As enterprises work to take advantage of Big Data technologies, they frequently become distracted by product-level decisions. In most new Big Data builds this approach is completely counter-productive: it presupposes tools that may not be a fit for development teams, forces IT to take on the burden of evaluating and maintaining unfamiliar technology, and represents a major up-front expense.
In his session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Andrew Warfield, CTO and Co-Founder of Coho Data, will discuss how enterprises can bring Big Data tools to a point of customer value. He’ll cover core lessons about how to approach Big Data and how to be successful at winning from Big Data in your environment.
Cloud Security Industry to Register Impressive Growth | @CloudExpo #Cloud
In a recent market study offering by Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global cloud security market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12.80% from 2015 to 2022. The report, titled «Cloud Security Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 – 2022», states that the global cloud security market will reach a valuation of US$11.8 bn by 2022 increasing from its 2014 valuation of US$4.5 bn.According to the report, factors such as the rapid proliferation of handheld devices, the increasing trend of CYOD and BYOD policies in corporate organizations, increasing use of cloud-based computing by small and medium scale businesses, and ease of use of cloud security services are driving the cloud security market.
Unit Testing Legacy Code: Three Reasons to Reconsider By @ReselBob | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Teams that have embraced DevOps and begun using the practice of test driven development are familiar with the headaches that accompany testing legacy code.
This is particularly true for companies that have applications out in production that have been working for years, but have no formal tests or testing regiment associated with its codebase.
Most of the time the physical code for the applications is known; many times it is not. In fact, both the code and the developer who wrote the code might have left the building years ago.
AWS targets games developers with Lumberyard and Gamelift services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched new services, Lumberyard and Gamelift, to help developers create games and build communities of fans. By simplifying the infrastructure work it could help keep games developers loyal to its cloud services.
Amazon Lumberyard is a free, 3D game engine which developers can use to create games on any IT platform while using the computing and storage resources of the AWS Cloud. According to Amazon, Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool can open up the games development market because it allows non-technical game developers to add cloud-connected features to a game. It claims that features such as community news feeds, daily gifts or server-side combat resolution can be added in minutes through a drag-and-drop graphical user interface.
The other new AWS service, GameLift, aims to simplify the launch and operational management of session-based multiplayer games. Used in combination the two new services will make it easier for games developers to ramp up capacity to order as demand for high-performance game servers fluctuates. The services makes it easier for games developers to cater for fluctuating demand without the expense of additional engineering effort or upfront costs, says AWS.
Amazon Lumberyard is free and available today in beta for developers building PC and console games. A version for mobile and virtual reality (VR) platforms is ‘coming soon’ it says. GameLift is charged on a per-player basis, with fees currently $1.50 per 1,000 daily active users on top of the standard AWS services fees.
Developers typically need to bring 20 technology components to build the highest-quality games, according to Mike Frazzini, Amazon Games’s VP. The expense of resources such as real-time graphics rendering, animation systems and physics simulation make this a prohibitive and risky market to be in.
“Game developers asked for a game engine with the power of commercial engines but significantly less expensive and deeply integrated with AWS for the back,” said Frazzini. AWS now provides that with Lumberyard and GameLift, he said.
Developing and maintaining a back-end infrastructure for multiplayer games requires time, money and expertise that are beyond the reach of most developers, according to Chris Jones, Obsidian Entertainment’s CTO. “GameLift removes much of that burden from the developer, allowing them to focus their energy on bringing their game ideas to life,” said Jones.
VMware broadens its Horizon 7 and Horizon Air
Cloud infrastructure vendor VMware has announced that VMware Horizon 7 and VMware Horizon will be simpler to set up, faster, easier to maintain and more flexible.
Version 7 of Horizon promises new features that VMware describes under the headings of just in Time Delivery, Blast Extreme, application life cycle management, smart policies and Integration with VMware Workspace ONE.
The new Just in Time Delivery option, a product of Instant Clone Technology (formerly Project Fargo) means managers can provision 2,000 desktops in under 20 minutes. Blast Extreme offers options for GPU off-load to increase scale and mobile network support. The new Application Lifecycle efficiencies promise to cut storage and operational costs by up to 70% and slash the time needed for managing images by up to 95%. Smart Policies and integration with VMware Workspace ONE will both improve management of internal resources.
