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Computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) often use extremely large files, which make remote working and collaboration difficult to achieve. Most businesses are able to work remotely with laptops, smartphones and tablet PCs, but the processing power required to create, store and share CAD files over a wide area network is often prohibitive. Yet with the power of the internet they can work remotely and collaboratively.

The key challenge, because the files they send to their colleagues and CAD partners across the globe are so large, is about how their IT teams mitigate the effects of latency in wide area networks (WAN) to enable them to work uninterrupted by slow network connections. Strained WAN resources aren’t the only issue that concerns them. They need to deploy remote access control technology to protect their data as it flows across the internet, and from cloud to cloud, to ensure that only authorised individuals can work on any given CAD or CAE projects.

In essence, the internet and more recently cloud computing has become an enabler of remotely situated design, manufacturing, construction and engineering teams. Not only can they share their skills, knowledge and expertise, but also their data. Cloud can handle the peaks in storage and computing demand, but organisations must be able to get it up and down quickly in order to benefit from the potential cost efficiencies and the infrastructure agility that it can offer.

“With the ubiquitous access to the internet it is now possible to gather data from every part of the world and bring it back to a central hub for analysis, and you can design an aircraft or a car in one country while manufacturing it in another”, says David Trossell, CEO and CTO of data acceleration company, Bridgeworks. He points out that this means a huge amount of data is constantly being moved around and that all of the data is logged.

It’s about time

The Engineer says in its June article, ‘It’s About Time – Evolving Network Standards for the Industrial IoT’, “The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) promises a world of smarter, hyper-connected devices and infrastructure where electrical grids, manufacturing machines, and transportation systems are outfitted with embedded sensing, processing, control and analysis capabilities.”

The article recognises that latency can still be a problem, and it claims that:

“Much of today’s network infrastructure is not equipped to handle such time-sensitive data. Many industrial systems and networks were designed according to the Purdue model for control hierarchy in which multiple, rigid bus layers are created and optimised to meet the requirements for specific tasks. Each layer has varying levels of latency, bandwidth and quality of service, making interoperability challenging, and the timely transfer of critical data virtually impossible. In addition, today’s proprietary Ethernet derivatives have limited bandwidth and require modified hardware.”

The article adds: “Once networked together, they’ll create a smart system of systems that shares data between devices, across the enterprise and in the cloud. These systems will generate incredible amounts of data, such as the condition monitoring solution for the Victoria Line of the London Underground rail system, which yields 32 terabytes of data every day. This Big Analog Data will be analysed and processed to drive informed business decisions that will ultimately improve safety, uptime and operational efficiency.”

Commenting on the article, and specifically about the London Underground example, Trossell says: “Everything is real-time, and so the question has to be: How can we get the data back as fast as possible to analyse it and to inform the appropriate people. Some elements of this task may be in-house first for a quick exception analysis?” Some of this data may then be pushed to the cloud for further in-depth analysis by comparing present data with historical data to see whether anything can be learnt or improved from a maintenance and service perspective. With an unimpeded network, big data analysis from a wide range of data sources is possible, adding the ability to gain insights that were once not so easy to obtain.

From IoT to IIoT

Trossell thinks that the broader expression of the Internet of Things (IoT) is just one of the current buzzwords that everyone for a variety of reasons is getting excited about. “Most people think of this as their connected fridge, the smart meter for their utilities or the ability to control their heating system at home, but with the ever increasing diversity and the decreasing cost of sensors for industrial use, the term takes on a new level of sophistication and volume when applied to industry”, he explains.

In industry, IoT gives birth to IIoT, which involves monitoring the performance of complex machinery such as gas turbines, aircraft, ships, electrical grids and oil rigs. So it’s not just about a diversely spread group of CAD engineers working collaboratively across the globe. “IIoT has never been so diverse and in depth with vast amounts of data being created every second. To put this in perspective, each Airbus A350 test fight can received measurements from 60,000 separate sensors”, he claims. That’s a phenomenal amount of data that needs to be transmitted, backed-up, stored, and at some point it needs to be analysed in real-time in order to have any value.

“An example of this is a company that has developed a system where the aircraft technician can download the data from the black box flight recorder, send it over the internet where it is analysed with artificial intelligence for anomalies exceptions and then passed to an expert for investigation”, he explains. The benefit is that this approach can engage several experts, for example from an air transport safety board and involve manufacturers, across the globe to find out, unusual pilot activity, or sensor data can be collated to enable an airline to reduce maintenance and unplanned outages and possible safety implications  to a minimum therefore improving availability and profitability.

