In case you missed it, the first phase of cloud computing has left the building. Thousands of companies are in the cloud. Practically all organizations regardless of size already have production applications in a public, off-premises cloud or a private cloud. Yep. Been there, done that.
And the vast majority of these applications use the classic “SaaS-style” public cloud model. Someone develops a useful service and hosts it on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud Marketplace, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or one of several other cloud vendors. Accessing this external service is typically performed via a well-defined API. Typically this API invocation is made using a simple REST call (or a convenient library wrapper around a REST call). This request originates from a web browser, native app on a mobile device or some server-side application and traverses the web. Using only port 443 or 80, it connects through a series of firewalls to the actual service running in the external cloud environment. The request is serviced by a process running in a service provider’s computing environment and returns a result to the client application.
Have we come to the point of guaranteed successful cloud migrations from/to almost anything for less than $1,000? That’s the promise of migration services specialists, WSM, which has successfully completed 250,000 migrations and based on that experience will start offering $849 fixed price server migrations.
I am not sure how many people remember Cisco SANTap. About ten years ago, Cisco introduced a data tapping mechanism in the MDS 9000 fibre channel switches. The idea was to allow the data path to be “tapped” at-will. Tapping in this case meant using a mechanism in the switch to split the data being written from client hosts to the storage, allowing the identical “split” data to be routed through a second, separate path.
SANTap therefore allowed a copy of the data to be seamlessly “mirrored” through the switch and subsequently used by other applications for multiple purposes (especially for backup). It facilitated real-time protection of critical data, and allowed advanced functions such as migration, snapshots, etc.
“Threats are always evolving and the days of ‘set it and forget it’ malware and virus scanners are over if you want to keep your business information secure,” explained Abel Sussman, Director of Federal Services at Coalfire, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff.
Cloud Computing Journal: Security threats seem so widespread and diverse that it seems companies need a framework before they tackle individual issues. To what degree do you take this point of view?
There was a time not so long ago when phones were used exclusively to make calls. Today, that notion seems almost alien. Smartphones are essentially all-in-one mobile computing devices, as useful for communication as they are for productivity. Given its prominence, it’s thus not surprising that mobile technology is seeing so much use in the modern workplace – nor is it entirely shocking that they’ve proven a major driving force in cloud adoption.
GoodData is exploring new technologies to make BI as a service more seamless across more data types for more types of users — all in the cloud.
To learn the ups and downs of BIaaS, we welcome Jeff Morris, Vice President of Marketing at GoodData in San Francisco, and Chris Selland, Vice President for Business Development at HP Vertica. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
SaaS businesses develop intimate, long term relationships with their SaaS customers. Keeping that relationship positive and aligned over the years is a real challenge. In fact, many public SaaS companies have yet to turn a profit. If they don’t keep their customers around for years, then all that capital invested in customer acquisition will have gone to waste.
In their Live Hack” presentation at 17th Cloud Expo, Stephen Coty and Paul Fletcher, Chief Security Evangelists at Alert Logic, will provide the audience with a chance to see a live demonstration of the common tools cyber attackers use to attack cloud and traditional IT systems.
This “Live Hack” uses open source attack tools that are free and available for download by anybody. Attendees will learn where to find and how to operate these tools for the purpose of testing their own IT infrastructure. They will also witness a cyber-attack from both sides – attacker and defender. Get an inside view how indicators of compromise are researched to develop security content to be deployed for detection based on these attacks.
It’s a funny thing isn’t it? Vendors like to talk about so-called IT transformation in the context of the general move toward new mobile, digital, virtualized, cloud-centric initiatives that take us to the new style of IT we can achieve in the promised land.
The trouble with media commentary in this space is… we are too often guilty of being superficial. We look at the big picture without talking about the granular components of transformation.
SmartBear Software has updated its API tools, ServiceV for API service virtualization and LoadUI NG for API load testing, to accelerate development and testing processes in Agile teams. Updates to ServiceV enable software teams to rapidly build advanced mocks from real-time API traffic and quickly switch between virtualized “mock” services and actual APIs during diagnostic, load or integration testing in the continuous delivery lifecycle.