SYS-CON Events announced today that CodeFutures, a leading supplier of database performance tools, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. CodeFutures Corporation is a leading supplier of Big Data technology designed to reduce the time and effort required to develop database applications and dramatically increase deployed database scalability, reliability for Big Data environments, enabling customers to obtain maximum value from their Big Data investment.
There are many potential applications for WebRTC and for many interoperability is not a requirement. However, this does not mean that there is not a need for interoperability, particularly at the signaling level, for other applications. Many people have dismissed interoperability as a consideration when using WebRTC - often due to the fact that their favoured use-cases do not require it (and in some cases are even hampered by it). In his session at 2nd WebRTC Summit, Peter Dunkley, Technical Director, at Crocodile RCS, will look at the other side and discuss the case for interoperability and explain how WebRTC can be used to enhance and extend existing services in a way provides benefits to service providers and their customers.
There have been a flurry of "green cloud" announcements recently, and that got us thinking about the relationship between green IT and saving money. Green is also the color of money, after all, and companies are discovering that reducing data center costs leads to substantial green benefits. The cloud takes cost reduction and green even further. In the first announcement, IBM continues to innovate in cloud and in green, and it has patented technology for distributing compute workloads for cloud computing in a way that reduces power consumption. I'd liken it to a load balancer, but instead of trying to reduce response times, they're trying to reduce power utilization overall. Now, it's really interesting because this is not just a green initiative but it is also a cost-savings opportunity for cloud service providers. Power consumption is a major cost driver for cloud service providers. Often, it's pay-as-you go for storage, for compute, even for bandwidth. But no cloud provider is really charging for power utilization. This is a way for cloud service providers to reduce their sunk cost and improve their margins without having to charge the customers more. It's green, but it's also green for your wallet.
The use of in-memory data grids (IMDGs) for scaling application performance has rapidly increased in recent years as firms have seen their application workloads explode. This trend runs across nearly every vertical market, touching online applications for financial services, ecommerce, travel, manufacturing, social media, mobile, and more. At the same time, many firms are also looking to leverage the use of cloud computing to meet the challenge of ever increasing workloads. One of the fundamental promises of the cloud is elastic, transparent, on-demand scalability -- a key capability that has become practical with the use of in-memory data grid technology. As such IMDGs are becoming a vital factor in the cloud, just as they have been for on-premise applications.
A tutorial about Memory Monitoring and Limiting with LXC (Linux Containers) and the importance of building a metrics infrastructure. For a long time we didn't limit the amount of memory that you can use during your build on Codeship. There was the possibility of a bad build eating up all of our memory. A few weeks ago that bad build happened, using up so much memory that it decreased performance and eventually killed the test server. Even though we measure the memory usage of the whole test server, we didn't have the data to figure out exactly which build caused the trouble.
I had the privilege of interviewing the CEO of Capriza, Yuval Scarlat, last week. We discussed a wide range of topics such as cloud mobility, MADPs, MBaaS, mobile strategies and why he thought the market needed another mobile solutions vendor. On a side note, I think Capriza's website design is very effective. Enjoy!
Recent reports of a massive data breach affecting popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo have many companies rethinking security practices and wondering how to protect vital data. If your company uses cloud services to conduct business and manage data or is contemplating a hosting partnership, it’s natural to wonder if your service provider is taking all the steps necessary to keep your confidential information secure. It’s an important issue: Cloud resources are becoming a must-have service for businesses since they offer scalability without requiring a massive investment in hardware. But before choosing a cloud service provider, it’s crucial to make sure the company can deliver the security your business needs. Here are some questions to keep in mind when making an evaluation.
Change in IT is the only constant that you find in IT. Even the methods for managing change, change. Resistance to change is an open invitation to the Grim Reaper of software development projects in decent size companies. I have mentioned this in other book reviews, and find that it applies here as well. I was sitting in a meeting some time ago with a company that was embracing Scrum like a ten year old being offered a warm plate of chocolate chip cookies. They were grabbing at it as fast as they're little hands could reach out and grab the goodies. Watching this made me wonder what is was about Scrum that made them embrace it so emphatically. They had claimed to be an Agile shop for years, but were still failing to deliver quality software on time within budget. In past years they refused every single proposed process improvement recommendation made by consultants.
