Small data management solutions don’t work in our brave new Big Data world. Back in the small data days, we talked proudly about having gigabytes of structured data that had been carefully denormalized to reduce latency as much as possible. Today’s data is measured in petabytes, and it is dynamic, complex, and wildly varied in structure.
Small data was a nicely planned garden, but Big Data is a jungle: rich with resources, abundant in growth, but also a bit overwhelming and easy to get lost in.
Archivo mensual: enero 2015
Top Cloud Security Tips for CISOs By @GiladPN | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Cloud security is a top concern for chief security officers. In almost any enterprise, cloud migration is a given fact and recent attacks have proven, yet again, that data security is a critical component in any cloud migration strategy.
Below are four tips, specific to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud security.
When moving to the cloud, companies have the natural tendency to look for security solutions from their cloud provider of choice. IaaS providers are very good at managing storage, computation resources, and virtual machines, but in most cases they can’t provide data security solutions that are as secure as if you were to manage them yourself.
The Five DevOps Blogs You Need To Read By @XebiaLabs | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
With so much great content on the web and so many people writing about DevOps, I am sure you have heard of either some of these blogs or the brilliant minds running them. This very short list includes some of the most popular and interesting DevOps blogs we could find. Whether you are just starting out in the industry or a 10 year veteran, you need to start reading these immediately.
Predictions for Cloud Industry Growth in 2015 By @Solgenia_Corp [#Cloud]
The end of the year typically brings about a frenzy of news, reviews and forecasts about the next year, and rightfully so one of the top industry predictions for 2015 relate to the Cloud.
According to IDC, “the global cloud market, including private, public and hybrid clouds, will hit $118 billion in 2015 and crest at $200 billion by 2018. If the market shows that much growth next year, it will mean a 23.2% rise over the $95.8 billion market it reached in 2014.”
Industry analysts and pundits have speculated about the major growth areas of the cloud in 2015 and a majority of the predictions relate to hybrid cloud and security. These no doubt are key areas in the cloud, but are not the only factors that will lead to growth. The cloud is a complex framework and an industry that is driven by multiple drivers and has multiple complex pieces of framework that make it work. To understand the overall growth of the industry it is important to look at all the factors that affect the cloud overall.
Convergence: Catalyst to Transform Scientific Research | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
A new transformative research approach is gaining global attention and adoption. The scientific opportunities enabled by convergence-the coming together of insights and approaches from originally distinct fields-will make fundamental contributions in our drive to provide creative solutions to the most difficult problems facing us as a society. This convergence provides power to think beyond usual paradigms and to approach issues informed by many perspectives instead of few.
Announcing @B2Cloud to Exhibit at @CloudExpo New York [#Cloud]
SYS-CON Events announced today that B2Cloud, a provider of enterprise resource planning software, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
B2cloud develops the software you need. They have the ideal tools to help you work with your clients. B2Cloud’s main solutions include AGIS – ERP, CLOHC, AGIS – Invoice, and IZUM
Mature Asia Pacific public cloud services to climb to $7.4bn in 2015, Gartner claims
(c)iStock.com/BrianAJackson
Gartner has been gazing at its crystal ball again – and this time the analyst house claims that public cloud services in the mature Asia Pacific (APAC) market will reach $7.4 billion ($4.86bn) this year, and hit $11.5bn (£7.56bn) by 2018.
The analysts assess the ‘mature’ APAC as comprising Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea. Cloud management, storage, and software as a service (SaaS) will be among the strongest growers in the interim period, as more enterprise and government users jump onto cloud services.
Ed Anderson, research vice president at Gartner, argues “consistent and stable growth” will occur through 2018, because of the five countries’ relatively advanced tech profiles and solid telecommunications infrastructure.
Gartner sees the majority (52.5%) of the APAC public cloud services market to come through cloud advertising. SaaS will be at 21.5%, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at just under 10%, business process as a service (BPaaS) at 9.2%, cloud management and security services at 4% and platform as a service (PaaS) at 3%.
CloudTech has covered the Asia Pacific market in detail in the past, with eyes cast over the Indian and Chinese markets respectively. Neither country makes Gartner’s list of mature APAC cloud players, and with good reason; both countries are at a crossroads in their technological development.
The latest report from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) saw Japan as clear number one, followed by New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. These top six countries were defined as ‘ever-ready leaders’. China and India, in comparison, ranked 11th and 13th out of 14 nations respectively, and were described as ‘steady developing’ countries.
“We are anticipating a seismic data revolution once information access in Asia becomes universally cheap, powerful, and available,” the report notes. “And we believe the knowledge economy and cloud computing is the next great leveller for the region, poised to help accelerate the momentum around trade and economic integration in Asia.”
The full Gartner report (subscription required) can be found here.
