Monthly Archives: March 2016

News & Analysis, Open Source, Private Cloud, Suse

SUSE targets simplification with OpenStack Cloud 6 release

Public privateGerman open source vendor SUSE claims its new OpenStack Cloud 6 is designed to overcome the fear of commitment that is putting IT buyers off engagement with the cloud. SUSE claims its new private cloud offering is a solution to the buying objections that potential customers have outlined.

According to SUSE’s own feedback, many companies want the cloud but think it’s too much hassle to install applications and can’t risk the disruption to their business. A recent study commissioned by SUSE found that more than 90% of large companies say they’ve already got at least one private cloud within their business, can see the advantages and would, in theory, use cloud computing for more business-critical workloads. But in practise they are not going to. Their worst fears are over installation challenges, possible vendor lock-in and a lack of OpenStack skills in the market.

SUSE claims it can address these fears and aims to convince potential clients that they won’t be subject to IT project creep. In response it is offering non-disruptive upgrades and a more business-friendly release cycle with longer support duration. This combination, it claims, will compensate for the limited skilled resources by requiring fewer upgrades and minimising disruption to production environments.

In addition, SUSE aims to offer more training to boost the available skills base with a new OpenStack training and certification scheme. SUSE is introducing the SUSE Certified Administrator-OpenStack  (SCA-OpenStack) certification along with a new training course on how to install and administer SUSE OpenStack Cloud. This is intended as a complement to, not a replacement for, existing SUSE OpenStack Cloud training. The training was developed in collaboration with the OpenStack Foundation exam development team.

A new course will specifically prepare students to take both the OpenStack Foundation Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA) exam as well as the SCA-OpenStack exam. The new course will be held unveiled at an OpenStack Summit in Texas on April the 25th.

The Cloud 6 is based on the OpenStack release Liberty, has Docker and IBM z Systems mainframe support designed to make it easier to move applications and data to the cloud. Cloud 6 also supports Xen, KVM, Hyper-V and VMware hypervisor options and the OpenStack Manila shared file system service.

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IoT Creating Buildings of the Future | @ThingsExpo #BigData #IoT #IIoT #M2M

Advances in technology are redefining how energy assets are managed. Buildings that use energy IoT technology can connect to and manage their energy assets in real-time. They can institute system-wide operational oversight and compliance, execute energy efficiency programs, utilize real-time data, and support budgeting and asset planning across local and geographically-dispersed sites with first-of-its-kind connectivity.

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Critical IoT Communications | @ThingsExpo #IoT #Wearables #InternetOfThings

transform operational efficiency and safety for businesses and communities, especially during critical situations. During these critical events, man-made incidents or natural disasters, identifying and reaching employees with reliable and automated communications can not only protect business assets, but can be the difference between life and death.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Imad Mouline, chief technology officer for Everbridge, will highlight incident communications best practices and use cases that harness IoT – whether it be leveraging access control data to identify and communicate to dynamic employee locations, or automating downstream communications directly from public infrastructure.

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IIoT Consortium @ThingsExpo Media Sponsor | #IoT #IIoT #InternetOfThings

SYS-CON Events announced today Object Management Group® has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 18th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7–9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

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Cisco, News & Analysis, Virtualisation

Cisco launches Digital Network Architecture virtualization platform

Network Function VirtualisationCisco has launched a new system which aims to virtualize every conceivable network function possible for clients and take them through the painful process of digital transformation, reports Telecoms.com.

The networking vendor has announced its new Digital Network Architecture (DNA), which it describes as an open, software driven framework. The DNA will complement and extend the policies of its datacentre based Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology throughout the entire network, Cisco says.

Whereas ACI software defined the network, DNA will help enterprises to define everything from the campus to the branch, whether the network is wired or wireless, at the core or at the edge, says Cisco. DNA will sit within the Cisco ONE Software family, in order to simplify software licensing and help protect investments by providing continuity.

The Cisco DNA is built on five guiding principles, which can be summarized as virtualize everything, automate management, analyse everything everywhere, one policy for the entire network and keep every layer of networking as open and extensible as possible.

The mission to virtualising everything that can be possibly software defined will maximise the options for telcos and all enterprises. This gives the clients the choice to run any service anywhere, independent of the underlying platform, be it physical or virtual, on premise or in the cloud, says Cisco. Yesterday Cisco announced the acquisition of Leaba Semiconductor, which specialises in networking semi-conductors which could play a central role in the virtualisation of networking functions and maximise the possibilities for embedding virtualised functions.

