Of course, I work for an API security/management vendor (Axway), so you might think «he would say that». But, having an API Management strategy in place means that API Keys are protected at Runtime by an API Gateway, and issued at Design Time by an API Portal. What all of the recent API Key vulnerability victims have in common is a lack of an API Gateway in place, or an API Management strategy. An API Management strategy allows administrators to manage how API Keys are issued, typing them to the lifecycle of the API. In the screenshot below, we can see how an API Key can be issued for an app (in this case, the sample API Days voting app used at our API Security workshops at the API Days conference):

read more

The shift to the cloud is in full swing. More and more organizations are adopting Software-as-a-Service(SaaS), forcing IT organizations to develop new strategies to secure the onslaught of data created and stored in cloud applications. Failure to develop strategies to close security gaps can result in compliance violations and data breaches. In some cases, organizations incur fines, but in extreme cases, businesses are forced to reorganize, replace the CEO, or even shut down completely. Perhaps the most overlooked factor in these cases is the effect this has on customers, who place their personal and financial information in the hands of major companies.

read more

Grow your business with enterprise wearable apps using SAP Platforms and Google Glass. SAP and Google just launched the SAP and Google Glass Challenge, an opportunity for you to innovate and develop the best Enterprise Wearable App using SAP Platforms and Google Glass and gain valuable market exposure.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Brian McPhail, Senior Director of Business Development, ISVs & Digital Commerce at SAP, outlined the timeline of the SAP Google Glass Challenge and the opportunity for developers, start-ups, and companies of all sizes to engage with SAP today.

read more

Can the spatial component of your Big Data be harnessed and visualized, adding another dimension of power and analytics to your data?
In his session at Big Data Expo®, John Meza, Product Engineer and Performance Engineering Team Lead at Esri, discussed the spatial queries that can be used within the Hadoop ecosystem and their integration with GeoSpatial applications.
The GIS Tools for Hadoop project was also discussed and its implementation to discover location-based patterns and relationships in Big Data to enable better decision support. This was followed by a demonstration of GIS Big Data on a live cluster with expressive web mapping visualization.

read more

There’s no doubt that the Internet of Things is driving the next wave of innovation. Google has spent billions over the past few months vacuuming up companies that specialize in smart appliances and machine learning. Already, Philips light bulbs, Audi automobiles, and Samsung washers and dryers can communicate with and be controlled from mobile devices. To take advantage of the opportunities the Internet of Things brings to your business, you’ll want to start preparing now.

read more

Today, IT is not just a cost center. IT is an enabler and driver of business. With the emergence of the hybrid cloud paradigm, IT now has increasingly more capabilities to create new strategic opportunities for a business. Hybrid cloud allows an organization to utilize multi-tenant public clouds, dedicated private clouds, bare metal hosting, and the associated support and services for the right use cases through an on-demand, XaaS model. This model of IT creates tremendous opportunities for businesses to utilize cloud in the most customized way possible to suit its requirements and business goals, and also to enable new business opportunities in a way that was not possible a few years ago. This hybrid cloud computing model brings many more advantages than just cost savings. While a TCO analysis immediately shows the benefit of the hybrid cloud model, it does not fully capture the tremendous value that hybrid cloud brings to a business. The hybrid cloud model can enable and drive strategic opportunities for a business that will have far more impact than just cost savings.

read more

Plutora, Inc., a global provider of enterprise release management and test environment management SaaS solutions, designed to accelerate the end-to-end software delivery journey through transparency and control, on Tuesday announced a global strategic partnership agreement with UST Global, an information technology solutions and services company for Global 1000 enterprises.
Under the partnership, UST Global will incorporate Plutora’s SaaS Solution into their DevOps service line to provide end-to-end test environment management services. UST Global will train and certify personnel on the Plutora’s SaaS solution.

