Manufacturing is in the midst reinventing itself on the heels of the latest IoT innovations. The industrial automation paradigm, which some say also gave rise to the lean manufacturing management philosophy, continues to influence organizations that wish to find new ways to capitalize on business opportunities in the digital age. Through that lens we gathered the top articles from the week and found some interesting perspectives. Some reports started suggesting manufacturing is in a time of trouble, both in the U.S. and around the globe, namely in places like China. But upon further investigation, we also find exciting trends that are shaping the evolution of manufacturing.
Modern threat defense presents many new challenges to enterprises, resulting from the sophisticated threat techniques, new threat actors like organized cybercrime groups and nation states, and the ever-evolving IT infrastructure. Advanced malware threats are fundamentally different from the threats of yesterday.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Alert Logic, Inc., the leading provider of Security-as-a-Service solutions for the cloud, 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. Alert Logic has announced that it received a grant by Invest Northern Ireland in support of its security research and technology development center located in Belfast. The £572,000 grant will enable the continued growth of its Belfast office in Northern Ireland by supporting approximately 90 jobs.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Avere Systems, a leading provider of enterprise storage for the hybrid cloud, 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. Avere Systems has announced that NASA has selected Avere to help consolidate legacy storage and move many of its datasets to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Avere will be supporting the Ames Research Center, NASA’s Silicon-Valley field center, which has led NASA in conducting world-class research and development. Breakthrough research conducted at the Ames Research Center includes advancements in supercomputing, NexGen air transportation, missions for low-Earth orbit and the moon, lunar science and advancing human-technology interaction.
Storage is moving to flash, and flash is getting faster, so people keep asking me why I keep talking about latency as if there is a problem. Isn’t faster flash going to just make everything faster? Won’t “the rising tide lift all boats”? Flash media as a storage media is indeed “faster” than the spinning hard-disks we’ve all been using for decades. But when it is used to simulate a hard disk, as is the case with SSD products, there are software layers which prevent it from reaching its full potential. That explanation always gets heads nodding, because it is obvious. But what about when the flash media is not simply packaged into an “SSD” and connected over SATA or SAS, but instead can be addressed via NVMe over PCIe? Doesn’t that make the problem of hard disk drive emulation go away?
Back in October, my son’s robotics team said “Hey! You work for a software company, can you build us an application that will help us with scouting and competitions?” Foolishly, ego stepped in before a careful outsourced review of my existing skills could take place, so I said “Sure! Not a web developer, but how hard could it be?” Seriously… how hard could this be? I see web application traffic all the time. On the wire. And I can even manipulate that traffic at the protocol level and do amazing things with it programmatically. But…changing application traffic in flight is not development of that application. Nor is it an understanding of all the considerations one must evaluate and handle to get from idea to solution. So yeah, it is hard. Dang hard. Actually, getting to a dynamic web experience "hello world” is easy, but getting to a working application? Not so easy. Or quick. And rightfully so. Skills take time to master, and mastery unlocks new levels with which to master.
Manufacturing is in the midst reinventing itself on the heels of the latest IoT innovations. The industrial automation paradigm, which some say also gave rise to the lean manufacturing management philosophy, continues to influence organizations that wish to find new ways to capitalize on business opportunities in the digital age. Through that lens we gathered the top articles from the week and found some interesting perspectives. Some reports started suggesting manufacturing is in a time of trouble, both in the U.S. and around the globe, namely in places like China. But upon further investigation, we also find exciting trends that are shaping the evolution of manufacturing.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Alert Logic, Inc., the leading provider of Security-as-a-Service solutions for the cloud, 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. Alert Logic has announced that it received a grant by Invest Northern Ireland in support of its security research and technology development center located in Belfast. The £572,000 grant will enable the continued growth of its Belfast office in Northern Ireland by supporting approximately 90 jobs.
Modern threat defense presents many new challenges to enterprises, resulting from the sophisticated threat techniques, new threat actors like organized cybercrime groups and nation states, and the ever-evolving IT infrastructure. Advanced malware threats are fundamentally different from the threats of yesterday.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Avere Systems, a leading provider of enterprise storage for the hybrid cloud, 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. Avere Systems has announced that NASA has selected Avere to help consolidate legacy storage and move many of its datasets to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Avere will be supporting the Ames Research Center, NASA’s Silicon-Valley field center, which has led NASA in conducting world-class research and development. Breakthrough research conducted at the Ames Research Center includes advancements in supercomputing, NexGen air transportation, missions for low-Earth orbit and the moon, lunar science and advancing human-technology interaction.
Internet of Things (IoT) platforms have evolved. Advances in technology make it possible for facilities to become more data-driven by connecting to energy assets, thereby improving building resiliency and reducing energy costs. By creating an Energy Network of Things, facilities can manage energy assets in real-time, institute system-wide operational oversight and compliance, execute energy efficiency programs, utilize real-time data, and support budgeting and asset planning across local and geographically-dispersed sites.
What is the cloud? Does my data really sit on fluffy white clouds and float above the world? What happens when an airplane drives through my spreadsheet, or a bird gets stuck in my document? The scope of cloud technology and cloud computing is growing, as is its adoption. Your prospects and clients could be using it right now and not even know it. When working with the right IT services provider, cloud technology helps small-to-medium-sized businesses scale up the IT needs of their companies much faster than setting up new hardware.
WebRTC: together these advances have created a perfect storm of technologies that are disrupting and transforming classic communications models and ecosystems. In his session at WebRTC Summit, Cary Bran, VP of Innovation and New Ventures at Plantronics and PLT Labs, provided an overview of this technological shift, including associated business and consumer communications impacts, and opportunities it may enable, complement or entirely transform.
