As open technologies continue to make a bigger splash in the industry, the growth with OpenStack is showing the shift toward a new way to manage and consume IT resources. In the public and private cloud ecosystems, OpenStack has an opportunity to bring existing organizations into a standardized platform, plus many new customers are making moves to embrace OpenStack and open platforms in their IT portfolio. What does OpenStack mean to today’s companies, systems integrators, and to administrators?
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Eric Wright, Systems Architect at Pluralsight, to discuss how making the move toward OpenStack and increasing knowledge and feature usage in OpenStack is going to be a key factor in the success in adopting this exciting platform.
Unlocking Business Value with Cloud Hosted Desktops
As businesses look to unlock greater value out of their existing IT investments, they are increasingly re-evaluating their overall desktop strategy. A greater mobile workforce shifting usage models like BYOD and legacy infrastructure refresh cycles are all acting as catalysts in fueling a shift to a hosted, cloud-based model across the entire IT infrastructure, including the end-user computing side. Increasingly, IT leaders everywhere are seeking high performing, secure, and cost-effective alternatives to traditional desktops – one that minimizes large capital investments and allows them to shift scarce resources into supporting the needs of the business.
The groundswell of Windows 7 migration plans, expanding virtual workforce, growing popularity of mobile devices, and tighter IT budgets all point to the need to reevaluate desktop strategies. By moving virtual desktops to the cloud, instead of an internally deployed and managed data center, companies can realize all the promised benefits of virtual desktops – centralized management, improved data security and simplified deployment – without the exorbitant cost, limitations or hassles of VDI.
Why You Need to Enable Transparent Security in the Cloud
The promise of easy, rapid, and low-cost deployment is luring increasing numbers to the cloud. Is security the only remaining obstacle to total domination by the cloud?
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, John Gunn, VP of Corporate Communications for VASCO Data Security, will examine how the evolving threat landscape will present new security challenges for the cloud. You will also learn how to use transparent authentication to find the right balance between keeping the promise of user convenience while still maintaining essential security practices.
85% of CRMs will be SaaS by 2025, research shows
If you are using a CRM, your CRM is most likely hosted in the cloud. If you aren’t using a CRM, you are light years behind your competition in regards to the amount of knowledge you have on your customers and your interactions with them.
Cloud CRM presents distinct advantages versus the traditional model of setting the system up in an onsite data centre. Technology research firm Gartner predicts that 50% of CRM tools will most likely be delivered by cloud in 2015 and by 2025, 85% of CRM offerings will be hosted in the cloud.
Angus McFayden, a technology law expert affiliated with Out-law.com says, “The move towards cloud based solutions is predominantly being driven by cost effectiveness and the flexibility of those solutions.”
McFayden goes on to say, “As a result, businesses are able to deliver on their strategies a lot quicker than if they had …
Why DevOps Needs a Friend
Application Performance Management (APM) has been bred with all the right elements to give us the insights we need to see the health of our applications. Similar to your most trusted watch dog, it alerts us to anomalies when events occur, providing awareness to the environment that only they can observe.
As enterprises embrace the DevOps philosophy, and the coalescence of the Development and Operations continues, I foresee the conditions ripening to foster innovative methods of making application performance better and code deployments smoother. To me, the argument that system monitoring is just a “nice to have” and not really a core requirement for operational readiness dissipates quickly when a critical application goes down with no warning.
GoodData Launches Enterprise Partnership Enablement Program
GoodData has announced the launch of its Enterprise Partnership Enablement Program. This program provides implementation and reseller partners with the training and tools necessary to support GoodData’s end-to-end Open Analytics Platform. This initiative supports GoodData’s commitment to delivering an enterprise-ready and scalable BI solution.
«With the launch of this partnership program, GoodData will increasingly support a wider variety of customers,» said Senior Vice President of Global Services at GoodData, Ran Van Riper. «Implementation partners work with the GoodData team to provide the highest quality of service to enable every customer.»
Toll Gates, Pot Holes, Grid Lock – Roadblocks to DevOps
In his session at 2nd DevOps Summit, Vasu Sankhavaram, Chief Strategist of DevOps and Cross Portfolio Architecture Alignment at HP Software, will discuss strategic and tactical challenges for DevOps adoption – how to get buy-in for and implement DevOps.
Vasu Sankhavaram is Chief Strategist of DevOps and Cross Portfolio Architecture Alignment within HP Software. He has been working in the area of DevOps and Continuous Delivery since 2009.
Hiring for cloud? Here’s how to find the right people
Demand for cloud-skilled IT workers continues to outstrip the supply, and demand keeps growing. You can’t pick up a technology journal without seeing quotes from hiring managers who complain about the lack of cloud skills in the job market these days. Training and OJT are well underway, but growth is just too steep to fill all of the jobs.
The search for cloud talent is made harder due to several realities in the tech industry:
- Cloud providers do a poor job of providing generalized cloud computing skills. They typically focus only on their technology, which shouldn’t be surprising. However, the majority of enterprises use many clouds, so cloud professionals need to understand most of them.
- Certification programs are far too general. We all know the differences between IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS. The deeper skills and knowledge are more desirable these days, but they are not what the certifications …
Fanning the Flames of Agile
Knowledge creation is a major source of value creation. And great companies –and their employees – know that continuous learning is a key to generating knowledge, and thus value. The agile mindset, particularly in development, is gaining popularity, with credit to a suite of powerful ideas and practices commonly known as the agile methodology – defined by Wikipedia as “software development methods based on iterative and incremental development.”
In February 2001, a group of 17 software developers wrote the Agile Manifesto, the Magna Carta of the agile movement. At just 68 words, it was elegant, but at that point just words on paper. Early attempts to apply it came by adapting existing techniques such as lean manufacturing (adapted from Toyota’s methodologies), Crystal, Scrum and XP (Extreme Programming). Admittedly, we were still learning. Buying into “agile” signaled your ideals were more lofty than grounded. Agile supporters were revolutionary, but agile was not.
Digital Disciplines: Strategies for Things and the Cloud
The Internet of Things is a natural complement to the cloud and related technologies such as Big Data, analytics, and mobility.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Joe Weinman will discuss four generic strategies – digital disciplines – to exploit emerging digital technologies for strategic advantage.
Joe Weinman has over 30 years of experience in executive leadership positions at Telx, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, and Bell Laboratories, in areas such as corporate strategy, business development, product management, operations, and R&D. He is a frequent keynote speaker, blogger and the founder of Cloudonomics – a rigorous, multidisciplinary approach to valuing the cloud. He has been awarded 14 U.S. and international patents in diverse fields and has been showcased in numerous global broadcasts, print and online publications.