The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at a rapid pace with millions of new devices getting connected every day.
Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use in 2016 and by 2020, the number will reach 20.8 billion. Billions of devices including smartphones, laptops, cars, watches, refrigerators, and even thermostats are all getting connected thanks to APIs. Many of these devices are part of a larger application ecosystem, connected to the cloud and each other using the same APIs.

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Silver Spring Networks, Inc. (NYSE: SSNI) extended its Internet of Things technology platform with performance enhancements to Gen5 – its fifth generation critical infrastructure networking platform. Already delivering nearly 23 million devices on five continents as one of the leading networking providers in the market, Silver Spring announced it is doubling the maximum speed of its Gen5 network to up to 2.4 Mbps, increasing computational performance by 10x, supporting simultaneous mesh communication on both 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies, integrating 4G LTE communications, and delivering simplified modularity for easier device integration. These Gen5 platform enhancements, coupled with Silver Spring’s existing multi-application, range, latency, scale, distributed intelligence, and power optimization capabilities, further enable utilities, cities and other Internet of Things (IOT) device and application providers to deliver multiple applications on a single, unified network without compromising reliability, speed, security, or cost.

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Picture credit: “Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011”, by “Andrew Hyde”, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Cloud provider Rackspace has announced the launch of a new private cloud service utilising the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack platform.

The move plays further into Rackspace’s ‘OpenStack as a service’ offerings, which aim to simplify the process of OpenStack private and hybrid cloud uptake. The latest product, ‘Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat’ to give its full name, will be fully managed by OpenStack and Red Hat experts at Rackspace and promises all the hype of the public cloud but with enterprise-grade security.

“Rackspace is excited to expand our managed services and expertise to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform,” said VP and OpenStack private cloud general manager Darrin Hanson. “We help make OpenStack simple by eliminating the complexity and delivering it as a service to customers in their data centre, a Rackspace data centre or in a colocation facility.”

The move ties in with various Rackspace policies, including its ‘fanatical support’ for managed cloud services, and partnering with other technologies. In July, Rackspace announced an expanded service offering with Microsoft, combining its private cloud with Microsoft Cloud Platform, for customers who are not entirely ready to go all in with public cloud.

Like Microsoft, Rackspace has enjoyed a long partnership with Red Hat and claims it is uniquely positioned to provide customers benefits through managed deployment of Red Hat clouds. “We are consistently hearing feedback from enterprises that one of the primary barriers to OpenStack adoption continues to be the operational complexities around deployment,” said Gina Longoria, Moor Insights & Strategy senior analyst. “With Rackspace expanding their offerings, customers can take out a lot of the uncertainty of the do it yourself model and leverage the OpenStack as a service product portfolio at Rackspace.”

The Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat is generally available now.

The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service).
In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, will provide an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data professionals, as experts estimate that “as-a-service” cloud sourcing will increase from today’s 15% to 35% by 2021. Learn more and hear important considerations to help evaluate and rank your options.

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One of the bewildering things about DevOps is integrating the massive toolchain including the dozens of new tools that seem to crop up every year. Part of DevOps is Continuous Delivery and having a complex toolchain can add additional integration and setup to your developer environment.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Miko Matsumura, Chief Marketing Officer of Gradle Inc., will discuss which tools to use in a developer stack, how to provision the toolchain to minimize onboarding time for new developers, and how to maximize productivity according to some of the leading companies in Silicon Valley whether in the coding, build, integration, testing or deployment phase.

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Adding public cloud resources to an existing application can be a daunting process. The tools that you currently use to manage the software and hardware outside the cloud aren’t always the best tools to efficiently grow into the cloud. All of the major configuration management tools have cloud orchestration plugins that can be leveraged, but there are also cloud-native tools that can dramatically improve the efficiency of managing your application lifecycle.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Alex Lovell-Troy, Director of Solutions Engineering at Pythian, will present a roadmap that can be leveraged by any organization to plan, analyze, evaluate, and execute on moving from configuration management tools to cloud orchestration tools. He will address the three major cloud vendors as well as some tools that will work with any cloud.

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Join us at Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo 2016 – June 7-9 at the Javits Center in New York City and November 1-3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA – and deliver your unique message in a way that is striking and unforgettable by taking advantage of SYS-CON’s unmatched high-impact, result-driven event / media packages.

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This week’s top news covers all the necessary tools and practices to successfully adopt DevOps and Continuous Delivery in your organization. As we have been told time and again, changing your team’s culture and organizational structure is key to kick starting a smooth and successful shift towards DevOps. Equally important is having the right tools to implement these practices. Continue reading to learn what tools DevOps and Continuous Delivery experts suggest you use.

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