Virtualization obscures the lines with storage and it becomes intractably complex to manage the macro-level supply and demand of resources occurring across the stack. Traditional management tools – storage- and virtualization-related – are running into the limitations of their stats-based, linear approach to managing diverse environments. As an illustration, let’s use a real-life example. Let’s assume we have a NetApp environment supporting VMWare. The NetApp consist of 4 Aggregates spread across two filers.
“Hybrid clouds offer users the opportunity to deploy application workloads in environments that best meet requirements for compliance, performance, or cost,” noted Bernard Golden, Vice President of Strategy at ActiveState, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference and Tech Chairs Larry Carvalho and Vanessa Alvarez. “The key challenge to truly achieving the best outcomes from hybrid cloud computing involve mapping dissimilar APIs, operations, services, and pricing.” Cloud Computing Journal: How are cloud standards playing a role in expanding adoption among users? Are standards helping new business models for service providers? Bernard Golden: To date, standards promulgated by official bodies have not played much role in cloud computing due to the rapid evolution of the market and offerings. However, de facto standards based on wide adoption or consortia are having a significant effect on the market and allowing users to have more confidence in their choices. Examples of de facto standards include the AWS API for cloud interaction, the OpenStack IaaS open source project for resource orchestration, and the CloudFoundry open source project for application development and deployment.
“Hybrid clouds offer users the opportunity to deploy application workloads in environments that best meet requirements for compliance, performance, or cost,” noted Bernard Golden, Vice President of Strategy at ActiveState, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference and Tech Chairs Larry Carvalho and Vanessa Alvarez. “The key challenge to truly achieving the best outcomes from hybrid cloud computing involve mapping dissimilar APIs, operations, services, and pricing.” Cloud Computing Journal: How are cloud standards playing a role in expanding adoption among users? Are standards helping new business models for service providers? Bernard Golden: To date, standards promulgated by official bodies have not played much role in cloud computing due to the rapid evolution of the market and offerings. However, de facto standards based on wide adoption or consortia are having a significant effect on the market and allowing users to have more confidence in their choices. Examples of de facto standards include the AWS API for cloud interaction, the OpenStack IaaS open source project for resource orchestration, and the CloudFoundry open source project for application development and deployment.
Arlington Computer Products improved their financial processes and operations using the new AribaPay cloud-based B2B payment service. Agile business services are entering into a new era, an integrated and on-demand approach to ordering, billing, and settlement processes between buyers and seller. A prime example is Ariba's partnership with Discover, the financial services organization, to create AribaPay. At the recent 2014 Ariba LIVE Conference in Las Vegas, BriefingsDirect had an opportunity to learn first-hand how the new approach works and benefits a first major user, ACP. To understand how AribaPay fulfills the last critical step in an end-to-end P2P process, we sat down with Arly Guenther, Chief Executive Officer at Arlington Computer Products in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and Drew Hofler, Manage Cash Solution Marketing Director at Ariba, an SAP company. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Arlington Computer Products improved their financial processes and operations using the new AribaPay cloud-based B2B payment service. Agile business services are entering into a new era, an integrated and on-demand approach to ordering, billing, and settlement processes between buyers and seller. A prime example is Ariba's partnership with Discover, the financial services organization, to create AribaPay. At the recent 2014 Ariba LIVE Conference in Las Vegas, BriefingsDirect had an opportunity to learn first-hand how the new approach works and benefits a first major user, ACP. To understand how AribaPay fulfills the last critical step in an end-to-end P2P process, we sat down with Arly Guenther, Chief Executive Officer at Arlington Computer Products in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and Drew Hofler, Manage Cash Solution Marketing Director at Ariba, an SAP company. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Companies are quickly finding new and innovative ways to recognize value by integrating real time mapping applications into their business processes. Real-time mapping is the GIS process of tracking changes on the earth’s surface and displaying that information on a computer screen. This process can include changes to company assets and resources (vehicles, cargo containers, people), and changes in physical terrain based on weather conditions, construction activity, etc. Companies are increasingly using real-time GIS to improve workforce and project supervision, oversight and accountability.
Mobile device shipments are growing in leaps and bounds. While more and more workers amalgamate both personal as well as corporate computing devices in order achieve their daily goals, this presents a daunting challenge for enterprises. Starting from cost effectively deploying, managing, and supporting all the diverse devices to ensuring an optimal user experience, enterprises are scrambling to update their policies and legacy systems in order to embrace mobility.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Silanis, the world’s leading electronic signature provider, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Silanis is the world’s leading electronic signature provider. Since the company was founded in 1992, our software has automated business transactions that require secure, compliant and enforceable e-signatures. Recognized as the enterprise market leader, we are responsible for processing more than 600 million e-signed transactions annually – more than any other e-signature vendor. These transactions represent billions of dollars’ worth of regulated business processes taking place 24/7 around the globe, from insurance applications and consumer loans to federal procurement contracts. Our customers represent the leading organizations within their respective fields, including four of North America’s top 10 banks, eight of the top 15 insurers and the entire US Army, among others.
