The now mainstream platform changes stemming from the first Internet boom brought many changes but didn’t really change the basic relationship between servers and the applications running on them. In fact, that was sort of the point.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Gordon Haff, senior cloud strategy marketing and evangelism manager at Red Hat, will discuss how today’s workloads require a new model and a new platform for development and execution. The platform must handle a wide range of recent developments, including containers and Docker, distributed resource management, and DevOps tool chains and processes. The resulting infrastructure and management framework must be optimized for distributed and scalable applications, take advantage of innovation stemming from a wide variety of open source projects, span hybrid environments, and be adaptable to equally fundamental changes happening in hardware and elsewhere in the stack.
“Let’s take a field trip” – What’s important for students and teacher when working with a Mac?
Last week, on March 27, 2018, at 8 a.m., the first Apple® launch event of 2018 took place. This event focused mainly on the education sector and was being held at Chicago’s Lane Tech College Prep School. The biggest news was that Apple will bring out a new $329 iPad® to take on Google Chromebook™ […]
The post “Let’s take a field trip” – What’s important for students and teacher when working with a Mac? appeared first on Parallels Blog.
IoT and Connected Transportation | @ThingsExpo #AI #IoT #IIoT #SmartCities
As ridesharing competitors and enhanced services increase, notable changes are occurring in the transportation model. Despite the cost-effective means and flexibility of ridesharing, both drivers and users will need to be aware of the connected environment and how it will impact the ridesharing experience. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Timothy Evavold, Executive Director Automotive at Covisint, discussed key challenges and solutions to powering a ride sharing and/or multimodal model in the age of connected vehicles.
Enterprise #AI and #MachineLearning | @ExpoDX #IoT #ArtificialIntelligence
Artificial intelligence and machine learning systems are made up of code and algorithms, and as such, they work as fast as computers can process them. Often this means massive amounts of learning can be accomplished every second without stop 24x7x365. Code doesn’t need to take weekends off, holidays, or sick time. Code doesn’t get tired. It can recognize complex patterns, areas of potential improvement and problems in real-time (aka digital-time). Given these available computing capabilities and speeds, what are executives to do with AI and machine learning, when we live and operate in relatively slow human-time, and work within organizations that work at an even slower pace of organizational-time.
The #Agile Accelerator | @DevOpsSummit @IsomorphicHQ #Agile #DevOps
Between the mockups and specs produced by analysts, and resulting applications built by developers, there exists a gulf where projects fail, costs spiral, and applications disappoint. Methodologies like Agile attempt to address this with intensified communication, with partial success but many limitations.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 19th Cloud Expo, Charles Kendrick, CTO at Isomorphic Software, presented a revolutionary model enabled by new technologies. Learn how business and development users can collaborate – each using tools appropriate to their expertise – to build mockups and enhance them all the way through functional prototypes, to final deployed applications. This approach helps you improve usability, exceed end-user expectations, and still hit project milestones.
Databases in Containers | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Docker #Kubernetes
Hardware virtualization and cloud computing allowed us to increase resource utilization and increase our flexibility to respond to business demand. Docker Containers are the next quantum leap – Are they?! Databases always represented an additional set of challenges unique to running workloads requiring a maximum of I/O, network, CPU resources combined with data locality.
How to move your accounting to the cloud
5 Apr, 2018
If you have always done your accounts with a traditional accounting package, it’s perhaps time you started thinking about moving them to the cloud.
Many organisations turned to cloud applications to either help reduce costs or improve operational speeds, yet those same organisations have now started moving their accounts to the cloud too. While there’s some trepidation about moving highly sensitive financial information off premises, the drivers to do so are becoming harder to ignore.
One such driver is the Making Tax Digital initiative from HMRC. From April 2019, all companies over the VAT threshold of £85,000 will be required to keep digital records and submit these electronically. There are also some suggestions that income tax could become mandatory as well, meaning businesses will have to review all aspects of how they engage with clients today and what that might look like in future.
There’s increasing pressure on accountants to do more than has traditionally been expected of them. According to a recent survey of accountants, 83% said clients expect them to do more than they did five years ago, with 42% expecting their accountants to offer business advice as part of the service.
«With this in mind, accountants are looking to lighten their administrative burden which will enable them to spend more time attending to these new demands,» says Sean Evers, accountant development director at Sage. «Moving accounting to the cloud allows organisations to spend less time on admin and more on attracting and serving customers.»
Benefits of cloud accounting
One of the main benefits of moving accounts to the cloud is quicker access to better software.
«Software is constantly evolving and improving, from bug fixes, patches to new features,» says Kris Brown, UK R&D Director at TechnologyOne. «When you enhance the software for one customer, all customers benefit. Not only is it much quicker to deploy cloud solutions, you also gain full control over the deployment process for new software. «
If you only wish to implement certain parts of the solutions, you can test those and then leave the other features ‘switched off’.»
Paul McCooey, a partner at chartered accountants Duncan & Toplis, says that recording long lists of payments is a thing of the past, as your bank account automatically syncs with your software.
«[There are] no more manually listing invoices [either]. The software can issue them automatically. And no more lost receipts or unclaimed tax relief – simply take a photograph of your bills or receipts and upload them,» he says.
«You’ll spend less time chasing debts too – cloud accounting software can issue automated reminders and ‘pay now’ buttons as payment prompts.»
