SYS-CON Events announced today that mruby Forum will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
mruby is the lightweight implementation of the Ruby language. We introduce mruby and the mruby IoT framework that enhances development productivity. For more information, visit http://forum.mruby.org/.
Monthly Archives: September 2017
Mobile Create USA to Exhibit at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #AI #IoT #M2M #SmartCities
SYS-CON Events announced today that Mobile Create USA will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Mobile Create USA Inc. is an MVNO-based business model that uses portable communication devices and cellular-based infrastructure in the development, sales, operation and mobile communications systems incorporating GPS capability.
MIRAI Inc. to Exhibit at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #AI #IoT #M2M #Analytics
SYS-CON Events announced today that MIRAI Inc. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
MIRAI Inc. are IT consultants from the public sector whose mission is to solve social issues by technology and innovation and to create a meaningful future for people.
Keisoku Research Consultant Co. to Exhibit at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #Cloud #APM #Monitoring
SYS-CON Events announced today that Keisoku Research Consultant Co. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Keisoku Research Consultant, Co. offers research and consulting in a wide range of civil engineering-related fields from information construction to preservation of cultural properties. For more information, visit http://www.krcnet.co.jp/eng_site/e_index.htm.
Defining Touch Bar Buttons for a Windows Application in Parallels Desktop 13
In an earlier blog post, I described how to use the Touch Bar with Windows applications. In this follow-up blog post, I will show you how to customize the Touch Bar™ buttons for almost any Windows application—and also describe how the Parallels engineers made the Touch Bar work with Windows. If you haven’t already read that […]
The post Defining Touch Bar Buttons for a Windows Application in Parallels Desktop 13 appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Fusic to Exhibit at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #ML #IoT #M2M #AWS #Cloud
SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusic will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Fusic Co. provides mocks as virtual IoT devices. You can customize mocks, and get any amount of data at any time in your test. For more information, visit https://fusic.co.jp/english/.
Announcing @DaiyaIndustry to Exhibit at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley | #AI #IoT #M2M
SYS-CON Events announced today that Daiya Industry will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Daiya Industry specializes in orthotic support systems and assistive devices with pneumatic artificial muscles in order to contribute to an extended healthy life expectancy.
For more information, please visit https://www.daiyak.co.jp/en/.
What is Azure Confidential Computing?
For years now, cloud security has been a major deterrent for many companies to join the cloud bandwagon. This is an Achilles heel for cloud service providers too, as they spend billions of dollar each year on cloud and cybersecurity. One of the aspects that could possible ease this fear and spending is encryption and other data security strategies, and Microsoft is leading the way with a new product called Azure confidential computing.
Microsoft Azure is the first cloud provider to offer a collection of security capabilities and securities under Azure confidential computing. This product’s features is expected to fill in the gaps that are present in public cloud security today.
Azure confidential computing ensures that the data that has to be processed is protected inside an enclave called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This is an important step because if you look at past data breaches, you’ll notice that malicious intruders use administrative privileges to access data only when it is being processed. These TEEs ensure that no one can view the data or the operations that happen on it, so outside access or breach is impossible.
Microsoft goes one step further too. If it detects any change in the code, all operations are denied and the environment is instantly disabled. This mechanism is necessary to ensure that hackers don’t use any malware or bugs to exploit the system.
All this functionality is offered to developers through the Azure confidentiality computing platform that runs on top of Intel’s Software Guard Extension (SGX) technology. With this, Azure is the first to offer SGX-capable servers in the public cloud sphere. Customers who’re enrolled in Microsoft’s Early Access program can now develop applications on this confidential computing platform.
This discussion can get you wondering about SGX. What is this and how does it help with cloud security?
Intel’s SGX is the latest technology from Intel that allows developers to protect selected code and data from disclosure or modifications. It uses different protection mechanisms to ensure that the data and code are protected even when the system that’s using it, is running. In other words, the application that’s using this selected code and data is protecting it not just from other applications running on the system, but also from the system’s own operating system, Hyper-V and even Intel’s management engine. So, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to reach this code or data.
Given these high levels of security, we can soon expect Azure confidential computing to be adopted across different organizations, particularly in the finance, healthcare, government, and artificial intelligence sectors. In oil and gas and IoT industries too, this platform can be used to protect the intellectual property of the company, regardless of which application or organization is generating and using the derived data.
In all, this is an exciting product that could pave the way for wider cloud adoption, so everyone gets to make the most of the benefits that come from cloud computing.
The post What is Azure Confidential Computing? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
AWS launches per-second billing for EC2 and EBS services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to move to a per-second billing model for its EC2 and EBS services from October 2.
The move aims to go one step ahead of its competitors, Microsoft, Google et al, who have been since 2013 been utilising per-minute billing for its services.
Given the developments of products such as AWS Lambda, among others in the serverless realm, it makes sense to make the shift. AWS said many of its customers had been ‘dreaming up applications’ for EC2 that utilised a larger number of instances in a short space of time.
The move will affect usage of Linux instances launched in on-demand, reserved and spot form, as well as Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and AWS Batch.
Jeff Barr, AWS chief evangelist, noted in a post announcing the news the price aspect is just the start of what can be achieved with per-second billing.
“I believe that this change will inspire you to innovate and to think about your compute-bound problems in new ways,” he wrote. “How can you use it to improve your support for continuous integration? Can it change the way that you provision transient environments for your dev and test workloads? What about your analytics, batch processing, and 3D rendering?
“One of the many advantages of cloud computing is the elastic nature of provisioning or deprovisioning resources as you need them,” Barr added. “By billing usage down to the second, we will enable customers to level up their elasticity, save money, and customers will be positioned to take advantage of continuing advances in computing.”
