The Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), which enables organizations to seamlessly run in a hybrid cloud model (public + private cloud), is here to stay. IDC estimates that the software-defined networking market will be valued at $3.7 billion by 2016. Security is a key component and benefit of the SDDC, and offers an opportunity to build security 'from the ground up' and weave it into the environment from day one. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Reuven Harrison, CTO and Co-Founder of Tufin, will discuss the main security considerations enterprises face when rolling out SDDCs and how they can harness key functionality of a virtual environment to achieve more granular security controls across hybrid environments.
Since enterprise digital transformation efforts involve organizational, process, and technology changes that better connect the customer to the technology systems of record, formulating the best way of accomplishing the goals of digital sounds like a perfect application of enterprise architecture. Only most organizations don’t see this connection.
Internet of Things (IoT) is booming. The “Software for the Internet of Things (IoT) Developer Survey” report, published by Embarcadero Technologies last month, shows that 77% of development teams will have IoT solutions in active development in 2015 with almost half (49%) of IoT developers anticipating their solutions will generate business impacts by the end of this year. IoT Maturity Model (IoTMM) is a qualitative method to gauge the growth and increasing impact of IoT capabilities in an IT environment from both business and technology perspectives. It comprises a set of criteria, parameters and factors that can be used to describe and measure the effectiveness of the IoT adoption and implementation.
The word DevOps is a portmanteau of “development” and “operations”. However, anyone who knows “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim et al. will agree that its radius is much wider than what the term suggests: it’s a melting pot that combines principles from Agile Software Development and Lean Manufacturing with the aim to reduce friction and improve collaboration by honing a culture of communication, respect and trust across Product Management, Development, Testing, IT Operations, Information Security, Marketing, Sales and Technical Support departments, as well as to continuously improve organizational performance. Aside from the social, DevOps also has a technological side to it: tooling. Picking the right tools that support or even fully automate software development, testing and delivery processes empower everyone involved in getting things done more effectively and efficiently, lessen the risk of the human factor, reduce waste and allow for a vastly improved time to market.
They say that you are only as secure as your weakest firewall. But then is it just firewalls that protect our network and the information therein, or is it the framework the policies and the processes that have cracks that let the vulnerabilities seep through? Hackers will be hackers and you really can't blame anything on them. They are doing what they are meant to do. i.e Hack. Now that’s a completely different topic as to why unethical hacking is bad and so on. That’s next time. Right now, let’s talk about what we can do on our side. In addition to getting the best IT security systems, firewalls, more firewalls, anti-hacking everything and so on, it’s also essential that with moving times, or let’s say more intelligent hackers, address the foundations of the problem. Here are three best practices to consider.
The dust has settled from CES 2015. The Internet of Things was front and center throughout the show, a reflection of its rapidly expanding presence in products and services for consumers and businesses alike. IoT played a vital role in hundreds of products on display, including dazzling innovations such as self-driving cars and the latest drones. Here are three trends that emerged from CES that will shape the direction of IoT monetization in 2015 and beyond.
There is little doubt that Big Data solutions will have an increasing role in the Enterprise IT mainstream over time. 7th International Big Data Expo, co-located with 16th International Cloud Expo - to be held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY - has announced its Call for Papers is open until February 28, 2015. As advanced data storage, access and analytics technologies aimed at handling high-volume and/or fast moving data all move center stage, aided by the cloud computing boom, Big Data Expo is the single most effective event for you to learn how to use you own enterprise data - processed in the cloud - most effectively to drive value for your business.
If you’ve spent any time at leading cloud computing conferences, you may have come across the meme “pets vs cattle.” (Here is a lengthy slideshare presentation by Randy Bias of EMC/Cloudscaling discussing the difference between pets and cattle in a cloud computing world.) The message associated with this meme is that we should have different attitudes about traditional infrastructure versus today’s cloud infrastructure. Traditional infrastructure is expensive and individuated – we give servers names, we lavish attention on them, and when they suffer problems we do evaluation, diagnosis, and nurse them back to health via hands-on administration. In other words, we treat them as part of a family. This is true whether the server is physical or virtual; they are long-lived and stable, and therefore deserve personal attention and emotional attachment – just like a pet.
