[session] Test Automation | @DevOpsSummit @AnneHungate #AI #DevOps

“Why didn’t testing catch this” must become “How did this make it to testing?” Traditional quality teams are the crutch and excuse keeping organizations from making the necessary investment in people, process, and technology to accelerate test automation. Just like societies that did not build waterways because the labor to keep carrying the water was so cheap, we have created disincentives to automate.
In her session at @DevOpsSummit at 20th Cloud Expo, Anne Hungate, President of Daring Systems, will discuss how to break the cycle of manual testing as de-facto – empowering development and quality to lead with automation. Be prepared to learn about the changes in reporting, behaviors, and communication necessary to make automation the first choice.

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Software-Defined Technologies: Transforming the Value Stream | @CloudExpo #SDN #NFV #Cloud

Software-defined is a concept that refers to the ability to control some or all of the functions of a system using software. The concept is sometimes incorrectly characterized as a buzzword or marketing jargon, when in fact it has a clear meaning that needs to be understood by organizations looking to keep pace with change.
When technologies become software-defined, there are major systemic benefits for organizations that use them, including lower costs, higher quality products and services, and less risk.

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Updating the Balanced Scorecard for the Saas World | @CloudExpo #SaaS #Cloud #FinTech

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a tool that organizations have used for many years to measure strategic, operational and financial performance. The concept behind the BSC is simple: a company and/or business unit prioritizes a set of 15 to 20 financial and non-financial metrics across four quadrants linked to the company’s market and operations strategy in order to measure and manage performance. While the BSC is a good organizing framework and remains relevant today, it needs a major shift to be effective in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) world where traditional BSC measures don’t adequately gauge and predict performance.

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[session] #IoT Security Certifications | @ThingsExpo @PECB #M2M #Security

In his session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Lachapelle, CEO of the Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (PECB), will provide an overview of various initiatives to certifiy the security of connected devices and future trends in ensuring public trust of IoT. Eric Lachapelle is the Chief Executive Officer of the Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (PECB), an international certification body. His role is to help companies and individuals to achieve professional, accredited and worldwide recognized certification against various international standards. He also has extensive experience as a trainer and an educator in the fields of Information Security, Risk Management and IT. Throughout his career, he has worked in North America, Latin America and Asia with individuals and various companies of all sizes.

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Managing Performance for SaaS-Based Applications | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DevOps #WebPerf

Software as a service (SaaS), one of the earliest and most successful cloud services, has reached mainstream status. According to Cisco, by 2019 more than four-fifths (83 percent) of all data center traffic will be based in the cloud, up from 65 percent today. The majority of this traffic will be applications.
Businesses of all sizes are adopting a variety of SaaS-based services – everything from collaboration tools to mission-critical commerce-oriented applications. The rise in SaaS usage has many positive benefits, but one drawback is that as demand grows, SaaS providers are having a harder time ensuring a high-performing (fast, reliable) end-user experience – at the same time performance expectations are growing higher than ever.

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Tech News Recap for the Week of 03/27/17

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 03/27/2017!

Apple iCloud account beach gets bigger. A scramble at Cisco exposes uncomfortable truths about U.S. cyber defense. How VMware HA works in your data center. Cisco’s AppDynamics acquisition is official. Why hybrid IT is the stepping-stone to the enterprise cloud. Leaked records up 566 percent to 4 billion in 2016 and more tops news this week you may have missed!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

Security

VMware

Cisco

Microsoft

Cloud

Software Defined Networking

And these are just cool…

Did you miss our recent webinar, “Harnessing Lightning: DevOps + ITOM for Secure & Compliant Hybrid Cloud Ops?”

Click here to download the webinar and find out how to embrace not resist DevOps and transform your IT with a next-gen IT Operations Transformation Framework

By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist

Server Provisioning | @DevOpsSummit @Automic @CAinc #DevOps #APM

In large enterprises, environment provisioning and server provisioning account for a significant portion of the operations team’s time. This often leaves users frustrated while they wait for these services. For instance, server provisioning can take several days and sometimes even weeks.
At the same time, digital transformation means the need for server and environment provisioning is constantly growing. Organizations are adopting agile methodologies and software teams are increasing the speed of their development processes, thus requiring more and more servers and environments to be provisioned for their development and testing.

