The principles behind DevOps are not new – for decades people have been automating system administration and decreasing the time to deploy apps and perform other management tasks. However, only recently did we see the tools and the will necessary to share the benefits and power of automation with a wider circle of people.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Bernard Sanders, Chief Technology Officer at CloudBolt Software, will explore the latest tools including Puppet, Chef, Docker, and CMPs needed to move from an insulated culture where automation is absent or hoarded to one where the power of DevOps is shared.
Monthly Archives: September 2015
The Mid Week Motivator – How to Get Things Done! By @IanKhanLive | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Are you a winner? Are you someone who always gets what they want? Are you one of those people who do what they set their eyes on no matter what the circumstances? If you answered yes to all of these questions then you are among the highly successful people in the world that have a proven formula for success. If you did not answer yes to all of these questions, you are part of the other majority in the world that tries to succeed but has good and bad days. This post is for the majority – because you have some catching up to do.
Secure Applications By @CloudRaxak | @CloudExpo #BigData #SaaS #API #IoT
Businesses want to take advantage of the flexibility and cost benefits of running applications in the public cloud. To balance the benefits and risks, businesses need to deliver consistent security compliance across both private and public clouds. To develop their security compliance strategy, executives need to determine what cloud workloads to secure and how to secure them.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Sesh Murthy, Co-Founder and SVP of Sales and Customer Care, will show how any business can automate security compliance for any workload in the cloud.
Guide: Rapid Application Delivery Platforms | @CloudExpo @OutSystems #APM #Cloud
This complete kit provides a proven process and customizable documents that will help you evaluate rapid application delivery platforms and select the ideal partner for building mobile and web apps for your organization.
eBook: Why IT Struggles with Mobility | @CloudExpo @OutSystems #Cloud
The mobile tsunami has arrived and app dev is experiencing similar growing pains experienced in past decades. Choices in standards, architecture, device priorities, and a broad landscape of device types pose significant challenges for IT today.
This eBook draws from the experience of industry veterans to simplify the enterprise mobile app dev journey and make your organization’s transition into mobility a smooth one.
Equinix and Telecity to offer Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365
Data centre operators Equinix and TelecityGroup are both now offering Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 as part of their cloud offerings. Microsoft is understood to be announcing as many as five such partnerships with data centre operators.
Co-location specialist TelecityGroup said it is offering the cloud service to three distinct types of customer, these being enterprise customers, co-location partners and a reseller channel. The reseller channel itself is broken down three groups of telcos, managed service providers and systems integrators.
The nature of the market for Office 365 is broadening, according to Adi Ayyagani, the group head of market development for TelecityGroup. “Once interest was restricted to financial services and a couple of other early adopters, but now enterprises from every vertical market are showing an interest.”
TelecityGroup is offering the Office365 service on its software defined networking Cloud-IX platform. Though a number of operators are reportedly making ExpressRoute for Office 365 available, Ayyagani claimed that the Level 3 MPLS network that underpins Cloud-IX will make all the difference. “It means customers can get the service from anywhere, it’s more robust and there’s a greater level of integration available, so that configuration of the service is a lot simpler for service providers,” said Ayyagani.
The managed service providers, telcos and systems integrators reselling the cloud service will be able to use TelecityGroup’s broad footprint to access almost any market in Europe, the Middle East or African, said Ayyagani.
Meanwhile, global data centre operator Equinix has now announced worldwide availability of the cloud version of Microsoft Office for enterprises. The service improves the levels of data privacy since ExpressRoute enables most Office 365 network traffic to avoid the public Internet. Enterprises that use ExpressRoute in an Equinix data centre also get the benefit of being able to run hybrid and multi-cloud services that didn’t previously scale well over the Internet or over typical WAN works, it says.
“Office 365 customers can now benefit from predictable network performance and the ability to better manage network availability,” said Ross Ortega, Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager for Azure Networking.
Application Data Loss By @eFolder | @CloudExpo #Cloud #BigData #IoT #API
Data loss happens, even in the cloud. In fact, if your company has adopted a cloud application in the past three years, data loss has probably happened, whether you know it or not.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Bryan Forrester, Senior Vice President of Sales at eFolder, will present how common and costly cloud application data loss is and what measures you can take to protect your organization from data loss.
Deloitte and Cloudera create compliance service in the cloud
Professional service company Deloitte and cloud operator Cloudera have launched a jointly created cloud service that helps financial services people meet their compliance obligations more easily. It aims to specifically ease the workload created by the supervisory rules of the capital analysis and review (CCAR) process.
The Deloitte CCAR service aims to help companies cope with the masses of data needed to stress test financial products as regulations constantly change. Annual CCAR supervisory rules regularly specify new scenarios and datasets to be used in credit risk, liquidity risk, market risk, pre-provision net revenue (PPNR) and capital management models.
The cost and time involved in constantly processing these complicated variables, in order to generate the forecasted stress estimates, is escalating as the number of quarterly and yearly models multiples, according to Deloitte.
The Deloitte-designed solution includes accelerators to streamline data selection, data quality, variables conversion, data ingestion and management and to convert or migrate models to the SAS DS2 or Apache Spark or Python programming languages.
Cloudera was approached to use its expertise in Apache Hadoop open source software frameworks in order to create the visualization and dashboard tools promised in the system. The tools are designed to interact with the results of stress tests so they can quickly identify trends and potential sources of risk.
