Dynatrace is an application performance management software company with products for the information technology departments and digital business owners of medium and large businesses. Building the Future of Monitoring with Artificial Intelligence

Today we can collect lots and lots of performance data. We build beautiful dashboards and even have fancy query languages to access and transform the data. Still performance data is a secret language only a couple of people understand. The more business becomes digital the more stakeholders are interested in this data including how it relates to business. Some of these people have never used a monitoring tool before. They have a question on their mind like “How is my application doing” but no idea how to get a proper answer.

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It’s a mad, mad, multi-cloud world all right. At Cisco Live US in Florida yesterday – the company’s flagship jamboree of all things networking – CEO Chuck Robbins was all but upstaged by Google Cloud chief Diane Greene.

Robbins is more than happy to let the great and good share the stage with him at Cisco’s events – Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared at Cisco Live Las Vegas last year to discuss securing the mobile workforce. It is testament to the strength of partnerships at this level too from both sides; Apple and Google have plenty of the consumer clout, but Cisco’s presence in the enterprise market is vital too.

Yet it was also telling that Robbins mentioned Cisco’s Catalyst 9000 platform after Greene’s cameo. The Catalyst 9000 is, in the words of the CEO, ‘the fastest ramping product in the history of Cisco’. But first, an update on the company’s partnership with Google Cloud – in which the word Kubernetes was said rather a lot.

Robbins asked the audience of Cisco customers and partners how many were testing, piloting, or generally getting a feel for Kubernetes today. The applause which came back suggested a positive uptake. Google and Cisco’s partnership, launched in October last year, aims to give Cisco customers the same experience when running Kubernetes applications either on-premise or in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Or in other words, to enable organisations to tackle their cloud journeys at their own pace.

“It’s helping all of you keep doing what you’re doing – keep innovating, and non-disruptively keep disrupting what your company’s doing,” said Greene. “You can’t just rewrite your applications and move to a new environment, and so what we’re doing here is bringing you Kubernetes containers, and then you can let your application developers concentrate on what they’re doing.”

Greene said there were four stakeholder bases who would see benefit from the partnership; engineers, developers, ops, and security. “For engineers, being able to take this incremental approach, this non-disruptive way to keep disrupting what you’re capable of doing in a fast-moving company – that’s one huge advantage,” said Greene. “It really modernises the developer environment.

“I’ve been involved in software development for a long, long time, and I really think these modern technologies are almost giving a 10x productivity improvement,” added Greene. “The Kubernetes environment and Istio is just taking care of a lot of things that developers used to have to worry about. Now they can focus more on the business of the company.

“For the ops folks, it gives you a consistent environment that you can monitor,” Greene continued. “Istio’s going to be really powerful there. For security, to have one consistent model across everywhere that you’re running, that’s huge – and it’s really good for the developers because you don’t have these lowest common denominator rules that can get in the way of innovation.”

Perhaps talk of upstaging is a little harsh. Cisco’s vision is around how its network architecture (above) underpins the innovation and partnerships taking place. “The reality, I believe, is it’s this architecture that brings together automation, security, analytics,” said Robbins. “For me, that’s what’s made the big difference – because you all understand how this can change the operational paradigm in your organisations and allow you to focus on other strategic things.”

Robbins touched on the importance of emerging technologies and their effects on the business in his opening salvo. “This is going to define how we think about the network’s next act: what does it have to do?” asked Robbins. “When you think about the complexity of the world you’re operating in now – which candidly is more complex than it was even four years ago – and then you introduce these new tech changes that bring incredible capabilities.

“Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning – you think about the requirements, and what you’re being asked to do by the business,” added Robbins. “Your business leaders in your organisation actually don’t care about the technology. They care deeply about the outcome that technology can deliver. They care deeply about moving faster. They care deeply about being able to execute on a strategy the minute they have a strategy.

“This is at the heart of how we defined our strategy that we first began to launch last year. If you step back and look at all of the connections, you have traffic going to public cloud, SaaS, applications, consuming M2M/IoT connectivity at the edge… the only common denominator is the network. Therefore the network has to become a secure platform that enables you to help your organisation achieve its strategies.”

As regular readers of this publication will be aware, Google’s cloud push has been a serious bet over the past couple of years, with validation of Greene’s work coming from the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud IaaS. The analyst firm put Google in its leaders’ section for the first time in five years.

