Although we often write about and discuss digital transformation, we often fail to identify the end goal we are really trying to achieve. We talk at great length about data, analytics, speed, information logistics systems and personalized user experiences, but none of these are the end goal. Ultimately we must digitally transform so we can remove the “fog of war,” and have clear visibility and insights into our businesses and the needs of our customers. The end goal of digital transformation, however, is the ability to rapidly act and react to changing data, competitive conditions and strategies fast enough to succeed.
Cognitive Computing is becoming the foundation for a new generation of solutions that have the potential to transform business. Unlike traditional approaches to building solutions, a cognitive computing approach allows the data to help determine the way applications are designed. This contrasts with conventional software development that begins with defining logic based on the current way a business operates. In her session at 18th Cloud Expo, Judith S. Hurwitz, President and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates, Inc., put cognitive computing into perspective with its value to the business. The session detailed what it takes to build a cognitive application and the types of solutions that are the best fit for this data-driven approach.
Organizations are experiencing a new emphasis when it comes to cybersecurity. They are moving from securing the perimeter to securing the data within it, which is the result of the proliferation of connected devices in organizations today: smartphones, tablets and the IoT. Organizations used to focus their efforts on keeping attackers outside the perimeter, because just a few years ago, the network perimeter was much more static and limited. Today, the perimeter is everywhere – and constantly moving.
SYS-CON Events announced today that ReadyTalk, a leading provider of online conferencing and webinar services, has been named Vendor Presentation Sponsor at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. ReadyTalk delivers audio and web conferencing services that inspire collaboration and enable the Future of Work for today’s increasingly digital and mobile workforce. By combining intuitive, innovative technology with unmatched customer service, ReadyTalk provides a seamless collaboration experience for anyone, across any device, platform or location. Everything you need, anywhere you are, for before, during and after your online event. ReadyTalk is headquartered in Denver, CO and was founded in 2001.
Amazon has gradually rolled out parts of its IoT offerings, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to optimizing their backend AWS offerings, Amazon is laying the ground work to be a major force in IoT - especially in the connected home and office. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Kocher, founder and managing director of Grey Heron, explained how Amazon is extending its reach to become a major force in IoT by building on its dominant cloud IoT platform, its Dash Button strategy, Replenishment Services, the Echo/Alexa voice recognition control platform, strategic investments of its Alexa Venture Fund, strategic partnerships with 30+ major consumer package goods companies and the 50-60 million current Prime customers. If you are developing products, services or platforms for IoT, you don't want to miss this session. Amazon does not just want to dominate the backend cloud storage, compute and analysis capabilities for IoT data. This is not an incremental, small potatoes effort. It will use its usual low-cost, market share grabbing approach to stake out a large chunk of the IoT market, especially in the Connected Home and office. This will have significant impacts on Google, Apple, ATT, Comcast and other major and minor IoT players.
The pace of technology today means organizations are increasingly tasked with delivering applications that are fast, efficient, and capable of doing more than ever to keep up with the demands of the business. They’re looking to improve existing applications and add new ones. But how can IT guarantee application availability or create new applications when so much has already been invested in current programs and infrastructures?
Those that lead are able to collect and analyze data that followers can't. Think about the first climber to reach the top of the mountain, they have a new and different view slower followers don't. If you believe, as I do, that understanding data is the secret sauce of the digitally transformed enterprise, then having data not available to your competitors is a treasure! Those that achieve digital transformation before their competitors will have advantages - and advantages have advantages. Not only do they have new experiences and new data to analyze and understand, they are able to develop and implement new strategies that make no sense to slower competitors without access to the new data. The digitally transformed can act on data invisible to slower competitors.
Data drought in the rural Australian outback has illuminated the myriad problems stemming from a lack of Wi-Fi connectivity. Precision agriculture today requires broadband and high-speed connectivity to compete in the innovative global marketplace. Yet, many rural areas lack the sufficient infrastructure needed, offering only spotty or basic wireless internet solutions.
Redis is not only the fastest database, but it has become the most popular among the new wave of applications running in containers. Redis speeds up just about every data interaction between your users or operational systems. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Dave Nielsen, Developer Relations at Redis Labs, shared the functions and data structures used to solve everyday use cases that are driving Redis' popularity.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Tintri Inc., a leading producer of VM-aware storage (VAS) for virtualization and cloud environments, will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Tintri VM-aware storage is the simplest for virtualized applications and cloud. Organizations including GE, Toyota, United Healthcare, NASA and 6 of the Fortune 15 have said “No to LUNs.” With Tintri they manage only virtual machines, in a fraction of the footprint and at far lower cost than conventional storage.
Industrial IoT continues to cause disruption; not just in manufacturing, but across many other industries as well. In the last few months we’ve been keeping a pulse on the state of digital transformation across the business landscape and have been discovering exciting new implementations of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This week we’re highlighting the disruption Industrial IoT is instigating as product development and lifecycle management continues to evolve.
The cloud wars rage on. The room is full of 800lb gorillas that have been battling over market share and supremacy for several years now. You know who the key players are - Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM – all still standing. Three year ago, Gartner described the market as ‘still evolving and maturing’. However, last year, they described the market as ‘in a state of upheaval’ with many providers shifting their strategies as they struggle to obtain market share.
