As part of my Share Your PurePath and Performance Clinic initiatives I get to see lots of interesting problems out there. This time I picked two examples that just came in this week from Balasz and Daniel. Both wanted my opinion on why their apps show high response time contribution to their web requests coming from worker threads that seem to be either in I/O or in a Wait state. The question was what are these threads waiting for and whether this is something that could be optimized to speed up these slow response times they see on some of their critical web requests.
SYS-CON Events announced today Arista Networks will exhibit at SYS-CON's DevOps Summit 2015 New York, which will take place June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Arista Networks was founded to deliver software-driven cloud networking solutions for large data center and computing environments. Arista’s award-winning 10/40/100GbE switches redefine scalability, robustness, and price-performance, with over 3,000 customers and more than three million cloud networking ports deployed worldwide.
Recurring revenue business models provide a compelling business proposition: predictable revenue streams, deeper customer engagements, higher customer lifetime value (CLV). What’s not to like? And when you bring the Internet of Things into the mix, there’s even more to like – if you go about it wisely, that is. In this post, we take a look at what works and what doesn’t when it comes to generating incremental revenues from IoT. First, a caveat. A recurring billing model is not suitable for every IoT product. There are hundreds of great IoT offerings like Sonos speakers and Bluesmart carry-on luggage that do perfectly well as one-time purchases. But if you want to create incremental revenues, IoT-related offers are worth serious consideration.
The GoDaddy customer breaches didn’t have to happen and don’t have to happen to you. Cisco threat researchers recently reported a dramatic uptick in Angler Exploit Kit-based attacks connected to compromised GoDaddy domain registry accounts. GoDaddy, which manages nearly a third of all global domain names used on the Internet, has issued media statements clarifying that it was not breached. It was its customers who allowed their login credentials to be stolen and used to create malicious subdomains, the company explained, accurately stating this is an industry problem for cloud-based service providers.
A well-oiled APM solution comes from correlating bottom-up monitoring (infrastructure monitoring) with insights from top-down monitoring (real-time application monitoring) all within the context of the end-user-experience (EUE). But from what angle should we be looking at APM as it relates to IT strategy? Consider Australia for a moment. Is it a country, a continent, or an island? The answer depends upon your perspective, and, in much the same way, the unique spectrum of APM can be viewed as a framework, methodology, or platform. Understanding these attributes will help raise APM up the stack into the wheelhouse of IT Leadership for greater visibility.
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. Just the other day I was hanging out with my developer buddy. We entered what we thought would be an interesting topic on how you cannot call an environment "DevOps" without analytics.
As enterprises look to take advantage of the cloud, they need to understand the importance of safeguarding their confidential and sensitive data in cloud environments. Enterprises must protect their data from (i) system administrators who don't need to see the data in the clear and (ii) adversaries who become system administrators from stolen credentials. In short, enterprises must take control of their data: The best way to do this is by using advanced encryption, centralized key management and cutting edge access controls and policies. When an outside party owns, controls, and manages infrastructure and computational resources, how can you be assured that sensitive data remains private and secure, that your organization is protected from damaging data breaches, and that you can still satisfy the full range of reporting, compliance and regulatory requirements?
Forget the funnel. Your customers no longer adhere to that nice, neat linear purchase model. But don't worry, Communications Service Providers have the most important tool necessary to communicate effectively with customers: Big Data. Don't plan on following them around like a heartbroken teenage sweetheart either. Many of your customers (current and potential) will send your emails straight to spam, unsubscribe from newsletters, block ads and refuse to share their locations with you. (Well, they might share some data, but only if you promise a big discount in return.)
SYS-CON Media announced today that 9 out of 10 " most read" DevOps articles are published by @DevOpsSummit Blog. Launched in October 2014, @DevOpsSummit Blog offers top articles, news stories, and blog posts from the world's well-known experts and guarantees better exposure for its authors than any other publication. The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.
Recent events have taught us that everyone is vulnerable to data breaches. Now that the majority of businesses are running services in the cloud, whether sanctioned, rogue or Shadow IT, there is much work to be done in beefing up cloud security. And, with each major data breach that takes place in the cloud, trust in the cloud is further eroded. Cloud Is an Attractive Target for Data Breaches The increasing pervasiveness of the cloud makes it an attractive target for hackers and cybercriminals. Cloud is not only for business and leisure applications; it’s also the back end for electricity grids, water treatment plants, healthcare applications, smart cars, smart refrigerators and so much more. With each device or source that connects to the cloud it creates additional pathways or access points for unauthorized users to infiltrate. The increasing volume of data that is either stored or transacted in the cloud is a strong lure for hacktivists and cybercriminals.
