At this point in the hybrid cloud evolution, data is accumulating quickly in the cloud and in data centers, not to mention moving from place to place. So it’s natural that storage concerns are rising. This recent survey from Wikibon found that software services are the most popular use of cloud technology, followed by infrastructure and platform services. All these applications’ data need storage that can scale up and down as needed, as another survey found: Cloud storage elasticity was respondents’ top cloud challenge.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
[video] #IoT Keynote: Are You Seeing DOTS? | @ThingsExpo #M2M #BigData
The explosion of new web/cloud/IoT-based applications and the data they generate are transforming our world right before our eyes. In this rush to adopt these new technologies, organizations are often ignoring fundamental questions concerning who owns the data and failing to ask for permission to conduct invasive surveillance of their customers. Organizations that are not transparent about how their systems gather data telemetry without offering shared data ownership risk product rejection, regulatory scrutiny and increasing consumer lack of trust in technology in general.
Out of This World Digital Experience | @CloudExpo #AI #Cloud #DigitalTransformation
As technologists, we find ourselves in the middle of tumultuous times and radical change: cloud, containers, automation, artificial intelligence, mobility, the Internet of Things, cyberwarfare, digital transformation, and more! When the $&#! hits the fan, military strategists reference a mental framework called the OODA loop, to sort chaos into clarity. At Perform 2017, we were reminded of how customers continue to find clarity amidst today’s complexity by focusing on their customers. This year’s Digital Experience track at Perform reminded us all of how to successfully orient performance management around the customer.
Microsoft Optimistic on Asian Cloud Market
Asia, as you know, is the largest continent in the world, both in terms of size and population. It is also one of the fastest growing regions in the world, with China and India leading the way. Over the last few years, this continent has seen many people climb out of poverty, and many countries have a sustainable and growing economy that provides jobs to millions of people. Much of these positive developments can be attributed to education and technology.
Asian companies are always looking for ways to improve their operations , and technology has been a major aspect in its quest for higher efficiency and profits. In such a scenario, it is little wonder that cloud computing is the present and future of these Asian companies. Though the rate of adoption in Asia has been much slower when compared to Europe or the U.S, it’s still picking up fast.
To cater to this growing demand, cloud leaders like Microsoft are going all out. The president of Microsoft Asia, Ralph Haupter, opined that Asian companies are always looking for means to digitally transform their business, and cloud is the technology that will make it possible. His statement is based on a report that Microsoft released recently about the state of cloud affairs in Asia.
According to this report, 78 percent of 1,494 respondents who were surveyed for this report believe that cloud computing is an important component in their digital transformation strategy. In addition, 80 percent think cloud strategy is vital for the long-term growth and economic sustainability of this region. However, only 29 percent of respondents have made plans to implement it.
This difference between those who believe in the need for cloud and those who have plans to execute it, is the opportunity area for Microsoft. If it can talk to the remaining 51 percent of respondents, identify the reasons for non-implementing and provide a roadmap for integrating cloud into their operations, then it can be a huge business for Microsoft. There is even a potential for Microsoft to become the leading cloud provider in Asia, if it plays its cards well.
One of the biggest advantages that Microsoft has over that of its competitors is its brand name. A large number of households in Asia have a computer, so “Microsoft” is a household name here. To top it, Microsoft has 13 data centers in Asia to cater to the demands of its clients, so it’s infrastructure is already in place. Also, all these 13 data centers support Azure, so this makes it easy for Microsoft to expand its cloud presence in Asia.
Further, Microsoft has identified potential cloud partners in different countries and is working with them closely. For example, in China, Microsoft has partnered with a company called 21Vianet to provide local services to clients in Beijing and Shanghai. The obvious advantage is these local players have a better idea of their market conditions, and can provide a better service to local clients.
A combination of these different strategies can help Microsoft take a lion’s share in the Asian market within the next few years. However, it has to keep stay on top of intense competition from companies like AWS and Alibaba.
The post Microsoft Optimistic on Asian Cloud Market appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
From #BigData to #FastData | @CloudExpo #DevOps #AI #APM #Monitoring
Big data is old news. Today, the key to leveraging data effectively is to do fast data.
In a similar fashion, traditional incident management—which entails collecting and analyzing large volumes of monitoring information—is no longer enough. Organizations must also now do “fast monitoring,” which means not only collecting monitoring data; but making it actionable in real-time.
This post examines what fast monitoring means, and explains how incident management teams can implement this approach to realize great benefits.
Amazon, Apple and Microsoft vow to improve cloud conditions after CMA review
(c)iStock.com/maxkabakov
Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have vowed to improve their terms and conditions of cloud storage contracts after a review from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the body has announced.
The giants join BT, Dixons Carphone, Dropbox, Google, JustCloud, Livedrive and Mozy in moving forward with improved conditions. Common areas where Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft will make changes include giving ‘adequate notice’ to customers before significant changes are made to the service, or whether it is suspended or cancelled, as well as cancellation rights and refunds if customers do not want to accept ‘significant’ changes.
