SYS-CON Events announced today that Pythian, a global IT services company specializing in helping companies leverage disruptive technologies to optimize revenue-generating systems, has been named “Bronze 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.
Founded in 1997, Pythian is a global IT services company that helps companies compete by adopting disruptive technologies such as cloud, Big Data, advanced analytics, and DevOps to advance innovation and increase agility. Specializing in designing, implementing, and managing systems that directly contribute to revenue growth and business success, Pythian’s highly skilled technical teams work as an integrated extension of our clients’ organizations to deliver continuous transformation and uninterrupted operational excellence.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
IoT = Big Data | @ThingsExpo @Codero #IoT #M2M #API #RTC #BigData
Organizations already struggle with the simple collection of data resulting from the proliferation of IoT, lacking the right infrastructure to manage it. They can’t only rely on the cloud to collect and utilize this data because many applications still require dedicated infrastructure for security, redundancy, performance, etc.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Emil Sayegh, CEO of Codero Hosting, will discuss how in order to resolve the inherent issues, companies need to combine dedicated and cloud solutions through hybrid hosting – a sustainable solution for the data required to manage IoT devices/technology. There is no one-size-fits-all to the question of data collection and security, but hybrid is the only solution that seamlessly adapts to fit any and all.
Leverage Data Source Discovery By @Attivio | @CloudExpo #BigData #IoT #API
As enterprises capture more and more data of all types – structured, semi-structured, and unstructured – data discovery requirements for business intelligence (BI), Big Data, and predictive analytics initiatives grow more complex. A company’s ability to become data-driven and compete on analytics depends on the speed with which it can provision their analytics applications with all relevant information. The task of finding data has traditionally resided with IT, but now organizations increasingly turn towards data source discovery tools to find the right data, in context, for business users, data scientists, and BI analysts. These tools provide self-service data access speeding time to insight.
What to Consider With a Citrix XenApp Install
The news about the release of XenApp 7.6 and XenDesktop 7.6 is especially important because Citrix has made quite a few changes compared to previous versions. The move from IMA to FMA architecture resulted in several features being left out. Therefore, looking at this history, it is important for businesses to consider certain aspects before […]
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The Evolution of Video Game Controllers (Infographic)
Picking your favorite video game controller is as contended as picking your favorite game—more than one fight has broken out in my house about how awesome the Dreamcast was vs. how terrible its controller was! It’s been a long road from Tennis for Two to our Xbox One controllers (and my gaming mouse and mechanical […]
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PaaS and app migration: How to navigate digital disruption while keeping legacy investments
(c)iStock.com/PeskyMonkey
Digital technologies are having an irrefutable impact on working lives. Mobile, social media, cloud and big data technologies have been ushered into the enterprise to enable more flexible working practices for employees, more convenient access for customers and greater agility for the deployment of new services. However, it isn’t enough to simply layer these new technologies on top of an existing IT infrastructure.
Legacy applications and technology platforms must go through a process of modernisation to ensure they can be seamlessly integrated with the new digital systems being introduced. Business models must also be redefined; as the traditional designs based on processes become redundant in favour of new approaches built around the customer experience.
As a result, organisations must go through a major transformational shift as they move towards a digital future. This is no easy feat; it requires a significant investment of both time and resources since the IT department can’t just jettison its entire legacy IT infrastructure and start again. Instead, it must reengineer existing applications and redefine the IT ecosystem. The scale of this task has caused some industries to be late in embracing the digital switchover.
Unsurprisingly, these delays are most apparent in sectors such as financial services, where more established firms have a heavy reliance on legacy IT systems. For example, Forrester recently warned that European insurance firms are not being responsive enough to the forces of digital disruption. Unfortunately, those that fail to react quickly enough to the digital disruption risk being phased out of the market by newer digital start-ups that are more agile and responsive to customer demands. Indeed, Gartner issued the sobering warning that digital incompetence will lead a quarter of organisations to lose market position.
Overcoming the legacy burden
For established organisations, the major barrier they must overcome is in transforming their existing legacy IT ecosystem so that it is able to integrate seamlessly with new digital technologies. In order to do this successfully, they must go through the process of modernising their application environment. Historically, this has been about standardising applications across the enterprise and migrating away from aging legacy systems in order to reduce costs.
