In our previous 2013 Online Holiday Shopping blog Klaus highlighted that the top goal of 2013 is to increase Conversion Rates and take into consideration everything we have learned in past years such as Third-Party Performance, as well as the new challenges such as “The Rise of Mobile Users.” This article is a guide for performance engineers on how to best test for ensuring high conversion rates. Based on our real user monitoring data we know that the abandonment rate on eCommerce sites increases by 8% for every additional two seconds of page load time. Mobile users expect even better performance on their smartphones as the assumption is that accessing shopping sites with mobile web or mobile native apps are optimized for these devices. Load Time of key landing pages, key mobile actions and everything along the conversion funnel must therefore be our top priority during pre-holiday testing:
Check your misconceptions about Social Media at the door. Forget about "buzz" and "awareness": Social Media can be - and should be - a huge revenue channel for your organization. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Hollis Tibbetts, Director for Global Marketing Operations for Dell Software Group, will review the strategies, techniques, tools, "dos & don'ts" that will help you - whether you're an entrepreneur or a multi-national corporation - create practical and actionable plans for turning Social Media into a reliable and measurable revenue machine. This session is based on the presenter's real-life experiences and "lesson's learned" from the practical applications of Social Media as both an entrepreneur and as part of a Fortune 100 corporation. Hollis Tibbetts is currently Director for Global Marketing Operations for Dell Software Group. He has established himself as a successful software marketing and technology expert. His various strategy, marketing and technology articles are read nearly 50,000 times a month. Hollis has developed substantial expertise in middleware, SaaS, Cloud, data management and distributed application technologies, with over 20 years experience in marketing, technical, product management, product marketing and business development roles at leading companies in such as Pervasive, Aruna (acquired by Progress Software), Sybase (now SAP), webMethods (now Software AG), M7 Corporation (acquired by BEA/Oracle), OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette) and KIVA Software (acquired by Netscape). He has established himself as an industry expert, having authored a large number of technology white papers, as well as published media articles and book contributions.
Video Guidance has been chosen by Pexip, a new video conferencing software company headquartered in Oslo, Norway, to become a strategic conferencing channel partner. Launched at InfoComm in June, Pexip Infinity is a cloud-based conferencing solution that provides personal meeting rooms for any number of users on video, voice and mobile.
Strong InfoSec strategies must answer the key questions of who is logging in, what is accessed, when was it changed and how is the IT landscape affected. Enterprise security can be a labyrinthine, complex beast with many moving parts, dozen upon dozen of requirements, needs, implications, options and alternatives. But when we get down to the nitty gritty (the brass tacks if you will), cloud security can be simplified by six simple questions.
Vidyo, Inc. announced that it is continuing its relationship with Google to enhance the video quality within WebRTC. This agreement will help align the technology roadmaps of both companies and enables Google to use Vidyo’s Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extensions as part of WebRTC. Under the agreement, Vidyo will develop a scalable video extension for the VP9 codec as part of the WebRTC client open source project.
XirSys, a California-based tech company recently launched by the founders of Influxis, officially announced today that it is now providing cloud accounts for developers interested in testing the BETA services for their WebRTC hosting platform. WebRTC is being touted as the leading disruptive communication technology, as it will allow people to communicate conveniently through their HTML5 compatible browsers in real-time, without any plugins. However, there are some real world challenges to overcome in order for users to properly connect to one another, such as traversing complex firewalls and configuring reliable and scalable STUN and TURN servers; that's where XirSys comes in.
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere' collaboration is now a reality as Easynet Global Services has created the ultimate unified communications experience, integrating Microsoft Lync and Office 365 with Polycom's virtual meeting technology for the first time ever. The pioneering secure platform, painstakingly designed by Easynet's expert engineers, brings choice and flexibility to the mobile enterprise, and represents another industry-first for Easynet. Meeting delegates experience the outstanding quality of real-time, high definition videoconferences on-the-go from wherever they are in the world using their Smartphones, tablets or desktops. The platform integrates voice, social networking, scheduling, instant messaging and a host of other features and benefits. Ideal for businesses migrating to the cloud, the virtualised environment means lower costs and added flexibility and removes the need for equipment. As it uses encryption technology, it guarantees network traffic is protected even when travelling across the Internet rather than a corporate network. With this solution, Easynet demonstrates its capacity to innovate and simplify complexity whilst addressing a major trend: virtual collaboration anytime, anywhere with any device.
Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, you are probably aware that in May 2011 Google open-sourced the key audio/video components for web browsers, paving the way for the development of rich, high quality, RTC applications in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5. This in turn gave rise to the WebRTC project, a cross-industry project to bring Real-Time Communication to the Open Web platform. WebRTC - Web-based Real-Time Communication - is being heralded as one of most disruptive web/telecoms innovations for years, which is why SYS-CON Events, true to its 13-year tradition of producing events on the technologies of tomorrow, is holding its 1st WebRTC Summit in California's Silicon Valley in November.
SYS-CON Events announced today that the "First International WebRTC Summit" (@WebRTCSummit) will take place Nov 6-7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is “To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5.” A survey by TokBox found that the WebRTC adoption rate among small organizations is growing quickly where over 25% of developers say it is important for their work.
That's one big check for Big Blue. IBM won a federal cloud-computing contract with a maximum value of $1 billion, its largest such agreement with the U.S. government, according to an article on Bloomberg.com. The Interior Department awarded similar, 10-year pacts to nine other suppliers, including Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), which also described the agreement as its largest federal cloud contract. The deals might reach a combined $10 billion, allowing the agency to speed its efforts to move information to the cloud, a Web-based pool of shared resources such as data storage and software. Other U.S. departments may eventually tap the program. The agreement shows that “IBM’s ability to help governments transform with new technologies, like cloud, continue to grow,” Michael Rowinski, a spokesman for the Armonk, New York-based company, said in an e-mail yesterday.
VMware vSphere 5.x includes automated server workload balancing in the vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise+ premium suites via two feature sets: Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM). DRS and DPM together are intended to provide an automated method for balancing compute capacity and reducing energy consumption in a highly virtualized datacenter. These capabilities are important to ensure that an organization is efficiently leveraging virtualization host capacity in a manner that provides greatest performance benefits while reducing ongoing operating costs. However, research has shown that 65% to 70% of organizations are running more than one hypervisor. As a result, it’s necessary to provide these capabilities universally on every hypervisor platform in use – not on just the most expensive editions of a single hypervisor. These capabilities are important to ensure that an organization is efficiently leveraging virtualization host capacity in a manner that provides greatest performance benefits while reducing ongoing operating costs. However, research has shown that 65% to 70% of organizations are running more than one hypervisor. As a result, it’s necessary to provide these capabilities universally on every hypervisor platform in use – not on just the most expensive editions of a single hypervisor. In this article, we’ll briefly describe each of these key technical areas and contrast with how these same capabilities are delivered in Windows Server 2012, our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 enterprise-grade bare-metal hypervisor, and System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) across multiple hypervisors in a heterogeneous Private Cloud ...
A middle-of-the-road solution between dedicated servers and shared hosting is a balance that makes a lot of sense for many businesses. Such a service exists and is called a virtual private server (or VPS). VPS offers webmasters a way to host their own server, but without the higher costs and complexities of dedicated servers. Here's more about whether VPS strikes the right balance for you. When a website uses shared hosting, it shares memory, hard drive space and CPU cycles with other sites on the same server. If one site gets hacked, there is a chance that other sites on the same server can get hacked. If one webmaster uses up all the server resources, other sites on the same server suffer. Some web hosts place hundreds of sites on the same server, so each site is at the mercy of other webmasters.
It's time to update you with the most recent statistics on the Java & PHP software stacks' popularity within the Jelastiс PaaS. As usual, you'll see the overall numbers, distribution by regions and the monthly trends. This month, the results are more interesting with stats from another one of our European hosting partners, Neohost, located in Ukraine. MySQL continues to dominate as usual and it looks like other database servers have almost no chance of overtaking it. Moreover, the MySQL market share has expanded 2% compared to the previous month.
