To some the above (read the full article here) may seem like common sense tips and things everybody should know otoh there are many people who are new to servers storage I/O networking hardware software cloud virtual along with various applications, not to mention different tools. Thus the above is a refresher for some (e.g. Dejavu) while for others it might be new and revolutionary or simply helpful. Interested in HDD's, SSD's as well as other server storage I/O performance along with benchmarking tools, techniques and trends check out the collection of links here (Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking and Performance Resources).
As the cloud becomes the primary model for both IT and line-of-business professionals around the world, a certain amount of refinement and fine-tuning is a healthy part of the process. In other words, now out of its infancy, the cloud is growing up. Highlighting this trend, SAP SE has announced the results of a global survey conducted with Oxford Economics that showcase the fact that the cloud business model has not only become mainstream - indeed, over two-thirds (69 percent) of businesses surveyed expect to make moderate-to-heavy cloud investments over the next three years - but that companies are increasingly shifting from using the cloud for productivity and efficiency to specific business benefits like innovation in supply chain, talent management, collaboration and analytics.
Thomson Reuters in London sought to foster innovation and derive more value from its vast trove of business and market information by means of a hackathon. To learn more about getting developers on board the big-data analysis train, BriefingsDirect sat down with Chris Blatchford, Director of Platform Technology in the IT organization at Thomson Reuters in London. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Much of what is written about Continuous Delivery at present seems to revolve around technical challenges and technical choices: “Which is better: Puppet, Chef or Salt?”, “Should I use Jenkins, Go or XL Release?”, “How do I build a CD pipeline with containers?” etc. etc. If we’re looking at CD properly, though, this is the sideshow – an implementation detail at best. The real CD story is much bigger. Don’t get me wrong: as a technical kind of person, I can get very enthusiastic about the tech: there are a lot of cool tools and frameworks out there and the tooling landscape is expanding rapidly. Working with evolving technology is a lot of fun, and there are plenty of challenges to be solved around supporting Continuous Delivery at scale…which is why we develop XL Release, XL Deploy and XL Test.
I was talking to a friend the other day about Cloud Foundry and whether there was any buzz surrounding it. Cloud Foundry in particular and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in general have now been around for a few years, a considerable amount of time in the Web Era. Recent buzz was generated with the formal establishment of the Cloud Foundry Foundation last year. Collateral buzz was generated by CoreOS with its late-year Rocket container announcement, which took aim at CFF member Docker and its expanding containers strategy. That said, “buzz” may be too strong a word to associate with the unglamorous tasks of designing and deploying software applications and services into the cloud. Yet, companies who are integrating PaaS into the way they do things should not be afraid to commend themselves a little bit for being pioneers in what are still the early days of the PaaS phenomenon. PaaS generated less than $4 billion in global revenue in 2012, according to IDC. The research firm predicts annual growth rates on the order of 50%, with revenues reaching $14 billion by 2017. This number would still be less than 1% of the global total enterprise IT spend of more than $2 trillion. But it would be a very important 1%. PaaS provides that critical link between infrastructure (processing power, storage, and networking) and the software applications and services that run on it. Time's wastin' In a world in which flexible, fluid technology stacks are emerging, competing, and mixing with one another, there is a sense that there is no time to develop and deploy new software. Long development cycles are replaced by the perpetual beta, a DevOps culture is emerging (difficult as it may be), and a mobile-equipped populace not only needs its information right now, it needs the latest, coolest experience right now. So, we circle back to PaaS. Within a typical enterprise shop of a few dozen or few hundred developers, a PaaS such as Cloud Foundry will be of interest to about 70% of the staff, according to a conversation I had with an exec at a Cloud Foundry company. Not everyone will be using it directly, of course, but the majority of the team needs to know what is doing and why. In smaller shops, a PaaS will be of high interest to everyone. There may not be a big buzz per se for the PaaS itself, but there should be for the projects it enables. I've already seen notable stories concerning the use of Cloud Foundry to Cloud Foundry in these cases was used to improve products and services in major industries such as healthcare, agriculture, and entertainment. It also transformed the entire business and delivery model for a major publishing company. Companies buzzing with success include AT&T, Monsanto, the LDS Church, Philips, Axel Springer, and Warner Music. Each of these projects had a measurable outcome and success criteria. So, I do believe there is some buzz about Cloud Foundry, or at least the projects it is help bringing to life.
