Much of the value of DevOps comes from a (renewed) focus on measurement, sharing, and continuous feedback loops. In increasingly complex DevOps workflows and environments, and especially in larger, regulated, or more crystallized organizations, these core concepts become even more critical.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Andi Mann, Chief Technology Advocate at Splunk, will show how, by focusing on ‘metrics that matter,’ you can provide objective, transparent, and meaningful feedback on DevOps processes to all stakeholders. Learn from real-life examples how to use the data generated throughout application delivery to continuously identify, measure, and improve deployment speed, code quality, process efficiency, outsourcing value, security coverage, audit success, customer satisfaction, and business alignment.
Monthly Archives: May 2016
Microsoft announces general availability of SQL Server 2016
Microsoft has announced the SQL Server 2016 will hit general availability to all customers worldwide as of June 1.
The SQL Server, which is recognized in Gartner Magic Quadrants for Operational Database, Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, and Advanced Analytics, will be available through four editions, Enterprise, Standard, Express and Developer. The team also announced it would move customer’s Oracle databases to SQL Server free with software assurance.
“SQL Server 2016 is the foundation of Microsoft’s data strategy, encompassing innovations that transform data into intelligent action,” said Tiffany Wissner, Senior Director of Data Platform Marketing at Microsoft. “With this new release, Microsoft is delivering an end-to-end data management and business analytics solution with mission critical intelligence for your most demanding applications as well as insights on your data on any device.”
Features for the SQL include mission critical intelligent applications delivering real-time operational intelligence, enterprise scale data warehousing, new Always Encrypted technology, business intelligence solutions on mobile devices, new big data solutions that require combining relational data and new Stretch Database technology for hybrid cloud environments.
“With this new innovation, SQL Server 2016 is the first born-in-the-cloud database, where features such as Always Encrypted and Role Level Security were first validated in Azure SQL Database by hundreds of thousands of customers and billions of queries,” said Wissner.
Last month, the team announced the team also announced it was bringing the SQL Server to Linux, enabling SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. This move seemingly surprised some corners of the industry by moving away from its tradition of creating business software that runs only on the Windows operating system. The news continues Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s strategy of making Microsoft a more open and collaborative organization.
IoT Data and HTML5 | @ThingsExpo #HTML5 #IoT #M2M #InternetOfThings
Increasing IoT connectivity is forcing enterprises to find elegant solutions to organize and visualize all incoming data from these connected devices with re-configurable dashboard widgets to effectively allow rapid decision-making for everything from immediate actions in tactical situations to strategic analysis and reporting.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Shikhir Singh, Senior Developer Relations Manager at Sencha, will discuss how to create HTML5 dashboards that interact with IoT devices via Ext JS constructed components like Grids, Charts, and Widgets.
Century launches automation offering for hybrid and multi-cloud
CenturyLink has launched Runner, it’s new configuration management and orchestration service designed for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
The new offering is built with openness in mind, ensuring automation in any cloud or data centre, including its own cloud platform, other third-party cloud providers and on premise infrastructures and devices. Runner focuses on open source automation and orchestration engine as a service.
“Runner is a new product from CenturyLink Cloud that enables fast, easy automation and orchestration on the CenturyLink Cloud Platform, as well as third-party cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure and devices,” said Chris Kent, Runner Product Owner at Century Link. “Runner provides the ability to quickly provision and modifies resources on any environment, and gives users a true Hybrid IT solution, regardless of where their resources are.
“Runner, at its core, is an Ansible engine. On top of that engine exists several other custom services and APIs we’ve created, many of which were created in tandem with the Runner job service to enhance the job execution capabilities.”
The new offering is built on the assumption that customers do not have the time or resource to effectively manage a hybrid or multi-cloud environment, and also cases where customers need better distribution in case of failures. The team seem to be focusing on the concepts of execution speed and a reduction in human error as some of the prominent features to differentiate themselves in an already competitive market. CenturyLink has also differentiated itself by focusing the technology on managing and automating the infrastructure itself, as opposed to focusing on the connections themselves, as with other competitors.
