If transaction times jump from less than one second to more than 60 seconds after a software upgrade, it is evident that there is a problem that needs investigation. This scenario was experienced by a customer with its time-tracking application. Our customer identified this performance regression while executing extensive performance tests prior to its production upgrade. The company’s “traditional” approach of analyzing these types of problems was analyzing application and database log files as well as infrastructure metrics such as CPU, Memory and Network Throughput. Our customer couldn’t find a single slow database query, nor were there any indications of an error in the log files. The infrastructure also seemed to be fine because the application, the database server and the network didn’t show any bottlenecks. Analyzing the end-to-end transaction, such as the click on search, however, revealed a problem that turned out to be a “data-driven” performance issue.
Having an efficient Development Workflow is immensely important. In this new series 'Efficient Development Workflows' we show how the Codeship Crew works on new features, which apps it uses and how it communicates. With this blog post we start a new series about how we work on the Codeship. Many people asked us how we develop features, about our workflow and which apps we use every day. This blogpost focuses on the workflow to implement a new feature. From branching away from master until it is ready for the pull request. The following blogposts will talk about our internal communication, how we do pull requests and code reviews and an in-depth look into our deployment strategy.
Three of my colleagues here at Cognizant, Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring, are writing a new book on the subjects of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud), digital and business transformations, and successful strategies for navigating through them. The concepts in this book resonate with me. I see enterprise mobility and B2C mobile app strategies as key components. In this article, we get a sneak preview from the book. Several weeks ago we outlined the concept of "Code Halos™" - aka our digital fingerprint - and discussed how "personal" Code Halos are migrating into enterprise computing. We also analyzed the areas in which "organizational" Code Halos are changing what businesses do and how they do it. In this post we advocate how Code Halos create a repeatable pattern of disruption across a wide range of industries; by studying this pattern we have developed a business model - the Crossroads Model™ - to help business and technology leaders understand the impact Code Halos have on winning and losing in today's fast dgitizing global markets. We also provide a "playbook" for executives to win in the new "code rush" and avoid the "extinction events" that so many once great corporations, from Kodak to Newsweek, have experienced in recent years.
ARM-based Servers are poised to shake up the traditional Server market. This will also shake up the software market – creating opportunity for new vendors who choose to specialize in delivering solutions for this emerging computing platform. "There's a new class of technologies poised to shake up the Server market - the Microserver, sometimes called the ARM Server. But the Microserver will do more than shake up the X86 server market. It is going to shake up the software market as well." That's the message software and technology executive Chris Piedmonte, CEO and founder of Austin, TX-based Suvola Corporation delivered as we discussed the topic over coffee earlier this week.
When Melrose transitioned from nearly 100 percent server virtualization to a novel cloud capability built on VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, they discovered that they could not only host their own applications, but also those of nearby communities for an ongoing fee.
12th International Cloud Expo, held on June 10–13, 2013 at the Javits Center in New York City, featured four content-packed days with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of cloud computing led by exceptional speakers from every sector of the cloud computing 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.
In the process of Java development, developers will come across data computation. But Java alone is not convenient to handle such computation. SQL has limited impact on improving the computational efficiency for Java. With Java alone it's difficult to handle such computations. Although it is powerful enough and also quite convenient in debugging, Java has not directly implemented the common computational algorithms yet. So, Java programmers still have to spend great time and efforts to implement the details like aggregating, filtering, grouping, sorting, and ranking. In the respect of data storage and access, programmers have to use List and other objects to assemble every 2D table and every piece of data, and then arrange the nested multi-level loops. In addition, such computation involves set and relation operations on massive data, or relative position between object and object properties. The underlying logics for these computations demand great efforts, not to mention the Excel or Text data, data from set, and the complex computational goal.
Does your Ops team care about the number of Exceptions thrown in the application – do they even monitor this number? Does your Test Team report the list of Exceptions thrown during a load test to engineering or are they just sending those that end up in a logfile? Is development interested in the Exceptions that are thrown within frameworks while executing their unit tests? Why should they care? Is there a real impact on performance that comes from a couple of exceptions? Two years ago Alois Reitbauer wrote a nice article about The Cost of an Exception, which is typically hard to evaluate. After a recent deployment of a new version we saw that 30% of the CPU on our application server was consumed by creating Exception objects – these were Exceptions that never made it to a logfile – so nobody really cared until we identified it as being a performance impact on the infrastructure and to the end user. The root cause is simple – but also not that easy to find if you don’t look at all Exceptions thrown and not just those that bubble up to the end user or as SEVERE messages into log files.