“However, just like the consumer internet, moving vast amount of data across the internet has it challenges – especially when the data may be half the world away”, he warns. These challenges include increased network latency due to the teams working at a distance over a WAN, and potential security breaches. He adds: “Moving files around between various data silos can be inhibitive even over a LAN – the cost of 10Gb networks are dropping considerably, but with WANs the problem is about moving data over distance because of latency.”

Yet in spite of the gremlins posed by security threats and network latency, there are many companies around the world that are established virtually thanks to the internet. They are often specialists in their chosen disciplines, and each of them can add a bit to the whole picture, but Trossell believes it’s no good to collect or generate data if you can’t use it to encourage and enable the collaboration of globally dispersed multi-disciplinary teams, to allow for innovation and for the creation of efficiencies. The data – including sensor data – must get to the right people at the right time if it is to add any value, but latency can prevent this from happening and latency can turn invaluable data into redundant and out of date data that adds nothing of worth or merit. 

Being smart

Companies investing in IIoT and remote working therefore need to protect their businesses by investing in solutions that can mitigate the impact of network latency while enabling data to be securely sent at velocity between the various data users and analysers. With smart systems, the challenges can be harder to overcome because in a traditional Purdue system data flows up and down the model, but Trossell says that smart systems and IIoT data tends to flow in all directions like a web. Being smart is also about mitigating latency and reducing the potential threats to data. With this in mind, Trossell offers five top tips that could ensure that your company gains the most from its data:

• Remember that the two biggest killers of performance in WAN is packet loss and latency. When you have them together then you will suffer massive performance hits.
• Adding bandwidth to your WAN will not necessarily increase performance, but it will increase costs!
• Marshal and consolidate data if possible rather than allowing lots of individual streams as this is a more effective use of WAN bandwidth.
• Use a product such as PORTrockIT to accelerate data transmissions, and use applications that pre-compress and encrypt data before it is sent to the WAN.

In essence, by mitigating latency and improving data security, industrial organisations can maximise the potential of the industrial internet. With the growing amount of sensor data, and the growing need to work collaboratively with remote teams across the world, these challenges are going to become more and more prevalent and obstinate. Industrial organisations therefore need to act today to ensure they protect their businesses well into the future, to enable them to participate in the industrial internet of things, and to allow them to benefit from real-time big data analysis right now. In other words, there is no point in using smart technology if you aren’t being smart with it too. 

SYS-CON Events announced today that China Unicom will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
China United Network Communications Group Co. Ltd (“China Unicom”) was officially established in 2009 on the basis of the merger of former China Netcom and former China Unicom.
China Unicom mainly operates a full range of telecommunications services including mobile broadband (GSM, WCDMA, LTE FDD, TD-LTE), fixed-line broadband, ICT, data communications, domestic and international communications facilities, satellite service, network access service, value-added and system integration services with a modern communication network characterized by nationwide coverage and extensive global reach.

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The campaigns were closely fought. Polls indicated it would be close. Still, many businesses assumed that the UK would stick to what they knew and vote to remain in the European Union (EU). In the aftermath of the vote to leave, and with the heat and hyperbole having largely dissipated, what new challenges does Brexit bring?

The Leave campaign was always a broad coalition of different interests, many with competing ideas. With a Brexit vote secured, some of those will fall by the wayside, while others become government policy. In the meantime, companies in the tech sector, dependent on investment to maintain their position, must live with the thing most likely to restrict it: uncertainty. 

The greatest uncertainty concerns access to markets and trade conditions. EU politicians have stated, repeatedly, that unrestricted access to the single market is conditional on Britain maintaining freedom of movement. Meanwhile, Brexit-supporting politicians in the UK believe that this is negotiable. It seems unlikely that the EU will reward Britain’s decision to go it alone with a uniquely advantageous arrangement, but it would be wrong to think that there is a single European stance. Much depends on whether the European Council or the European Commission takes the lead in negotiations. The Council is more likely to be pragmatic; the Commission may take a harder line.

Whatever happens, the UK won’t lose access to the single market – actually a single regulatory regime with a common set of technical standards, which benefit businesses outside the EU as much as those within it. UK exports may become subject to tariffs, but these average 2.3% for non-agricultural products: significant, but less so than movements in exchange rates, for example.

