Monthly Archives: May 2016

blockchain, Enterprise IT, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM becomes latest tech giant to join blockchain euphoria

Cloud computingIBM has launched its updated blockchain offering for the financial, healthcare and government industries, on IBM’s cloud platform Bluemix as well as Docker.

While blockchain is another trend which has been empowered by the transition to cloud computing, the same security concerns persist as with cloud computing as the more senior technology family member. IBM claims the new blockchain offering answers these demands and concerns, while also meeting existing regulatory and security requirements.

“Clients tell us that one of the inhibitors of the adoption of blockchain is the concern about security,” said Jerry Cuomo, VP of Blockchain at IBM. “While there is a sense of urgency to pioneer blockchain for business, most organizations need help to define the ideal cloud environment that enables blockchain networks to run securely in the cloud.”

The blockchain adoption seemingly fits into IBM’s continued quest to transform its business, moving away from legacy technologies and build new fortunes in the cloud. Although IBM could be seen as being slightly slow to the cloud party, it has made positive strides in putting its name forward in the cognitive computing sub-sector (IBM’s Watson), and now blockchain. Industry insiders have told BCN tech giants such as Microsoft are interesting in the potential of blockchain, though IBM are one of the first to make such a solid commitment.

While the company has been demonstrating healthy growth in the cloud market segment, its recent quarterly earnings highlighted the decline of traditional IT technologies. The company’s quarterly earnings declined for the 16th straight quarter though its Strategic Imperatives projects, which include all cloud computing efforts, grew 14% to $7 billion.

From a feedback perspective, we asked BCN readers what they thought of IBM’s cognitive computing technology, Watson, which seems to be gaining healthy media attention. 40% of the industry believes Watson is the industry leader for cognitive computing and 20% say it’s in the pack. 40% believe the media attention is down to a powerful PR machine in IBM’s corporate team.

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Finding Ways to ‘Bake in’ Security During Application Development | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Internet of Things (IoT), hybrid cloud services, mobile-first, and DevOps are increasing the demands and complexity of the overall development process.
Key factors to improving both development speed and security despite these new challenges include new levels of collaboration and communication across formerly disparate teams — from those who design, to coders, to testers, and on to continuous monitoring throughout operations. The result is security being integrated into software design, even as the pressure builds to bring more apps to market faster.

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Intuit’s DevSecOps | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Gamification #Microservices

Wow, if you ever wanted to learn about Rugged DevOps (some call it DevSecOps), sit down for a spell with Shannon Lietz, Ian Allison and Scott Kennedy from Intuit. We discussed a number of important topics including internal war games, culture hacking, gamification of Rugged DevOps and starting as a small team. There are 100 gold nuggets in this conversation for novices and experts alike.

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Digital Transformation, Enterprise IT, Ingram Micro, News & Analysis

71% of enterprise will be digitally transformed by 2018 – survey

Life cycle of common birdwing butterflyResearch from Ingram Micro Cloud claims the UK is well on its way to the digitally enabled ecosystem, as 71% of enterprise organizations believe they will be digitally transformed by 2018.

The findings highlighted 31% of organizations believe they have a strategy in place currently, 23% are actively implementing one and a further 18% claim they will have one in place within the next 24 months. Roughly 80% of the respondents confirmed cloud played either a critical or very important role within the digital transformation projects themselves.

“Cloud has turned everything on its head,” Apay Obang-Oyway, Director for Northern Europe at Ingram Micro Cloud. “It is no longer about big corporations eating small businesses; now it is small challenging the big because with Cloud, small can be so much more innovative and agile.  Greater opportunities now lie with SMBs. It’s important to realise the potential of the Cloud; it is about doing more with more to develop strong strategic advantage in a world that is fast changing.”

The transition of cloud computing through to the mainstream market has enforced a substantial number of enterprise organizations to redefine themselves through digital transformation projects to ensure they remain relevant in the new digital economy. 56% of respondents highlighted customer engagement was the primary objective of such strategies, 48% claimed identifying cost reduction and 45% stated remaining competitive, were the main drivers of the strategies.

“The ability to digitally reimagine the business is determined in large part by a clear digital strategy supported by leaders who foster a culture of change,” said Obang-Oyway. “While this is nothing new – and let’s be honest the world of business and IT have seen many technical evolutions – what is unique to digital transformation is that risk taking is becoming a cultural norm. More digitally advanced companies are seeking new levels of competitive advantage.

“New market entrants are appearing almost daily, disrupting traditional industries, the small are now challenging the large, the new challenging the old. Just think Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo. Equally important, employees across all age groups want to work for businesses that are committed to digital progress and this is what will attract the talent of the future. But underpinning this entire revolution is the Cloud. It is without doubt the single most transformative element in this radical rethinking of the way business is done today.”

While digital transformation strategies should not necessarily be considered new within the industry, the increased adoption rate of cloud within enterprise organizations on the whole has accelerated the necessity of such strategies. While it would be considered worst case scenario, Blockbuster is a prime example of the consequences of not accepting the new digital world, and has in turn normalised the concept of digital transformation.

Parallels Remote Application Server, RDS, VDI

Get Your Apps Anywhere

The advent of virtualization and cloud computing has brought a great transformation in the IT segment. Office desktops are now a thing of the past. Thanks to virtualization technology, businesses are now able to centrally host Windows applications and publish them to remote devices with ease. There are two ways to get your apps anywhere. […]

The post Get Your Apps Anywhere appeared first on Parallels Blog.

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Continuous Integration | @DevOpsSummit @Datical #ContinuousIntegration

In 2006, Martin Fowler posted his now famous essay on Continuous Integration. Looking back, what seemed revolutionary, radical or just plain crazy is now common, pedestrian and “just what you do.” I love it.
Back then, building and releasing software was a real pain. Integration was something you did at the end, after code complete, and we didn’t know how long it would take. Some people may recall how we, as an industry, spent a massive amount of time integrating code from one team with another, or even just between developers that sat next to each other. The arguments against it at the time seemed valid and impactful. Now they seem weak and silly.
Fowler proposed Continuous Integration, an idea that was simple, elegant and had far-reaching repercussions. By producing constant, automated, self-testing builds in development, a huge amount of resource overhead typically incurred down the line was eliminated.

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[session] #1 Myth of the IoT – It’s Not About Invention By @LogMeIn | @ThingsExpo #IoT

We’ve worked with dozens of early adopters across numerous industries and will debunk common misperceptions, which starts with understanding that many of the connected products we’ll use over the next 5 years are already products, they’re just not yet connected. With an IoT product, time-in-market provides much more essential feedback than ever before. Innovation comes from what you do with the data that the connected product provides in order to enhance the customer experience and optimize business performance.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ryan J. Lester, Director of IoT Strategy at LogMeIn, will cite from our customer examples in home automation – lighting, pet care, plumbing – as well as industrial printing.

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IT Monitoring Clickbait | @CloudExpo #APM #Cloud

It is a sad but very real truth that many, dare I say most, IT professionals consider alerts to be the bane of their existence. After all, they’re annoying, noisy, mostly useless and frequently false. Thus, we IT professionals who specialize in IT monitoring are likely well acquainted with that familiar sinking feeling brought on by the discovery that the alert you so painstakingly crafted is being ignored by the team who receives it.

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