Defining the future state
Paul Nicklin, technical director at inniAccounts, says that moving to the cloud isn’t as simple as flicking a switch so you need to do your homework.
«The world is going cloud first, so you’ll have an easier time if everything is in the cloud. However, you still need to consider how systems interact.
«For instance, if you have an ERP system and payroll plugged into on-premise accounting package it will be more tricky, but far from impossible, to move than if you have cloud-based services that are compatible with your old and new provider,» says Nicklin.
Brown says that the first phase in moving an organisation’s accounts to the cloud is to have a clear view of what success will look like – the future state – and to clearly define the current state.
«Every organisation is unique and will develop its own unique path to transition based on its existing applications, systems and requirements,» he says.
«It can be as simple as taking a copy of what you have on premise and starting the next day in the cloud. A like for like move of business process and software doesn’t have to be a massive task. But, a ‘lift and shift’ approach – placing current applications into a hosted environment – won’t deliver true transformation.»
Brown adds that if you are moving to a new provider, then this does need to be considered as a new implementation, and at that point, a change of processes and culture will be required to realise the full benefits of SaaS.
Nicklin believes that if your business is small, and your existing accounts aren’t as streamlined as they could be, then moving to cloud is the perfect opportunity to clean things up.
«In our experience of moving accounts from complex spreadsheets through to exports from accounts packages, we’ve encountered quality issues,» says Nicklin. «Our advice, therefore, tends to be not to bring too much history. It’s often wrong.»
Integrating accounts with other cloud apps
By migrating other parts of the back office into the cloud, it ensures that the benefits seen by the accounting team are also seen across the board, argues to Sage’s Sean Evers.
«Back office functionalities can often be time and resource consuming but moving to the cloud will take away much of the heavy lifting associated with these processes, allowing organisations to focus on serving their customers and improving workforce efficiency.»
He believes that once accounting is moved to the cloud, organisations should regularly review processes and challenge their efficiency. This is particularly useful for identifying those processes that can be automated or streamlined by using a third-party app, provided it’s able to connect to your cloud accounting service.
«That way, not only are you saving time and money around the accounting aspect, but all over your business. It also means more time to do what you want to do – whether that’s growing your business or more personal time,» says Evers.
David Lindores, technical director at Eureka Solutions, says that it is not a requirement to have other parts of the business in the cloud, however, this is highly advisable.
«There are integration tools that are available which allow businesses to transfer data seamlessly between cloud-based software solutions and on-premise software,» he says.
Image: Shutterstock
Oracle adds AI and bare metal to UK cloud region
4 Apr, 2018
Oracle has built out its UK cloud offering with the addition of several new services to its local region.
Those include Oracle’s autonomous database, Exadata, AI and blockchain, which are all now available from its UK data centres, meaning organisations that store their data locally can now leverage these capabilities.
They can also take advantage of Oracle’s bare metal cloud based on its new X7 server, and block storage, both designed for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.
Claiming the UK-hosted services benefit from «extremely low latency and high bandwidth», James Stanbridge, VP and lead product manager for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in Europe and Asia, said: «It’s a very significant new region and what Oracle is doing and our strategy has been over many years now is to build new regions and cloud capabilities exactly where and when customers need them to meet their growing needs to complete their transformation to the cloud.»
Oracle touted customers like Bristol startup YellowDog, which specialises in processing HPC workloads, and the National Grid, to show its cloud is attracting users both big and small.
«The goal National Grid has is a complete IT transformation from on-premise to a cloud-first strategy – that’s by no means unusual [among our customers],» Stanbridge told Cloud Pro.
«These IT transformation projects have long lead times on them, much more like six to nine-month projects. I’m seeing that in data centre regions in the EU. We are starting to see some of those large IT transformations move in [to the UK region].»
Oracle’s new additions to its UK region come as part of a new push to expand its global data centre footprint, opening 12 new regions of three or more facilities across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
It added new UK facilities in the first half of 2017, alongside an expansion in Turkey and the US. Oracle spent just $1.7 billion on new cloud regions in 2016, compared to $31 billion by rivals Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google. CEO Mark Hurd defended his company’s outlay by saying that Oracle’s fast hardware meant it could provide fewer facilities.
Bringing #DevOps to #DataScience | @DevOpsSummit @CAinc #AI #Analytics
There’s no shortage of material about DevOps on the Interwebs. But as you sift through mountains of information, it appears mostly skewed toward better and faster web and mobile app development. Look for details on how the thinking can be applied to the wicked world of data science or analytics and you’ll be hard pressed to find much at all. This seems odd, because a sustainable business isn’t just carved out on the back of web and mobile apps. It’s also dependent on intimately understanding customer data and pivoting towards the opportunities revealed – with yes, web and mobile apps.
Peter Principle and Big Data | @ExpoDX #BigData #Analytics #AI #IoT #IIoT
Wikibon just released their “2017 Big Data Market Forecast.” How rosy that forecast looks depends upon whether you look at Big Data as yet another technology exercise, or if you look at Big Data as a business discipline that organizations can unleash upon competitors and new market opportunities. To quote the research: “The big data market is rapidly evolving. As we predicted, the focus on infrastructure is giving way to a focus on use cases, applications, and creating sustainable business value with big data capabilities.”