Caesars Entertainment Corp. is transforming supplier discovery and improving supplier diversity through collaboration across cloud-based services and open business networks.
The next BriefingsDirect business trends interview focuses on Caesars Entertainment Corp. and how they’re transforming supplier discovery and improving their supplier diversity through collaboration across cloud-based services and open business networks.
Learn from Caesars’ best practices on how they expand diversity across their supply chain and how that’s been accomplished using Ariba Discovery. We’ll hear first-hand how one supplier, M and R Distribution Services, has benefited from such supplier visibility on the business network.
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Part 2: Cisco Live 2015 Recap – AWS Direct Connect, VIRL Facelift & More!
It was another great Cisco Live event this year! My colleague Dan Allen wrote a post summarizing the key takeaways he got out of the event. I wanted to add in some of my own to supplement his. As you probably know, it was John Chambers last Cisco Live event as CEO – which makes it especially cool that I got this picture taken with him!
Expanded DevNet Zone
Last year Cisco introduced the DevNet zone which was focused on giving people hands on access to Cisco’s most ground breaking technology that could be construed as science fiction unless they opened their toy box and let people see and touch what they’ve been hiding in it. This year we got to play with Internet of Things development environments, API driven SDN solutions, virtual network simulation toolkits and drone technologies hosted by the co-founder of iRobot. Last year, it was 4 little booths in between two restrooms with giveaways to get people to come in. This year, it consumed a whole section of the convention center with over 20 booths, 6 interactive labs and different exhibits and guest speakers delivering presentations on the future of technology.
Programmability and automation were a part of every session no matter what the topic was
It didn’t matter if you were attending entry-level or advanced breakout sessions, IT management track courses or developer workshops; everything you attended at Cisco Live this year had something to do with automation, programmability, cloud connectivity or application awareness. This was very different from any of the 8 Cisco Live events I’ve attended throughout my career. If you’re a technologist and have any doubt in your mind that this is where the industry is headed, you’d better start learning new skills because, like it or not, our customers and the customers of our customers are, or will soon be, believers and consumers of these technologies and consumption models.
Cisco and Amazon TEAM up to BEEF up AWS Direct Connect
AWS Direct Connect is a part of Amazon’s APN Partner program that consists of ISP’s that provide WAN circuits directly connected to AWS datacenters. That means if you’re a Level3 or AT&T MPLS customer and you have 10 offices and 2 datacenters on that MPLS network, Amazon AWS can now become another site on that private WAN. That’s HUGE! Just look at a small portion of their ISP partner list:
- AT&T
- Cinenet
- Datapipe
- Equinix, Inc.
- FiberLight
- Fiber Internet Center
- First Communications
- Global Capacity
- Global Switch
- Global Telecom & Technology, Inc. (GTT)
- Interxion
- InterCloud
- Level 3 Communications, Inc.
- Lightower
- Masergy
- Maxis
- Megaport
- MTN Business
- NTT Communications Corporation
- Sinnet
- Sohonet
- Switch SUPERNAP
- Tata Communications
- tw telecom
- Verizon
- Vocus
- XO Communications
Combine that with a CSR1000v and an ASAv and you have a public cloud that can be managed and utilized exactly like a physical colo that is completely transparent to both your network teams and users.
ASAv in AWS
This little announcement slipped under the radar when it was made a week before Cisco Live but was definitely front and center in the Cisco Solutions Theater in the world of solutions. The ASA1000v has been Cisco’s only answer to a full featured virtual security appliance for the past two years or so. The only problem is that it required the Nexus1000v with which the industry as a whole has been reluctant to embrace (particularly in the public cloud space). Well good news, the ASAv doesn’t require the Nexus 1000v and, therefore, has opened the doors for the likes of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to let us make use of an all Cisco Internet and WAN edge within an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This means you can manage the edge of your AWS VPC the same way you manage the edge of your datacenters and offices. The ASAv supports everything an ASA supports which will soon include the full FirePower feature set. Have you ever tried building a VPN tunnel to an ASA at a customer’s datacenter from the AWS VPC Customer Gateway? I have – not the best experience. Well, not any more – it’s pretty cool!
ACI was big this year, but not as big as last year
I was expecting more of the same from last year on this one. Just about everywhere you looked last year, you saw something about ACI. This year was a more targeted effort both with the breakout session and in the Cisco Solutions Theater. I’m not saying it didn’t get a lot of attention, just not as much as last year and certainly not more. This shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise for anyone used to Cisco’s marketing and positioning tactics, however. Last year was geared toward awareness of the new technology and this year was more geared toward the application of the technology across very specific use cases and advances in it’s capabilities. The honeymoon is clearly over and everyone was focused on how to live every-day life with ACI being a part of it.
