Log data provides the most granular view into what is happening across your systems, applications, and end users. Logs can show you where the issues are in real-time, and provide a historical trending view over time. Logs give you the whole picture. Separating the signal from the noise is one of the biggest challenges when dealing with machine-generated log data today and has generally required deep technical expertise. However once you find that signal it can be massively useful and can help you make business decisions with a big impact. Today Logentries is announcing log level usage reports, which is one more way we are striving to do the hard work so you don't have to!
During my first trip out to the Blue Box office in Seattle this week, I thought about the coast-to-coast flight while relaxing at 40,000 feet. A journey of thousands of miles made completely routinely in about five hours. I remembered one of my favorite computer games as a kid—The Oregon Trail. It tried to capture the experience of leading a wagon train of settlers to the West Coast in 1848. The trip took almost six months and death along the way wasn’t uncommon, as the game frequently reminded you.
It’s amazing how that trip has transformed from perilous to commonplace.The need for safe travel drove massive technology advancements. We’ve seen a similar transformative push in cloud computing. Cloud computing is already having a major impact on IT services. The need for on-demand, self-service offerings from the developers and lines of business has made this a critical area for CIOs to...
Imagine building your software like it was ordering furniture from Ikea. You pick out a desk, add a corner piece, raise it up to be a standing desk with some props for the legs, and add small things like organizers to better fit how your work. Things are modular, you can add and remove bits and pieces to build the projects that fits the customer's needs. In software projects, this is usually done with a configuration flag that lives in either a system configuration file on the server, or in the database. This flag controls the visibility of all the things in a feature and can be turned on and off as needed. At worst, you might have to restart apache in between. Another way to build components is through a set of APIs. Programmers create the front-end, then mix and match APIs that already exist to create the back-end.
Digital Transformation is the ultimate goal of cloud computing and related initiatives. The phrase is certainly not a precise one, and as subject to hand-waving and distortion as any high-falutin' terminology in the world of information technology. Yet it is an excellent choice of words to describe what enterprise IT—and by extension, organizations in general—should be working to achieve. Digital Transformation means: handling all the data types being found and created in the organization understanding that through mobility, data is being generated and analyzed on the edges of the enterprise more than at the center mixing and matching that data in an ecosystem of specific, loosely connected applications and services automating processes; analyzing and acting upon data in short timeframes to develop, improve, and enhance products and services directly through IT having enough well-trained people at all levels of the organization to address the inevitable technology glitches while also maintaining a high-level strategic view of what's going on. I recently attended the Cloud Foundry Summit 2015 in Santa Clara, CA, and listened to many stories of Digital Transformation. The catalyst in these cases was, naturally, Cloud Foundry, an open-source PaaS that is used to handle the complex infrastructure that underlies cloud-computing development, provisioning, and operations. I was struck by the impatience of much of this discussion; many presenters spoke of the old ways of doing things versus the new, slick, automated, loosely coupled, transformative way and how great progress was being made and would continue to be made this year. One could get the idea that Digital Transformation is a product or service itself, and one that needs to be installed right now. This type of thinking is only natural in a modern business environment that does not reward patience. Things must be accomplished in a few months, rather than years. In an era where servers can be ordered up and deployed “within seconds,” according to many glowing reports, the idea of a true long-term strategy gets lost in the excitement. But Digital Transformation is something that should be thought of in terms of years, and decades. We must retain the ability to look back over a period of 20 years and longer, to see what's truly been fundamentally accomplished. My twitter handle of “IoT2040” reflects my viewpoint, as I'm researching, covering, and instigating progress over the next 25 years, whether I'm around to see the end-state of this progress or not. Taking the long view does not mean throwing a bunch of exotic visions and soothing words in the air. It means setting measurable goals and focusing day-to-day efforts to turn those goals into self-fulfilling prophesies. I'm inspired by Moore's Law, which is not an absolute, but rather something that people have assumed is an absolute and therefore worked their tails off for decades to adhere to it. A similar commitment to measurable Digital Transformation would seem to be in order. I can dovetail this thought into our ongoing research at the Tau Institute, which measures dynamics of IT environments in the nations of the world; and in my role as Conference Chair of Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo, which continues to offer a mix of proven use cases and envelope-pushing vision. In the first role, we can argue that a lack of commitment to IT in Greece is a reflection (or perhaps precipitator) of the country's perilous economic state, whereas an overheated technology environment has caused (and is causing) societal disruption in several countries throughout the world. In the second role, I'm pleased to point to some slight yet significant tweaks to the eight core tracks being offered at the next Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo, to be held November 3-5 in Santa Clara. Cloud APIs have their own unique track this time, Containers and Microservices have their own track, and our three IoT-focused tracks have been focused more tightly on the latest developments. Here's a list of the specific tracks: Track 1 – Enterprise Cloud Adoption Track 2 – Mobility | Enterprise Security Track 3 – Containers & Microservices | PaaS Track 4 – Cloud APIs Track 5 – IoT | Big Data & Analytics Track 6 - IoT | Consumer/Wearables Track 7 - IoT | Enterprise/Industrial Internet Track 8 – WebRTC Summit | Hot Topics We'll also be holding another DevOps Summit at the same time, with tracks devoted respectively to Development and Operations.
