The Future of Data Centers | @CloudExpo #Cloud

The future of data centers looks very exciting. Data Centers are turning out to be increasingly important in today’s connected world as we can store and process a lot of consumer and commercial data. Data centers seem to be either becoming huge or very small. In general, marketing cloud storage and cloud computing services are likely to increase the profit margins and favor the large players. There is an increasing need for superior Data center competence as we are more dependent on cloud-based applications and huge Data center services.

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Experts Share Their 2016 Software Industry Predictions | @CloudExpo #Cloud

It’s never easy to predict the future. But if you want to plan for the future, you need to keep an eye on what’s coming next.

This month, we reached out to people from different areas of the software industry to get their thoughts on what to expect in 2016.
From DevOps to automation, security, and open API – these experts discuss new and continuing developments, changes, and trends that will impact that software industry in 2016.
Here are thirteen software industry predictions.

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Cloud Security Strategic Action Items for 2016 By @MariaHorton | @CloudExpo #Cloud

The recent uptick in cyber attacks across all sectors of the economy, have reinforced for CIOs the need to be able to address corporate boards and customers on their strategies for protection and resilience for the coming 2016 year.

Cloud, Big Data, and the liability issues in the news, have exposed the increased both the virtual, legal and physical risk bases and attack surfaces related to cloud and cyber. More than ever, formulating strategic and tactical defenses against adapting and evolving threats requires both a business and technological viewpoints. With external attacks, ransomware, and potential malicious insiders, CIOs and CISOs are faced with unprecedented challenges that require updating and re-thinking security policies, cyber hygiene, and technology migrations.

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Pitfalls of Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 2: 3rd Party Utilities, DNS, & Management Tools

Here is the second part of my video series around issues & operational considerations of Microsoft O365 migrations (you can watch part one here). In this video, I  cover 3rd party utilities, DNS, and other management tools. Keep your eyes peeled for part 3 coming soon!

If you’re looking for more information around O365 migrations, I recently held a webinar with a couple of my colleagues that takes a deep dive into the topic. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave them in the comment section below.

Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 2

 

Or click here to watch the video.

 

Interested in learning more about Microsoft O365 Migrations? Download David’s recent webinar, “Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality

 

By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies

Ellucian and Amazon Web Services Expanding Relationship

Ellucian has expanded its relationship  with Amazon Web Services, as many of Ellucian’s higher education solutions are offered on a cloud enabled platform. In the future, Ellucian plans to utilize the Amazon Web Services Cloud to power some of its services, allowing the more than 2,400 colleges and universities Ellucian serves to have access to cloud services. This will increase the both the accessibility of cloud solutions and the efficiency in which these are offered.

Jeff Ray, president and CEO at Ellucian, has commented “Cloud technology is essential to delivering an exciting new modern student experience for our institutions to deliver on student success. We are investing heavily in our strategic collaboration with AWS, a leading cloud infrastructure provider, to deliver a superior user experience for faculty, staff, and more than 18 million students within Ellucian’s growing higher education community.”

AWS cloud

The collaboration between the two companies allows colleges and universities to move securely to the cloud at their discretion. Many services, such as Ellucian Mobile and Ellucian Pilot, are cloud ready. Some services like Colleague by Ellucian can be hosted on the Amazon Web Service platform today through a Software as a Service platform (SaaS) by the end of 2016.

Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services, has stated: “Institutions across the world will benefit from Ellucian’s cloud-first strategy that combines their higher education product portfolio with the agility, flexibility and scale of the AWS Cloud. This will give educational institutions access to critical data and analytics that influence teaching decisions and enable successful learning outcomes campus-wide.”

The cloud has begun to transform education, healthcare, security; where will it go next?

The post Ellucian and Amazon Web Services Expanding Relationship appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

DevOps with Containers | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Docker #Microservices

Containers have changed the mind of IT in DevOps. They enable developers to work with dev, test, stage and production environments identically. Containers provide the right abstraction for microservices and many cloud platforms have integrated them into deployment pipelines. DevOps and containers together help companies achieve their business goals faster and more effectively.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Ruslan Synytsky, CEO and Co-founder of Jelastic, reviewed the current landscape of DevOps with containers and the benefits. In addition, he discussed known issues and solutions for enterprise applications in containers.

