Do chief information officers really prepare and provision their datacenter backbones especially for Christmas? Do CIOs honestly talk to systems architects, software development team leaders and individual programmers about the festive season and plan for an additional data burden?
The fact is that the IT industry has a vibrant and healthy media and publicity scene. Come the “holiday season” (let’s use the politically correct term), the stories turn to the so-called seasonal spike ahead.
Of course, Christmas is really only one seasonal spike among many for the truly discerning CIO. During normal trading hours companies witness demand spikes for any number of reasons including new product launches, web-based viral (usually positive) publicity surges and even the weather.
OK, Here We Go, Cloud Protection
HighCloud Security, one of those rare cloud security start-ups, is warming up to its subject.
A year ago when it first came to market it was focused on encryption and policy-based key management in the private cloud. It has now moved on to the public cloud in rev 2.0 of its widgetry and figures it could change the way companies buy security. After all, encryption isn’t reserved to the CIA anymore.
It claims its particular brand of magic is the first cloud encryption solution to let enterprises and cloud service providers lock down data across private, hybrid and public clouds.
It’s not something legacy solutions can do; at least not easily; they’re hard to manage and hard to deploy, not to mention expensive. And data security is often the gating factor scaring companies off the cloud.
Intel & Red Hat Tuck Money in 10gen’s Jeans
10gen, the open source document-oriented MongoDB creator, says Intel Capital and Red Hat have made strategic investments in it.
It means to use the undisclosed amount of money for product development and support of its rapidly growing worldwide community and user base. It has visions of being the top NoSQL database on the cloud and is reportedly hiring.
It doesn’t need the money. It’s up to Series E and got $42 million in September from VCs – who supposedly valued the company at between $500 million and $550 million – followed by an undisclosed investment from the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel. Since 2009 the start-up has gotten more than $73.4 million and with these last two undisclosed investments TechCrunch thinks the total amount is now around $81 million.
Intelligent Complex Event Processing with Artificial Neural Network
In the current world, data is continuously being generated across various layers of organizations and environment due to changes in the system states or due to the occurrence of new events. These changes in the state of the existing system can happen due to the arrival of a new order request, customer service calls for complaints or feedback, changes in the company stock prices, text or multimedia messages, emails, social media posts, traffic reports, weather reports or any other kind of data. Simply producing reports using these data on a predefined schedule is not enough. Decision makers need real-time alerts and intelligent insight of all that is happening within and around the organization so that they may take meaningful reactive and proactive action before it is too late based on the new information being continuously generated.
Cloud survey from Asigra shows data backup trends
A survey commissioned by Asigra and conducted by TechValidate has found security as the primary concern with storing data in the cloud.
Of the companies surveyed, security (21%) was the biggest concern, followed by location of company data (7%), cost (3%), cloud service provider going out of business (3%) and user error leading to data loss (3%).
There is a reason if these numbers appear particularly low – the top answer for respondents was “all of the above” (59%).
So, evidently, the majority of respondents can’t choose between various cloudy pain points, but of those who can, security worries once again come out on top.
3% selected user error leading to data loss – a pertinent worry, given data recovery expert Kroll Ontrack released its annual Top 10 Data Disasters list, including one man who ran over his camera and another whose iPad slipped into the sea off a Nigerian oil …
Coraid Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Coraid Inc., a leading developer of Ethernet-based storage solutions, has been named “Gold Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Coraid redefines storage with its breakthrough line of EtherDrive and EtherCloud solutions. Coraid delivers scale-out performance, Ethernet simplicity, and an elastic storage architecture to handle massive data growth. Designed from the ground up for virtualization and cloud architectures, Coraid’s platform has been deployed by more than 1,500 customers worldwide.
Cloud Computing IT Outsourcing Contracts Triple
Worldwide IT services deals with a cloud computing element have tripled since 2010, according to research from IT outsourcing consultancy ISG.
ISG used its TPI index to analyze IT outsourcing deals and found 2012 will bear 300 IT contracts awarded that involve cloud computing services. This compares with 110 in 2010 and 220 in 2011.
Stanton Jones, emerging technology analyst at ISG, said the move to standardized platform-based services which are difficult to customize is a step-change for the IT services sector.
“Cloud services, especially shared platforms, are a new terrain for providers and clients alike, as they are highly standardized and can’t be easily customized – the antithesis of traditional outsourcing,” said Jones.
He added that the greatest potential for growth and momentum is in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – especially for human resources (HR), customer relationship management CRM) and collaboration.
AppNeta Offers Cloud-delivered Insight To Path, Packet, Flow and Device
AppNeta today announced the addition of device monitoring to its suite of Network Performance Management (NPM) capabilities. This addition augments the end-to-end service visibility of AppNeta’s PathView Cloud service, which now brings network engineers and IT leaders the only solution in the market that integrates diagnostic monitoring and troubleshooting across all four elements of the network performance stack: path, packet, flow and device.
Traditional network performance management and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) solutions have historically shown just the status of network devices and the volume of data transmitted up to the edge of the network that is owned, which only provides limited visibility. The cloud-delivered PathView Cloud service offers an unprecedented 360º view into known, owned networks and beyond to the WAN, Internet, cloud services and third-party networks. As the only network performance management service to provide complete insight from every element of the network performance stack – path, packet, flow and device – PathView Cloud ensures the experience of application end users by providing visibility and analysis of network performance and application traffic.
