SYS-CON Events announced today that VAI, a leading ERP software provider, 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. VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.) is a leading independent mid-market ERP software developer renowned for its flexible solutions and ability to automate critical business functions for the distribution, manufacturing, specialty retail and service sectors. An IBM Premier Business Partner, VAI is the 2012 IBM Beacon Award Winner for Outstanding Solutions for Midsize Businesses.
I was working at a financial services software company in the early days of User Interface automation frameworks. We decided that automating the GUI was the way to go, and immersed in developing the framework and our own tests. The goal of automating our tests was to speed us up, while still providing broad coverage once the system was in place. We would then be able to perform repetitive or slowly changing operations, like building a very complex document, to see if the application had memory leaks or unexpected crashes. We wanted to be able to repeat the tests and have each run be identical. We learned a lot about what you should do and - most importantly - what you shouldn't do when reusing tests.
A thought leadership discussion that focuses on advancements in business applications and the modern infrastructure that supports them, and what that combination portends for the future. As we enter 2016, the power of business networks is combining with advanced platforms and mobile synergy to change the very nature of business and commerce. We’ll now explore the innovations that companies can expect -- and how that creates new abilities and instant insights -- and how companies can, in turn, create new business value and better ways to reach and serve their customers.
There will be new vendors providing applications, middleware, and connected devices to support the thriving IoT ecosystem. This essentially means that electronic device manufacturers will also be in the software business. Many will be new to building embedded software or robust software. This creates an increased importance on software quality, particularly within the Industrial Internet of Things where business-critical applications are becoming dependent on products controlled by software. Quality is the central issue when safety, security or human life is at risk if software fails.
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, will explain 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.
I remember back in 2003 when I had a meeting with the then CTO of Amazon for a couple of hours. He was narrating his vision of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), where individual business or programming functions (called services) can be stacked up in libraries and get invoked as and when required. This notion of re-usable services was not new (remember subroutines from the mainframe era or stored procedures from the client-server days?). Subsequently we called them “web services” because they were loosely coupled applications that can be exposed as services and easily consumed by other applications using Internet standard technologies. Phrases such as XML (EXtensible Markup Language), UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description, Integration), WSDL (Web Services Definition Language), and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) were new lexicons then. These were URL addressable resources that could exchange information and execute processes automatically without human intervention. Oh yes, we talked about how the equivalent of a phone dial-tone is evolving to a personal digital dial-tone (Internet) to an application digital dail-tone (web services).
Imagine that you are designing the 2017 Ford Mustang. Like all gas-powered vehicles, each one needs an exhaust muffler. Ford has already vetted and narrowed in on a preferred provider of mufflers. But imagine what would happen if the designers and factory line workers could pick from any one of 20+ past versions of that exhaust muffler from any provider for the new model year—even if that part is outdated, has lower performance, does not meet current emission standards or has a known defect.
Ask anyone who is working with data “What is your biggest challenge?” The answer most of the time is “the inability to use our data fully.” This and similar statements signify one common thread of pain. With data growing at 44% over the next 10 years, it goes without saying that your business is going to be inundated with data from all sides. With “making a profit” on the minds of over 35% of SMB survey respondents, it goes without saying that the challenge is multi-fold with being able to sustain the business and ensure profitability being prime.
IT departments currently face a constant “need for speed” from within the organization, predominantly driven by an increase in application and business demand. This isn’t going to change any time soon. Indeed, according to Gartner, by the end of 2017 demand for app development services will grow at least five times faster than an internal IT organization's capacity to deliver them. Speed is the competitive differentiator in a SaaS environment, but this can often place undue strain on IT. An effective DevOps strategy can alleviate this. It can also help research and development teams move faster, taking the launch cycle of a product from months to weeks. This is especially crucial at Lithium, given that our product is highly customizable, and those continual iterations help both us and our customers stay ahead of the game.
On a recent road trip I was reminded about the importance of DevOps feedback loops and application supportability. I enjoy driving into the Australian outback. This probably explains why I prefer to take the back roads. On my last trip I did just that; forgoing the fast highway for a more sedate but picturesque route. Deciding to fill up at a small country town gas station on my way home I hit a snag. The marvelous electronic park brake system wouldn’t disengage. It was late and I was stuck up that proverbial creak without a paddle – 200+ miles from home.
DevOps is not just last year’s buzzword. Companies with DevOps practices are 2.5x more likely to exceed profitability, market share, and productivity goals. But how do you enable high performance? What can you do right now to start? Find out from DevOps experts including Gene Kim, co-author of "The Phoenix Project," and the Dynatrace Center of Excellence.
If you’re looking to predict how things should work in the future, start by looking in the right places in the present. Innovations in technology, management and collaboration that will change the way we work are already up and running in visionary organizations. Ever since reading Robert Charette’s IEEE article titled This Car Runs on Code, I’ve been fascinated by the fact that the 100 million lines of code in cars represents one of the most complex software artifacts that we interact with day-to-day. That falls just above the number of lines of code you will find in Mac OS X, and in the same order of magnitude of complexity as the DNA of a mouse – as artfully illustrated by David McCandless on the Information Is Beautiful blog.
SYS-CON Events announced today that SpeedyCloud 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. SpeedyCloud is the IaaS brand owned by Beijing SpeedyCloud Technology Co., Ltd., a leader in the cloud industry. As a general solution provider, SpeedyCloud provides IaaS for Internet and enterprises companies.