However, digitalisation has redirected the process to focus on developing future-proof platforms that are ready for the cloud and the integration of the entire business ecosystem; enabling seamless interaction between employees, suppliers and customers. There are three key steps critical to undergoing this process successfully:
- Platforms in the cloud – a cloud-based application platform is critical to success in the digital era. This model enables organisations to easily innovate with low capital expenditure by developing and deploying new services using application programming interfaces (APIs) or software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions such as Salesforce.
- Application migration – once the platform has been established, organisations should be looking to transfer their existing applications into the cloud in order to reduce the costs of supporting them. Concerns over security and compliance with sensitive applications can be addressed through the use of a hybrid cloud model, combining public and private cloud environments.
- Integration of assets – even with a hybrid cloud model, it may not be possible to migrate all of the organisation’s existing applications into the cloud due to technical, legal or business constraints. As such, it will be critical to integrate these applications that remain on the legacy IT infrastructure with the newly digitalised services running in the cloud in order to create an agile IT environment that supports the business effectively.
The fast-paced evolution of digital technologies also means that this process must be continuous. It’s therefore important that businesses don’t look at application modernisation as an end state; they must be content with innovating through continuous change and regularly reassessing the IT ecosystem to ensure that it is able to meet the needs of the business and its customers.
The complexities and potential pitfalls involved in implementing this process are leading many to look to bring in technology partners to gain access to application and digital design expertise that may not exist internally. However, bearing in mind the speed of change and the need for technology to deliver a competitive advantage, it is essential that businesses demand flexibility from their partners.
With a modernised application landscape at the heart of their operating environment, businesses will be in a far stronger position to embark on the road to digitalisation. The future-proofed IT environment will enable firms to introduce new digital services incrementally, phasing out legacy systems gradually to minimise disruption and ensure they are seamlessly integrated with the broader ecosystem. In this way, established organisations can come out fighting against the rising tides of digital disruption; putting themselves firmly back on the map with a lasting competitive edge.
AWS re:Invent 2015 – The Preview Video By @PSilvas | @CloudExpo #Cloud
I preview AWS re:Invent, the Amazon Web Services annual user conference, happening next week October 6-9 at The Venetian Sands in Las Vegas. From Booth 830, F5 will show you how you can take your critical application services with you to the cloud. The sold out show is expecting 20,000 attendees and if you can’t get to the event, bookmark this channel and watch some of the highlights.
[session] Taking Cloud Databases to the Edge By @BradleyHolt | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Apps and devices shouldn’t stop working when there’s limited or no network connectivity. Learn how to bring data stored in a cloud database to the edge of the network (and back again) whenever an Internet connection is available.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Bradley Holt, Developer Advocate at IBM Cloud Data Services, will demonstrate techniques for replicating cloud databases with devices in order to build offline-first mobile or Internet of Things (IoT) apps that can provide a better, faster user experience, both offline and online. The focus of this talk will be on IBM Cloudant, Apache CouchDB, and related open source tools and open standards.
Parallels Named Champion in the European Business Awards
Featured image courtesy of the European Business Awards. Parallels Malta has today been named as a National Champion for Malta in the European Business Awards, a prestigious competition sponsored by RSM and supported by businesses leaders, academics, media, and political representatives from across Europe. Now in its ninth year, the European Business Awards this year […]
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Cloud computing in the public sector
BCN has partnered with the Cloud Asia Forum event to speak to some of its speakers. In this interview we speak to Ben Dornier, Director of Corporate & Community Services, City of Palmerston.
BCN: What does your role involve and how is technology helping your organisation grow and reach more customers? What is the role of Cloud Computing in this?
Ben Dornier: My role includes responsibility for general corporate affairs (finance, city tax revenue, legal affairs, HR, IT, contracts, insurance and risk) as well as governance and strategy (the city strategy, annual budget, annual financial reporting, performance reporting, policy and corporate strategy), and community services (libraries, city recreational facilities, city facilities, city community services).
ICT plays a major role in ensuring this portfolio can not only be adequately delivered, but especially in ensuring it is done efficiently and sustainably. Cloud computing is a major player, with several major systems already in the cloud, and our transfer of all corporate ICT systems into public/private cloud hybrids over the course of this financial year. It has reduced our risk and cost base, and allowed us a shift of emphasis from employing pure technical expertise to technical strategy expertise, allowing us to focus on our core services while improving service standards.