File sync and share. Endpoint protection. Both are massive opportunities for today’s enterprise thanks to their business benefits and widespread user appeal. But one size does not fit all, especially user-adopted consumer technologies. Organizations must apply the right enterprise-ready tool for the job in order to properly manage and protect endpoint data. In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Michael Bachman, Senior Enterprise Systems Architect at Code42, he will discuss how the synergy of an enterprise platform – where sync/share and endpoint protection converge – delivers incredible value for the business.
No matter how often you deploy your application or how sophisticated your delivery pipeline is, you always need to know the quality status of the software you are building. That can only be done if you measure it; but measure what exactly? In Part 1 we introduced the Concept of Quality Metrics in CD (Continuous Delivery) by looking at the metric # of Requests per End User Action. In Part 2 we will focus on metrics around database access. You need to be aware of bad database access patterns right when they get introduced in your code. Whether the reason is incorrectly configured O/R (Object Relational) Mappers such as Hibernate, TopLink or JDO, or because of bad coding. Finding these problems immediately by looking at the right metrics will make it is easier for developers to fix the problem, which will reduce test cycles and give operations more confidence that a new deployment will not blow their current database server.
In today’s application economy, enterprise organizations realize that it’s their applications that are the heart and soul of their business. If their application users have a bad experience, their revenue and reputation are at stake. As public, private and hybrid cloud are becoming mainstream and applications are transitioning to these complex environments, IT has to effectively manage applications running on mobile devices to legacy mainframes and traditional multi-tier application servers and everywhere in the middle. Operational complexity due to running applications in the diverse and distributed environment makes it difficult for IT to have complete control over the environment. At the same time, tolerance for application downtime is decreasing, the cost of service slowdowns and interruptions is increasing, and the resources dedicated to manage the entire, complex, heterogeneous environment are flat at best if not shrinking. You don’t need a crystal ball to see that this is a recipe for disaster.
In 2013, Adobe took the bold step of moving from a perpetual licensing model to a subscription-based model to sell its creative software. The world is becoming more connected, collaborative and mobile, and Adobe wanted to make the shift to meet those needs. The process began in 2012 when Adobe launched the first phase of Creative Cloud, which provided Adobe's full set of creative applications as a membership. In the year since, Adobe built the infrastructure to store and share files in the cloud, and acquired Behance, a thriving social network used by millions of people to connect, showcase their work, and discover other talent. For users, there is a blending of sorts of cloud computing and desktop applications: Customers will continue to install and use the creative applications on their desktop just as they always have, but the apps will increasingly be part of a larger creative process centered on Creative Cloud.
APIs came about to help companies create and manage their digital ecosystem, enabling them not only to reach more customers through more devices, but also create a large supporting ecosystem of developers and partners. While Facebook, Twitter and Netflix were the early adopters of APIs, large enterprises have been quick to embrace the concept of APIs and have been leveraging APIs as a connective tissue that powers all interactions between their customers, partners and employees. As enterprises embrace APIs, some very specific Enterprise API Adoption patterns and best practices have started emerging. In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Sachin Agarwal, VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at SOA Software, will talk about the most common enterprise API patterns and will discuss how enterprises can successfully launch an API program.
Need to scale your data tier? The foundation of every application is the database layer, and today application architects have more choices than ever. With these choices come new questions: Which database technology is best for your application? How can your application take advantage of Big Data technology? Can you run your relational database at Big Data scale? What does it take to implement a comprehensive data infrastructure, including your core database, incorporating SQL, No SQL and Big Data platforms? How can you make a scalable database cluster more manageable?
Ben Franklin often said that "by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." Not preparing for who your actual enterprise mobility management (EMM) customer is may have dire consequences as mobile devices (both personal and corporate-issued) access more corporate data. Before you can solve the requirements for EMM you have to properly define who the enterprise mobility customer is. It may seem obvious who the customer is, but the road to EMM success is littered with failed projects (and companies for that matter) that didn't properly define who the EMM customer is. The EMM customer is three parts of any organization...the business itself, the actual users of course and the IT department. Understanding that you have to address requirements for each part is important and cannot be understated. Focusing on only one or two parts of an organization will prove costly.
Simply defined the SDDC promises that you’ll be able to treat “all” of your IT infrastructure as if it’s completely malleable. That there are no restrictions to how you can use and assign everything from border controls to VM size as long as you stay within the technical capabilities of the devices. The promise is great, but the reality is still a dream for the majority of enterprises. In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Mark Thiele, EVP, Data Center Tech, at SUPERNAP, will cover where and how a business might benefit from SDDC and also why they should or shouldn’t attempt to adopt today.
