SYS-CON Events announced today that Key Information Systems, Inc. (KeyInfo), a leading cloud and infrastructure provider offering integrated solutions to enterprises, will exhibit at the 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Key Information Systems is a leading regional systems integrator with world-class compute, storage and networking solutions and professional services for the most advanced software-defined data centers. These competencies are tightly complemented by a full suite of data center capabilities, including private and hybrid cloud offerings, connectivity services, colocation facilities and managed services.
Bridging the Divide Between IT Security & IT Operations By @BillBerutti | @CloudExpo #Cloud
After the deluge of data breaches in 2014 and more emerging every day, security is without a doubt a top strategic initiative for just about every enterprise in 2015. Along with top-notch security, it is imperative for organizations – particularly cloud-driven ones – to also have leading operations tools in place to manage the availability and reliability of their infrastructure. Consider these statistics: more than 80 percent of attacks target known vulnerabilities and 79 percent of vulnerabilities have patches available on the day of the attack’s disclosure. It’s shocking then to realize that it takes 193 days on average to resolve the average vulnerability. Clearly, something needs fixing. The gap between IT security and IT operations teams needs closing.
Ski Helmets, Seat Belts, and Encryption By @Chvrles | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Ski helmets, seat belts, and encryption. What comes to your mind when you read these words?
You may immediately think “safety,” and you’d be right, but how about “speed enablers”? At first blush, that may not be the first concept that comes to mind, but there’s a pretty compelling case to be made for this as another common theme.
Let me give you a couple fun examples, starting with ski helmets. During the winter of 2002/2003 researchers studied different factors, and how they affect skier and snow boarder speed. One of the variables examined was “use or not of helmet”. The authors measured the speed of 650 individuals at three different US ski resorts and found the average speed for helmet users (28.4 MPH) was significantly higher than those not using a helmet (25.4 MPH).
Cryptzone Joins CSA
Cryptzone has joined the Cloud Security Alliance, a not for profit organization that serves to promote the best practices for providing security within the realm of cloud computing as well as disseminating information pertaining to the myriad of cloud computing uses. Cryptzone provides a dynamic context-aware network, application and content security solutions.
Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA, has stated, “Cryptzone offers a unique, comprehensive approach to securing data across both on-premises and cloud-based networks – a model that is very typical of what we see end-users leveraging today. Cryptzone offers a unique, comprehensive approach to securing data across both on-premises and cloud-based networks – a model that is very typical of what we see end-users leveraging today.”
Cryptzone has an extensive portfolio of solutions including but not limited to AppGate, a dynamic, context aware security gateway that prevents unauthorized access, Compliance Sheriff, which provides content governance for public websites, intranets and extranets, and Simple Encryption Platform, which secures data in email, removable storage, files and folders.
Kurt A. Mueffelmann, President and CEO of Cryptzone has also said, “Sophisticated cyberattacks are forcing enterprises to dramatically shift their thinking on how they secure their most valuable data and assets. The CSA has been at the forefront of research, not only to secure cloud computing, but to leverage the cloud to secure your entire compute infrastructure. We look forward to working with the CSA to further this research, and educate enterprises on how they can leverage best practices and proven models to improve their security posture now and for the future.”
The post Cryptzone Joins CSA appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
[webinar] Enabling the Digital Leap | @CloudExpo @Cisco #Cloud
Learn how you can use the CoSN SEND II Decision Tree for Education Technology to make sure that your K–12 technology initiatives create a more engaging learning experience that empowers students, teachers, and administrators alike.
[slides] The Battle for Cloud Hosting By @TNikolov | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Containers
There is no question that the cloud is where businesses want to host data. Until recently hypervisor virtualization was the most widely used method in cloud computing. Recently virtual containers have been gaining in popularity, and for good reason. In the debate between virtual machines and containers, the latter have been seen as the new kid on the block – and like other emerging technology have had some initial shortcomings. However, the container space has evolved drastically since coming onto the cloud hosting scene over 10 years ago. So, what has changed?
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Tenko Nikolov, founder and CEO of Kyup, discussed the security, speed, scalability, cost and outlook for the future of container cloud hosting.
Tenko Nikolov is the founder and CEO of Kyup and the main driving force behind the company’s product development and market growth. With a firm background in the field of web hosting as a managing partner at SiteGround – a leading tech innovator on the web hosting market for more than 10 years now – he has both the vision and the experience to foster the company’s business strategy and cater to the high-standards of delivering a truly advanced, next-generation cloud hosting products.
Take Your Cloud Strategy to the Next Level By @JmkGill | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Many organizations’ virtualization strategies begin and end with deploying VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V to virtualize as many servers as possible. But there’s so much more that an enterprise can do to extend the benefits of virtualization. In addition to virtualizing, a workflow-based management overlay can minimize operational costs while ensuring assets are fully utilized. Furthermore, taking advantage of applications in the public cloud can further reduce costs while ensuring agility and on-demand resources to meet changing business requirements. Here are four ways an enterprise can improve its overall cloud strategy.
HP Offers Flexible Infrastructure Solutions By @Dana_Gardner | @CloudExpo @HP #Cloud
HP today announced the new HP ConvergedSystem 250-HC StoreVirtual, a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.
Designed to attract customers on a tight budget, the HP CS 250 includes a new three-node configuration that is up to 49 percent more cost effective than comparable configurations from Nutanix, SimpliVity and other competitors, says HP. Because HP’s StoreVirtual runs in VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM virtual environments, the appliance may soon come to support all those hypervisors.
Rackspace to add AWS to Fanatical Support services
Rhodes: “We are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms”
Rackspace is currently developing a Fanatical Support offering for AWS customers, the company’s latest move aimed at shifting its business towards managed cloud services.
