Foxconn is losing its Apple monopoly. Apple has signed up $7.4 billion-a-year Pegatron to build the low-cost iPhone it’s expected to bring to market later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Pegatron, which started making iPad minis last year and made some iPhones the year before, is another Taiwan-based contract manufacturer with factories in China. Actually it’s an Asustek spin-off. Foxconn had manufacturing problems with the iPhone 5 last year that scratched the metal cases and limited availability. It’s also not getting the cost advantages of scale like it used to because it’s been raising wages and improving working conditions following a string of suicides.
A 2013 McKinsey survey reported that 75% of CEOs find value for their company in cloud computing. Given the well-documented perception of risk, are these established brands now coming to cloud to leverage "brand momentum" and create a "fresh start"? What are the pitfalls as these established companies enter the cloud environment, as CEOs start to discover the power of cloud computing beyond efficiency and cost savings? In this Lunchtime Discussion Panel at the 12th International Cloud Expo panelists will discuss the risks involved with doing business in the cloud, the competitive landscape, the impact of regulation, compliance and what our experts see as the opportunity for reward.
Foxconn is losing its Apple monopoly. Apple has signed up $7.4 billion-a-year Pegatron to build the low-cost iPhone it’s expected to bring to market later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Pegatron, which started making iPad minis last year and made some iPhones the year before, is another Taiwan-based contract manufacturer with factories in China. Actually it’s an Asustek spin-off. Foxconn had manufacturing problems with the iPhone 5 last year that scratched the metal cases and limited availability. It’s also not getting the cost advantages of scale like it used to because it’s been raising wages and improving working conditions following a string of suicides.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Nimbo will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Nimbo helps medium to large organizations discover, create, integrate and manage their IT environment using public and hybrid cloud technologies. Nimbo is headquartered in New York City with offices in Austin, TX, and Tampa, FL. Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
For many organizations, cloud computing has become an integral part of their everyday business. Many companies are relying on cloud applications for fundamental operations such as CRM and email and are looking to increase utilization of the cloud for other functions. For others, adoption of the cloud along with internal communication about proper protocols for usage has perhaps been slower to evolve or implement. As recently highlighted in this article in Forbes, it’s been widely observed that employees are experiencing the benefits of cloud computing at home and are often times transferring this personal use into the workplace. Popular applications employees are using both places include Gmail, Skype and Dropbox.
In this CTO Power Panel at the 12th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, topics discussed will be at a deliberately high level and will include: 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? How exactly does a company or organization go about deciding whether to migrate only specific applications to the cloud – such as storage or security – or their overall IT infrastructure? How much of an influence on cloud adoption is the US Government's continuing support of Cloud strategies for all government agencies?
“Anyone moving to the cloud saves not only time but money,” stated Joel Daly, Chief Operating Officer of HOSTING, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “For SMBs, the primary cost issue is a lack of resources. They have no choice but to run legacy systems during the transformation to the cloud. This gets expensive, but once done, the cost savings are there.” Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree? Joel Daly: Agree, but time is money. Virtualization allows for faster provisioning and faster recovery, therefore increasing time-to-market for solutions. In many cases, especially if you’re a software provider, getting to market sooner means revenue sooner. In addition, via the cloud, you can reinvest that money and use it to increase your capabilities. A recent study by the University of Manchester showed that 60% of companies have more time to focus on strategy and innovation and 70% of large enterprises and 59% of SMEs surveyed have been able to reinvest more money back into their business.
This article provides an outline of java bean validation using javax annotations provided in Java EE 6 and Hibernate validator. As you know modern programming paradigm suggests validating a java bean with annotations. A java bean can be validated in many ways. You can refer to my earlier article on bean validation .But we have to opt for the simplest and the robust one. With the introduction of java annotation feature, programming has become easier and lets developers to write less code. In this article I will show you the significance of Hibernate validator and javax annotation in a java bean. The api provided by hibernate validator and javax annotation has made developer’s life much easier to put validation instantly. Java EE 6 platform provides a set of annotations for bean validation. This bean validation api can be applied to field and method level to achieve validation. Apart from that Hibernate validator provides some extra validation annotation to ease the development and also it provides the shortcut way define your own custom validation constraints. The javax bean validation api provides below the most frequently used annotations.
At the top of many IT group’s list of concerns lie security, compliance and internal process governance – both in static data centers and in dynamic clouds. Indeed, governance should not be overlooked. And, as they say in many security circles, the best measure of successful security is silence. Although the discussion around governance in the cloud has evolved, many organizations still struggle with questions such as: Which apps should we deploy to public clouds? When and where should cloud environments be encrypted? Who has access to cloud-based applications and infrastructure? Which firewall rules should apply? How do security rules differ from app to app based on the application’s lifecycle phase?