Recently I listened to a discussion on Big Data Visualization hosted by Bill McKnight of the McKnight Consulting group. The panelists agreed that Big Data is shifting from the hype state to an “imperative” state. For start-up companies, there are more Big Data projects whereas true big data is still a small part of the enterprise practice. At many companies, Big Data is moving from POC (Proof of Concept) to production. Interest in visualization of data from different sources is certainly increasing. There is a growth in data-driven decision-making as evidenced by the increasing use of platforms like YARN, HIVE, and Spark. The traditional approach of RDBMS platform can not scale to meet the needs of rapidly growing volume and varieties of Big Data.
Docker has acquired software-defined networking (SDN) startup SocketPlane. SocketPlane, which was founded in Q4, 2014, with a vision of delivering Docker-native networking, has been an active participant in shaping the initial efforts around Docker’s open API for networking. The explicit focus of the SocketPlane team within Docker will be on collaborating with the partner community to complete a rich set of networking APIs that addresses the needs of application developers and network and system administrators alike.
Pomeroy, a Global IT managed services provider, improves quality for their applications testing, development and packaged applications customization by working with a partner, TurnKey Solutions, and HP. This next edition of the HP Discover Discussion Series highlights how Pomeroy, a Global IT managed services provider, improves quality for their applications testing, development and packaged applications customization. By working with a partner, TurnKey Solutions, and HP, Pomeroy improves their overall process for development and thereby achieves far better IT and business outcomes.
A discussion from The Open Group San Diego 2015 examining the both need and outlook for Cybersecurity standards among supply chains. The latest discussion, examining the both need and outlook for Cybersecurity standards among supply chains, is moderated by Dave Lounsbury, Chief Technology Officer, The Open Group; with guests Mary Ann Davidson, Chief Security Officer, Oracle; Dr. Ron Ross, Fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Jim Hietala, Vice President of Security for The Open Group. Download a copy of the transcript. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
The epic changes brought about by mobile and cloud computing over the past 5 years have completely transformed the way organizations do business today. We now live in an age where mobile devices are the PCs of choice and mobile apps are the ubiquitous software of choice in this digital era. IT is shifting completely to the cloud and this new paradigm is leading organizations to adopt quicker and more agile frameworks for managing that software.
While putting my test code up on GitHub and writing the readme.md, I ran my NetBeans test code on my 2011 early MacBook Pro. To my surprise the times for both embedded and remote testing were between 25 and 35 seconds. My original blog was based on working on a much much faster Windows 8.1 system that took 16 seconds for embedded but 100 seconds for remote. So I guess we blame. Some very bright people will be looking at the code and hopefully they will have an explanation for why remote server testing on Windows 8.1 performs so badly.
Right off the bat, Newman advises that we should "think of microservices as a specific approach for SOA in the same way that XP or Scrum are specific approaches for Agile Software development". These analogies are very interesting because my expectation was that microservices is a pattern. So I might infer that microservices is a set of process techniques as opposed to an architectural approach. Yet in the book, Newman clearly includes some elements of concept model and architecture as well as process and organization.
FedRAMP is mandatory for government cloud deployments and businesses need to comply in order to provide services for federal engagements. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Abel Sussman, Director for Coalfire Public Sector practice, will review the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) process and provide advice on overcoming common compliance obstacles.
John McAdam, F5 President & CEO talks about what the mobile revolution means to F5. John discusses how mobile technology is driving innovation, why the need for intelligent application traffic management is critical, how F5 is in the sweet spot for the explosion of mobile data traffic and why Mobile World Congress is attracts so many executives from around the world. If you only watch one #MWC15 video, this is it!
Smart mobile teams know that delivering a 5-star app is more than just finding a good business use-case and designing an app with wow experience; it’s also about ensuring amazing app performance. Apps that perform well will engage the customer – poor app performance is a sure fire way to lose the customer and their business. To deliver a first-rate app performance, mobile teams have to master the many variables which affect performance:
Our guest on the podcast this week is David Houghton, Director at Bright Wolf. We discuss the evolutions of connected technologies leading to the Internet of Things (IoT). Industrial use cases are transforming operational efficiency, remote monitoring asset tracking, preventative maintenance, and safety and regulation benefits. Listen in to learn how IoT extends beyond commercial use cases.
An explosive combination of technology trends will be where ‘microservices’ and the IoT Internet of Things intersect, a concept we can describe by comparing it with a previous theme, the ‘X Internet.' The idea of using small self-contained application components has been popular since XML Web services began and a distributed computing future of smart fridges and kettles was imagined long back in the early Internet years.