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How Seattle City Light is leveraging the power of cloud?

Companies across all sectors are embracing cloud computing to leverage the many benefits it offers. Since cloud offers increased productivity and efficiency, almost every major company in the world, including semi-government ones like utility companies, are taking to the cloud in a big way. The latest utility company to implement cloud is the Seattle City Light.

This public utility company provides electrical power through its grid network to the city of Seattle and its surrounding areas such as Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Normandy Park and Tukwila. Seattle City Light is the tenth largest utility company in the U.S.

Now, this company wants to tap into the power of cloud to increase its efficiency. Specifically, it wants to use high-powered computing, storage and data analysis to improve the efficiency of its power distribution. Given the changing demands of all businesses and the emergence of different clean energy sources, it makes sense for the company to shift to the cloud now than ever before.

In addition, it wants to get a deeper insight into its customers’ behavior, so that they can tailor solutions that meet their unique needs. For example, some customers may prefer to give back solar power to the grid while others may completely depend on the utility company to power their home. Since the needs of each of these customers vary, Seattle City Light wants to be in a position to give them just the tailored solution they want. This is possible only with the cloud as it can analyze vast amounts of real-time data quickly to give the insights that can help this company to make better decisions.

As a first step, Seattle City Light has partnered with a Cincinnati-based company called Integral Analytics to host its flagship LoadSEER solution on AWS.  According to the CEO of Integral Analytics, Kevin Kushman, AWS was one of the top choices given the complex nature of this application and the varying storage it entails. Also, he opined that AWS has many market tested apps and process that essentially meant Seattle City Light did not have to reinvent the wheel.

Just to give you a brief idea, LoadSEER is a distribution and DER integration application that is built on a distribution load database updated with data in real-time. As a result, the distribution can be dynamic and will be based on the current needs of customers. Such a distribution plan will greatly optimize distribution and can make the overall usage of power more efficient.

Over time, this move is expected to pave way for this utility company to adopt smartgrids and maybe even smart meters that can make power distribution and efficiency even more efficient.

It’s noteworthy that Seattle City Light is the first municipal authority in the US to own and operate a hydroelectric plant. It also uses other sources of power such as wind and solar to meet its demands. Given this, it’s not surprise that this utility company wants to embrace cloud and set an example for other public utility companies in the U.S to follow suit.

The post How Seattle City Light is leveraging the power of cloud? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Security monitoring remains ‘complex and chaotic’ – and cloud and IoT will only make it worse

One in three respondents in a survey conducted by AlienVault said the state of security monitoring in their organisation was ‘complex and chaotic’, adding a ‘major disconnect’ was still in place between beliefs and actions in cloud security.

The survey, conducted at the RSA conference in San Francisco back in February, polled 974 attendees. One in five (21%) admit they don’t know how many cloud applications are being used in their organisation, while 39% say it is more than 10. 42% of respondents say lack of visibility into their cloud activities is a ‘significant’ concern.

Almost two thirds (62%) said they were worried about Internet of Things (IoT) devices in their environment – yet 45% added that they saw the benefits of IoT outweigh the risks. 43% of respondents said their company does not monitor IoT traffic at all – a finding which was described as ‘frightening’ by AlienVault – while 20% said they didn’t know what traffic was monitored.

“The driving force behind cloud and IoT is the availability and analysis of information, but they must be managed and monitored in the right way,” said Javvad Malik, AlienVault security advocate. “If data is misused, or inadequately protected, the consequences can be severe.”

Writing for this publication earlier this month, iland director of EMEA marketing Monica Brink argued that this was the year when IoT ‘moved up the agenda’ for business investment in cloud technologies. “IoT data tends to be heterogeneous and stored across multiple systems; as such, the market is calling for analytical tools that seamlessly connect to and combine all those cloud-hosted data sources, enabling businesses to explore and visualise any type of data stored anywhere in order to maximise the value of their IoT investment,” she wrote.

“It’s time for organisations to focus on what they do have control over – threat detection and incident response – and implement a unified solution that can monitor on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments,” added Malik. “Simplifying security in this way enables companies to immediately identify and respond to threats, and in today’s cybersecurity landscape, this is the best strategy to mitigate risk.”