An IT services provider based in Asia is throwing up some big numbers when it comes to savings and cloud computing. DataOne Asia, an independent provider of IT services in the Philippines, said businesses can significantly reduce expenses by putting in place cloud computing solutions, according to an article on PCAdvisor.co,uk. "Businesses that migrate their IT systems to the cloud could save at least 50 percent of their expenses. This is because the cloud minimizes the cost of infrastructure, management and support," said DataOne Asia President and CEO Cyril Rocke. Rocke says that the cloud could help companies minimize expenses on procuring and maintaining their IT infrastructure. "Most IT users tend to underestimate the cost of procuring infrastructure. Whenever a company wants to buy IT equipment like servers, they cannot do it in a snap. They need to follow a long procurement process where they have to justify the project, write cost-benefit analyses, and submit the necessary papers to different departments. Sometimes, there's even a need to hire IT experts that will decide which equipment is best for a company." "In reality, companies can spend more than a year and thousands of [dollars] on the procurement process alone. This entire traditional procurement process severely damages businesses, and reduces their ability to react and roll out new ideas and solutions."
The rise of cloud computing has exposed hard drive-based storage as the new data center bottleneck. Combating this, data center managers have deployed SSDs to gain the performance needed to provide real-time access to data. However, due to budget constraints, many have turned to consumer-grade SSDs without understanding that they wear out quickly when processing enterprise workloads. In this session, Esther Spanjer will discuss recent endurance advancements in SSD technology that enable usage of low cost, enterprise-class SSDs, and how this helps organizations lower their storage TCO by avoiding frequent replacements.
CollabNet, the enterprise cloud development concern, figures the new version of CloudForge it’s put together kicks butt, leapfrogging GitHub and BitBucket by offering the broadest, freest toolkit around, while romancing developers by taking the shackles off its use. The multi-tenant development-Platform-as-a-Service (dPaaS) is now unrestricted even though it’s free. It can build web sites, mobile, cloud and web applications, and rapidly prototype and deploy business software. CloudForge can now be used by an unlimited number of users for an unlimited number of private projects, and it comes with Subversion and Git, the version control fixtures, so these users won’t get lost in their own underwear. If you’ve got something better, bring it along.
It turns out cloud computing could be the most useful sales associate on the floor, and you won't have to worry about it stealing sales leads, ala “Glengarry Glen Ross.” With the help of cloud computing, some brick-and-mortar stores are combating showrooming, a trend where consumers look at items in a store before buying them online, usually at lower prices, according to an article on Wired.com. Clouds offer retailers a way to explore the potential of Big Data analytics to understand their customers better. In order to compete with e-tailers, retailers are tapping social networks to learn what customers are saying about them and about their competitors. Weather data is being used to influence product-purchasing decisions, and merchandise promotions are organized around social events. In many cases, brick-and-mortar retailers are even finding new data sources. Some companies are tracking the movement of customers within stores and analyzing how many stop at displays to improve the effectiveness of merchandising. Others are considering installing license-plate cameras in parking lots to find out which customer is about to walk into the store.
The technology infrastructure of today’s business landscape has undergone dramatic shifts in recent years. The consumerization of IT, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and of course the cloud have revolutionized the way corporations manage data, complete transactions and communicate with employees and customers. Organizations of all sizes are moving their document and email management needs to the cloud, with increasing numbers opting for a private cloud solution, a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services behind an organization's firewall.
The IT industry is nothing if not a breeding ground for an infinite variety of acronyms and neologisms. Alongside cloud computing today sits the term Big Data, which of course we understand to mean “that amount” of data which a traditional database would find hard to compute and process as a normal matter of job processing. But what is a neologism if you can’t turn it into a neo-neologism? Big Data in its own right is a term that we are just about getting used to, but the sooner we move towards an appreciation of ‘fast Big Data’ the better.
In my recent article, "Five Steps to Improve E-Commerce Performance for Increased Sales: Introduction” I discussed problems encountered by our client TescaraHats (name changed for commercial reasons), a European market leader in manufacturing customized hats. The company quickly realized that e-commerce performance is critical to the success of an e-commerce platform and that sales will not increase just because you have an application online. We argued that while improving search engine ranking is important, you should never forget about the performance and usability in an e-commerce application. In this episode of our e-commerce performance series, we will analyze the impact that the back-end performance has on your online sales.
On May 22, Ethernet – Robert Metcalfe’s ingenious invention –celebrated its 40th anniversary. As the global tech community celebrates this milestone for one of the world’s most transformative technologies, we take a look at its evolution from a printer-to-printer communication system at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), to a system that is underpinning everything from how we access and leverage data to how we drive our cars. From its origins at Xerox, over the last 40 years Ethernet has become the quintessential and standard network solution for an increasingly diverse array of applications. Highly scalable and adaptable, in recent years Ethernet has evolved from its enterprise roots, infiltrating today’s high performance data centers and Metro network rings at 10 GbE speeds and now 40 and 100 GbE speeds, offering predictable performance with quality of service, improved latency and seamless access to a wide array of applications and services.