WebSocket is effectively a persistent and fat pipe that is compatible with a standard web infrastructure; a "TCP for the Web." If you think of WebSocket in this light, there are other more hugely interesting applications of WebSocket than just simply sending data to a browser. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Frank Greco, Director of Technology for Kaazing Corporation, will compare other modern web connectivity methods such as HTTP/2, HTTP Streaming, Server-Sent Events and new W3C event APIs with WebSocket. He will also look at how WebSocket provides innovative enhancements for dynamic hybrid cloud computing connectivity. By providing proprietary TCP-based IoT with a common connectable substrate (Web of Things), we can obtain advantages for connected devices such as global reach, ease of deployment, economies of scale, and ease of development.
Enterprises are finally realizing that digital transformation must be end-to-end if they want to remain competitive in today’s software-driven, customer-focused world – but virtually every large organization has a massive boat anchor dragging them down – slow IT. Legacy technology woes are bad enough – but what really makes slow IT slow are the people and the processes they follow. Nobody likes to change, yet change is what digital transformation is all about.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Catchpoint Systems, Inc., a provider of innovative web and infrastructure monitoring solutions, has been named “Silver Sponsor” of SYS-CON's DevOps Summit at 18th Cloud Expo New York, which will take place June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Catchpoint is a leading Digital Performance Analytics company that provides unparalleled insight into customer-critical services to help consistently deliver an amazing customer experience. Designed for digital business, Catchpoint is the only end-user experience monitoring (EUM) platform that can simultaneously capture, index and analyze object level performance data inline across the most extensive monitor types and node coverage, enabling a smarter, faster way to preempt issues and optimize service delivery. More than 350 customers in over 30 countries trust Catchpoint to strengthen their brands and grow their businesses. Founded in September 2008 by former DoubleClick/Google veterans and backed by Battery Ventures, Catchpoint Systems is headquartered in New York City.
With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing IoT strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @ThingsExpo 2016 in New York and Silicon Valley. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is as "IoT-Ready" as it can be! Internet of @ThingsExpo, taking place Nov 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 17th Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the most profound change in personal and enterprise IT since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago. All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.
@DevOpsSummit taking place June 7-9, 2016 at Javits Center, New York City, and Nov 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with the 18th International @CloudExpo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
I decide to write this blog after reading this post of a frustrated developer (he goes by the nick pistacchio) who couldn’t create a simple single-page application (SPA) in JavaScript in several days. Typically frustration is a result of unmet expectations and this is the case here as well. If pistachio would decide to create a simple app using the JavaScript framework he already knew, he could achieve his goal in 2-3 days allocated for this job. The problem is that he decided to achieve two goals:
Join us at Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo 2016 – June 7-9 at the Javits Center in New York City and November 1-3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA – and deliver your unique message in a way that is striking and unforgettable by taking advantage of SYS-CON's unmatched high-impact, result-driven event / media packages.
I was working at a financial services software company in the early days of User Interface automation frameworks. We decided that automating the GUI was the way to go, and immersed in developing the framework and our own tests. The goal of automating our tests was to speed us up, while still providing broad coverage once the system was in place. We would then be able to perform repetitive or slowly changing operations, like building a very complex document, to see if the application had memory leaks or unexpected crashes. We wanted to be able to repeat the tests and have each run be identical. We learned a lot about what you should do and - most importantly - what you shouldn't do when reusing tests.
SYS-CON Events announced today that FalconStor Software® Inc., a 15-year innovator of software-defined storage solutions, 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. FalconStor Software®, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC) is a leading software-defined storage company offering a converged, hardware-agnostic, software-defined storage and data services platform. Its flagship solution FreeStor®, utilizes a horizontal architecture that unlocks a new world of storage opportunities, allowing IT managers, MSPs, and CSPs to maximize efficiencies and lower costs, while taking advantage of public cloud, hybrid cloud, flash storage and software-defined storage.
With 10 simultaneous tracks, keynotes, general sessions and targeted breakout classes, Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo are two of the most important technology events of the year. Since its launch over eight years ago, Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo have presented a rock star faculty as well as showcased hundreds of sponsors and exhibitors! In this blog post, I provide 7 tips on how, as part of our world-class faculty, you can deliver one of the most popular sessions at our events. But before reading these essential tips, please take a moment and watch this brief video from Sandy Carter.
We've said it on this blog before, and we'll repeat the same message: Solving a software engineering problem is simple physics. It takes a set amount of energy to move a project from point A to point B, and changing the process or path doesn't change the unavoidable fact that difficult software problems are difficult to solve. DevOps integration is no different. If you have a complex, highly-orchestrated release no amount of automation can change the fact that the large, successful systems found in the Fortune 500 are often full of seemingly intractable complexity: databases that have been around longer than most of your junior engineers, middleware systems maintained by teams that have been outsourced to by the teams they were originally outsourced to, and lot's of risk. In fact, risk is the common attribute in most big business, and while moving your development and operations teams to work more closely together can reduce your overall exposure to user-error by encouraging more automation, it doesn't take the risk out of software releases.
If you work for a large company, you'll often look around and wonder if moving to a daily release cycle or automating deployments is even possible given the number of meetings and the amount of process your releases are subject to. Between the CAB meetings, the QA schedules, and the coordinated conference calls it's tough to imagine a monthly release process being condensed down to a process that could run in a single day. For most organizations dealing with real risk - it's true - you will not be able to condense release cycles down to a single day, but you can get closer to this ideal if you make the right decisions about how your department is organized and managed.