The WebRTC Data Channel is the next big thing in browser real-time communication. In his session at WebRTC Summit, Dan Ristic, a developer evangelist for PubNub, will be exploring the specification of what the data channel is, the potential road blocks to using it, and where to use it in production today. He will also explore the future of the data channel and how it will change the browser landscape in the years to come.
Dan Ristic is a developer evangelist for PubNub, the leading provider of real-time technologies. He is passionate about front-end engineering and looks to push the web to its limits every day. His goal is to map the future of the web and how it will change the future of the world.
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Cloud Expo: Cloud Shifts the Burden of Security to Development
The move to the cloud brings a number of new security challenges, but the application remains your last line of defense. Developers are extremely well-poised to perform tasks critical for securing the application – provided that certain key obstacles are overcome.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Wayne Ariola, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Parasoft, will explore three ways to help development bear the burden of security that the cloud places on them:
Use penetration testing results to help developers determine how to effectively “harden” the most vulnerable parts of the application.
Apply the emerging practice of “service virtualization” to provide developers the test environment access needed to exercise realistic security scenarios from the development environment.
Implement policy-driven development to help developers understand and satisfy management’s security expectations.
WebRTC Summit | A Practical Guide to Building WebRTC Apps
Transforming the promise of WebRTC into a reliable solution takes more than writing a few lines of JavaScript. In his session at the WebRTC Fundamentals Summit, Ben Strong, CEO & Co-founder, vLine, will dive into a range of considerations you’ll need to address. What does the browser provide – and not provide? (Spoiler alert: things left to the web developer to figure out include signaling between peers, session management, UI controls, TURN, STUN, and more.) We’ll also cover the design choices required as well as common client- and server-side components you’ll need to build. And no practical guide to WebRTC apps would be complete without addressing the hottest topic in WebRTC: mobile.
Cloud Expo: The Next Generation IT Department – Must Have Hybrid Cloud
Compelling consumer applications are created every day. Are you ready for the IT implications both internally and externally? As your datacenter needs more capacity, the cloud will be critical to success. What are the key considerations to help plan for the needed capacity over time? And how can the cloud best work with your existing applications?
In his General Session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Brian Jawalka, Sr. IT Strategist at Rackspace, will discuss how a hybrid approach can add agility, flexibility and speed-to-market for your organization. This session will potentially open conversation to talk about the SaaS consumer apps that are forcing IT to evolve.
What? A Parallels Solution for cPanel?
Parallels Web Presence Builder isn’t just for Parallels Plesk Panel anymore.
There’s a bit of a rivalry between users of Parallels Plesk Panel and users of cPanel. Those who host a handful of websites tend to lean toward cPanel, while those who host hundreds or thousands professionally prefer Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Plesk Automation. But no matter which hosting control panel you prefer, you have something in common – you can now offer Parallels Web Presence Builder via both control panels, and beef up your shared hosting offers to attract new customers.
Cloud, Are We There Yet?
The Washington Post recently ran an article by Andrea Peterson on RIM (now BlackBerry), with a chart they called “The decline of blackberry in one chart”. But more than the story of BlackBerry this chart rang home for me the enormous dynamics of a relative new industry.
As their chart showed the four mobile vendors that together had about hundred percent market share in 2005 barely managed to hold on to 20% by 2013. In only eight years they went from hero to zero, and were replaced by platforms that were introduced in 2007 (Apple) and 2009 (Android). I don’t cover mobile platforms so see this data mainly as a consumer, but it did make me wonder about the cloud market.
The mobile market in 2005 was by no stretch of imagination a startup market, I was on my third cellphone, after having enjoyed a car bound phone (car bound because it took up about half the boot) for about 4 years. The vendors were established, companies were handing out cellphones to most of their road warriors. Something that actually started in Europe – my US colleagues initially were juggling company provided calling cards and dialing codes – but by 2005 this was pretty much a global movement. A movement that felt more mature, established and business as usual as today’s cloud market.
Bitrix24 Collaboration for SMBs Update Supports Online Document Creation, Sharing
Bitrix has released a new version of Bitrix24, its free enterprise social network and collaboration suite for small businesses. The new release allows users to create, edit and collaborate on documents online, without having MS Office suite installed on their personal computers.
In addition to using Bitrix24 instant messenger for video and group chats, users now have access to video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities. Email connectors to MS Exchange, Outlook, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo!, iCloud and other popular e-mail services have been added to enable e-mail access from Bitrix24 accounts.
Activity Stream has been enhanced with real time updates, smart forwarding, notification options and company-wide announcements, while engagement analytics module (Company Pulse) has been added to provide real time indicators for enterprise social network adoption, identify roadblocks and slow adopters, and show which intranet tools are currently being (under)used by employees.
Bitrix24 has also released a fully functional mobile CRM, which allows creation or editing of CRM entries and invoices directly from the mobile device. The new mobile app also allows using multiple Bitrix24 accounts from a single smartphone or tablet.
“2013 has been a year of significant growth for us, – said Bitrix24 CEO Dmitry Valyanov, – we’ve signed up 90,000 companies, which is well over 500,000 users for the cloud and onsite versions of Bitrix24 intranet. Our workforce grew by 40% to over 130 employees and we opened three new sales and support offices. GooglePlay now lists Bitrix24 among the top 5 mobile intranet apps, along with or surpassing such established enterprise social brands as Jive Software, IBM Connection, VMWare SocialCast and TIBCO Tibbr. We hope to have a million users by the end of the year.”
