Avnet, Inc. has announced that it ranked No. 4 on the InformationWeek Elite 100 – a list of the top business technology innovators in the U.S. Avnet was recognized for the development of an innovative cloud-based training system that serves as the foundation for Avnet Academy – the company’s education and training organization focused on technical training around top IT vendor technologies. The development of this system allowed Avnet to quickly expand its IT-related training capabilities around the world, while creating a new service that Avnet and its IT solution providers can offer to their customers.
Online tax companies go from an absolute standstill to 100 mph in a matter of days. How do these companies do it? Tax laws change every year, so that online application is basically a brand new release when users start pounding away at it in February. What is it like to test the performance of a website that sees a higher traffic spike than an eCommerce site on Black Friday – with no warm-up period preceding it? How do they get performance right the first time that they face an onslaught of users?
We spend a lot of time talking and writing about the IoT (Internet of Things) in the macro, as a giant worldwide network of objects and things, communicating with themselves and others. That is indeed interesting, but the most interesting components of the IoT, in my opinion, are the sensors. Sensors are defined as, "Devices that detect or measure a physical property and record, indicate, or otherwise responds to it." In the context of IoT, sensors detect or measure a physical property and then communicate the findings wirelessly to a server for analysis. Sensors are our digital fingers that touch and feel the earth and environment!
This talk focuses on the application of DevOps fundamentals to include network infrastructure. It draws from real deployment case studies on the extension of today's paradigms to address the challenges of the network infrastructures' ability to seamlessly and cohesively integrate into agile workflows. In this session at DevOps Summit, Arista Networks will focus on configuration management using automation with a nod to future work necessary to include telemetry and ephemeral state information. It will also touch on the changing role of the network engineer and how network operations teams can better align in this new world approach to unified DevOps principals.
SYS-CON Events announced today that CenturyLink, Inc., a leader in the network services market, has been named “Platinum Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. CenturyLink is the third largest telecommunications company in the United States and is recognized as a leader in the network services market by technology industry analyst firms. The company is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprise customers.
Everyone’s talking about the Internet of Things recently, but one topic I don’t see addressed much is the difference between Service-Focused IoT and Device-Focused IoT. The concept of “The Internet of Things” has always been about vast, heterogeneous networks of small, limited-purpose devices. However, there is a growing need to further differentiate IoT into the two delivery models. In my previous blog, I discussed how hardware manufacturers are able to leverage IoT and recurring revenue to further lock in customers, increase lifetime value, and raise exit barriers around their services. However, these examples all require the service provider to also be some sort of hardware manufacturer. Nest (the popular smart thermostat company) is fantastic, but you must buy a Nest-branded device in order to leverage Nest cloud services. Canary (a home security camera) is great, but you must buy Canary cameras and subscribe to Canary cloud services in order to fully take advantage. If the manufacturer goes down (or worse, out of business), the devices become useless.
Gareau: In the past few months we have seen the proliferation of “commercialized cyber attack services,” notably Lizard Squad and the tool that they used to take down Xbox Live and Playstation during the Holidays. As these services become more popular, large-scale DDoS attacks will be easily launched by anyone with a PayPal account.
Our guest on the podcast this week is Jeff Sussna, Founder of Ingineering.IT. We discuss the parallels between LeanUX and DevOps, identifying how each can benefit from the other's methodologies. LeanUX uses nimble processes to create a digital experience designed for the end user, while DevOps uses three ways to integrate feedback between development and operations teams. Listen in to learn how to successfully create a digital service offering by incorporating LeanUX and DevOps processes.
As we approach the next @ThingsExpo, to be held June 9-11 at the Javits Center in New York, my thoughts naturally turn to the Internet of Things. The IoT is a leviathan—in the best possible sense of the term—that will sweep up most everything in the ocean of data and technology being created today and tomorrow. But rather than try to grasp all of its possible uses, for today I'm looking at “just” the Industrial Internet part. I just read a long paper co-authored by Tim Berners-Lee about the possibility of describing a “web science,” that is, discipline that combines the study involved in physical science with the engineering involved in computer science. There's a lot of talk of the semantic web in the paper as well. Written in 2006, the paper is entitled, “A Framework for Web Science,” and already seems dated in one aspect: it focuses on the search and retrieval that become such a powerful societal phenomenon with the creation of the Worldwide Web. The IoT, on the other hand, is primarily a data generation engine, not a searchable repository. The searches metamorphosize into the science of data analytics, much of it done in near real-time and real-time. Furthermore, the data appear at the edges of the IoT rather than from a central web-server resource. This is a fundamental re-thinking of what the Internet is and what it does. Privacy issues move from concerns about invasions of personal privacy to theft of corporate information—big companies may no longer be cavalier about this issue. The red cape of security will be waved in front of us all incessantly, even as security experts modulate the many complex layers—and degrees—of security that will be optimal along the information trail of IoT deployments. The semantic web—once referred in handwaving fashion as Web 3.0—does not go away. It was originally envisioned as a way to get a handle on proliferating data types, and the IoT will certainly be prolific in this area. But again, searches become analytics, and there will be an Oklahoma land rush of opportunities for software companies to stake their claims, while discovering numerous data lakes along the way. It's a huge topic, and one that, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum, threatens enormous disruption to a major sector of the world economy. “The Industrial Internet will afford emerging markets a unique opportunity to leapfrog developed countries in digital infrastructure,” says a guy from Chinese giant Huawei in this report. More on this later...
