For many companies with whom I talk, there isn’t a lack of IT talent when it comes to security--just a lack of hours in the day, computing resources and necessary headcount with specific expertise to change the culture from reactive to proactive and strategic risk management. Executives simply expect IT security to do more with less. But the ability to recruit and retain security experts is an issue in itself. At the MSPAlliance meeting this week in Orlando, it was reported that the unemployment rate for such professionals is less than 1%. The salary for these specialists has doubled in the past three years. No wonder there is a critical shortage to feed this growing monster. And executives are still wary to spend budget on security line items-including staffing. It is still regarded (mistakenly, I might add) as a cost center.
“There is a real shift that’s going on in the data center and it’s accelerating, moving away from these big iron, legacy architectures toward something that looks much more like Amazon, Google and Facebook,” stated Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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.
Development and software testing work hand-in-hand; the risks associated with pushing testing as far back in the software development lifecycle (in order to save on resource costs) might not be cost-effective in the long run. In addition, if you fail to create a process, or perhaps a testing strategy as part of the development, then chances are you'll incur more costs and further delay shipping your product. Test automation necessitates that both developer and software tester identify and assign conventions for Selenium locators, for example, at the onset. These locators allow software testers to find elements on a page that can be used in automated tests. If the developer changes that locator (in the next iteration), then the tester then has to make edits, which is typically more time-consuming versus starting from scratch. In addition, it is not a trivial task to uniquely identify locators, but tools such as Firebug come in really handy.
“We were early starters in Big Data. We cover everything around Big Data – from real time to analytics to visualization. We believe in taking on challenging problems and then solving them, bringing not only our expertise to the table but our experience as well,” explained Sanjay Sharma, Principal Architect at Impetus, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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.
Today’s end users demand highly satisfying and interactive web experiences, such as automatically populated search suggestions and dynamic menus. To make applications more engaging, technologies like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) have emerged. AJAX works by dynamically displaying and allowing users to interact with presented information – think of when you enter a Google search and results are produced as you type. AJAX does this by sending data to, and retrieving data from, a server asynchronously in the background, without interfering with the display and behavior of an existing page. While AJAX can make websites and web applications seem faster and more engaging, it also results in more application logic sitting in the web browser than ever before. This produces a greater impact for browsers overall on end-user experiences, which makes it critical to measure and optimize the performance of dynamic web applications at the browser level.
As the volume and purpose of data and business intelligence has dramatically shifted, older notions and misconceptions -- what amount to myths about data infrastructure -- need to updated and corrected, too. Debunking myths around big data should be a first step to making better business decisions for improving data analysis and data management capabilities in your company. As the volume and purpose of data and business intelligence (BI) has dramatically shifted, older notions and misconceptions -- what amount to myths about data infrastructure -- need to updated and corrected, too. So we're here to pose some better questions about data, and provide up-to-date answers for running data-driven businesses that can efficiently and repeatedly predict dynamic market trends and customer wants in real time.
With the C-suite, innovators, developers and IT all pushing for the cloud, albeit for different reasons, there is no doubt that cloud computing is the next or fifth wave. As the cloud computing market continues to mature, explaining the platform shift gets easier and more succinct. There are a wide variety of benefits to this next wave of computing, each resonating in shape, tone and strength depending on the listener's role in an organization. C-level and financial people like the economic drivers of the cloud. Limiting capital investment by converting CAPEX to OPEX; paying for what the business needs with scalable, success-based pricing; and enabling efficient use of limited internal resources. These are a few of the benefits that strike a chord with this part of the organization.
A US federal judge Wednesday found Apple guilty of colluding with five publishers and artificially driving up the price of e-books before it entered the market with the debut of the iPad in 2010. Apple is bound to appeal after the court fixes on a penalty next week. The Justice Department claimed Apple let the publisher set higher prices on bestsellers and new releases as a way to offset Amazon’s low $9.99 price point on the same books. As a result the DOJ said e-book prices in general rose to $12.99-$14.99. The publishers settled with the government ahead of trial but a resolute Apple, apparently acting on principle, refused to settle and denied any price-fixing. It did settle with the European Commission last year without admitting any wrongdoing.