Cisco offered one other piece of news yesterday; the company is working with NetApp to deliver a new managed private cloud FlexPod product. FlexPod ‘combines Cisco USC integrated infrastructure with NetApp data services to help organisations accelerate application delivery and transition to a hybrid cloud with a trusted platform for innovation’, in the company’s words.

Main picture credits: Cisco

Keumars Afifi-Sabet

Cohesity, a hyperconverged storage provider, has announced it has raised $250 million (£186.7m) in an oversubscribed series D funding round to help further drive the company’s momentum.

The round was led by the SoftBank Vision Fund – making it only the second time the group has invested in an enterprise software company – with participation from Cisco Investments, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, and Sequoia Capital among others.

Cohesity offers hyperconverged storage for secondary data – in other words, not collected by the user – with the company saying secondary data consumes up to 80% of enterprise storage capacity. With the data in different repositories, such as backups, archives, test/dev and analytics, the company aims to simplify the process with its data platform.

The company has had significant success over the past 12 months, with more than 200 new enterprise customers – from Schneider Electric to the San Francisco Giants – coming on board in the past two quarters alone. Cohesity also secured increased revenues to the tune of 600% between 2016 and 2017.

“My vision has always been to provide enterprises with cloud-like simplicity for their many fragmented applications and data – backup, test and development, analytics, and more,” said Mohit Aron, CEO and founder of Cohesity. “Cohesity has built significant momentum and market share during the last 12 months and we are just getting started. We succeed because our customers are some of the world’s brightest and most fanatical IT organisations and are an extension of our development efforts.”

“Cohesity pioneered hyperconverged secondary storage as a first stepping stone on the path to a much larger transformation of enterprise infrastructure spanning public and private clouds,” said Deep Nishar, senior managing partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We believe that Cohesity’s web-scale Google-like approach, cloud-native architecture, and incredible simplicity is changing the business of IT in a fundamental way.”

Despite SoftBank’s leadership being the eye-catching headline, it is interesting to compare some of the other investors.

Cisco and HPE also put a stake in last April with Cohesity’s series C round of $90 million. As a Business Insider story put it at the time, eyebrows were raised given Cisco and HPE’s fierce competition across multiple business units – storage being one of the hotter ones. Both companies have a clear interest in the space; in January last year, HPE acquired hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider SimpliVity for $650 million in cash, while Cisco caught up by snaffling fellow HCI firm Skyport Systems at the start of this year.

The series D funding has given Cohesity a total of $410 million raised.

With nine in 10 sales and marketing teams insisting that cloud-based business intelligence (BI) technology is necessary to the management of their strategies, it’s no wonder that the adoption has exploded in recent years. However, many businesses, especially small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are still lagging behind.

BARC’s research study on BI and data management found that 45% of businesses had not adopted this technology yet, with 6% stating they were opposed to it altogether. Over half of SMEs rated their strategy usage as “low”, and the majority were still not using the cloud for any of their BI and data management programs.

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Cloud-based BI can solve many data management issues that businesses face today. If used correctly, it can foster seamless and continuous utilization of information crucial to business growth. So why are so many companies still averse to it?

Let’s discuss.

User proficiency

It’s fair to say that no company can survive for long in the modern world without some form of business intelligence program, whether it be a simple database or a complex data library. As companies become more reliant on large sums of data to manage their sales and marketing strategies, the need for larger storage capacities and immediate access to information becomes an absolute.

However, switching up an operation to run on a cloud-based business intelligence system can be a cumbersome process. Since these systems have the capability to draw from a wide range of datasets, getting everyone in the company up to speed during the implementation phase takes time. The hours spent in training eat into company profits, yet it is necessary for all employees to get onboard if the system is going to be used to its fullest potential. Unfortunately, most businesses that use BI systems fail in this regard, as 49% of employees report that they use less than half of the system’s features due to improper training.

Obviously, failing to properly onboard your team to a cloud-based system could lead to disaster, including decreased profits, longer sales cycles, and copious amounts of employee frustration. For example, say your company switches to a cloud CRM system so your sales associates have access to customer data at all times. If they are not properly trained, they could miss important consumer tidbits, such as the customer’s position along the sales funnel or previous encounters with other representatives. However, with proper training, they can gather important insights from the program to create more seamless experiences. To give you an idea, reps could use the information from POS data points to create more personalized sales strategies based on customers’ past purchases and preferences. 

