The First Law of Thermodynamics states, "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed." In a business context that can be interpreted to mean if energy is being used to resist change, then it is not available for making change. Change is difficult. The default mode for most organizations and people is to resist change. Blockbusters' own board resisted digital and business model transformation out of concern for short-term profits, which doomed it. Businesses that can direct energy to fast and positive transformation can exploit many more opportunities than enterprises mired in resistance.
Windstream has recently completed construction of a new colocation point of presence (PoP) in Dallas, Texas, and plans to complete construction of a new colocation PoP in Columbus, Ohio, in October – both in facilities operated by Cologix, a network-neutral interconnection and data center company. This adds to Windstream’s already-established presence in the Cologix Minneapolis and Jacksonville data centers, and aligns with Windstream’s continued aggressive Data Center Interconnect (DCI) efforts, adding carrier neutral data centers to its network and giving its wholesale and enterprise customers more options to access cloud resources.
In a series of articles, I am going to share my thoughts on the state of IT infrastructure and how we've arrived with current architecture trends. The topic today is SAN. Storage Area Networking (SAN) is a technology that solved a real problem that existed a couple decades ago. SANs have been a foundational piece of IT infrastructure architecture for a long time and have helped drive major innovations in storage. But how relevant are SANs today in the age of software-defined datacenters? Let's talk about how we have arrived at modern storage architecture.
There are seven key MegaTrends driving the future of enterprise IT. You can remember them all with the helpful mnemonic acronym CAMBRIC, which stands for Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Mobility, Big Data, Robotics, Internet of Things, CyberSecurity. In this post we dive deeper into the first of these trends, Cloud Computing. We succinctly describe Cloud Computing as the scalable delivery of computational resources. Models of cloud compute include public clouds, private clouds and blends in between. Architectures are in place now that leverage tiers of clouds that can exist in multiple sizes and locations, including homes, businesses and datacenters.
Data centers have seen a lot of change in a short time. It used to be possible for organizations to run their service from a single data center and house their Domain Name Service (DNS) servers within it. It wasn’t an issue to have them in the same place, since if the data center went down, the DNS servers wouldn’t be of any use. Of course, things aren’t so simple now. Organizations use multiple data centers, sometimes in multiple countries, not to mention cloud regions and highly distributed networks. Consequently, your DNS needs to be just as highly distributed as your content. After all, what good is a Disaster Recovery site if you have no way to direct your users to it?
No modern enterprise stands alone; each is dependent upon a network of trading partners to remain competitive in today’s global marketplace. But in most cases, the lack of business to business (B2B) integration is holding back efforts to evolve into a true digital business. A high-performing supply chain is essentially a dynamic digital network, and every link in the supply chain is vital for business. But, remarkably, “over 50 percent of the information exchanged among business partners is still done so manually — not automatically — via email, phone calls and faxes.”1 Many enterprises are stymied by silos of data, complex linear processes and disparate application landscapes. Moreover, each enterprise is reliant on its own unique set of applications, further exacerbating the struggle to exchange key information with partners.
Cloud computing is now entering adolescent. With all the early adopters now swimming in the cloud pool with that “I told you so” smug, fast followers are just barely beating the early majority. The gold rush to cloud is also driving the IT herd to get cloud computing training. Training vendors from multi-billion dollar behemoths to little Mom and Pop shops are ready to cash in with fast and easy, vendor-specific certifications for just about any cloud service provider.
This is an unusual blog for me. Usually I talk about how organizations can more effectively leverage data and analytics to power their business. However, as I conduct more Big Data Vision Workshops, I have come to realize that a big part of the success of these engagements is the ability to “listen and comprehend.” Here are some observations and tips for “listening and comprehending” more effectively. I’ve classified this as “facilitation” because I seek to “facilitate” a dialogue with the client where I can learn enough about the client’s business to help them build the right Big Data business strategy.
Imagine if every PhD dissertation resulted in something that changed the world? That's what happened when Roy Fielding presented his doctoral dissertation on the "representational state transfer" at University of California-Irvine in 2000. This dissertation laid the groundwork for the staggering growth of RESTful web services, which have reshaped how organizations deploy and utilize APIs. In fact, today 70% of public APIs depend on REST services.
I just had to write an Olympic-themed headline, since today is the first day of the 2016 Summer Games! I love the Olympics. It's so much fun watching athletes do what they're best at. Plus, they have the extra challenge this year of swimming or boating in polluted, mucky water-so it's even more impressive for the winners, I suppose. Technology is charging forward in sports, like everywhere else. New at this year's Olympic Games are underwater lap counters for swimmers and an infrastructure powered by cloud computing, with a full disaster recovery center ready off-site. Keep an eye on network traffic these next few weeks when employees are streaming Olympic events during lunch.
A company’s collection of online systems is like a delicate ecosystem – all components must integrate with and complement each other, and one single malfunction in any of them can bring the entire system to a screeching halt. That’s why, when monitoring and analyzing the health of your online systems, you need a broad arsenal of different tools for your different needs. In addition to a wide-angle lens that provides a snapshot of the overall health of your system, you must also have precise, scalpel-like tools that can isolate and analyze all of those different components (DNS, CDNs, internal and external servers, third-party tags, etc.).
I’ve been flying quite a bit lately and I started thinking about why apps should be built more like planes. This is not meant to be a deep and insightful blog but rather amusing so I hope you enjoy my perspective!