As companies produce an ever-increasing amount of data that’s pushing network and bandwidth capacity to its extremes, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is becoming a popular solution to these concerns and as an effective platform for a BYOD policy. During the recent bout of intense winter weather throughout the Midwest, many folks were able to receive the news on office closings by receiving work email messages through their personal laptops and smartphones. Access available anywhere is becoming a given for many people who can receive updates on their personal devices no matter where they are. For the typical enterprise IT department, the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy has become a standard, and it’s not uncommon to see different brands and models of laptops throughout the office.
The era of Big Data is upon us. Data is growing in volume, variety and velocity. At the same time, cybercrimes, breaches and advanced persistent threats are increasing at an alarming rate. As a result, the pressure is on to protect critical data and demonstrate compliance to a growing body of regulation. Security Intelligence transforms the playing field and shifts the balance in favor of the good guys. In this webcast, learn how to blend Big Data technologies that address speed and flexibility and are ideal for ad-hoc data exploration, discovery analysis of unstructured data in motion with traditional structured data suitable for repeatable tasks, to build a security intelligence platform across your enterprise. Leveraging Big Data analytics to uncover hidden threats within massive amounts of data in motion provides actionable insights to detect unknown threats and prioritize actions.
When we made our 2013 predictions for the realm of APIs, our premise was that API adoption and use was still a relatively nascent area, but one about to explode once smart people figured out its potential. We were certainly spot-on in that regard, but few believed us when we suggested that the API Economy was about to get as vibrant as it did. It may be safe to say that 2013 was the year that APIs really caught the business world’s attention. In these past 12 months, we’ve seen major acquisitions of API enablement companies, new industry conferences dedicated to the business of APIs, and talk of API management is on the lips of leading business executives. Untold billions of dollars have been transacted, all enabled by APIs, and innovation is making the world an easier place to transact as a result of applications, mash-ups and APIs. As we predicted, the discussion and decision-making about how to use APIs to increase customer and user engagement through channels has moved to now include both the technical and business sides of an organization.
Database change management is a unique challenge when adopting an agile development practice or implementing DevOps patterns. It really straddles two groups: the developers and the DBAs. Developers design and author the application schema changes based on the needs of the business. DBAs are on the hook for providing a secure and high performing data platform and protecting the integrity of the organization’s priceless data. In companies where these two groups are isolated, the goals of each can soon become opposed and forward progress can grind to a halt. Because of this unique division and its impact on the application lifecycle, implementing DevOps patterns to nurture understanding and collaboration between these two groups is crucial to the success of companies that are trying to adapt to a market that expects better value of services provided, through more frequent releases at a high level of quality. In framing the discussion, I relied heavily on “The Three Ways” of DevOps. The Three Ways are the principles that underpin the DevOps patterns that Gene Kim discusses in detail in his novel “The Phoenix Project” and in the“The DevOps Cookbook”, written by John Allspaw, Patrick Debois, Damon Ewards, Jez Humble, Kim, Mike Orzen, & John Willis. Here’s a quick summary of The Three Ways: • The First Way: Systems Thinking – This Way stresses the performance of the entire system of value delivery. Instead of becoming laser focused on the part of the process for which an individual or team is responsible, the individual or team works to understand the entire process from requirements generation to customer delivery. The goal is to eliminate the delivery impediments that arise when a project transitions from one isolated silo to another. Understanding the entire system allows business, development, and operations to work towards a common goal in a consistent manner. • The Second Way: Amplify Feedback Loops – This Way deals primarily with facilitating easier and faster communication between all individuals in a DevOps organization. The goals of this step are to foster better understanding of all internal and external customers in the process and to develop an accessible body of knowledge to replace the dependence on “tribal knowledge.” • The Third Way: Culture of Continual Experimentation & Learning – This way emphasizes the benefits that can be realized through embracing experimentation, risk taking, and learning from failure. By adopting this kind of attitude, experimentation and risk taking lead to innovation and improvement while embracing failure allows the organization to produce more resilient products and sharpen skills that allow teams to recover more quickly from unexpected failure when it does occur. Database change management is a unique challenge when adopting an agile development practice or implementing DevOps patterns. It really straddles two groups: the developers and the DBAs. Developers design and author the application schema changes based on the needs of the business. DBAs are on the hook for providing a secure and high performing data platform and protecting the integrity of the organization’s priceless data. In companies where these two groups are isolated, the goals of each can soon become opposed and forward progress can grind to a halt. Because of this unique division and its impact on the application lifecycle, implementing DevOps patterns to nurture understanding and collaboration between these two groups is crucial to the success of companies that are trying to adapt to a market that expects better value of services provided, through more frequent releases at a high level of quality. I will dive more deeply into each of the Ways as they pertain to the database change management in subsequent blog posts. Until then, checkout Gene Kim’s blog post on “The Three Ways.”