Unless your employees are tech wizards who happen to be experts in cloud-based BI systems, thorough onboarding will be necessary to get them comfortable with the technology. Of the companies that were able to successfully integrate BI into their sales and marketing practices, 86% claimed to have more accurate reporting and analysis, 84% improved their business decision making process, and 79% saw an enhancement in employee satisfaction.

Additionally, operational efficiency increased, as did customer satisfaction and revenues. Numbers like this clearly show the benefits of proper training and how it can create a more competent and productive company.

Data governance

The mass amount of data that companies have access to in today’s business landscape has created all kinds of gray areas in terms of data governance. Of course, there are many legal issues that come with the hierarchy of data access. For example, should every department within a business have access to sensitive and private information like financial or customer data? Perhaps not. But if every person needs to request permission to access necessary information, it could lead to an immense backlog and wait time to gather specific data points, which completely defeats the purpose of cloud-based BI.

There are some key guidelines companies should follow when setting up internal governance for data.

First of all, teams must recognize that not all data is created equal, and therefore, no single level of access can be used for every dataset all the time. There must be a chain of command in place and a series of checks and balances to ensure that data is being used correctly.

The second rule of thumb is to understand how linking data will create stronger strategies. However, this must be done wisely without using unnecessary datasets. Many sales teams will have their own sets of stored data from experiences and interactions with customers. Similarly, financial departments, customer service representatives, and marketing teams will have their own information as well. By combining these data points into a unified system (like a cloud-based BI program), every department can harness the power of this information to create better customer experiences.

Companies that understand the importance of a unified system for proper governance report remarkably higher success rates than businesses with multiple, inconsistent data sources. Additionally, failure to put a system in place leads to unreliable data that cannot be trusted, which creates confusion, and ultimately, failure.

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There is no “one size fits all” rule that can be applied to data governance, at least not yet. The technology is changing very rapidly, and it may take time for legal restrictions to catch up. However, in the meantime, it is vital that businesses set their own standards and rules for proper lineage and chain of custody when it comes to data management.

Security is the number one issue that businesses have with implementing cloud-based BI systems – with 45% listing it as their top concern.

Source 

In the process of moving data to the cloud, security risks can increase significantly. Cloud-based data can sometimes be more prone to hackers and system attacks, so this objection is certainly viable.

These days, data security is at the very top of most priority lists, and if it isn’t, it needs to be. However, it is not impossible to guarantee data security with cloud-based systems if the proper precautions and measures are taken.

In order to ensure that data points are safe and secure (especially during transfer), businesses must use cloud providers with network segmentation, strong password requirements, and heavy encryption for maximum protection. Machine learning systems can be a powerful weapon of defense when it comes to data security. This is because of its ability to mold and adapt as threats grow and system needs change. In fact, machine learning-powered security systems are able to identify and combat credential attacks, which make up over 80% of hacking-related data breaches.

System agility

BI solutions are in a fast, perpetual state of advancement. If a solution goes obsolete, businesses need to be able to change their system with very short adjustment times. This is, of course, a major concern for companies who equate technology changes with higher costs.

In order to diminish the feeling of being overwhelmed with the power and complexity of cloud BI systems, it is best to only focus on the features that will best support your specific industry. Different businesses will require different focuses, depending on their key areas of service. For example, financial services would benefit greatly from end-user self service programs, but have little need for deep data mining. On the other hand, healthcare companies need more data discovery capabilities, along with in-memory support and data cataloging.

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Businesses that are considering adopting this type of technology-forward BI system must be prepared to keep up with the changes. This will require constant re-evaluation of systems and comparing old strategies with new and emerging ones. By narrowing your company’s focus to only the most important features, the task of keeping up with the changes will be easier and narrower than trying to keep up with cloud-based advancement as a whole.

Conclusion

Adopting cloud-based systems are rarely easy, but they are necessary in order to keep up with the advancing tech world, especially in regards to BI. Of course, no technology is without its weaknesses or challenges. And in the case of cloud-based BI programs, these obstacles can often seem insurmountable. Fortunately, the top four objections against the implementation of this technology are not without solutions.

Clare Hopping

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Who is leading digital transformation at the most forward-thinking organizations across the globe, and what are the most significant roadblocks to their progress? That depends, on who you ask. Let's consider the most common digital business challenges today, and how savvy leaders overcome them.

Digital growth tops the list of CEO business priorities in 2018 and 2019, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. However, as growth becomes harder to achieve, CEOs are concentrating on changing and upgrading the structure of their companies — including digital business investments.