Off-The-Shelf Technology Sparks Maker Space Race
Using an Intel Galileo microcontroller, a Styrofoam cooler and other do-it-yourself components, technology analyst Jamel Tayeb launched an odyssey to prove the space race is for anyone.
A few days before Elon Musk called off the launch of SpaceX’s AsiaSat 6 to “review all potential failure modes and contingencies again,” another inventor reaching for space sent his makeshift spacecraft 97,000 feet into near space, where it cracked through the Earth’s stratosphere before landing in an Oregon field just 60 miles from the original launch pad.
It’s a clear sign that the space race, once the realm of powerful governments and leading industries, has trickled down to curious individuals empowered with easily accessible, off-the-shelf computer components and gadgets.
Arduino, Intel Galileo and even Raspberry Pi are just a few of the programmable,data-crunching payloads makers are launching into space today to conduct their own near-space science experiments.
Compared with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecrafts, Jamel Tayeb’s handmade creation seems more like a helium balloon with an uncovered kite frame dangling from a string. But together they show just how quickly space exploration is evolving beyond NASA-led missions to outer space.
It was just two years ago that Falcon 9 made history when it lifted the Dragon spacecraft into orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station. It was the first time a commercial company visited the Space Station.
“Traveling into space is not yet as easy as taking the bus,” said Tayeb, a technology analyst who works in the Intel Software and Services Group.
“But today, we can reasonably get into the skies and take a peek — for real — at that shore of the cosmic ocean, as Carl Sagan said. We can get out there, just ankle deep, and run back to the safety of the beach.”
That’s what Tayeb did on August 20. His weather balloon-powered creation, fitted with computer hardware that he programmed, allowed him to capture atmospheric data then return to Earth.
High-altitude ballooning is becoming more popular as professional and novice makers build their own computer-powered spacecraft. Last April, 17 countries competed in theGlobal Space Balloon Challenge.
“The best thing about high-altitude ballooning is that it’s an accessible project for everyone, regardless of experience,” wrote Maker Magazine, which covered the international challenge. “The majority of teams built their payloads using Arduinos and Raspberry Pi’s connected to sensors, smartphones/tablets with data-logging apps, cameras hacked with high-capacity batteries, off-the-shelf GPS trackers, and 3D-printed parts.”
For Tayeb, building a space balloon craft and capturing his own images of the curvature of the Earth was a childhood dream come true.
He also had other admirable motivations.
“I wanted to generate a blueprint that students and academics could reuse,” he said.
He practiced first on an Arduino MEGA 2560 microcontroller then moved to a Galileo board to build his final spacecraft. After two months of software coding, testing the battery- and solar-powered computer hardware, then collaborating with others to assemble the craft, Tayeb was ready to launch in an open, uncrowded area along Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge.
To get there, it took the help of about 10 people, including friends, co-workers and Joseph Maydell, a former flight controller for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and founder of High Altitude Science.
Tayeb’s craft weighed less than four pounds, just under FAA regulations, which allowed him to avoid registering for permission to launch.
“The bellow weighed 1.3 pounds, the platform was 1.2 pounds and the payload was 1.5 pounds,” he said.
“We used an Eagle Pro Near Space Kit as our platform. In addition of the Eagle Flight Computer, we used two Intel Galileo boards.”
One Galileo was fitted on the outside frame as static, “to immortalize the event,” he said.
The second Galileo computer board accounted for the so-called payload, which was nestled in protective styrofoam and focused on capturing flight parameters such as temperature, pressure and altitude.
For those who want to know, Tayeb shared details about the payload: he used an Intel Galileo (first generation) microcontroller, a 10200 mAh LiPo battery, DC-DC power booster, uMMC logger module and a MS5607 sensor. The Eagle Flight Computer, which is designed to handle temperatures as low as -60C, was fitted to the platform without thermal protection. The Eagle Flight acted as a backup computer, capturing position, heading and speed.
[Editor’s note: This balloon spacecraft will be in the Ultimate MakerSpace at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco September 9-11.]
Two GoPro video cameras were fastened to the frame, capturing the voyage in HD.
Combined, the two cameras captured over five hours of video, which amounted to nearly 11 GB of video data.
“Everything gets recorded on-board by each sub-system — computers, cameras, loggers, etc.,” he said. “Then you have to successfully recover the platform so you can extract the data.”
He said there’s no way to view the information in real or pseudo real time while the craft is in flight because even if it was permitted by FCC, the required bandwidth would exceed what’s available to makers today.
Tayeb launched his craft on August 20 after 2 .pm. After about a 3-hour accent through the Jetstream, which the team monitored for weeks leading up to the launch, the craft hovered in near space momentarily before dropping back to Earth, which took about an hour.
“We were getting GPS data every 10 minutes,” he said. But he’d have to wait until the craft landed before he could see the atmospheric data collected by the on-board computers.
