Percona buys Tokutek to mashup MySQL, NoSQL tech

Percona acquired Tokutek to strengthen its expertise in NoSQL

Percona acquired Tokutek to strengthen its expertise in NoSQL

Relational database services firm Percona announced it has acquired Tokutek, which provides a high-performance MongoDB distribution and NoSQL services. Percona said the move will allow it to improve support for non-relational database technologies.

Tokutek offers a distribution of MongoDB, called TokuMX, which the company pitches as a drop-in replacement for MongoDB – but with up to 20 times performance improvements and 90 per cent reduction in database size.

One of the things that makes it so performant is its deployment of fractal tree indexing, a data structure that optimises I/O while allowing for simultaneous search and sequential access but with much faster insertions and deletions (it can also be applied in MariaDB).

Percona said the move will position the company to offer the full range consulting and technology services to support MySQL and MongoDB deployments; Percona Server already supports TokuMX as an option but the move will see the later further integrated and ship standard with the former.

“This acquisition delivers game-changing advantages to our customers,” said Peter Zaitsev, co-founder and chief executive of Percona. “By adding a market-leading, ACID-compliant NoSQL data management option to our product line, customers finally have the opportunity to simplify their database decisions and on-going support relationships by relying on just one proven, expert provider for all their database design, service, management, and support needs.”

John Partridge, president and chief executive of Tokutek said: “Percona has a well-earned reputation for expert database consulting services and support. With the Tokutek acquisition, Percona is uniquely positioned to offer NoSQL and NewSQL software solutions backed by unparalleled services and support. We are excited to know Tokutek customers can look forward to leveraging Percona services and support in their TokuMX and TokuDB deployments.”

NoSQL adoption is growing at a fairly fast rate as applications shift to handle more and more unstructured data (espeically cloud apps), so it’s likely we’ll see more MySQL incumbents pick up non-relational startups in the coming months.

 

Cloud security vendor Adallom secures $30m in series C led by HP

Adallom secured $30m in new funding this week from HP Ventures among others

Adallom secured $30m in new funding this week from HP Ventures among others

Cloud security service provider Adallom announced this week it has secured $30m in a series C funding round led by Hewlett Packard Ventures, which the company said it would put towards research and development.

Adallom, which was founded by cybersecurity veterans Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik in 2012, offers a security service that integrates with the authentication chain of a range of SaaS applications and lets IT administrators monitor usage for every user on each device.

The software works with a conjunction of end-point and network security solutions and has a built-in, self-learning engine that analyses user activity on SaaS applications and assesses the riskiness of each transaction in real-time, alerting administrators when activity becomes too risky for an organisation given its security policies.

The company said the latest funding round, which brings the total amount secured by the firm since its founding three years ago to just under $50m, speaks to the rapid growth of the SaaS market, and the need for more flexible security solutions.

“The market’s embrace of our approach to cloud security and our investors’ continued confidence in our products, team and results to date is a strong endorsement of Adallom. It also serves as encouragement to continue to execute on our mission to deliver the best platform for protecting data in the cloud,” said Rappaport, Adallom’s chief executive. “We’re determined to exceed the expectations of our customers and investors, and continue our innovation in this market.”

The company said the investment will be used to double down on development and improve support for more services; it claims the security service already supports over 13,000 cloud apps.

Adallom’s funding round caps off a successful month for a number of cloud security vendors, with Palerra, ProtectWise and Elastica all securing millions in investment.

Docker raises $95m in series D funding: Analyst describes “huge gamble” ahead

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Open container platform Docker has announced $95m (£64.3m) in series D funding, in a move to “address the needs of the millions of ecosystem users and thousands of enterprises that have standardised on Docker’s technology.”

The funding round was led by Insight Venture Partners, with eight other firms putting their change in the bowl, including new investors Coatue, Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust. Docker’s last funding round, in September 2014, was $40m (£27.1m), led by Sequoia. Overall, the company has raised around $160m (£108.2m).

Jeff Horing, co-founder of Insight, said in a statement: “This financing is a strong vote of confidence in Docker management, and strengthens the company’s ability to fulfil the needs of the millions of developers who have made the commitment to utilising its breakthrough products and services in their daily work.” Solomon Hykes, Docker founder and CTO, said: “Our responsibility is to give people the tools they need to create applications that weren’t possible before. We will continue to honour that commitment to developers and enterprises.”

With all this VC cash knocking around, it’s easy to forget that two years ago, Docker was simply an offshoot of dotCloud, which was sold to CloudControl in August 2014 to focus squarely on the container business. As fashionable tech startups go it’s certainly up there right now; partnerships with Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace among others have helped, with Docker being described as “the next big thing in cloud computing.”

Yet questions are being raised over how Docker will best utilise this latest cash injection. Benjamin Golub, Docker chief executive, told the New York Times the company hadn’t yet spent all the money raised from its second round of financing.