Exploring digital business transformation culture

"Although growth remains a CEO's biggest priority, there was a significant fall in simple mentions of it this year, from 58 percent in 2017 to just 40 percent in 2018. This doesn't mean CEOs are less focused on growth, instead it shows that they're shifting perspective on how to obtain it," said Mark Raskino, vice president at Gartner.

The Gartner survey of CEO and senior business executives in the fourth quarter of 2017 examined their business issues, as well as some areas of technology agenda impact. In total, 460 business leaders in organizations with more than $50 million in annual revenue were qualified and surveyed.

IT remains a high priority coming in at the third position, and CEOs mention digital transformation, in particular. Workforce has risen rapidly this year to become the fourth-biggest priority, up from seventh in 2017. The number of CEOs mentioning workforce in their top three priorities rose from 16 percent to 28 percent.

However, when asked about the most significant internal constraints to growth, employee knowledge and progressive talent issues were at the very top of the list. CEOs said a lack of 'skilled talent' and workforce capability, by far,  is the biggest inhibitor of digital business development progress.

Culture change is a key aspect of digital transformation. Gartner found that CIOs agreed it was a very high-priority, but only 37 percent of CEOs said a significant or deep culture change is needed by 2020. Regardless, when companies that have a digital growth initiative are compared with those that don't, the proportion in need of culture change rose to 42 percent. Enough said.

"These survey results show that if a company has a digital initiative, then the recognized need for culture change is higher," said Mr. Raskino. "The most important types of change that CEOs intend to make include making the culture more proactive, collaborative, innovative, empowered and customer-centric. They also highly rate a move to a more digital and tech-centric culture."

Survey respondents were asked whether they have a management initiative or transformation program to make their business more digital. Sixty-two percent said they did. Of those organizations, 54 percent said that their digital business objective is transformational while 46 percent said the objective of the initiative is optimization.

In the background, CEOs' that use of the word 'digital' has been steadily rising. When asked to describe their top five business priorities, the number of respondents mentioning the word 'digital' at least once has risen from 2.1 percent in the 2012 survey to 13.4 percent in 2018.

This attitude toward digital business development is backed up by CEOs' continuing intent to invest in IT infrastructure. Sixty-one percent of respondents intend to increase spending on IT in 2018, while 32 percent plan to make no changes to spending and only seven percent foresee spending cuts.

Ongoing digital culture development challenge

The Gartner survey showed that the percentage of survey respondents who think their company is an 'innovation pioneer' has reached a high of 41 percent — that's up from 27 percent in 2013 — with fast followers not far behind at 37 percent.

"CIOs should leverage this bullish sentiment by encouraging their business leaders into making commitments to digital business change," said Mr. Raskino. "However, superficial digital change can be a dangerous form of self-deceit. The CEO's commitment must be grounded in deep fundamentals, such as genuine customer value, a real business model concept and disciplined economics."

Google Cloud has announced the launch of sole-tenant nodes on Google Compute Engine – helping customers in various industries around compliance in the process.

The new service, which is currently in beta availability, gives customers ownership of all VMs, hypervisor and host hardware, going against the traditional cloud use case of multi-tenant architecture and shared resources.

“Normally, VM instances run on physical hosts that may be shared by many customers,” explained Google’s Manish Dalwadi and Bryan Nairn in a blog post confirming the news. “With sole-tenant nodes, you have the host all to yourself.”

This will potentially be good news to companies in finance and healthcare, along with other firms who adopt an all-data-is-equal-but-some-data-is-more-equal-than-others mindset. Organisations with strict compliance and regulatory requirements can use sole-tenant nodes to ensure physical separation of compute resources in the cloud, while Google also noted that companies can achieve higher levels of utilisation if they are creative with their instance placements and machine types launched on sole-tenant nodes.

The move puts Google in line with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft. The former, for example, offers EC2 Dedicated Hosts, a physical server with EC2 instance capacity dedicated to the user, as well as Dedicated Instances. An AWS document outlines the differences between the two; apart from the straightforward difference in terms of per-host and per-instance billing, Dedicated Hosts offers visibility on sockets and physical cores, targeted instance placement and bring your own license (BYOL).

This is just one of various initiatives Google has put into place this year to beef up its cloudy operations. Last month, this investment was validated in the form of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure as a service. Google made the leaders’ section, which for five years had been the sole domain of AWS and Microsoft, for the first time.

Pricing for Google’s sole-tenant nodes is on a per-second basis with a minimum charge of one minute.

Main picture credit: Google