A strange thing is happening along the way to the Internet of Things, namely far too many devices to work with and manage. It has become clear that we’ll need much higher efficiency user experiences that can allow us to more easily and scalably work with the thousands of devices that will soon be in each of our lives. Enter the conversational interface revolution, combining bots we can literally talk with, gesture to, and even direct with our thoughts, with embedded artificial intelligence, which can process our conversational commands and orchestrate the outcomes we request across our personal and professional realm of connected devices.
eBay is Planning its Own Public Cloud-Based Platform
eBay, the world’s largest marketplace, has launched its own public cloud-based platform that will run parallel to its existing on-premise system. This is the first step taken by the company to fully migrate its platform from an on-premise one to the cloud. The company claims that it made this transition within a period of six months, which is no ordinary feat, considering that at any given moment, eBay has at least one billion listings spread across the 200 countries in which it operates.
If you’re wondering why it’s transitioned to the cloud, the answer is easy. Cloud offers a ton of benefits for businesses, and this is partly the reason for almost every major company in the world to have some or all major applications in the world. eBay wanted to follow suit, and tap into the many advantages that comes with cloud.
The next obvious question is, why it chose to build a public cloud-based platform from scratch instead of choosing one of the prominent platforms like AWS and Azure? Well, there are many reasons for it.
First off, eBay wants to cater to a growing digital customer base, as new generations of tech-savvy buyers and sellers are emerging. With its own platform, it will have the flexibility to customize and add-on all the features it wants.
Secondly, eBay will have a high level of control if it owns the cloud, when compared to storing all the data in a system owned by another company. Let’s say, it stores all its important applications in AWS. What happens if Amazon decides to start its own business similar to eBay? Technically speaking, this shouldn’t affect eBay’s operations, but it can still create doubts in the minds of its customers. Moreover, when eBay retains the cloud, it has greater visibility into what’s going on inside its operations.
The third factor is cost. In general, cloud is cheaper than investing in capital-based items like servers and data centers. However, this rule applies only when your business is small and you use only a small amount of space on the cloud. Remember, most cloud providers use a pay-as-you-go model, which means, when your usage level increases, you’re going to have to pay more.
As your business grows, there will come a point when the subscription fee you pay towards a cloud service will be more than your capital expenditure. At that time, it’ll be too late to turn back. To avoid getting into such a situation, eBay decided to build its own platform. This is a sensible strategy given that eBay already has more than one billion listings, and this is only likely to grow over the next few years.
Lastly, the preferences of buyers and sellers are changing rapidly, so eBay wants to be in a position to react well to these dynamic changes. This requires a complete control over its operations, including its data management, and this is another compelling reason for eBay to launch its own cloud platform.
Overall, this is a great decision by the company, and hopefully it works well in the coming years.
The post eBay is Planning its Own Public Cloud-Based Platform appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Rackspace announces first managed services deal for Google Cloud Platform
Rackspace has announced a partnership with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner.
The news, revealed at the time of Google’s Cloud Next event in San Francisco, represents an alignment between the two companies’ ‘obsession’ with customer service and support, Rackspace said. The two companies will collaborate on a new managed services offering for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers which will be made available later this year.
Rackspace already has extensive managed services capabilities for both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – so with Google the next cab off the rank it makes a natural step up. “The momentum around GCP is building, and as businesses move workloads to this platform, they’re looking for expertise and a support partner to help with that journey,” said Patrick Lee, Rackspace Google business general manager. “We will be able to help deliver value to joint customers and help them meet their evolving business needs.”
According to figures from 451 Research, adoption of Google’s cloud has ‘nearly doubled’ over the past 12 months. “The partnership between Rackspace and Google is a natural fit,” Michelle Bailey, chief research officer at 451 Research said in a statement. “Both companies have strong technical capabilities and the pairing of Rackspace’s strong service culture with Google’s Customer Reliability Engineering practice is an important step forward in providing enterprise-ready customer support capabilities on the Google Cloud Platform.
