“Our customers see PaaS and IaaS as cost-saving models to be applied based on specific project needs, noted Steve Ahlgrim, Business Development Manager at FalconStor, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff. “Depending on their level of IT expertise and staffing, PaaS can be the most cost effective solution.”
2016 is shaping up to be the year of DevOps in the mainstream, as enterprises across every industry – from FinServ and Retail to Automotive and Telecom – adopting DevOps practices. However, many still have lingering questions about what this DevOps thing is and the best ways to begin implementation. Continue reading to learn best practices on how to map your DevOps journey and what DevOps trends are permeating in the software delivery world. More experienced in your DevOps practice? There are still plenty of stories for you about compliance and the increasing complexity of the CIO role. As always, stay tuned to all the news coming from @ElectricCloud on DevOps and Continuous Delivery throughout the week and retweet/favorite to get your top news items featured in our weekly recap!
Over the years we've seen a push in the software industry for tighter release schedules and a more agile development process. As a result, departments that used to function independently in a waterfall development environment are now working more closely together in an accelerated release environment. What does this mean for the relationship between development and QA? Folks in Dev and QA are part of a symbiotic relationship that's critical to put out a high-quality product quickly. Teams that are able to bridge the gap between these departments will have a real advantage.
In my previous posts I have been talking about the issues with DevOps as seen from the Operations side; the cultural changes needed and the reality of the challenges that are faced getting there. As a firm believer in the idea that you "never present a challenge without a possible solution" it's time we talked about one of the ways to start building towards true Operationalized DevOps.
For a company in the IT sector, a 20-year anniversary signifies that we have experienced and endured so many radical changes in the industry. We have witnessed the era in which mainframes were challenged by minis, which were then themselves challenged by PCs. Then came the age of software, then something called the Internet, and now another something called the cloud. Every time, we thought that nothing more could be invented, another massive change would take place. If we are still here and thriving after 20 years, it is a testament to our ability to realize that things will always be constantly changing, and that we must adapt to new worlds.
So we have an eBook, The Top 10 Java Performance Problems, that we tweet out from time to time. Without exception, a few people reply with some version of “the problem is you’re using Java.” Java, apparently, is constantly criticized, and people have been predicting its demise for some time. Sure, it’s not as cool, flexible, or fun as some of the newer, more dynamic languages such as Python, Node.js, or Ruby, however, Java remains an important language for applications everywhere.
I finished my last post with the statement Agile will be applied on a much wider scale in the near future. Within governmental organizations, industry, startups, on a personal level, you name it, but how? In my next posts I will take a deep dive in this exciting story lying in front of us in five steps: Step I: Creating Awareness & Distributing Agile Knowledge Change is a chance, not a threat. Understanding and applying the Agile Mindset and toolsets will help everyone riding the wave of change with more pleasure and success. This is the main reason why I’ve joined initiatives like Nederland Kantelt, EduScrum, Wikispeed and Delft University’s D.R.E.A.M. Hall.
Disruption. You can’t have a discussion today about business or technology without the term entering the conversation. I think it’s become an unwritten rule. It’s almost as if no one will take you seriously unless you’re talking about business disruption. Or how disruptive technologies can be used to advance business and provide a competitive edge. Take Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Both rank highly on the list of disruptive technologies. As with most technologies, there are areas of great synergy that ultimately provide a yellow brick road to real business value. (See my recent blog Big Data, the Internet of Things, and Russian Nesting Dolls
To conduct complete mobile performance testing, a process that will allow you to consistently deliver an exceptional application experience to mobile users, make sure you hit every point on our ultimate mobile performance testing checklist. By now, hopefully you're well aware of the importance of mobile performance testing. It's essential for your organization to test for mobile users whether or not you have a dedicated mobile application.
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), has announced that the AWS Database Migration Service, a fully managed service that allows customers to migrate their production Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL databases from on-premises datacenters to AWS with virtually no downtime, is now available to all customers. Customers, including global enterprises and startups from a range of industries, used the AWS Database Migration Service preview to move more than 1,000 databases to the AWS Cloud since January 1, 2016. Many of these customers also used the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to switch database engines and break free from the cost and complexity of old guard commercial databases. To learn more about the AWS Database Migration Service, visit https://aws.amazon.com/dms.
Pivot3 has announced the availability of Edge Protect, a hyperconverged SAN storage solution for mid-sized and remotely distributed surveillance applications. Edge Protect delivers enterprise-class IT capabilities on off-the-shelf x86 server hardware, enabling users to realize the benefits of highly efficient shared storage and built-in failover without the complexity or cost typically associated with infrastructure based on separate servers and SAN storage.
Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE: ANET), has announced financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2015. Revenue of $245.4 million, an increase of 41.5% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014, and an increase of 12.8% from the third quarter of 2015. Non-GAAP gross margin of 64.0%, compared to non-GAAP gross margin of 67.4% in the fourth quarter of 2014 and 65.5% in the third quarter of 2015. GAAP gross margin of 63.6%, compared to GAAP gross margin of 67.1% in the fourth quarter of 2014 and 65.2% in the third quarter of 2015.
SaaS companies can greatly expand revenue potential by pushing beyond their own borders. The challenge is how to do this without degrading service quality. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Adam Rogers, Managing Director at Anexia, will discuss how IaaS providers with a global presence and both virtual and dedicated infrastructure can help companies expand their service footprint with low “go-to-market” costs.
