I was recently on a business trip out to Wausau, WI. The purpose was to conduct a training session on web application development for a new batch of associates at our onshore development center. When I picked up my rental car at the airport, I was very happy to discover it had built in Bluetooth integration for my phone. I have this feature on both cars at home. I love the convenience of having the car become an accessory for my mobile device. I immediately bound my phone with the car’s Bluetooth. Then something unusual happened. My phone prompted me with a question: ‘Chevy/Malibu would like access to your contacts list, click OK to grant request.’ My first reaction was no, and canceled the request. Each time I started the car, it would persistently ask the question. My curiosity got the better of me, and I finally relinquished and said OK to see what happened next.
Since the announcement of Docker approximately 18 months ago there has been an explosion of new technology in this space. Although the list is becoming very long, here I will outline five evolving Docker-related technologies that are driving the direction that cloud technology is going. 1. Kubernetes At Dockercon this summer Google's VP of Infrastructure, Eric Brewer, announced Kubernetes, which provides a way to orchestrate a collection of Docker containers across a cluster of machines. It is essentially a scheduler, which means it handles running your containers and ensuring uptime, even in the event of losing machines.
Vichara Technologies in Hoboken, New Jersey is expanding its capabilities in big data from origins on Wall Street into other areas, and thereby demonstrating the growing marketplace for advanced big-data analytics services. The next BriefingsDirect deep-dive big data benefits case study interview explores how Vichara Technologies in Hoboken, New Jersey is expanding its capabilities in big data from origins on Wall Street into other areas, and thereby demonstrating the growing marketplace for advanced big-data analytics services. The use of HP Vertica as a big data core component to Vichara has allowed them to extend their easier to use financial modeling and tools, and then apply them to other industries such as insurance and healthcare.
Vichara Technologies in Hoboken, New Jersey is expanding its capabilities in big data from origins on Wall Street into other areas, and thereby demonstrating the growing marketplace for advanced big-data analytics services. The next BriefingsDirect deep-dive big data benefits case study interview explores how Vichara Technologies in Hoboken, New Jersey is expanding its capabilities in big data from origins on Wall Street into other areas, and thereby demonstrating the growing marketplace for advanced big-data analytics services. The use of HP Vertica as a big data core component to Vichara has allowed them to extend their easier to use financial modeling and tools, and then apply them to other industries such as insurance and healthcare.
Agility is top of mind for Cloud/Service providers and Enterprises alike. Policy Driven Data Center provides a policy model for application deployment by decoupling application needs from the underlying infrastructure primitives. In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, David Klebanov, a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems, discussed how it differentiates from the software-defined top-down control by offering a declarative approach to allow faster and simpler application deployment. David Klebanov is a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems. In his work David influences strategic development of the industry leading Data Center switching platforms, which lay foundation for the next generation cloud fabrics. David also takes great pride in speaking at industry events, releasing publications and working on patents.
Working with Big Data is challenging, especially when decision makers depend on market insights and intelligence from your data but don't have quick access to it or find it unusable. In their session at 6th Big Data Expo, Ian Khan, Global Strategic Positioning & Brand Manager at Solgenia; Zel Bianco, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Interactive Edge of Solgenia; and Ermanno Bonifazi, CEO & Founder at Solgenia, discussed how a revolutionary cloud-based BI along with mobile analytics is already changing the way organizations rely on data for decisions that affect operations as well as strategy. Also learn how combined predictive analytics, data modelling, mobile, and cloud BI are fast changing the key decision-making mechanisms in the enterprise.
Agility is top of mind for Cloud/Service providers and Enterprises alike. Policy Driven Data Center provides a policy model for application deployment by decoupling application needs from the underlying infrastructure primitives. In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, David Klebanov, a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems, discussed how it differentiates from the software-defined top-down control by offering a declarative approach to allow faster and simpler application deployment. David Klebanov is a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems. In his work David influences strategic development of the industry leading Data Center switching platforms, which lay foundation for the next generation cloud fabrics. David also takes great pride in speaking at industry events, releasing publications and working on patents.
Software is eating the world. Companies that were not previously in the technology space now find themselves competing with Google and Amazon on speed of innovation. As the innovation cycle accelerates, companies must embrace rapid and constant change to both applications and their infrastructure, and find a way to deliver speed and agility of development without sacrificing reliability or efficiency of operations. In her Day 2 Keynote DevOps Summit, Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Qubell, discussed how IT organizations can automate just-in-time assembly of application environments - each built for a specific purpose with the right infrastructure, components, service, data and tools - and deliver this automation to developers as a self-service. Victoria's keynote will include remarks by Kira Makagon, EVP of Innovation at RingCentral, and Ratnakar Lavu, EVP of Digital Technology at Kohl's.