Meanwhile VMware’s Horizon Air has a hybrid-mode that will pave the way for a simple out of the box set-up, the vendor says. Having achieved that, users can create and scale desktops faster, with new Instant Clone technology integrated with VMware’s App Volumes and User Environment Management technologies.
Another major advantage, according to VMware, is greater hybrid cloud flexibility. In practical terms this will mean that applications and desktop workloads can be moved back and forth from on-premises data centres to the cloud more effectively. The process will be managed from a consistent Cloud Control Plane and will support the use of the cloud as a primary system for everyday work, or as a secondary use case for desktop bursting or disaster recovery.
VMware Horizon 7 and VMware Horizon Air with Hybrid-mode are expected to be generally available before March 2016. VMware Horizon 7 pricing starts at $250 per user for on-premises perpetual licenses. VMware Horizon Air Hybrid-mode cloud subscription pricing starts at $16 per user per month for named users and $26 per user per month for concurrent connections.
“VMware Horizon Air will provide our team with the opportunity to scale desktops on an as needed basis with access to VMware’s public cloud in both Europe and the United States,” said user Jason Bullock, executive director of IT global infrastructure and support at BDP International.
Wind River launches vCPE NFV platform
Intel subsidiary Wind River has added to its NFV portfolio with the announcement of a new product which focuses on the virtualization of customer premises equipment (vCPE). The vendor claims it has strengthened its VNF offering to bring initiatives like vCPE management closer to reality.
Wind River’s new Titanium Server CPE software adds to the vendor’s existing NFV portfolio. vCPE is one of the primary NFV use cases mooted by the telecoms industry; the improvements to Wind River’s software could mean all functions traditionally configured on each piece of hardware at the customer’s premises can now be handled centrally and instantly replicated across the cloud.
According to Wind River, the improvements to the Titanium Server portfolio (Titanium Server and Titanium Server CPE) will create faster network performance, allow networks to ramp up in size instantly and simplify the commissioning of new additions to any network. The vendor also claims the Titanium Server portfolio’s new software stands up to the carrier grade needed for telecom networks.
The cost of administering moves and changes, which is often time consuming and labour intensive, is one of the areas that telcos view as ripe for efficiency improvements. However, the virtualization of CPE functions has proved a challenging ambition to fulfil. The replacement of a system which individually configures each physical appliance (such as a switch or handset) with a centrally managed one could slash operating expenditure (OPEX). The savings would come by substituting the work of multiple physical configurations, requiring a site visit, with a single software change that can be published to all devices on all points of the telecoms cloud, using the new Titanium Server CPE platform, according to Wind River.
Among the new features added to Titanium Server are dynamic CPU scaling, greater system scalability, a virtual switch packet trace tool and the capacity for bulk provisioning and automated deployment. The new release also now supports QinQ tunnelling, IPv6 support for all interfaces and has updated support for all the latest high-performance network interface cards (NICs). It also supports VNF access to hardware acceleration devices, such as the Intel Communications Chipset 8925 to 8955 Series.
The new incarnation of Titanium Server CPE launch follows collaboration with NFV software partners Brocade, Check Point, InfoVista and Riverbed.
Titanium Server and Titanium Server CPE will be showcased at Mobile World Congress 2016.
Battles with Micro-Second Synchronicity By @JamesCarlini | @CloudExpo #Cloud
In the middle of World War II, very basic and primitive computers were designed to improve accuracy for naval gunfire. The first computers ran complex mathematical applications to calculate trajectories and gunfire from large battleships. The size of the computer was huge and was made up of vacuum-tube technology. You could literally walk into the computer. (And needed to, when a tube went bad and you had to replace it.)
Wearables in the Workplace | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData #Wearables
With the Apple Watch making its way onto wrists all over the world, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a staple in the workplace. In fact, Forrester reported that 68 percent of technology and business decision-makers characterize wearables as a top priority for 2015. Recognizing their business value early on, FinancialForce.com was the first to bring ERP to wearables, helping streamline communication across front and back office functions.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Kevin Roberts, GM of Platform at FinancialForce.com, discussed the value of business applications on wearable devices, use cases and predictions for the evolution of wearables in the workplace.