Tariffs may be reduced or removed by free trade agreements, which have been secured by every non-EU European country other than Belarus. British negotiators are likely to focus on key service industries, such as finance and technology. The size of our economy and its value to the EU, which enjoys a trade surplus of £88.7 billion with the UK, gives us a relatively strong bargaining position. Furthermore, the costs arising from new barriers in Europe could be offset by concluding trade agreements with countries outside the EU. According to Eurostat, over 56% of UK trade is with non-EU states, up from 38% in 2002. Among EU members, only Malta does a higher proportion of its trade outside the bloc, so the EU’s lack of success in forging external trade agreements has affected Britain disproportionately.

A second risk for the tech sector relates to the free movement of data. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which sets common rules on storage and transfer of personal data, comes into effect in May 2018. The GDPR won’t exclude British providers from handling EU data, provided they comply with the regulation. However, the regulation would have applied automatically had the UK remained in the EU. Now, either Parliament must pass new laws to bring Britain into line with the new standards, or UK companies will need to be assessed by the Commission. This is an unwelcome hindrance, but most data processing companies will already meet the standards, if they are already ISO 27001 certified.

A third risk, particularly relevant to the technology sector, is energy security and cost. Recent governments have under-invested in new generating capacity, but a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point was expected to address that. Hinkley Point could provide 7% of the UK’s supply, but the project has been beset by problems, delaying completion from 2017 to no earlier than 2025. The principal contractor, EDF, is 85% owned by the French government and struggling under billions of euros of debt. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, reports in the press suggested that the deal is under threat. EDF will no longer be investing in an EU partner country, and the French unions, concerned about the company’s ability to take on more debt, have used the opportunity to argue against it.

Hinkley Point is also dependent on large subsidies from the British government, which will support EDF. The European Commission agreed to these in 2014, but it’s possible that a coalition of European governments, many of which are anti-nuclear, will seek to block the deal under EU competition laws.

If Hinkley Point falls through, or if Britain is unable to sell surplus nuclear energy to the continent, the cost of power will go up and by proxy, the cost of running offices, data centres and the cloud will increase as well.

Despite the risks, Brexit provides an opportunity for UK business to change the way we trade with Europe and the wider world. As ever, we will succeed if we produce goods and services that other countries want. Britain must remain open to trade, people, data and ideas, and continue to welcome the best and brightest of everything from around the world.  The tech sector, which prides itself on being agile in the face of changing conditions, is actually well placed to benefit from the changes, even if Brexit wasn’t the result that it expected or desired. Looking forward, post-Brexit Britain could be a very exciting place to be.

In terms of GDPR specifically, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed that “if the UK is not part of the EU, then upcoming EU reforms to data protection law would not directly apply to the UK. But if the UK wants to trade with the single market on equal terms we would have to prove ‘adequacy’” – in other words UK data protection standards would have to be equivalent to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation framework starting in 2018.”

From a contingency perspective therefore, most big companies and especially cloud hosting firms are acting as if the GDPR will come into effect on the May 28 2018, to ensure that, even after we exit the EU, we can still trade as effectively, and legally, as we would if we remained a part of the Union.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced it has signed a criminal justice information services (CJIS) agreement with the State of Oregon, enabling AWS GovCloud services available to the state’s law enforcement officers.

Oregon joins California, Colorado, and Minnesota among others in signing up to AWS’s cloud services. The provider has two availability zones in its US GovCloud data centre.

“We are committed to doing our part as a cloud service provider by giving our customers the means, through our services, to comply with CJIS requirements within their IT environments,” an AWS statement read. “Customers can deploy applications, data, and services, all of which securely comply with CJIS Security Policy requirements.”

“The Oregon State Police is pleased to announce to the Oregon CJIS community that OSP and Amazon have agreed to a security control agreement that meets every requirement of the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy,” said Major Tom M. Worthy, Oregon State Police CSO, in a statement. “This agreement gives Oregon agencies additional hosting options that enhance security, while meeting their business requirements pertaining to criminal justice information.”

Elsewhere, research from IT services provider Eduserv has found a slightly different tone on UK public sector cloud adoption. According to the figures, 12% of all UK council authorities – some 50 councils – account for 90% of G-Cloud local government spend, while eight councils represent 57% of G-Cloud spend to date. More than a quarter (27%) of UK councils say their procurement policy does not allow them to use G-Cloud, while 61% of councils insist they do not have a cloud IT policy in place.