It’s hard to implement an effective, scalable search system, which is why Apache Solr is probably the most popular ‘black box’ in web app infrastructure. Your site is indexed on Google, but that doesn't mean you're done with search. Content-rich websites provide native search functionality to keep users engaged, maintain visual consistency, and provide content-aware filtering. But it's very hard to implement an effective, scalable search system, which is why Apache Solr is just about the most popular ‘black box' in web application infrastructure. This Lucene-backed search appliance has seen wide adoption due to its performance, reliability, and ease of deployment. In fact, it's become so widely used that many Solr deployments are managed by people who have no other exposure to running Java applications. Documents go in, indexed RESTful search comes out - that is, until something breaks.
SYS-CON Media has launched WebRTC Journal on Ulitzer.com featuring over 160 original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is “To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5.” Follow WebRTC Journal on Twitter at @WebRTCSummit.
Maintaining email servers is a full-time job including server maintenance, filtering spam, blocking viruses, and creating backups. A hosted Exchange service frees up IT time by putting all of these tasks in the hands of the email host. Even still, the myths surrounding hosted Exchange persist. Let's knock them out one at a time to see why Exchange might make sense for you. Myth #1: Hosted Exchange is Only for Large Businesses Because of the time it takes to manage an Exchange server, small businesses can take the most advantage of a third-party email system. While large businesses can also use Exchange, small business IT departments have more tasks to keep the company running. Allowing the host to manage the email servers takes much of the busy work away from IT personnel, so they can focus on more internal issues instead of maintaining servers.
The DevOps methodology is a straightforward and obvious initiative to cater for the changing face of application development and deployment. Despite this it’s greatest challenge lies within people and their willingness to change. For most organisations application releases are analogous to extremely tense and pressurized situations where risk mitigation and tight time deadlines are key. This is made worse with the complication of internal silos and the consequent lack of cohesion that exists not just within the microcosm of IT infrastructure teams but also amongst the broader departments of development, QA and operations. Now with the increasing demand on IT from application and business unit stakeholders for new releases to be deployed quickly and successfully, the interdependence of software development and IT operations are being seen as an integral part to the successful delivery of IT services. Consequently businesses are recognizing that this can't be achieved unless the traditional methodologies and silos are readdressed or changed. Cue the emergence of a new methodology that's simply called DevOps.
In these competitive times, how does a business like yours navigate required technology transitions and retain its edge? By changing the game and transforming the way you engage customers. Watch this free webcast and learn how the game-changing Network Open Environment (ONE) from Cisco helps you capture new business opportunities by creating innovative customer experiences with greater IT simplicity and investment protection. In this webcast, you will: See Inbar Lasser-Raab and Rob Soderby introduce the Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) Enterprise Network Architecture—a next-generation technology. Learn about new networking solutions that can help you stay one step ahead of technology transitions. Hear customers discuss how they’ve used innovative networking technologies to solve IT challenges and affect their business.
Anytime we in IT encounter a new paradigm, our natural reaction is block, control, stop. In many shops, our first response is to prohibit users from accessing websites that the company has not approved, including cloud-based software, mobile applications, and other “bring your own apps” candidates. Instead, we ought to put more of our attention on words like partner or enable. That’s what IT is really striving for. IT managers want to serve their company’s needs and to enable employees to do their job better. But the perception of IT is that is has been on a long trajectory towards (let’s face it) irrelevance.
Setting up a single instance of a cloud application, let alone multiple ones, can be complex, time consuming, and prone to mistakes. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Alex Sousa, Senior Director, Cloud Solutions, at SHI, will show how the SHI Cloud Marketplace can quickly deploy sophisticated multi-tier applications across multiple geographically diverse servers, located at different cloud service providers. Alex Sousa is Senior Director, Cloud Solutions, at SHI. He oversees productization aspects of the SHI Cloud Backup as a Service (Baas). Combining business, technical, and legal expertise, Sousa is a cross-functional hybrid. Most recently, he was the legal counsel of two solar cell start-ups, where he drafted patents and negotiated commercial agreements. He was also in charge of building out and managing the datacenter at one of the start-ups.
