Today, we’re at a crossroads. Some companies are choosing to dive into the application economy, while others stand back afraid of the change. It should come as no surprise then that companies that are embracing the application economy are emerging as victorious.
That’s because customers today are far more likely to experience brands through software than in-person interactions. Everything is connected through the application-based world, and customers are demanding superior user experiences.
What can you learn from the leaders in the application economy, and what will it take for you to join their ranks?
Todas las entradas hechas por Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal
ITSM Brings Big Changes for Banking Operating [#Cloud]
Desjardins Group in Montréal is improving their IT operations through an advanced IT services management (ITSM) approach.
Tell us why ITSM has become important to you. What were some of the challenges, some of the requirements? What was the environment you were in that required you to adopt better ITSM principles?
Cloud Storage Goes Local for SANs & NAS | @CloudExpo
New local cloud services for co-location customers in 17 markets has been announced by 365 Data Centers. The new service supports customers’ NAS and SAN storage architectures, and is aimed at everything from clustered databases and Big Data analytics to archiving and disaster recovery.
We asked company executive Keao Caindec a few questions, and this is what he told us:
Cloud Computing Journal: Who are the target customers for the new service?
Keao Caindec: We are targeting businesses that are using the storage for databases, clustering, file storage with large volumes, local back, remote disaster recovery and mirroring, storage migration and temporary workloads. Data-intensive industries will also be targeted such as hardware and software, SaaS, manufacturing, retail, advertising, education, finance, and healthcare.
CCJ: How important is the hourly pricing plan? What sort of demand have you seen for it?
Keao: Hourly pricing is critical to realizing the benefits of cloud-based services. Hourly pricing allows our customers to pay only for the amount of storage they need, when they need it.
CCJ: Could you explain a bit how you can work with customers’ SANs and NAS storage?
Keao: Using our our web-based console, users create a Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) made up of dedicated drives that have been selected by the customer. You can easily add those drives into a RAID-protected pool drives. Based on that storage, you can create volumes of block (SAN) or file (NAS) storage. All of this functionality to manage and control storage is built into the console.
Security Issues in Cloud Computing By @GiladPN | @CloudExpo
In a recent webinar, Porticor’s AWS cloud security experts took on the security challenges companies face when migrating to AWS (and other IaaS clouds) and offered alternatives that enable IT Directors to take advantage of the cloud, while maintaining control of their data and its security. Security Issues in Cloud Computing: Are you a TARGET? […]
The post Security Issues in Cloud Computing: Porticor’s AWS Experts Discuss appeared first on Porticor Cloud Security.
SaaS and Cloud Sprawl By @SoftwareHollis | @CloudExpo [#SaaS #Cloud]
The proliferation of SaaS and Cloud applications has a dark side – the disconnect between IT and the application owners. IT is aware of only about 1 in 7 of the Cloud applications in their organization, raising issues ranging from compliance to security to backup and recovery.
Cloud Is the Future and Mobile Is the Driver By @Centrify | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
For all but the most curmudgeonly luddites among us, it’s become totally clear: “The cloud” is here to stay. The power and ubiquity of distributed compute and storage is all around us – at home, at work, and in our social lives.
Recent advances in virtualization have brought us compute efficiency, storage consolidation, and system redundancy that were nearly unimaginable just 10 years ago. As a former IT guy, those benefits were always the promise of virtualization, but they seemed like a futuristic fantasy.
A decade ago, my corporate file store consisted of primary storage with three disk shelves of expensive, fast spinning disks to store backed-up data for 30 days. Then I had a filer to track what data was “fresh” and what was “stale.” Stale data was moved to secondary storage, which consisted of many more shelves of much slower disks. Then, after 90 days, all data was copied via a (totally awesome and very expensive) tape robot that whipped and whizzed tapes around inside a big ol’ refrigerator-sized enclosure in my datacenter.
Announcing @SoftLayer ‘General Session’ at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley
Performance is the intersection of power, agility, control, and choice. If you value performance, and more specifically consistent performance, you need to look beyond simple virtualized compute. Many factors need to be considered to create a truly performant environment.
In their General Session at 15th Cloud Expo, Phil Jackson, Development Community Advocate at SoftLayer, and Harold Hannon, Sr. Software Architect at SoftLayer, to discuss how to take advantage of a multitude of compute options and platform features to make cloud the cornerstone of your online presence.