Working with Big Data is challenging, especially when decision makers depend on market insights and intelligence from your data but don't have quick access to it or find it unusable. In their session at 6th Big Data Expo, Ian Khan, Global Strategic Positioning & Brand Manager at Solgenia; Zel Bianco, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Interactive Edge of Solgenia; and Ermanno Bonifazi, CEO & Founder at Solgenia, discussed how a revolutionary cloud-based BI along with mobile analytics is already changing the way organizations rely on data for decisions that affect operations as well as strategy. Also learn how combined predictive analytics, data modelling, mobile, and cloud BI are fast changing the key decision-making mechanisms in the enterprise.
Software is eating the world. Companies that were not previously in the technology space now find themselves competing with Google and Amazon on speed of innovation. As the innovation cycle accelerates, companies must embrace rapid and constant change to both applications and their infrastructure, and find a way to deliver speed and agility of development without sacrificing reliability or efficiency of operations. In her Day 2 Keynote DevOps Summit, Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Qubell, discussed how IT organizations can automate just-in-time assembly of application environments - each built for a specific purpose with the right infrastructure, components, service, data and tools - and deliver this automation to developers as a self-service. Victoria's keynote will include remarks by Kira Makagon, EVP of Innovation at RingCentral, and Ratnakar Lavu, EVP of Digital Technology at Kohl's.
With the blurring of technology lines, the rise of competitive companies, and a shift in buying models all before us, it would appear we are at the cusp of ushering in the next era in IT—the Third Platform Era. But as with the other transitions, it is not the technology or the vendors that trigger a change in buying patterns. There must be fundamental shifts in buying behavior driven by business objectives. The IT industry at large is in the midst of a massive rewrite of key business applications in response to two technology trends: the proliferation of data (read: Big Data) and the need for additional performance and scale. In many regards, the first begets the second. As data becomes more available—via traditional datacenters, and both public and private cloud environments—applications look to use that data, which means the applications themselves have to go through an evolution to account for the scale and performance required.
In late August, voke, Inc. debuted its “Market Snapshot Report: Virtual and Cloud-Based Labs,” about how companies of all sizes and levels of testing sophistication view, use and benefit from virtual and cloud-based development and testing technologies. The results were pretty amazing―even we were surprised! Among the many benefits the 503 participant companies (50% of which were U.S. based) cited, 53% saw reduced CAPEX (capital expenditures) from the use of virtual and cloud-based labs. Thirty-nine percent said they help eliminate defects prior to production, and 33% said they improve audits and compliance. Of course, the biggest benefit (58%) was on-demand access to environments, which we see as a primary reason why many organizations adopt virtual and/or cloud-based testing, either alone or in combination with on-premise, physical testing.
With the blurring of technology lines, the rise of competitive companies, and a shift in buying models all before us, it would appear we are at the cusp of ushering in the next era in IT—the Third Platform Era. But as with the other transitions, it is not the technology or the vendors that trigger a change in buying patterns. There must be fundamental shifts in buying behavior driven by business objectives. The IT industry at large is in the midst of a massive rewrite of key business applications in response to two technology trends: the proliferation of data (read: Big Data) and the need for additional performance and scale. In many regards, the first begets the second. As data becomes more available—via traditional datacenters, and both public and private cloud environments—applications look to use that data, which means the applications themselves have to go through an evolution to account for the scale and performance required.
In late August, voke, Inc. debuted its “Market Snapshot Report: Virtual and Cloud-Based Labs,” about how companies of all sizes and levels of testing sophistication view, use and benefit from virtual and cloud-based development and testing technologies. The results were pretty amazing―even we were surprised! Among the many benefits the 503 participant companies (50% of which were U.S. based) cited, 53% saw reduced CAPEX (capital expenditures) from the use of virtual and cloud-based labs. Thirty-nine percent said they help eliminate defects prior to production, and 33% said they improve audits and compliance. Of course, the biggest benefit (58%) was on-demand access to environments, which we see as a primary reason why many organizations adopt virtual and/or cloud-based testing, either alone or in combination with on-premise, physical testing.
Cloud security is a top concern for any organization migrating to the cloud. The threats are many. For example, the fact your data resides in a shared, multi-tenant environment is a threat that has become a reality with the latest Xen virtualization bug, which allowed a malicious fully virtualized server to read data about other virtualized systems running on the same physical hardware or the hypervisor). Other threats to cloud security include internal employees and even governments. The consensus is that data encryption is a critical first step to migrating to the cloud; but in fact, encryption is the easy part. The real challenge lies with the management of the encryption keys. Allowing your cloud provider to encrypt your data and manage the encryption keys is as secure as parking your car in a public parking space and leaving the car keys in the ignition.
Cloud computing started a technology revolution; now DevOps is driving that revolution forward. By enabling new approaches to service delivery, cloud and DevOps together are delivering even greater speed, agility, and efficiency. No wonder leading innovators are adopting DevOps and cloud together! In his session at DevOps Summit, Andi Mann, Vice President of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies, explored the synergies in these two approaches, with practical tips, techniques, research data, war stories, case studies, and recommendations on how to: Embrace, source, consume, and expose shared services across the SDLC Apply automation lessons from the cloud to deliver 'software-defined everything' Accelerate time from ideation to release for new applications and services Drive service efficiency and scalability while better managing cost and risk Establish more effective feedback loops, from pre-planning to post-production Secure rapid access to cloud infrastructure, platform, and software services Whether you are a startup or an enterprise; using private cloud, public cloud, or no cloud; an Agile n00b or a DevOps pro; struggling with core banking systems, or building a new social/local/mobile app that will change the world (!); this session provides actionable ideas on using cloud and DevOps together to revolutionize your software and service delivery lifecycle.
