In 2007, there were virtually no mobile apps. Last year alone, over 100 billion apps were downloaded, generating $26 billion in sales. App stores operated by Apple and Google now offer more than a million apps each and people every day depend on apps like Facebook, Google Maps and Uber.
The app economy is here. And – with the coming tide of wearable devices giving rise to a new generation of applications and the Internet of Things taking off – it’s going to get big. Fast. There are app developers right now who are working on ways to connect your TV to your fridge, so you know what drinks are available without tearing yourself away from “Orange Is the New Black.”
The DNS of Things @ThingsExpo 2014 By @PSilvas [#IoT]
With Levi’s Stadium as a backdrop, I share a bit about the Internet of Things and the strain it will place on the Domain Name System (DNS) along with a preview of his DNS of Things session at CloudExpo/ThingsExpo at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Reporting from Silicon Valley.
The Evolution of the ‘Internet of Things’ By @RedHatNews | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
The Internet of Things is not new. Historically, smart businesses have used its basic concept of leveraging data to drive better decision making and have capitalized on those insights to realize additional revenue opportunities. So, what has changed to make the Internet of Things one of the hottest topics in tech?
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Gray, Director, Embedded and Internet of Things, discussed the underlying factors that are driving the economics of intelligent systems. Discover how hardware commoditization, the ubiquitous nature of connectivity, and the emergence of Big Data and analysis are providing the pull to meet customer expectations of a widely connected, multi-dimensional universe of people, things, and information.
Worried about cloud files going to the wrong place? This startup could help
Picture credit: Bob Mical/Flickr
It’s every CIO’s worst nightmare. Your employees are collaborating and getting stuff done, sharing files on cloud software. But what if a device was lost, or the files ended up in the wrong hands?
Meet Veradocs. The Mountain View based startup, until today operating in stealth, has announced a $14 million (£8.95m) round of funding despite not having a product, with the aim of “creating an entirely new way to secure and share information.”
The company was founded earlier this year by Ajay Arora and Prakash Linga, and has a plethora of admirers, including Battery Ventures, who led the funding round and whose partner Roger Lee has joined the Veradocs board, as well as Robin Daniels, former head of enterprise marketing at Box, who joins as chief marketing officer.
Using Veradocs, end users and IT can set policies for data and files, change policies in real time, and allow users to revoke access at any time – essentially a ‘kill switch’.
“In a world without walls, current offerings stop short at solving the issues around data security, and these issues now extend well beyond traditional highly regulated industries like financial services,” said CEO Arora. “With Veradocs, we are creating an entirely new way to secure and share information that gives IT strong levels of security while providing consumer-like user experience and choice.”
There are plenty of options for companies looking at storage, sync and share. From the likes of tech giants Google and Microsoft, to the traditional leaders Box and Dropbox – who recently announced a partnership with Redmond to improve its footprint in the enterprise space – there are lots of cards on the table. There are even solutions out there which put all your accounts together into one big cloud.
It’s all well and good for companies to have the data encrypted within those services, but if it travels anywhere else then the information may be at risk. With a product expected to be out in early 2015, Veradocs aims to change that.
CloudTech has reached out to Veradocs and will update accordingly.
What to Store in the Cloud By @RickNotDelgado | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Storing data of any kind on the cloud can be a risk, but there are ways to mitigate the risks. With such an abundance of cloud providers, there are plenty of options for you to choose from for security purposes. Finding a vendor that encrypts data in motion as well as data at rest is a wise move, making it safer to store information of all types in the cloud. Just make sure you’re aware of all the security measures a vendor takes, and you’ll make an informed choice.
Solr vs Azure Search
Microsoft Azure, a cloud platform, is rapidly expanding its scope to include newer enterprise class services. Some of the significant new additions are:
Azure Search: Azure Search Service is a fully managed, cloud-based service that allows developers to build rich search applications using REST APIs. It includes full-text search scoped over your content, plus advanced search behaviors similar to those found in commercial web search engines, such as type-ahead, suggested queries based on near matches, and faceted navigation.
Power Savings in Data Centers Lower #CloudComputing Costs
In the Internet of Things (IoT), more and more data processing done by processors and memory is being moved to distributed, low power nodes, and since we reduce the dynamic power required by these nodes, we will have a role to play in the design of these IoT nodes.
We produce products that enable substantial power reduction and consequent component area, BOM, and operational expense reduction in customer systems at the System, PCB, and IC levels of circuit integration. The CurrentRF products can be added to existing customer designs (no customer re-design needed) or at the time of initial design. The CurrentRF products can and should be used in conjunction with existing, standard power reduction techniques, in that they enhance, not interfere with, the said, existing standard power reduction techniques.
How Data Analytics Drives the Business By @Dana_Gardner [#BigData]
HP analyzes its own vast data warehouses to derive new insights for its global operations, extensive supply chain, sales organization, global marketing groups, and customers.
How Portugal’s Age of Discovery Is Related to Enterprise Mobility [#IoT]
This week I had the good fortune of spending time in Lisbon, Portugal. I met with several hundred business men and women at a mobility event in Microsoft’s auditorium in Lisbon, at banks and with mobile network operators where we discussed digital transformation, enterprise mobility, IoT and mobile strategies. In preparation for these discussions I did some homework. Here is what I learned about Portuguese history and how it relates to digital transformation and enterprise mobility.
The Portuguese developed innovative sailing technologies and navigational skills in the 15th-century that enabled ocean-going ventures, where before most ships stayed within sight of land or took very short excursions. Portugal’s Vasco da Gama (among others), using these innovations and skills, sailed south and east and ultimately reached India in 1498.
Yes, we’re all in the cloud – but use it to develop enterprise apps? Not yet
Picture credit: iStockPhoto
A report from CipherCloud and Gigaom Research has revealed while most companies are in the cloud, they’re still reticent about using it to develop enterprise applications.
According to the research, just less than half (44%) of respondents had already made cloud deployments, with only 14% saying it would take them more than a year to deploy. 83% of respondents said they had adopted public cloud. Yet only 21% of those surveyed said they were using the cloud as a platform to build enterprise apps.
It seems that while businesses are more than happy to espouse the virtues of the cloud, it’s only for the front end. At Apps World Europe last week John Finch, the CIO of the Bank of England, all but confirmed this at his organisation, although when you’re the central bank and have no real market competition, it’s probably better to be on the safe side.
Not surprisingly, security is the primary concern for companies moving into the cloud, being cited by 62% of those polled. App performance (44%), time to learn new skills (41%) and cost (39%) were also popular. Yet the polls changed dependent on whether you were a leading edge or mainstream buyer, most notably with security (46% leading edge buyers, 63% mainstream) and vendor lock-in (29% leading edge, 5% mainstream).
The report leads on to shadow IT as a natural issue if there’s cloudy software afoot. Shadow IT being what it is, often the IT department only hears about it through the grapevine, or worse, when something goes wrong and the rogue employee needs bailing out because of a security violation.
It further warns that a company just can’t rely on this method – data security must cut across a business’s organisational lines. 81% of line of business employees admitted to using unauthorised software as a service applications, with Dropbox, not surprisingly, the most popular choice.
The report concludes shadow IT is, in reality, “an expensive road disaster”, security needs to be implemented across the company and not just an IT bailout, and that the cloud is here to stay.
“The cloud is not going to replace IT,” the report concludes. “Instead, the cloud is simply another vehicle for which IT delivers services to users – and IT should use it appropriately.”
What do you make of the results? Are you developing enterprise apps in the cloud at your company?