APIC can interact with ASA and other non-Cisco devices
The ACI APIC is slowly getting more and more abilities related to northbound programmatic interaction with other Cisco and non-Cisco appliances. For example, it can now instantiate policies and other configuration elements of ASA, Fortigate, F5 and Radware appliances as part of its policy driven infrastructures.
iWAN almost officially tested and supported on CSR1000v
As of next month, the iWAN suite of technologies will be officially tested and supported on the CSR1000v platform which means all of that functionality will now be available in public cloud environments. More to come on iWAN in another post.
CSR1000v
The CSR1000v (Cloud Services Router) is Cisco’s answer to a virtual router. Until now, it’s been sort of an “Oh ya? We can do that too” sort of project. Now it’s a full-fledged product with a dedicated product team. It’s supported across just about every public cloud provider and in every Cisco Powered Cloud partner (Cirrity, Peak 10, etc.).
Additionally, I managed to get the product team to pull back the covers on the roadmap a bit and reveal what Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) will be supported on the CSR1000v soon along with a number of other ISR/ASR features which will make a truly seamless WAN that includes your public cloud resources.
Non-Cisco Cloud News – Azure Virtual Network now supports custom gateways
A big challenge in real adoption of non-Microsoft application workloads in Azure has been the inability to use anything but Azure’s gateway services at the edge of your Azure Virtual Network. Well, Cisco let the cat out of the bag on this one as Cisco CSR’s and ASR’s will soon be supported as gateway devices in Azure VN. For me, this really brings Azure into focus when selecting a public cloud partner.
APIC-EM has more uses than ever
Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (rolls right off the tongue right?), or APIC-EM, is Cisco’s answer to an SDN controller. It’s part of Cisco’s ONE software portfolio and has more uses than ever. Don’t confuse the APIC-EM with the ACI APIC, however. The ACI APIC is the controller and central point of interaction for Cisco’s ACI solution and runs on Cisco C-Series servers. The APIC-EM, however, is truly an open source SDN controller that is free and can run as a VM and interact with just about anything that has an API. That’s right.
VIRL got a facelift
Cisco’s Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL) is getting some real attention. It’s an application that was unveiled to Cisco DevNet partners last year that lets you virtually build Cisco networks with VM’s running real IOS and NX-OS code to simulate a design and test it’s functionality. As a partner, this is huge as we can virtually replicate customer environments as a proof of concept or troubleshooting tool. It’s getting more development support within Cisco.
A lot of crucial information and updates came out of this event. If you would like to discuss any in more detail, feel free to reach out!
By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect
App Security: The Elephant in the Cloudy Room By @LMacVittie | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Okay, kids. It’s time we had “that talk”. You know the one, the one you’ve been whispering about with your friends but heretofore were afraid to actually ask about because of course everyone else knows about it and you didn’t want to appear, well, not cool by admitting you didn’t really know.
Except they don’t, or at least if they do, they aren’t talking about it either. And it’s really past time we talked about taking the right precautions when using the cloud. You know, how to protect your apps in the cloud from infection and attack.
Yes, today we’re finally going to talk about application security in the cloud.
Real use cases: Why 50% of enterprises are choosing hybrid cloud
(c)iStock.com/marekuliasz
Enterprises are shaping the cloud to fit their needs, and the result is overwhelmingly a hybrid of public, private, and on-premises clouds. Today, nineteen percent (19%) of organizations manage hybrid clouds and an additional 60% plan to deploy them. Gartner estimates that hybrid cloud adoption will near 50% by 2017.
Why are enterprises going hybrid? Below are four use cases that demonstrate how enterprises determine what, when and how to move to the cloud.
Case 1: Testing environments
Migrating testing/staging environments to the public cloud is a compelling business case for many enterprises, especially when business leaders are still skittish about trusting production environments to multi-tenant clouds. Enterprises get a 20-30% cost reduction on non-critical infrastructure, and developers have the opportunity to get familiar with cloud architecture without the risk of an inexperienced cloud engineer bringing down their applications.
A large software service provider builds discrete environments for each of their clients. Their data is highly regulated, and many of their clients are not comfortable using the public cloud to host sensitive information. However, compelled by the cost savings of Amazon Web Services, they decided to host their development and staging environments for their customer-facing applications onto AWS. Their development and staging environments do not host sensitive data. Low-latency connections from their AWS environment to their hosted private cloud with AWS Direct Connect allow them to maintain high deployment velocity. AWS Storage Gateway allows them to easily move data between clouds if necessary for a nominal fee, and AWS Code Deploy allows them to coordinate code pushes to their production servers.
The company has reduced their hosting costs and the success of the project has led to greater department-wide acceptance of cloud hosting. If the project is successful, they plan to migrate the production environment to AWS in 6-12 months.