“We continue to see rising adoption of GCP globally, so there is real value to Rackspace in being the first to market with this type of managed services partnership that seeks to bring cloud-native capabilities to traditional enterprise customers and business-critical applications,” Bailey added.
In Rackspace’s Q216 results in August – the last before it became a private company with a $4.3 billion transaction from Apollo Global – CEO Taylor Rhodes said the firm had seen ‘strong demand’ for AWS cloud customers, alongside Microsoft and the OpenStack private cloud. The company noted 277 customers acquired on its AWS service over the previous nine months, with 60% of these choosing the higher tier managed services option.
“We plan to launch a bold marketing campaign to tell the world about the value we can deliver as the number one managed cloud services provider,” Rhodes told analysts in August, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. “Businesses today are being told that the cloud is simple, that it’s easy to manage on your own, and that whatever the platform the vendor is selling or supporting is the complete solution for every workload.
“What these businesses are learning, however, is that different workloads require different platforms across public cloud, private cloud and dedicated servers,” added Rhodes. “They are finding that the cloud is complex and fast changing, that they need help in managing it and that expert engineers are expensive and hard to find.”
According to industry figures from Synergy Research, AWS continues to hold 40% of the global public cloud infrastructure space – a minimal change from last year – while Microsoft, Google and IBM went up 5% to break the 20% threshold between them.
Picture credit: Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011, by Andrew Hyde, used under CC BY / Modified from original
Rackspace announces first managed services deal for Google Cloud Platform
Rackspace has announced a partnership with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner.
The news, revealed at the time of Google’s Cloud Next event in San Francisco, represents an alignment between the two companies’ ‘obsession’ with customer service and support, Rackspace said. The two companies will collaborate on a new managed services offering for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers which will be made available later this year.
Rackspace already has extensive managed services capabilities for both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – so with Google the next cab off the rank it makes a natural step up. “The momentum around GCP is building, and as businesses move workloads to this platform, they’re looking for expertise and a support partner to help with that journey,” said Patrick Lee, Rackspace Google business general manager. “We will be able to help deliver value to joint customers and help them meet their evolving business needs.”
According to figures from 451 Research, adoption of Google’s cloud has ‘nearly doubled’ over the past 12 months. “The partnership between Rackspace and Google is a natural fit,” Michelle Bailey, chief research officer at 451 Research said in a statement. “Both companies have strong technical capabilities and the pairing of Rackspace’s strong service culture with Google’s Customer Reliability Engineering practice is an important step forward in providing enterprise-ready customer support capabilities on the Google Cloud Platform.
“We continue to see rising adoption of GCP globally, so there is real value to Rackspace in being the first to market with this type of managed services partnership that seeks to bring cloud-native capabilities to traditional enterprise customers and business-critical applications,” Bailey added.
In Rackspace’s Q216 results in August – the last before it became a private company with a $4.3 billion transaction from Apollo Global – CEO Taylor Rhodes said the firm had seen ‘strong demand’ for AWS cloud customers, alongside Microsoft and the OpenStack private cloud. The company noted 277 customers acquired on its AWS service over the previous nine months, with 60% of these choosing the higher tier managed services option.
“We plan to launch a bold marketing campaign to tell the world about the value we can deliver as the number one managed cloud services provider,” Rhodes told analysts in August, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. “Businesses today are being told that the cloud is simple, that it’s easy to manage on your own, and that whatever the platform the vendor is selling or supporting is the complete solution for every workload.
“What these businesses are learning, however, is that different workloads require different platforms across public cloud, private cloud and dedicated servers,” added Rhodes. “They are finding that the cloud is complex and fast changing, that they need help in managing it and that expert engineers are expensive and hard to find.”
According to industry figures from Synergy Research, AWS continues to hold 40% of the global public cloud infrastructure space – a minimal change from last year – while Microsoft, Google and IBM went up 5% to break the 20% threshold between them.
Picture credit: Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011, by Andrew Hyde, used under CC BY / Modified from original
How on-demand cloud is contributing to the ransomware problem
“Attention! All your files have been encrypted.” More and more businesses are being greeted with messages such as this one, with ransomware attacks against businesses having increased threefold last year.
