If you are thinking about moving applications off a mainframe and over to open systems and the cloud, consider these guidelines to prioritize what to move and what to eliminate.
On the surface, mainframe architecture seems relatively simple: A centrally located computer processes data through an input/output subsystem and stores its computations in memory. At the other end of the mainframe are printers and terminals that communicate with the mainframe through protocols.

For all of its apparent simplicity, mainframe architecture can be extraordinarily complex. Mainframes process thousands of transactions per second and require an extensive infrastructure to house and maintain them. The hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of terminals (think of a bank’s ATM network) require a message routing scheme that can quickly prioritize and route transaction requests.

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As enterprise cloud becomes the norm, businesses and government programs must address compounded regulatory compliance related to data privacy and information protection. The most recent, Controlled Unclassified Information and the EU’s GDPR have board level implications and companies still struggle with demonstrating due diligence. Developers and DevOps leaders, as part of the pre-planning process and the associated supply chain, could benefit from updating their code libraries and design by incorporating changes.

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Unlike legacy ERP systems that can cost several hundred thousand dollars in capital expenditure, cloud ERP is relatively a lot more affordable. They are also viewed as a lot more stable given that the data is stored on decentralized servers. But besides these, moving your ERP to the cloud can bring in a number of other lesser understood benefits.

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Data reduction delivers compelling cost reduction that substantially improves the business case in every cloud deployment model. No matter which cloud approach you choose, the cost savings benefits from data reduction should not be ignored and must be a component of your cloud strategy.
IT professionals are finding that the future of IT infrastructure lies in the cloud. Data reduction technologies enable clouds — public, private, and hybrid — to deliver business agility and elasticity at the lowest possible cost, making cloud the deployment model of choice for IT infrastructure going forward.

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Today’s fast-paced work environment finds employees striving to improve efficiency, productivity and communication. In an attempt to excel at work, they often use applications, services, data storage and sharing beyond IT’s approval. This practice — known as shadow IT — is having an obvious impact on technical support teams by undercutting sound governance and reducing operational efficiencies. According to Gartner, by 2020, one-third of security breaches will be because of shadow IT.

There are five ways, though, that IT can become a trusted ally across an organisation and build a plan of action against the security vulnerabilities and unnecessary costs of shadow IT.

Seek out the biggest shadow IT opportunities

Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. Take inventory of who is using what programmes across the company. With this information, IT can then assess potential issues and make appropriate changes. Monitor closely to see if any new and unknown tools or applications pop up in regular scans. Depending on results, an enterprise-wide vulnerability scan may be necessary. Network sniffers and security scanning tools can provide detailed information on new and unknown data streams. And while monitoring does not remove the threats of shadow IT, it does provide the IT department with better insights and the ability to start risk assessments or research alternative solutions.

Assess security and efficiency risks and provide suitable alternatives

Take advantage of creating an open dialogue with your colleagues — your internal customers — across the company. Listen to their feedback, learn more about the problems they’re trying to solve, and be willing to provide input on which tools may be a security concern and offer an alternative. I once had a request to review a tool that was already approved and deployed by another department in the organisation. In this case, it was a lot easier (and a lot cheaper) to adjust our plan to add a few more licenses than it would have been to initiate a whole new contract.

Encourage employees to come forward with their requirements

Let’s look at supporting teleworkers as an example. If you don’t have an IT-approved way of enabling employees to work remotely, it is almost certain they will find a way to do so on their own. That’s when things get tricky. There is a tendency for IT organisations to not be as open to new requirements needed by employees to do their job.

IT should offer a safe haven for those employees and departments to come forth with their requirements and even suggest possible solutions that they would like to see implemented. By working together, IT can then take a look at the programmes, determine the risk and offer comparable solutions, where needed, to achieve beneficial outcomes for all.

Become more involved in the application selection process

This truly comes down to trust and relationships. It is important for IT to build a rapport with every department head and meet regularly to discuss their technology strategy. Establishing an open dialogue between departments and the IT organisation helps to remove the “us” versus “them” notion and makes technology transparency and potential risks of adopting unapproved technologies less of an issue. Having a seat at the table in the strategic planning stage will reduce most surprises around shadow IT down the road.

