Data reduction delivers compelling cost reduction that substantially improves the business case in every cloud deployment model. No matter which cloud approach you choose, the cost savings benefits from data reduction should not be ignored and must be a component of your cloud strategy.
IT professionals are finding that the future of IT infrastructure lies in the cloud. Data reduction technologies enable clouds — public, private, and hybrid — to deliver business agility and elasticity at the lowest possible cost, making cloud the deployment model of choice for IT infrastructure going forward.
Archivo mensual: julio 2017
Five ways to shine a light on shadow IT
Today’s fast-paced work environment finds employees striving to improve efficiency, productivity and communication. In an attempt to excel at work, they often use applications, services, data storage and sharing beyond IT’s approval. This practice — known as shadow IT — is having an obvious impact on technical support teams by undercutting sound governance and reducing operational efficiencies. According to Gartner, by 2020, one-third of security breaches will be because of shadow IT.
There are five ways, though, that IT can become a trusted ally across an organisation and build a plan of action against the security vulnerabilities and unnecessary costs of shadow IT.
Seek out the biggest shadow IT opportunities
Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. Take inventory of who is using what programmes across the company. With this information, IT can then assess potential issues and make appropriate changes. Monitor closely to see if any new and unknown tools or applications pop up in regular scans. Depending on results, an enterprise-wide vulnerability scan may be necessary. Network sniffers and security scanning tools can provide detailed information on new and unknown data streams. And while monitoring does not remove the threats of shadow IT, it does provide the IT department with better insights and the ability to start risk assessments or research alternative solutions.
Assess security and efficiency risks and provide suitable alternatives
Take advantage of creating an open dialogue with your colleagues — your internal customers — across the company. Listen to their feedback, learn more about the problems they’re trying to solve, and be willing to provide input on which tools may be a security concern and offer an alternative. I once had a request to review a tool that was already approved and deployed by another department in the organisation. In this case, it was a lot easier (and a lot cheaper) to adjust our plan to add a few more licenses than it would have been to initiate a whole new contract.
Encourage employees to come forward with their requirements
Let’s look at supporting teleworkers as an example. If you don’t have an IT-approved way of enabling employees to work remotely, it is almost certain they will find a way to do so on their own. That’s when things get tricky. There is a tendency for IT organisations to not be as open to new requirements needed by employees to do their job.
IT should offer a safe haven for those employees and departments to come forth with their requirements and even suggest possible solutions that they would like to see implemented. By working together, IT can then take a look at the programmes, determine the risk and offer comparable solutions, where needed, to achieve beneficial outcomes for all.
Become more involved in the application selection process
This truly comes down to trust and relationships. It is important for IT to build a rapport with every department head and meet regularly to discuss their technology strategy. Establishing an open dialogue between departments and the IT organisation helps to remove the “us” versus “them” notion and makes technology transparency and potential risks of adopting unapproved technologies less of an issue. Having a seat at the table in the strategic planning stage will reduce most surprises around shadow IT down the road.
Keep in mind that not all shadow IT is bad
It is very possible that not everything you discover when mitigating shadow IT is bad. The tools you discover are truly the voice of the customer, showing you what teams really need to be successful. And it even may be that these applications can be beneficial to other departments. Be open to feedback from the department heads and work together to have IT be part of the strategic planning for the department and company from the beginning.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that shadow IT doesn’t have to be prevalent if there is open communication between IT and its customers. Employees typically engage in shadow IT because they think it will save time and money by not involving IT in the approval process for the technology they want to use to be more efficient.
In reality, going around IT just bypasses the critical management, integration, and security and compliance — related safeguards they support. While it may take a bit of time, additional due diligence and even a bit of hand-holding make it possible to mitigate the risk of shadow IT and safeguard the security, profitability and efficiency of the entire company.