Advice for preventing ransomware – which is malicious software that encrypts devices or data until the owner pays a ransom in exchange for access to their data – is typically something to the effect of “back up your data off-site so you don’t have to pay the ransom.” In response, businesses may vault their data in the cloud, assuming that it is secure and they no longer have to worry about the threat of ransomware as long as the backups are up to date.
To be sure, backing up data in the cloud is a good strategy. However, rapid adoption of on-demand cloud applications could be putting an organisation’s cloud backups at risk. In fact, a recent Netskope report found that 43.7 per cent of the malware found in the cloud is carrying ransomware. Below are some of the top ways ransomware can spread via the cloud.
Employees downloading unauthorised cloud applications
Employees can easily sign up for cloud applications, as many cloud services by nature enable users to bypass company and country security policies. When employees open accounts with unauthorised cloud services – whether they are software services, file-sharing applications or payment processors, IT staff are not able to monitor the apps appropriately and ensure proper security measures are implemented. This lack of security monitoring dramatically increases the likelihood of ransomware being introduced to the network. What employees may not realise is that the increased possibility of new security breaches essentially negates any gains made by the cloud applications. Worse, if the cloud provider itself is attacked, all its customers could be affected as well.
To put the risk into perspective, 1 in 10 of the enterprises monitored by Netskope yielded ransomware-infected files in sanctioned cloud apps. Although the report did not cover unsanctioned applications, it stands to reason that ransomware would be even more rampant in these, as they are not monitored by IT staff.
Syncing and sharing
Malware and malicious files and links can spread rapidly through an organisation, and more sophisticated ransomware is now using the cloud to spread. Imagine an employee opens a suspicious email attachment and downloads ransomware to their computer, encrypting all the files in their “Documents” folder. The employee has granted a file-sharing application access to this folder, and the application automatically syncs the infected files to the cloud account. Multiple other employees’ computers are also synced with the cloud folder containing the malware, and the moment they click on any of the infected files, the ransomware spreads to their systems as well.
One new variant of ransomware in particular, called Virlock, uses this method to spread. Unlike other ransomware strains, it does not tell the user their device has been infected by ransomware. Instead, it displays an official-looking message claiming to be an anti-piracy warning from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The message demands the payment of a fine to avoid incarceration – a tactic designed to coerce businesses into paying the ransom.
Using personal devices for work
Bring your own device (BYOD) is ubiquitous now. Odds are, employees are using their personal devices for work whether or not BYOD is sanctioned by their employer. Unfortunately, access to data anytime, anywhere means more entrypoints into the network, and employees are typically less vigilant about security when it comes to their personal devices and are more likely to connect to public networks.
When employees fail to observe proper security measures, this can result in both their personal data and their employer’s data being held hostage. With 4 per cent of all mobile devices containing malware, ransomware is a real possibility. And, of course, this risk is exacerbated if the employee uses sync-and-share applications on their mobile device.
How can businesses prepare for these threats?
Businesses should continue to back up data both on-site and in the cloud, but with hackers taking advantage of the on-demand nature of the cloud to perpetrate ransomware attacks, businesses must take additional protection measures.
The first line of defence against ransomware is employee education and accountability. To encourage employee engagement, businesses should emphasise the following key points when training employees:
- Exercising caution when using personal devices for work not only protects corporate data but employees’ personal data as well. To keep information safe, employees should be encouraged to avoid connecting to public WiFi networks, be wary of clicking on links in emails and notify their IT department immediately if they suspect their device has been infected by ransomware.
- Sensitive employee information is stored on the company network as well. Once malware infiltrates the corporate network, it can spread to other areas – including human resources files containing employees’ sensitive information. Employees can do their part to protect any data stored on the corporate network by working with IT administrators to understand how to identify phishing emails (e.g. typos, misspelled words and mismatched domain names). Additionally, they should be instructed to only download content or software from trusted sources and immediately run all software updates when prompted.
- They learn valuable cybersecurity skills to apply in their personal lives. Do they know the telltale signs of a phishing email? Or what type of password is most secure? Or whether putting off computer updates really hurts anything? Knowing the answers to questions such as these is key to being security conscious at work, but they’re just as applicable at home.