What’s Big Data without Big Compute? Basically just a large collection of unstructured information with little purpose and value. It’s not enough for data just to exist, we must derive value from it through computation – something commonly referred to as analytics. With traditional data, we simply query it to derive results; all we need is currently stored within the data set itself. For instance, for a customer database with dates of birth, we may just fetch the list of customers who were born after a certain date. This is a simple query, not a computation, and therefore cannot be considered analytics.
The revolutionary business aspects of cloud excite me every day, but the business diversity is even more exciting. This fact really struck me after teaching my last Learning Tree Cloud Computing Introduction class in New York City. I’ve been in the regular rotation here for four months now and have taught three classes during that time. The chart below breaks out the students in these classes by industry.
The software industry has seen a shift away from applications being housed at a company's premise to the cloud. Such a shift allows companies to focus more on their business needs and less on their IT infrastructure needs. In this article, we take a look at webapps developed for Tomcat and weblogic and attempt to deploy them into a cloud-based environment.
You don't necessarily get 2x the value from your logs when your volumes double. Value is more aligned with the analysis and trends you can extract from your data. It's no secret that log data is quickly becoming one of the most valuable sources of information within organizations. There are open source, on-premise, and cloud-based solutions to help you glean value from your logs in many different ways. Largely, organizations use logs for debugging during development, for monitoring and troubleshooting production systems, for security audit trails and forensics, and (more and more) for different business use cases that transcend product management and marketing teams.
Much of what human beings experience as commonplace today - social networking, on-line gaming, mobile and wearable computing -- was impossible a decade ago. One thing is certain: we're going to see even more impressive advances in the next few years. However, this will be the result of a fundamental change in computing, as current methods have reached their limit in terms of speed and volume. Traditional disk-based storage infrastructure is far too slow to meet today's data demands for speed at volume, which are growing exponentially. In-memory computing (IMC) offers the only practical way to scale to today's computing demands. Although IMC may once have been the domain of only the most well-funded organizations, the falling cost of RAM means that it can now be accomplished by any organization on commodity hardware.
Operationalization (which is really hard to say, go ahead - try it a few times) is a concept that crosses the lines between trends and technologies. Both SDN and DevOps share the notion of "operationalization" as a means to achieve the goal of aligning IT with business priorities, like that of accelerating time to market for all important applications. But what does it really mean to operationalize the network, or app deployments, or really, anything? Operationalization is a lot like DevOps in that it's more of an approach to how you deploy and manage operations than it is some concrete, tangible thing. It is a verb, it's something you do that has concrete, measurable impacts on the application environment, aka the data center, and the processes that move an application from development and into the hands of its intended consumers, whether internal or external.
IoT is still a vague buzzword for many people. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Mike Kavis, Vice President & Principal Cloud Architect at Cloud Technology Partners, discussed the business value of IoT that goes far beyond the general public's perception that IoT is all about wearables and home consumer services. He also discussed how IoT is perceived by investors and how venture capitalist access this space. Other topics discussed were barriers to success, what is new, what is old, and what the future may hold. Mike Kavis is Vice President & Principal Cloud Architect at Cloud Technology Partners. He has served in numerous technical roles such as CTO, Chief Architect, and VP positions with over 25 years of experience in software development and architecture. A pioneer in cloud computing, Mike led a team that built the world’s first high speed transaction network in Amazon’s public cloud and won the 2010 AWS Global Startup Challenge. An expert in cloud security, he is the author of “Architecting the Cloud: Design Decisions for Cloud Computing Service Models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)” from Wiley Publishing.
Life is difficult. Business life is sometimes argued to be even more difficult. If nothing else, business life is as socially complex as life itself. This truism obviously means that there are different business types – but different in regard to what? Separating the old and the new is good way to look at how the family tree breaks down. At one end of the spectrum we find the old languid non-transformative company (or user) who fails to grasp new digital information empowerment – and at the other end we find the true digital native. But the space in between is populated by a degree of other behavioural types.
The pace of innovation in such big data-driven targeting technology is advancing unabated. There is so much noise in today’s omnichannel world that anything a marketer can do to get your attention is welcome – and furthermore, the more information they can collect about you, the better. For the marketer, big data mean big cha-ching. We've all been there: on our lunch hour we surreptitiously visit our favorite My Little Pony fan site. Then hours later we bring our laptop to a meeting and project our client's corporate web site for all to see - and right there at the top is a banner ad for My Little Pony: The Movie. How did that site know about our secret fetish? How embarrassing! How creepy!