Auto-scaling environments, micro-service architectures and globally-distributed teams are just three common examples of why organizations today need automation and interoperability more than ever. But is interoperability something we simply start doing, or does it require a reexamination of our processes? And can we really improve our processes without first making interoperability a requirement for how we choose our tools?
If you are the VP of Sales, it is quite likely you want and need to know up to date sales numbers, pipeline status and forecasts. If you are meeting with a prospect to close a deal, it is quite likely that having up to date business intelligence and CRM information would be useful. Likewise traveling to a remote job site to check on the progress of an engineering project is also an obvious trigger that you will need the latest project information. Developing solutions integrated with mobile applications that can anticipate your needs based upon your Code Halo data, the information that surrounds people, organizations, projects, activities and devices, and acting upon it automatically is where a large amount of productivity gains will be found in the future.
Security can create serious friction for DevOps processes. We've come up with an approach to alleviate the friction and provide security value to DevOps teams. In her session at DevOps Summit, Shannon Lietz, Senior Manager of DevSecOps at Intuit, discussed how DevSecOps got started and how it has evolved. Shannon Lietz has over two decades of experience pursuing next generation security solutions. She is currently the DevSecOps Leader for Intuit where she is responsible for setting and driving the company’s cloud security strategy, roadmap and implementation in support of corporate innovation with a DevSecOps mindset.
Imagine building your software like it was ordering furniture from Ikea. You pick out a desk, add a corner piece, raise it up to be a standing desk with some props for the legs, and add small things like organizers to better fit how your work. Things are modular, you can add and remove bits and pieces to build the projects that fits the customer's needs. In software projects, this is usually done with a configuration flag that lives in either a system configuration file on the server, or in the database. This flag controls the visibility of all the things in a feature and can be turned on and off as needed. At worst, you might have to restart apache in between. Another way to build components is through a set of APIs. Programmers create the front-end, then mix and match APIs that already exist to create the back-end.
It’s easy to invent additional C-suite job title designations. We might conjure up Chief Data Analytics-Insight Officer (CDAIO - pronounced “see-day-oh”) for example. Equally, we can see that the role of the CIO quickly gained additional layers some time ago – and we now see the CSO (Chief Security Officer) quite commonly being ranked as the CIO’s right hand man or woman.
Forbes called 2015, the Year of the Mobile Beacon. AdWeek talks about how beacons are already influencing the way we network, get drunk, vacation, shop, and even how we buy sausage. Ten experts at Marketing Land predicted that this year the whole world of mobile marketing will become acutely location-aware. Plus, if Google, Apple, and Facebook are betting on it, shouldn't you? We'll dive in and learn how beacons interact with APIs, how the different beacon protocols work, and what makes for a quality beacon experience.
How do you securely enable access to your applications in AWS without exposing any attack surfaces? The answer is usually very complicated because application environments morph over time in response to growing requirements from your employee base, your partners and your customers. In his session at DevOps Summit, Haseeb Budhani, co-founder and CEO of Soha, will share five common approaches that DevOps teams follow to secure access to applications deployed in AWS, Azure, etc., and the friction and risks they impose on the business.
Nobody wants to be in the news with headlines like this, but it happens. I’d like to share an interesting experience I had when meeting on site with an anonymous customer. I’ve since noticed this same problem a few times, concerning email marketing, conversion impact, nervous operators, CDNs and what happens if there is no communication between the marketing teams and IT operations.
"robomq.io connects any device, system, application or cloud together. We have built connectors and support for all the protocol," explained Bramh Gupta, founder and CEO of robomq.io, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.
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, will provide a deep dive overview of OpenShift v3 and demonstrate how it helps with DevOps.
