A somewhat controversial title because of course DevOps promises a lot of value. But now I have your attention, what I really want to outline is the importance of value stream mapping in regards to DevOps adoption. I think that the famous “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” should be updated for modern IT as DevOps would make a great new Wonderland. This is because one of the most popular questions that I have been asked and heard being asked, over the last couple of years is – “Where do you start with DevOps?”
There once was a time when testers operated on their own, in isolation. They’d huddle as a group around the harsh glow of dozens of CRT monitors, clicking through GUIs and recording results. Anxiously, they’d wait for the developers in the other room to fix the bugs they found, yet they’d frequently leave the office disappointed as issues were filed away as non-critical. These teams would rarely interact, save for those scarce moments when a coder would wander in needing to reproduce a particularly finicky error.
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, Bryan Forrester, Senior Vice President of Sales at eFolder, will present how organizations can use eFolder Cloudfinder to automate backups of cloud application data. He will also demonstrate how easy it is to search and restore cloud application data using Cloudfinder.
Organizations already struggle with the simple collection of data resulting from the proliferation of IoT, lacking the right infrastructure to manage it. They can't only rely on the cloud to collect and utilize this data because many applications still require dedicated infrastructure for security, redundancy, performance, etc. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Emil Sayegh, CEO of Codero Hosting, will discuss how in order to resolve the inherent issues, companies need to combine dedicated and cloud solutions through hybrid hosting – a sustainable solution for the data required to manage IoT devices/technology. There is no one-size-fits-all to the question of data collection and security, but hybrid is the only solution that seamlessly adapts to fit any and all.
Mobile messaging has been a popular communication channel for more than 20 years. Finnish engineer Matti Makkonen invented the idea for SMS (Short Message Service) in 1984, making his vision a reality on December 3, 1992 by sending the first message ("Happy Christmas") from a PC to a cell phone. Since then, the technology has evolved immensely, from both a technology standpoint, and in our everyday uses for it. Originally used for person-to-person (P2P) communication, i.e., Sally sends a text message to Betty – mobile messaging now offers tremendous value to businesses for customer and employee-facing communication. This is most notably done through application-to-person (A2P) messaging platforms that send things like appointment reminders, shipping alerts, IT status updates, to name a few.
For almost two decades, businesses have discovered great opportunities to engage with customers and even expand revenue through digital systems, including web and mobile applications. Yet, even now, the conversation between the business and the technologists that deliver these systems is strained, in large part due to misaligned objectives. In his session at DevOps Summit, James Urquhart, Senior Vice President of Performance Analytics at SOASTA, Inc., will discuss how measuring user outcomes – including how the performance, flow and content of your digital systems affects those outcomes – can bridge that “conversation gap,” and enable DevOps to seamlessly align work priorities with business objectives.
Somebody call the buzzword police: we have a serious case of microservices-washing in progress. The term “microservices-washing” is derived from “whitewashing,” meaning to hide some inconvenient truth with bluster and nonsense. We saw plenty of cloudwashing a few years ago, as vendors and enterprises alike pretended what they were doing was cloud, even though it wasn’t. Today, the hype around microservices has led to the same kind of obfuscation, as vendors and enterprise technologists alike are saying they’re building microservices—even though a cursory look at what they’re really up to wouldn’t uncover a single one.
“All our customers are looking at the cloud ecosystem as an important part of their overall product strategy. Some see it evolve as a multi-cloud / hybrid cloud strategy, while others are embracing all forms of cloud offerings like PaaS, IaaS and SaaS in their solutions,” noted Suhas Joshi, Vice President – Technology, at Harbinger Group, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff.
Interested in leveraging automation technologies and a cloud architecture to make developers more productive? Learn how PaaS can benefit your organization to help you streamline your application development, allow you to use existing infrastructure and improve operational efficiencies. Begin charting your path to PaaS with OpenShift Enterprise.
“The Internet of Things transforms the way organizations leverage machine data and gain insights from it,” noted Splunk’s CTO Snehal Antani, as Splunk announced accelerated momentum in Industrial Data and the IoT. The trend is driven by Splunk’s continued investment in its products and partner ecosystem as well as the creativity of customers and the flexibility to deploy Splunk IoT solutions as software, cloud services or in a hybrid environment. Customers are using Splunk® solutions to collect and correlate data from control systems, sensors, mobile devices and IT systems for a variety of Industrial Data and IoT use cases. These use cases include operational efficiency, predictive maintenance, industrial cybersecurity and asset analytics.
For VMware customers shops under pressure from users to improve their app and desktop experience, gain greater infrastructure flexibility and simplify end user computing management, Citrix has announced a free service to migrate VMware Horizon View virtual app and desktop deployments to XenApp and XenDesktop. Powered by the new Citrix Lifecycle Management Service - now available from Citrix Workspace Cloud - the new service enables administrators to do an in-place migration in less than 15 minutes by easily exporting application and desktop settings from Horizon View into the Citrix app and desktop delivery solution. The creation of the migration service addresses numerous requests Citrix has received to salvage failed, stalled and small VMware VDI deployments.