With the technology advancements of phones, tablets, glasses, clothing and machines over the last year, there are volumes of unstructured and multi-structured data collected from machines and connected devices, and it’s growing at a dizzying pace. The Internet of Things is quickly turning into the Internet of Everything – in today’s always-on, always-connected world, and machine data is everywhere. If 2013 could be classified as the year of the Internet of Things, what will 2014 bring? Looking ahead even further, IDC has estimated that in 2020 there will be 26 times more connected things than people. Wikibon issued a forecast of $514 billion to be spent on the “Industrial Internet” in 2020, and Gartner estimates 20 billion connected devices by 2020, a 30-fold increase from today.
The phrase "Mind the Gap" was first introduced in 1969 in London as a warning for passengers to watch for the gap between the train door and the station platform. The need to warn passengers is and was the result of some stations being located on curves and at varying heights relative to the tracks. The warning is intended to prevent injuries. Mind the gap is also a relevant warning for organizations today. The gap I am referring to is the one between your customers' expectations and your ability to meet those expectations given your current IT infrastructure and legacy systems.
Mission-critical functions at the heart of your business – such as order entry, finance, human resources, customer relationship management, and enterprise resource planning – frequently depend on “always-on” and scalable Oracle Database functionality. In the past, many businesses have selected HP-UX/Itanium systems as the backbone of an Oracle Database infrastructure because they could supply the throughput and availability needed for key database workloads. The life cycle of an HP-UX/Itanium infrastructure for Oracle Database, however, is rapidly coming to an end. On July 1, 2013, Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Database 12c. Because cloud deployments are the projected direction for IT services, Oracle Database 12c follows a multi-tenant architecture that facilitates cloud delivery of database services. It seeks to simplify database management tasks by managing multiple co-located databases as one, while simultaneously enabling data isolation and database resource prioritization. Changes to existing Oracle database tables and applications are not required. However, Oracle supports this new release only on Solaris, Windows, and Linux® operating systems – and not on HP-UX. This means that current HP-UX customers must migrate to a different platform to take advantage of Oracle Database 12c and its ability to ease the transition to a database service cloud.
CPUs drive all software and are often the first target for systems performance analysis. Modern systems typically have many CPUs, which are shared among all running software by the kernel scheduler. When there is more demand for CPU resources than there are resources available, process threads (or tasks) will queue, waiting their turn. Waiting can add significant latency during the runtime of applications, degrading performance. The usage of the CPUs can be examined in detail to look for performance improvements, including eliminating unnecessary work. At a high level, CPU usage by process, thread, or task can be examined. At a lower level, the code path within applications and the kernel can be profiled and studied. At the lowest level, CPU instruction execution and cycle behavior can be studied.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to conduct digital and mobile strategy workshops and speak in many places around the world. Because of the frequency of these trips, I often don't have time to research in advance the locations I will be visiting. That can be both good and bad. I am often pleasantly surprised to stumble upon a famous historical landmark with little or no knowledge that I was in its vicinity. Surprises are fun. The downside is stumbling upon a recognizable landmark or building, but having little knowledge as to why it is recognizable, and having no time to look it up. There is now a useful app for that!
In a previous blog on Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB), I promised to return briefly to the topic of CSB monetization. The term CSB can refer to both to the activity of brokering cloud services, or to the software application (or suite of applications) used to manage that activity. The activity of brokering cloud services can be carried out within an enterprise, as an internal support function, or performed as a paid-for service by a third party. So just to be clear, the discussion in today’s blog is all about the monetization of CSB as a service when provided by a CSB service provider. The scope of CSB need not be limited to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). To provide a complete cloud service, a broker might also offer IaaS and/or PaaS. The CSB service might also include desktop tools to help the customer, and also some good old-fashioned consulting.
IT organizations face the constant challenge of juggling two almost opposing priorities: continuously delivering business-critical application services while keeping IT expenses in line with budget constraints. The primary function of IT departments is to supply core infrastructure and applications to attract new business, generate revenue, and facilitate profitability – and IT managers strive to meet this goal in spite of flat or shrinking IT budgets. According to an article in Computer Weekly, approximately 80% of IT expenses are spent on maintenance and support for the existing infrastructure.1 Beyond maintaining current platforms and mission-critical applications, IT must also address new mandates, such as reporting requirements for regulatory compliance or corporate “green” IT initiatives. In addition, IT managers must allocate budget to tackle emerging strategic initiatives that are needed for future success. By decreasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for infrastructure systems, IT managers can potentially free budget dollars, re-allocating them to other essential or more pressing projects. The challenge lies in figuring out how to reduce TCO by increasing IT efficiency and driving down operational costs – or, to put it simply, how to do more with less.