More and more enterprises today are doing business by opening up their data and applications through APIs. Though forward-thinking and strategic, exposing APIs also increases the surface area for potential attack by hackers. To benefit from APIs while staying secure, enterprises and security architects need to continue to develop a deep understanding about API security and how it differs from traditional web application security or mobile application security. In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Sachin Agarwal, VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at SOA Software, will walk you through the various aspects of how an API could be potentially exploited. He will discuss the necessary best practices to secure your data and enterprise applications while continue continuing to support your business’s digital initiatives.
Some people really want Google to be a wireless carrier. The most recent speculative episode was early in April when The Information published an exclusive suggesting that Google might be thinking about an MVNO deal with Verizon or AT&T, based on comments by people who were unnamed (but might have been close to Google). Now I don’t want to be picky, but the notion that Google might want to become a wireless carrier has been talked about by unnamed “experts” in bars for many years, and lots of that speculation has been published with enthusiasm. It is rather evident that becoming a wireless carrier might be something that Google (and Apple or Samsung) could seriously consider. For Google especially the pairing of wireless with fixed broadband access might seem attractive, but it’s hardly a novel concept. Note that if any of those companies want to move into the mobile wireless carrier space in a hurry, then an MVNO deal with one of the major U.S. wireless operators is the only way to do it. Google doesn’t own the spectrum needed to provide nationwide cellular coverage, so renting another carrier’s capacity is the only practical way forward. No new insights there.
Next-Gen Cloud. Whatever you call it, there’s a higher calling for cloud computing that requires providers to change their spots and move from a commodity mindset to a premium one. Businesses can no longer maintain the status quo that today’s service providers offer. Yes, the continuity, speed, mobility, data access and connectivity are staples of the cloud and always will be. But cloud providers that plan to not only exist tomorrow – but to lead – know that security must be the top priority for the cloud and are delivering it now. In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Kurt Hagerman, Chief Information Security Officer at FireHost, will detail why and how you can have both infrastructure performance and enterprise-grade security – and what tomorrow's cloud provider will look like.
The social media expansion has shown just how people are eager to share their experiences with the rest of the world. Cloud technology is the perfect platform to satisfy this need given its great flexibility and readiness. At Cynny, we aim to revolutionize how people share and organize their digital life through a brand new cloud service, starting from infrastructure to the users’ interface. A revolution that began from inventing and designing our very own infrastructure: we have created the first server network powered solely by ARM CPU. The microservers have “organism-like” features, differentiating them from any of the current technologies. Benefits include low consumption of energy, making Cynny the ecologically friendly alternative for storage as well as cheaper infrastructure, lower running costs, etc.
Maintaining lower development environments can become an unbearable headache. Changes to an application, service or API are seldom completely testable, leaving us to discover broken code when it’s too late. This lack of visibility into application dependencies severely limits early code validation, which has a direct impact on delivery cycles. While traditional methods of Change Management, Test Data Management and Test Scheduling have failed, there’s now an opportunity to finally deliver on the vision of always available, always configured and always verifiable. In his session at 2nd DevOps Summit, Ian Kelly, Senior Director of Product Management at CA Technologies, to discuss how the “software defined enterprise” through proper virtual services and API management now provides the building blocks to realize automated change validation.
Appthority is an app risk management company with a Software-as-a-Service solution that analyzes mobile apps for hidden behaviors that pose privacy and security risks. Our main customers are large organizations and we provide them with the first all-in-one App Risk Management service to uncover the hidden actions of apps and enable enterprises to create custom policies to prevent unwanted app behaviors. Appthority combines the largest global database of analyzed public and private apps with advanced policy management tools to automate control over risky app actions to protect corporate data on company-issued and BYOD mobile phones as employees bring their own apps to work.
Web conferencing in a public cloud has the same risks as any other cloud service. If you have ever had concerns over the types of data being shared in your employees’ web conferences, such as IP, financials or customer data, then it’s time to look at web conferencing in a private cloud. In her session at 14th Cloud Expo, Courtney Behrens, Senior Marketing Manager at Brother International, will discuss how issues that had previously been out of your control, like performance, advanced administration and compliance, can now be put back behind your firewall.
In my previous blog I contrasted the latest net neutrality developments in the EU with the situation in the U.S. Neither decision will settle the argument and the two camps will continue to debate the topic for the foreseeable future. On both sides of the argument and the ocean, believers state with conviction that their way is the right way, leading to a healthier Internet industry and benefits for all. One camp takes the view that Internet openness and neutrality means that telecom service providers should not be restricted from managing Internet traffic and, if they feel it is appropriate, to charge more to third-party ISPs and content providers for premium service. Only in this way, it is argued, will bit-carriers be able to earn the revenues they need to invest in network growth and quality improvements that will benefit us all.
Today’s hyper competitive environment defined by unreasonable demands for speed and high expectations for quality and usability has forced companies to differentiate based on their technology. Every company is a software company where customers’ demands for features and functions are more relentless than ever. All while organizations are unable to meet demand or innovate because of a lack of interface testing or too many bugs escape downstream, or a lack of automated testing, or even the difficulty in managing environments across multiple concurrent releases producing longer lead times and configuration related defects.