Bitrix24 is 100% free to any company or organization with up to 12 employees. Bitrix24 paid cloud plans are priced at $99/mo (50 GB) and $199/mo (100 GB), and both come with unlimited users.
Object Storage Is THE Big Thing
In my opinion, Object Storage officially broke through this month. It went from being the “next” big thing to being “the” big thing. Why? Because Larry said so. Well, technically he didn’t: someone else had to do it for him as he skipped the Oracle Open World Keynote to see Team USA win the America’s Cup in the most exciting regatta of all times. So I’ve been told. I wasn’t there and I’m not a sailor. I kite surf, like Richard Branson.
What has Larry Ellison to do with Object storage and how is he an authority on the topic? Isn’t object storage about unstructured data, rather than databases? Well, correct: I don’t expect a whole lot from Oracle’s object storage technology. They are a database company and they are pretty damn good at that. But they haven’t been exceptionally successful with the Sun storage legacy other than the tape part of that business. Oracle’s object storage technology could have been good if they had recycled some of Sun’s honeycomb technology, but it doesn’t look like that is going to be the case. The little information that is out there points to OpenStack Swift, and we all know how well Oracle and open source blend! Also, Swift isn’t exactly storage-efficient: the technology was designed to run on cheap, commodity hardware – not really Oracle’s game.
Day 2 Keynote at Cloud Expo | How to Maintain Relevancy in a Cloud World
Let’s face it, developers rule. They have instantaneous access to technology resources that can be spun up easily without your knowledge. It is this pressure that is driving the inevitability of Cloud adoption across enterprise IT. If you still think of your IT organization as a cost center – presiding over a hefty annual budget and responsible for doling out dollars to the developers – then it’s time to rethink and re-imagine the business of IT.
If IT continues with the same old tired cost models and budget planning cycles, some of the best, most creative and most ingenious innovations in technology will never see the light of day. It’s a true dilemma for developers and innovators – why spend time creating, when your next great idea or project doesn’t meet the initial business case requirements for funding? But that was the old world of IT. The hard truth is that IT organizations are faced with a fundamental choice: resist or transform. CIOs can either accept the fact that they are now service providers competing with external vendors for budget dollars, or become impediments to change and lose relevance. Those choosing to become service providers are finding they need to develop a new operating model for IT, one that requires new platforms, processes, and skills.
Top Ten Considerations When Investing in BYOD
By Chris Reily, Director of Solutions Architecture
Every year has its own special IT acronym and 2013 has been no different. During client meetings, in the pages of IT trade publications and on the minds of vendor partners – the term BYOD pops up more frequently than Psy’s “Gangham Style” does on pop radio. For the record, Psy is the smartly dressed Korean pop music sensation sporting Risky Business-style Ray Bans as opposed to the (also trending) bearded Uncle Si of Duck Dynasty (reality-TV) fame. If this is all meaningless to you, you’ve been working too hard. Ask your family, they miss you.
Consumerization of IT is finding its way into the enterprise rapidly. Choice, personalization and mobility are no longer simply appreciated but are ultimately demanded. BYOD in theory sounds like a terrific plan and if executed properly can be an outstanding component of an end user computing (EUC) solution in many environments. Success however goes far beyond an employee stipend and flexibility in choice. BYOD is not for every organization and even in those organizations where it makes sense, it’s not for every employee. Here is a list of the top ten considerations when investigating a BYOD solution for your organization:
- What are the core applications you need to deliver to end users? Are these applications supported by recommended or allowed devices? What are the corporate use cases?
- Will your infrastructure support connectivity and desktop/application delivery to new devices on your network? Storage, compute and network – it all matters.
- Do you have the budget to support this initiative? Hint: it will be more than you expect. Hint #2: don’t expect to “save money” (at least in the first year). The ROI (return on investment) may come but expectations inside 36 months are unrealistic.
- Who needs what? Organizations are diverse and dynamic. Not every employee will need to be part of a BYOD initiative. Different categories of associates will have varying device needs. The road warrior sales guy, administrative assistant and mechanical engineer will all have different needs.
- A well-executed plan will drive employee job satisfaction. Figure out how your team will deal with happy IT-using employees; it may be a new experience for all involved.
- Are you ready to set policy and stick to it? There will be challenges that make you question what you were thinking in the first place. Get managerial support and be confident.
- Be flexible. Sure, this may seem somewhat contrary to comment #6. Of course you’ll encounter situations where the intelligent response is to modify and improve.
- Get “buy in” from the board room and the corner office(s). The support of senior management and investors is critical; don’t even go there without serious majority support.
- Seek advice and approval from legal, accounting and human resources. Ask the art department and maintenance team too if you think it can help.
- Talk to others. I know this is hard for many of us who have spent careers in IT, but give it a shot and see what happens. Speak to partners who have delivered BYOD solutions. Reach out to similar organizations who have implemented their strategy. Heck, speak with companies who tried it and failed. Arm yourself with information, do your research.
This is a lot to digest. A poorly executed implementation has the surety of employees abandoning the program. Small steps and a detailed approach work best – don’t be afraid of running test groups and proof of concept (POC) trials. The risk of not exploring your options may leave your IT environment seeming as outdated as last decade’s pop dance craze. Is your organization considering BYOD? Have you already implemented a policy? If so, how has your experience been?