With containerization using Docker, the orchestration of containers using Kubernetes, the self-service model for provisioning your projects and applications and the workflows we built in OpenShift is the best in class Platform as a Service that enables introducing DevOps into your organization with ease. In his session at DevOps Summit, Veer Muchandi, PaaS evangelist with RedHat, provided a deep dive overview of OpenShift v3 and demonstrated how it helps with DevOps.
We all argue, especially if you’re passionate about something. Sometimes it’s with our spouse, sometimes with friends or co-workers and sometimes we scold objects that aren’t doing what we want them to do, ‘Ah, come on pen…don’t run out of ink now!!’ As more of these things get connected and are interacting with us, will you find yourself arguing with inanimate objects even more?
Automation is a big part of the DevOps approach, to the point where some people (incorrectly) define DevOps exclusively as automation. While many discuss automating the deployment pipeline process for build->test->deploy, few talk about utility automation for the intermediate steps of that process. There are different aspects of end-to-end processes that can help improve the adoption of DevOps principals by developers. There are on-call responsibilities, development-centric monitoring and process automation for developers. One of the great techniques for the latter is commit/push hooks that can be implemented as part of the version control system. Unfortunately, many people are either not familiar with pre/post commit hooks or not using them to their advantage. As a result, I thought it might be helpful to outline a few of the most common use cases for commit/push hooks that I’ve implemented on different projects that help to streamline the development process and reduce a number of points of failure along the way.
Electric power utilities face relentless pressure on their financial performance, and reducing distribution grid losses is one of the last untapped opportunities to meet their business goals. Combining IoT-enabled sensors and cloud-based data analytics, utilities now are able to find, quantify and reduce losses faster – and with a smaller IT footprint. Solutions exist using Internet-enabled sensors deployed temporarily at strategic locations within the distribution grid to measure actual line loads.
Naturally, new and exciting technologies and trends like software defined networking, the Internet of Things and the cloud tend to get the lion’s share of attention these days, including when it comes to security. However, it’s important to never forget that at the center of it all is still the enterprise network. And as evidenced by the ever-expanding landslide of data breaches that could have been prevented or at least their impact lessened by better practicing network security basics, it’s obvious there is a need to keep network security best practices front and center. Thus, what follows is a recap of the basic, but critically important do’s and don’ts of achieving a truly secure network.
Lately I have been reading the excellent book Digital Apollo. It explores the evolution of digital control systems and the man-machine interface that evolved during the development of space flight and ultimately the Apollo missions. It’s a fantastic book – more technical than most – but very approachable to those not familiar with flight control, embedded software, or the challenges of building such systems. As I read the book, I could not help but compare the way space missions were executed to that of the role of DevOps in modern SaaS businesses.
This morning on #c9d9 we spoke with two industry veterans and published authors - James DeLuccia and Jonathan McAllister - on how to bake-in security and compliance into your DevOps processes, and how DevOps and automation can essentially help you pass your next audit.
You may have heard about the pets vs. cattle discussion – a reference to the way application servers are deployed in the cloud native world. If an application server goes down it can simply be dropped from the mix and a new server added in its place. The practice so far has mostly been applied to application deployments. Management software on the other hand is treated in a very special manner. Dedicated resources are set aside to run the management software components and several alerting systems are deployed to watch the health of those components. Administrators spend hours each day managing the management infrastructure.
Countless business models have spawned from the IaaS industry – resell Web hosting, blogs, public cloud, and on and on. With the overwhelming amount of tools available to us, it's sometimes easy to overlook that many of them are just new skins of resources we've had for a long time. In his general session at 17th Cloud Expo, Harold Hannon, Sr. Software Architect at SoftLayer, an IBM Company, broke down what we have to work with, discussed the benefits and pitfalls and how we can best use them to design hosted applications.
Our resident Cognizant digital/mobile expert, Peter Rogers, asked me to recommend a digital strategies topic to share, and I suggested Beacons for this week. I confess to reading about them daily without knowing much about them, so I want to thank Peter for this article! Enjoy! Beacons do not push out notifications. They broadcast an advertisement of themselves (traditionally their UUID, major and minor values) and can be detected by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices.
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.
As the Internet of Things gains further ubiquity, data on consumer lifestyles and habits will take on increased value to IoT manufacturers and their ecosystem of partners. In today’s era of digital user empowerment ought not users have the ability to control how their data is shared, with which parties and to have a digital data trail over their data? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Evelyn de Souza, Data Privacy and Compliance Strategy Leader at Cisco Systems, will propose an ecosystem-industry-wide approach for enhanced end user data control and for providers a model for digital trust and safety.
OpsHub, Inc. has announced enhanced support for DevOps and Migration for both Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio On-line in a heterogeneous environment. With added support for build and release entities in OpsHub Integration Manager (OIM) Microsoft customers can now leverage Visual Studio build and release services to manage DevOps processes in a heterogeneous environment. With the enhanced support customers can manage the DevOps process in Team Foundation Server while undertaking activities in heterogeneous tools as a part of the automated process.
In recent years, at least 40% of companies using cloud applications have experienced data loss. One of the best prevention against cloud data loss is backing up your cloud data. In his General Session at 17th Cloud Expo, Sam McIntyre, Partner Enablement Specialist at eFolder, presented how organizations can use eFolder Cloudfinder to automate backups of cloud application data. He also demonstrated how easy it is to search and restore cloud application data using Cloudfinder.