[video] The Benefits of Public Cloud with @Cloudistics | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud #Analytics
«As we’ve gone out into the public cloud we’ve seen that over time we may have lost a few things – we’ve lost control, we’ve given up cost to a certain extent, and then security, flexibility,» explained Steve Conner, VP of Sales at Cloudistics,in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
[video] Cloud-Scale Infrastructures with @JuniperNetworks | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Security
«We’re here to tell the world about our cloud-scale infrastructure that we have at Juniper combined with the world-class security that we put into the cloud,» explained Lisa Guess, VP of Systems Engineering at Juniper Networks, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Stripe beats Dropbox and Slack to top spot in Forbes Cloud 100 ranking
Payments provider Stripe is the top private cloud computing company today with storage company Dropbox and messaging firm Slack making up the top three, according to the latest Cloud 100 list from Forbes.
Slack, which came top last year, finishes third with Dropbox taking second position for the second consecutive year. DocuSign was ranked at #4, completing a quartet of San Francisco-based companies at the top.
The list also recognises the growing influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) in valuations; among the highest new entries were Redwood City-based C3 IoT, at #19, and Uptake, based out of Chicago, at #22. Both companies participate in the industrial IoT space.
In total, almost half (48%) of companies in the Cloud 100 were based in the Silicon Valley area, compared with 13 in New York City, Boston with seven, and Utah with six. European companies in the mix include Adyen (#5), a payments provider based in the Netherlands and Veeam (#27) from Switzerland, while the UK’s only entry is NewVoiceMedia (#71), a provider of contact centre technology based in Basingstoke.
As new companies join the list – a quarter in all – others disappear, with 10 firms ‘graduating’, as Forbes puts it, to sale or IPO. Six of these 10 firms were in the top 20 last year, including Cloudera, ranked fifth in 2016, which went public in April this year, and AppDynamics, ranked ninth, acquired by Cisco in March.
In other words, the Cloud 100 list is not just for who is performing well today, but who is likely to go further tomorrow, as Alex Konrad, list editor at Forbes, explains. “Members of the second annual Cloud 100 list today will be tomorrow’s major IPOs and acquisitions, driving forward not just the tech sector but also the many industries that make up their customers,” he said.
Reuters, in an exclusive article earlier this month, reported that Dropbox was seeking to hire IPO underwriters – a story the company declined to comment on – while Stripe pocketed $150 million in series D investment in November last year and Slack secured $200m in a series F in April 2016.
The top 10 companies, in order, were Stripe, Dropbox, Slack, DocuSign, Adyen, Qualtrics, Medallia, Tanium, Mailchimp, and Squarespace.
You can read the full list here.
[slides] #Monitoring with #ArtificialIntelligence | @CloudExpo @Dynatrace #DevOps #AI #ML #DX
Today we can collect lots and lots of performance data. We build beautiful dashboards and even have fancy query languages to access and transform the data. Still performance data is a secret language only a couple of people understand. The more business becomes digital the more stakeholders are interested in this data including how it relates to business. Some of these people have never used a monitoring tool before. They have a question on their mind like “How is my application doing” but no idea how to get a proper answer.
[video] Simplify Complex Issues with @PlanTools | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Agile #FinTech
«I’m here to leverage my secret sauce, which is using outsourced development and the company that I utilize is delaPlex Software and they’ve basically allowed me to win Fortune 500 companies,» noted Justin Witz, CTO of FRA and PlanTools, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
State of Cloud Computing in American Counties
Cloud computing is almost everywhere today. Yet, many American counties are behind when it comes to cloud adoption.
That’s the conclusion from 2017 Digital Counties Survey conducted by the Center for Digital Government (CDG). This survey collected a sample from many counties across the length and breadth of the country and found that 78 percent of respondents have less than 20 percent of their systems in the cloud.
One quick word about this survey – many of the counties that took part in this survey are digitally more advanced than other counties, so this number tends to reflect higher than average numbers.
If you think about it, the picture is really dismal. It goes to show that most counties have just started on the path to cloud adoption or are yet to begin this process. What could be the possible reasons?