DevOps bridges the gap between Development and Operations to accelerate software delivery and increase business agility and time-to-market. With its roots in the Agile movement, DevOps fosters collaboration between teams and streamlines processes, with the goal of breaking silos in order to “go fast.” Information Security (InfoSec) and compliance are critical to businesses across the globe, especially given past examples of data breaches and looming cybersecurity threats. InfoSec has long been thought of as the group that "slows things down" - the wet towel to your DevOps efforts - often requiring a more conservative approach as a means of mitigating risk. Traditionally, DevOps was viewed as a risk to InfoSec, with the increased velocity of software releases seen as a threat to governance and security/regulatory controls (these, by the way, often require the separation of duties, rather than the breaking of silos.)
In my last post I spoke about the concept that Operations needs to understand and embrace the ____ as a service model (viewable here). The concept is difficult, but the reason it has to happen is that it is the most core tenant of DevOps, and it is the only way organizations will be able to truly drive digital transformation. This matters more than ever, because in the new digital wasteland we live in, failing to transform is agreeing to die.
transform operational efficiency and safety for businesses and communities, especially during critical situations. During these critical events, man-made incidents or natural disasters, identifying and reaching employees with reliable and automated communications can not only protect business assets, but can be the difference between life and death. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Imad Mouline, chief technology officer for Everbridge, will highlight incident communications best practices and use cases that harness IoT – whether it be leveraging access control data to identify and communicate to dynamic employee locations, or automating downstream communications directly from public infrastructure.
Keeping pace with advancements in software delivery processes and tooling is taxing even for the most proficient organizations. Point tools, platforms, open source and the increasing adoption of private and public cloud services requires strong engineering rigor – all in the face of developer demands to use the tools of choice. As Agile has settled in as a mainstream practice, now DevOps has emerged as the next wave to improve software delivery speed and output. To make DevOps work, organizations must focus on what is most relevant to deliver value, reduce IT complexity, create more repeatable agile-based processes and leverage increasingly secure and stable, cloud-based infrastructure platforms.
Lots of things are happening there. As of today it’s the liveliest software ecosystem. The last time I’ve seen such an interesting gathering was 15 years ago in Java. Fifteen years ago Java developers were looking down on the JavaScript folks. It was assumed that JavaScript was only good for highlighting menus and making an impression that the Web site is current by displaying a running clock on the page. Mobile phones still had buttons with one digits and three letters. There were no App stores. Java was promising “Write once run everywhere”, but now we can see that JavaScript actually delivered on this promise.
The evolution of JavaScript and HTML 5 to support a genuine component based framework (Web Components) with the necessary tools to deliver something close to a native experience including genuine realtime networking (UDP using WebRTC). HTML5 is evolving to offer built in templating support, the ability to watch objects (which will speed up Angular) and Web Components (which offer Angular Directives). The native level support will offer a massive performance boost to frameworks having to fake all these features like Polymer and Angular. It will also encourage people who are not familiar with these next generational frameworks to get in on the action. As I am from a gaming background then I always complain that TCP (Web Sockets) is not genuinely real-time, so I look forward to seeing UDP (WebRTC) solutions being delivered like Desktop Sharing in Chrome 34.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Noah Harlan, Founder of Two Bulls and President of AllSeen Alliance, will discuss why open source frameworks are vital for the future of IoT. Noah Harlan is President of AllSeen Alliance and a Founder of Two Bulls, a leading mobile software development company with offices in New York, Berlin, and Melbourne. He is also Managing Director of Digital Strategy for Sullivan NYC, a brand engagement firm based in New York. He has served as an advisor for the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy on gaming and the outdoors, has appeared as a commentator on Bloomberg TV discussing mobile technology, and has an Emmy Award for Advanced Media Interactivity.
How well do you know your code? It sounds like a strange question, but please indulge me. Maybe you're a manager or business analyst. If this is the case, you ‘know' the code through a translation layer in which the developers in your organization explain what it does. Sometimes you can see what it does by interacting with it as a user or by reading incident reports. But to really know and understand what it would do - to have a grasp on how it will behave in an arbitrary situation - you need one or more developers to give you an explanation.
This morning on #c9d9 we were joined by Patrick Debois, Nassim Kammah from Etsy and Trent Peterson from AWS, who are gearing up for a brand new DevOpsDays-styled event they are putting together- – called Mobile Delivery Days. As a preview to the conference, happening March 21-22 in SF, we tdiscussed the challenges that they were seeing in the mobile delivery space and the reason they got together to bring us this event. We talked about the tools and patterns in the mobile app ecosystem and how there’s a lack of clarity around what to use and how to use it, which is what they hope to solve for by bringing practitioners to attend the event, share their experiences and learn from each other.
Advances in technology are redefining how energy assets are managed. Buildings that use energy IoT technology can connect to and manage their energy assets in real-time. They can institute system-wide operational oversight and compliance, execute energy efficiency programs, utilize real-time data, and support budgeting and asset planning across local and geographically-dispersed sites with first-of-its-kind connectivity.
I was a guest on Scriptrock's podcast series. We discussed cloud security and DevOps. We even talked about my all time favorite album.
As enterprises today undergo digital transformation, they become software-driven organizations. But software-driven is somewhat of a misnomer, because software alone is only an enabler – just as software-based tools are not the core of DevOps, but merely DevOps enablers. In reality, to become software-driven, companies must transform organizationally – and the key to such transformation is self-organization. What we’re missing, however, is a self-organization playbook. That’s where DevOps can help. Getting DevOps to work means getting self-organization to work. The challenge then becomes spreading the approach beyond the software organization.