Case 2: Disaster recovery
Enterprises spend millions maintaining backup systems that are largely unused for 95% of the year. The public cloud allows companies to pay for disaster recovery when they need it — and not pay when they don’t. The public cloud also has greater geographic diversity of datacenters than even the largest enterprises can afford, and enterprises can cheaply ship and store machine images in AWS.
However, migrating backups to the cloud is not a simple proposition. Many enterprises have highly regulated backup procedures around location of backups, length of data storage, and data security. Enterprises often do not have the internal experience in cloud database and storage to meet compliance standards.
A research company maintains critical intellectual property in on-premises and colocated data centers. Their business leaders are adamant about not hosting intellectual property in the public cloud, yet they want to explore the public cloud for cost savings. When evaluating their disaster recovery procedures, they realized that while their backups were geographically dispersed, each was highly prone to earthquakes.
The research company has decided to maintain backups in AWS, including vast quantities of data from research trials. This will allow them to repurpose hardware currently dedicated to backups on front-line data processing, saving both on disaster recovery costs and non-hardware provisioning. They plan to use pilot light disaster recovery to maintain a mirrored DB server while keeping their other application and caching servers off. In the case of a disaster, they will be able to start up these instances in under 30 minutes.
Case 3: Legacy systems
In many organizations, complex lines of application dependency mean that some components of an application can move to the cloud while others, usually those tied to legacy systems, cannot. These legacy systems are hosted on-premises or in private clouds while other components are moved to the public cloud.
A large SaaS provider maintains Oracle RAC as a major database system supporting a critical piece of several applications’ environments. Oracle RAC is a shared cache clustered database architecture that utilizes Oracle Grid Infrastructure to enable the sharing of server and storage resources. Automatic, instantaneous failover to other nodes enables an extremely high degree of scalability, availability, and performance. They wanted to move other components of the application onto AWS, but neither Amazon’s EC2 nor RDS provide native support for RAC.
The high performance capability of RAC meant they did not want to look for another solution on AWS. Instead, they decided to host RAC on bare metal servers and use AWS Direct Connect to provide low-latency connections to the other application tiers on AWS. They were able to successfully maintain the high performance of RAC while still gaining the scalability and low cost of AWS compute resources.
Case 4: Cloud bursting
The idea of cloud bursting appeared several years ago, but the “own the base, rent the spike” system has never taken off in the enterprise. Partially this is due to the fact that it is technically difficult to accomplish, and often requires that applications be built for cross-cloud interoperability from the get-go. Systems often cannot talk to each other, and the systems often require handcrafting by developers and administrators. Building the automation scripts to perform scaling without human intervention is a challenge for even the most advanced automation engineers. Only in the last 6-12 months have we seen the kind of tools appear on the market that might facilitate bursting for enterprise grade applications, like Amazon resources that now appear in VMware’s vCenter management console.
We have yet to hear of cases where a large-scale enterprise employs cloud bursting. We expect this to become more common only as hybrid cloud tools mature. Vendors that claim to have the built-in ability to do cloud bursting are often limited in other ways, such as breadth of services and compliance. Furthermore enterprises are at a far greater risk of vendor lock-in with these smaller clouds than with a system built modularly for scalability, as expert engineers can achieve in AWS.
In the next 12-24 months, many enterprises will be in the application evaluation and planning phase of their hybrid cloud deployments. Some will choose to experiment with the public cloud in highly controlled ways, as in Case 1 and 2, while other enterprises — usually smaller ones — will take a more aggressive approach and migrate production applications, as in Case 3 and 4. Although most hybrid deployments add complexity to enterprise infrastructure, the success of this planning phase will turn what could become a series of unwieldy mash-ups into the ultimate tool for business agility.
The post Why Are 50% of Enterprises Choosing Hybrid Cloud? Real Use-Cases appeared first on Gathering Clouds.
Virgin Active urges cloud players to embrace ‘the database of you’
In his keynote address at Cloud World Forum 2015, the CIO of fitness chain Virgin Active – Andy Caddy – urged cloud and big data companies to find better uses for the mountains of data people are accumulating about themselves.
Coining the term “the database of you”, Caddy said that in his capacity as the CIO of a health and fitness company with 1.4 million members in 270 clubs he is acutely aware of the desire for gym-goers to track their every waking movement and a bunch of other biometric data, such as heartrate, besides.
Caddy also thinks wearables such as fitness bands are at an early stage and, in reference to the recent IPO of fitness band company Fitbit, indicated he thought wearables were currently near the most hyped phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle. He reckons it will be a few years yet before the ‘winning design’ emerges, such as happened with smartphones and the touchscreen form factor that has changed little for the past eight years.
One result of all this hype, however, is that people are constantly generating data about themselves – around 31 datapoints per year for Virgin Active members. Caddy’s concern is they they’re currently not able to do much with it, beyond gloating about how much exercise they’ve done on social media.