It’s not uncommon for companies to exit, or go public, with little to show in the way of profitability. Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at Finspreads, tells CloudTech: “[Docker’s] technology is already extremely popular with software engineers and its effects are profound. This, in addition to its huge ambition and desire to expand at such a rate that it pushes all other competition out of the way, is meaning that it is having a huge impact on the marketplace and attracting plenty of attention.”

She adds: “The extra funding will be directed towards building Docker’s products out [and] making the technology work more efficiently. However it is a huge gamble, and we have seen on many occasions that massive amounts of funding don’t necessarily translate to a successful technology business.”

As businesses are beginning to discover, cloud computing is simply a consumption model for them to buy and build their applications and improve business efficiency. Matthew Finnie, CTO of Interoute, told this publication in March how Docker, in combination with scalable network MPLS, is a viable model as Docker “does a brilliant job of abstracting the way to understand the VM, so you don’t really care what’s happening below.”

Cincotta adds: “The bet here is clearly that the market will continue to grow.”

Google Drive, Facebook and Twitter most popular business cloud apps – but are they safe?

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More than 15% of European organisations now use more than 1000 cloud apps with Google Drive, Facebook and Twitter the most popular, according to a report from Netskope.

The findings, which appear in the April 2015 Netskope Cloud Report, saw iCloud and Salesforce make the top five. Five cloud storage apps (Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive for Business, OneDrive and Dropbox) made the top 12, alongside four social apps (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn).

Of the organisations analysed in the Netskope Cloud, over a quarter use more than 1000 apps, with the average number of cloud apps – both sanctioned and unsanctioned – standing at 730, representing a 16% increase from the previous quarter. European organisations have on average 511 cloud apps.

Yet not all of these apps are enterprise-grade secure – far from it. According to Netskope’s figures, nine out of every 10 apps in use today score “medium” or below for enterprise-level security. Furthermore, 13.6% of app users have had their login details compromised, and more than one in five (21.6%) logins to Salesforce has been through users who have had their accounts compromised.

Regular readers of this publication and sister title Enterprise AppsTech will be aware of issues surrounding data breaches and compromised accounts. Often, it’s the employees themselves who pose a risk; a recent report from Aruba Networks argued the ‘generation mobile’ workforce was simply indifferent to security policy, while other research has shown employees are more than happy to give up their passwords if the price is right.

Netskope makes the point that many employees re-use passwords, or variations of them, across multiple accounts. “It is important to understand which of those are accessing, and how they’re using, your most business-critical cloud apps,” the report notes.

Yet it again brings up the age-old argument of ‘shadow IT’, or unsanctioned use of cloud apps. Whereas once blacklisting and whitelisting apps was commonplace in an attempt to curb unauthorised activity, many in the industry are now coming around to thinking ‘shadow IT’, if managed correctly, can be a benefit for the business.

“Like it or not, this is the new reality for IT,” said Sanjay Beri, Netskope CEO. “It’s thus critical that organisations maintain a deep level of visibility into their cloud app infrastructure so they can spot a suspicious pattern before it becomes an issue.”

Take a look at the most popular 20 cloud apps according to Netskope. Are these in use at your organisation?

Keys to Success for Continuous Monitoring in Government | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

In recent years, the US government has become a leading advocate for continuous monitoring of security threats and vulnerabilities. But how effectively are departments and agencies in implementing these programs? And how do we measure success?
Moving Towards Continuous Monitoring
Though it’s become a popular concept, continuous monitoring wasn’t always in vogue. When the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) was enacted in 2002, the law required agencies to document security practices, including taking inventory of information systems and writing security plans. External firms would audit the plans and grade departments and agencies based on their efforts.

read more

On-Premises Infrastructure with Cloud Economics | @HPHelionCloud @CloudExpo [#Cloud]

Fred Duball is the Data Center Practice Principal, Workload and Cloud Solutions at HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector. Previously he served as the Executive Director and Deputy CIO for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us again today, Fred. Before discussing HP Data Center Services in greater detail, please tell us about your background.
Fred Duball: I am the practice principal for data center solutions in the U.S. Public Sector Workload and Cloud Solutions Practice, where I have strategic focus on IT transformation trends and provide oversight and contract negotiation in support of our client’s business workload delivery needs. I acquired more than 25 years of government and commercial enterprise experience in IT and IT consulting before joining HP in 2009. Previously, I served as the Executive Director and Deputy CIO for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I led the efforts to privatize the complex state government infrastructure in a shared services initiative.

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Launching GreenPages’ Transformation Services Group

GreenPages' Transformation ServicesI am excited to announce that today, with the launch of GreenPages’ Transformation Services Group, GreenPages took a major step in the continuing evolution of our company. This evolution was done for one reason, and one reason only –to meet the needs of our customers as they strive to compete in today’s rapidly-changing business and technology environment.

GreenPages’ new Transformation Services Group is a practice dedicated to providing customers with the agility, flexibility and innovation they need to compete in the modern era of cloud computing.  We see the establishment of this focused practice area as a way to help clients take a revolutionary, accelerated approach to standing up New World, Modern IT architectures and service delivery models that enable business agility and innovation.

