Employee benefits provider Unum Group has been building a DevOps continuum, and is further exploring the benefits of a better process around cloud-assisted applications development and deployment.
This interview highlights how employee benefits provider Unum Group has been building a DevOps continuum, and is further exploring the benefits of a better process around cloud-assisted applications development and deployment.
To learn more about how they’ve been using certain tools and approaches to improve their applications delivery, we sat down with Tim Durgan, an Enterprise Application Architect at Unum Group, and Petri Maanonen, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Application Performance Management at HP Software.
Cloud Expo: Delivering Guaranteed Performance Through an SDS Framework
For cloud providers, offering predictable storage performance backed by firm SLAs will become a competitive differentiator that drives greater customer affinity and a better application experience. Many providers feel that a Software Defined Storage (SDS) frameworks hold the key to delivering guaranteed performance, yet this “software abstraction layer” is only half of the solution. SDS frameworks are dependent on the virtualized resources presented to it, and without the granular abstraction of physical storage resources, these frameworks will remain limited.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Dave Wright, Founder & CEO of SolidFire, will explore how to deliver guaranteed performance today, through intelligent storage architectures and software defined control planes of CloudStack, OpenStack, and VMware.
Data Everywhere – Distributed Data Security in the Cloud
Securing your data used to be simpler (if not necessarily easy). You had IT infrastructure in your data center. You adopted security controls at all levels – from physical security, controlling who could enter the facility, up through the network and system, and application layers. IT security looked a lot like perimeter security in a building – the valuables are inside, the attackers are outside, so you have good walls and strong locks and monitor what passes through.
The cloud explodes this model. Today, your data is in your own facility, at a managed hosting provider’s data center, and at your cloud provider. And while you’ve got a specific set of servers and network connections at the hosting provider – you can even go see your servers if you want to! – in the cloud you’ve got virtual machines that vary in number and location within the cloud environment. In a dynamic, autoscaling cloud the number of VMs you’re using may change hour to hour. And wait, there’s more – your employees, customers, and partners are accessing that data not just on IT-approved workstations but on iPads, Android phones, and probably Google Glass before long with the rise of BYOD.
Data Everywhere – Distributed Data Security in the Cloud
Securing your data used to be simpler (if not necessarily easy). You had IT infrastructure in your data center. You adopted security controls at all levels – from physical security, controlling who could enter the facility, up through the network and system, and application layers. IT security looked a lot like perimeter security in a building – the valuables are inside, the attackers are outside, so you have good walls and strong locks and monitor what passes through.
The cloud explodes this model. Today, your data is in your own facility, at a managed hosting provider’s data center, and at your cloud provider. And while you’ve got a specific set of servers and network connections at the hosting provider – you can even go see your servers if you want to! – in the cloud you’ve got virtual machines that vary in number and location within the cloud environment. In a dynamic, autoscaling cloud the number of VMs you’re using may change hour to hour. And wait, there’s more – your employees, customers, and partners are accessing that data not just on IT-approved workstations but on iPads, Android phones, and probably Google Glass before long with the rise of BYOD.
Aspera Drive Offers Sharing, Collaboration Platform For Big Data
Aspera, Inc. today announced the beta availability of Aspera Drive, their new unified sharing and collaboration platform for big data, combining complete desktop explorer integration with performance and ease of use, transparent support for on–premise and cloud storage, and with security, management and access control.
The Aspera platform allows for transfer and synchronization of files sets of any size and any number with maximum speed and robustness at any distance, with the full access control, privacy and security of Aspera technology. Its architecture allows the platform to be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid model.
Aspera Drive brings remote file browsing, transfer, synchronization, and package sending and receiving to the desktop, browser and mobile device. A backend architecture and API allows for fine-grained, centralized control over content access, security and bandwidth, regardless of content storage location – on premise or on cloud.
SYS-CON Launches WebRTC Journal
SYS-CON Media has launched WebRTC Journal on Ulitzer.com featuring over 160 original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is “To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5.”
Follow WebRTC Journal on Twitter at @WebRTCSummit.
The U.S. Open Tennis Tournament and Cloud Technology
Sporting events are periodic events that suddenly demand lots of information technology resources and a good example where cloud technology can be applied effectively.
At VMWorld, a marketing executive from a technology company asked me what kinds of workloads were inappropriate for the cloud with today’s technology. Core banking and manufacturing execution systems immediately came to mind. Banks do not want their security compromised, and manufacturing plants do not want any downtime. Current cloud technology is not ideally suited for these applications.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley | Ceph: Distributed Storage for the Cloud
Ceph is an open source distributed object store, network block device, and file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability. With an advanced placement algorithm, active storage nodes, and peer-to-peer gossip protocols, Ceph scales from terabytes to exabytes with no single point of failure. Through native integrations with OpenStack and Apache CloudStack, Ceph provides a complete object and block storage solution for cloud data. Instead of using scale-up storage appliances, Ceph is a software solution that works on commodity hardware.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Greg Farnum, a Software Developer at Inktank, will discuss the Ceph architecture, its current status, and plans for future development. Attendees will also learn how Ceph integrates with major cloud platforms to provide storage for public and private cloud deployments.
GENBAND Acquires fring
GENBAND, a leading developer of multimedia and cloud communications solutions, today announced it has acquired fring’s Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile IP communications service, which works across all major smartphone platforms. The acquisition of the fring consumer multimedia IP communications solutions expands GENBAND’s cloud portfolio for the consumer market. Through an easy-to-use, white-label service that includes capabilities for mobile group video chat, 2-way video chat, voice-only calls and text chat, GENBAND’s integration of the fring solutions empowers service providers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to compete with OTT solutions.
CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey on the strength of the PaaS market
It’s been a very good first half of the year for Java-based platform as a service (PaaS) provider CloudBees. The Belgium-based cloud company reported a revenue increase of 148% in the first two quarters of 2013, as well as a 135% increase in its customer base.
The news, which CEO Sacha Labourey describes as “definitely a great step for us”, could also be seen as more affirmation of the sharp rise in the PaaS market.
Almost every recent research paper you come across will mention it.
Market Monitor, a service of 451 Research, recently forecast that PaaS would be the fastest growing area of cloud computing, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41% through 2016. Cloud overall would have a CAGR of 36%.
TechNavio, in May, put the CAGR at near 50%, with their beancounters expecting the global PaaS market to hit $6.45bn by 2016 and …