The emerging Internet of Everything creates tremendous new opportunities for customer engagement and business model innovation. However, enterprises must overcome a number of critical challenges to bring these new solutions to market. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Michael Martin, CTO/CIO at nfrastructure, outlined these key challenges and recommended approaches for overcoming them to achieve speed and agility in the design, development and implementation of Internet of Everything solutions within your organization.
Ixia has announced that the company’s ThreatARMOR™ solution, a key component of Ixia’s Security Fabric™, adds Zero-Day Malware Immunity™ (ZDMI), which blocks mutated versions of malware that use sophisticated obfuscation techniques to evade detection by signature-based security engines. The Ixia Security Fabric provides robust resilience, context-aware intelligent data handling, and security intelligence, ensuring the right data gets to the right tools every time even when encrypted, and enhancing the performance of existing security tools.
Thomas Bitman of Gartner wrote a blog post last year about why OpenStack projects fail. In that article, he outlined three particular metrics which together cause 60% of OpenStack projects to fall short of expectations: Wrong people (31% of failures): a successful cloud needs commitment both from the operations team as well as from "anchor" tenants. Wrong processes (19% of failures): a successful cloud automates across silos in the software development lifecycle, not just within silos.
Application performance problems can be quite challenging to resolve and even more difficult to predict. In my role as Dynatrace Guardian Consultant - leading the implementation of APM best practices with our customers - I've experienced quite a few "head-scratcher" situations. In this blog, I'll relate a recent problem that had most of the IT department scrambling early one Monday morning.
Every time I call up any customer support and hear the familiar 'all our representatives are busy dealing with other customers,' that my call is very important to them and from the more technologically advanced ones that I am 'fourth in the queue and my approximate wait time is 23 minutes,' I wonder why can't they simply call me back when they are free? They already have my contact number. Some of them actually play some music while I wait - which is still better than those who actually take that opportunity to inform me about their new products.
In today's uber-connected, consumer-centric, cloud-enabled, insights-driven, multi-device, global world, the focus of solutions has shifted from the product that is sold to the person who is buying the product or service. Enterprises have rebranded their business around the consumers of their products. The buyer is the person and the focus is not on the offering. The person is connected through multiple devices, wearables, at home, on the road, and in multiple locations, sometimes simultaneously. Products have rebranded from content management, asset management, CRM, social media, analytics ... to Experience Management for the Consumer. However, the key to success in this IoT enabled world is to treat the buyer as a person and not as a consumer or customer. This means we have to offer the person an immersive experience through their lifecycle every day, at every hour, and everywhere.
Personalization has long been the holy grail of marketing. Simply stated, communicate the most relevant offer to the right person and you will increase sales. To achieve this, you must understand the individual. Consequently, digital marketers developed many ways to gather and leverage customer information to deliver targeted experiences. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Lou Casal, Founder and Principal Consultant at Practicala, discussed how the Internet of Things (IoT) has accelerated our ability to monitor behavior, gather even more customer data and potentially deliver outstanding experiences. Regrettably, as history demonstrates, there are countless examples of how this can go terribly wrong. Perhaps it's time to learn from our mistakes.
Qosmos has announced new milestones in the detection of encrypted traffic and in protocol signature coverage. Qosmos latest software can accurately classify traffic encrypted with SSL/TLS (e.g., Google, Facebook, WhatsApp), P2P traffic (e.g., BitTorrent, MuTorrent, Vuze), and Skype, while preserving the privacy of communication content. These new classification techniques mean that traffic optimization, policy enforcement, and user experience are largely unaffected by encryption. In respect with subscriber privacy, communication service providers can continue to leverage network intelligence to ensure service quality and manage resource utilization.
Okay, okay, that seems like an odd thing to say. But at a recent keynote, that came out of my mouth. But that’s a confusing statement, so let me share the entirety of what I said: Big Data is about getting small; it’s about getting down to the level of the individual. Sometimes the Big Data conversation gets too fixated on the “big” part of the conversation: Is my data big enough? Is my company big enough? Is my analytics team big enough?
After Internet of Things (IoT), Connected Cars is the most used buzzword in the industry. From automobile manufacturers to software vendors to telecom operators to consumer electronic companies, everyone is excited about the connected vehicle phenomenon. With the power of 20 modern PCs, contemporary cars pack more punch than any another computing device. They contain more
While API virtualization is already over a decade old, many developers, testers, and decision-makers still misunderstand it. Virtual APIs create an environment that teams can use to mimic the characteristics of the production environment and create simulated responses from all APIs the application relies on. API virtualization is a single technique that pays off in several distinct roles. Let's take a look at a few examples to help illustrate the benefits attached to virtual APIs.
It’s surprisingly difficult to find a concise proper definition of just what exactly DevOps entails. However, I did come across this quote that seems to do a decent job, “DevOps is a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes.”
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." – W. Edwards Deming. How often do we see this quote used in DevOps blogs without a hint of irony? It’s as if we need to instantly complete generations of evolution to stave off extinction, like trying to grow an extra lung overnight. DevOps or Die!!! So this is it – the dreaded DevOps transformation looms large. The department will be ‘shaken up’, practices will be ‘turned on their head’, and staff will be ‘taken out of their comfort zone’. It’s sink or swim: The extinct will be carried out on stretchers, to graveyards in which Ops and Dev are siloed for eternity.