Keep in mind that not all shadow IT is bad

It is very possible that not everything you discover when mitigating shadow IT is bad. The tools you discover are truly the voice of the customer, showing you what teams really need to be successful. And it even may be that these applications can be beneficial to other departments. Be open to feedback from the department heads and work together to have IT be part of the strategic planning for the department and company from the beginning.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that shadow IT doesn’t have to be prevalent if there is open communication between IT and its customers. Employees typically engage in shadow IT because they think it will save time and money by not involving IT in the approval process for the technology they want to use to be more efficient.

In reality, going around IT just bypasses the critical management, integration, and security and compliance — related safeguards they support. While it may take a bit of time, additional due diligence and even a bit of hand-holding make it possible to mitigate the risk of shadow IT and safeguard the security, profitability and efficiency of the entire company.

«As we’ve gone out into the public cloud we’ve seen that over time we may have lost a few things – we’ve lost control, we’ve given up cost to a certain extent, and then security, flexibility,» explained Steve Conner, VP of Sales at Cloudistics,in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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«We’re here to tell the world about our cloud-scale infrastructure that we have at Juniper combined with the world-class security that we put into the cloud,» explained Lisa Guess, VP of Systems Engineering at Juniper Networks, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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Payments provider Stripe is the top private cloud computing company today with storage company Dropbox and messaging firm Slack making up the top three, according to the latest Cloud 100 list from Forbes.

Slack, which came top last year, finishes third with Dropbox taking second position for the second consecutive year. DocuSign was ranked at #4, completing a quartet of San Francisco-based companies at the top.

The list also recognises the growing influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) in valuations; among the highest new entries were Redwood City-based C3 IoT, at #19, and Uptake, based out of Chicago, at #22. Both companies participate in the industrial IoT space.

In total, almost half (48%) of companies in the Cloud 100 were based in the Silicon Valley area, compared with 13 in New York City, Boston with seven, and Utah with six. European companies in the mix include Adyen (#5), a payments provider based in the Netherlands and Veeam (#27) from Switzerland, while the UK’s only entry is NewVoiceMedia (#71), a provider of contact centre technology based in Basingstoke.

As new companies join the list – a quarter in all – others disappear, with 10 firms ‘graduating’, as Forbes puts it, to sale or IPO. Six of these 10 firms were in the top 20 last year, including Cloudera, ranked fifth in 2016, which went public in April this year, and AppDynamics, ranked ninth, acquired by Cisco in March.

In other words, the Cloud 100 list is not just for who is performing well today, but who is likely to go further tomorrow, as Alex Konrad, list editor at Forbes, explains. “Members of the second annual Cloud 100 list today will be tomorrow’s major IPOs and acquisitions, driving forward not just the tech sector but also the many industries that make up their customers,” he said.

Reuters, in an exclusive article earlier this month, reported that Dropbox was seeking to hire IPO underwriters – a story the company declined to comment on – while Stripe pocketed $150 million in series D investment in November last year and Slack secured $200m in a series F in April 2016.

The top 10 companies, in order, were Stripe, Dropbox, Slack, DocuSign, Adyen, Qualtrics, Medallia, Tanium, Mailchimp, and Squarespace.

You can read the full list here.

Today we can collect lots and lots of performance data. We build beautiful dashboards and even have fancy query languages to access and transform the data. Still performance data is a secret language only a couple of people understand. The more business becomes digital the more stakeholders are interested in this data including how it relates to business. Some of these people have never used a monitoring tool before. They have a question on their mind like “How is my application doing” but no idea how to get a proper answer.

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«I’m here to leverage my secret sauce, which is using outsourced development and the company that I utilize is delaPlex Software and they’ve basically allowed me to win Fortune 500 companies,» noted Justin Witz, CTO of FRA and PlanTools, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 20th Cloud Expo, held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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