Automating network management will maximise the speed and efficiency of the virtualised functions of an enterprise, but this may be regulated by the third important DNA principle, the need to have pervasive analytics. Analytics will provide the checks and balances needed to keep the network and IT infrastructure meeting its performance potential. Similarly, a virtualised network can only be an efficient cloud if service management from the cloud can unify policy and orchestration across the network. On Monday BCN reported how Cisco plans to buy cloud orchestration specialist CliQr.

The key to preventing network sclerosis is keeping everything open and accessible, which is why Cisco’s fifth guiding principle for DNA is to keep everything open, extensible and programmable at every layer, so that Cisco and third party technology can be integrated.

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Revealed: The best cloud computing companies and CEOs to work for in 2016

(c)iStock.com/theevening

Employees would most recommend Zerto, FusionOps, Google, OutSystems, AppDirect, Sumo Logic, Cloudera, HyTrust, Tableau Software and Domo to their friends looking for a cloud computing company to work for in 2016. These and other insights are from an analysis completed today to determine the best cloud computing firms and CEOs to work for this year.

To keep the rankings and analysis completely impartial and fair, the latest Computer Reseller News list, The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2016 is the basis of the rankings. Cloud computing companies are among the most competitive there about salaries, performance and sign-on bonuses and a myriad of perks and benefits. They are also attracting senior management teams that have strong leadership skills, many of whom are striving to create distinctive company cultures. The most popular request from Forbes readers are for recommendations of the best cloud computing companies to work for, and that’s what led to this analysis.

Using the 2016 CRN list as a baseline to compare the Glassdoor.com scores of the (%) of employees who would recommend this company to a friend and (%) of employees who approve of the CEO, the table below is provided. You can find the original data set here. There are many companies listed on the CRN list that doesn’t have than many or any entries on Glassdoor, and they are excluded from the rankings shown below but are in the original data set. If the image below is not visible in your browser, you can view the rankings here.

best cloud computing companies to work for in 2016 large

The highest rated CEOs on Glassdoor as of February 3rd, 2016 include the following:

  • Ziv Kedem, Zerto, 100%
  • Gary Meyers, FusionOps, 100%
  • Christian Chabot, Tableau Software, 100%
  • John Burton, Nintex, 100%
  • Rob Mee, Pivotal, 100%
  • Rajiv Gupta, Skyhigh Networks, 100%
  • Ken Shaw Jr., Infrascale, 100%
  • John Dillon, Engine Yard, 100%
  • Ramin Sayar, Sumo Logic, 99%
  • Sundar Pichai, Google, 98%
  • Lew Cirne, New Relic, 97%
  • Daniel Saks, AppDirect, 96%
  • James M. Whitehurst, Red Hat, 96%
  • Marc Benioff, Salesforce, 96%
  • Tom Kemp, Centrify, 95%
  • Jeremy Roche, FinancialForce, 95%
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DevOps in Heterogeneous World | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Microservices

Keeping pace with advancements in software delivery processes and tooling is taxing even for the most proficient organizations. Point tools, platforms, open source and the increasing adoption of private and public cloud services requires strong engineering rigor – all in the face of developer demands to use the tools of choice. As Agile has settled in as a mainstream practice, now DevOps has emerged as the next wave to improve software delivery speed and output. To make DevOps work, organizations must focus on what is most relevant to deliver value, reduce IT complexity, create more repeatable agile-based processes and leverage increasingly secure and stable, cloud-based infrastructure platforms.

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IoT and Energy Assets | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #DataCenter #Microservices

Internet of Things (IoT) platforms have evolved. Advances in technology make it possible for facilities to become more data-driven by connecting to energy assets, thereby improving building resiliency and reducing energy costs. By creating an Energy Network of Things, facilities can manage energy assets in real-time, institute system-wide operational oversight and compliance, execute energy efficiency programs, utilize real-time data, and support budgeting and asset planning across local and geographically-dispersed sites.

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Latency – Going Beyond Throughput | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Storage is moving to flash, and flash is getting faster, so people keep asking me why I keep talking about latency as if there is a problem. Isn’t faster flash going to just make everything faster? Won’t “the rising tide lift all boats”?
Flash media as a storage media is indeed “faster” than the spinning hard-disks we’ve all been using for decades. But when it is used to simulate a hard disk, as is the case with SSD products, there are software layers which prevent it from reaching its full potential. That explanation always gets heads nodding, because it is obvious. But what about when the flash media is not simply packaged into an “SSD” and connected over SATA or SAS, but instead can be addressed via NVMe over PCIe? Doesn’t that make the problem of hard disk drive emulation go away?

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