This week, I joined SOASTA as Senior Vice President of Performance Analytics. Given my background in cloud computing and distributed systems operations — you may have read my blogs on CNET or GigaOm — this may surprise you, but I want to explain why this is the perfect time to take on this opportunity with this team. In fact, that’s probably the best way to break this down. To explain why I’d leave the world of infrastructure and code for the world of data and analytics, let’s explore the timing, the opportunity, and the team that brought me to SOASTA.
"We're an IT services company and we do a lot of managed services around disaster recovery and data protection," explained David Cintron, Vice President of Managed Services at dcVAST, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 16th Cloud Expo, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Nobody wants to be in the news with headlines like this, but it happens. I’d like to share an interesting experience I had when meeting on site with an anonymous customer. I’ve since noticed this same problem a few times, concerning email marketing, conversion impact, nervous operators, CDNs and what happens if there is no communication between the marketing teams and IT operations.
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, will provide a deep dive overview of OpenShift v3 and demonstrate how it helps with DevOps.
"Actifio is essentially a software platform that can capture pretty much any data other than mainframe data and then allow customers to manage that data in its native form," explained Brian Reagan, Managing Director of Blackthorne Consulting Group, an Actifio company, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at DevOps Summit, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.
United Airlines flights nationwide were grounded early Wednesday morning, creating delays and long lines at airport terminals. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) also suspended trading on Wednesday and stayed down for nearly four hours. Minutes later, The Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) homepage experienced an outage, possibly under intense traffic as a result of the NYSE news. Root causes were quickly identified and published - "a router degraded network connectivity for various applications" and "the root cause was determined to be a configuration issue."
I’ve always had a fascination with the way information is acquired and process. Reading back through the history of this site, you can see this tendency towards more fanciful thinking, e.g. GPGPU assisted network analytics, future storage systems using Torrenza-style processing. What has once been theory has made its way into the realm of praxis; looking no further than ICML 2015, for example, to see the forays into DML that nVidia is making with their GPUs. And on the story goes. Having said all this, there are elements of data, of data networking, of data processing, which, to date, have NOT gleaned all the benefits of this type of acceleration. To that end, what I am going to attempt to posit today is an area where Neural Networking (or at least the benefits therein) can be usefully applied to an area interacted with every single nanosecond of every day: the network.
Yes, you read that right. The price/performance of your cloud computing infrastructure could vary as much as 1000 percent depending on time and location. High levels of variability have actually been seen within the same cloud service provider (CSP) processing the exact same job. This also means that the cost to you of processing the exact same job in the cloud could vary by this much as well. This surprising result was discovered by a Rice University group, headed by Dr. T. S. Eugene Ng, that has been focusing on cloud computing. Recently they published their joint work with Purdue University: Application-Specific Configuration Selection in the Cloud: Impact of Provider Policy and Potential of Systematic Testing, in the IEEE INFOCOM 2015 Conference Proceedings. That paper took a first step towards understanding the impact of cloud service provider policy and tackling the complexity of selecting configurations that can best meet the price and performance requirements of applications. That work resulted in a collaboration between Rice University and Burstorm, a developer of computer aided design (CAD) software specifically built to support cloud computing architects.
If you are the VP of Sales, it is quite likely you want and need to know up to date sales numbers, pipeline status and forecasts. If you are meeting with a prospect to close a deal, it is quite likely that having up to date business intelligence and CRM information would be useful. Likewise traveling to a remote job site to check on the progress of an engineering project is also an obvious trigger that you will need the latest project information. Developing solutions integrated with mobile applications that can anticipate your needs based upon your Code Halo data, the information that surrounds people, organizations, projects, activities and devices, and acting upon it automatically is where a large amount of productivity gains will be found in the future.
Cyber warfare is not a futuristic theory being discussed on one of the military channels by some obscure software architect anymore. It is a common occurrence in today’s global economy and it appears some are trying to test the electronic defenses we have set up on the Internet. The question becomes, are we susceptible to a cyberattack? How much would we lose in a cyberattack? Would the damages be even greater than in a war waged with conventional weapons and/ or atomic weapons? That would be a great discussion. We continue to spend billions of dollars on physical weapon systems for traditional land, air and sea battles, but how much are we spending on electronic cyber defenses? Should we be spending our money in a different direction? Are we going to fight the next war on land and in the air, or on the Sea? Or, it is going to be electronically?
"robomq.io connects any device, system, application or cloud together. We have built connectors and support for all the protocol," explained Bramh Gupta, founder and CEO of robomq.io, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.