Who are you? How do you introduce yourself? Do you use a name, or do you greet a friend by the last four digits of his social security number? Assuming you don’t, why are we content to associate our identity with 10 random digits assigned by our phone company? Identity is an issue that affects everyone, but as individuals we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ben Klang, Founder & President of Mojo Lingo, discussed the impact of technology on identity. Should we federate, or not? How should identity be secured? Who owns the identity? How is identity created, addressed, and shared?
Learn how IoT, cloud, social networks and last but not least, humans, can be integrated into a seamless integration of cooperative organisms both cybernetic and biological. This has been enabled by recent advances in IoT device capabilities, messaging frameworks, presence and collaboration services, where devices can share information and make independent and human assisted decisions based upon social status from other entities. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Michael Heydt, founder of Seamless Thingies, discussed and demonstrateed how devices and humans can be integrated from a simple cluster of Raspberry Pi/IoT devices, up through cloud connected devices, severs, wearables and humans.
Overgrown applications have given way to modular applications, driven by the need to break larger problems into smaller problems. Similarly large monolithic development processes have been forced to be broken into smaller agile development cycles. Looking at trends in software development, microservices architectures meet the same demands. Additional benefits of microservices architectures are compartmentalization and a limited impact of service failure versus a complete software malfunction. The problem is there are a lot of moving parts in these designs; this makes assuring performance complex especially if the services are geographically distributed or provided by multiple third parties.
The Internet of Things (IoT), in all its myriad manifestations, has great potential. Much of that potential comes from the evolving data management and analytic (DMA) technologies and processes that allow us to gain insight from all of the IoT data that can be generated and gathered. This potential may never be met as those data sets are tied to specific industry verticals and single markets, with no clear way to use IoT data and sensor analytics to fulfill the hype being given the IoT today.
The Microservices architectural pattern promises increased DevOps agility and can help enable continuous delivery of software. This session is for developers who are transforming existing applications to cloud-native applications, or creating new microservices style applications. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Jim Bugwadia, CEO of Nirmata, introduced best practices, patterns, challenges, and solutions for the development and operations of microservices style applications. He discussed how application container solutions can be used to efficiently deploy and operate these applications in a highly scalable and flexible manner. He also included a live demonstration of how microservices applications, packaged in Docker containers, can be deployed and managed across public and private clouds in a fully automated manner.
Because of the explosive growth of DevOps, there is still a seemingly large amount of confusion on the topic. While I’ve written about this before [link to DevOps article], this article takes a shot at dividing things in a way that we naturally do as users, but vendors often fail to differentiate, simply because “DevOps” is a hot term, and it’s all too often about SEO and AdWords when vendors talk/write.
Contextual Analytics of various threat data provides a deeper understanding of a given threat and enables identification of unknown threat vectors. In his session at @ThingsExpo, David Dufour, Head of Security Architecture, IoT, Webroot, Inc., discussed how through the use of Big Data analytics and deep data correlation across different threat types, it is possible to gain a better understanding of where, how and to what level of danger a malicious actor poses to an organization, and to determine the measures to implement to prevent future occurrences.
When we look back at the IT world in 2015, we think of high profile hacks and crashes that brought vastly expensive systems to their knees - Ashley Madison, United Airlines, the New York Stock Exchange and so on... With the constant disruption and complexity added to an already convoluted IT landscape, your success in 2016 will center around how well you decipher complexity. Will you fail under the added weight of new technology, or can you weave your way through to rise above it?
WebRTC is the future of browser-to-browser communications, and continues to make inroads into the traditional, difficult, plug-in web communications world. The 6th WebRTC Summit continues our tradition of delivering the latest and greatest presentations within the world of WebRTC. Topics include voice calling, video chat, P2P file sharing, and use cases that have already leveraged the power and convenience of WebRTC.
There is little doubt that Big Data solutions will have an increasing role in the Enterprise IT mainstream over time. Big Data at Cloud Expo - to be held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY - has announced its Call for Papers is open. Cloud computing is being adopted in one form or another by 94% of enterprises today. Tens of billions of new devices are being connected to The Internet of Things. And Big Data is driving this bus. An exponential increase is expected in the amount of information being processed, managed, analyzed, and acted upon by enterprise IT. This amazing is not part of some distant future - it is happening today. One report shows a 650% increase in enterprise data by 2020. Other estimates are even higher. Big Data at Cloud Expo New York is the place where you can see the technologies and use cases that are delivering Big Data to enterprise IT.
Everyone talks about continuous integration and continuous delivery but those are just two ends of the pipeline. In the middle of DevOps is continuous testing (CT), and many organizations are struggling to implement continuous testing effectively. After all, without continuous testing there is no delivery. And Lab-As-A-Service (LaaS) enhances the CT with dynamic on-demand self-serve test topologies. CT together with LAAS make a powerful combination that perfectly serves complex software development and delivery pipelines. Software Defined Networks (SDNs) turns the network into a flexible configurable system of software components and connections that is powerful but presents new complexities and challenges for network software development, delivery and deployments.
Clearly the way forward is to move to cloud be it bare metal, VMs or containers. One aspect of the current public clouds that is slowing this cloud migration is cloud lock-in. Every cloud vendor is trying to make it very difficult to move out once a customer has chosen their cloud. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Naveen Nimmu, CEO of Clouber, Inc., advocated that making the inter-cloud migration as simple as changing airlines would help the entire industry to quickly adopt the cloud without worrying about any lock-in fears. In fact by having standard APIs for IaaS would help PaaS explode much faster as there is no need to support plethora of clouds by every PaaS vendor.
