3 ways application development is thankful for MSPs

In honour of the upcoming holiday, we wanted to spend a little time exploring how application development and product management can leverage managed services as well as (or better) other parts of the organization more traditionally associated with such outsourcing partnership.

Smaller organizations have few, if any infrastructure-specific employees, but instead focus hiring product and development roles to improve the development cycle and strength of features for an application. This makes a lot of sense, especially when provisioning cloud-based infrastructure has never been easier.

Yet, even with outsourced infrastructure, the actual responsibility of managing the more traditional parts of IT fall on the development staff. This is obviously not optimal, given the differences in product development within  infrastructure management.

Where does that leave an organization with an over-taxed development team and not enough infrastructure management knowledge internally? Managed services, of course!

Utilizing an MSP means more than simply offloading work …

VASCO to Launch DIGIPASS 760, a Visual Transaction Signing Solution

VASCO Data Security International, Inc. has announced the launch of DIGIPASS 760, a visual transaction signing solution. DIGIPASS 760 is the first successful integration of Cronto’s patented solution into VASCO’s DIGIPASS product line.
DIGIPASS 760 is an innovative authentication device targeted towards banks, enabling them to establish a secure optical communication channel with the client. The solution works with the CrontoSign technology whereby a graphical cryptogram consisting of a matrix of colored dots is displayed on the bank’s website.

read more

IBM-Marist College Team Tests Cloud Tech for System Outage Prevention

IBM and Marist College are evaluating a cloud computing technology intended to help keep communications services running during natural calamities.
The new invention will work to migrate voice and data applications to safer data centers within minutes, IBM said Thursday.

Casimer DeCusatis, IBM engineer, said the technology is aimed at helping data center operators reduce the time of moving services to another location outside disaster-hit areas using mobile devices.

The cloud invention being tested at Marist’s lab leverages software-defined networking technology in order to manage data flows within physical and virtual networks.

Information technology personnel can use the SDN-based technology to access and control network resources via wireless devices and open source networks, IBM says.

IBM sponsors Marist’s lab where technologies related to SDN are being studied.

The disaster prevention technology is slated for commercial release in 2014.

read more

IBM-Marist College Team Tests Cloud Tech for System Outage Prevention

IBM and Marist College are evaluating a cloud computing technology intended to help keep communications services running during natural calamities.
The new invention will work to migrate voice and data applications to safer data centers within minutes, IBM said Thursday.

Casimer DeCusatis, IBM engineer, said the technology is aimed at helping data center operators reduce the time of moving services to another location outside disaster-hit areas using mobile devices.

The cloud invention being tested at Marist’s lab leverages software-defined networking technology in order to manage data flows within physical and virtual networks.

Information technology personnel can use the SDN-based technology to access and control network resources via wireless devices and open source networks, IBM says.

IBM sponsors Marist’s lab where technologies related to SDN are being studied.

The disaster prevention technology is slated for commercial release in 2014.

read more

Is Internet of Things Really Internet of Agents? | Part 1

Machine-to-machine (M2M) technology and the resulting Internet of Things are leading us inexorably toward everything-as-a-service (XaaS). As more things get connected, the range of service opportunities expands. And as those services are presented online, they become available for use, re-use and re-purposing.
At first thought, the idea of more connected devices suggests simply that there will be more devices around, and as such, more products for manufacturers to make and sell. That’s true, but as I suggested in an earlier blog, even the manufacturers will realize that there is actually more value in services related to those connected things than in the things themselves.

read more

Let’s Be Frenemies: Playing Nice in the Cloud

I first heard the word “frenemy” a few years ago from my teenage daughter describing one of her classmates. She really liked this girl, but there were things about her she didn’t quite trust – like she couldn’t be counted on as someone who “had her back.” Off to the Urban Dictionary I went, as was the new norm if I wanted to more fully relate to my teenagers. Thanks to my daughter, today I’ve found a great use for this word that can help others come to terms with certain fast-paced technology. For me, the Cloud is like my daughter’s nice, but not-so-trustworthy friend. The cloud is our frenemy.
The cloud is our frenemy because we struggle with the stability of the relationship. Consumers have never felt so powerful since the advent of smartphones and tools that enable them to download, upload and share music, videos, and photos. When this phenomenon first caught on, most consumers didn’t even realize they were using the cloud – or what was behind the technology. They just knew they were more productive and more fulfilled.

read more

New Massively Scalable Monitoring in OpenNebula 4.4

This is the fifth entry in a blog post series explaining how to make the most out of your OpenNebula 4.4 cloud. In previous posts we explained the new multiple datastore system with storage load balancing, the enhanced cloud bursting to Amazon features, the multiple groups functionality and the enhanced Amazon API implementation.

OpenNebula is aimed at extremely large production clouds and it’s continuously evolving to become more and more scalable. We are excited to announce that the upcoming OpenNebula 4.4 release features a brand new monitoring system that delivers more performance and scalability.

The old monitoring system divided the hosts into chunks, and for each monitoring cycle it executed a set of static probes on that chunk of hosts via ssh, collecting the monitoring information (including Virtual Machines running in the hosts). The following monitoring cycle would do the same thing with the next chunk of hosts. As a consequence, when the number of hosts was very large the system took a large amount of time to monitor all the hosts. It was possible to increase the number of monitored hosts per cycle, but beyond a certain amount the system got overloaded with ssh connections.

read more

CloudCow Named “Media Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2014 NY & Silicon Valley

SYS-CON Events announced today that CloudCow has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and the 15th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Established in 2011, CloudCow is an online publication dedicated to the next generation data center environment. It is recognized as one of the leading authorities in cloud computing information.
CloudCow is a comprehensive resource for cloud computing news, analysis and information. The online publication provides IT professionals and executives with access to the latest information needed to make cloud computing and IT business decisions within their respective organizations.

read more

NRRC Video Series – Video 1 : Introduction and Overview

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled and used as a rapid response capability.While this demonstration was designed around lessons learned in the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, the effort showed how a cloud services brokerage approach could be used to quickly provide critical information technology infrastructure support to an unplanned event.

read more

NRRC Video Series – Video 1 : Introduction and Overview

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled and used as a rapid response capability.While this demonstration was designed around lessons learned in the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, the effort showed how a cloud services brokerage approach could be used to quickly provide critical information technology infrastructure support to an unplanned event.

read more

The cloud news categorized.