Cloud computing is the #1 topic for most CIOs this year. In her Lunchtime Focus Keynote at 12th Cloud Expo, Krishna Subramanian, VP of Marketing & Business Development at Citrix Systems, walks you through how customers have transformed the way they do business using Citrix Cloud Solutions. Learn best practices and architecture from companies who have embraced the cloud in their datacenter environment.
“We have moved on from hosting to managed hosting to managed cloud hosting. We build and operate high performance clouds for business-critical applications,” explained Mike Donaldson, CMO of HOSTING, stated, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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.
A US federal judge Wednesday found Apple guilty of colluding with five publishers and artificially driving up the price of e-books before it entered the market with the debut of the iPad in 2010. Apple is bound to appeal after the court fixes on a penalty next week. The Justice Department claimed Apple let the publisher set higher prices on bestsellers and new releases as a way to offset Amazon’s low $9.99 price point on the same books. As a result the DOJ said e-book prices in general rose to $12.99-$14.99. The publishers settled with the government ahead of trial but a resolute Apple, apparently acting on principle, refused to settle and denied any price-fixing. It did settle with the European Commission last year without admitting any wrongdoing.
You can design a great enterprise cloud network, but it will be very restricted if you are in a building that does not support broadband connectivity or mission-critical applications. What good is a multi-gigabit design if your connection to the central office is not fiber? Or redundant? Can you even have a mission-critical network if you only have one connection to one central office? Here are five ways to tell if your building is obsolete. How receptive is your building to all the new connectivity technology exploding onto the market? Have your smartphone with you? Does it work well in your building?
“We are a very unique product, being a Distributed Database as a service, kind of meeting in between Big Data, NoSQL and mobile,” explained Sam Bisbee, Director of Technical BD at Cloudant, stated, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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.
“Quantum is transitioning its business from being a predominantly hardware-based, on-premise data protection provider into a cloud-based managed service provider,” explained Henrik Rosendahl, Senior Vice President of Cloud Solutions at Quantum, stated, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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 data center industry, especially cloud providers, has recently been in the spotlight for massive power consumption. For example, if the industry were a country, it would be in the Top 15 users of energy, somewhere between Spain and Italy. The 30+ Gigawatts pushed through data centers across the globe has a far-reaching impact, including on the enterprise bottom line. Electricity isn’t cheap and, to top it off, analyst firm IDC estimated un-utilized server capacity as equal to $140 billion, more than 20 million servers and 80 million tons of CO2 per year. Yet, using virtualization technology in a public or private cloud scenario to run many instances of operating systems simultaneously on the same piece of hardware can lead to up to 80% efficiency. Pair this with Infrastructure as a Service or cloud computing models where virtualization is the norm, and the potential for cost savings is tremendous.
One of the biggest drawbacks in IT operations is that we work in silos, with loads of attempts made to connect functional departments before but it seems like very little progress has been made. With applications being the lifeblood of businesses, it is imperative that there is a common bridge between departments to deliver fast, effective and agile solutions. But the fact is that we work in a distributed tiered environment and with these walls around functions and tiers it is difficult to get this seamless approach of delivering fast, effective solutions and when you add operations to the mix you have multiple stakeholders with conflicting agendas, delegating application performance to the firefighting exercise that ensures business is severely impacted. It is important that app developers, app owners and/or operations create a cross cultural alignment and come together to collaborate and develop an agile product. There certainly is a need for an application monitoring solution which helps in promoting a common language across the board which helps app developers, app owners and/or operations to go right to the source of the problem without requiring data from the stakeholders to find it, by doing this we have less pressure within the organization, there's less finger pointing, which enables in a rapid application lifecycles.
Businesses look to resellers for expertise on emerging technology trends and solutions that can help their organizations stay competitive. Lately, there’s been an onslaught of these trends, from virtualization to hybrid clouds and the performance and uptime challenges of complex mission-critical applications. Unfortunately, most of the tools with which IT maintains application performance were created before these trends emerged and are struggling to keep up. “The tools of the past twenty years are just too monolithic, static, and difficult to help solve today’s performance problems quickly,” says Giulio Covass, CEO of Italian reseller Kiratech.
