SYS-CON Events announced today that Daiya Industry will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Daiya Industry specializes in orthotic support systems and assistive devices with pneumatic artificial muscles in order to contribute to an extended healthy life expectancy.
For more information, please visit https://www.daiyak.co.jp/en/.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to move to a per-second billing model for its EC2 and EBS services from October 2.

The move aims to go one step ahead of its competitors, Microsoft, Google et al, who have been since 2013 been utilising per-minute billing for its services.

Given the developments of products such as AWS Lambda, among others in the serverless realm, it makes sense to make the shift. AWS said many of its customers had been ‘dreaming up applications’ for EC2 that utilised a larger number of instances in a short space of time.

The move will affect usage of Linux instances launched in on-demand, reserved and spot form, as well as Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and AWS Batch.

Jeff Barr, AWS chief evangelist, noted in a post announcing the news the price aspect is just the start of what can be achieved with per-second billing.

“I believe that this change will inspire you to innovate and to think about your compute-bound problems in new ways,” he wrote. “How can you use it to improve your support for continuous integration? Can it change the way that you provision transient environments for your dev and test workloads? What about your analytics, batch processing, and 3D rendering?

“One of the many advantages of cloud computing is the elastic nature of provisioning or deprovisioning resources as you need them,” Barr added. “By billing usage down to the second, we will enable customers to level up their elasticity, save money, and customers will be positioned to take advantage of continuing advances in computing.”

You can read the full blog post here.

The key to successful cloud technology implementation lies with the workforce.

Implementing new cloud hosted technology in companies of any size presents challenges and opportunities. It also induces uncertainty and anxiety among the workforce who may see their jobs under threat. There is no doubt that some companies introduce new technology to reduce headcount. But simply replacing people with technology implies that the human capital of the organisation remains underdeveloped and while short-term savings can be achieved the company may not progress sustainably.

Across the range of companies that we encounter those who consider technology in relation to the workforce are able to innovate more successfully. This is possible because the workforce is enabled to operate in new ways, form new groups and generate new ideas as a result. The introduction of new technology is most successful when it is aligned strategically with the business model. In other words, it should be an integral part of corporate strategy that is also reflected in staff development. If these factors are taken into account the company and its employees will be culturally ready to embrace technological advancement and to reap the considerable productivity and innovation rewards that cloud hosted technology adoption offers.

One of the main reasons for introducing new technology is to remove waste. In manufacturing and construction, waste is expensive and often highly visible but ultimately totally avoidable. In commerce or services there may be no physical waste but it is equally expensive and harder to detect. Large amounts of waste in business result from the dispersion of people and information into separated silos each with its own processes and in many cases its own applications and solutions. Because the data that each department creates is separated from the rest of the business it cannot be turned into useful intelligence in the ideation process. Its potential value is hidden and locked away.

Resourceful humans

It is common for numerous organisations to use antiquated procedures that have been built up over many years. Any resourceful and innovative thoughts about the company cannot flourish within the existing construct. By introducing technology that breaks down silos and where stakeholders can use the same unified and universally accessible system, sequential and well-received business transformations happen.

Deploying new technology brings automation to functions such as design, manufacturing, engineering, finance, commerce and marketing, unifying separate islands of work into one single stream while connecting different departments, their stakeholders and the whole organisation.

Innovation is harder to achieve on an individual basis but in groups it can be accomplished and implemented more effortlessly. Rather than people, worrying that technology will replace them; they are motivated to utilise it and any synergies to the fullest while developing better and more efficient ways of working that lead to improvements of their own and the company’s prospects.

One of the main benefits that this methodology has already brought to many types of businesses is that the enterprise can expand and take on more people in the knowledge that its human resource will be fully capitalised.

New roles to play

Human resources and IT are often gridlocked by unrewarding practices and outmoded technology. These specialists have a great part to play in introducing and explaining the methods and the adapted strategy that will project the organisation into the future. New roles can be created at all levels while the organisation is drawn together into a more efficient unit. Employees will use technology to form new working groups drawn from previously siloed departments. This leads to a mixing of, ages, demographics and disciplines from across the entire business. And because the technology automates many formerly wasteful processes, time becomes available to commercially exploit innovations brought about by the new order.

Involving the interdisciplinary workforce provides feedback for managers and highlights areas for potential improvement and up-skilling, re-skilling or training. In many of the companies that we work with the workforce requests that more areas of their work are digitized because they see it as a catalyst for overall improvement. It makes them more productive and profitable and therefore more valuable to the company. This is especially felt in the SME sector where companies may struggle to be competitive but can use technology to innovate through enhanced collaboration and give themselves a winning edge.