“The big picture behind this research is that only a minority of councils appear to have a deep appreciation of how IT must change to support service redesign and new technologies in the future,” said Jos Creese, Eduserv principal analyst and report author. “Local government is of course already using cloud, often in ‘shadow IT activity’ outside the IT department, and cloud will inevitably form an increasingly important role, given its prevalence and growth.

“Given this, and the data risks to be managed with cloud, it is therefore critical that councils have some sort of policy guidance around how and when it could or should be considered,” added Creese. “It is surprising and somewhat alarming that this is not the case.”

Many IT organizations look to the private cloud to improve agility and simplify business operations. More and more are introducing converged and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions to support cloud initiatives and agile development practices. But there is too often a road block — legacy data center networks.

Private clouds require a new multipurpose data center network to support diverse applications and workloads without sacrificing performance or service quality. Fully programmable and highly adaptable, the next-generation network easily integrates with service orchestration tools and DevOps systems to enable elastic services and self-serve IT. And it supports seamless workload mobility within and across data centers to ensure high availability for business-critical applications.

The post PlexxiPulse— Eliminating Private Cloud Networking Barriers appeared first on Plexxi.

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Adopting storage innovation protects the Nebraska Medical Center from data disruption and adds operational simplicity to complex data lifecycle management.
To describe how more than 150 terabytes of data remain safe and sound, we’re joined by Jeff Bergholz, Manager of Technical Systems at The Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect’s Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Secure Channels will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The bedrock of Secure Channels Technology is a uniquely modified and enhanced process based on superencipherment. Superencipherment is the process of encrypting an already encrypted message one or more times, either using the same or a different algorithm.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Pulzze Systems will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Pulzze Systems, Inc. provides infrastructure products for the Internet of Things to enable any connected device and system to carry out matched operations without programming.
For more information, visit http://www.pulzzesystems.com.

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Slack has been ranked as the number one private company leading cloud computing in 2016, according to research conducted by Forbes.

The messaging app provider, which was noted by Netskope in recent research to be among the top 20 cloud apps used by businesses for the first time, finished ahead of cloud storage firm Dropbox (#2) and electronic signature provider DocuSign (#3). Payments infrastructure company Stripe and data management platform provider Cloudera rounded off the top five.

The research was produced alongside Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, which aims to ‘recognise cloud companies for the financial health and growth of their business’. The hundreds of submissions were presented to 27 public cloud CEO judges who made their verdict for the inaugural report.

Naturally, plenty of companies have been putting forward their acknowledgement of being placed in the top 100. Zuora, a subscription billing and commerce provider, issued a statement arguing the importance of this validation not just for the company but for the market in general.

“As the standard subscription finance platform for the cloud computing industry, we’re honoured to be included,” said CEO Tien Tzuo. “It’s a huge validation for Zuora, as well as the subscription economy. While we have lots of clients on this list, we’re looking forward to helping many more amazing cloud companies turn their customers into subscribers.”

Fuze – formerly ThinkingPhones – finished just inside the top 20, and was recently named as a leader in the Gartner unified communications as a service (UCaaS) Magic Quadrant. “On behalf of Fuzers worldwide, we are thrilled to be named to the inaugural Forbes 2016 Cloud 100,” said Steve Kokinos, Fuze CEO in a statement. “Our mobile-first user experience is designed to delight today’s digitally empowered workforce, while our powerful suite of business analytics integrates with other cloud services to make our solution an indispensable tool for business and technology leaders.”

“The Forbes Cloud 100 companies represent the very best private companies in cloud computing,” said Byron Deeter, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We will see big IPOs and category killers emerge from this list as cloud computing continues to propel the trillion-dollar software industry.”

This report represents an interesting examination of which privately held cloud companies are leading the charge in their respective fields; yet related research from Glassdoor and Battery Ventures released last month paints a different picture. Taking into account employees’ verdicts on their CEO, as well as a ‘positive business outlook’, seven companies came out on top, including Chef Software, which scored 100% in both categories, and Asana, a productivity app led by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz.

Of the companies which led the way in the Forbes research, Dropbox and Zuora only scored 71% and 77% respectively in terms of business outlook, while DocuSign fared a little better, with 90% positive outlook rating and 97% approval for CEO Keith Krach.

There are some enterprise applications that were born to be in the cloud. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications were an early favorite because salespeople (the primary consumers of CRM) are decentralized and mobile. Web applications and personal data storage are also ideal cloud applications because they allow enterprises to scale up easily while driving down costs. Enterprises have held on to their communications, however, making it one of the last applications to move into the cloud.

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