Developing software for the Internet of Things (IoT) comes with its own set of challenges. Security, privacy, and unified standards are a few key issues. In addition, each IoT product is comprised of at least three separate application components: the software embedded in the device, the backend big-data service, and the mobile application for the end user’s controls. Each component is developed by a different team, using different technologies and practices, and deployed to a different stack/target – this makes the integration of these separate pipelines and the coordination of software updates for IoT more problematic. How do you coordinate the diverse moving parts that must come together when your IoT product is updated?
Monthly Archives: October 2015
NTT’s Disaster Recovery Service Available in Europe
NTT Communications has brought its Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to European customers. Its DRaaS provides a managed cloud service to deliver business continuity in the event of an on-premise failure; it has been operating within the United States for many years. NTT is bringing the service to many European data centers for enterprise customers within the region. NTT is currently offering a one month launch trial of DRaaS for customers that qualify.
DRaaS allows companies that it supports to function normally during times of either planned or unplanned shortages. In addition, it provides real-time replication of customer servers to NTT’s cloud application, which in turn provides automatic failover and failback to ensure both data protection and high availability. This service is currently being offered at four NTT data centers across Europe in addition to other data centers around the world; so, customers may choose where they would like their recovery environment to be located. According to NTT Communications, DRaaS is based off of technology from Geminare’s Cloud Recovery platform. DRaas functions by replicating critical servers, customer data, and operating systems to the NTT cloud. European companies that are interested in testing out the service to see if the offering of DRaaS is compatible against their infrastructure and if it fits the companies’ requirements. This trial will be at either reduced or no cost to companies willing to try it.
“NTT Com’s DRaaS is a powerful cloud solution that allows customers to place their recovery environments in NTT’s Enterprise Cloud whether their primary infrastructure is on-premise, in a public cloud or in a private cloud. This is powered by Geminare’s patented DRaaS platform making it a compelling way for customers to capitalise on the benefits of cloud,” said Damian Skendrovic, NTT Europe’s vice president of cloud services.
About NTT Communications Corporation
NTT Com is a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, the largest telecommunication company in the world. It offers cloud services, data center services, network services, and voice and video communications services. Its network service is offered across 196 countries/regions and has upwards of 140 data centers throughout the world.
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Join Cloud Raxak at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #IoT #Cloud #BigData #Microservices
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Raxak has been named “Media & Session Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 17th Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Raxak Protect automates security compliance across private and public clouds. Using the SaaS tool or managed service, developers can deploy cloud apps quickly, cost-effectively, and without error.
Are You Worried About DRaaS? By @MonicaBrink | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Latest figures from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) indicate that cloud adoption is at its highest figure to date, with 78 per cent of organisations now having formally adopted at least one type of cloud-based service. TechNavio echoes this surge and in particular the surge in growth of Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service, forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 54.64 per cent between 2014 and 2018. However, despite the striking numbers and growth expectations there are still many IT professionals out there who have fears about adopting Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service.
Citrix Named Top Virtual Desktop (VDI) Vendor by Forrester By @ChrisFleck | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Citrix announced that the company has been named as a leader in the Forrester Research, Inc. report, The Forrester WaveTM: Server-Hosted Virtual Desktops (VDI), Q3 2015. The report evaluated seven vendors based on 26 criteria, including current offering, strategy and market presence.
According to the report, the “XenDesktop VDI offering is distinctive at several levels, from the user experience with Citrix Receiver endpoint clients that offer native HDX protocol support on all device and OS platforms to rich 3D graphics and multiple 4K monitor support and sophisticated features for multimedia and videoconferencing performance.” The report also noted that Citrix offers a “clever Wi-Fi-based mouse that works with the Citrix Receiver on the iOS platform.”
Cybersecurity Through Enterprise Risk Management By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Cybersecurity is top of mind for corporations around the world. The quantity of recent data breaches and the dollar loss associated with some of them indicates either an underinvestment in cybersecurity or a failure to properly invest in people, security training or technology. While breaches are very costly to the companies concerned, they also represent major consequences for individual privacy and a business’s short-term and long-term viability.
With this as a backdrop, I spoke with Curtis Hutcheson, VP and GM, Dell Security, at Dell Peak Performance. During the conversation, he shared his views and insight about enterprise risk management and how an integrated cybersecurity fabric could be used to better protect a company’s information and reputation.
Information Governance and Cloud By @TeresaSchoch | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Too many multinational corporations delete little, if any, data even though at its creation, more than 70 percent of this data is useless for business, regulatory or legal reasons.[1] The problem is hoarding, and what businesses need is their own “Hoarders” reality show about people whose lives are driven by their stuff[2] (corporations are legally people, after all). The goal of such an intervention (and this article)? Turning hoarders into collectors.