Windows 2003 End of Support Poll By @AppZero_Inc | @CloudExpo
Most IT administrators are painfully aware that Windows Server 2003 will reach the end of extended support in July 2015. This is a big deal because Windows Server 2003 has been a monster success since it was released 11 years ago. From 2003 to 2010 this platform was the workhorse for applications deployed at both small businesses and large enterprises. And, even though Microsoft released a major update with Windows 2008, late in 2008, most enterprises stuck with Windows 2003 until Windows Server 2008 R2 launched on October 22, 2009.
F5 Synthesis: Hybrid SSL Offload
#SSL #webperf #infosec
Now your services can take advantage of hardware acceleration even when they're deployed on virtual machines 
Way back in the day, when SSL offloading was young and relatively new, there were a variety of hardware, software and even architecture that arose to defeat the security penalty imposed by the requisite cryptographic functionality.
Most commonly, we'd slap a PCI-card into a server, muck with the web server configuration (to load some shared objects) and voila! Instant performance boost via hardware acceleration. Later, an architectural approach that leveraged a network-based offload capability was introduced. This meant configuring an SSL offload appliance in a side (or one) arm configuration (common for caches and even load balancers back then) in which SSL traffic was routed to the offload appliance and decrypted before being sent on to the web or app server. You added some latency in the hairpin (or trombone, if you prefer) but that was always more than offset by the improvement of not letting the web server try to decrypt that data in the first place.
We've come a long way since then and most often these days you'll find an application delivery controller (ADC) or an app proxy serving duty as cryptographic master of the application. Most ADCs are still far more efficient at handling SSL/TLS traffic because they've benefitted from Moore's Law in two places: the core system and the SSL acceleration hardware (which takes advantage of CPUs, too, in addition to custom hardware).
Now comes the advent of the next generation of application delivery architectures which, necessarily, rely on a fabric-based approach and incorporate virtual appliances as well as traditional hardware. Services 
deployed on the hardware of course benefit from the availability of specialized SSL acceleration but the virtual appliances? Not so much.
We (as in the corporate We) didn't like that much at all, especially given trends toward greater key lengths and the forthcoming HTTP 2.0 specification which, yes, requires SSL/TLS. That means a lot more apps are going to need SSL – but they aren't going to want the associated performance penalty that comes with it running on software. They may not be as important, but they aren't expendable. That's true whether the web server natively handles SSL or you move it off to a virtual ADC within the services fabric. All apps are important, of course, but we know that some are more important than others and thus are afforded the benefits of services deployed on faster performing hardware while others are relegated to virtual machines.
We take our commitment with Synthesis to leave no application behind seriously and thus have introduced the industry's first hybrid SSL offload capability.
Hybrid SSL Offload
Hybrid SSL Offload was made available with the release of BIG-IP 11.6 and enables virtual editions of BIG-IP as well as less capable and legacy BIG-IP appliances and devices to harness the power of hardware to improve app performance through cryptographic acceleration. This has the added benefit of freeing up resources on virtual appliances to improve the overall performance and capacity of app services deployed on that virtual edition.
In a nutshell, user requests are sent to the appropriate virtual ADC instance, which hosts all app services for an app except SSL. SSL is offloaded to a designated service running on a hardware platform that can take advantage of its targeted hardware acceleration.
Using hybrid SSL offload within the Synthesis service fabric allows organizations to:
•Achieve the maximum SSL performance of a virtual license
•Free up Virtual Edition CPU utilization for other application services
All together this means better app performance and capacity for services deployed on virtual editions.
All applications need services and deserve optimal performance, even those that might otherwise by designated as "red shirt" apps by IT. F5 Synthesis continues to leave no application behind by ensuring every application has access to the services it needs, even when it means collaborating across device types.
Monetization – As Interesting as It Sounds?
Monetization. Monetize. Great sounding words. Is it just pricing or something more? Merriam-Webster defines monetize as “to coin into legal tender,” or “to purchase debt and thereby free for other uses moneys that would have been devoted to debt service,” or “to utilize (something of value) as a source of Brian James
The post Monetization – As interesting as it sounds? appeared first on Recurring Revenue Blog | Aria Systems.