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Sharing Options in Parallels Desktop 11

Guest blog by Manoj Kumar Suresh, Parallels Support Team Parallels Desktop 11 and Parallels Desktop Pro are here and all of us are glad that both versions have many exciting new features—especially features like advanced networking tools, support for development and design, test tools like Docker, Jenkins, and Chef, and much more. But let’s look at a […]

The post Sharing Options in Parallels Desktop 11 appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Guest Post: Outsourcing IT – Is it Helping or Hurting Your Business Agility?

This is a guest post and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of GreenPages Technology Solutions.

Bob loves coffee. He loves coffee so much he’s making a career out of it. As Bob contemplates opening his own coffee shop, he’s confronted with a big decision: ‘Do I create my own model and serve up coffee in a unique way or do I join a franchise?’

A franchise is appealing as Bob feels he would have an immediate customer base because of the reputation of the brand. But he also knows that he’ll have to give up the model of something new and unique into the neighborhood, where his passion truly lies.

outsourcing ITThe franchise choice would be quicker and safer and probably yield some profit. Opening his own coffee shop is more risky but Bob gets to follow his passion for coffee and, if successful, has the potential to be very profitable if it resonates with the locals.

I worked in the ‘traditional IT’ model for about 15 years. I’ve been in the room where executive management is telling IT management to provide a solution that supports some business goal, “no excuses!” There were times when I hated those ‘discussions’; the demand was inefficient and disruptive and always came at a time where my distributed system design was in full swing. It forced me create something I felt was clumsy and inefficient like forcing a round peg into a square hole. Nevertheless, I’ve seen smart people get creative and do amazing things and the business flourishes, despite the crazy demands. It was the IT team’s ‘Scotty moment.’

Some businesses may not be a good fit for outsourcing IT services, regardless of how efficient and cool we Architects and Engineers think they are. Many executives who have gone the external cloud route find that they lose agility. Why? Because they lost the ability to share their vision and business goals with IT. Instead of talking to an internal team within the company culture, they have to talk to contracts and SLAs and some services simply aren’t possible. In this case, internal IT may be a better fit for business goals and agility, like Bob’s coffee shop where he wants to offer something unique to his customers, he has control of the model.

On the other hand, startups who want to hit the ground running and don’t have a complex set of applications, may find a predefined outsourced model makes more sense, like the coffee shop franchise model. Maybe an established company can simply move their offerings to an outsourced model, but larger established companies can fall into a special trap, where they invest heavily in the ‘Cloud’ but realize they have to keep their existing infrastructure to support some applications that aren’t ready – the worst of both worlds from a cost perspective. So, a mature application discovery phase and well-defined time-line for these business goals is crucial.

Every smart company looks for ways to improve agility and efficiency. Both insource and outsource models have their merit. It will be interesting to see how these decisions affect the success of both small and large companies in their endless varieties in the long term.

I’d love to get your perspective on this subject, so please feel free to provide some feedback and/or your own stories of IT success or disillusionment.

 

About the author

Mark Macinnis is a Cloud Architect and Performance Analyst at Teradata. He has over 20 years of experience in enterprise IT engineering, planning and building distributed systems to support multiple locations. In his current role, as well as his past role at Pearson Education, Mark has supported robust applications used to help the organizations stay ahead of market trends.

Get a Mac for the Holidays? Why Everyone Needs Windows on Mac

It’s a familiar scene: Christmas morning, an excited you tears at red and green wrapping paper, successfully ripping it off of a pretty white box—revealing a shiny new Mac. You’re jubilant! You’ve wanted to make the switch to Apple for years, but hadn’t yet taken the plunge. Then, suddenly, you have a sinking realization: what […]

The post Get a Mac for the Holidays? Why Everyone Needs Windows on Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.

DevOps Shares the Spotlight | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #IoT #Microservices

Did you think we forgot about our good friends Agile and Continuous Integration? With all the buzz around DevOps looking towards 2016, it’s been challenging to focus on anything else. DevOps, Agile, CI and Continuous Delivery are all joined at the hip, and this past week saw some great articles on these methodologies on our news feed. According to Joe Feccorata from InfoQ, adopting Agile practices can actually increase employee satisfaction. Not only can Agile promise happiness in the workplace, but the US Government is finding ways this method can save the planet. Still struggling with continuous integration adoption? Rami Honig from TechBeacon lays out 6 best practices of CI that even veterans can learn from.

Continue reading for more on this week’s top news on DevOps, Agile and Continuous Delivery. As always, stay tuned to all the news coming from @ElectricCloud throughout the week and retweet/favorite to get your favorite pieces featured in our weekly recap!

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