One of the best things about working here is the collaborative nature of our team. We throw around ideas, critique each other’s suggestions, and ultimately arrive at some pretty smart decisions through a combination of talking, illustrating, venting, analysis, logic, and insane amount of passion and conviction. And yes, there’s a lot of caffeine fueling all of that. This style of working – thoughtful, insightful, respectful – has given us the freedom and courage to make important changes to our products and in the technology we believe in. By the same token, we have wonderful customers who work in partnership with us to help us understand how their markets are evolving and allow us to serve them better through our innovative technology. Our ability to engage, react and predict has served us incredibly well.
If you’ve ever watched a submarine movie like The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide, or U-571 you’ll notice that these scripts always include running a surprise drill soon after getting underway from port. When a submarine submerges after a long port call one of the first things a captain will do is run an exercise called “Angles and Dangles.” Captains run these exercises for a few reasons: to test the ability of the sub to rapidly descend and surface, to make sure that everything in the sub is properly stowed, but also to run the crew through a series of exercises to test their readiness after a long break on shore.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Tapabrata Pal, Director of Enterprise Architecture at Capital One, will tell a story about how Capital One has embraced Agile and DevOps Security practices across the Enterprise – driven by Enterprise Architecture; bringing in Development, Operations and Information Security organizations together. Capital Ones DevOpsSec practice is based upon three "pillars" – Shift-Left, Automate Everything, Dashboard Everything. Within about three years, from 100% waterfall, Capital One now has 500+ Agile Teams delivering quality software via Agile and DevOps practices.
Years ago companies saw a major improvement in efficiency in the heyday of virtualization. As the world looked to the cloud to solve business challenges these savings were forgotten. Today we live in a post cloud world with pre-virtualization efficiencies. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Jordan Jacobs, VP of Products at SingleHop, will discuss the common mistakes that as many as 90% of companies are making utilizing public clouds, what are causing these problems and how to avoid them.
Even as cloud and managed services grow increasingly central to business strategy and performance, challenges remain. The biggest sticking point for companies seeking to capitalize on the cloud is data security. Keeping data safe is an issue in any computing environment, and it has been a focus since the earliest days of the cloud revolution. Understandably so: a lot can go wrong when you allow valuable information to live outside the firewall. Recent revelations about government snooping, along with a steady stream of well-publicized data breaches, only add to the uncertainty
Cryptography has become one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood components of technology. It’s too easy for salespeople to dismiss concerns with three letters that nobody wants to question. ‘Yes, of course, we use AES.’ But what exactly are you trusting to be the ultimate guardian of your data? Let’s face it – you probably don’t know. An organic, grass-fed Kobe steak is a far cry from a Big Mac, but they’re both beef, right? Not exactly. Crypto is the same way. The US government requires all federally deployed technology to meet minimum standards. For encryption, if it hasn’t been certified to meet the FIPS 140-2 benchmark, it is considered the equivalent of exposing your data in plain text. That’s how crucial it is.
Here at VictorOps, we are going through the process of overhauling the serialization framework that we use for inter and intra process communication. We evaluated several great options including Kryo (and its Scala companion Chill), Protobuffers, and Thrift. In the process, we put together a little test project to help us decide which of these choices was right for us. Testing Thrift posed some challenges as the tooling, while quite mature, wasn’t quite as plug-n-play with our local development environment as we would have liked. The following instructions assume a basic knowledge of the Scala/SBT framework, Thrift, and (optionally) Intellij.
Last month, fellow Forbes contributor Peter Cohan remarked on application intelligence vendor AppDynamics and their incredible run up to going public, probably later this year. He reported that “on February 17, AppDynamics reported that its bookings for the year ending January 2015 doubled to $150 million — adding 600 customers. The company also increased its employee base during the year from 365 to 600 people today,” according to AppDynamics CEO Jyoti Bansal. Cohan also quoted Bansal’s comment on their Net Promoter score, a measure of how likely customers will recommend them: “AppDynamics recently increased its Net Promoter Score from 84 to 87 indicating an extraordinarily high likelihood to recommend the company; comparable enterprise software scores sit at 19.” Such a remarkably favorable opinion on the part of its customers suggests that AppDynamics is doing something right – something that other vendors struggle to match. As AppDynamics is an Intellyx client, I had the opportunity to sit down with Bansal last week and ask him about the secrets to the company’s success.