Analytics is the foundation of smart data and now, with the ability to run Hadoop directly on smart storage systems like Cloudian HyperStore, enterprises will gain huge business advantages in terms of scalability, efficiency and cost savings as they move closer to realizing the potential of the Internet of Things. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Paul Turner, technology evangelist and CMO at Cloudian, Inc., will discuss the revolutionary notion that the storage world is transitioning from mere Big Data to smart data. He will argue that today’s hybrid cloud storage solutions, with commodity hardware and in-place analytics capabilities, will help to yield high value insights without the high price tag.
‘Perfection would be a fatal flaw for evolution. ’In technology, as in life, everything evolves, grows, develops, mutates and eventually goes away, being replaced with improved versions. In the past several years, application development evolved and applications have come to play a more centric part of many businesses, even those that traditionally were not software players.
In my blog from September 2014, I wrote “encryption and access controls are your front-line defenses for defending data-at-rest. Given today’s threat environment, encrypt everything possible, everywhere possible.” While lots of things change in 6 months – the projected World Series Champion, the Super Bowl front-runner, Taylor Swift going from tweeting about dating to tweeting about hacking – this recommendation remains constant. Data-at-rest is susceptible to many forces, not least of which are malicious and non-malicious insiders. As we noted in our recent 2015 Insider Threat Report, the insider threat landscape is becoming more difficult to deal with as the range of miscreant’s moves beyond employees and privileged IT staff. It now includes outsiders who have stolen valid user credentials; business partners, suppliers, and contractors with inappropriate access rights; and third-party service providers with excessive admin privileges. Unless properly controlled, all of these groups have the opportunity to reach inside corporate networks and steal unprotected data.
New York-based adMarketplace, a search syndication advertising network, uses big data to improve its search advertising capabilities. The next BriefingsDirect big data innovation success story uncovers how New York-based adMarketplace, a search syndication advertising network, uses big data to improve its search advertising capabilities. In part two of our series on adMarketplace, we'll explore how they instantly capture and analyze massive data to allow for efficient real-time bidding for traffic sources for online advertising. And we'll hear how the data-analysis infrastructure also delivers rapid cost-per-click insights to advertisers.
The 3rd International Internet of @ThingsExpo, co-located with the 16th International Cloud Expo - to be held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY - announces that its Call for Papers is open until February 28, 2015. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the biggest idea since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.
The 16th International Cloud Expo has announced that its Call for Papers is open until February 28, 2015. 16th International Cloud Expo, to be held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City brings together Cloud Computing, APM, APIs, Security, Big Data, Internet of Things, DevOps and WebRTC to one location. With cloud computing driving a higher percentage of enterprise IT budgets every year, it becomes increasingly important to plant your flag in this fast-expanding business opportunity. Submit your speaking proposal today!
The 4th International DevOps Summit, co-located with16th International Cloud Expo – being held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY – announces that its Call for Papers is open until February 28, 2015. Born out of proven success in agile development, cloud computing, and process automation, DevOps is a macro trend you cannot afford to miss. From showcase success stories from early adopters and web-scale businesses, DevOps is expanding to organizations of all sizes, including the world's largest enterprises – and delivering real results. Among the proven benefits, DevOps is correlated with 20% faster time-to-market, 22% improvement in quality, and 18% reduction in dev and ops costs, according to research firm Vanson-Bourne. It is changing the way IT works, how businesses interact with customers, and how organizations are buying, building, and delivering software.
This week's post is taken from a collection of stories and a Q&A session based around the experiences of Brad Stoner, an expert in testing, performance and Virtual Users. Brad is a senior performance engineer at Neotys and was the manager of the Load and Performance Team at H&R Block. In his tenure there, he managed five people and successfully improved application performance and quality for the company. In a given year, it wasn't uncommon for Brad's team to be tasked with more than fifty projects around the performance testing process. This experience led Brad to found his own venture in Sandbreak Digital Solutions, a consulting company with a focus in web application performance testing, web page optimization, front end optimization, capacity testing, infrastructure validation and cloud testing. With twelve years of experience in IT, Brad has held multiple roles that range from systems engineering to operations management and we can certainly learn a lot from him.