SHI International has teamed with Ariba to streamline IT product discovery and purchasing processes for large agricultural machinery builder AGCO. A global provider of IT products, procurement, and related services, with more than $4 billion in annual sales, SHI has tapped into the networked economy to improve their business productivity and sales. To learn more about how agile procurement works well, we're joined John D’Aquila, Applications Support Manager at SHI International Corp. in Somerset, New Jersey.
Among the most important factors in finding a home for Information Technology infrastructure is location. The hurricane, or ‘Super Storm Sandy,’ as it is referred to in the New York metro market, created many calamitous events throughout the region, especially those areas close to the water or in-land surrounded by trees. While this natural disaster was not something we could have all planned extensively for, it certainly provided lessons that only a 100+year storm can teach us. First, let’s consider the location of your company’s data communications infrastructure. This is the equipment that is the core of your business. If it goes down, then everyone is down. Regardless of each end-user’s location, if they are unable to access the company’s communications systems, they can’t perform their jobs effectively. Finding the most suitable location could be challenging, particularly for those in regions with regular seismic activity, but there are other concerns in the New York metro market: rain, wind and flooding.
In the enterprise context, the missing piece of Agile Software Architecture is Agile Enterprise Architecture, where EA brings together the organization, the processes, the technology, and the information in a consistent, business-driven whole. Configurability alone doesn’t provide this consistency. Instead, true Agile Architecture – that is, architecture that supports the business agility requirement – must tie these concerns together using a balanced combination of Enterprise Architecture, governance, and Agile Software Architecture.
Historically, the end user has not been a primary focus for IT operations. While this focus is starting to change, the user continues to be supported through the service desk and enabled through the management of the devices used. This level of support alone does not give the user the ability to solve IT problems independently or provide visibility into how these people use IT. This situation is changing now because end users are beginning to play a major role in influencing IT decisions, especially regarding how IT applications are chosen, supplied, consumed and evaluated to support the business. Forward-thinking IT operations organizations are now using or investigating the use of management products that can provide greater visibility into how users consume IT. It enables IT operations to understand how the end user is experiencing IT services, irrespective of how many applications are being used or where they are sourced. However, gaining visibility into end-user activity is valuable only if IT operations measure it against end-user satisfaction metrics.
With so many stories about cloud computing, IT outsourcing, hosting, SaaS solutions and managed services, we should all be well beyond the question of whether organizations should be moving their enterprise applications to the cloud. For those companies that have not yet started to move these applications outside of their own four walls or, worse yet, have yet to develop a plan to do so, a window is ever shrinking on your ability to keep up with your competitors. Why? Because unless your value proposition to your customers is managing data centers, connectivity, routers, firewalls, servers, storage, backups, operating systems, databases, applications, etc., you’ll always be a step or maybe even two or three behind cloud service providers that do this day in and day out as part of their core business model. When an organization moves its enterprise applications to the cloud and it’s done right, the benefits are compelling and real.
“Cloud Technology Partners focuses on three key service areas: building cloud for our customers, delivering cloud native applications, and we’re migrating applications to the cloud,” explained John Treadway, SVP at Cloud Technology Partners, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City. 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 convergence of increased data stored on company networks and stricter compliance regulations dictating the length of time the information needs to be stored for have helped cloud storage explode in popularity. The cloud offers an easy-to-use, scalable and cost-effective solution for data storage. However, organizations must seriously consider how they manage their storage from a back-up and disaster recovery perspective. While there is no doubt that cloud computing can speed disaster recovery – from reducing the time it takes to restore data, to the fact that information is stored off-site, alleviating the risk of natural disasters – incorrectly managing the storage can often prove more of a hindrance than a help. Whether an employee accidently deletes a file, or a more sinister hack on the company network takes place, for most organizations it is inevitable that data recovery will need to occur at some point. Planning for disaster is essential and having in place an effective back-up and disaster recovery process can save headaches down the line.
IT has more opportunities than ever before with the growth in users, devices, data and secure cloud services. This creates not only a more enriching experience for users, but more opportunities for businesses. The key to capitalizing on these opportunities is to have the right tools in place to help scale operations. In his Day 3 Keynote at 12th Cloud Expo, Robert Crooke, corporate VP and general manager of the Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Solutions Group at Intel Corp, describes the range of products that Intel provides to support different usage models faced by IT with a specific emphasis on the advancement in SSDs.