Deloitte built accelerators in Spark that cater for a wide variety of contingencies, which cuts the cost and risk of migrating existing CCAR models into an open source environment at first and into the SAS DS2 once it is released.
“The current regulatory environment that our clients face is more complex than at any time in history,” said Ashish Verma, director at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “This complexity in regulation has led to complexity in data management, making compliance very costly with little benefit to the business.”
Cloudera has created a ‘cost effective solution’ to the problems faced by clients, said Verma, “storing this data within Cloudera Enterprise means companies can perform additional non-compliance analysis and potentially develop a deeper understanding of their businesses.”
Carrenza claims it’s now top cloud host for UK government digital service
UK cloud service provider Carrenza has announced it is now providing the majority of hosting for the government digital service (GDS) as it made the production and staging environments for the Gov.UK site live on its cloud infrastructure.
Gov.uk has now rationalised hundreds of individual web sites for government departments and public bodies and concentrated the traffic for 24 ministerial departments and 28 other organisations according to Carrenza.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider Carrenza was initially asked to provide the infrastructure for Gov.UK’s preview operation in 2013 but, it claims, once it opened a second UK data centre its role was expanded. Carrenza rents capacity in Slough and London from data centre operators Equinix and Level 3.
Carrenza runs its IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings on a VMware-based cloud built on HP servers and HP 3PAR SAN storage which, it says, supports a range of operating systems, application and database technologies that includes “pretty much anything that runs on X86 architecture”. After Carrenza achieved official security accreditation the GDS moved the majority of Gov.Uk’s staging and production systems to the Carrenza Cloud, which has now received 2 billion visits, it says.
GDS originally found Carrenza through the G-Cloud III framework and a competitive tendering process. A major consideration for any cloud service provider, when pitching for contracts with the GDS, is a commitment to open source technology, according to Carrenza CEO Dan Sutherland.
Carrenza was chosen for Gov.UK because its custom software was developed in-house at GDS which needed to source cloud hosting and support for its flagship website.
“The launch of Gov.uk was a significant milestone,” said Sutherland. Open source has underpinned open dialogue and is helping to change and improve the way government communicates with its citizens, according to Sutherland.
Any cloud service provider wanting to win government contracts needs to concentrate on communicating with them, according to Andrew Mellish, Carrenza’s Head of Public Sector Services. “Our team understands what GDS is trying to achieve and how best to deliver the technologies they are using,” said Mellish, “when someone from GDS calls one of our engineers, they know they are speaking to someone who gets it and will work with them as efficiently as possible.”
Cloud computing dominates Deloitte’s 2015 global venture capital confidence survey
(c)iStock.com/cherezoff
- Cloud computing is the strongest technology investment sector for the third year in a row.
- Biopharmaceuticals and robotics are the two sectors that have gained the greatest venture capital confidence from 2014 to 2015.
- U.S. technology hubs (Silicon Valley/San Francisco, New York, Boston, Los Angeles & Chicago), Israel and Canada dominate while confidence continues to fall in Brazil and other emerging markets.
These and other insights are from Deloitte’s 2015 Global Venture Capital Confidence Survey. You can download a copy here (PDF, no opt-in, 70 pp.). Deloitte has also produced and made available infographics of the key findings here (PDF, no opt-in, 4 pp.).
Deloitte & Touche LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) collaborated on the eleventh annual survey, which was conducted in May & June of this year. The study assesses investor confidence in the global venture capital environment, market factors shaping industries and investments on specific geographies and industry sectors. See page 4 of the study for a description of the methodology.
Key takeaways include the following:
- Global venture capital investors are most confident in cloud computing (4.18). Investors were asked to rate their confidence level in each sector. Confidence levels were measured on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 representing the most confidence. Basis points indicate year-over-year changes. Mobile (4.05), Internet of Things (3.95) and enterprise software (3.82) are the top four sectors venture capitalists are the most confident in today. Biopharmaceuticals are experiencing the greatest increase in venture capital confidence today. Please the the graphic below for additional details.
- The United States (4.17), Israel (3.90) and Canada (3.60) dominate venture capital investors’ confidence while emerging markets including Brazil continues to fall. U.S. technology hubs including Silicon Valley/San Francisco, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago continue to retain and reinforce global venture capital investor confidence. The following graphic illustrates global venture capital investor’s confidence by nation.
- Silicon Valley/San Francisco (4.28), New York (3.86) and Boston (3.77) are the top three U.S. metros global venture capital investors have the greatest confidence in. Los Angeles (3.43) and Chicago (3.22) are the fourth and fifth most trusted U.S. metros that venture capitalists have confidence in. $15.2B was invested by global venture capital investors in Silicon Valley/San Francisco according to the Deloitte study. The following graphic compares venture capitalist confidence levels and venture capital investment dollars received in 2015 through Q2.
- Immigration reform (61%) and patent demand reform (36%) are the top two initiatives U.S.-based venture capitalists want addressed by policy leaders. For non-U.S. venture capitalists, tax incentives/credits (50%), infrastructure and job creation (both 41%) are the top two initiatives they would like to see public policy leaders take on in their home country.
- Cloud computing continues across all sectors as the area global venture capital investors have the greatest confidence in. Confidence in biopharmaceuticals grew the fastest of any sector measured by the survey between 2014 and 2015, and this is the first year Deloitte is tracking investor confidence in the Internet of Things (IoT). A sector comparison is provided below.
