CRAM the Cloud: Creating Resilient Application Migration

As businesses aspire to move more and more application workloads outside of the boundaries of their private cloud data centers, public cloud service providers are increasingly implementing a private cloud staple: resiliency.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, John Roese, SVP and Chief CTO at EMC Corporation, will summarize the key architectural tenets of resilient private cloud architectures. These tenets can be implemented in any service provider cloud implementation, regardless of hypervisor choice (e.g., VMware, Hyper-V, Xen), cloud orchestration software (e.g., vSphere, OpenStack), network implementation (e.g., SDN, NFV), or storage implementation (file, block, object). A resilient public cloud will naturally attract increased workload migration, and the rest of the session will describe foundational technologies that facilitate not only secure and seamless application workload migration, but secure and seamless data set migration as well.

read more

Managing Risk and Deployments

Finansbank in Istanbul has developed an impressive record of managed risk and deployments, with an eye to greater automation over time.
Governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) form a top-tier of requirements for banks anywhere in the world as they create and deploy applications. A close second nowadays is speed to market, and rapid responsiveness to changing customer expectations and demands.
So when Finansbank, an Istanbul-based bank, knew they had to better manage risk — but not lose time-to-market advantages — they did a thorough analysis of available IT products and services. The result was an impressive record of managed risk and deployments, with an eye to greater automation over time.

read more

Managing Risk and Deployments

Finansbank in Istanbul has developed an impressive record of managed risk and deployments, with an eye to greater automation over time.
Governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) form a top-tier of requirements for banks anywhere in the world as they create and deploy applications. A close second nowadays is speed to market, and rapid responsiveness to changing customer expectations and demands.
So when Finansbank, an Istanbul-based bank, knew they had to better manage risk — but not lose time-to-market advantages — they did a thorough analysis of available IT products and services. The result was an impressive record of managed risk and deployments, with an eye to greater automation over time.

read more

Informatica 9.6 aims to attract business users and lower cost

Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Software – Information Management

Informatica claims to have raised the bar for data integration and quality following the release of its PowerCenter and Data Quality 9.6 platform. This release scores points with Ovum because it mirrors much of the functionality that our enterprise clients are inquiring about and looking for – notably, business-friendly governance features, seamless integration and management of data across cloud and on-premise systems, and quicker integration cycles.

Equally noteworthy is the company’s effort to harden the customer and partner ecosystem around its data integration platform, and the revised packaging and pricing aimed at platform-purchasing. Informatica 9.6 clearly follows a strategy of convincing organizations that data quality and integration is best served by an integrated platform, rather than point tools.

The attention given to platform integration and cost-effectiveness will appeal to existing and new customers and solutions partners that want to graduate from …

Federated Clouds for Emergency Response

Recent high-profile events (2010 Haitian Earthquake, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami, 2013 Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda) have highlighted the growing importance played by the international community in successful humanitarian assistance and disaster response. These events also showcased the critical importance of quickly providing robust information technology resources to response effort participants. In June 2010, in support of its continuing effort to foster international collaboration, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) initiated a dialog with the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) to discuss this and other aspects of geospatial data information-sharing across the international community. In response to this request the NCOIC through the use of a cloud services brokerage paradigm, built and demonstrated a federated cloud computing infrastructure capable of managing the electronic exchange of geospatial data. The effort also led to the development of the more generalized NCOIC Rapid Response Capability Pattern (NRRC), a process that could improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of emergency situations that require an international joint civilian/military response.

read more

AccelOps Cloud Security Survey: Network Security Trails Behind Cloud Usage

AccelOps on Thursday announced its global survey of 140 IT security professionals found that while cloud usage continues to rise, cloud security remains stagnant. Results indicate that 73 percent of survey respondents are running a greater number of mission-critical applications in the cloud this year, while only 42 percent of respondents’ networks are more secure. The survey was conducted at the recent Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley in Santa Clara, Calif.
The survey’s findings underscore the critical need for visibility into security threats. Ninety-two percent of respondents said visibility into potential network threats would be “very important” or “fairly important,” and 77 percent of the respondents’ organizations use multiple tools to monitor security and network performance.

read more

Enterprise Cloud Analytics and Business Intelligence

Enterprise Cloud Analytics and Business Intelligence enables organizations to leverage the cloud and provide end-to-end data aggregation and analysis capabilities. The objective is to develop analytics on the cloud to support Business Intelligence and analysis capabilities. Effective strategic and operational business decisions can be made based on the search, analysis, drill down and visualization of data in real time to get actionable information for making effective business decisions. In addition predictive analysis can be very useful to predict trends and patterns.

read more

OpenNebula vs. OpenStack: User Needs vs. Vendor Driven

How do you compare OpenNebula with OpenStack?…
This is indeed a complex question. There is no single answer because open-source projects and technologies present several dimensions. But we are far from afraid to answer it: the short, tl;dr version would be that they represent two different open-source models. While OpenNebula is an open-source effort focused on user needs, OpenStack is a vendor-driven effort.

read more

NetApp Introduces Unified Scale-Out Storage Systems

With more organizations embracing cloud mandates and moving quickly to flash-accelerated, shared storage infrastructures, NetApp introduced a new line of enterprise storage systems and enhanced software designed to accelerate the broadest range of virtualized applications.
“As they adapt their IT operations to improve service delivery and embrace cloud mandates, CIOs recognize the advantages of shared storage infrastructures,” said George Kurian, Executive Vice President, Product Operations, NetApp. “Our new FAS8000 series and enhanced software offerings allow customers to respond quickly to changing business needs, move seamlessly to an era of unbound clouds, and eliminate the overprovisioning of people, time, and money.”

read more