Growth is good, but sometimes it may not feel that way when the business you love has outgrown your ability to manage it. When Post-It notes can’t support your customers, it’s time to change. When you’re apprehensive about winning that big, new account because you don’t have the capacity to manage it, it’s time to change. Change came to Old Mill Kettle Corn, a company that manufactures healthy corn-based snacks, when McKee Foods Corporation a national snack food manufacturer approached it with a distribution offer that the company couldn’t refuse. Old Mill Kettle Corn had never used an ERP platform or a formal food safety management system (FSMS) but with the imminent expansion and new market opportunities, management realized it was no longer feasible to use paper spreadsheets and manual processes to manage product quality, inventory, supply chain communications and other processing operations aspects.
The Google Cloud Platform lets you build applications and websites, store data, and analyze data on Google’s infrastructure. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, William Vambenepe, Sr. Product Manager for Big Data on Google Cloud Platform, will discuss Big Data Analytics with the Google Cloud Platform. William Vambenepe is Sr. Product Manager for Big Data on Google Cloud Platform. Prior to joining Google he was an Architect at Oracle, and before Oracle he was a Distinguished Technologist at HP. Follow him on Twitter: @vambenepe Cloud Expo® 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4-7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
This article is the corollary to “The Anatomy of APM” which outlines four foundational elements of a successful APM strategy: Top Down Monitoring, Bottom Up Monitoring, Reporting & Analytics, and ITIL / ITSM Processes. Here I provide a deeper context on how the event-to-incident flow is structured. It is the correlation of events and the amalgamation of metrics that bring value to the business by way of dashboards and trending reports, and it’s in the way the business interprets the accuracy of those metrics that determines the success of the implementation. If an event occurs and no one sees it, believes it, or takes action on it, APM’s value can be severely diminished and you run the risk of owning “shelfware.” Overall, as events are detected and consumed by the system, it is the automation that is the lifeblood of an APM solution, ensuring that the pulse of the incident flow is a steady one. The goal is to show a conceptual view of how events flow through the environment and eventually become incidents. At a high level, the Trouble Ticket Interface (TTI) will correlate the events into alerts, and alerts into incidents which then become tickets, enabling the Operations team to begin working toward resolution.
For enterprises moving more business and customer data to the cloud, investigating and selecting an online storage solution can be a challenging task. A primary concern is the level of data security offered by the sites being considered. While the theme holds true across all of the major providers (Box, DropBox, SkyDrive), for the purpose of illustration I’ll focus on DropBox since it is arguably the most popular site boasting over 100 million users. Here is where some of the concerns begin; DropBox experienced a major security breach in July 2012, specifically involving user passwords. In response to the attack, DropBox attempted to improve password security by implementing two-factor authentication. But just last month though, a pair of researchers released a paper claiming they had reverse-engineered the DropBox application, providing details for how hackers could potentially access private user data. Their goal in releasing this paper was actually innocuous, but provides a disturbing example of what hackers can still do to bypass password security methods to access valuable data stored in DropBox.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the basic principles of APM, and a simple methodology that can be applied to any monitoring initiative or strategic discussion about application performance. Since the nomenclature used within this space is still very fluid, the need for highlighting some basic methods of operations for the casual user is in order. The rapid advances in technology are astounding, catapulting Application Performance Management (APM) into a period of intense competition with a multiplicity of vendors and viewpoints. This has created a lot of noise for the consumer when discussing requirements, approaches for implementation, best practices, ROI, etc. Much like the basic needs for human survival: food, water, clothing, and shelter, APM has four elements that will sustain its existence. These basic principles of APM can be applied to any monitoring initiative or strategic discussion about application performance.
SYS-CON Events announced today that LSI Corporation will exhibit at SYS-CON's 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. LSI Corporation (NASDAQ: LSI) designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters, mobile networks and client computing. Our technology is the intelligence critical to enhanced application performance, and is applied in solutions created in collaboration with our partners.
Here at MetraTech we work hard to provide a billing and compensation platform that will help service providers monetize their services, whether those services are deployed in the cloud, across the Internet or other methods. However, we have learned that before proposing a billing solution, we first need to understand the full extent of the problems our customers face. The cloud business model is already exciting enough, offering opportunities for a plethora of new services, delivering services in new and better ways and enabling collaborative business models that could be worth more than the sum of their parts. But, if all that isn’t enough, the cloud is now being infused with “magical” properties. This week I read several articles that introduced a new concept that takes the cloud one step further: the magic cloud.