For many enterprises, moving business processes and data to the cloud has become a next step for improving both operational and technological capabilities. The cost savings and efficiencies created by utilizing cloud applications continue to increase, including opportunities for more business functions to be put on the cloud. For those currently using the cloud or planning to begin or expand cloud adoption, a growing concern is cloud security and specifically this question – “Why is cloud security such a big challenge?” The challenges of cloud security begin with an enterprise’s need to keep control over their data and to ensure that their data is kept private and protected. Whether it is outsourced data storage or the use of popular cloud SaaS applications, putting more data in the cloud inherently means more opportunity for unwanted or unauthorized access to that information. But cloud adoption by the enterprise is simply too compelling because of its business benefits, so enterprise security and IT teams have to search for ways to secure their data in the cloud while permitting access and use by legitimate corporate users.
A recent article by Rob Livingstone on CFO.com [1] attracted my attention. In the article, Rob talks about the need for a tighter, ongoing working relationship between your company and its IT vendors for “as-a-service” technology-delivery models. We have in previous blogs also discussed the changes required in the everything-as-a-service (XaaS) movement. Clearly, Rob’s target audience here is primarily the CFO, and Rob’s suggestions are intended to help financial officers focus on some of the vendor selection issues that are emerging as the technology evolves, and as the customer-vendor relationship evolves in parallel. As a billing vendor, I look at this from the other side of the negotiation fence, but nevertheless I find I’m pretty much in agreement with Mr. Livingstone. The article contains a number of useful reminders, some of which I may return to in a future blog. However, for today, I’ve picked out a couple of Rob’s comments, because they happen to resonate with discussions we are constantly having with our customers and prospective customers. They both address adaptability and flexibility, important tag words for us here at MetraTech.
Recently, one of our customers, let’s call him PointInFact, had a very typical problem. After deploying a new version of its software, some user requests degraded horribly. Requests that should have taken half a second took up to a minute. Interestingly, the PointInFact team runs a multi-tenant SaaS solution in the AWS Cloud and relies heavily on cloud services. This reliance makes User Experience Management and fault domain isolation very challenging. Back Story: Application Running in the AWS Cloud PointInFact runs a SaaS service. Internally this results in a multi-tenant service where each customer has his own instance of the application he subscribes to. All of these applications and services are hosted in Amazon’s EC2 Cloud where they dynamically create new application environments and offload some functionality to AWS by using the provided services. As a SaaS business, customer satisfaction is very important to them, as a consequence they monitor all applications and services centrally and from an end-user and server-side perspective with Compuware APM.
To state the obvious, businesses of all sizes are moving their applications to the cloud or renting software as a service (SaaS) instead of licensing or buying the software outright. The number one reason people cite is cost. Businesses large and small are under the impression they can save a bundle by moving their apps to the cloud. At the same time, companies who handle a move to the cloud badly can suffer a negative backlash from their user community. When you consider all the cost factors, like your time, energy and risk to your business, will you save money in the long run by going with SaaS? The short answer is no. One thing is clear: businesses will pay less up front for cloud vs. on-premise. Modern SaaS systems are rented on a pay-as-you-go basis, or might have short-term contracts. Average license fees for equivalent on-premise software range from two to three years' worth of SaaS subscriptions. Add in 20% annual maintenance when you buy and install your own software and you are in concept paying three years' worth of subscription revenues up front for the same tools.
Why should enterprises move data and applications into the cloud? The discussion on cloud strategy is still to this day focused on cost-reduction, primarily featuring economies achieved in infrastructure, platform and even applications. Certainly no one is going to argue that this is all worth thinking about; every business needs to be aware of cost reduction opportunities. However a complete cloud strategy for an enterprise needs to be a whole lot more comprehensive than that. Enterprises, big and smaller, need to stretch their minds to take in the business opportunities that emerge from a cloud way of working, opportunities that are difficult or impossible to achieve in an environment of discrete platforms and applications.