You can never be too careful. Security is on everyone’s mind. Not too long ago, we talked about how beefed up security impacts load testing and we want to continue the conversation. How do you keep yourself and your company safe in the age of industrial and state-sponsored hacking? In this post, we’ll outline a few things you must know.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Is Agile Killing Enterprise Architecture? | @CloudExpo #DevOps #Microservices
Maybe EA is essentially governance. If someone from a line of business wants something from IT, they have to pass the request by the EA gatekeepers first. After all, nobody wants duplication or spaghetti integration, right? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. So nothing gets done until EA gives it the stamp of approval.
If that’s the definition of EA, then the first thing we should do is burn that sucker to the ground. There’s no way any organization will ever be agile if there’s a whole department in charge of roadblocks. If Agile is up to the task, then more power to it.
IBM and Etihad Deal
Recently, Etihad Airways has signed a $700 million deal with cloud giant IBM. IBM is set to provide the company’s passengers with cloud computing services that will make air travel easier. This ten year service agreement entails that IBM will provide new information technology services to Etihad and its partner airlines via a new cloud data center in Abu Dhabi. This new data center will be developed and created by IBM. According to Etihad, the center will be one of the most sophisticated of the facilities in the Middle East. As airlines look to reduce line times, they are beginning to invest in IT solutions, as Etihad has with IBM. Cloud technologies will help the airlines improve security while reducing the cost for passengers.
Etihad is the newest addition to the trend of airlines that have adopted cloud-based collaborative decision-making systems. Such systems aim to share important information such as flight departure and arrival times and baggage information. Etihad joins companies such as Lufthansa, who signed a €1 billion IT outsourcing deal with IBM, and British Airways, who signed a deal with Red Hat to increase its cloud computing capabilities.
New technologies may include better luggage drops with label printing and self-boarding gates based on data generated from check-ins, enable airlines to order, replace and maintain aircraft components more efficiently, better estimate travel times, and better manage loyalty programs.
James Hogan, Etihad’s president and chief executive, has commented, “This is a game-changing agreement for Etihad Airways, for our partners and employees, and for Abu Dhabi. This is a long-term, strategic partnership which will allow Etihad Airways and its partners to harness the latest technologies as we deliver our services.” IBM and Etihad will also create a joint technology and innovation council in Abu Dhabi to work on developing more personal travel solutions.
The post IBM and Etihad Deal appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
The Road to Enterprise PaaS | @CloudExpo @RedHatNews #DevOps #BigData #Microservices
Interested in leveraging automation technologies and a cloud architecture to make developers more productive? Learn how PaaS can benefit your organization to help you streamline your application development, allow you to use existing infrastructure and improve operational efficiencies. Begin charting your path to PaaS with OpenShift Enterprise.
How to win with AWS: Five best practice tips
Picture credit: Nandor Fejer/Flickr
As AWS increasingly becomes the preferred deployment model for enterprise applications and services, it’s never been more important for a software or AWS SaaS provider to effectively work with AWS. Many leading technology providers are therefore optimising their software to run on AWS as well as building globally available cloud services delivered through AWS’ worldwide regions.
We’ve had some success on AWS, and thought we’d share some of our learnings in the form of best practices for you to keep in mind when developing your software or SaaS business in this way.
Embrace the change
If you’ve attended the keynote at any recent AWS Summit, you’ve heard the message “cloud is the new normal.” Our advice is to take this to heart, and invest in your business knowing the momentum behind cloud will only continue to accelerate.
This is a boon to businesses of every size and in every location around the world – cloud makes it easier than ever before to innovate, rapidly bring an offering to market, and serve your customer.
Relentlessly focus on the customer experience
Focusing your business on customer success is a must when building a business on AWS.
Why? Because the number one driving factor behind everything AWS does is help its customers be successful and innovative. Tactically, this can mean many things for a SaaS Partner, but the one that stands out is building technology integrations that can provide additional value to AWS customers.