The most important one could be lack of knowledge about the benefits that come from cloud systems. Unfortunately, there continues to be much apprehension surrounding cloud security and many counties are hesitant to put public information on the cloud. This lack of awareness about cloud security advancements is one of the major impediments when it comes to moving apps to the cloud.
The second important factor could be the cost. Moving existing apps and data to the cloud can be a costly affair, even if it’s one time and pays off eventually. The initial investment is fairly high and the existing budgetary constraints in counties can make it difficult to make this transition.
A third factor could be the presence of legacy systems. Many apps that are in place are at least a decade old, which means, they may not be so cloud friendly. Moving them to the cloud could possibly entail much effort and cost, and sometimes, the migration may be complicated too.
A combination of these three factors could be the reason for this poor cloud adoption rate among counties.
A surprising aspect is that many counties want to leverage the power of cloud by moving their data to the cloud. In fact, in the same survey, more than 45 percent of respondents said that half of their apps would be in the cloud soon. Another 22 percent said that they plan to move anywhere between 40 to 50 percent of their data to the cloud within the next year.
These are positive signs that can bring cheer to cloud specialists. From a cloud service provider’s perspective, this survey is good news because it means there’s a dearth of opportunities available in the government tech sector. However, it’s important for these providers to be more proactive and address any concerns that counties may have with respect to cloud computing.
Also, it’s important for cloud service providers to reach out not only to the richest and digitally advanced counties, but also to the relatively backward and smaller ones, so the development is uniform and everyone gets to gain some benefit out of it.
With such measures, we can expect to see improved results in the next annual survey of CDG.
The post State of Cloud Computing in American Counties appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
How cloud robotics will generate new value chains and business models – with 5G the enabler
Cloud robotics is set to generate new value chains, technologies, architectures and business models, according to a new paper.
The report, put together by GTI, a body focusing on the TD-LTE (time division long term evolution) ecosystem alongside SoftBank, CloudMinds, China Mobile, Huawei and Skymind, argues the advantages of cloud robots, with the same common network, are threefold; information sharing, offloaded computation, and collaboration.
One of the examples the report looks at – or gives an image of – is a machine learning project Google undertook last year featuring an array of robots sharing experiences to improve their grasping ability. “A human child is able to reliably grasp objects after one year, and takes around four years to acquire more sophisticated precision grasps,” the researchers wrote. “However, networked robots can instantaneously share their experience with one another, so if we dedicate 14 separate robots to the job of learning grasping in parallel, we can acquire the necessary experience much faster.”
Hence the potential of cloud as a common medium. The report argues the possibilities and use cases are many; from intelligent visual processing, to natural language processing, to facial recognition, giving opportunities in logistics, security, and education among others. According to Tractica, the value of the global robot market will grow from $34.1 billion in 2016 to $226.2bn in 2021.
By 2020, GTI adds, the proportion of connected robots globally will be 90%, with approximately 20 million new connections needed every year to support their day to day operations. The key to its success, the report argues, is 5G.
As 5G progresses, three application scenarios are predicted; enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC), backed up by software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV). For issues in cloud robotics, such as real-time control, video and voice processing, 5G, network slicing, and mobile edge computing, will fit the bill for applications.
“Network slices that have different specific performance characteristics can match the requirements of cloud robotics, match the needs for power consumption at the robot terminal, and provide appropriate roaming,” the report argues. “Using these approaches, 5G networks will also be able to meet the most demanding requirements in terms of bandwidth, latency and security.”
You can read the full report here.
Windows Auto-Login: Why and How?
Parallels Support team guest author: Hemnath Prabagaran It’s well-known that users of Windows operating system set passwords for the login screen to protect their machines from unsolicited use. (Or they’re forced to do so by the system—e.g., when Windows 10 asks you to create and use a Microsoft account to use certain features like Cortana, syncing […]
The post Windows Auto-Login: Why and How? appeared first on Parallels Blog.