Oracle has refreshed its SPARC groups with the world's fastest and the best processor. This makes it even more attractive and advantageous for the customers to go for it. Oracle SPARC Refresh: the world’s fastest processor has an unbeatable value for midrange and high-end enterprise computing. The new SPARC T5 and M5 systems makes Oracle reach the top of the ladder with up to 10X performance power, beating the last generation computing systems, making it the fastest single server for databases, multi-tier applications and Java. With Oracle, claiming the world’s fastest microprocessor title with its refreshed SPARC servers makes entrepreneurs and small business rethink the concept up updating and upgrading their systems. Even with all these all these improvements and its performance, Oracle is amazingly available at its best price.
Today, we will show you how to run a few domain names on Java application server GlassFish, which combines enterprise-class capabilities with open source cost efficiency. It's an enterprise-ready application server with true interoperability and a wide range of features including superior documentation, administration, and configuration. Log into the Jelastic dashboard and click Create environment. Select application server GlassFish and specify the cloudlet limits for it. Enter your environment name and click Create.
Today I want to share a success story from one of our customers in the financial business that combined the currently hyped topic Real User Monitoring with the good old mainframe. They used Real User Monitoring to identify unnecessary calls from their rich client application into the mainframe and reduced useless data retrieved from the mainframe that ultimately saved them lots of money on MIPS. The customer’s internal banking application consists of a Java Rich Client used by the bank clerks in the daily business with the customer. This Rich Client makes calls via the IBM CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG) to the mainframe CICS transactions. The central storage for all the data is an IBM DB2 database that is accessed via the mainframe. The following screenshot shows a typical Transaction Flow through their environment.
Software development is an ingenious process that requires both technical skills and cutting-edge tools to create something new. If you are a software developer, you must know that the reporting modules are the backbone of any application. The success of an application depends on the accuracy of the reports it presents to the end users. Moreover, the client may ask you to add some more reports in the app and, thus, you need a flexible and strong library that can be effortlessly customized as per any requirements. There are a number of reporting tools available, both free and paid versions, but the final selection always depends on the platform you are working on. If you are working on Java technology, then your task is easier as there is a number of Java reporting tools or libraries that can help you in your project. In this article we will take a look at some of the best Java reporting tools that have the capabilities to produce any report your client may need.
Cloud Security Providers (CSPs) interested in doing business with the government have a strategic decision to make before entering the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) authorization process. FedRAMP can help these providers consolidate their compliance demands by allowing them to leverage FedRAMP as the high-watermark of security control standards and apply them to other industries. Obtaining FedRAMP compliance can enable CSPs to achieve a security compliance baseline for their cloud solutions while also meeting other regulatory requirements (PCI, ISO 27001, SSAE 16, HIPAA/HITECH, FFIEC, etc.). FedRAMP can provide CSPs with new business opportunities as federal agencies adopt the Cloud First initiative and public and private sectors expand their collaboration and interdependence. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo, Douglas Greise, Principal & Co-Founder of Veris Group, will discuss how the strategic and technical solutions offered by an experienced third party can provide a cost-saving and business-driven approach to gain a competitive edge in the government sector, while also meeting existing and changing compliance standards.
In this demo at 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, Impetus Technologies looks at Ankush, a Big Data Cluster Management Solution and how to manage multiple vendor clusters from a single interface. Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world. The growth and success of Cloud Computing will be on display at the upcoming Cloud Expo conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, California, November 4–7, 2013.
In our increasingly connected world, the number of mobile phones will exceed the world’s population by 2014. Users expect to be able to run diverse applications on these devices at work, home, and practically anywhere else. We assume secure access to any information we need, with an expectation of seamless mobility and a high-quality user experience. Security is a primary concern, but at the same time users don’t want security to get in the way of their experience. Users want to simply be able to find an application in an app store, and then download and use it without having to be concerned about whether it’s a trusted application.
With recent revelations about NSA surveillance programs including PRISM and now XKeyscore, many organizations are concerned about the privacy of customer data and other sensitive business information being put on the cloud. Some are predicting that the public uncovering of these programs will lead to a decrease in use of U.S. cloud providers. It’s been reported though, that other countries are obtaining information from the NSA’s surveillance, including the UK, and there are regularly stories about China and Russia maintaining similar surveillance programs, making the avoidance of just U.S. vendors not a viable strategy for protecting data.
Having made it past the 2013 midpoint, it’s time for technology-driven and/or technology-enabled organizations to evaluate plans and review outcomes so far, look at what has changed in the industry or business landscape; and realign for what the rest of the year has to offer. Here are some checkpoint trends, observations and tips to help you review and adjust plans for rest of the year. These observations and suggestions are based on field work, intelligence gathered working with customers, partners, prospects and industry leaders.