What we want

Technology is constantly evolving so it is crucial to ensure that the IT framework is future proofed with the ability to incorporate any new applications that could be useful to the business as it organically develops. Developing trusting partnerships between technology providers and users where they understand and mesh with each other is a prime requirement. When this is achieved, engagement at all levels within and between the companies delivers the insight and adaptations that lead to improved competitiveness, performance and business strategies.

Implementing technology and processes bottom-up as well as vertically means that emerging innovations in lines and products that could otherwise be lost or hidden can be captured and marshalled for the benefit of the business. Providing a common working basis, such as a platform, makes information and process details available for all employees. This way, ideas and innovation are nurtured and at the same time easier to detect and capitalise. This flexibility lets the company work together leveraging the enthusiasm and new thinking of the young with more experienced minds, nurturing transformation and improvement. People begin to think and perceive the organisation differently. The company can reassess itself and its internal and external identity and reputation in relation to customers, competitors and suppliers.

While bringing operational efficiencies digital data can also be deployed to extrapolate future business performance. This could be on a single work cell level or for the whole enterprise. This level of foresight and the opportunity to run digital ‘what-if’ scenarios is a powerful lens through which to view the business.

Because we work on an international level I have seen that Asia is far ahead of Europe in the deployment of unified platforms with India making very fast headway to cementing its position as an innovation centre. There, university students use the same cloud hosted technology as their eventual employers to ensure that they hit the ground running in the world of work.

A fresh wind of change is blowing the stifling bureaucracy from many companies that want to reap the rewards of working digitally (on premise and on the cloud). Small companies are leading the vanguard with their agility, fresh thinking and clear strategies that deploy technology to maximise their most valuable resource – people.

Top 10 management tips for introducing technology to a business enterprise

• Start with a clear strategy for being a digital organisation
• Use technology to empower and manage people as a business asset
• Get IT departments to understand the big picture and be proactive in the change process
• Use focus groups to recognise technology evangelists and innovation drivers in your business
• Challenge your own thinking about the value of technology and educate yourself and your key stakeholder about it
• Use HR departments to champion the business transformation process and explain the advantages of technological change in your organisation
• Merge individual silos of information with a unified and universally accessible enterprise platform
• Think across the business and at all levels to generate new and different ideas
• Use technology to bring people together into new interest and responsibility groups
• Think long-term (10 – 30 years) about your business direction

Mobile device usage has increased exponentially during the past several years, as consumers rely on handhelds for everything from news and weather to banking and purchases. What can we expect in the next few years? The way in which we interact with our devices will fundamentally change, as businesses leverage Artificial Intelligence. We already see this taking shape as businesses leverage AI for cost savings and customer responsiveness. This trend will continue, as AI is used for more sophisticated patterns, and chatbots replace the traditional mobile apps.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Michael Meiner, an Engineering Director at Oracle, will look at this evolution of mobile computing, along with the underlying enterprise technologies that enable this shift. Demos using Amazon Alexa and Oracle Mobile Suite will be shown.

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Why Federal cloud? What is in Federal Clouds and integrations? This session will identify the process and the FedRAMP initiative. But is it sufficient? What is the remedy for keeping abreast of cutting-edge technology?
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Rasananda Behera will examine the proposed solutions:
Private or public or hybrid cloud
Responsible governing bodies
How can we accomplish?

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Cloud-based disaster recovery is critical to any production environment and is a high priority for many enterprise organizations today. Nearly 40% of organizations have had to execute their BCDR plan due to a service disruption in the past two years. Zerto on IBM Cloud offer VMware and Microsoft customers simple, automated recovery of on-premise VMware and Microsoft workloads to IBM Cloud data centers.

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For those at software as a service companies, it’s easy to forget that cloud services still aren’t standard at most companies. 

According to a BetterCloud report, just 43 percent of organisations today operate primarily on cloud services. By 2020, however, BetterCloud expects that figure to hit 73 percent, and by 2022, it predicts that 86 percent of firms will default to cloud services.

Increased cloud usage obviously benefits cloud service providers. But as SaaS services increase in popularity, so do opportunities for hackers to compromise them. Data breaches in the U.S. cost companies about $225 per compromised record, with healthcare data breaches costing a whopping $380 per record. 

Hackers know that crime pays when it comes to cloud data breaches. Unfortunately, they also know that plenty of SaaS providers and their clients are wholly unprepared to prevent attacks.

