IBM said Monday that it’s bought UrbanCode, a Cleveland concern that automates software delivery and is good at releasing and updating mobile, social, Big Data and cloud applications. Terms were not disclosed.
Its technology is supposed to reduce the cycle time it takes to get updates or new applications into market from months to minutes, IBM says. It’s designed to reduce cost and risk, while enabling a company to rapidly incorporate feedback into the overall quality of their applications and services.
IBM describes UrbanCode’s software as a natural extension of its DevOps strategy, designed to simplify and speed the software development and delivery process for businesses.
CA Swallows Layer 7 & Israeli-Based Nolio
Last week Intel said it was buying Mashery, the multi-tenant SaaS API manager, for a reported $180 million.
On Monday CA Technologies said it was buying Mashery rival Layer 7 Technologies on undisclosed terms thought to be in the same neighborhood as Intel’s spend.
CA figures Layer 7’s API management and security widgetry complement its Identity and Access Management suite and DevOps technology. It means to combine them so customers can quickly deliver the cloud, mobile and composite apps that run today’s business services.
CA’s vision extends to the “Internet of things” and imagines the billions of API calls that are already made every day and the billions more that will be made with the increasing proliferation of smart devices like vehicles, meters, TVs and whatnot.
The cloud for live sports: From blue-sky to real world
Many broadcast experts believe that live sports and news programming have driven much of the broadcast production innovation we see today. The demand for high-quality, low latency video delivered at maximum speed, accelerated ongoing advancements in digital workflows enjoyed by many broadcast sectors.
Now the sheer volume of content – thanks to the wide array of newer digital outlets – in new and more complex formats, is increasing requirements and straining broadcasters’ network capacities and resources. In short, data has never been so large, complex and challenging to transport, store and manage effectively.
For the past several years, cloud computing has been like a carrot dangling just beyond reach: promising to dramatically improve the transport and management of large amounts of data while streamlining workflows and increasing collaboration but not quite delivering.
The virtually unlimited, on-demand increases in transfer, storage, compute and bandwidth that the cloud could enable, plus the clear cost …
Complicating Cloud- Yes You Can, But No You Shouldn’t
By Ben Sawyer, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne
As a software engineer it is very easy to, well, over-engineer something. But, just because you *can* do something doesn’t mean you *should* do something. For example, I can get a tattoo but I shouldn’t. That being said, I did get a tattoo a while back so don’t judge me. Okay, back to the point. In these days, where for almost any project it’s hard to control scope, it’s very easy for an engineer to go above and beyond what is required because often times they will build something because they think it’s cool. These ideas are often not vetted with the internal team or, even more tragically, the client. And, while the idea may actually be great, the engineer has unknowingly increased the duration of the project significantly because, now, not only will time be used to implement some feature but more time is needed to test how that feature may affect the many other “known” features of a product or service.
There is no better example of simplicity than Apple. Steve Jobs was fanatical about keeping its products as simple as possible. If you think about it, the more features and moving parts a product has can very easily lead to more confusion. There is a lot of up front work (a lot) that needs to be considered about how a user *should* (there’s that word again) use a product…in other words how to control their experience. My 3-year old son was able to navigate his way around my iPhone in a matter of days so that speaks volumes to its usability. My mom still calls me once a week with an iPhone question and that speaks to her age.
For anyone who builds a product or delivers a service, it is crucial to not only consider how someone should consume their product but also how they shouldn’t. In other words, don’t let them shoot themselves in the foot (sorry Plaxico Burress). In terms of configuring or customizing a piece of software, many have options that are grouped under a “Basic” or “Advanced” group. The goal is to protect the users from themselves because if my mom ends up in the “Advanced” settings, I will most likely get a phone call in a matter of minutes (unless she’s managed to disable her phone).
So what does usability have to do with the cloud? Lots. As companies expand their datacenters, move some resources to the public cloud, and in general add more moving parts, it’s crucial to make sure all those products work together nicely and, if possible, are able to be managed as easily and in as few “places” as possible. Think of the famous new buzzword, Single Pane of Glass. That very phrase implies that there is a bunch of stuff going on under the covers which therefore necessitates having an easy place to control, monitor, and use all the moving parts. Regardless of what products companies use, they need to make certain that it’s not just the guts and plumbing of the product that’s important, it’s how you may manage them. Simplicity is even more important as people move to the public cloud where in many cases a user has little control over the UI (user interface) which must be used to manage those resources. That’s why it’s key to find a tool which can not only integrate with a company’s existing private infrastructure but also any one of the many public service providers out there. Any large service provider will provide a public API (a way for your code to call their code) so that you can manipulate the underlying resources without having to use their front-end application.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a product out there that allowed people to monitor & manage their entire infrastructure from a single place? Well, it just so happens there is…GreenPages’ Cloud Management as a Service solution, a.k.a., CMaaS. This product takes all the hard work from thousands of hours of development & presents the abundance of information in a very easy to use interface. But don’t be fooled by its simplicity; Steve Ballmer said the iPhone would never take off. Appreciate the amount of work that went into understanding how someone would use it in addition to how someone could use it. Bottom line…don’t be a Steve Ballmer.