Why 2016 needs to be the year of granularity for cloud
(c)iStock.com/alengo
A recent business conversation led to the establishment of the fact that the data centre business is becoming more cutthroat than ever. Price wars, advanced offerings, upsells and what not are the usual tactics that have been used, but now competing forces are pressuring data centre providers to go beyond the usual and utilise something new.
Data centre businesses are now relying more and more on leveraging strategic footprints, global presence and larger capabilities to educate and work with customers at a local level – in the United States alone, there are an estimated 3 million data centres. With data centre services more abundant than grocery stores, how will the model sustain itself and what will determine the winners from the losers? My answer: granularity.
Granularity needed by MSPs
Managed service providers (MSPs) work day in and day out with end users. The core of their business revolves around providing cloud services and solutions to their customers. This may include computing power, database, hoisting, storage and many other services that are cloud based. MSPs, however, are facing a challenging time as well. For example, their relationship with data centres, where the need for granularity is evermore necessary.
Consider this: IOTA Services, a medium-scale MSP, has over 800 customers. All 800 customers are hosted on a third-party data centre owned by TrueNorth Data Centre. At the end of every month, TrueNorth Data Centre provides an invoice to IOTA Services for all their utilisation of the infrastructure within the data centre. IOTA Services then looks at what aspect of the infrastructure is used by each customer and then splits the invoice based on a homemade logic consisting of multiple Excel worksheets.
This is one of the biggest challenges faced by MSPs overall; the granularity of consumption. Data centres today can really propel into the success domain by helping MSPs deal with their challenges. Providing data and infrastructure services today is not enough and having more control over your information, infrastructure and the consumption of it is key. If data centres reply on MSPs to drive their business, it makes more sense to empower SPs with what they need to drive the business forward.
Ultimate value for end users
MSPs, on the contrary, are now able to completely view the usage of infrastructure and services at the data centre level and can easily make sense of all the services used by each of their customers. This plays a key role at the end-user level where say a small consulting company that uses IOTA Services to host some of their data and exchange server can now see exactly how much it costs from an IT aspect, assuming, of course, there are adequate margins and other business due diligence in place. End users may have proprietary software or nice software solutions they have deployed. Knowing how much in very precise terms becomes invaluable.
More reasons for granularity to be key
As software solutions have evolved, we are now at a time where the consumption of IT is a key aspect in every business. I have spoken about the need for chargeback and empowering IT to charge back the services and solutions they offer in an enterprise environment for this very reason. Unless you have such a unique offering that nobody else offers in the universe, you will face the same economic terms as everyone else.
Be it the economy, the need to lower expenses, the need to improve margins and the absolute need to scale; everyone has the same set of problems. Knowing where you spend, stopping the bleed and optimising the business are just essentials you should be doing anyway. As a business end user, I absolutely do not want to pay for anything that I do not use. This trend of consumption is growing – be it in our personal lives or the workplace. Enabling this value proposition forms the bedrock of business profitability.
Where to go from here?
We are all going to use a lot of data and IT services going forward. Data centres are amazing with the offerings they have, and so are MSPs who are providing much-needed solutions and services to millions of businesses and essentially helping organisations enable and embrace the cloud. Unless we have an element of granularity built into the billing of cloud solutions and services at every level, we are going to face the challenge of not being happy for what we pay. This is purely because human beings love granularity and businesses especially need granularity to make sense of what they are spending. Global economies are not helping either. Whether it is Canada, the United States or China, daily changing market conditions and economic conditions makes conducting business more difficult.
Let’s make 2016 the year of granularity and help bring more knowledge to what we consume. Let’s also engage in a meaningful conversation with our customers, clients, service providers and peers to know more about the consumption model, cloud, chargebacks, and of course granularity. Do you have ideas about cloud granularity? For the sake of value, let’s start a granular conversation.
Why Aren’t You Managing Your Macs? Part 2
Like any other new concept, accepting the fact that your organization has Macs in your network might take some time. (If you’re not sure what stage you’re in, read our blog post, “The 5 Stages of Acceptance for Managing Macs in Business” and find out. We’ll be waiting for you.) Griffith University didn’t waste any […]
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