Now that ransomware can spread more rapidly than ever before via the cloud, generating awareness of how to prevent ransomware is essential. Employees must be educated on how their security habits can negatively impact the organisation ‒ and even their personal data as well. The time to build awareness is now – not when the hacker delivers that dreaded message: “Attention! All your files have been encrypted.”
How on-demand cloud is contributing to the ransomware problem
“Attention! All your files have been encrypted.” More and more businesses are being greeted with messages such as this one, with ransomware attacks against businesses having increased threefold last year.
Advice for preventing ransomware – which is malicious software that encrypts devices or data until the owner pays a ransom in exchange for access to their data – is typically something to the effect of “back up your data off-site so you don’t have to pay the ransom.” In response, businesses may vault their data in the cloud, assuming that it is secure and they no longer have to worry about the threat of ransomware as long as the backups are up to date.
To be sure, backing up data in the cloud is a good strategy. However, rapid adoption of on-demand cloud applications could be putting an organisation’s cloud backups at risk. In fact, a recent Netskope report found that 43.7 per cent of the malware found in the cloud is carrying ransomware. Below are some of the top ways ransomware can spread via the cloud.
Employees downloading unauthorised cloud applications
Employees can easily sign up for cloud applications, as many cloud services by nature enable users to bypass company and country security policies. When employees open accounts with unauthorised cloud services – whether they are software services, file-sharing applications or payment processors, IT staff are not able to monitor the apps appropriately and ensure proper security measures are implemented. This lack of security monitoring dramatically increases the likelihood of ransomware being introduced to the network. What employees may not realise is that the increased possibility of new security breaches essentially negates any gains made by the cloud applications. Worse, if the cloud provider itself is attacked, all its customers could be affected as well.
To put the risk into perspective, 1 in 10 of the enterprises monitored by Netskope yielded ransomware-infected files in sanctioned cloud apps. Although the report did not cover unsanctioned applications, it stands to reason that ransomware would be even more rampant in these, as they are not monitored by IT staff.
Syncing and sharing
Malware and malicious files and links can spread rapidly through an organisation, and more sophisticated ransomware is now using the cloud to spread. Imagine an employee opens a suspicious email attachment and downloads ransomware to their computer, encrypting all the files in their “Documents” folder. The employee has granted a file-sharing application access to this folder, and the application automatically syncs the infected files to the cloud account. Multiple other employees’ computers are also synced with the cloud folder containing the malware, and the moment they click on any of the infected files, the ransomware spreads to their systems as well.
One new variant of ransomware in particular, called Virlock, uses this method to spread. Unlike other ransomware strains, it does not tell the user their device has been infected by ransomware. Instead, it displays an official-looking message claiming to be an anti-piracy warning from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The message demands the payment of a fine to avoid incarceration – a tactic designed to coerce businesses into paying the ransom.
Using personal devices for work
Bring your own device (BYOD) is ubiquitous now. Odds are, employees are using their personal devices for work whether or not BYOD is sanctioned by their employer. Unfortunately, access to data anytime, anywhere means more entrypoints into the network, and employees are typically less vigilant about security when it comes to their personal devices and are more likely to connect to public networks.
When employees fail to observe proper security measures, this can result in both their personal data and their employer’s data being held hostage. With 4 per cent of all mobile devices containing malware, ransomware is a real possibility. And, of course, this risk is exacerbated if the employee uses sync-and-share applications on their mobile device.
How can businesses prepare for these threats?
Businesses should continue to back up data both on-site and in the cloud, but with hackers taking advantage of the on-demand nature of the cloud to perpetrate ransomware attacks, businesses must take additional protection measures.
The first line of defence against ransomware is employee education and accountability. To encourage employee engagement, businesses should emphasise the following key points when training employees:
- Exercising caution when using personal devices for work not only protects corporate data but employees’ personal data as well. To keep information safe, employees should be encouraged to avoid connecting to public WiFi networks, be wary of clicking on links in emails and notify their IT department immediately if they suspect their device has been infected by ransomware.