To some the above (read the full article here) may seem like common sense tips and things everybody should know otoh there are many people who are new to servers storage I/O networking hardware software cloud virtual along with various applications, not to mention different tools. Thus the above is a refresher for some (e.g. Dejavu) while for others it might be new and revolutionary or simply helpful. Interested in HDD's, SSD's as well as other server storage I/O performance along with benchmarking tools, techniques and trends check out the collection of links here (Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking and Performance Resources).
As the cloud becomes the primary model for both IT and line-of-business professionals around the world, a certain amount of refinement and fine-tuning is a healthy part of the process. In other words, now out of its infancy, the cloud is growing up. Highlighting this trend, SAP SE has announced the results of a global survey conducted with Oxford Economics that showcase the fact that the cloud business model has not only become mainstream - indeed, over two-thirds (69 percent) of businesses surveyed expect to make moderate-to-heavy cloud investments over the next three years - but that companies are increasingly shifting from using the cloud for productivity and efficiency to specific business benefits like innovation in supply chain, talent management, collaboration and analytics.
Thomson Reuters in London sought to foster innovation and derive more value from its vast trove of business and market information by means of a hackathon. To learn more about getting developers on board the big-data analysis train, BriefingsDirect sat down with Chris Blatchford, Director of Platform Technology in the IT organization at Thomson Reuters in London. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
The Android Wear app that Hyundai demonstrated at CES several weeks ago is now available on Google Play, letting owners of appropriately-equipped models control their cars from their wrists. The app is basically a scaled-down version of the Blue Link app already available for Android phones — you can start and stop the engine, lock and unlock the doors, find the car if you can't remember where you parked it, and flash the lights, among other things. The app also supports voice controls, so you can just say things like "find my car" instead of tapping through the UI.
Much of what is written about Continuous Delivery at present seems to revolve around technical challenges and technical choices: “Which is better: Puppet, Chef or Salt?”, “Should I use Jenkins, Go or XL Release?”, “How do I build a CD pipeline with containers?” etc. etc. If we’re looking at CD properly, though, this is the sideshow – an implementation detail at best. The real CD story is much bigger. Don’t get me wrong: as a technical kind of person, I can get very enthusiastic about the tech: there are a lot of cool tools and frameworks out there and the tooling landscape is expanding rapidly. Working with evolving technology is a lot of fun, and there are plenty of challenges to be solved around supporting Continuous Delivery at scale…which is why we develop XL Release, XL Deploy and XL Test.
I was talking to a friend the other day about Cloud Foundry and whether there was any buzz surrounding it. Cloud Foundry in particular and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in general have now been around for a few years, a considerable amount of time in the Web Era. Recent buzz was generated with the formal establishment of the Cloud Foundry Foundation last year. Collateral buzz was generated by CoreOS with its late-year Rocket container announcement, which took aim at CFF member Docker and its expanding containers strategy. That said, “buzz” may be too strong a word to associate with the unglamorous tasks of designing and deploying software applications and services into the cloud. Yet, companies who are integrating PaaS into the way they do things should not be afraid to commend themselves a little bit for being pioneers in what are still the early days of the PaaS phenomenon. PaaS generated less than $4 billion in global revenue in 2012, according to IDC. The research firm predicts annual growth rates on the order of 50%, with revenues reaching $14 billion by 2017. This number would still be less than 1% of the global total enterprise IT spend of more than $2 trillion. But it would be a very important 1%. PaaS provides that critical link between infrastructure (processing power, storage, and networking) and the software applications and services that run on it. Time's wastin' In a world in which flexible, fluid technology stacks are emerging, competing, and mixing with one another, there is a sense that there is no time to develop and deploy new software. Long development cycles are replaced by the perpetual beta, a DevOps culture is emerging (difficult as it may be), and a mobile-equipped populace not only needs its information right now, it needs the latest, coolest experience right now. So, we circle back to PaaS. Within a typical enterprise shop of a few dozen or few hundred developers, a PaaS such as Cloud Foundry will be of interest to about 70% of the staff, according to a conversation I had with an exec at a Cloud Foundry company. Not everyone will be using it directly, of course, but the majority of the team needs to know what is doing and why. In smaller shops, a PaaS will be of high interest to everyone. There may not be a big buzz per se for the PaaS itself, but there should be for the projects it enables. I've already seen notable stories concerning the use of Cloud Foundry to Cloud Foundry in these cases was used to improve products and services in major industries such as healthcare, agriculture, and entertainment. It also transformed the entire business and delivery model for a major publishing company. Companies buzzing with success include AT&T, Monsanto, the LDS Church, Philips, Axel Springer, and Warner Music. Each of these projects had a measurable outcome and success criteria. So, I do believe there is some buzz about Cloud Foundry, or at least the projects it is help bringing to life.