Between the compelling mockups and specs produced by analysts, and resulting applications built by developers, there exists a gulf where projects fail, costs spiral, and applications disappoint. Methodologies like Agile attempt to address this with intensified communication, with partial success but many limitations. In his session at DevOps Summit, Charles Kendrick, CTO and Chief Architect at Isomorphic Software, presented a revolutionary model enabled by new technologies.
Whether you like it or not, DevOps is on track for a remarkable alliance with security. The SEC didn’t approve the merger. And your boss hasn’t heard anything about it. Yet, this unruly triumvirate will soon dominate and deliver DevSecOps faster, cheaper, better, and on an unprecedented scale. In his session at DevOps Summit, Frank Bunger, VP of Customer Success at ScriptRock, discussed how this cathartic moment will propel the DevOps movement from such stuff as dreams are made on to a practical, powerful, and insanely valuable asset to enterprises. You may call it DevSecOps, or SecDevOps, or maybe even DevOpsSec. Choose your own adventure.
Containers are revolutionizing the way we deploy and maintain our infrastructures, but monitoring and troubleshooting in a containerized environment can still be painful and impractical. Understanding even basic resource usage is difficult – let alone tracking network connections or malicious activity. In his session at DevOps Summit, Gianluca Borello, Sr. Software Engineer at Sysdig, covered the current state of the art for container monitoring and visibility, including pros / cons and live demonstrations of each method. Special emphasis will be put on sysdig, an open source troubleshooting tool. Sysdig offers unprecedented container visibility without the need to break the “sanctity” of the container.
Our shopping experiences continue to change. Today, we use smartphones, tablets and laptops to shop, purchase and track shipments online, from anywhere at any time. We bring mobile devices into retail stores to compare prices and learn more about products on the shelf. We search for available inventories, the nearest store locations, and for new, used, shared and auctioned products and services. These digital transformations are profoundly altering the nature of retailing, and their velocity will only accelerate.
Agile, which started in the development organization, has gradually expanded into other areas downstream - namely IT and Operations. Teams – then teams of teams – have streamlined processes, improved feedback loops and driven a much faster pace into IT departments which have had profound effects on the entire organization. In his session at DevOps Summit, Anders Wallgren, Chief Technology Officer of Electric Cloud, discussed how DevOps and Continuous Delivery have emerged to help connect development with IT operations (mainly through the introduction of Automation) to support and amplify agility, responsiveness and faster time to market throughout the software delivery lifecycle.
The traditional, on-premise computing model has established processes, accreditations, certifications, governance and compliance rules - FISMA, NERC CIP, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, IRS 1075. While the security industry is aggressively addressing the technical security gaps in cloud-driven services, many organizations using cloud services are struggling to implement and adapt strategic processes, procedures, and controls for cloud governance and due diligence.
Rapid innovation, changing business landscapes, and new IT demands force businesses to make changes quickly. The DevOps approach is a way to increase business agility through collaboration, communication, and integration across different teams in the IT organization. In his session at @DevOpsSummit, Chris Van Tuin, Chief Technologist for the Western US at Red Hat, discussed: The acceleration of application delivery for the business with DevOps
The Internet of Things has the potential to disrupt all industries, not just consumer, as businesses leverage the new insights and capabilities enabled by new devices / things, automation, integration and analytics, etc., to transform how they do business. One industry ripe for disruption is higher education. Colleges and universities are being challenged with serving more students and at the same time ensuring successful student outcomes. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Witeck, Principal Technology Strategist at Citrix, looked at the potential of IoT in providing the platform for the next generation classroom, helping schools to easily offer a blended learning environment for students inside and outside of the classroom.
Cloud adoption across enterprises is accelerating and this momentum will continue to be a core focus for many organizations in 2016. Realizing we are still in the early stages of the cloud migration tsunami is both exciting and scary at the same time. When it comes to the cloud, unprecedented opportunities lie ahead that can be capitalized upon. There is also a serious threat of being left behind if not well prepared. Cloud enabled IT will percolate throughout all parts of the enterprise in some form or another. Every single aspect of IT – including server infrastructure, networks, storage, application development, packaged apps, and applications management – will all be touched and transformed by the cloud in short order.
NHK, Japan Broadcasting, will feature the upcoming @ThingsExpo Silicon Valley in a special 'Internet of Things' and smart technology documentary that will be filmed on the expo floor between November 3 to 5, 2015, in Santa Clara. NHK is the sole public TV network in Japan equivalent to the BBC in the UK and the largest in Asia with many award-winning science and technology programs. Japanese TV is producing a documentary about IoT and Smart technology and will be covering @ThingsExpo Silicon Valley. The program, to be aired during the peak viewership season of the year, will have a major impact on the industry in Japan. The film's director is writing a scenario to fit in the story in the next few days will be turned in to the network.
The Internet of Things is in the early stages of mainstream deployment but it promises to unlock value and rapidly transform how organizations manage, operationalize, and monetize their assets. IoT is a complex structure of hardware, sensors, applications, analytics and devices that need to be able to communicate geographically and across all functions. Once the data is collected from numerous endpoints, the challenge then becomes converting it into actionable insight.
Is ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) still relevant in the digital world? The short answer is…yes. The longer answer is: it depends on your organization’s understanding and application of ITIL. In order to best answer the question it’s important to take a step back and examine the goals and intent of ITIL.
As smart cars, pre-loaded with millions of lines of code, are becoming the norm in the automotive industry, the topic of safety has come to the forefront of the conversation in a big way. Most consumers remember several large-scale recalls in the past few years, and it’s left some a bit wary of software glitches that could affect driver safety.