The craft landed about 60 miles away from the launch spot, something that made Tayeb proud. But when he finally located his craft in an open field of dry grass, the payload was missing.
“It got ejected somewhere just at landing and we have not yet found it,” he said.
Disappointed but not deterred, Tayeb calls his first mission a great success.
“Science is a real interesting thing,” he said. “With the right help, a team can make pretty amazing things. Building this awoke the daydreamer inside me.”
Tayeb, who is creating a recipe book so others can create a Galileo-powered spacecraft, says anyone can test scientific theories and the laws of physics on their own. Here are his 5 tips:
- Preparation is the key. Prepare your flight in advance. Prepare your recovery in advance. Prepare your payload and launcher in advance. The less improvisation, the more successful you will be. Seek the help of other makers of professionals if in doubt.
- Something will go wrong! However prepared you are, there will be unexpected events or behaviors of hardware and software.
- There is no-one to reload / restart your code up there, so make it resilient as much as possible.
- Safety first! If your platform is stuck in a dangerous location, do not try to recover it by yourself — don’t get caught by the recovery fever. Seek the help of the appropriate professional services.
- For the recovery, be methodical, don’t race off until you’ve checked the GPS data. Use Google Earth to plot your easiest pathway to the landing. Satellite view can give you a good hint of the issues you may have to face — so you can prepare for trees, water, etc.
Two Looks at Cloud Readiness In Asia
I had an interesting discussion recently with a key person at the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), a consortium based in Singapore. The group is funded by companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, HP, EMC, Equinix, NetApp, several global and regional telcos, and many others.
The ACCA, in its words, provides a forum “to collaborate on the requirements of the Asia market from within, with expertise born of local knowledge.” The organization, through the activity of its members, aims to “accelerate the growth of the cloud market regionally by helping remove obstacles and leveraging opportunities.”
Among its activities is the annual publication of a region-wide Cloud Readiness Index. The report integrates and weighs from several sources, in ten areas: Data privacy, international connectivity, data sovereignty, broadband quality, government regulatory environment and usage, power grid and green policy, intellectual property protection, business sophistication, and data center risk.
Japan Leads The Way
Japan is the most highly ranked country among the 14 nations surveyed, followed by Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. A middle group includes Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Rounding out the results are China, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam.
The report delves into detail about how it derived rankings in each category, what each nation is doing well and less well, and how each nation can continue to improve. Bandwidth is a big issue, something that is improving with more submarine cables (which deliver 98% of the region’s bandwidth) coming online, and various national commitments to bringing broadband connectivity (as much as 100Mb) to a regional population that includes almost half of the people on earth.
It’s not unexpected to see the survey’s results closely follow income levels; the wealthier a nation, the more capable it should be to develop a strong IT infrastructure, and perhaps institute the freedoms of information flow and helpful governmental policies that enable continued development.
It’s fun to contrast these results with the ongoing search we’ve been doing at the Tau Institute (which was founded in Asia). We take a relative approach, adjusting for income levels and socio-economic factors such as income disparity and perceived corruption. This tends to show less-wealthy countries as performing in a much more dynamic fashion than they appear in traditional ranking systems.
Another Look at Vietnam
So, for example, Vietnam is one of the star performers in our research. It ranks among the world’s top 20 nations on a relative basis, having developed a robust IT infrastructure given its per-person income, which ranks 86th among the 100+ nations we survey.
We also have Japan and South Korea in our global top 20, however, with South Korea slightly head, showing how tremendously well these nations have developed their IT, using their ample economic resources wisely.
China and Indonesia lag in our rankings as they do in the Cloud Readiness Index. India performs better in our ranking than with the Cloud Readiness Index, Thailand performs worsse, with the Philippines and Malaysia doing well but not speactacularly so.
Several Measures
We have developed several different views of our data, measuring not only overall dynamics, but also technology-centric potential; a “Goldilocks Index” that shows whether a nation is too hot, too cool, or just right; an overall challenge index; and a look at what we call instantaneous dynamism, ie, how rapidly is each nation developing at the present moment.
That said, it’s nice to see the amount of data and work that’s gone into the Cloud Readiness Index. I would urge people in business, government, and NGOs to download the full report from the ACCA site – it’s free of charge – as a way of learning a lot about what’s going on in Asia.
With a strong infrastructure and solid policies in place, these nations can start to benefit mightily from learning more about cloud computing and how to design and deploy modern applications and services on a modern architecture.
A Look into Our Crystal Ball By @CarpathiaHost | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
At the start of a new year we have the opportunity to look ahead and think about what trends will likely shape the coming months. 2015 is poised to be transformative for government agencies and enterprises, as an increasing number of organizations look to modernize their computing environments, expand their focus on secure and compliant hosting, and meet the growing demands of an increasingly mobile workforce. What trends will we see emerge this year?
Here are the top seven predictions we see for 2015.