The annual holiday shopping season, which started on Thanksgiving weekend and runs through the end of December, is undoubtedly the most crucial time of the year for many eCommerce websites, with sales from this period having a dramatic effect on the year-end bottom line. Web performance – or, the overall speed and availability of a website or mobile site – is an issue year-round, but it takes on increased importance during the holidays. Ironically, it is at this time of year that networks and infrastructure come under the most strain from traffic and are more vulnerable than ever to performance degradations. Yet busy, hurried holiday shoppers expect better performance than ever, and the stakes for lost conversions are frighteningly high. When customers encounter long load times, they’re likely to abandon their current shopping destination and move on to a competitor’s site that is performing better, sending potential revenue out the door. What’s worse, studies have shown that if a site freezes or crashes, is too slow, or involves an overly complicated checkout process, 75 percent of shoppers will no longer buy from that site.
17th International Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo | @DevOpsSummit held on November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, featured three content-packed days with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of cloud computing, Internet of Things, Big Data, and DevOps led by exceptional speakers from every sector of the IT ecosystem. The Cloud Expo series is the fastest-growing Enterprise IT event in the past 10 years, devoted to every aspect of delivering massively scalable enterprise IT as a service.
ThoughtWorks has issued the latest Technology Radar, an assessment of trends significantly impacting software development and business strategy. The Technology Radar sets out the current changes in software development - things in motion to pay attention to based upon ThoughtWorks' day-to-day work and experience solving their clients' toughest challenges. "With the threat landscape still evolving, our latest edition of Technology Radar continues to focus on security and innovative approaches," said Dr. Rebecca Parsons, CTO of ThoughtWorks. "In addition, we are seeing exciting growth and investment around microservices, opening up new opportunities for developers to create more maneuverable architectures. And the explosion in container ecosystems is helping reduce the friction of reliably building and deploying applications to the cloud."
So-called ‘paradigm shifts’ happen across the information technology landscape roughly every five years. We can make this statement with enough approximate ambiguity for it still to be of some value in terms of the way an average CIO might look to plan for major infrastructural changes. As we stand today, Big Data has been around for roughly five years. In the year 2000, famed economist Francis X. Diebold is said to have published the first version of a paper titled “Big Data Dynamic Factor Models for Macroeconomic Measurement and Forecasting” – and the rest we know is modern history.
OpsHub, Inc. has announced enhanced support for DevOps and Migration for both Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio On-line in a heterogeneous environment. With added support for build and release entities in OpsHub Integration Manager (OIM) Microsoft customers can now leverage Visual Studio build and release services to manage DevOps processes in a heterogeneous environment. With the enhanced support customers can manage the DevOps process in Team Foundation Server while undertaking activities in heterogeneous tools as a part of the automated process.
As the Internet of Things gains further ubiquity, data on consumer lifestyles and habits will take on increased value to IoT manufacturers and their ecosystem of partners. In today’s era of digital user empowerment ought not users have the ability to control how their data is shared, with which parties and to have a digital data trail over their data? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Evelyn de Souza, Data Privacy and Compliance Strategy Leader at Cisco Systems, will propose an ecosystem-industry-wide approach for enhanced end user data control and for providers a model for digital trust and safety.
When you look at the evolution of IT in the enterprise, innovation has really taken hold within the last few years. In the systems and infrastructure part of the stack, virtual machines and the public cloud have greatly reduced the need for server floorspace, cooling and other investments that are overhead-intensive. That’s very tangible evidence of innovation. On the application layer of the stack, developer teams have been boosted by DevOps tools and Agile methodologies. The evidence of that innovation manifests itself in dev teams’ ability to go faster than ever and constantly stage applications for release. But guess where the industry has forgotten to employ innovation? The database.
What is DevOps? It is one of the hottest buzzwords in IT, but many have difficulty finding a specific definition. The truth is that DevOps means different things to different people. DEVOPSdigest asked experts from across the industry to define what DevOps means to them. The purpose of this list is not to come up with a one-sentence definition of DevOps to appeal to all. The goal is to show just how many varied ideas are connected with the concept of DevOps, and in the process learn a little more what DevOps is all about.
"What is the next step in the evolution of IoT systems? The answer is data, information, which is a radical shift from assets, from things to input for decision making," stated Michael Minkevich, VP of Technology Services at Luxoft, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
In recent years, at least 40% of companies using cloud applications have experienced data loss. One of the best prevention against cloud data loss is backing up your cloud data. In his General Session at 17th Cloud Expo, Sam McIntyre, Partner Enablement Specialist at eFolder, presented how organizations can use eFolder Cloudfinder to automate backups of cloud application data. He also demonstrated how easy it is to search and restore cloud application data using Cloudfinder.
The best way to leverage your Cloud Expo presence as a sponsor and exhibitor is to plan your news announcements around our events. The press covering Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo will have access to these releases and will amplify your news announcements. More than two dozen Cloud companies either set deals at our shows or have announced their mergers and acquisitions at Cloud Expo. Product announcements during our show provide your company with the most reach through our targeted audiences.