To learn more about Cloud Management as a Service and the importance of hybrid cloud management in today’s IT landscape, download this free whitepaper. To contact us for more information on GreenPages CMaaS offering, click here!
Brass tacks: Answering the security questions that matter
But when we get down to the nitty gritty (the brass tacks if you will), security can be simplified by six simple questions:
WHO is logging in?
WHAT are they accessing/viewing?
WHERE is the device from which that person logs in?
WHEN was any asset changed/modified/moved
HOW are they authorised/credentialed?
WHAT is the impact of the event?
Now determining the answers to those questions might require a bit of coordination, but in terms of initiative and priority, it is the answers to the above questions that must drive any enterprise security initiative.
The concept of enterprise security is simple. Allow those who you want to see and access data in, and everyone else out. Of course the addendum to that is those that are …
Cloud Expo NY: How Cloud Replication Can Turn Disaster Recovery into DRaaS
Today, highly orchestrated, easily testable disaster recovery (DR) and data center migration solutions are becoming the norm in cloud environments. Costs related to DR implementation and ongoing operations can be dramatically reduced through the use of technologies such as VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM). HOSTING has implemented Cloud Replication 3.0 – essentially DR as a Service – built on VMware and SRM – a service that offers SRM’s compelling value, but built in the cloud, with additional business-driven API controls and integration that makes SRM a seamless part of a cloud operations environment.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Matt Ferrari, CTO of HOSTING, will provide an overview of DR with vSphere and SRM. The focus will be on what’s new with cloud replication, emphasizing DR as a Service (DRaaS) and automated fail over and fail back, including best practices on how to move DR to the cloud and how to simplify DR environment management. He will present these concepts with the help of a live demo based on actual use cases.
Proactive security is required in highly regulated industries
Andrew Kellett, Principal Analyst, Infrastructure and Security
Maintaining security that meets the risk and compliance requirements of the enterprise is a constant challenge. Systems and networks are becoming more open and accessible, but at the same time, threats have become more advanced, persistent, and complex. This is a particularly important issue in highly regulated markets such as financial services, where failure to protect sensitive information will have a negative effect on the business and how it is regarded by customers, trading partners, and regulators.
Keeping business organizations safe is harder than it used to be for several reasons. These mostly relate to the well-worn arguments that malware is becoming more difficult to detect, attack volumes and their intensity are growing, and the effectiveness of traditional security products is in decline. There is a predominant requirement to more actively prepare organizations to deal with security threats, to provide proactive approaches to …
Open Source Cloud Computing Testing Tools
Testing tools and frameworks are infinitely useful when planning cloud architecture for many reasons.
“The confidence of a well-tested codebase brings the ability to deploy quickly, and often. Testing infrastructure assures that incremental changes to the codebase do not affect the overall application performance,” said Omid Rahmat, president, Burnside Digital.
One of the Rahmat’s favorite testing tools is rspec, used for ruby applications. Rahmat said it takes a “behavior-driven” approach to testing. “We follow the best practices of writing tests that explain what our code should do before writing it. This gives us a clear path to follow to implement solutions with great confidence and far fewer defects. Having that test and seeing it pass lets us know that we have written features to specification.”
Accelerating the Hybrid Cloud
Last night CloudVelocity CEO Rajeev Chawla was able to talk to Brian Gracely at The Cloudcast on CloudVelocity and the hybrid cloud. The 33 minute interview (Accelerating the Hybrid Cloud (#83) is now available for download. A special thanks to Brian, who asked some of the most probing hybrid cloud questions asked by anyone to date.
Here is the outline of the conversation (created by the team at CloudCast) so that you can navigate to the part that you are most interested in (if you don’t have time for the entire interview):
Description: Brian talks with Rajeev Chawla (CEO @ CloudVelocity) about the evolution and challenges of Hybrid Cloud, working across multiple clouds, and how start-ups are innovating in a highly competitive cloud market.
Cloud Expo New York: Build Modern Business Applications
Today’s developers want platforms that make innovation faster, less complex, and more efficient.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Gene Eun, Sr. Director, Oracle Cloud at Oracle, will provide an overview of Oracle Cloud’s easy-to-use, enterprise-grade, and open standards-based platform services. Learn how you can transform the development experience and quickly build applications in the cloud using the tools and techniques developers love and already use today.
Gene Eun is Sr. Director, Oracle Cloud at Oracle.