A good example of this involves AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config, services that deliver log data on AWS API calls around user activity and resource changes. When properly harnessed, these services help ensure security and compliance of AWS deployments. A handful of SaaS Partners deliver integrations for these AWS services. The importance of these integrations is clear when you think of how crucial security and compliance are for any successful AWS deployment.
Leverage your customers in your go-to-market strategy
When it comes to building your software or SaaS business on AWS, nothing beats customer validation. One of the most compelling stories is when a customer fully integrates your technology into their AWS strategy.
A great example of this is the Federal Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). FINRA is an independent regulator that examines all securities firms and their registered persons and surveils trading on U.S. markets. To respond to rapidly changing market dynamics, FINRA is moving its platform to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to analyse and store approximately 30 billion market events every day. FINRA uses Splunk Cloud to ensure security and compliance in their AWS deployment.
Choose AWS and go “all-in”
When building out your cloud strategy, you have to make choices. Our advice: When two roads diverge in the cloud, choose AWS.
This is a best practice because AWS has the richest and broadest set of services in the market. Whether your offering is storage intensive, computer intensive, or I/O intensive, there are specific solutions for each of them. Regardless of what you need on the infrastructure stack – whether it’s automated provisioning, configuration or management, there is a mature solution that fits the bill.
In addition, business today is global. To successfully grow your business you need the ability to rapidly expand around the world. AWS offers that through their 11 worldwide regions.
Leverage the ecosystem
If you’re building on AWS, chances are that other folks building on AWS will find it useful. This is what makes the AWS announcement of its SaaS Partner Program so exciting. If you’re building a SaaS billing management solution, odds are we could use it for our SaaS operational and security monitoring solution. Since we’re building a SaaS operational and security monitoring solution, odds are you could use it for your SaaS billing management solution. It’s a win-win for all sides.
Adobe and Dropbox team up for easier PDF handling on the go
(c)iStock.com/KIVILCIM PINAR
Digital giant Adobe and cloud storage provider Dropbox have announced a partnership for more seamless document handling and editing in a variety of locations.
According to Dropbox, there are more than 18 billion PDF files in the storage provider’s repository, being one of the most common business file types in Dropbox. The new partnership enables easier collaboration facilities with Adobe files, including viewing additional actions on PDF files stored in Dropbox Basic, Pro, and Dropbox for Business accounts, as well as edit PDFs via Dropbox through Acrobat DC on desktop or Reader elsewhere.
As a result, it seemed the partnership was a no-brainer from Dropbox’s perspective. “Ultimately, we want you to be able to work with any kind of file easily, from viewing to editing to sharing,” a company blog post reads. “Our collaboration with Adobe, the inventor of the PDF, is the next step in this process.”
“The requirements of our customers have constantly evolved over time; today, mobile has become the rule and people expect to complete work quickly and simply wherever and whenever they need,” added Kevin M. Lynch, SVP and general manager of Adobe Document Cloud. “Our work with Dropbox, as our first file sync and share partner, will help Adobe Document Cloud customers and people around the world be more productive with the documents at the centre of their daily lives.”
This move again highlights the necessity for the cloud storage provider in shaping its operations around the enterprise market. In November last year, Dropbox announced a partnership with Microsoft to entail closer collaboration with Office 365. Figures released by the company in June revealed there were more than eight million Dropbox business customers, compared to their overall total of 400 million.
Putting the Test Back into DevOps | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #BigData #Microservices
DevOps has become synonymous with empowering developers to move faster and deliver more software, but has unintentionally moved software quality and testing into a corner. The pendulum that swings back and forth between very slow testing and staying far away from overly technical solutions has swung hard with DevOps, completely ignoring the value that testers can bring by forcing customers to test new code and creating teams that rely monitoring systems to find things that could have been caught before customers noticed.