EMC rolls out Virtustream global hyper-scale storage cloud
(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Sami Sert)
Entering a large emerging market, EMC has rolled out a global, hyper-scale storage cloud known as Virtustream Storage Cloud as the company takes on the likes of IBM Softlayer, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services among others. EMC, which will be known as Dell EMC in the near future, considers the offering to be its vanguard webscale storage, backup and archiving instrument.
Virtustream offers a tier of cloud-management abstraction that is placed above the virtual machine management tier and provides more accurate controls for administrators. This feature makes it stand out from rival offerings. The product’s services will hit the market on May 10, 2016, as both on-premises and cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) deployments for large enterprises.
The platform has gone through wide-ranging tests with underlying elements running successfully in production for several years as the primary object storage platform for a select set of customers managing multiple exabytes of data, with hundreds of billions of objects under management and an event monitoring system that processes more than 35 billion events per day.
The new Virtustream Storage Cloud provides cloud extensibility for on-premises EMC storage, providing simple and efficient tiering, long-term backup retention, and cold storage in the cloud with single-source EMC support. EMC offerings that will support the platform in the future include Data Domain, EMC Data Protection Suite, EMC Isilon, VMAX, XtremIO and Unity Systems.
What do you think about EMC’s new Virtustream solution? Let us know in the comments.
Parallels Desktop 11 Update2 Highlights
Parallels Desktop 11 Update2 Highlights Parallels Desktop 11 Update 2 was just released. While the update is recommended for all users, there are some new features especially for Pro users and Business users. I list some of the highlights in this blog post. But first of all, for everyone here is how to get the […]
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Oracle continues efforts to buy its way into the cloud market with $532 million acquisition
Oracle has announced it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Opower for approximately $532 million.
Opower, which provides customer engagement and energy efficiency cloud services to the utilities industry, boasts a healthy customer list of more than 100 utilities including companies such as PG&E, Exelon and National Grid. The announcement follows a similar one from last week, with Oracle acquiring Textura, a provider of construction contracts and payment management cloud services.
“Utilities want modern technology solutions that work together to meet their evolving customer, operational and compliance needs,” said Rodger Smith, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit. “Together, Oracle Utilities and Opower will be the largest provider of mission-critical cloud services to utilities.”
Oracle has certainly changed its tune in recent years, as it was once one of the foremost critics of the technology. “The computer industry is the only industry which is more fashion driven than women’s fashion. I was reading W and it said that orange is the new pink. Cloud is the new SaaS,” Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said in an analyst briefing in 2008.
While other organizations seemingly embraced cloud as a technology during its embryo days, and have in turn developed a portfolio to compete in this competitive marketplace, Oracle appear to be using financial muscle as a means of levelling the playing field and catching up with industry leaders.
Although the aforementioned acquisitions have increased Oracle’s share in the cloud market place, the company has been on the receiving end of some unfavourable reports recently. Research from JP Morgan highlighted while there are still a number of enterprise organizations who will continue to utilize the services of Oracle, this is more due to the complications of migrating their systems to another vendor, as opposed to the technological strength of the tech giant.
Microservices and Python | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #IoT #Microservices
The goal of any tech business worth its salt is to provide the best product or service to its clients in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. This is just as true in the development of software products as it is in other product design services.
Microservices, an app architecture style that leans mostly on independent, self-contained programs, are quickly becoming the new norm, so to speak. With this change comes a declining reliance on older SOAs like COBRA, a push toward more sustainable API approaches and fewer monolithic development and deployment models.
Welcome to the cloud party – Michael Dell launches Dell Technologies
Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell
Speaking at EMC World in Las Vegas, Dell CEO Michael Dell and EMC CEO Joe Tucci outlined the rationale behind one of history’s largest mergers, and announced the name of the industry’s latest tech giant – Dell Technologies.