What do you consider as the three main challenges for wide Cloud Computing adoption in Asia and how do you anticipate they can be overcome?
Interesting question, and really I can only answer regarding the public sector – the first is primarily HK based. I note a reticence amongst public agencies to provide mobility solutions to their employees, and I think this seriously hampers the effectiveness of cloud based solutions to get government workers out of their desks and into the city infrastructure and services, which I believe likely drags on costs and efficiency. With this as a barrier, many of the benefits of cloud based solutions will not be readily as apparent to the government – and the skill sets of highly competent, highly mobile workforce will not be an advantage.
Second, I see the structural issues associated with data governance and related policy as a serious barrier, although this is steadily decreasing. As long as policy makers are not actively addressing cloud procurement and adoption issues, the ICT staff supporting internal decision making will not be able to recommend new and innovative models of service delivery without there being fairly high costs associated with development. This continues the prevalence of ‘bespoke systems’ and the myth that ‘our agency and its requirements are unique, and we need a unique system’. I simply do not believe this is true any longer, and nations which address this at a federal or national level are reaping the benefits.
Third, in ‘cloud-readiness’, Asia is rapidly climbing – but this is really a private sector metric. I would strongly advocate that there be a concerted effort in the industry to support a public sector metric, which could bootstrap some of the incredible work happening in the private sector, and be a convincing argument for changes in public policy towards cloud use. Public sector use will be a serious revenue driver once procurement practices are able to support government cloud use in the least restrictive manner appropriate.
How much is Mobility part of your strategy? Is it important for organisations to enable employee mobility and reach out to customers through mobile devices?
Mobility is a ‘force-multiplier’ for us (to borrow from military terms), which allows us to increase productivity while reducing pressures on human resources. Municipal employees are able to spend less time at their desks entering data into corporate systems, be it for inspections and assessments of civic assets, to animal and parking infringements. For these staff, less time at the desk means more time doing the work they were hired to do. It also allows us to offer better employment flexibility for staff who would prefer to operate part time or odd hours, without some of the productivity issues often associated with workplace flexibility.
We are also finding that young employees are increasingly expecting us to provide this capability, and quickly adopt mobile solutions. As for our city residents, more than 50% are accessing city information through mobile devices when and where they need it, and an increasing proportion of these rely on mobile devices as their primary access. This will only increase.
How do you think Disruptive Technologies affect the way business is done in your industry?
Technology disruption is continuing to be a key component, particularly as older, expensive Line of Business systems are proving not nearly as capable as well managed cloud based solutions. I believe an increasing disruptor in this area will be cloud based integration services offering connections which tie multiple cloud based solutions into effectively a single service from the perspective of the end user.
There will always be a role for major system suppliers, but increasingly the aggregated cloud based service sector will take a large chunk of market share while reducing the risks associated to big capex spends and expensive implementations. When I am spending tax money, this is an important consideration!
Can you recommend a – relevant to Cloud and Technology – book/film/article that inspired you?
Being a bit more digital, might I suggest a blog! I have a heavy interest in concepts around ‘smart cities’, a technology disruption occurring around the business of building very expensive but often technologically ‘dumb’ civil infrastructure like bridges and waste facilities. I am an avid reader of posts at Jesse Berst’s “Smart Cities Now” blog, through his site at www.smartcitiescouncil.com. There are a few good blogs in this sector, but I enjoy the variety Jesse’s site provides.
What was your interest in attending Cloud Asia Forum? What are you looking to achieve by attending the event?
Frankly, I know from past experience that I am guaranteed an ‘ah-hah’ moment, or even several, which will change my thinking and perspective on a specific area related to cloud solutions in government. I am looking forward to hearing the speakers and interacting with delegates and finding out where these ‘ah-hah’ moments will occur. This year I am particularly interested in listening to topics covering C-Level persuasion, the translation of the technical advantages of cloud computing into corporate decision making involving non-technical (meaning ICT!) executives. For me, I think this will be helpful in persuading elected officials on their own terms about the benefits of cloud adoption.