- Sensitive employee information is stored on the company network as well. Once malware infiltrates the corporate network, it can spread to other areas – including human resources files containing employees’ sensitive information. Employees can do their part to protect any data stored on the corporate network by working with IT administrators to understand how to identify phishing emails (e.g. typos, misspelled words and mismatched domain names). Additionally, they should be instructed to only download content or software from trusted sources and immediately run all software updates when prompted.
- They learn valuable cybersecurity skills to apply in their personal lives. Do they know the telltale signs of a phishing email? Or what type of password is most secure? Or whether putting off computer updates really hurts anything? Knowing the answers to questions such as these is key to being security conscious at work, but they’re just as applicable at home.
Now that ransomware can spread more rapidly than ever before via the cloud, generating awareness of how to prevent ransomware is essential. Employees must be educated on how their security habits can negatively impact the organisation ‒ and even their personal data as well. The time to build awareness is now – not when the hacker delivers that dreaded message: “Attention! All your files have been encrypted.”
#2 Mac Usage in the Workplace
As enablers of Mac integration with traditional Windows networks, Parallels often surveys Windows IT professionals to understand the trends associated with supporting a dual-platform environment. This is the second in a series of five blog posts that will summarize our results, the challenges revealed in a recent survey we conducted to understand the usage and […]
The post #2 Mac Usage in the Workplace appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals | @CloudExpo #SDN #Cloud #Storage
Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk and Object Storage fundamentals page part of the objectstoragecenter.com micro site collection of resources. Software defined, Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands. There are various types of cloud, bulk and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, DDN, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Scality, Seagate, Spectra, Storpool, Suse, Swift and WD among others.
The End Is Near for Microsoft SQL 2005
It’s an end of a great era some may say…SQL 2005 is going End of Support. It’s like finally selling that old Dodge Durango you had since college, or throwing away that T-shirt with a whole bunch of holes in it. It’s a sad day when you finally must say goodbye. The year 2005 brought some amazing things such as YouTube, Mr. Brightside by the Killers, and The Chronicles of Narnia movie (WHAT!) What was so special about SQL 2005 was that it took Microsoft five years to come out with it. The previous edition of SQL was 2000 so it took some time to perfect the next installment of this well-known database. Now all that is coming to an end as extended support will no longer be available for SQL 2005 as of April 12, 2016.
With the End of Support, security updates and hotfixes are no longer available from Microsoft. There’s never been a better time to upgrade and benefit from the performance gains, higher availability, greater scalability, and rich BI capabilities that SQL Server 2014 and 2016 offer.
Reasons to Upgrade to 2014 or 2016
Breakthrough in-memory performance: SQL 2016 is 13x faster than 2005. That’s like challenging Usain Bolt to a game of “beat you there,” and expecting to win. Not going to happen. SQL 2005 crawls compared to what the current database can provide. Plus, SQL 2016’s additional in-memory OLTP delivers up to 30x more in performance.
High Availability: SQL 2014/2016 includes HA and disaster recovery with SQL AlwaysOn.
Security: Per the “National Institute of Standards and Technology,” SQL 2014/2016 was recognized as being the most compliant database with the least amount of security vulnerabilities for the past 6 years in a row.
Scalability: SQL 2014/2016 is scalable across computer, networking, and storage with Windows Server 2016 and has virtualization and live migration support.
Support: Since SQL 2005 will not have any support (hence this blog) there will be support if you upgrade to the latest edition. With 2014/2016 SQL Server, the support includes security patching and maintenance updates, and eliminates the expense of custom support agreements.
Another thing to consider is compliance, as it can be problematic for SQL Server 2005 just like it was when Microsoft ended support for Windows 2003. HIPAA and PCI compliance both require up-to-date patch databases, just like they do with the operating system. So, if you’re using SQL Server 2005 for anything related to HIPAA or PCI, you will be out of compliance in April.