Imagine there was a technology that could solve some of the top issues for IT managers of large companies: managing a large fleet of users’ devices, with all the associated maintenance tasks, and maintaining the security and integrity of devices by preventing malicious software installation. Now imagine this solution also provided unparalleled energy efficiency. Thin computing is the answer. Thin clients are basic computer systems that work with a server to process applications and store data through virtualization – almost all of the actual computing occurs on the server, and most of the software is installed and managed virtually by an IT manager. Many clients can run the same applications on a shared sever, which finds its best usage among workers in massive buildings, with a lot of turnover, where many employees will use the same fundamental programs repeatedly.
Complexity is the new reality of web and mobile applications with almost no new release going out without the addition of services and applications spread across many different companies. But the reality of this new interrelationship is still the same: If a third-party Internet outage or issue occurs, your brand is the one that is affected. With up to 1,500 distinct third-party services available to choose from around the world, it is sometimes difficult to even identify what a service does when it appears in your applications. This forces your team to not only be fully aware of the components you control, but also to be able to follow the trail of services that extends far outside the code and systems your company manages when issues appear.
“Cloud has everything to do with what has happened with Big Data,” explained Jason Deck, Director of Strategic Alliances at Logicworks, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Big Data doesn’t exist in its easily accessible way without cloud. From reduced startup costs, to cheap storage, to fast processing, to adequate security, to the easy incorporation of third-party analytics tools, cloud made Big Data accessible to customers of all sizes, with all different budgets.” Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree? Jason Deck: The move to cloud is not specifically about money or time. The real value of cloud computing is in giving a business the platform to create real operational agility, so an organization can focus economic and human resources on the most valuable parts of its business. Cloud does save time and it does save money but, above all, it provides a company with agility to respond to its competitors and test out new ideas with minimal risk, all while being certain sensitive data are secure and compliant.
Intel’s new broom has begun to sweep, meaning its new CEO Brian Krzanich, in office four days, started reorganizing the place reportedly to make the old girl more focused and spry. The one-time plant manager has taken direct control of the company’s chip design unit, its fabled Architecture Group, which includes its PC client group, mobile communications operation and data center unit, giving its old boss Dadi Perlmutter the job of leading a so-called management transition effort whose point is unclear.
SYS-CON Events announced today that OpenStack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. OpenStack software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed by a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS applications and eCommerce sites, the world’s largest public clouds, and Global 1000 enterprises alike, each of whom rely on OpenStack to run their businesses every day. The open source cloud platform controls pools of compute, storage and networking resources at massive scale, making them available via a self-service dashboard.
“Open source has always provided a number of benefits, including easing adoption costs, propagating a better understanding of the technology, and allowing for faster evolution and commercialization of products and services based on it,” noted Terry Woloszyn, Founder & CEO, Leeward Security Ltd., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This is clearly evident with the OpenStack and CloudStack,” Woloszyn continued, “and others that have been quickly commercialized as offerings such as Rackspace.” Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree? Terry Woloszyn: It's actually both. Depending on the type of cloud – SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS, and whether it is private or public – the metrics that are used to determine the savings vary in weighting and importance. For example, the total cost of ownership in selecting, installing, configuring, managing, and ultimately replacing enterprise applications is quite large when compared to utilizing a public cloud SaaS equivalent. In this case, it's about saving time and money. On the other hand, utilizing a private cloud infrastructure as a host platform for enterprise applications is much more about saving time in provisioning, as the money difference is small, realized only in hardware utilization and platform management cost savings.
The saying “if it doesn’t exist on the Internet, it doesn’t exist”[1] is ringing truer every day. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine most businesses without an e-commerce platform, let alone without a web presence at all. Since e-commerce is becoming the new standard, e-commerce performance needs to be at its best. In this blog series, I have come up with several ways to ensure your company’s e-commerce performance success, including: avoiding unnecessary network load,reducing number of (internal) HTTP errors, improving backend performance,understanding your clients, ensuring scalability of e-commerce site and finally understanding sales results through conversion rate. Our client TescaraHats (name changed for commercial reasons), a European market leader in manufacturing customized hats, decided to expand its market reach with an e-commerce site where its potential customers could choose, customize and order hats online. Since the company’s core competence is in delivering highly customized products, TescaraHats could not simply use an off-the-shelf e-commerce application. It needs a customization wizard so that customers can create a uniquely customized product.
Although I started with ColdFusion for application development, I did plenty brochureware sites with HTML. I believe the version was HTML 2.0 for IE 2.0. I lived in the browser world for years doing ColdFusion, ASP, and HTML sites. When winforms and Smart Client with web services emerged I changed my religion. Since then I have been avoiding the browser whenever possible since. For the past couple of years I have used HTML/JavaScript/CSS a lot as a byproduct of building ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC applications for public consumption. Internal enterprise applications I will still push for using WPF and web services over ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC, but I lose that battle a lot, especially when the developers have never learned WPF (XAML) and have no interest in learning anything new. When it comes to Mobile Apps my first choice will always be native applications using Objective-C, XAML with C# or C++, and Java using the ASP.NET Web API for the services. The problem is I am going to end up fighting the same battle with the web developers that don't like learning anything new. They are going to turn to HTML/JavaScript/CSS to build their mobile applications as a mobile web site or hybrid application.