“We are excited to offer a new approach to network performance management designed to monitor and evaluate today’s modern networks from one, integrated solution that looks across network paths, packet captures, flow data and device status,” said Jim Melvin, CEO, AppNeta. “We are taking network performance management to a new level where it can actually be easy, affordable, and provide visibility we know that you cannot get from traditional SNMP solutions today.”
With today’s launch of PathView Cloud with on-demand SNMP, the solution now offers extremely lightweight and intelligent device monitoring capabilities, continuously monitoring the performance across the network, and when an issue is detected, gathering the relevant data across network paths, packet captures, flow data and device status, so the problem can be located and resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“I am very excited at the addition of device monitoring to AppNeta’s suite of network monitoring solutions,” said Michael Paynter, CEO, Tier3 Technologies. “We’re always looking for cost-effective and unique solutions to meet our managed service needs for clients, and until now, I’ve been unable to find a solution that offers total visibility into all four elements of the performance stack. This service provides just what I have been looking for to help me meet client needs and our MSP offering objectives. I anticipate that the industry-first, on-demand SNMP capability will completely change our network monitoring approach.”
All existing PathView Cloud customers automatically receive the new on-demand SNMP monitoring capabilities. For more information or a free trial, visit www.appneta.com.
Cloud hosting streamlines the hotel sector
It’s been revealed that cloud computing has managed to revolutionise the hotel sector.
This comes thanks to Claudia Harris, event manager of new trade show Hospitality Technology EXPO. It is also expected that cloud hosting will remain an integral part of the industry’s future success.
Ms Harris has previously stated that cloud technology has enabled operations to be much smoother and easier. It has also been financially beneficial as operations are now more profitable for the hoteliers that have adopted it thus far.
Ms Harris has been quoted saying the following: “Cloud technology has revolutionised every aspect within the hotel industry, from hosting the property management system to all sorts of other software solutions, its biggest benefit is it takes all the hardware out of a hotel, which makes such a big difference.”
The main financial benefits have been that there has been a reduction in the maintenance …
F5 Adds BIG-IP Solutions for Amazon Web Services
F5 Networks, Inc. today introduced a BIG-IP® virtual edition for AWS, which leverages F5’s complete portfolio of BIG-IP products for the AWS cloud. This announcement addresses organizations’ escalating demand to extend their data center and applications to AWS, maintaining enterprise-class reliability, scale, security, and performance. F5’s new AWS offering is also the featured attraction at the company’s booth (#506) at the AWS re: Invent conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, November 27–29.
“Enterprise customers have come to rely on BIG-IP’s strategic awareness that provides important information on how applications, resources, and users interact in order to successfully deliver applications,” said Siva Mandalam, Director of Product Management and Product Marketing, Cloud and Virtualization Solutions at F5. “Since BIG-IP for AWS will have equivalent features to physical BIG-IP devices, customers can apply the same level of control for their applications in AWS. With BIG-IP running in enterprise data centers and on AWS, customers can establish secure tunnels, burst to the cloud, and control the application from end to end.”
The BIG-IP solution for AWS includes options for traffic management, global server load balancing, application firewall, web application acceleration, and other advanced application delivery functions. With the new F5 offering:
- F5 ADN services operate seamlessly in the cloud – BIG-IP
virtual editions are being made available to a growing number of
customers seeking to leverage cloud offerings. Availability for AWS
expands on F5’s broad support for virtualized and cloud environments
based on vSphere, Hyper-V, Xen, and KVM. - Enterprises can confidently take advantage of cloud resources –
AWS customers can easily add F5’s market-leading availability,
optimization, and security services to support cloud and hybrid
deployment models. - IT teams are able to easily scale application environments –
Production and lab versions of BIG-IP virtual editions for AWS enable
IT teams to move smoothly from testing and development into production
to support essential business applications. Customers can leverage
their existing BIG-IP configuration and policies and apply them to
BIG-IP running on AWS.
Supporting Facts and Quotes
- F5 has the greatest market share for the advanced application delivery
controller (ADC) market, deployed within the enterprise and service
providers markets. According to Gartner, Inc., F5 has 59.1% market
share based on Q2 2012 worldwide revenue.1 - F5’s initial product offering will use the AWS “bring your own
license” (BYOL) model, which allows customers to buy perpetual
licenses from F5 and then apply these licenses to instances running in
AWS. To evaluate or purchase BIG-IP software modules, customers should
contact their local
F5 sales office.
“As enterprises consider which applications to move to the cloud, many customers have asked for the same advanced application control they have in their local data centers,” said Terry Wise, Head of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem at Amazon Web Services. “The BIG-IP solution for AWS enables enterprises to quickly move complex applications to AWS while maintaining high levels of service at a lower overall cost.”
“Enterprises want the flexibility and scale of cloud services, yet they can struggle with application complexity and sufficient control,” said Rohit Mehra, VP of Network Infrastructure at IDC. “The challenge lies in easily expanding IT’s service portfolio with cloud and hybrid capabilities while keeping the applications fast, secure, and available. BIG-IP’s native availability inside Amazon Web Services allows enterprises to deeply embed a strategic awareness of how applications behave in cloud adoption scenarios.”
To learn more about how F5 enables organizations to realize the full potential of cloud computing, visit F5 (booth #506) at the AWS re: Invent conference. During the event, Siva Mandalam from F5 will deliver a presentation focused on “Optimizing Enterprise Applications and User Access in the Cloud” at 1 p.m. PT on Wednesday, November 28.