SUSE® has announced the general availability of SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6, the latest enterprise-ready technology for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds with less stress on IT staff and resources. Based on the OpenStack release Liberty, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 delivers high availability enhancements and non-disruptive upgrades for future releases, along with Docker and IBM z Systems mainframe support to make it easier to move business-critical applications and data to the cloud. In addition, SUSE is offering new OpenStack training and certification for deployment and operation of OpenStack private clouds.
Iron.io has debuted three new solutions that give modern enterprises greater flexibility and control as they build and scale apps. These solutions – for data processing, file processing, and extract, transform, load (ETL) – combined with a rich feature set, empower enterprises to reliably scale their Docker-based jobs on any cloud, including hybrid environments. Additionally, Iron.io announced Project Kratos, which will enable enterprises to run AWS Lambda functionality in any cloud provider, as well as on-premise, eliminating vendor lock-in. Iron.io is currently seeking project members, who will provide input and feedback as the project is developed. Project members will have the option of becoming beta users.
Trend Micro International has announced the close of an agreement to acquire TippingPoint from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Trend Micro TippingPoint solutions are immediately available to bring customers comprehensive threat intelligence and protection for current and zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits. “We are very excited to see this agreement come to fruition as it demonstrates our ongoing commitment to enterprise security,” said Eva Chen, CEO, Trend Micro. “With the addition of TippingPoint, Trend Micro provides customers with the unmatched ability to respond to known and unknown threats, exploits and vulnerabilities across the entire attack lifecycle. Trend Micro is now in a unique position to deliver these integrated, layered capabilities to address the complex network security challenges facing global companies today.”
Network software provider Metaswitch Networks® has announced that Broadvoice has gone live with a multi-state, geo-redundant configuration of Metaswitch’s clustered MetaSphere Multiservice Telephony Application Server (MTAS) in the cloud. “With this further investment in Metaswitch’s world-class technology and support services, we are doubling-down on our success to ensure that we are best positioned for taking advantage of NFV while securing our network against potential disasters, including earthquakes,” said Jim Murphy, CEO of Broadvoice. “We are committed to providing a best-in-class communication platform to our channel partners and customers. All of our hosted voice customers have been seamlessly migrated to the new platform, affording them unrivalled redundancy and reliability while giving us the ability to easily flex and scale our services to our customers’ demands, at any location.”
This week’s top 10 reminds us that there is always room to be continually improving and adapting. For example, the CIO role is becoming more involved with the digital transformations of organizations. CIOs should be focusing their teams on collaboration to breed innovation and implementing a service-centered approach to design to keep business booming and customers satisfied. Our weekly round-up covers several other areas to be thinking about to keep your company on top of the game – like how to keep your software testing relevant and why employees need to be Agile now more than ever.
Nike is an organization that understands the shift driven by trends like the Internet of Things, where technology becomes an integral part of product value. Fitness is a key area where IoT wearable technologies combined with new apps will become differentiating factors that influence which new sports shoes and clothes we buy.
SYS-CON Events announced today that DatacenterDynamics has been named “Media Sponsor” of 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. DatacenterDynamics is a brand of DCD Group, a global B2B media and publishing company that develops products to help senior professionals in the world's most ICT dependent organizations make risk-based infrastructure and capacity decisions.
Illumio has extended the capabilities of Adaptive Security Platform (ASP)™ through integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory groups. The new capability, known as Adaptive User Segmentation, dynamically calculates and provisions connectivity rules based on user identity to prevent unauthorized communications with, and access to, any Illumio-protected applications. Illumio ASP now can govern how hundreds of millions of users connect to applications across data centers, clouds or hybrid-cloud compute environments.
Private, public or hybrid cloud? This is the question that is being asked by C-level executives and IT professionals across the globe, as each enterprise continues to mature its cloud strategy and rethink the earlier role of cloud and whether to move away from an all public or private environment and embrace a hybrid cloud strategy.
The rise of cloud, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) applications is spurring the implementation of microservices that are easy to share, modify and maintain. To facilitate the creation of microservices based on Java, WSO2 today introduced WSO2 Microservices Framework for Java 1.0 (WSO2 MSF4J). Using the open source WSO2 MSF4J, developers can quickly and easily create secure, high-performance microservices in Java that support container-based deployments.
DevOps is one of those buzzwords that nearly everyone wants to discuss these days. However, it is often interpreted as an extension of Development's influence to the detriment of Operations teams. So much has changed in the past few years that it is conceivable we will see another major shakeup: Could Operations teams disappear altogether? Or to put it another way, is ‘NoOps' the future of IT? While DevOps promotes a speed-up in delivery of new digital services and a blurring of the lines between Dev and Ops, in reality is Dev consuming Ops entirely?
@ThingsExpo has been named the ‘Top WebRTC Influencer' by iTrend. iTrend processes millions of conversations, tweets, interactions, news articles, press releases, blog posts - and extract meaning form them and analyzes mobile and desktop software platforms used to communicate, various metadata (such as geo location), and automation tools. In overall placement, @ThingsExpo ranked as the number one ‘WebRTC Influencer' followed by @DevOpsSummit at 55th.