Reality itself is going through a digital transformation thanks to leaps in 3D rendering and the crunch-speed motion feedback data. Although the modern definition of virtual reality (VR) has been making promises for three decades, the emphasis was always on the potential. Now it’s here. This is a tour of the state of VR in 2016 and where developers are taking it as VR spreads far beyond the world of gaming.
Monthly Archives: December 2016
Citizen Data Scientist, Jumbo Shrimp | @CloudExpo @Schmarzo #BigData
Okay, let me get this out there: I find the term “Citizen Data Scientist” confusing. Gartner defines a “citizen data scientist as “a person who creates or generates models that leverage predictive or prescriptive analytics but whose primary job function is outside of the field of statistics and analytics.” While we teach business users to “think like a data scientist” in their ability to identify those variables and metrics that might be better predictors of performance, I do not expect that the business stakeholders are going to be able to create and generate analytic models. I do not believe, nor do I expect, that the business stakeholders are going to be proficient enough with tools like SAS or R or Python or Mahout or MADlib to 1) create or generate the models, and then 2) be proficient enough to be able to interpret the t-tests, f-scores, p-values and residuals necessary to ascertain the analytic model’s goodness of time.
Enterprise cloud strategies and taming the digital dragon
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In their 2014 CIO Agenda report Gartner describes how ‘Taming the Digital Dragon’ (12 page PDF) is key to digital transformation strategies, with the hybrid cloud platform model as the enabling technology blueprint and business model.
As their ‘We are here’ arrow describes, Gartner proposes we are at the transition point from a second to a third generation of IT, the shift from IT industrialization to digitization, where the key skills of a CIO are business models and digital leadership, rather than just IT service management aka a shift from the CIO to the CDO – chief digital officer.
This corresponds with the view of Mike Rosen of IDC, who describes platforms as a third generation.
As Gartner concludes: “CIOs now face the challenge of straddling the second era of enterprise IT and a new, third “digitalisation” era — moving from running IT like a business within a business, into a period characterised by deep innovation beyond process optimisation, exploitation of a broader universe of digital technology and information, more-integrated business and IT innovation, and a need for much faster and more agile capability.”
Digital dragons
Gartner principally characterizes this heightened capability in terms of competitive threat and advantage: “All industries in all geographies are being radically reshaped by digital disruption — a “digital dragon” that is potentially very powerful if tamed but a destructive force if not. It’s a CIO’s dream come true, and also a career-changing leadership challenge.”
They describe it as a dragon because it so effectively destroys the competition in its field, through a massive scale of technology leverage such as Netflix, Airbnb and Uber, with brands like Kodak or the Blockbuster video rental chain examples of those being destroyed by failing to adapt to this digital disruption.
These ‘digital unicorn’ startup firms have generated billions in shareholder value in only a few short years specifically through this principle, achieving inventory levels of the world’s largest players simply through smart use of IT.
To replicate this level of IT-driven success experts recommend CIO’s embrace the threat as a career opportunity, such as Harvard urging CIOs to take a leadership role, and also to become ‘digital mentors.’
Research and insights from Deloitte and Gartner show that the demand for implementation of new digital capabilities will ultimately mean a large and sustained market for digital transformation skills, with considerable recognition and reward for those CIOs synonymous with advanced, successful digital programs.
Hybrid cloud business model
This article provides the introduction for our new eBook: Enterprise Cloud – Data Centre and Application Modernisation Blueprint.
Utilising design models like hybrid cloud is central to the scope of this paper: the overall goal is to provide enterprise decision makers with the full spectrum of topics they need to address that scale of cloud adoption, and these high level strategy frameworks are ideal to set the scene.
Gartner describes how hybrid cloud enables increased adoption of public and private IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and BPaaS, making a ‘Bi-modal IT’ framework possible, made up of three core foundations:
- Moving to a more loosely coupled “postmodern-ERP” paradigm – More federated ERP, multi-enterprise solutions, cloud components, mobile support, embedded analytics.
- Creating the information architecture ad capabilities to exploit big data – Handled through in-memory databases, advanced analytics, unstructured and multimedia data.
- SME innovation ecosystem – Augmenting conventional sourcing with more innovation, including sourcing from, and partnering with, smaller and less mature enterprises, in key categories of partners: mobile, design, etc.
Their central thesis is that the hybrid cloud model is key to the CIO strategy to ‘renovate the IT core’, modernizing the legacy estate to enable new digital strategies and thus provide the tool set for meeting the challenge of digital native competitors.
Bimodal IT and legacy modernisation
Fundamentally the emergence of a ‘bimodal IT‘ capability represents the evolution to the third era of IT that Gartner introduces.
Establishing DevOps teams and Agile software practices atop a Hybrid Cloud platform builds a second, much faster and adaptive layer of IT innovation that extends legacy business IT into new digital business models.
It’s such an important concept because the largest issue most enterprises will face is their legacy IT estate. Sectors like government and banking in particular operate very large complex estates, of very large, complex applications, many still operating on mainframes et al.
A bimodal IT framework enables an organization to establish the required new skills and tools, and empowered with a hybrid cloud information model that ‘overlays’ across the existing estate and opened up to an innovation ecosystem of developers and other key partners.
The post Enterprise Cloud – Taming the Digital Dragon appeared first on CBPN.
[slides] From #IoT Service to Profit | @ThingsExpo #M2M #Sensors #Analytics
Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance – how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders – from customers to the board – will be able to understand and comprehend.