Continuous Provisioning | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Microservices
Now, with more hardware! September 21, 2015, Don MacVittie, Sr. Solutions Architect. The “continuous” trend is continuing (get it..?), and we’ll soon reach the peek of the hype cycle, with continuous everything. At the pinnacle of the hype cycle, do not be surprised to see DDOS attacks re-branded as “continuous penetration testing!” and a fee … Read More Continuous Provisioning
Salesforce offers $100m VC opportunity to European cloud startups
Salesforce Ventures has allocated $100 million to invest in European startups as the investment arm of the cloud giant aims to capitalise on a potential $33.3 billion market. Any European cloud start up that impresses the venture capitalists could typically expect backing of between $1 million and $5 million, according to the fund’s development head.
As the investment arm of cloud-based CRM giant Salesforce it has already invested £500 million in 150 cloud and enterprise startups since 2009. However the majority of these have been US based and only 17 European cloud start up firms have been funded. However, researcher IDC predicts that the European cloud sector will grow 12 as fast as any other sector of the IT industry. As Europe catches up with the US, by 2019 its cloud market could be worth a collective $33.3 billion, it said.
As the global shift to the cloud generates demand for exciting new social, mobile and data science technologies it is creating an opportunity that should not be missed, said Salesforce EVP of corporate development John Somorjai. The European investment business will link back to Salesforce Ventures’ operations in the US run by Somorjai. London based Alex Kayyal will head the Salesforce Ventures’ efforts in Europe.
“There is so much incredible innovation happening in Europe today and we want to empower the next generation of enterprise cloud startups in the region,” said Somorjai, “Our $100 million commitment strengthens our mission to help startups grow and give back to their communities.”
However, he admitted that the competition has already started with five investments already earmarked to take a chunk of the budget.
European cloud start ups that have previously won funding from Salesforce Ventures include CartoDB, CloudSense, Cloud9 IDE, NewVoiceMedia, Qubit, Universal Avenue and YOUR SL. It’s not just about the money, according to Ruben Daniels, co-founder of Cloud9 IDE. “It’s the network and introductions, mentorship and framework that help,” said Daniels.
Salesforce Ventures’ global expertise was as important as its funding, according to CartoDB founder Javier de la Torre. “It helps us more effectively bring our data visualization tools to individual and business users around the world,” said de la Torre.
Software AG launches web-based Digital Marketplace
Software AG has launched an online shop for development components in a bid to make cloud application development easier for enterprises.
The Digital Marketplace allows programmers at enterprises to choose and use the essential IT development components they need to solve their business problems. The stock on offer includes solution accelerators, business process models, application components, adapters and industry frameworks. Clients can also get fully-fledged systems created by Software AG’s partners and customers.
Software AG says it has two million developers and an expanding partner base contributing to the online resource. Visitors to the site can browse and take inspiration from industry-specific use cases and – if they fit the bill for the client’s own installation – download components of the systems described.
The vendor was compelled to set up the resource as the model for software purchase and consumption is changing, said Eric Duffaut, Chief Customer Officer for Software AG. “Digitisation is changing everything. Enterprises and governments have to develop and implement their unique digital strategies to meet customer and citizen expectations,” said Duffaut.
The hub is designed to make the increasingly complex world of cloud computing less threatening to the enterprise buyer, many of whom are not particularly technical, according to Duffaut. “These are not run-of-the mill investments and every one is a strategic decision. The Digital Marketplace will make digitisation easier, based on the collective experience of Software AG, our partners and customers.”
Meanwhile, partners will have a new channel to market, said Harish Dwarkanhalli, the Global Delivery Head of Software AG partner Cognizant’s Integrated Process Management practice. “Co-innovation is a key part of the value to our mutual clients. The Digital Marketplace is a new way to highlight the innovation, frameworks and thought leadership we’ve developed.”
Cognizant is using the online market to launch its Intra Day Liquidity Monitoring (ILM) system to clients.