«We formed Formation several years ago to really address the need for bring complete modernization and software-defined storage to the more classic private cloud marketplace,» stated Mark Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Formation Data Systems, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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Most business people only select enterprise grade software once or twice during their entire lifetimes, if at all. Companies hire consultants to help with the Request for Proposal (RFP) and to guide them through the search process. Selection teams create extensive RFPs that cover the most minute details of functionality. They consider a multitude of other factors, both tangible and intangible. The final choice can make or break a career, so people take it very seriously and ensure they cover every detail. The ERP selection process is rigorous. There are thousands of search consultants vying for the chance to help. The process has given rise to more than 10,000 books on the topic available on Amazon. The process is well defined. And it’s all wrong.

The ERP selection process described above focuses on minutia, and it skips over some of the most important factors that contribute to long term success.

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Cloud computing is rewriting the books on information technology (IT) but inter-cloud networking remains a key operational issue. Layering inherently global cloud services on top of a globally fractured networking infrastructure just doesn’t work. Incompatibilities abound and enterprise users are forced to use “duct-tape and baling wire” to keep their global operations limping along. The continuing gulf between IT professionals and business managers only exacerbates this sad state of affairs. IT professionals, however, bear a more significant amount of blame for the current state because we are the ones responsible for providing the operational platform and enabling the new information delivery models that drive modern constituent services and commerce.

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Traditional IT, great for stable systems of record, is struggling to cope with newer, agile systems of engagement requirements coming straight from the business.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, William Morrish, General Manager of Product Sales at Interoute, outlined ways of exploiting new architectures to enable both systems and building them to support your existing platforms, with an eye for the future. Technologies such as Docker and the hyper-convergence of computing, networking and storage creates a platform for consolidation, migration and enabling digital transformation.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that MangoApps will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
MangoApps provides modern company intranets and team collaboration software, allowing workers to stay connected and productive from anywhere in the world and from any device.

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A data breach could happen to anyone. Data managed by your company is valuable to someone, no matter what the data is. Everything has a price tag on the dark web. It is especially true when it is customer data, such as personal and payment card details.
When your customers’ data turns up somewhere unexpected on the Internet, you may feel the world is collapsing around you. People start tweeting about the hack, angry customers phone in, and Brian Krebs publishes his first article. Your organization switches to an emergency mode to handle the situation. It is the time when your incident response team takes control to put the genie back in the bottle.

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Venafi has extended the power of its platform in an easy-to-use utility for DevOps teams available for immediate download. Now DevOps teams can eliminate the hassle of acquiring and installing TLS keys and certificates. Instead, customers can focus on speeding up continuous development and deployment, while security teams have complete visibility and can keep the DevOps environment secure and compliant to protect customer data. Extending the Venafi Trust Protection Platform requires only a single line of code and works out-of-the box with leading automation, orchestration, and containerization platforms including Puppet, Chef, Docker, Terraform, Saltstack, and Ancible – on premise and in the cloud.

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Many private cloud projects were built to deliver self-service access to development and test resources. While those clouds delivered faster access to resources, they lacked visibility, control and security needed for production deployments.
In their session at 18th Cloud Expo, Steve Anderson, Product Manager at BMC Software, and Rick Lefort, Principal Technical Marketing Consultant at BMC Software, discussed how a cloud designed for production operations not only helps accelerate developer innovation, it also delivers the control that IT Operations needs to run a production cloud without getting in the way.

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As cloud and storage projections continue to rise, the number of organizations moving to the cloud is escalating and it is clear cloud storage is here to stay. However, is it secure?
Data is the lifeblood for government entities, countries, cloud service providers and enterprises alike and losing or exposing that data can have disastrous results.
There are new concepts for data storage on the horizon that will deliver secure solutions for storing and moving sensitive data around the world.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Scott Sobhani, CEO and cofounder of Cloud Constellation Corporation and the SpaceBelt, Information Ultra-Highway, attendees learned about new best practices to bypass the Internet.

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Since we launched our Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster two weeks ago, several hundred people around the globe have downloaded it – but it’s not clear how many of them have taken the time to work their way through it.

Haven’t seen it yet, you say? No worries – you can download the poster for free at AgileDigitalTransformation.com.

OK then – everyone have the poster handy? Good. Here’s how to make sense of it.

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