Software is eating the world. Companies that were not previously in the technology space now find themselves competing with Google and Amazon on speed of innovation. As the innovation cycle accelerates, companies must embrace rapid and constant change to both applications and their infrastructure, and find a way to deliver speed and agility of development without sacrificing reliability or efficiency of operations.
In her Day 2 Keynote DevOps Summit, Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Qubell, discussed how IT organizations can automate just-in-time assembly of application environments – each built for a specific purpose with the right infrastructure, components, service, data and tools – and deliver this automation to developers as a self-service. Victoria’s keynote will include remarks by Kira Makagon, EVP of Innovation at RingCentral, and Ratnakar Lavu, EVP of Digital Technology at Kohl’s.
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Network Security Trends to Be Aware of By @RenePaap | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
With every New Year it is time to look back at the industry events of the past 12 months, and use our expertise to predict what lies ahead, in order to be more prepared. With regards to DDoS attacks, here is a short list of what to expect in 2015.
We expect to see an increase in DDoS attacks size in terms of bandwidth, but likely there will be an emphasis on packets per second metric. Bandwidth is an important metric, and it is something most people can relate to. When shopping for home Internet connection, the bandwidth metric is what people are comparing.
Generating Quality with @CloudTest CEO @Lounibos | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
«SOASTA built the concept of cloud testing in 2008. It’s grown from rather meager beginnings to where now we are provisioning hundreds of thousands of servers on a daily basis on behalf of customers around the world to test their applications,» explained Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at DevOps Summit, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Connecting Applications to the Cloud with @ZenteraSystems | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
“The year of the cloud – we have no idea when it’s really happening but we think it’s happening now. For those technology providers like Zentera that are helping enterprises move to the cloud – it’s been fun to watch,» noted Mike Loftus, VP Product Management and Marketing at Zentera Systems, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at Cloud Expo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Vietnam Shines In Our IT Research
There’s something extraordinary going on in Vietnam, and I’m not sure everyone sees it. The country blazes from the dry pages of our research printouts, its incandescence obscuring its neighbors and making our office fire alarms nervous.
Among the 105 nations we now survey, Vietnam will finish in or near the Top 20 in the world in our overall ranking, when we announce our latest results next month. It will be near the top in Asia. Our overall ranking integrates several socio-economic and technological factors.
Additionally, Vietnam will rank near the top of the world in our pure tecnology development ranking.
In contrast, Vietnam continues to lag in the traditional economic development rankings that I’ve read. The United Nations’ Human Development Index places it 121st among 187 nations, tied with Guyana and trailing even Syria and Iraq.
It fares a little better in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index, finishing in a tepid tie for 65th among 144 nations, in the neighborhood of Peru, Colombia, Slovenia, and India. Another ranking, the Asia Cloud Computing Association’s Cloud Readiness Index, places Vietnam dead last among 14 nations surveyed.
Damned Lies & Statistics
The country’s mediocre to poor rankings in these surveys and others is no doubt strongly tied to less than $2,000 in per-person income, ranking around the bottom quartile of world incomes. Compare this amount to about $2,800 in the neighboring Philippines, $5,600 in Thailand, and $7,000 in China.
Yet this statistic, as with all single statistics, doesn’t tell the whole story. Our research takes the view that relative developmnt is the key; that is, how well is a country doing given its current economic resources. How strong are its underlying IT infrastructure and overarching societal development with respect to its overall wealth? And how dynamic is its environment? How quickly is its pace of change increasing?
By these measures, Vietnam is a star. Its global buzz has diminished recently, as years of rapid development following enactment of doi moi (renovation or innovation) reform policies in 1986 led to uneven development and societal stress.
Indeed, our research also shows Vietnam running “too hot” in our Goldilocks Index of pure technology development. How long can it sustain its current pace?
(More later…)
Containers: Don’t Skeu Them Up, Man
Gordon Haff wrote an insightful column today about “skeuomorphic virtualizaton,” in other words the notion of thinking of virtual servers as having the same look and feel of the physical machines lying underneath. The upshot is that virtualization ends up just being a form of partioning; users view virtualized instances as no different from a single physical server.
Gordon urges the end of skeuomorphism’s reign of terror (my words, not his) now that containers are (back) in the news.
