Microsoft has announced that Windows Server 2003 will hit End of Support (EOS) on July 14, 2015. Over the course of 2013, AppZero undertook the first “State of Readiness for Windows Server 2003 End of Support” Survey in an effort to assess how serious this event is to enterprise IT pros.
AppZero surveyed Fortune 1000 IT professionals at a series of industry events to assess their readiness for the impending end of support of Windows Server 2003. Results show that IT pros are evaluating their options which range from accepting the risks of running on an unsupported operating system to upgrading all of their servers to moving to the Cloud, and lots of other choices in between.
2014: Customers Rejoice in the Year of Service Personalization
As we enter a new year, it is time to look back over the past year and resolve to improve upon it. In 2014, we will see more service providers resolve to add more personalization in enterprise technology. Below are seven predictions about what will drive this trend toward personalization.
The Internet of Things turns into the Internet of Agents. M2M connections and multi-agent systems will result in an increasing number of highly personalized, value-added branded services. The latest Gartner forecast for the Internet of Things (IoT) predicts that by 2020, there will be $309 billion in incremental revenue opportunity for IoT suppliers, mostly in services. Everything-as-a service (XaaS) will lead us toward more complex services, more bundles and more options. Individual users will use agents whose sole job is to create functional services for individuals, out of everything available in the connected service universe. As we move closer toward XaaS, we will become familiar with the concept of “agents” in the delivery of those everything services via SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Agents can reside as modules within SaaS service offerings or they can be tools embedded in the service provider infrastructure or operating systems. Agents can exist in cloud-connected devices, or in the management software within the evolving smart device ecosystem. Any service delivery platform (SDP) can contain agents that add functionality to the supported services by collaborating with other agents on other platforms.
The Future of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing continues to transform the way organization are doing business, proving to be a transformative innovation for many enterprises. Considering how far the cloud has come in recent years spurs questions of what the future will look like and what types of changes we can expect. Many are speculating about the pace of cloud adoption and what services and capabilities will become available in the future.
Some believe recent reports of online surveillance and data breaches at popular cloud applications resulting from hacking could impede the growth rate of cloud adoption. But we believe recent events will lead to further innovations that will bolster security and corporate control and this will allow more companies to confidently move important processes online, ensuring the cloud continues its path of fundamentally transforming corporate IT. Broadly, the future for cloud computing will include clearly defined and standards-based security solutions and technology that will enable enterprises to retain full control of their sensitive information assets while continuing to move more business functions online (thereby reducing IT and other costs). This year’s The Future of Cloud Computing survey by North Bridge gave some great insights into what might be coming for the cloud and I’ve added a couple of additional ideas below.
Book Excerpt: Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud | Part 1
CPUs drive all software and are often the first target for systems performance analysis. Modern systems typically have many CPUs, which are shared among all running software by the kernel scheduler. When there is more demand for CPU resources than there are resources available, process threads (or tasks) will queue, waiting their turn. Waiting can add significant latency during the runtime of applications, degrading performance.
The usage of the CPUs can be examined in detail to look for performance improvements, including eliminating unnecessary work. At a high level, CPU usage by process, thread, or task can be examined. At a lower level, the code path within applications and the kernel can be profiled and studied. At the lowest level, CPU instruction execution and cycle behavior can be studied.
Rise of the Thing – Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) is giving rise to a whole new set of protocols for API access. Until recently, it was taken for granted that JSON is all-conquering and predominant. In my view, the popularly of JSON for APIs is as much to do with the widespread usage of dynamic languages on the client side (JavaScript in particular, of course) as it is to do with the smaller size of JSON relative to XML.
Mobile Expert Interviews: Vaidy Iyer on Cloud Mobility and PaaS
I had the privilege of interviewing mobility expert Vaidy Iyer today. He is the founder and CEO of AppsFreedom, a company focused on providing enterprise mobility solutions in the form of Multi-Channel, Multi-Device Platform as a Service solutions to the SAP community. I asked if they could compete with SAP’s mobile solutions – you should hear his answer! Enjoy!
SYS-CON.tv Interview: The Purposed Cloud
“We had been a managed service provider but with all the deafening noise around the cloud we have found that we do something that people would love – the purposed cloud,” explained Chetan Patwardhan, CEO of Stratogent, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, held Nov 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Expo® 2014 New York, June 10-12, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Why cloud services will kill big bad whole-of-government IT projects
Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, Public Sector Technology
Momentum for cloud services adoption in government grew solidly in 2013 and looks certain to accelerate in 2014. We believe that growth in cloud services adoption by agencies will drive a change in the core logic of whole-of-government IT strategy. Cloud services offer a less risky win-win-win path towards IT modernization and intra-agency collaboration. Big bad experimental whole-of-government IT projects are dead. Long live the new logic of cloud services: find solutions that work well in individual agencies and then adopt them more broadly across multiple agencies. Simple.
Stop the horror story of whole-of-government IT strategy experiments
IT strategy in government too often resembles a horror story because of a passion for big projects which become mad experiments that go bad. Under pressure to cut costs, whole-of-government CIOs pursued adventurous and experimental shared services and common application and infrastructure strategies. While the …
Rackspace Announces DevOps Automation Service
The DevOps Automation Service will enable developers and IT departments to accelerate time to market for their products and features by allowing them to deploy, scale and test new configurations in hours rather than days. In addition, the service will help improve the quality of software deployments and to create more frequent software releases, as automating processes will allow organizations to provision servers consistently and free of mistakes typically caused by manual installation and configuration.
Cloud IDE Roundup
The recent announcement of the open-sourcing of the Codebox IDE is a good excuse to take a break and examine some current cloud-based IDEs.
If you’re new to the space, a cloud IDE lets developers code and manage their projects from a browser. This lets you keep all of your code in the cloud, and means you don’t need to have a powerful laptop to do real programming work. Using a cloud IDE lets you more easily share development environments with your team, which lets new team members become productive faster. Some cloud IDEs also allow you to connect to backend services for build/analysis/deployment, further simplifying the workflow for individual developers.
Most cloud-based IDEs have a similar baseline set of functionality: file/folder management, tabbed editors, access to remote files via (S)FTP/Dropbox/etc. Most claim compatibility with browsers on lightweight devices like tablets, smartphones, and Chrome laptops.