Disrupt or be Disrupted

With each day’s latest business headlines we learn of new ‘up-start’ companies that are finding a new way to compete in what was once a mature market.  You know the names – its Uber, it’s Airbnb.  These companies have found a way to leverage advanced technologies as a strategic weapon and were able to completely turn existing industries on their heads without even owning cabs or hotels (respectively).

How’d they do it?  They were agile enough from a business standpoint to understand the disruptive force that technology can play, and they were fortunate enough not to be encumbered by existing infrastructure, policies and procedures.  While these companies clearly were smart and innovative, they were also fortunate — they had a blank slate and could start from scratch with an offensive game plan capable of delivering value to customers in new ways.

These market disrupters share the benefit of not being encumbered by legacy technologies, platforms and processes and as a result, are out-performing and executing their larger competitors.  These companies were born to be agile organizations capable of “turning on a dime” when their competitors could not.

To compete effectively in today’s environment, every company needs to find a way to become more agile.  Business leaders have the choice, play defense and respond to disruption, or play offense and become the disruptor.  The need for business agility has never been greater.  To support this needed agility and innovation, enterprises need nimble, agile IT platforms, as legacy platforms cannot meet this need.

If it were just about technology, modernizing IT would be a more straightforward situation, but it’s about more than that. This is more than a technology problem. This is a people and process problem. It’s about command, control and compliance… Needless to say, “high velocity change” is no walk in the park.

Fortunately, helping companies achieve transformational change is something we have been doing for many years and is an area where we have deep domain expertise.  Throughout our history as a company, we have become adept at guiding companies through IT and business transformation.  What we are doing today is formalizing this expertise—which has been forged working with our customers in the trenches and in the boardrooms—into a unique Transformation Services practice.  Transformation Services represents the next logical evolution of GreenPages and builds on our prior legacy of high quality and competency deploying advanced virtualization and cloud solutions.

Our Approach

We have always believed that while many companies face similar challenges, no two scenarios are identical. Through our more than 20 years of experience we have established a methodology that we use in each engagement, regardless of the challenge, that allows us to identify the best solution for each customer, drive organizational and technical change, and create positive outcomes for the business.

We hope that you share our excitement about this unique moment in the IT industry and our continued evolution as a company.   We all know that technology can produce tangible benefits, but sometimes the road to deployment can be daunting.  Transformation Services was founded to ensure our customers are able to successfully navigate that road with agility and velocity.

If you’re interested in learning more about our new Transformation Services Group, please reach out!

 

By Ron Dupler, CEO

Four Reasons Why Microservices Resonate | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]

We just finished the first O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference and the overwhelming most popular topic was microservices. Why all the hype about an architectural style?

Microservices are the first post-DevOps revolution architecture.

The DevOps revolution highlighted how much inadvertent friction an outdated operations mindset can cause, starting the move towards automating away manual tasks.

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How to Run Boot Camp in a Virtual Machine

Guest blog by Nikhil Palathingal, Parallels Support Team Many Mac users who still need access Windows programs use Boot Camp. While Boot Camp is a useful feature, it has one major downside: you have to restart your Mac to boot into Windows and vice versa. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably using Parallels Desktop or are […]

The post How to Run Boot Camp in a Virtual Machine appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Pivotal punts Geode to ASF to consolidate leadership in open source big data

Pivotal is looking to position itself as a front runner in open source big data

Pivotal is looking to position itself as a front runner in open source big data

Pivotal has proposed “Project Geode” for incubation by the Apache Software Foundation, which would focus on developing the Geode in-memory database technology – the technology at the core of Pivotal’s GemFire offering.

Geode can support ACID transactions for large scaled applications such as those used for stock trading, financial payments and ticket sales, and the company said the technology is already proven in customer deployments of more than 10 million user transactions a day.

In February Pivotal announced it would open source much of its big data suite including GemFire, which the company will continue to support commercially. The move is part of a broader plan to consolidate its leadership in the open source big data ecosystem, where companies like Hortonworks are also trying to make waves.

The company also recently helped launch the Open Data Platform, which seeks to promote big data tech standardisation, and combat fragmentation around how Hadoop is deployed in enterprises and built upon by ISVs.

In the meantime, while the company said it would wait for the ASF’s decision Pivotal has already put out a call to developers as it seeks early contributions to ensure the project gets a head start.

“The opening sourcing of core components of products in the Pivotal Big Data Suite heralds a new era of how big data is done in the enterprise. Starting with core code in Pivotal GemFire, the components we intend to contribute to the open source community are already performing in the most hardened and demanding enterprise environments,” said Sundeep Madra, vice president, Data Product Group at Pivotal.

“Geode is an important part of building solutions for next generation data infrastructures and we welcome the community to join us in furthering Geode’s already compelling capabilities,” Madra said.