Enterprises must rethink network management in the cloud computing world. This new reality is driven by the rise of software defined networking, the virtualization of everything and a business imperative to create and deploy even newer information delivery models. With the entire infrastructure stack now fully programmable, the need to integrate the network with cloud compute services is essential. Another important environmental change is that both servers and applications have joined data with respect to mobility. This leads to an increased need to categorize those assets and apply appropriate security controls with respect to business/mission functions, data user role, location of access, legal/regulatory guidelines and user devices. In meeting the challenges of mobility and globalization, enterprises must address their lack control or complete visibility into the networks they use.
industrial company for a multi-year contract initially valued at over $4.0 million. In addition to DataV software, Bsquare will also provide comprehensive systems integration, support and maintenance services. DataV leverages advanced data analytics, predictive reasoning, data-driven diagnostics, and automated orchestration of remediation actions in order to improve asset uptime while reducing service and warranty costs.
Vidyo, Inc., has joined the Alliance for Open Media. The Alliance for Open Media is a non-profit organization working to define and develop media technologies that address the need for an open standard for video compression and delivery over the web. As a member of the Alliance, Vidyo will collaborate with industry leaders in pursuit of an open and royalty-free AOMedia Video codec, AV1. Vidyo’s contributions to the organization will bring to bear its long history of expertise in codec technology and the process of developing standard codecs, with emphasis on interactive real-time communications. The Alliance has made its AV1 codec source code publicly available as an open source project, and the group welcomes contributions from the broader developer community.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Plasma will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Plasma, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is a leader in IoT and Enterprise Digital Transformation. C2M®, Plasma’s code-free, end-to-end IoT and Digital Enterprise platform allows easy, secure and rapid prototyping and deployment of IoT/M2M solutions.
When it comes to cloud computing, the ability to turn massive amounts of compute cores on and off on demand sounds attractive to IT staff, who need to manage peaks and valleys in user activity. With cloud bursting, the majority of the data can stay on premises while tapping into compute from public cloud providers, reducing risk and minimizing need to move large files. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Jeschonek, Director of Product Management at Avere Systems, will discuss the IT and business benefits that cloud bursting provides, including increased compute capacity, lower IT investment, financial agility, and, ultimately, faster time-to-market.
Digital Initiatives create new ways of conducting business, which drive the need for increasingly advanced security and regulatory compliance challenges with exponentially more damaging consequences. In the BMC and Forbes Insights Survey in 2016, 97% of executives said they expect a rise in data breach attempts in the next 12 months. Sixty percent said operations and security teams have only a general understanding of each other’s requirements, resulting in a “SecOps gap” leaving organizations unable to mobilize to protect themselves. The result: many enterprises face unnecessary risks to data loss and production downtime.
We now work in a world in which data flows to and from the cloud across platforms, geographies and applications. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Jeff Greenwald, Senior Director of Market Development at HGST, will discuss the millennial approach to managing how data is stored, protected, accessed, shared, and governed. Attendees will learn that employing the right infrastructure will set your business free, even within the most demanding use cases – from business continuity to backup and archive.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Violin Memory®, Inc., will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Violin Memory, the industry pioneer in All Flash Arrays, is the agile innovator, transforming the speed of business with enterprise-grade data services software on its leadership Flash Storage Platform™. Violin Concerto™ OS 7 delivers complete data protection and data reduction services and consistent high performance in a storage operating system fully integrated with Violin's patented Flash Fabric Architecture™ for cloud, enterprise and virtualized business and mission-critical storage applications.
IoT is rapidly changing the way enterprises are using data to improve business decision-making. In order to derive business value, organizations must unlock insights from the data gathered and then act on these. In their session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Hoffman, Vice President at EastBanc Technologies, and Peter Shashkin, Head of Development Department at EastBanc Technologies, will discuss how one organization leveraged IoT, cloud technology and data analysis to improve customer experiences and efficiencies. They’ll share the lessons learned, why they believe IoT works better with the cloud, and the four steps organizations should follow to ensure they are able to achieve big business intelligence with IoT.
Internet of Things (IoT) is the in thing that no sane company would neglect. BlackBerry after its recent smart phone is also into IoT and has a complete platform. Main vertical applications targeted are automotive and asset tracking for now. Here is about the platform in Blackberry's own words. "The BlackBerry® IoT Platform is here to give you that control, providing a cloud-based solution that lets you build and manage IoT applications and devices in a secure, efficient, and scalable way."
In addition to all the benefits, IoT is also bringing new kind of customer experience challenges - cars that unlock themselves, thermostats turning houses into saunas and baby video monitors broadcasting over the internet. This list can only increase because while IoT services should be intuitive and simple to use, the delivery ecosystem is a myriad of potential problems as IoT explodes complexity. So finding a performance issue is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
We’ve been doing it for years, decades for some. How many websites have you created accounts on? Your bank, your credit card companies, social media sites, hotels and travel sites, online shopping sites, and that’s just the start. We do it often without even thinking about it, quickly entering our personal information, our data, in a plethora of systems. Sometimes we’re not even aware of the information we are providing. It could be very personal information (think of the security questions you provide answers to for protecting your information on these systems), to information about your behavior, your interests (websites visited, internet search topics). While possibly concerning from a privacy perspective, you had some level of control. For the backend systems involved, the volume and variety of the data was a manageable situation. The tradeoff between privacy and convenience is something we, for the most part, found acceptable.
Creating replica copies to tolerate a certain number of failures is easy, but very expensive at cloud-scale. Conventional RAID has lower overhead, but it is limited in the number of failures it can tolerate. And the management is like herding cats (overseeing capacity, rebuilds, migrations, and degraded performance). In his general session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Cleland, Senior Director of Product Marketing for the HGST Cloud Infrastructure Business Unit, will discuss how a new approach is necessary, one that supports the attributes of the cloud with the millions of applications and users depending on it for their business and personal lives. Object storage is the millennial approach to cloud-based data storage, archival, retrieval and cost. Why? Because it delivers significantly higher data reliability and allows virtually unlimited expansion for storage. Perfect for a hash-tagging, selfie-taking, always communicating and collaborating in an on-demand world.