Some people might think of cloud adoption as a marathon: a set distance to a clear goal, where keeping focus and maintaining a steady pace will ensure a winning outcome. While there is an element of truth to that, I consider the implementation process more of an obstacle course, with traps and pitfalls that can easily deter a careless competitor. I have seen all too many businesses jump into the trend of cloud computing without taking the time to make a plan outlining what they want to achieve in the short term while also keeping an eye on the future. The ideal cloud computing system will suit an organization’s current needs while also providing flexibility for changing circumstances.
It’s no secret that the cloud offers a tremendous variety of benefits to businesses of all sizes. It changes the static, inefficient data center into a dynamic service provider while providing high availability, scalability and better compliance with regulations. With constantly changing business requirements, and the rapid evolution of technology, that makes the cloud an ideal technology.
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Hip? Or Hype? Load and Performance Testing from the Cloud
Assuming you haven’t spent the last couple of years living under a rock, you’re bound to have been bombarded with all sorts of propaganda about “The Cloud.” “The Cloud,” according to the marketing types, is the greatest thing since the invention of bread, surely able to solve all of our needs, whether technology-related or not. While the hype for the cloud might be frequently and frustratingly overstated and confusingly applied in odd places (can someone please explain to me the Microsoft Cloud commercial where the woman goes “to the cloud!!” so she can generate a family photo? What does this have to do with the cloud? Isn’t this just Photoshop?), I’d like to discuss one place where the cloud adds a great deal of value: Load and Performance testing.
In this article, I’m going to talk about the benefits of using the cloud as part of your load and performance testing practices, as well as point out some common approaches in choosing a cloud solution.
In a future article, I’ll discuss some of the challenges the cloud presents and some best practices to deal with these challenges.
CloudTip #14 – Can I Get Profile Information from SQL Azure?
Your application is running slow. You need to find out what’s going on. If you’ve used SQL Profiler on a local database you might be familiar with how you can capture a trace of database activity and use it to figure out where your resources are going. The visibility makes it MUCH easier to tune a database than sorting thru a bunch of code. The question is, what do you do when you’re moving an app to the cloud?
If you’ve wondered how you can get Profile information from SQL Azure, the new online management portal for SQL Azure has been updated with design, deployment, administration and tuning features built in. The Overview screen provides quick links to the different areas of the portal, as well as easy links to help information from msdn online. You can get to the portal either by going to the Windows Azure management portal on http://windows.azure.com and after signing in going to the database section and clicking Manage, or simply browsing to your database name – https://
Cloud Expo NY: How Pro Sports Teams Use Collaborative Decision Making
The impact of Big Data is extremely broad for business, information management and technology. Being able to analyze your growing mountain of data can give you a distinct competitive advantage, but Big Data can be more than traditional tools can handle.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, John Igoe, Executive Director of Cloud and Big Data Solutions at Dell, will discuss how Dell Apache Hadoop Solutions can help by providing super-fast analysis, data mining and processing.
Cloud Expo NY: Integrate Big Data & Cloud with Your On-Premise Data Center
Whether your company is large or small, you are probably exploring Big Data solutions and using cloud services and will need to integrate with other enterprise workloads.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Gwyn Clay, CEO of Stonebranch, will share detailed information about how their customers are already integrating Workload Automation with tools like Hadoop, and running workloads completely in the cloud using a modern enterprise-wide workload automation solution that is 100% web-based, has modern graphical dashboards, embedded workload lifecycle management, and detailed auditing for security compliance.
RACI and PaaS – A Change in Operations
I have been having a great debate with one of my colleagues about the changing role of the IT operations (aka “I&O”) function in the context of PaaS. Nobody debates that I&O is responsible and accountable for infrastructure operations.
Application developers (with or without the blessing of Enterprise Architecture) select platform components such as application servers, middleware etc. I&O keeps the servers running – probably up to the operating system. The app owners then manage their apps and the platform components. I&O has no SLAs on the platform, etc.
In the PaaS era, I think this needs to change. IT Operations (I&O) needs to have full accountability and responsibility for the OPERATION of the PaaS layer. PaaS is no longer a part of the application, but is now really part of the core platform operated by IT. It’s about 24×7 monitoring, support, etc. and generally this is a task that I&O is ultimately best able to handle.
Cloud Expo Sponsor Rackspace Special Offer Coupon Code ▸ rackspaceVIPgold
As a Platinum Plus Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, Rackspace Hosting is offering special passes to SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Rackspace Hosting is the service leader in cloud computing, and a founder of OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers and partners, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and was featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. The company was also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2010 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting.”
Sigma Systems Unveils Cloud Service Broker
Sigma Systems on Monday unveiled the Sigma Cloud Service Broker, an integrated SaaS service fulfillment solution for the selection, provisioning and management of SaaS services and applications.
The Sigma Cloud Service Broker platform reduces costs, removes operational silos and reduces overall CapEx and OpEx by providing a single-sourced and deployed architecture for managing all on-network business services, including VoIP and high-speed broadband, as well as cloud-based SaaS services. The Cloud Service Broker enables communication service providers to extend value-added SaaS services to their small and medium business (SMB) customers in a scalable, repeatable and economic manner.
China Gives Google-Moto Merger Conditional OK
China’s antitrust regulators gave Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility the nod Saturday provided Google’s Android operating system remains open and free-of-charge for the next five years.
The “free” stipulation apparently doesn’t apply to applications or services, but it remains to be seen how that works out.
Google will have to report about its compliance with the terms to a Chinese monitor. “At the end of the five years, the Ministry of Commerce will continue to assess the state of the Chinese smartphone operating system market,” the agency said on its web site.
Google’s relationship with China has been tense since it moved its Chinese search operation to Hong Kong complaining of censorship. There’s also the little matter of China reportedly hacking its computers and stealing its secrets.
China was the last approval the giant deal needed so it might close this week. It will make Google a maker of phones, tablets and other devices like set-top boxes.
MMI, needless to say, makes Android devices, raising issues about what Android terms will be for other manufacturers. It has also courted patent infringement suits from Apple and Microsoft and an investigation by the European Commission into its licensing terms for FRAND patents.
In a statement, the Chinese ministry aligned behind Motorola’s FRAND obligations. How China might interpret FRAND is unclear.
Google will now own MMI’s 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications, but has already backed Motorola’s unreasonably high prices. Ironically China wants Google not to discriminate on Android.
Chinese phone makers ZTE and Huawei use Android and have to compete against foreign handset makers that also use Android. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Google would abandon its practice of giving early access to new Android code to only one company.
Cloud Expo NY: Predictive Analytics Leads to Successful Recommendations
Businesses today generate billions of events or 100s of TBs of data in a month. These data contain valuable insights into customer behavior, key trends, buying patterns, etc. If these are successfully mined, they can lead to successful decision-making to maximize revenue and traffic for the business. Successfully driving a business is only partly about understanding what happened; the other part lies in knowing what’s going to happen next.
In order to use past data and predict future events, there needs to be sufficient technology that is not merely extrapolating events. Powerful machine learning algorithms in association with combinatorial and graph algorithms are imperative to make accurate predictions about future events based on cross-dimensional correlations within the data, time-event correlations and recognizing patterns that would not be identified or understood using standard statistical, AI or Bayesian techniques. Handling the scale and the complex relationships within the data requires purpose-built algorithms that are specially designed to handle the needs of online businesses.