Every organization needs to consider innovation as part of their strategy. Bernard Golden recently wrote a book titled Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Dummies, which I had an opportunity to review. One intriguing segment of the book came from a section offering 10 reasons to use AWS and one that stood out was AWS enables Innovation. Results from innovation are more immediate when it leverages the capability of cloud computing to change underlying processes across a broad segment of industries. AWS not only challenges legacy vendors in the enterprise but also help them to dominate areas of new IT revenue from start-ups funded by venture capitalists. For example, while discontinuing shrink-wrapped products, Adobe powers their cloud-delivered services with AWS.
Identity and access management solutions provide governance and visibility capabilities that enable organizations to provision and control access to their applications, cloud infrastructure, servers and both structured and unstructured data. Enterprise IAM deployments are generally effective in managing the identities assigned to interactive, human users. However, within a typical enterprise there often are a greater number of identities assigned to the automated processes that drive much of the computing in large- scale data centers. As enterprises adopt more and more process automation, the number of non-human identities continues to grow while the number of identities assigned to human users remains relatively flat or even declines. The net result is enterprise IAM deployments are ignoring the much larger set of identities that actually perform most of the enterprise computing functions.
The Open Group asks the pertinent question: How prepared are you for the coming together of such growing technical phenomena as cloud, mobile, social computing, and big data? The convergence of technical phenomena such as cloud, mobile and social computing, big data analysis, and the Internet of things that is being addressed by The Open Group’s Open Platform 3.0 Forum will transform the way that you use information technology. Are you ready? Mobile and social computing are leading the way. Recently, the launch of new iPhone models and the announcement of the Twitter stock flotation were headline news, reflecting the importance that these technologies now have for business. For example, banks use mobile text messaging to alert customers to security issues. Retailers use social media to understand their markets and communicate with potential customers.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Thursday announced the release of the CSA Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) Version 3.0, the most comprehensive update to the industry's gold standard for assessing cloud centric information security risks. The CCM Version 3.0 expands its control domains to address changes in cloud security risks since the release of the CSA's seminal guidance domain, "Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing version 3.0" while making strides towards closer harmonization of the two.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Lunarline, Inc., a cyber-security company, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 13th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. One of the original FedRAMP-accredited 3PAOs, Lunarline helps private sector organizations adapt to evolving federal information security requirements. While Lunarline can’t make security compliance fun, they can make it painless. Kind of. Their services are backed by a suite of industry leading products that streamline compliance and drive continuous improvement in security posture. Lunarline: Solutions Built on Security.
SYS-CON Events announced today that VASCO Data Security International, Inc., will exhibit at SYS-CON's 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. VASCO is a leading supplier of strong authentication and e-signature solutions and services specializing in Internet Security applications and transactions. VASCO has positioned itself as global software company for Internet Security serving a customer base of approximately 10,000 companies in more than 100 countries, including approximately 1,700 international financial institutions. VASCO’s prime markets are the financial sector, enterprise security, e-commerce and e-government.
There is no question that machine-to-machine (M2M) is attracting attention on a global scale. While many might say M2M is a nascent industry sector, the forecast of $10 billion worldwide in 2013 provides proof of the already significant market in key M2M verticals such as utilities, transport and automotive. At the end of 2013, there will be 200 million M2M device connections worldwide across various industry segments. This will increase to 2.2 billion by 2023 representing $88 billion according to the latest research from Analysys Mason. Future growth will emerge from tailored applications for local markets, large enterprises and SMEs across existing high growth verticals as well as emerging ones. In Part 1 of the M2M series, we focused on the cool applications being developed for the Internet-of-things. For those hopeful entrepreneurs and companies out there who are busy prototyping such devices let me offer a couple of suggestions based on our experience with previous cycles of technology innovation.
MZI Healthcare shows how the HP Vertica Analytics Platform leads to high-performance and cost-effective big-data processing, which forms a foundational element to improving overall healthcare quality and efficiency. To discover more about how high-performance and cost-effective big-data processing forms a foundational element to improving overall healthcare quality and efficiency, join Greg Gootee, Product Manager at MZI Healthcare, based in Orlando.
Asserting control of the IT environment through collaborative and integrated identity and user access strategies create the necessary visibility. Security is not an all-or-nothing proposition. And that’s part of the problem. It creates blind spots; gaps in vulnerability. Partly because of the inherent complacency that after a company institutes a new security initiative that hackers will be held at bay, or the employees won’t be tempted to make off with a database or a hundred other internal or external threats. I have long promoted that security is as much about planning and process as it is about the various solutions that are deployed to protect networks, data, and other assets. Security is no longer a wall. Stick up a firewall and your customer/user data won’t get leaked. Actually it’s more like a sandwich. And good security initiatives are like a good Dagwood sandwich - layered and integrated. But even the best sandwiches have holes (if they didn’t, you’d be eating a brick).
