When it comes to IoT in the enterprise, namely the commercial building and hospitality markets, a benefit not getting the attention it deserves is energy efficiency, and IoT’s direct impact on a cleaner, greener environment when installed in smart buildings. Until now clean technology was offered piecemeal and led with point solutions that require significant systems integration to orchestrate and deploy. There didn’t exist a ‘top down’ approach that can manage and monitor the way a Smart Building actually breathes – immediately flagging overheating in a closet or over cooling in unoccupied hotel rooms.

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Learn how IoT, cloud, social networks and last but not least, humans, can be integrated into a seamless integration of cooperative organisms both cybernetic and biological. This has been enabled by recent advances in IoT device capabilities, messaging frameworks, presence and collaboration services, where devices can share information and make independent and human assisted decisions based upon social status from other entities.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Michael Heydt, founder of Seamless Thingies, discussed and demonstrateed how devices and humans can be integrated from a simple cluster of Raspberry Pi/IoT devices, up through cloud connected devices, severs, wearables and humans.

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(c)iStock.com/Devonyu

A business-led approach, collaborative IT resources and adopting key controls are the three main factors to DevOps success – but many UK businesses are still struggling with it, according to a new study from CA Technologies.

The report, entitled ‘Assembling the DevOps Jigsaw’ which polled more than 500 respondents from Europe, found only one in 10 (11%) UK organisations are in the category of ‘advanced DevOps adopters’, defined as organisations who have implemented DevOps practice across at least six different business areas. Swiss businesses (23%) are the furthest advanced, but other European countries are not noticeably better, with Spain (13%), France (12%), Italy (12%) and Germany (10%) all struggling.

Yet the majority of UK businesses are tuning in to DevOps methodology. More than two thirds of companies (67%) have implemented DevOps in some capacity, such as failing fast, and streamlining IT to free up resources for digital investment.

The reason for companies making initial steps but not going further revolves around the difficulties breaking down established barriers. 68% of those polled said it was important to remove the traditional walls between Dev and Ops teams, yet only 38% say they have fully dealt with cultural transformation.

Companies in the ‘advanced adopters’ category see business benefit from their change, according to the report. 85% of organisations polled across Europe saw ‘significant measurable benefits’ in customer retention, while the majority of firms also saw similar results in customer acquisition and new income streams.

“Digital interaction with customers, partners, and suppliers increasingly takes place through applications, apps and online services,” said Ritu Mahandru, VP solution sales at CA Technologies. “To innovate new customer experiences, be more agile and grow revenues, UK organisations require a much more rapid and continuous delivery of value to create competitive advantage, while simultaneously allowing IT to become more responsive and efficient.”

Research over the past year has shown a confused outlook from businesses on the state and definition of DevOps. A report from Delphix in October found more than three quarters (77%) of firms had introduced dedicated budgets and support teams for DevOps, while in August the same firm found the primary definition was “developers and system administrators collaborating to ease the transition between development and production.”

(c)iStock.com/xenotar

By Steve Davis, marketing director, NGD

It is 2016 and Britain is on flood alert – again. The latest terrible flooding suffered by residents and business owners in the North of England were made even worse with it happening in the run up to Christmas and through the New Year period.

Flooding of course is not limited to the North. It is a nationwide phenomenon bearing in mind the dreadful events down in Somerset a couple of years ago, the same winter which also saw the Thames burst its banks just a few miles short of central London. If it hadn’t been for the Thames Barrier things could have been truly devastating.  

With such events becoming more frequent and more severe, and the Environment Agency saying climate change will make existing defended areas more vulnerable over this century, it is clear that businesses using on-premise or third party data storage facilities located on or nearby floodplains are at increased risk. The resulting impact on business continuity, either directly from water ingress or from the knock-on effects such as power outages, cannot be underestimated.

When it comes to data centre operations the name of the game is to protect and ensure data is safe and secure. This must surely include from flood water but such logical thinking appears at odds judging by the many existing facilities and new builds still being located near rivers and on floodplains, London Docklands a prime example. While plenty of time and resource is spent on cyber and physical defences, risk from acts of God seem to take a back seat.  

Some continue to argue there is no other choice as we are, after all, living on an island with numerous rivers. But there are many other areas in the UK to choose from and this argument certainly doesn’t wash in the face of the near millisecond latency over several hundred miles now widely available nationwide – and at very low cost with fibre connectivity costing under a fiver per mile.

Nine times out of 10 the low latency available is more than adequate for all but the most time critical financial trading applications. Furthermore, powerful remote diagnostics has also ruled out the case for server hugging. You really don’t need to be onsite anymore to check the lights are on.    

All things considered, 2016 could well be the year many more businesses make their data strategy more watertight – in all senses of the word.  Well-connected carrier neutral data centre locations, well away from rivers, floodplains and coast lines should become increasingly popular.

The Internet of Things (IoT), in all its myriad manifestations, has great potential. Much of that potential comes from the evolving data management and analytic (DMA) technologies and processes that allow us to gain insight from all of the IoT data that can be generated and gathered. This potential may never be met as those data sets are tied to specific industry verticals and single markets, with no clear way to use IoT data and sensor analytics to fulfill the hype being given the IoT today.

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For it to be SOA – let alone SOA done right – we need to pin down just what “SOA done wrong” might be. First-generation SOA with Web Services and ESBs, perhaps?
But then there’s second-generation, REST-based SOA. More lightweight and cloud-friendly, but many REST-based SOA practices predate the microservices wave.
Today, microservices and containers go hand in hand – only the details of “container-oriented architecture” are largely on the drawing board – and are not likely to look much like SOA in any case.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Jason Bloomberg, President of Intellyx, provided an insightful look into the nature of microservices architecture.

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With the exponential growth of network traffic slowing down data transmission, companies are looking for solutions. Recently, a solution has emerged that can help improve your data speed with data centers on the edge. These micro data center solutions can simplify the lives of many data center owners and operators because they are self-contained, secure computing environments, assembled in a factory and shipped in one enclosure which includes all the necessary power, cooling, security, and management tools. Their flexibility opens up a wave of new applications, made possible through reduced latency, increased security and cost efficiency.

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Contextual Analytics of various threat data provides a deeper understanding of a given threat and enables identification of unknown threat vectors.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, David Dufour, Head of Security Architecture, IoT, Webroot, Inc., discussed how through the use of Big Data analytics and deep data correlation across different threat types, it is possible to gain a better understanding of where, how and to what level of danger a malicious actor poses to an organization, and to determine the measures to implement to prevent future occurrences.

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