Here are seven completely real, jaw-dropping applications of cloud computing that can transform humanity. Made possible with cloud technology, don't be surprised if you have never heard about such applications. 1. Shoes Sold by the Step Imagine buying the world's best shoes or for that matter any pair of shoes and paying zero dollars for them upfront. That would be crazy right? Well the Internet of Things can make this possible. With new technologies that can power everything we do and create new ways of doing them, vendors of consumable items can sell items based on a unique measurement rather than on a flat fee. Shoes may be sold for the number of steps you are expected to take in them or car tire manufacturers may charge you based on the number of kilometers you drive. No matter what, the fundamental aspect of charging a customer will change with the Internet of Things and cloud computing. This idea is based on consumption cloud computing that measures the usage of a specific service or product and charges the end user in real time. The possibilities are endless.
This complete kit provides a proven process and customizable documents that will help you evaluate rapid application delivery platforms and select the ideal partner for building mobile and web apps for your organization.
SYS-CON Events announced today that ProfitBricks, the provider of painless cloud infrastructure, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. ProfitBricks is the IaaS provider that offers a painless cloud experience for all IT users, with no learning curve. ProfitBricks boasts flexible cloud servers and networking, an integrated Data Center Designer tool for visual control over the cloud and the best price/performance value available. ProfitBricks was named one of the coolest Cloud Providers of 2015 by CRN and was also the recipient of two CODiE awards and a Frost & Sullivan Cloud innovation award for 2014.
We talk about optimization a whole lot. There’s cloud workload optimization, there’s mobile optimization for website presentation and there’s every other type of optimization as we move through the ‘full stack’ of information technology from the base logic layer all the way up to the Graphical User Interface (GUI). You get the picture, there’s a lot of optimization going on – but this is a natural thing, i.e., we spent the end part of the last century trying to get more processing speed, better form factors for devices and cheaper memory and storage.
According to Forrester, public cloud platforms are evolving, blurring the lines between Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) in order to satisfy the needs of enterprises and widen their appeal to developers. In The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2014, Forrester evaluates the 16 most significant Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms and details how each vendor fulfills the 19 evaluation criteria points.
The cloud has reached mainstream IT. Those 18.7 million data centers out there (server closets to corporate data centers to colocation deployments) are moving to the cloud. In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Achim Weiss, CEO & co-founder of ProfitBricks, will share how two companies – one in the U.S. and one in Germany – are achieving their goals with cloud infrastructure. More than a case study, he will share the details of how they prioritized their cloud computing infrastructure deployments and the details they’ve learned. From performance to network configurations, they've got interesting architectures running in the cloud now. ProfitBricks learned from these two customers and he will give you some tips on how to make your move to the cloud painless.
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, will discuss and demonstrate 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.
Our guest on the podcast this week is Jason Bloomberg, President at Intellyx. When we build services we want them to be lightweight, stateless and scalable while doing one thing really well. In today's cloud world, we're revisiting what to takes to make a good service in the first place. Listen in to learn why following "the book" doesn't necessarily mean that you're solving key business problems.
Big Data is the revolution the business world has been waiting for. The transformation that has taken place among many companies due to the adoption of Big Data analytics simply can’t be understated. Organizations of all types have looked into the many ways in which big data can help them change how they do things for the better, cultivating more success as businesses look to the future. For all the benefits that big data provides companies, the main goal is, of course, to make money. In fact, with all the capabilities that come from using big data, if a business isn’t utilizing it to make money, it’s almost a waste of time. But there’s no single way to turn a bigger profit from Big Data. The following examples show the various strategies specific businesses are using to get the most out of all the data they collect and analyze.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Raxak has been named “Media & Session Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 17th Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Raxak Protect automates security compliance across private and public clouds. Using the SaaS tool or managed service, developers can deploy cloud apps quickly, cost-effectively, and without error.
Docker is hot. However, as Docker container use spreads into more mature production pipelines, there can be issues about control of Docker images to ensure they are production-ready. Is a promotion-based model appropriate to control and track the flow of Docker images from development to production? In his session at DevOps Summit, Fred Simon, Co-founder and Chief Architect of JFrog, will demonstrate how to implement a promotion model for Docker images using a binary repository, and then show how to distribute them to any kind of consumer, being it a customer or a data center.
DevOps is speeding towards the IT world like a freight train and the hype around it is deafening. There is no reason to be afraid of this change as it is the natural reaction to the agile movement that revolutionized development just a few years ago. By definition, DevOps is the natural alignment of IT performance to business profitability. The relevance of this has yet to be quantified but it has been suggested that the route to the CEO’s chair will come from the IT leaders that successfully make the transition to a DevOps model. If this still seems foreign to you, I recommend reading up on DevOps Blog from IT Revolution, the OpsCode Blog, and check out The Phoenix Project. Despite all the talk around simple monitoring tools, breaking through the walls between Dev and Ops still poses a real challenge. This is because of a misunderstanding around Operations real purpose – extracting real value from its resources. According to Kevin Behr the definition of Operations is the act of harvesting value from IT resources. Anything that prevents this from happening is a detriment to the business. This means that firefighting and war room sessions are a hindrance to the DevOps model. The following screenshots are good examples of a war room scenario.
Have we come to the point of guaranteed successful cloud migrations from/to almost anything for less than $1,000? That’s the promise of migration services specialists, WSM, which has successfully completed 250,000 migrations and based on that experience will start offering $849 fixed price server migrations.
The iPad sales are down, but it is now possible to run most business apps on the iPad with the Citrix X1 Mouse. Can this make the iPad more relevant for business? Despite the mostly positive financial news from Apple, the one weakness that gets a lot of press is the decrease in iPad sales. For the second quarter of 2015, sales were down 18 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.