government and education to shifts in the way we travel, parent, and monitor our health and our homes. Three major shifts further towards the mainstream that happened within our industry are the advent of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), the rise of Microservices architecture and Container technology, and the advancement of DevOps as an extension of Agile practices.
You’ve probably read a lot on what the new year has in store for the enterprise when it comes to digital transformation. The statistics are overwhelming; it’s clearly not an option to maintain your legacy framework in the next generation of innovation and enterprise. IDC reports in its latest research report, “IDC FutureScape: Worldside CIO Agenda 2016 Predictions“, that only 25% of CIOs actually feel prepared to drive new strategy towards digital innovation. The majority are stuck in trying to make legacy IT frameworks work for a rapidly evolving industry without the proper budget or resources. Today, your CIO requires insight into the scope of the enterprise and its existing technology to be able to understand an end-user’s growing capabilities and needs. As their role develops to bridge the gap between business and technology, the objective relies on honing in on an end-user’s experience. Gartner’s CEO survey stated that customer experience management is the highest priority across CEO’s with 37% of them making it a major push in the next 5 years. Thinking ahead of the customer is a key way to keep the customer engaged. This is accomplished by making small changes to applications and measuring the way users interact with the new change versus the old change. In order to remain customer obsessed and understand customer preferences, these small experimentations are necessary.
One thing I have learned so far this holiday season is that a 15 pound turkey is too big for only 4 people! I love this time of year as it’s a chance for me to take time and read a number of the predictions articles that have come out in recent weeks. Here are some that have caught my attention and I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.
Did you think we forgot about our good friends Agile and Continuous Integration? With all the buzz around DevOps looking towards 2016, it’s been challenging to focus on anything else. DevOps, Agile, CI and Continuous Delivery are all joined at the hip, and this past week saw some great articles on these methodologies on our news feed. According to Joe Feccorata from InfoQ, adopting Agile practices can actually increase employee satisfaction. Not only can Agile promise happiness in the workplace, but the US Government is finding ways this method can save the planet. Still struggling with continuous integration adoption? Rami Honig from TechBeacon lays out 6 best practices of CI that even veterans can learn from. Continue reading for more on this week’s top news on DevOps, Agile and Continuous Delivery. As always, stay tuned to all the news coming from @ElectricCloud throughout the week and retweet/favorite to get your favorite pieces featured in our weekly recap!
I recently had a chance to speak at The International Monetary Fund (IMF) big data symposium. I was told to make my presentation a bit provocative, so I opened my session by stating to the economist audience “Aren’t you embarrassed that the CVS across the street knows more about the U.S. economy on a day-to-day basis than you do?” Okay, so maybe that was a bit unfair, but the point behind the comment was not; which is that organizations need to think differently about how they leverage data and analytics to power their key business initiatives. And for the IMF, that means changing how it thinks about macro analytics (and macro economics) in a world more and more driven by micro analytics (and micro economics). Let me explain further.
Between the compelling mockups and specs produced by analysts, and resulting applications built by developers, there exists a gulf where projects fail, costs spiral, and applications disappoint. Methodologies like Agile attempt to address this with intensified communication, with partial success but many limitations. In his session at DevOps Summit, Charles Kendrick, CTO and Chief Architect at Isomorphic Software, presented a revolutionary model enabled by new technologies.
2015 has been a busy year for us at Electric Cloud, as we continue to innovate on the Product front to transform the way organizations deliver software to market. 2015 saw the launch of ElectricFlow Deploy - the industry's most powerful deploy automation and ARA solution, soon followed by ElectricFlow Release - which provides DevOps teams across the organization an easy way to coordinate software releases, enabling a clear, intuitive, view of your Path to Production and the state of your Release at any given time.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been one of the most prominent IT buzz words of 2015. Whether you are talking about thermostats you can set before you get home, beacons wirelessly suggesting items to buy in your high street clothing store or wearable gadgets like the Apple Watch, IoT is more than just hype. It’s here to stay if consumers have anything to say about it. However, there is a lot more to IoT than first meets the eye; it is much deeper and has the potential to affect much more than our lives on a personal level. In fact, Gartner has predicted that over 25 billion ‘things’ will be connected by 2020, and this is not just limited to our wearables and smart fridges; this includes connectivity on a bigger level, by linking whole cities, improving sustainability of fuels, and making workplaces ever more productive.