In this article my colleague Peter Abatan, a Mobile Technology Consultant and banking expert with Cognizant,shares his insights into the digital transformation happening in the banking industry. This transformation reflects new and innovative business models, the rapid adoption of mobile apps for banking, social media and other cloud based solutions. In this article Peter and I discuss P2P (peer-to-peer) lending services and their potential integration with Internet based and mobile banks. P2P lending sites are part of the emerging digital transformation happening in the banking industry. Their purpose is to provide higher returns for investors/savers, while using SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) based technologies to help find lenders for people/companies that may not meet a traditional bank's criteria for lending. They are a in effect, match makers. They are the match.com for people wanting to lend money for higher returns, and people or companies wanting to borrow it.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Incapsula, a cloud-based website security and performance service, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Through an application-aware global CDN platform, Incapsula provides any website and web application with best-of-breed Security, DDoS Protection, Load Balancing & Failover solutions, available as standalone services or as an integrated solution. Incapsula offers any online business with right selection of website security and performance services to meet your needs.
Cloud computing has opened the doors to a vast array of online services. With the emergence of new cloud technologies, both public and private companies are seeing increases in performance gains, elasticity and convenience. However, maintaining a competitive advantage has become increasingly difficult. Service providers are taking a closer look at their data storage infrastructure for ways to improve performance and cut costs. If the status quo remains, maintaining low-cost cloud services will become increasingly difficult. Service providers will incur higher costs, while consumers become burdened with storage capacity restrictions. Such obstacles are influencing service providers to find new ways to scale cost-effectively and increase performance in the data center.
With customer expecting information technology to be delivered with new models, systems integrators have to quickly transform themselves to meet these needs. Over the past few months, I have interacted with several organizations that are evaluating changes to their business model to adapt to the cloud-enabled IT ecosystem. Management is in a quandary over maintaining their profitable lines of business while growing revenue in new and emerging areas. The problem they face is that some emerging business lines are only possible with completely revamped business models requiring significant change.
Legendary Intel co-founder Gordon Moore’s eponymous law holds that the number of transistors per square inch of chip will double every two years, a prediction that has held remarkably firm as incredibly tiny devices have been made increasingly powerful. In recent years, that assertion could be used to apply to the creation of data as well. An IDC study in 2011 showed that the amount of data created by every device and person in the world would double every two years, with a staggering 1.8 zettabytes (1 billion terabytes) created in 2011 alone. A significant driver for this trend in the enterprise sector is the explosion of virtual machines. In virtualization, a software program is used to simulate the functions of physical hardware, offering new levels of flexibility and hardware cost savings as more and more hardware functionality is virtualized. Yet, as might be inferred, the rapid popularity of virtualization is allowing organizations to run substantially more applications at a given time, requiring near unheard-of levels of storage and renewing a focus on elegant management, flexibility and efficiency.
The data computation layer of Java aims to reduce the coupling between these two layers and shift the computational workload from them. What are the features of the typical computation layer? What are the advantages and disadvantages of 5 data computation layers of Hibernate, esProc, SQL, iBATIS, and R language? Ability to compute on the data from arbitrary data persistence layers, not only databases, but also the non-database Excel, Txt, or XML files. Of all these computations, the key is the computation on the commonest structured data. Ability to perform the interactive computations among various data sources uniformly, not only including the computation among different databases, but also calculation between the databases and non-database data sources.
How fast will the last remaining barriers to enterprise-wide cloud adoption melt away – are truly secure public clouds feasible, for example, or only private ones? In this CTO Power Panel at 12th Cloud Expo, moderated by Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Dennis Quan, Vice President of SmartCloud Enterprise at IBM; Jeff Lush, Chief Technology Officer Dell Services, US Public, Dell Services Federal Government; Brian Patrick Donaghy, CEO of Appcore; Pankaj Mittal, CTO and Senior Vice President at Impetus; and Jonathan King, VP, Cloud Solutions at Savvis, A Century Link Company, discussed this topic and more.
The enterprise is increasingly resorting to cloud services for many applications ranging from efficient application hosting or low-cost backup and archiving to cloud data centers. Typically, enterprise networks are interconnected to the cloud over low speed IP networks that are limited in capacity and flexibility. Over the next few years, however, enterprises will leverage the cloud for larger amounts of storage as they adopt Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). This in turn compels the need for a more flexible and intelligent network capable of dynamically responding to rapidly changing IT demands, without bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities or data loss. The impact of the cloud necessitates that Enterprise IT provide more focus on server-server connectivity rather than primarily supporting client-server interactions. This shift will also affect major service providers who must evolve their networks and corresponding business models to address the cloud, including significantly more rapid provisioning, multi-tenant, elastic network bandwidth, and far lower costs per bit than capable today. These are the primary drivers behind the emergence of Software-Defined Networks.