You can read the full blog post here.
Power to the people: The key to successful cloud implementations
The key to successful cloud technology implementation lies with the workforce.
Implementing new cloud hosted technology in companies of any size presents challenges and opportunities. It also induces uncertainty and anxiety among the workforce who may see their jobs under threat. There is no doubt that some companies introduce new technology to reduce headcount. But simply replacing people with technology implies that the human capital of the organisation remains underdeveloped and while short-term savings can be achieved the company may not progress sustainably.
Across the range of companies that we encounter those who consider technology in relation to the workforce are able to innovate more successfully. This is possible because the workforce is enabled to operate in new ways, form new groups and generate new ideas as a result. The introduction of new technology is most successful when it is aligned strategically with the business model. In other words, it should be an integral part of corporate strategy that is also reflected in staff development. If these factors are taken into account the company and its employees will be culturally ready to embrace technological advancement and to reap the considerable productivity and innovation rewards that cloud hosted technology adoption offers.
One of the main reasons for introducing new technology is to remove waste. In manufacturing and construction, waste is expensive and often highly visible but ultimately totally avoidable. In commerce or services there may be no physical waste but it is equally expensive and harder to detect. Large amounts of waste in business result from the dispersion of people and information into separated silos each with its own processes and in many cases its own applications and solutions. Because the data that each department creates is separated from the rest of the business it cannot be turned into useful intelligence in the ideation process. Its potential value is hidden and locked away.
Resourceful humans
It is common for numerous organisations to use antiquated procedures that have been built up over many years. Any resourceful and innovative thoughts about the company cannot flourish within the existing construct. By introducing technology that breaks down silos and where stakeholders can use the same unified and universally accessible system, sequential and well-received business transformations happen.
Deploying new technology brings automation to functions such as design, manufacturing, engineering, finance, commerce and marketing, unifying separate islands of work into one single stream while connecting different departments, their stakeholders and the whole organisation.
Innovation is harder to achieve on an individual basis but in groups it can be accomplished and implemented more effortlessly. Rather than people, worrying that technology will replace them; they are motivated to utilise it and any synergies to the fullest while developing better and more efficient ways of working that lead to improvements of their own and the company’s prospects.
One of the main benefits that this methodology has already brought to many types of businesses is that the enterprise can expand and take on more people in the knowledge that its human resource will be fully capitalised.
New roles to play
Human resources and IT are often gridlocked by unrewarding practices and outmoded technology. These specialists have a great part to play in introducing and explaining the methods and the adapted strategy that will project the organisation into the future. New roles can be created at all levels while the organisation is drawn together into a more efficient unit. Employees will use technology to form new working groups drawn from previously siloed departments. This leads to a mixing of, ages, demographics and disciplines from across the entire business. And because the technology automates many formerly wasteful processes, time becomes available to commercially exploit innovations brought about by the new order.
Involving the interdisciplinary workforce provides feedback for managers and highlights areas for potential improvement and up-skilling, re-skilling or training. In many of the companies that we work with the workforce requests that more areas of their work are digitized because they see it as a catalyst for overall improvement. It makes them more productive and profitable and therefore more valuable to the company. This is especially felt in the SME sector where companies may struggle to be competitive but can use technology to innovate through enhanced collaboration and give themselves a winning edge.
What we want
Technology is constantly evolving so it is crucial to ensure that the IT framework is future proofed with the ability to incorporate any new applications that could be useful to the business as it organically develops. Developing trusting partnerships between technology providers and users where they understand and mesh with each other is a prime requirement. When this is achieved, engagement at all levels within and between the companies delivers the insight and adaptations that lead to improved competitiveness, performance and business strategies.
Implementing technology and processes bottom-up as well as vertically means that emerging innovations in lines and products that could otherwise be lost or hidden can be captured and marshalled for the benefit of the business. Providing a common working basis, such as a platform, makes information and process details available for all employees. This way, ideas and innovation are nurtured and at the same time easier to detect and capitalise. This flexibility lets the company work together leveraging the enthusiasm and new thinking of the young with more experienced minds, nurturing transformation and improvement. People begin to think and perceive the organisation differently. The company can reassess itself and its internal and external identity and reputation in relation to customers, competitors and suppliers.
While bringing operational efficiencies digital data can also be deployed to extrapolate future business performance. This could be on a single work cell level or for the whole enterprise. This level of foresight and the opportunity to run digital ‘what-if’ scenarios is a powerful lens through which to view the business.
Because we work on an international level I have seen that Asia is far ahead of Europe in the deployment of unified platforms with India making very fast headway to cementing its position as an innovation centre. There, university students use the same cloud hosted technology as their eventual employers to ensure that they hit the ground running in the world of work.
A fresh wind of change is blowing the stifling bureaucracy from many companies that want to reap the rewards of working digitally (on premise and on the cloud). Small companies are leading the vanguard with their agility, fresh thinking and clear strategies that deploy technology to maximise their most valuable resource – people.
Top 10 management tips for introducing technology to a business enterprise
- Start with a clear strategy for being a digital organisation
- Use technology to empower and manage people as a business asset
- Get IT departments to understand the big picture and be proactive in the change process
- Use focus groups to recognise technology evangelists and innovation drivers in your business
- Challenge your own thinking about the value of technology and educate yourself and your key stakeholder about it
- Use HR departments to champion the business transformation process and explain the advantages of technological change in your organisation
- Merge individual silos of information with a unified and universally accessible enterprise platform
- Think across the business and at all levels to generate new and different ideas
- Use technology to bring people together into new interest and responsibility groups
- Think long-term (10 – 30 years) about your business direction