“We are pleased that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have joined seven previous companies in working with the CMA and agreeing commitments to improve their terms and conditions and, as a result, millions of cloud storage users will benefit from fairer terms which will help them make the right choices when using cloud storage services,” Andrea Coscelli, CMA acting chief executive said in a statement.
In May last year, the CMA issued an open letter to cloud storage providers warning them of issues if they didn’t smarten up their customer service. “If a term is not fair it will not be legally binding on a consumer and you are at risk of enforcement action,” the letter, from project director Cecilia Parker Aranha, explained. “Having clear and fair terms will save you time, help prevent disputes and reputational damage, and protect your business if something goes wrong.”
The underlying issue which adds to the overall landscape of this announcement is the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Ian Moyse, board member of the Cloud Industry Forum, and who is helping to organise training courses for businesses on GDPR, told this publication that cloud was “entering the growing up phase…this will benefit the industry as a whole, not just the consumer.”
As regular readers of this publication will know, plenty of cloud companies can disappear with little – or no – notice. 2017 kicked off with the news that developer-friendly cloud storage provider Bitcasa was ‘no more’, according to a cryptic message left on the company’s website, while customers of Nitrous.io were given two weeks to shift their data before its primary service shut down back in November.
The CMA added that as part of its compliance review, all cloud storage providers ‘co-operated and constructively engaged’ with the authority, and ‘voluntarily made changes to their terms and conditions’.
Amazon, Apple and Microsoft vow to improve cloud conditions after CMA review
(c)iStock.com/maxkabakov
Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have vowed to improve their terms and conditions of cloud storage contracts after a review from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the body has announced.
The giants join BT, Dixons Carphone, Dropbox, Google, JustCloud, Livedrive and Mozy in moving forward with improved conditions. Common areas where Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft will make changes include giving ‘adequate notice’ to customers before significant changes are made to the service, or whether it is suspended or cancelled, as well as cancellation rights and refunds if customers do not want to accept ‘significant’ changes.
“We are pleased that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have joined seven previous companies in working with the CMA and agreeing commitments to improve their terms and conditions and, as a result, millions of cloud storage users will benefit from fairer terms which will help them make the right choices when using cloud storage services,” Andrea Coscelli, CMA acting chief executive said in a statement.
In May last year, the CMA issued an open letter to cloud storage providers warning them of issues if they didn’t smarten up their customer service. “If a term is not fair it will not be legally binding on a consumer and you are at risk of enforcement action,” the letter, from project director Cecilia Parker Aranha, explained. “Having clear and fair terms will save you time, help prevent disputes and reputational damage, and protect your business if something goes wrong.”
The underlying issue which adds to the overall landscape of this announcement is the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Ian Moyse, board member of the Cloud Industry Forum, and who is helping to organise training courses for businesses on GDPR, told this publication that cloud was “entering the growing up phase…this will benefit the industry as a whole, not just the consumer.”
As regular readers of this publication will know, plenty of cloud companies can disappear with little – or no – notice. 2017 kicked off with the news that developer-friendly cloud storage provider Bitcasa was ‘no more’, according to a cryptic message left on the company’s website, while customers of Nitrous.io were given two weeks to shift their data before its primary service shut down back in November.
The CMA added that as part of its compliance review, all cloud storage providers ‘co-operated and constructively engaged’ with the authority, and ‘voluntarily made changes to their terms and conditions’.
Five reasons why every CIO needs an integration roadmap in 2017
(c)iStock.com/blackred
The difference between CIOs who lead and those caught in never-ending reactionary cycles is often a strategic IT plan and integration roadmap.
It’s the CIOs who take the time to create and pursue an integration roadmap that has the greatest chance of breaking out of always reacting to IT projects and leading them instead. That’s because the majority of inbound requests centre on data, reports or analysis only deliverable by integrating two or more systems together.
Five ways integration roadmaps are putting CIOs back in control
Based on conversations with CIOs across a variety of industries including manufacturing, distribution, aerospace, financial services, and retailing, five factors emerged that led to creating integration roadmaps and getting in control of IT spending and priorities. I’ve summarised these five factors below:
- Integration roadmaps are proving to be an effective catalyst for driving purpose-optimised integration strategies, reducing middleware costs in the process. CIOs who create and continually improve their integration roadmaps are prioritizing purpose-optimised integration strategies to more efficiently scale global operations. Creating real-time integration links between SAP and Salesforce is one example of how CIOs are using purpose-driven integration to reduce customer response times for information, improving customer satisfaction in the process. Enabling real-time, bi-directional data updates without requiring complex middleware coding and mapping of data is a challenging task, and innovative startups including enosiX are excelling in this area today.
- Defining a path for reducing ETL spending and dependence on logs to troubleshoot errors and measure performance.Reducing their dependence on ETL is giving CIOs and their teams much more flexibility in how they manage IT It is also freeing up system analysts to work on new projects instead of troubleshooting integration issues. With no automated error handling or recovery mechanisms, many CIOs are gradually phasing ETL out for more modern integration technologies that eliminate error logs altogether.