When Caddy surveyed members, as part of his planning for a ‘connected club’ initiative, about what they want technology in a gym context to do for them they said they want it to be device agnostic, always on and provide useful feedback and advice, as opposed to raw data. Caddy concluded with a call to the tech industry to step up to the plate and give his members what they’re looking for. “We need someone to come in and do this stuff, because it’s just begging for it,” he said.
IBM talks cloud innovation at CWF 2015
Enterprise tech giant IBM used its keynote presentation at Cloud World Forum 2015 to talk up the role of the digital economy, especially cloud tech, to drive innovation and disruption.
The speaker was Sandy Carter, GM of Cloud Ecosystem and Developers at IBM. The premise of her keynote was that the digital economy is driving innovation and chose five specific illustrations of this.
The first was the use of real-time data by Wimbledon.com, which for 50 weeks of the year is quiet, but then explodes when the tennis tournament is underway – 65 million page views last year. The point Carter wanted to make is that with the help of cloud solutions such as IBM’s Bluemix, which inevitably got frequent mentions, Wimbledon is able to not just scale up its resources but use analytics and even social media cues to anticipate demand in real-time.
The second example concerned IoT, via the example of German company Diabetizer, which uses wearables and the cloud to help people manage diabetes and to communicate with health professionals. The significance in this context was the point that IoT is essentially about data and what you do with it.
The remaining examples of cloud-enabled innovation focused on mobile, the hybrid cloud and a final rallying call for the Bluemix ecosystem. The general thread was that the flexibility, analytics and collaboration power (there was a nod to yesterday’s Box announcement) afforded by the cloud is the foundation of innovation today.
All the Essential Mac Shortcuts in One Infographic
A life-long PC user may view making the switch to Mac as intimidating. Believe it or not, this anxiety-ridden transition can actually be pretty easy! All you need to ensure success with your new Mac are these shortcuts: Still need Windows? Parallels Desktop is perfect for you. (Bonus: you can start a free trial right now.) […]
The post All the Essential Mac Shortcuts in One Infographic appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Oracle Looks to Compete With Companies Like Amazon
Oracle has been working to establish itself as a major player in the cloud computing industry and is preparing to take on Amazon Web Services. Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison has said the company will offer online storage and customers will be able to have their applications run entirely on Oracle’s cloud network.
The new cloud service, called Oracle Cloud Platform, will be a lower cost alternative to Amazon Web Services and will contain automation to improve cost efficiency and faster processing. In addition, there will be 24 new cloud services such as Oracle Database, Oracle Integration and Oracle Process Cloud to increase Oracles presence in SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. These programs are designed to give users a better experience while increasing productivity, allowing Oracle to compete with the big names in cloud computing like Amazon. As an example of the cost differences between Oracle and Amazon, Ellison has said “Our new archive storage service goes head-to-head with Amazon Glacier and it’s one-tenth their price.”
Also, Oracle Cloud Services has been growing rapidly. Ellison notes, “Oracle is growing really fast. We sold $426M worth of business in SaaS and PaaS last quarter, a 200 percent increase over the same quarter last year. That’s an industry record; no company has ever sold that much in just one quarter… Oracle is the only company on the planet that can deliver a complete, integrated, standards-based suite of services at every layer of the cloud. Those technology advantages enable us to be much more cost-effective than our competitors.”
So, while Amazon Web services may be the big name in cloud computing for now, Oracle is on the rise in the rapidly expanding industry.
The post Oracle Looks to Compete With Companies Like Amazon appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
People, Process & Technology at @CloudExpo By @IoT2040 | #IoT #Cloud #DevOps
People have re-entered the picture in discussions about cloud computing.
This was my primary takeaway from this year’s Cloud Expo East in New York, an event for which I serve as Conference Chair.
Over three days, we hosted thousands of delegates attending sessions from more than 150 speakers, including two prominent women as keynoters, and a range of topics that covered not only enterprise cloud in general, but microservices and containers, Big Data and the IoT, WebRTC, software-defined most-anything, an emerging DevOps culture…and people.
People, Process, & Technology
People, process, and technology has become a mantra within the world of DevOps proponents and practitioners, and it can easily be applied to the whole of cloud computing and all that it entails. Our DevOps Summit Chair Andi Mann led a panel discussion on the topic.
Getting to Cloud 9 | @CloudExpo #APM #Cloud
Almost every functional department in a business is thinking about how the cloud applies to them. The benefits are clear – it is easier for geographically diverse teams to access and collaborate over data, it is convenient for users, and it can cost far less. When it comes to performance testing, the benefits of the cloud are very compelling. All that load you need to generate to truly test your application can come from external, elastic, on-demand sources. You don’t have to build it out yourself.
However, you may also perceive some challenges that might prevent you from conducting load testing from the cloud.