So don’t simply stuff “a hodepodge,” as Gordon says, of operating systems versions along with your app and all that goes with it (web server, database, storage, comms) into a container as if it’s just another virtualized machine.
Instead, he writes that it’s time to think of “containerized operating systems, container packaging systems, container orchestration like Kubernetes, DevOps practices, microservices architectures, “cattle” (shorter term) workloads, software-defined everything, and pervasive open source as part of a new platform for cloud apps.”
Reboot Time
Old habits die hard. The relentless drive for efficiency in business focuses itself evermore on IT operations, breeding an instinct to view the new tool as simply an improved hammer and to simply try to slam things through with it more quickly. An increasing focus on DevOps, as seen from the high management level, can certainly reinforce this view.
But that would be wrong. Containers give everyone another shot at imagining their software as a number of services rather than a unified application. Further, as Gordon notes, they let you throw in an OS here, some orchestration there, a VPN there, and truly become efficient (and more future-proof) in the way you design and deploy what you’re trying to do.
The original SOA days seem far away to me, but the idea of provisioning services is still a radical one. Too often today, software-as-a-service in the cloud still means software-as-an-application from the sky. The inexorability of Moore’s Law allows people to slam things through for short-term gain rather than long-term efficiency, and this will be particularly true as containers become prized for their relative abstemious use of resources.
But an expeditious, rather than more profound, use of containers will just create tomorrow’s hodgepodge. The potential of containers to reboot the way we think of services and how they should be delivered can logically lead to re-imagining how users should experience what the services offer – and how skeuomorphic those experiences should be, of course.
OSS Development for the Modern Data Center By @John Savageau | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Modern Data Centers are very complex environments. Data center operators must have visibility into a wide range of integrated data bases, applications, and performance indicators to effectively understand and manage their operations and activities. Unfortunately, in many cases, the above systems are either done manually, have no standards, and had no automation or integration interconnecting individual back office components. This also includes many communication companies and telecommunications carriers which previously either adhered, or claimed to adhere to Bellcore data and operations standards.
In some cases, the lack of integration is due to many mergers and acquisitions of companies which have unique, or non standard back office systems. The result is difficulty in cross provisioning, billing, integrated customer management systems, and accounting – the day to day operations of a data center.
Have It Your Way By @MJannery | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
It’s always been my philosophy that we should make it as easy as possible for our prospects to write us checks. Sounds flippant, but I believe it is sound business philosophy.
It’s been interesting to me to see how customers have wanted to buy infrastructure software, and how it has changed over the years.
Back in the ’90s and early 2000’s, most network management vendors charged for their software per interface or per port, and we did as well. Around 2004 and 2005, we started receiving requests for device-based pricing, since it was difficult for end users to know just how many interfaces they had (but they knew how many devices were in inventory). So we acquiesced, and converted to device based pricing. To do this, you need to make assumptions about the average number of ports per networking device (or interfaces per Bladeserver, etc.).
Easy Internet of Things Integration By @AgilePoint | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
Today’s enterprise is being driven by disruptive competitive and human capital requirements to provide enterprise application access through not only desktops, but also mobile devices. To retrofit existing programs across all these devices using traditional programming methods is very costly and time consuming – often prohibitively so.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jesse Shiah, CEO, President, and Co-Founder of AgilePoint Inc., discussed how you can create applications that run on all mobile devices as well as laptops and desktops using a visual drag-and-drop application – and eForms-building techniques in 10% of the time it would take for traditional programming. Connect to all your existing in-house systems and databases as well as third-party applications like Salesforce, SAP, Office 365, etc., through easy-to-create and maintain process-centric enterprise workflow applications your team can create in days.
PCI DSS 3.0 Deadline Is Upon Us By @Porticor | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
2014 was a year of cloud security and compliance accomplishments and 2015 will certainly bring new challenges and new successes.
In 2014, we worked closely with many customers who needed to adhere to HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance requirements. We made sure all bases were covered, data was protected, and compliance was achieved.
Though PCI DSS 3.0 was officially released on November 7, 2013 and became effective on January 1, 2014, its compliance deadline took effect a year later, on January 1, 2015. This infographic explains what you need to know about PCI DSS 3.0.