- Investing in the latest technologies that enable business process and application logic is making IT more responsive, helping them break out of a bureaucratic reputation. When I asked CIOs about the best way to increase responsiveness to internal customers, they wanted integration technologies capable of scaling across the back office and selling systems to make them more responsive. By having integration technologies that enable business process and application logic, the time-consuming, and often error-filled, the task of enabling new business processes manually goes away. And, when IT can react faster, their bureaucratic reputation is also on the way out too.
- Choosing to reduce and eliminate hand-built adapters and connectors from their IT infrastructures to free up support funds and time on urgent IT project needs today. One large-scale industrial equipment manufacturer has a staff of software developers and engineers who do nothing but keep adapters and connectors written in ABAP running across their ERP, Manufacturing Execution Systems, quality management, and supply chain systems. With production centres in the Midwestern US, China, and Europe, the ABAP team is always busy but never innovating. They are just ‘keeping the lights on.’ Having an integration roadmap is going to get this manufacturer out of the situation they are in today, which is draining dollars and time from IT.
- Move closer to quantifying the value IT delivers by showing how an integration roadmap provides support for cutting maintenance costs, consolidating apps and introducing new platforms. The ROI of IT often hinges on how effective CIOs are at reducing costs and still delivering a median or average level of service. By having a plan in place to attack integration challenges and costs, CIOs can immediately prioritise steps to improve service, reduce costs, and attain department and corporate goals.
Originally published on the enosiX blog, Five Reasons Why Every CIO Needs An Integration Roadmap In 2017.
Five reasons why every CIO needs an integration roadmap in 2017
(c)iStock.com/blackred
The difference between CIOs who lead and those caught in never-ending reactionary cycles is often a strategic IT plan and integration roadmap.
It’s the CIOs who take the time to create and pursue an integration roadmap that has the greatest chance of breaking out of always reacting to IT projects and leading them instead. That’s because the majority of inbound requests centre on data, reports or analysis only deliverable by integrating two or more systems together.
Five ways integration roadmaps are putting CIOs back in control
Based on conversations with CIOs across a variety of industries including manufacturing, distribution, aerospace, financial services, and retailing, five factors emerged that led to creating integration roadmaps and getting in control of IT spending and priorities. I’ve summarised these five factors below:
- Integration roadmaps are proving to be an effective catalyst for driving purpose-optimised integration strategies, reducing middleware costs in the process. CIOs who create and continually improve their integration roadmaps are prioritizing purpose-optimised integration strategies to more efficiently scale global operations. Creating real-time integration links between SAP and Salesforce is one example of how CIOs are using purpose-driven integration to reduce customer response times for information, improving customer satisfaction in the process. Enabling real-time, bi-directional data updates without requiring complex middleware coding and mapping of data is a challenging task, and innovative startups including enosiX are excelling in this area today.
- Defining a path for reducing ETL spending and dependence on logs to troubleshoot errors and measure performance.Reducing their dependence on ETL is giving CIOs and their teams much more flexibility in how they manage IT It is also freeing up system analysts to work on new projects instead of troubleshooting integration issues. With no automated error handling or recovery mechanisms, many CIOs are gradually phasing ETL out for more modern integration technologies that eliminate error logs altogether.
- Investing in the latest technologies that enable business process and application logic is making IT more responsive, helping them break out of a bureaucratic reputation. When I asked CIOs about the best way to increase responsiveness to internal customers, they wanted integration technologies capable of scaling across the back office and selling systems to make them more responsive. By having integration technologies that enable business process and application logic, the time-consuming, and often error-filled, the task of enabling new business processes manually goes away. And, when IT can react faster, their bureaucratic reputation is also on the way out too.
- Choosing to reduce and eliminate hand-built adapters and connectors from their IT infrastructures to free up support funds and time on urgent IT project needs today. One large-scale industrial equipment manufacturer has a staff of software developers and engineers who do nothing but keep adapters and connectors written in ABAP running across their ERP, Manufacturing Execution Systems, quality management, and supply chain systems. With production centres in the Midwestern US, China, and Europe, the ABAP team is always busy but never innovating. They are just ‘keeping the lights on.’ Having an integration roadmap is going to get this manufacturer out of the situation they are in today, which is draining dollars and time from IT.
- Move closer to quantifying the value IT delivers by showing how an integration roadmap provides support for cutting maintenance costs, consolidating apps and introducing new platforms. The ROI of IT often hinges on how effective CIOs are at reducing costs and still delivering a median or average level of service. By having a plan in place to attack integration challenges and costs, CIOs can immediately prioritise steps to improve service, reduce costs, and attain department and corporate goals.
Originally published on the enosiX blog, Five Reasons Why Every CIO Needs An Integration Roadmap In 2017.
5 Reasons Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Is Better than VMWare Fusion 8.5
For the last 10 years, the best and most comprehensive option to run Windows® on Mac® has been Parallels Desktop for Mac. Our competitors all have one thing in common: They use cost as a driving reason as to why you should not use Parallels Desktop. However, our competitors often fail to mention the vast […]
The post 5 Reasons Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Is Better than VMWare Fusion 8.5 appeared first on Parallels Blog.