SYS-CON Media announced that Cisco, a worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow, has launched a new ad campaign in Big Data Journal. The ad campaign, a webcast titled Analytics Solutions for Driving Better Business Outcomes, focuses on how Big Data analytics can boost your business. The webcast will take place on February 24, 2015, at 9 a.m. PST.
At Fractal Analytics, we believe in chasing three ‘I's in what we do for our clients, or even for any internal development, to be able to deliver value. These ‘I's are critical for our success (as we perceive it), and forms the core of our thinking.
Thanks to an early season skiing accident, I found myself sitting in the Emergency Department of a small hospital in a Colorado ski town. The hospital had recently gone through a major renovation and was proud of its investment on HIT (Health care IT). Most patient workflows are now automated. Check-in and registration were a breeze. Within a few minutes, my patient record was updated, and my case was well documented. With an electronic signature of consent and a scan of my insurance card, all I needed to do was wait for my turn. A large monitor displayed my name as well as the names of others waiting to be seen, as well as the likely waiting time.
We are all here because we are sold on the transformative promise of The Cloud. But what good is all of this ephemeral, on-demand infrastructure if your usage doesn't actually improve the agility and speed of your business? How must Operations adapt in order to avoid stifling your Cloud initiative? In his session at DevOps Summit, Damon Edwards, co-founder and managing partner of the DTO Solutions, will highlight the successful organizational, process, and tooling patterns of high-performing companies that have reshaped their Operations to enable the business to get full value from their Cloud investment.
The annual holiday shopping season, which starts on Thanksgiving weekend and runs through the end of December, is undoubtedly the most crucial time of the year for many eCommerce websites, with sales from this period having a dramatic effect on the year-end bottom line. Web performance – or, the overall speed and availability of a website or mobile site – is an issue year-round, but it takes on increased importance during the holidays. Ironically, it is at this time of year that networks and infrastructure come under the most strain from traffic and are more vulnerable than ever to performance degradations. Yet busy, hurried holiday shoppers expect better performance than ever, and the stakes for lost conversions are frighteningly high. When customers encounter long load times, they’re likely to abandon their current shopping destination and move on to a competitor’s site that is performing better, sending potential revenue out the door. What’s worse, studies have shown that if a site freezes or crashes, is too slow, or involves an overly complicated checkout process, 75 percent of shoppers will no longer buy from that site.
Log data provides the most granular view into what is happening across your systems, applications, and end users. Logs can show you where the issues are in real-time, and provide a historical trending view over time. Logs give you the whole picture. Modern infrastructure constantly generates log data at a rate faster than humans can easily analyze. And now that data centers can be built and torn down with scripts, the amount of activity and data is exponential.
When it comes to cloud computing, there is no “one size fits all” platform for getting work done. High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads are not web applications. Thankfully, there are clouds specifically designed for running HPC workloads rather than web applications. No matter what type of work they do, all clouds have "Cloud Controllers" which put resources to work, and often feature load balancing and metering capabilities. An HPC Cloud uses a Job Scheduler to assign work when requested. Basically, this puts work in queues for future execution on appropriate resources. Jobs are then run as resources become available.
How do you surge ahead of the competitors and completely shake up the game? What determines who becomes the next Netflix, Apple, or Salesforce of your industry? It all comes down to identifying the opportunity to grow revenue and gain the competitive advantage. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel – just reinvent how you package and sell your products and services. Consider the brands above – each company is not the sole provider, or even the inventor, of the products and services they sell. A convergence of cloud computing technologies, mobility, and changing consumer preferences created the opportunity for brands to take the lead by repackaging products and services already sold in the marketplace.
Can the spatial component of your Big Data be harnessed and visualized, adding another dimension of power and analytics to your data? In his session at Big Data Expo®, John Meza, Product Engineer and Performance Engineering Team Lead at Esri, discussed the spatial queries that can be used within the Hadoop ecosystem and their integration with GeoSpatial applications. The GIS Tools for Hadoop project was also discussed and its implementation to discover location-based patterns and relationships in Big Data to enable better decision support. This was followed by a demonstration of GIS Big Data on a live cluster with expressive web mapping visualization.