If you’re looking to migrate from SQL 2005, the licensing has certainly changed over the past several years. SQL 2016 is the latest edition, however with backward compatibility rights, previous editions can be run like SQL 2014 and SQL 2012. SQL is offered in two editions: Standard and Enterprise (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-editions) and is sold as a Per Server/Cal or by the Core.
If you need any assistance migrating from SQL 2005, GreenPages has a team of experts who can help. Talk to your account manager or call us at 800-989-2989 and we’ll set up a time to discuss!
If you have any more questions, email us!
Three reasons 2017 will be the year of the hybrid cloud
The enterprise will increasingly live in a hybrid IT world in 2017, split between on-premises solutions and cloud environments. Recent reports have revealed that many organisations have already started to split their cloud budgets between public and private deployments, creating demand for hybrid cloud strategies that give businesses greater flexibility as well as more workload deployment options.
It’s easy to see why hybrid strategies are on the rise. Hybrid cloud enables workloads to exist on either a vendor-run public cloud or a customer-run private cloud. This means that IT teams are able to harness the security and control of a private cloud as well as the flexibility of public cloud services – thus, getting the best of both worlds. The most mature IT teams are reviewing their workloads – often in consultation with a cloud services provider – to determine which are most suited to a public or private cloud environment and adapting their workload placement accordingly across hybrid cloud options.
Here are the three key benefits often associated with implementing a hybrid cloud solution:
Scalability
Demand will wax and wane. Organisations’ requirements rarely run in a horizontal line and public cloud solutions are particularly valuable for dynamic or highly changeable workloads. When traffic surges, a hybrid environment allows for quick scalability in order to meet the needs of the moment. When the surge dies off the cloud resources consumed can be scaled back to avoid over-provisioning and keep costs under control. With a hybrid cloud strategy, IT has the option to burst workloads into the public cloud when required to maintain performance during periods of increased demand.
Cost
Public cloud is fast and inexpensive to scale out and does not require the up-front investment in infrastructure of private cloud. The great thing about a hybrid approach is that it brings long-term savings. It is no longer a case of trying to determine the maximum load, reserving what is needed for that maximum load and paying for it all whether it is used or not. A hybrid solution allows for location and reallocation to meet changing workload needs as and when required which can have a significant impact on the IT bottom line.
Security
While the perception that the cloud is not as secure as on-premises infrastructure is a persistent one, there is increasing evidence that public cloud environments actually suffer from fewer attacks such as ransomware and viruses than traditional IT environments. Cloud service providers like iland now offer levels of security and compliance reporting that is very difficult for medium to small enterprise businesses to match in their own IT infrastructure. Despite this, there may still be reasons why certain apps – particularly those running on legacy systems – may need to stay on-premises and a hybrid cloud strategy enables that dual approach.
Despite all the opportunities and related benefits provided by a hybrid cloud strategy, there is a key challenge that businesses must overcome – having visibility into and control of their cloud workloads and resources. All too often, organisations looking to adopt hybrid cloud as a means to increase agility within their IT operation get stuck in the implementation stage. They are left fighting for control of their environment because the majority of cloud providers don’t offer the same level of visibility teams are accustomed to from their on premise resources. They also struggle to maintain consistent network and security policies meaning that migration becomes a far bigger headache than initially expected. As companies make cloud computing a more strategic part of their overall strategy, having that visibility and management control over areas such as performance, billing, security and compliance reporting, is more important than ever.
At iland, we find that while customers continue to value and leverage our support teams, they increasingly want to take a more strategic and self-sufficient approach to cloud management in order to fully leverage all of its benefits. This means having the capability to perform data analytics, adjust resources, do DR testing on-demand, generate security reports and manage networking. And, increasingly, customers are using our APIs to link essential data about their cloud resources and workloads to their own IT systems which is invaluable in managing both public and private on-premises cloud environments in a holistic way.
As adoption of hybrid cloud increases, IT teams will need cloud service providers to provide the visibility and end-to-end cloud management tools that will help them approach and manage cloud in a more strategic way. The need for agility continues to be one of the biggest drivers of cloud adoption and with more complex hybrid cloud environments becoming the norm, management is key.
You can find out more about how customers leverage the iland cloud management console here.