Speaking about the company’s second quarter financial results earlier this week Rackspace president and chief exec Taylor Rhodes said the company plans to extend its Fanatical Support and managed cloud services to the AWS platform “later this year.”
“As I’ve advised you in earlier calls, we don’t expect significant revenue for managed services on other cloud providers in 2015, but we’re excited about the prospects for this business. We estimate that the addressable market is in the multiple billions of dollars annually and is growing in the high-double digits,” Rhodes explained in a call with analysts and journalists.
“Because of our scale and reputation for Fanatical Support, we are positioned to become the dominant service provider for these cloud platforms,” he said.
The new comes about a month after Rackspace announced it would extend its Fanatical Support services to Microsoft Azure’s public and private cloud infrastructure. The company said customers will be able to buy either bundled Azure infrastructure with support, or just support services. The offerings will be available first in the US, with plans for an international rollout “through early 2016.”
A tale of two ITs
Werner Knoblich, senior vp and gm of Red Hat in EMEA
Gartner calls it ‘bimodal IT’; Ovum calls it ‘multimodal IT’; IDC calls it the ‘third platform’. Whatever you choose to call it, they are all euphemisms for the same evolutions in IT: a shift towards deploying more user-centric, mobile-friendly software and services that more scalable, flexible and easily integrated than the previous generation of IT services. And while the cloud has evolved as an essential delivery mechanism for the next generation of services, it’s also prompting big changes in IT says Werner Knoblich, senior vice president and general manager of Red Hat in EMEA.
“The challenge with cloud isn’t really a technology one,” Knoblich explains, “but the requirements of how IT needs to change in order to support these technologies and services. All of the goals, key metrics, ways of doing business with vendors and service providers have changed.”
Most of what Knoblich is saying may resonate with any large organisation managing a large legacy estate that wants to adopt more mobile and cloud services; the ‘two ITs can be quite jarring.
The chief goal used to be reliability; now it’s agility. In the traditional world of IT the focus was on price for performance; now it’s about customer experience. In traditional IT the most common approach to development was the classic ‘waterfall’ approach – requirements, design, implementation, verification, maintenance; now it’s all about agile and continuous delivery.
Most assets requiring management were once physical; now they’re all virtualised machines and microservices. The applications being adopted today aren’t monolithic beasts as they were traditionally, but modular, cloud-native apps running in Linux containers or platforms like OpenStack (or both).
Not just the suppliers – but also the way they are sourced – has changed. In the traditional world long-term, large-scale multifaceted deals were the norm; now, there are lots of young, small suppliers, contracted in short terms or on a pay-as-you-go basis.
“You really need a different kind of IT, and people who are very good in the traditional mode aren’t necessarily the ones that will be good in this new hybrid world,” he says. “It’s not just hybrid cloud but hybrid IT.”
The challenges are cultural, organisational, and technical. According to the 2015 BCN Annual Industry Survey, which petitioned over 700 senior IT decision makers, over 67 per cent of enterprises plan to implement multiple cloud services over the next 18 months, but close to 70 per cent were worried about how those services would integrate with other cloud services and 90 per cent were concerned about how they will integrate those cloud services with their legacy or on-premise services.
That said, open source technologies that also make use of open standards play a massive role in ensuring cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-legacy integrations are achievable and, where possible, seamless – one of the main reasons why Linux containers are gaining so much traction and mind share today (workload portability). And open source technology is something Red Hat knows a thing or two about.
Beyond its long history in server and desktop OSs (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and middleware (JBoss) the company is a big sponsor and early backer of Open Stack, increasingly popular cloud building software built on a Linux foundation. It helped create an open source platform as a service, OpenShift. The company is also working on Atomic Host, an open source container-based hosting mechanism for a slimmed down version of RHEL with support for other open source container technologies including Kubernetes and Docker, the darlings of the container community.
“Our legacy in open source is extremely important and even more important in cloud than the traditional IT world,” Knoblich says.
“All of the innovation happening today in cloud is open source – think of Docker, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, and you can’t really think of one pure proprietary offering that can match these in terms of the pace of innovation and the rate at which new features are being added,” he explains.
But many companies, mostly the large supertankers, don’t yet see themselves as ready to embrace these new technologies and platforms – not just because they don’t have the type or volume of workloads to migrate, because they require a huge cultural and organisational shift. And cultural as well as organisational shifts are typically rife with political struggles, resentment, and budgetary wrestling.
“You can’t just install OpenStack or Dockerise your applications and ‘boom’, you’re ready for cloud – it just doesn’t work that way. Many of the companies that are successfully embracing these platforms and digitising their organisations set up a second IT department that operates in parallel to the traditional one, and can only seed out the processes and practices – and technologies – they’ve embraced when critical mass is reached. Unless that happens, they risk getting stuck back in the traditional IT mentality.”
An effective open hybrid approach ultimately means not only embracing the open source solutions and technologies, but recognising that some large, monolithic applications – say, Cobol-based mainframe apps – won’t make it into this new world; neither will the processes needed to maintain those systems.
“For some industries, like insurance for instance, there isn’t a recognised need to ditch those systems and processes. But for others, particularly those being heavily disrupted, that’s not the case. Look at Volkswagen. They don’t just see Mercedes, BMW and Tesla as competitors – they see Google and Apple as competitors too because the car becomes a technology platform for services.”
“No industry is secure from disruption, particularly from players that scarcely existed a few years ago, which is why IT will be multi-modal for many, many years to come,” he concludes.
This interview was developed in partnership with Red Hat