The group itself will be known as Dell Technologies upon the completion of the reported $67 billion merger, though there will also be several individual operating brands. Dell’s client services group will continue to be known as Dell, with the soon-to-be merged enterprise business known as Dell EMC.
“There are certain times once every two or three generations where everything changes,” said Tucci. “The industrial revolution went on for more than 100 years and changed everything they knew back then. Many new companies were born out of the opportunities that were created, and many failed as they didn’t. We are now on the cusp of an even bigger revolution, the digital revolution.”
Tucci, speaking at what he seemingly disappointingly admitted would be his final EMC World, highlighted the vast scale of change at which the world is undergoing currently. IoT and the connected world specifically are redefining not only the way in which individuals communicate with each other, but also the way in which enterprise organizations are structured and operated. The merger enables two companies, which could potentially be perceived as being stuck in a traditional IT world, to create a new brand which can capitalize on digitalization trends.
“We have to change rapidly to be on the wave of this revolution,” said Tucci. “The merger with Dell allows the company to change the concept of the business and capitalize on the opportunities presented by the digital revolution.”
Michael Dell’s contribution to the opening keynote focused more on the rate of innovation, normalization and implementation of new technologies which are driving the digital revolution. EMC World has now been running for 15 years, debuting in 2001, the same year which saw the launch of the iPod, Sun E25k as the state of the art data centre technology and the first availability of 3G networks. Dell commented that while these once-innovations could now be seen as relics, it raise the question of what is possible during the next 15 years.
EMC CEO Joe Tucci and Dell CEO Michael Dell on stage at EMC World
“Think about 15 years from now, to the year 2031,” said Dell. “Currently, if you want to code the human genome it takes around 36 hours. In 2031 it will take 94 seconds. In 2031 more than half the cars on the road will be driverless, and there will be more than 200 million connected devices. There will be thousands of innovations which we can’t even begin to perceive. I believe that it could happen sooner as well. The marginal cost of making something intelligent is fast approaching zero.
“The new digital, connected world will require data centre infrastructure to be architected in a different way. It’s going to be cloud native and operated on a Devops methodology. EMC and Dell are merging to create a company which can deliver this concept.”
“We are combining Dell and EMC to help you navigate a successful path, to modernise your IT, reduce costs and helping you create your digital future.”
The merger itself could be evidence of the weight of the digital world and the expectations which are placed on companies to succeed in the new ecosystem. Rather than attempting to change the perception of the organization which they oversee, like IBM and Intel for instance, the merger enables Tucci and Dell to create a new brand which can be defined as how and where they desire. Unlike companies who are in the process of redefining themselves for the cloud era, Dell Technologies can position itself where-ever it chooses in the market, without worry of legacy perceptions.
Dell also claimed the new company will have a significant advantage over competitors due to the fact it will be private. Leaning on the idea Dell Technologies will not have outside influences to be concerned about as publicly trading organizations do, Dell believes the new company can invest for long-term ambition, as opposed to short-termist aims which could be perceived to damage technological innovation.
The IoT wave is continuing to grow, and as we see more devices deployed, more data collected and more cloud-orientated behaviour infiltrating the boardroom, the role of the data centre is likely to become more evident. Dell believes the modern data centre will be the centre of the new technology world, enabling innovation in an increasingly competitive market, and the merger has created a new organization which can capitalize on these trends. The success of the new company remains to be seen, though the new proposition and brand does have the potential to remove perceived doubt as to how traditional IT players can operate in “The Next Industrial Revolution” as Michael Dell highlighted.
Parallels Co-Sponsoring the Privacy and Security Forum
HIMSS Privacy and Security Forum May 11th and 12th – Los Angeles Parallels will be participating in the HIMSS Privacy and Security Forum on May 11 and 12 at the Intercontinental Los Angeles Century City in Los Angeles, California. Parallels will be presenting a forum on the importance of security, especially in terms of cloud […]
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