This week’s post is about the trials and tribulations of companies who make wearable applications – from fitness trackers to the nascent smartwatch market. They have a tough road ahead, and the competition is heating up. And everyone is talking about them. You may be thinking: what is going on here? Last year, I made my first wearable purchase on a whim - a Vivofit wristband tracker. I had heard mixed reviews about a lot of wearables. A former roommate's rant about his always-broken wearable was permanently etched in my mind. Would my case be different? Well, as it turned out, I liked the Vivofit but just couldn't get it to sync with my iPhone properly, so I had to return it. It makes you think - is the wearables market ready for prime time? This week's post is about the trials and tribulations of companies who make wearable applications - from fitness trackers like the one I received to the nascent smartwatch market. They have a tough road ahead, and the competition is heating up. And everyone is talking about them. You may be thinking: what is going on here?
For those of you using Cassandra or considering it, we’ve got another Sematext user’s Planet Cassandra case study for your reading pleasure. In this Q&A/use case, Alain Rodriguez, main Data Architect for Teads.tv, talks about the business and technical needs that drove their decision to use Cassandra, how they are using Cassandra, how their Cassandra monitoring is done, and more. Here’s an excerpt related to Cassandra performance monitoring that’s especially dear to our heart.
Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is the lowest common denominator in today’s most treacherous corporate and governmental security breaches. Or more accurately: Privilege Mismanagement. Sony, Target, Anthem, JP Morgan Chase, the city of San Francisco and many others succumbed to the reality that the identity of a single super-user account can be subverted for the purposes of manipulating sensitive organizational data, correspondence, commercial goods and intellectual property.
A new definition of Big Data & the practical applications of the defined components & associated technical architecture models This presentation introduces a new definition of Big Data, along with the practical applications of the defined components and associated technical architecture models. In his session at Big Data Expo, Tony Shan will start with looking into the concept of Big Data and tracing back the first definition by Doug Laney, and then he will dive deep into the description of 3V and their implication. He will then pinpoint the limitations of this V-model, echoed by expert views and another industry survey report.
Database apps on mobile devices shouldn't stop working when there's limited or no network connectivity. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Bradley Holt, a Developer Advocate for IBM Cloudant, will discuss how to bring data stored in a cloud database to the edge of the network (and back again), whenever an Internet connection is available. He will demonstrate techniques for replicating cloud databases with mobile devices in order to build offline-enabled mobile apps that can provide a better, faster user experience, both offline and online. The focus of this talk will be on Apache CouchDB and related open source tools and open standards.
I woke up this morning to the devastating news about the earthquake in Nepal. Sitting here in California that destruction is literally on the other side of the world but my mind immediately went to thinking about my good friend Jeremy Geelan. See Jeremy and his family have been living in Kathmandu for a while now. His wife, in fact, is the Danish Ambassador to Nepal!
As more applications are needed to run those Things, traditional infrastructure concerns like scale and reliability will become paramount. Additional challenges with identity and access, improving the user experience, and the need for faster provisioning of services could overwhelm IT departments. A robust, scalable and intelligent infrastructure will be necessary to handle the massive traffic growth. IT professionals are tasked with designing and building the infrastructure that’s ready for the challenges that lie ahead, including IoT. But many of today’s traditional architectures will buckle under the increasing demand of all the connected devices. According to IDC, the rate at which applications double in the enterprise is every four years. This is likely to be cut in half as more IoT devices need applications supporting them and organizations need to be ready for the deluge.
ProfitBricks has launched its SDK for .NET, adding to its growing collection of libraries for the DevOps community. This new library exposes all functionality found in the SOAP API and expands ProfitBricks’ support for developers who work with Microsoft technology. “This .NET library addition provides a powerful programmatic interface to our SOAP API,” commented Achim Weiss, Co-founder and CEO of ProfitBricks. “This release is the latest in a series of new offerings that further extend ProfitBricks’ services into the developer community. We are dedicated to providing the industry with the best in painless cloud infrastructure, and you can expect more functionality for the Microsoft developer community in upcoming months.”
