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.
I just completed a video that accompanies my latest research on mobile consumer behaviors, and the strategies retailers must implement. If you design, develop or deploy customer facing apps, this content is relevant and important.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I recently had an opportunity to participate in the SPS Commerce DevOps day event; with over 100 engineers gathered to discuss topics ranging from remote team management, automation frameworks, managing docker deployments, and of course how dynamic monitoring can enable a more agile culture, it was one of the most interesting and collaborative days I’ve had the opportunity to be apart of. Bridget Kromhout – a rock star Cloud Foundry Engineer at Pivotal (@bridgetkromhout) – kicked off the day by discussing strategies for building globally distributed teams and embracing collaboration across time zones. Bridget is a great speaker, and the session was packed full of compelling anecdotes, but there were two specific takeaways that resonated with me, as they align closely to how I think about APM.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Automating AWS environments is important for all businesses as it simplifies creation and setup of cloud resources, facilitates otherwise complex processes, and streamlines management. The benefits of automation are clear: accelerate execution, reduce human error and unwanted consequences, and increase the enterprise’s ability to rapidly adapt, all while reducing the overall cost of IT operations. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Patrick McClory, Director of Automation and DevOps at Datapipe, delved deep into the technical specifics of automation for AWS including a discussion of best practices and real world use cases for PCI compliance, application management, continuous integration, CloudFormation and auto-scaling.
Manufacturing connected IoT versions of traditional products requires more than multiple deep technology skills. It also requires a shift in mindset, to realize that connected, sensor-enabled “things” act more like services than what we usually think of as products. In his session at @ThingsExpo, David Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Ayla Networks, discussed how when sensors start generating detailed real-world data about products and how they’re being used, smart manufacturers can use the data to create additional revenue streams, such as improved warranties or premium features. Or slash maintenance costs by replacing parts before they fail. Or learn from the data to iterate better products that give customers what they really want.
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.
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.
With the exponential growth of network traffic slowing down data transmission, companies are looking for solutions. Recently, a solution has emerged that can help improve your data speed with data centers on the edge. These micro data center solutions can simplify the lives of many data center owners and operators because they are self-contained, secure computing environments, assembled in a factory and shipped in one enclosure which includes all the necessary power, cooling, security, and management tools. Their flexibility opens up a wave of new applications, made possible through reduced latency, increased security and cost efficiency.
Over the course of 2015 I was exposed to many companies going through Lean software delivery transformations – some very successful, but many less so. Having this visibility into the software lifecycle architecture of such a broad range of the world’s leading organizations was eye opening. Here’s what I found: most leading IT organizations are going through some kind of Lean transformation. The ones that succeed in accelerating software delivery will thrive. Those that fail will fall behind. And those that take no action, but continue down the complacent road of delivering software in the slow ways of yesteryear, will be displaced by their nimbler enterprise counterparts, or by startups. This will happen much more quickly than they realize. One of the most interesting things I learned was just how fast the return on investment from a successful transformation is, which spells market-changing dynamics for the Have and Have Nots of software delivery transformations in 2016 and 2017.
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.