[session] True Cloud Security in the As-a-Service World By @Intel | @CloudExpo #Cloud
As-a-service models offer huge opportunities, but also complicate security. It may seem that the easiest way to migrate to a new architectural model is to let others, experts in their field, do the work. This has given rise to many as-a-service models throughout the industry and across the entire technology stack, from software to infrastructure. While this has unlocked huge opportunities to accelerate the deployment of new capabilities or increase economic efficiencies within an organization, it has complicated and even compromised security. A private cloud is nothing more than the virtualized components of a traditional data center, making it easier to provision, operate, and manage resources more efficiently. Hybrid clouds leverage larger scale public cloud environments to drive further efficiencies. Containers take this a step further, delivering greater micro-segmentation and isolation capabilities with much faster boot times. Security, of course, needs more than just perimeter defenses.
[session] Architecting for the Cloud with Cloud Foundry and Bluemix By @RagsS | @CloudExpo #Cloud
As the world moves towards more DevOps and microservices, application deployment to the cloud ought to become a lot simpler. The microservices architecture, which is the basis of many new age distributed systems such as OpenStack, NetFlix and so on, is at the heart of Cloud Foundry – a complete developer-oriented Platform as a Service (PaaS) that is IaaS agnostic and supports vCloud, OpenStack and AWS.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Raghavan “Rags” Srinivas, an Architect/Developer Evangelist at IBM, will discuss the microservices architecture, 12-factor app, containers, etc., and how to architect applications for the cloud in general and Cloud Foundry in particular. He will harness the power of dependency injection that Spring provides to pick a variety of data sources and services.
Cloud industry shaken by European Safe Harbour ruling
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled the Safe Harbour agreement between Europe and the US, which provides blanket permission for data transfer between the two, is invalid.
Companies looking to move data from Europe to the US will now need to negotiate specific rules of engagement with each country, which is likely to have a significant impact on all businesses, but especially those heavily reliant on the cloud.
The ruling came about after Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems asked to find out what data Facebook was passing on to US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Snowden revelations. When his request was declined on the grounds that the safe harbour agreement guaranteed his protection he contested the decision and it was referred to the Court of Justice.
This decision had been anticipated, and on top of any legal contingencies already made large players such as Facebook, Google and Amazon are offered some protection by the fact that they have datacentres within Europe. However the legal and logistical strain will be felt by all, especially smaller companies that rely on US-based cloud players.
“The ability to transfer data easily and securely between Europe and the US is critical for businesses in our modern data-driven digital economy,” said Matthew Fell, CBI Director for Competitive Markets. “Businesses will want to see clarity on the immediate implications of the ECJ’s decision, together with fast action from the Commission to agree a new framework. Getting this right will be important to the future of Europe’s digital agenda, as well as doing business with our largest trading partner.”
“The ruling invalidating Safe Harbour is seismic,” said Andy Hardy, EMEA MD at Code42, which recently secured $85 million in Series B funding. “This decision will affect big businesses as well as small ones. But it need not be the end of business as we know it, in terms of data handling. What businesses need to do now is safeguard data. They need to find solutions that keep their, and their customer’s, data private – even when backed up into public cloud.”
“Symantec respects the decision of the EU Court of Justice,” said Ilias Chantzos, Senior Director of Government Affairs EMEA at Symantec. “However, we encourage further discussion in order to create a strengthened agreement with the safeguards expected by the EU Court of Justice. We believe that the recent ruling will create considerable disruption and uncertainty for those companies that have relied solely on Safe Harbour as a means of transferring data to the United States.”
“The issues are highly complex, and there are real tensions between the need for international trade, and ensuring European citizen data is treated safely and in accordance with data protection law,” said Nicky Stewart, commercial director of Skyscape Cloud Services. “We would urge potential cloud consumers not to use this ruling as a reason not to adopt cloud. There are very many European cloud providers which operate solely within the bounds of the European Union, or even within a single jurisdiction within Europe, therefore the complex challenges of the Safe Harbor agreement simply don’t apply.”
These were just some of the views offered to BCN as soon as the ruling was announced and the public hand-wringing is likely to continue for some time. From a business cloud perspective one man’s problem is another’s opportunity and companies will be queuing up to offer localised cloud services, encryption solutions, etc. In announcing a couple of new European datacentres today Netsuite was already making reference to the ruling. This seems like a positive step for privacy but only time will tell what it means for the cloud industry.