The next few years could see a paradigm shift in the way anti-virus applications work. A number of businesses have started migrating from traditional desktop based anti-virus packages to “lighter” software apps that process desktop security on the cloud. At the outset, this change is not entirely apparent – end users will still require to install software on their local desktop systems. However, the processing of information is now getting ported to the cloud.
Redefining Airline-Passenger Experience | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData
Today air travel is a minefield of delays, hassles and customer disappointment. Airlines struggle to revitalize the experience. GE and M2Mi will demonstrate practical examples of how IoT solutions are helping airlines bring back personalization, reduce trip time and improve reliability.
In their session at @ThingsExpo, Shyam Varan Nath, Principal Architect with GE, and Dr. Sarah Cooper, M2Mi’s VP Business Development and Engineering, explored the IoT cloud-based platform technologies driving this change including privacy controls, data transparency and integration of real time context with predictive analytics.
They concluded with a look forward to tomorrow’s Smart Airports where airlines use connected baggage to predict plane fuel levels, security is ubiquitous and your seat remembers you.
IoT = Cloud + Big Data + Analytics | @ThingsExpo #Cloud #IoT #BigData
Two weeks ago (November 3-5), I attended the Cloud Expo Silicon Valley as a speaker, where I presented on the security and privacy due diligence requirements for cloud solutions.
Cloud security is a topical issue for every CIO, CISO, and technology buyer. Decision-makers are always looking for insights on how to mitigate the security risks of implementing and using cloud solutions. Based on the presentation topics covered at the conference, as well as the general discussions heard between sessions, I wanted to share some of my observations on emerging trends. As cyber security serves as a foundation and necessary defense for customer and cloud solutions, cyber becomes more and more commoditized. The real impact is how do we deliver a confidence or trust to customers and their customer journey with our organizations.
Cisco promises breakthrough software for cloud-scale networking
Cisco claims it has invented a way to integrate and simplify web scale networks to make them twice as cost effective and much more scalable.
The networking vendor has worked with the world’s top hyperscale web companies to help service providers create faster simpler clouds from its IOS XR network operating system using popular IT configuration and management tools.
By making networks more programmable they can create a form of liquidity in cloud services that will allow providers to pool and converge their data centres and wide area network (WAN) architectures, it claims.
As a result of its collaboration, new features will appear in Cisco’s IOS XR software which, it claims, would halve the cost of running today’s network over the course of five years (under the present circumstances) by doubling network efficiency and performance.
However network running costs for cloud operators are expected to soar in future due to predicted surges in data demand. Total global data centre traffic is projected to triple by the end of 2019 (from 3.4 to 10.4 Zettabytes), according to the Cisco Global Cloud Index figures for 2014-2019. With 83% of total data centre traffic expected to come from the cloud by 2019 the improvement in manageability will help to rein in soaring costs, according to Cisco.
The investment in IOS XR will also help cloud and data centre operators to make a smoother, less expensive, transition to cloud-scale networking in future, Cisco claims.
Cisco IOS XR software, which is currently run over 50,000 live network routers, will benefit from a number of technical improvements, including new modularity, more service agility and higher levels of automation convergence with third-party application hosting.
Cisco said its software development kits and the DevNet Developer Program Cisco will encourage service providers to create large-scale automation and predictable network programmability, with higher levels of visibility and control. The aim, says Cisco, is to cater for any data model, any encoding method and any transport method.
“The network is cloud computing’s final frontier, at technology, people and process levels,” said Laurent Lachal, senior analyst of infrastructure solutions at analyst Ovum. “It needs to be built for scale and ruthlessly automated.”
EMC announces new protection for data as cloud hybrids become the norm
Storage vendor EMC has created a new product range to protect data as it moves in and out of the various parts of a hybrid cloud.
On Tuesday it announced news products and services designed to integrate primary storage and data protection systems across private and public clouds. The aim is to combine the flexibility of public cloud services with the control and security of a private cloud infrastructure.
The new offerings carry out one of three functions, characterised as tiering data across diverse storage infrastructures, protecting data in transit to and from the Cloud and protecting data once its static in the cloud.
EMC says that by integrating its VMAX systems through new improvements to its FAST.X tiering systems it can make it cheaper for customers to prioritise their storage according to the expense of the medium. The new additions to the management system have now automated the tiering of public clouds and cater for both EMC and non-EMC storage systems.
The new levels of protection for data, as it travels in and out of the cloud, is provided by
CloudBoost 2.0. This, claims EMC, will work with EMC’s Data Protection Suite and Data Domain so that private cloud users can move data safely to the cheaper media in the public cloud for long-term data retention.
Once resident in the public cloud, data can be better protected now as a result of new Spanning product features, which can cater for different regional conditions across the European Union. Spanning Backup for Salesforce now offers better SaaS data restoration options so it’s easier restore lost or deleted data. Spanning’s new European data destination option will also aid compliance with European data sovereignty laws and regulations. Meanwhile, the Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) offering for private clouds now has better capacity management, secure multi-tenancy and a dense shelf configuration that EMC says will ‘dramatically’ cut the cost of ownership.
Meanwhile, EMC also announced a new generation of its NetWorker data protection software. NetWorker 9 has a new universal policy engine to automate and simplify data protection regardless of where the data resides.