The major strides achieved in IT in 2013 are possibly a hint of what to expect in 2014. The leading players are expected to introduce new and advanced cloud-based solutions, and at the same time keep testing, improving the efficiency of the existing services. Here are some of our top predictions for cloud services in 2014: The raging debate over which cloud service – private vs. public – is superior and/or suitable for enterprise IT architecture might finally be settled. The rapid growth in hybrid cloud solutions, which are essentially a combination of the two main architectures, is expected to provide an answer for businesses that have hitherto been reluctant to adopt cloud computing. On the one hand, hybrid cloud services offer the same cost-effective, scalable and powerful benefits as public cloud services. On the other, the hybrid architecture offers the high level of security similar to that of private clouds. As such, we foresee a significant growth in the use of hybrid clouds in enterprise IT since they enable businesses to implement a wide range of customizable solutions without sacrificing the security of their data and/or networks.
Cloud Expo, Inc. has announced today that Larry Carvalho has been named Tech Chair of Cloud Expo® 2014. 14th International Cloud Expo will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and 15th International Cloud Expo® will take place on November 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. “We are excited that Larry Carvalho is joining us as Cloud Expo Tech Chair. Our upcoming event in June will offer the best sessions and faculty to date,” said Carmen Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of Cloud Expo, Inc. “Since the 13th international conference in November we have received the highest number of sponsorship and exhibit inquiries for Cloud Expo 2014.”
SYS-CON Events announced today that the Web Host Industry Review has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and the 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Since 2000, The Web Host Industry Review has made a name for itself as the foremost authority of the Web hosting industry providing reliable, insightful and comprehensive news, reviews and resources to the hosting community. TheWHIR Blogs provides a community of expert industry perspectives. The Web Host Industry Review Magazine also offers a business-minded, issue-driven perspective of interest to executives and decision-makers. WHIR TV offers on demand web hosting video interviews and web hosting video features of the key persons and events of the web hosting industry. WHIR Events brings together like-minded hosting industry professionals and decision-makers in local communities. TheWHIR is an iNET Interactive property.
As we enter a new year, it is time to look back over the past year and resolve to improve upon it. In 2014, we will see more service providers resolve to add more personalization in enterprise technology. Below are seven predictions about what will drive this trend toward personalization. The Internet of Things turns into the Internet of Agents. M2M connections and multi-agent systems will result in an increasing number of highly personalized, value-added branded services. The latest Gartner forecast for the Internet of Things (IoT) predicts that by 2020, there will be $309 billion in incremental revenue opportunity for IoT suppliers, mostly in services. Everything-as-a service (XaaS) will lead us toward more complex services, more bundles and more options. Individual users will use agents whose sole job is to create functional services for individuals, out of everything available in the connected service universe. As we move closer toward XaaS, we will become familiar with the concept of “agents” in the delivery of those everything services via SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Agents can reside as modules within SaaS service offerings or they can be tools embedded in the service provider infrastructure or operating systems. Agents can exist in cloud-connected devices, or in the management software within the evolving smart device ecosystem. Any service delivery platform (SDP) can contain agents that add functionality to the supported services by collaborating with other agents on other platforms.
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about my skill set is that because I can develop software for the iPhone, iPad, and Windows 8 tablets, I must know everything there is to know about using them. 90% of my time spent on a computer is spent in code, UML tools, and using basic Word functionality. I do not play games, make photo albums, or read books on them. In other words, I am not as computer savvy as the business user or teenager that use them to connect to the world and conduct their business or coordinate a gaming session. I am very grateful for the Missing Manual series because they put everything I need to know about my devices in one place, and I don't have to spend the time looking for features.
Enterprise IT organizations today often are bypassed as employees and LoBs use cloud services; in fact cloud computing is considered the revenge of the business unit. 2014 will be year that the Enterprise IT organizations move from role of helpless bystander to role of strategic partner to the business unit. It will be the year that the CIO carves out a new role of strategic importance, namely the enabler of cloud apps that drive agility, productivity and competitive advantage for their business units. In 2014, CIOs and IT departments will use rapidly emerging cloud security solutions to accelerate the adoption of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) within the enterprise and will embark on security transformation.