[video] Network Visibility Solutions with @NiagaraNetw | @CloudExpo #Cloud #BigData #Analytics
“We are a leader in the market space called network visibility solutions – it enables monitoring tools and Big Data analysis to access the data and be able to see the performance,” explained Shay Morag, VP of Sales and Marketing at Niagara Networks, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Canonical Plans to Sue European Cloud Provider
Canonical, the company that distributes Ubuntu GNU/Linux, has announced that it plans to sue a European cloud provider for violation of its agreement terms. Canonical claims that the cloud provider distributed insecure and broken images of Ubuntu, despite repeated warnings to refrain from doing so. Though Canonical has not named the provider, it has already started taking legal steps to remove these images from all places on the Internet.
According to company sources, this lawsuit is expected to act as a deterrent for other companies, so only approved images are published. The company’s management believes this is essential as it can undermine the success of Ubuntu’s certified images.
This incident also brings to light some of the problems that come with third-party Ubuntu images. According to the founder and executive Chairman, Mark Shuttleworth, clouds tend to have baked private keys into their public images, so this can lead to a potential security pitfall, as any user can SSH into any machine they want. When such a situation occurs, it becomes the responsibility of the parent company, Canonical in this case, to protect its customers, and that’s exactly what it claims to have done with the European service provider.
In addition, when broken images of a software are released, users tend to assume that something is wrong with Ubuntu, and may even refrain from buying it. The company believes such “homegrown” images may cause it to behave unpredictably, and this can lead the user to believe that Ubuntu is unstable, when in reality it’s not.
Though this incident has not translated to a significant loss of revenue yet, there is always a possibility for this to happen. To get the facts straight, and to let its users know that everything is fine with Ubuntu, such a lawsuit becomes imperative. In this sense, Canonical has taken the right decision to protect itself as well as its customers from security hazards and misinformation.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that comes with Unity desktop. Currently, it runs in all cloud platforms such as AWS, Google, Rackspace, and OpenStack. The best part is Ubuntu offers same the look and feel, regardless of the underlying cloud provider, and this is what makes it easy for users, as they can use it on any cloud provider for their needs. Besides the cloud, Ubuntu also runs on different smartphone devices, PCs, and servers.
Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu. It is in-charge of helping organizations around the world make the most of Ubuntu with the right deployment on clouds, servers, and even desktops. In addition, it also offers 24/7 support for any question pertaining to this open-source software.
It’s a UK-based company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2004. It employs more than 500 employees, and is headquartered in London. With a presence in more than 30 countries, its offices are also located in Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, Taipei, and Isle of Man. This company provides commercial support for many open-source projects including Ubuntu. Some of the other projects that it supports include Snapcraft, GNU Bazaar, Storm, Juju, Upstart, and Quickly.
The post Canonical Plans to Sue European Cloud Provider appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
IBM launches new Bluemix continuous delivery and DevOps services
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IBM has announced the launch of new services on its Bluemix platform which are focused on continuous delivery, DevOps, and simplifying app development in the cloud.
IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery gives DevOps teams a central hub to create, manage, and scale toolchains, which are integral to the app development process, as well as providing toolchain templates designed to be provisioned enterprise-wide with minimum fuss. The templates can also be used to help build microservices, containers, or cloud-native applications, with integrations to solutions including GitHub, Stack, PagerDuty, and Sauce Labs.
“One of the biggest challenges developers face in today’s cloud-led world is efficiently building and deploying applications to stay competitive,” said Dave Lindquist, IBM fellow and VP development at IBM Cloud DevOps and Analytics. “With the introduction of Bluemix Continuous Delivery, developesr can not only create, integrate and share DevOps toolchains using their favourite tools, but also add optional pay-as-you-go powerful services like cognitive computing with Watson, or data and analytics services from The Weather Company.”
This is not the only Bluemix announcement of recent times; in November IBM launched a variety of services aimed at helping businesses get better insights from their data. The first, IBM Decision Optimisation on Cloud, helps organisations digest predictions, business goals and transactional figures before spitting them out as decision points, while IBM Bluemix Lift looks at data encryption and IBM dashDB for Transactions is a fully managed SQL database on Bluemix.
IBM says Bluemix now features more than 150 ‘advanced technologies and services’, including cognitive computing, blockchain, the Internet of Things, cloud data services, DevOps, and security.
You can find out more about Bluemix Continuous Delivery here.
Holiday Experience and #BigData | @CloudExpo @Schmarzo #IoT #Analytics
The holiday season is nearly upon us (I’ve already heard Christmas songs being played…really?) and retailers are usually the big winners during the holiday season. However, leading retailers are already thinking beyond the current holiday season, and not just from marketing and merchandising perspectives. These leading retailers are considering how this holiday season – and the resulting wealth of customer, product and operational data – can be converted into new analytic insights that can be used to optimize key business processes, uncover new monetization opportunities and create a more compelling, more prescriptive user experience all year round.
[slides] Identity Management in #IoT | @ThingsExpo @Covisint #M2M #AI #ML
What happens when the different parts of a vehicle become smarter than the vehicle itself? As we move toward the era of smart everything, hundreds of entities in a vehicle that communicate with each other, the vehicle and external systems create a need for identity orchestration so that all entities work as a conglomerate. Much like an orchestra without a conductor, without the ability to secure, control, and connect the link between a vehicle’s head unit, devices, and systems and to manage the lifecycle of people, systems and devices, transportation and fleet services are at risk of having connected, yet disparate systems.
Announcing @DataLoopIO Bronze Sponsor | @CloudExpo #DevOps #Monitoring
SYS-CON Events announced today that Dataloop.IO, an innovator in cloud IT-monitoring whose products help organizations save time and money, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Dataloop.IO is an emerging software company on the cutting edge of major IT-infrastructure trends including cloud computing and microservices. The company, founded in the UK but now based in San Francisco, is developing the next generation of cloud monitoring required for microservices and DevOps.