SYS-CON Events announced today that Rackspace® Hosting, the open cloud company, has been named “Platinum Plus Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company and founder of OpenStack®, the standard open-source operating system for cloud computing. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace delivers its renowned Fanatical Support® to more than 200,000 business customers, from data centers on four continents. Rackspace is a leading provider of hybrid clouds, which enable businesses to operate their workloads where they run most effectively – whether on the public cloud, a private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of these platforms. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, and is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.
To enable communications service providers (CSPs) and enterprises to offer WebRTC services -- from virtually any device, across virtually any network -- with carrier-grade reliability and security, Oracle unveiled Oracle Communications WebRTC Session Controller. The solution is the first combined offering following Oracle's acquisition of Acme Packet. WebRTC is an emerging Internet standard that equips any device with a supported web browser with real-time communications (RTC) capabilities -- such as voice calling, video, chat or file sharing -- via simple application programming interfaces (APIs) without requiring users to download plug-ins.
Application Performance Management (APM) grew out of the movement to better align IT with real business concerns. Instead of monitoring a lot of disparate components, such as servers and switches, APM would provide improved visibility into mission-critical application performance and the user experience. Today, APM solutions help IT track end-to-end application response time and troubleshoot coding errors across application components that have an impact on performance. APM has a rightful place in the arsenal of monitoring tools that IT uses to keep its applications and systems up and running. However, today’s APM solutions have some serious gaps and challenges when it comes to providing IT with the entire application performance picture.
The 1st International WebRTC Summit is being produced by SYS-CON Media and WebRTC Journal on November 6-7, co-located with the 13th International Cloud Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley. Cloud Expo continues to ride the leading edge of global IT, offering the most current topics in a comprehensive way. WebRTC is the latest superhot topic emerging from Cloud Expo, and emerging from the world's of open-source development and cloud computing worldwide. The distinguished lineup of expert speakers will focus on topics such as: WebRTC for telcos - is there a real business opportunity? Is Skype a WebRTC Killer, or is WebRTC a Skype killer?
Delegate registrations for OpenStack® Fundamentals Track at Cloud Expo® is FREE but seating is limited, so we will honor registrations on a first-come, first-served basis. Your confirmed registration will give you FREE access to "full networking opportunities" at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley [November 4-7], exhibit floor access and conference keynotes.
I have been writing about the Network Centric Operations approach to mobile field services for the past couple of years and plan to continue with even more enthusiasm. The mobile devices, mobile platforms, communication networks and integration frameworks exists today to revolutionize field services and the way companies interact with their mobile workforce in general. Today, few enterprise mobility vendors yet understand network-centric operations. In a way, I think ERP vendors may end up understanding the concept of network centric operations better than most enterprise mobility vendors. Why? Because ERP vendors are familiar with and accustomed to thinking about how all systems interact and work together, while many enterprise mobility vendors are still celebrating their ability to communicate point to point on a mobile device.
This book has made creating iOS Automation scripts much easier than it would have been with the Apple Instruments User Guide alone. Although, I do think reading the Apple Instruments User Guide is worthwhile. The Instruments User Guide gives you a nice overview of Instruments, but does not come close to the information this book provides on UI automation. I also recommend checking out the Apple UI Automation JavaScript Reference. At least breeze through it to get an idea of what it contains.
OData is quickly becoming the Lingua Franca for data exchange over the web. The OData standard defines a protocol and a language structure for issuing queries and updates to remote data sources, including (but not limited to) relational databases, file systems, content management systems, and traditional web sites. It builds upon existing Web technologies, like HTTP and RESTful web services, the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), XML, and Javascript Object Notation (JSON). SAP and Sybase iAnywhere released SQL Anywhere version 16 in March 2013, and it had many cool new features. This blog post will cover one specific enhancement, the new support for OData access to SA databases.
Cloud computing is at the forefront for many organizations across the world. Experts believe it is the future of IT. Considering all the benefits offered by the cloud, making the transition may appear inevitable to enterprises. But just like any major technology, it also comes with certain caveats - security and privacy of business data and legal compliance among others. While these concerns are now well known, the most obvious disaster that can befall a business depending on cloud computing is still largely overlooked - what happens when the cloud provider shuts shop? Consumers have already woken up to this scenario when Google shut down its popular RSS aggregator Reader. A cloud service provider may close its doors for any number of reasons: bankruptcy, business failure, breach of contract, being acquired by a bigger company or even regulatory problems. If the provider is located in another country or is privately held, the risks are even higher.