SaaS firms’ security obligations

Because they offer a software service, SaaS companies own more security responsibilities than traditional software businesses or even their platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service peers.

Unlike PaaS or IaaS providers, SaaS companies must manage access to all levels of their applications. When SaaS providers fail to meet that responsibility, client data can be compromised. 

The worst part of such breaches is that they’re typically preventable. A simple configuration error, for example, led to an Amazon Web Services breach this past June. The data of nearly 200 million U.S. voters was exposed, including names, birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details. 

Data breaches do not happen in a vacuum. Each brings greater distrust to an industry in which trust is already hard to come by. Today, just 13 percent of IT decision makers say they trust public cloud services. 

For SaaS providers, keeping customers’ data secure isn’t just smart business; it’s key to the entire industry’s success. To prevent breaches and earn customers’ trust, SaaS providers need a crack data security team.

Hiring for SaaS security

Every SaaS provider, from Microsoft to niche app shops, must build a security team that either reports to the chief information security officer or emulates that structure by disseminating responsibilities.

Regardless, the following four roles are absolutely necessary for SaaS companies to come alongside customers in managing security:

SecDevOps professional

At companies using traditional on-site infrastructures, applications are protected by “moats,” including the network layer and various security applications. In the past, this was enough. But in today’s multitenant SaaS world, crowds of hackers and bots prod for weaknesses in SaaS providers’ — and, by extension, their customers’ — castle walls.

To stay a step ahead, SaaS companies typically turn to a DevOps approach, with developers writing code and reviewing and integrating it into the code base. But these teams are typically missing a critical member: a DevOps hire focused on security.

SecDevOps professionals go by many titles, perhaps most commonly information security engineer. In a nutshell, this person’s role is to unravel insecure, lazy development habits.

Just like a quality assurance tester for a new product feature, SecDevOps personnel evaluate coding practices to recognise and shore up vulnerabilities. Their tools include risk modeling, threat assessments, and penetration testing throughout the development and deployment process.

To find the right fit, give candidates a take-home test that includes the identification and explanation of insecure code. Developing this test might take time, but having candidates solve an actual code challenge for the company could counterbalance that time expenditure. To quickly spot talent, look for individuals who are familiar with Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle methodology or the Open Web Application Security Project’s top 10 data security vulnerabilities.

Identity manager

SaaS organisations need stronger security than organisations offering on-premise or non-SaaS deployment models. To that end, they must hawkishly manage how, when, and by whom their applications are accessed.

Don’t assume that an application is secure simply because it’s hosted by AWS. A Corvette might park in a garage full of expensive tools, but without a trained mechanic maintaining it, the car won’t last long in any environment. 

In the SaaS world, that mechanic is an identity manager, and his or her job is to manage access credentials and architect a role-based security program. It’s easy to hand permissions to any team member who asks for them, but without an identity management expert’s oversight, those permissions can quickly become security liabilities. And the longer an organisation goes without proper role management, the more difficult implementing those rules becomes.

Governance and risk manager

The job of this role is twofold: to establish a process for communicating the company’s security requirements to relevant parties, including clients, employees, and regulators, and to enforce and evolve those mechanisms, revising them as business or regulatory needs change. 

Without a documented governance process in place, SaaS companies are slow to respond to new threats and ineffective at enforcing existing policies. Conversely, a cumbersome, outdated governance policy may cut into business productivity or lead employees to ignore important security steps. 

The governance and risk manager, then, works to achieve the right balance of security and agility. By understanding the risk exposure of the company’s stakeholders and the types of data in need of protection, he can prioritise security programs without slowing the business down. 

There’s no single background that makes a great governance and risk manager. Start searching for experienced individuals on industry forums such as ISACA; ISC2; and other governance, risk, and compliance communities.

Security operations manager

Like SecDevOps hires, security operations personnel can go by many titles. Regardless, their role is to detect and prevent threats and, if a breach does occur, manage the response. 

In practice, that requires the security operations team to develop a five-part plan to identify, protect, detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity threats. A SaaS provider without any of those capabilities exposes not only its business, but also the businesses of its customers to costly breaches. 

Information security professionals of all stripes, including security operations personnel, are in short supply. When choosing between candidates, look for certified information systems security professionals, but don’t discount others with experience in the trenches and the hunger to learn. 

As SaaS becomes the standard operating model for companies large and small, data threats will only deepen. Don’t wait for a breach to start searching for talent; invest in a security team now, and strengthen your SaaS operation for years to come.