Recently I listened to a discussion on Big Data Visualization hosted by Bill McKnight of the McKnight Consulting group. The panelists agreed that Big Data is shifting from the hype state to an “imperative” state. For start-up companies, there are more Big Data projects whereas true big data is still a small part of the enterprise practice. At many companies, Big Data is moving from POC (Proof of Concept) to production. Interest in visualization of data from different sources is certainly increasing. There is a growth in data-driven decision-making as evidenced by the increasing use of platforms like YARN, HIVE, and Spark. The traditional approach of RDBMS platform can not scale to meet the needs of rapidly growing volume and varieties of Big Data.
Docker has acquired software-defined networking (SDN) startup SocketPlane. SocketPlane, which was founded in Q4, 2014, with a vision of delivering Docker-native networking, has been an active participant in shaping the initial efforts around Docker’s open API for networking. The explicit focus of the SocketPlane team within Docker will be on collaborating with the partner community to complete a rich set of networking APIs that addresses the needs of application developers and network and system administrators alike.
Michael Porter, author of the most highly regarded of all business strategy theories, Competitive Advantage, describes how there are now three distinct eras of how technology can be defined to impact upon the ability to achieve this advantage. Michael makes two very important points. The first point is that there has previously been two eras and now there is a third – the first being when corporations started to use IT for automation purposes, described in this 1985 article, followed then by when all of this IT became interconnected via the Internet, described in this 2001 article. Then in this 2014 article Smart Connected Products he describes a third era, the Internet of Things.
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Pomeroy, a Global IT managed services provider, improves quality for their applications testing, development and packaged applications customization by working with a partner, TurnKey Solutions, and HP. This next edition of the HP Discover Discussion Series highlights how Pomeroy, a Global IT managed services provider, improves quality for their applications testing, development and packaged applications customization. By working with a partner, TurnKey Solutions, and HP, Pomeroy improves their overall process for development and thereby achieves far better IT and business outcomes.
A discussion from The Open Group San Diego 2015 examining the both need and outlook for Cybersecurity standards among supply chains. The latest discussion, examining the both need and outlook for Cybersecurity standards among supply chains, is moderated by Dave Lounsbury, Chief Technology Officer, The Open Group; with guests Mary Ann Davidson, Chief Security Officer, Oracle; Dr. Ron Ross, Fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Jim Hietala, Vice President of Security for The Open Group. Download a copy of the transcript. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
The epic changes brought about by mobile and cloud computing over the past 5 years have completely transformed the way organizations do business today. We now live in an age where mobile devices are the PCs of choice and mobile apps are the ubiquitous software of choice in this digital era. IT is shifting completely to the cloud and this new paradigm is leading organizations to adopt quicker and more agile frameworks for managing that software.
Much of what is written about Continuous Delivery at present seems to revolve around technical challenges and technical choices: “Which is better: Puppet, Chef or Salt?”, “Should I use Jenkins, Go or XL Release?”, “How do I build a CD pipeline with containers?” etc. etc. If we’re looking at CD properly, though, this is the sideshow – an implementation detail at best. The real CD story is much bigger. Don’t get me wrong: as a technical kind of person, I can get very enthusiastic about the tech: there are a lot of cool tools and frameworks out there and the tooling landscape is expanding rapidly. Working with evolving technology is a lot of fun, and there are plenty of challenges to be solved around supporting Continuous Delivery at scale…which is why we develop XL Release, XL Deploy and XL Test.
While putting my test code up on GitHub and writing the readme.md, I ran my NetBeans test code on my 2011 early MacBook Pro. To my surprise the times for both embedded and remote testing were between 25 and 35 seconds. My original blog was based on working on a much much faster Windows 8.1 system that took 16 seconds for embedded but 100 seconds for remote. So I guess we blame. Some very bright people will be looking at the code and hopefully they will have an explanation for why remote server testing on Windows 8.1 performs so badly.
Right off the bat, Newman advises that we should "think of microservices as a specific approach for SOA in the same way that XP or Scrum are specific approaches for Agile Software development". These analogies are very interesting because my expectation was that microservices is a pattern. So I might infer that microservices is a set of process techniques as opposed to an architectural approach. Yet in the book, Newman clearly includes some elements of concept model and architecture as well as process and organization.