Last week we announced the release of “Enabling the Future of Applications: The Stackato Vision.” This video describes how the nature of information technology is changing – from automating business-supporting processes to being the business offering itself. Using IDC’s Third Platform concept as a framework, we identify the critical success factors necessary to be a Third Platform company and present examples like Uber and Airbnb. If you’re not familiar with IDC’s Third Platform, it represents the confluence of four technology trends – social, mobile, Big Data, and cloud computing – that in combination enable an entirely new class of application – and a new way of doing business.
Despite the prevalence of public and private clouds in the enterprise, most IT departments still adhere to operational models designed for physical infrastructure and servers that involve complex environment setup processes. As a result, organizations miss opportunities to take advantage of dynamic cloud-based deployments for non-production environments. There are a number of reasons why it is often too difficult for enterprises to stand up a non-production environment for testing or staging. Databases have to be provisioned, application servers need to be configured, and a testing environment for a complex system can take weeks or months to properly certify as ready for use. This involves a lot of coordination and effort to setup environments. Organizations typically simplify setup by treating environments as permanent because they lack a tool like Plutora to help them keep track of environment management efforts.
There are lots of ways DevOps can fail. For all the revolutionary promise of the idea, it takes a tricky cultural shift to get Development and Operations working together. Many companies—especially big ones—take a top-down approach. C-suite execs trumpet a Brand New DevOps Initiative, which everyone else resists, undermines, or ignores. As a developer at a SaaS company, my success depends on Ops. Too often, Dev and Ops are divided by mistrust and rarely talk between releases. Bridging this gap requires finding a way to dial down the tensions that spring from differences in status and divergent incentives.
One of the most frequently requested Rancher features, load balancers are used to distribute traffic between docker containers. Now Rancher users can configure, update and scale up an integrated load balancing service to meet their application needs, using either Rancher's UI or API. To implement our load balancing functionality we decided to use HAproxy, which is deployed as a contianer, and managed by the Rancher orchestration functionality. With Rancher's Load Balancing capability, users are now able to use a consistent, portable load balancing service on any infrastructure where they can run Docker. Whether it is running in a public cloud, private cloud, lab, cluster, or even on a laptop, any container can be a target for the load balancer.
We found all manner of interesting practices and trends as it relates to cloud and security in our State of Application Delivery 2015 report. One of the more fascinating data points was a relationship between security posture and cloud adoption. That is, it appears that the more applications an organization migrates to the cloud, the less strict its security posture becomes. Really. I was a bit disturbed by that, too. At least at first.
Dorothy the CIO was walking the yellow brick road of planning. She was on her way to the Emerald City to ask the great wizard of the agile data center for advice. Along the way she met two other CIOs who joined her on the journey, nicknamed Tin Man and Scarecrow. Their travels brought them to the edge of the dark forest of datacenter hype and fear. ‘‘Do you think we’ll meet any wild technologies and fears in there?’’ she asked her companions. ‘‘We might.’’ responded Tin Man. ‘One’s that devour IT projects?’’ whispered Scarecrow. ‘‘Possibly.’ said the Tin Man, ‘‘but mostly containers, and clouds, and security.’’ ‘‘Containers, and clouds, and security, oh my!’’ they all murmured in unison as they entered the dark forest.
This is a no-hype, pragmatic post about why I think you should consider architecting your next project the way SOA and/or microservices suggest. No matter if it’s a greenfield approach or if you’re in dire need of refactoring. Please note: considering still keeps open the option of not taking that approach. After reading this, you will have a better idea about whether building multiple small components instead of a single, large component makes sense for your project. This post assumes that you have experience with software architecture and services (you’ll find some words about my experience on the bottom of this post). I won’t go into the details of Wikipedia’s or Martin Fowler’s definitions per se. Much more I will talk about what microservices and/or SOA could and should do for your project.
Those from a dev-centric background might discount monitoring from their DevOps approach. But if you're already automating deployment and testing, why wouldn't you use the right set of tools to avoid manual performance monitoring? Of course, you do performance tests each time you release changes to pre-production. You're checking for response time, processor utilization, memory occupation, I/O activity and so on, but how can you ensure normal behavior without a reference point? In other words - despite your good intentions - aren't you using critical production as a first level of benchmark? If you run pre-production performance tests regularly and you can compare those results to what is seen in production, there is a greater chance of detecting the processor utilization jump that caused slowdowns and then relate it to a code change. But the reality is that most developers lack the ability to monitor how their code performs in the test, staging and production environments.