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 backend 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?
As we inch our way closer to the New Year, we would like to take a moment and appreciate some of the technological advancements of 2015, as well as a few bold IIoT predictions for our connected-world enthusiasts. This medley of top news gives credit to our inventiveness, while highlighting a future forecast for IIoT. No matter your place in the world, drones have captured our attention. Precision Ag has changed the way farmers care for crops and animals. So naturally, more and more farmers would be jumping on the drone plan of action. Recently, the FAA has been putting a major kink in the farmer’s right to use drones in farming. The ruling states that if a farmer uses a drone for farm operations in any way, they must file with the FAA for a commercial exemption to use that technology legally. New permanent rules for drone usage could be in place next year from the FAA. So time will tell how the FAA’s ruling will impact the farmers and other commercial drone users in this country.
It's never easy to predict the future. But if you want to plan for the future, you need to keep an eye on what's coming next. This month, we reached out to people from different areas of the software industry to get their thoughts on what to expect in 2016. From DevOps to automation, security, and open API - these experts discuss new and continuing developments, changes, and trends that will impact that software industry in 2016. Here are thirteen software industry predictions.
We thought it’d be fun to offer a look back at some of 2015’s biggest performance testing stories. Or in some cases, maybe all that was tested was our patience. Either way, here’s a quick trip down memory lane. Here we are - just a day away from 2016. It's hard to believe the year is over. It's even harder to believe everything that happened this year. If you build and test software you probably powered through a ton during these past 12 months, to the point where you can't even understand where the time went. Yet if you pick your head up and think about all that's transpired, you might be surprised.
SYS-CON Events announced today that AppNeta, the leader in performance insight for business-critical web applications, will exhibit and present at SYS-CON's @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo New York, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. AppNeta is the only application performance monitoring (APM) company to provide solutions for all applications – applications you develop internally, business-critical SaaS applications you use and the networks that deliver them.
"We specialize is business process automation and our focus today is the Internet of Things and we are promoting a platform called Connect2me," stated Yasser Khan, Founder of Plasma, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to be a major topic of discussion in the tech industry. Many people want to know: how is the IoT influencing me already? That’s one of the themes of this week’s conversation between Electric Cloud CTO Anders Wallgren and Software Engineering Daily Host Jeff Meyerson. IoT continues to grow, with the proliferation of smart homes, wearables, smart cars, mHealth devices and more. For example, new cars today come pre-wired with hundreds of millions of lines of code already, and much of the embedded software is already connected to the Internet. This always-on connectivity offers manufacturers the ability to automatically update software and firmware on IoT devices and can greatly increase the rate of new feature updates, and the usability and usefulness to end users.
How do you securely enable access to your applications in AWS without exposing any attack surfaces? The answer is usually very complicated because application environments morph over time in response to growing requirements from your employee base, your partners and your customers. In his session at DevOps Summit, Haseeb Budhani, co-founder and CEO of Soha, shared five common approaches that DevOps teams follow to secure access to applications deployed in AWS, Azure, etc., and the friction and risks they impose on the business.
In today's rapidly changing IT world, database experts who wish to remain relevant must keep up-to-date on all kinds of technology - both database-related and other. DBAs should understand new data-related technologies but also other newer technologies that interact with database systems. Don't ignore industry and technology trends simply because you cannot immediately think of a database-related impact. Many non-database-related "things" eventually find their way into DBMS software and database applications. An example for that is Agile methodologies, such as DevOps and Continuous Delivery which until recently were not thought of as part of the database eco-system. My list of the top 18 news and opinion sites that DBAs, database developers, SysAdmin, and other database pros should check on a regular basis