read more

Stu Hammer is the leader of the HP Enterprise Services Applications Practice in U.S. Public Sector, where he has specialized in application modernization, transformation strategy and transformation to cloud services. He has been in the IT business for more than 29 years with a strategic focus on IT transformation trends and providing application transformation strategies for government clients.
Public sector IT agencies have many issues, including constrained if not reduced budgets, but meeting mission objectives is vital to ongoing operations. For IT leaders, costs are ever increasing, legacy systems are omnipresent, security risks are growing and new technologies are continually being introduced – including mobility, cloud and Big Data.

read more

(c)iStock.com/AndreyPopov

The cloud ecosystem has ushered in an exciting era of open access to world-class computing power, resources, storage, development framework and software applications. With this has come an explosion of innovation. While cloud service providers (CSPs) have enabled innovation and cost reduction for their customers, they have likewise been challenged to leverage the power of the cloud to innovate around monetisation and billing. This has resulted in business risks, such as:

• Becoming a commodity provider due to high CSP customer churn resulting from lack of differentiation
• Inability to exceed client satisfaction due to poor usage and billing details
• Missed revenue and maximisation opportunities due to value-added resellers covering this growing need
• Slow time-to-market of new services because there is no dynamic promotion mechanism built into the charging model
• Credit risk exposure, as enterprises with low credit ratings can end up using more than what they can pay

In short, effective monetisation of services remains a challenge to overcome for CSPs to deliver the ultimate cloud offering.

The challenge

Cloud computing monetisation models today remind us of the billing models of the past, with a bias towards flat rate billing. There were few monetisation models that were low latency usage or activity-based, reflecting consumption behaviour. However, with the onset of the mobile data tsunami, bundled packages to enterprise and retail clients and overall market saturation, monetisation models had to be changed to meet customer needs. Providers saw an opportunity to design billing plans to deliver the best offer at the most competitive prices and increase average revenue per user.

Recently, some have positioned subscription billing as the answer to CSPs’ billing challenges. While subscription billing has its place, it is inadequate for the needs of providers who need flexibility with their pricing plans, require hierarchy-based usages and billing break down, and stronger revenue recognition capabilities.

Market realities are rapidly pushing CSPs to become more robust in how they rate, charge and bill for their services.  Following are five essential challenges CSPs monetisation models must meet to be successful:

1. Billing and charging models must be value driven and more reflective of consumption behaviour
2. Transparency and granularity of usage details must be available by accounts and sub-accounts
3. Effective policy control and enforcement must be in place to deliver appropriate quality of service and SLA according to the purchased offer
4. Implementing a low latency credit control policy is necessary so clients don’t experience the “bill shock” effect
5. Delivering reliable and scalable billing and revenue management will be paramount to building trusted client relationships

The market potential                                                                      

Value maximisation potential in the cloud computing era is limitless for all “as a service” models. Effective revenue management and billing can help power the delivery of the ultimate cloud offering by enabling multi-dimensional pricing models.

The flexibility represented in Figure 1 can also be leveraged to deliver benefits, including:

1. Bundle: by bundling different services and packaging them as one
2. Incent: by leveraging metered information of usage and consumption behaviour
3. Reward: by giving limited period bonus services once criterion are met and usage levels have been crossed
4. Inform: by sending near real-time notifications of key account activity or critical usage to a client’s preferred channel
5. Satisfy: by delivering rated unbilled usage information to CSR or enforce credit limit checks to avoid bill shocks

Another benefit of using multi-dimensional revenue management attributes is that billing transaction data records can be used to obtain the end-customer’s usage and consumption behaviour, adding the creativity and innovation needed to achieve differentiation.

Monetising the potential

CSPs have an unprecedented opportunity to be innovative and successful in deploying monetisation models.

Figure 2 illustrates the most time-tested rating and charging keys that have been applied across industries to monetise services. Combining these monetisation strategies can significantly boost the value that IaaS, PaaS and SaaS deliver to CSPs’ clients.

Conclusion

Delivering the ultimate cloud offering calls for ultimate flexibility with on-demand access. The challenge is offering flexible, scalable and reliable monetisation, billing and revenue management for cloud services. The CSPs that can effectively monetise and bill for their services will thrive by meeting the evolving needs of this dynamic market. By learning from the past and understanding the future, CSPs will triumph with higher client satisfaction and a more successful business.