“Tiering is critical to business in our own data centres,” said Arrian Mehis, general manager of VMware Cloud practice at Rackspace, “and in the data centres of our customers.”
ENDS
Gemalto and NetApp to create secure cloud storage hybrid for AWS customers
Security vendor Gemalto and NetApp are to jointly create an integrated, encrypted key management system for securing data for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. The aim is to save time and improve security for end users, by simplifying the process of securing virtual data.
The two vendors, both AWS network partners, are to blend Gemalto’s SafeNet Virtual KeySecure and NetApp’s Cloud ONTAP as a unified service to be offered on the AWS Marketplace.
The SafeNet Virtual KeySecure for NetApp Cloud ONTAP (SKNCO) service promises to make storing and encrypting data and applications much easier for companies using virtual environments. The system will pay for itself, claim the vendors, through the productivity gains and raised levels of security created when users enjoy more governance over their stored data.
The SVKNCO creates these benefits, it’s claimed, by centralising management and making it easy to create customisable security policies for data access in the cloud. It achieves this by combining NetApp’s modern storage infrastructure with Gemalto’s SafeNet key management. The hybrid of the two systems can protect customers’ data and encryption keys against unauthorised access, while giving them the most cost effective storage options at all times.
It’s about creating top levels of security, but not at ‘any cost’ according to Todd Moore, VP of Data Encryption Product Management at Gemalto. “AWS users can now turn to NetApp to manage, store and protect their data more confidently, while completely owning their encryption keys,” said Moore.
Meanwhile, data centre infrastructure vendor Nutanix has also announced that its Community Edition is to be made available for AWS customers. The free software tool aims to help AWS customers speed up the evaluation process when weighing their options for buying infrastructure.
Monetizing IoT: Show Me the Money! | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly by extending current technologies, products and networks. By 2020, Cisco estimates there will be 50 billion connected devices. Gartner has forecast revenues of over $300 billion, just to IoT suppliers. Now is the time to figure out how you’ll make money – not just create innovative products.
With hundreds of new products and companies jumping into the IoT fray every month, there’s no shortage of innovation. Despite this, McKinsey/VisionMobile data shows “less than 10 percent of IoT developers are making enough to support a reasonably sized team.”
Delivering the Honeywell User Experience Through OnPrem Monitoring | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Being able to ensure a positive experience for your customers and end users is one of the hallmarks of any great company. Yet with all of the different internal and external online systems needed to do that, early detection and rapid response to performance issues becomes harder and more expensive.
Join us for the OpsCast, Delivering the Honeywell User Experience Through OnPrem Monitoring, to learn how Honeywell International, one of the world’s largest producers of commercial and consumer technology, has deployed synthetic OnPrem agents throughout their global networks. Citing specific examples of obstacles that the company has faced, Paul Fries, Monitoring Leader at Honeywell, will show how their customers benefit from synthetic OnPrem monitoring.
Blue Coat Systems Acquires Elastica
Blue Coat Systems as recently announced its agreement to acquire Elastica , Inc. for $280 million.
Because of the unprecedented rate with which cloud applications have been adopted, there is also an unprecedented necessity for increased security and protection for such applications. Due to the mixed use of cloud and on premise applications, Blue Coat Systems has found it difficult to efficiently manage its security. With the addition of Elastica, Blue Coat will be able to offer a global security platform with across the board data level security. This will make Blue Coat the only company to deliver the requirements that resulted from post-infrastructure. By combining the talents of Blue Coat with Elastica’s Cloud Access Security and Analytics, Blue Coat will provide a solution to the problems associated with cloud security requirements. Elastica’s CloudSOC provides tools such as threat scoring powered by machine learning, user and end-point behavior modeling, natural language-based cloud DLP, and analysis with remediation in a cloud application SOC. Elastica delivers such tools through its CASB gateway and API controls for cloud security management and enforcement.
Greg Clark, Blue Coat CEO, has commented: “This acquisition gives Blue Coat customers access to Elastica’s CloudSOC, which brings an unprecedented level of elegance and innovation to something that is rapidly becoming a complex challenge for organizations to solve. As we evaluated many CASB players, it was clear that Elastica’s technologies represent the future of the CASB space. Segmented CASB players have survived through their dependency upon existing on-premise infrastructure. As the industry’s leading web security platform, it is natural for Blue Coat to be the first to deliver an extended spectrum of CASB capabilities while also delivering them with our cloud protection solutions.”
Mike Fey, Blue Coat president and COO, also added, ““Our customers cannot tolerate a world where the performance and security of cloud applications are spread across a tangled web of solutions leaving them powerless to manage the threat and deliver the SLA which their users have come to expect. Corporations are facing a dissolving perimeter. The traditional infrastructure-centric way of protecting users cannot support the cloud age. We have made it our mission to solve this challenge by delivering an entire solution from the cloud, specifically built for the cloud.”
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How to Resize Your Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine
Guest blog by Paul Christopher Nathaniel, Parallels Support Team Living in today’s world of “Big Data,” the size of the files we create, share, and store doesn’t matter so much anymore. Do you remember those times when we had to shrink the size of pictures just to save some hard disk space? These days, most PCs […]
The post How to Resize Your Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine appeared first on Parallels Blog.