In his keynote at @ThingsExpo, Chris Matthieu, Director of IoT Engineering at Citrix and co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, focused on building an IoT platform and company. He provided a behind-the-scenes look at Octoblu’s platform, business, and pivots along the way (including the Citrix acquisition of Octoblu).
IoT Way of Thinking | @ThingsExpo @Ericsson @EsmeSwartz #IoT #M2M
The buzz continues for cloud, data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) and their collective impact across all industries. But a new conversation is emerging – how do companies use industry disruption and technology enablers to lead in markets undergoing change, uncertainty and ambiguity? Organizations of all sizes need to evolve and transform, often under massive pressure, as industry lines blur and merge and traditional business models are assaulted and turned upside down. In this new data-driven world, marketplaces reign supreme while interoperability, APIs and applications deliver unique customer value for new go-to-market models based on a cloud and IoT way of working. Analytics, IoT service mashups, fail fast business models and contextual data streams enable data to become the new currency for digital citizens and businesses and will determine business success or failure.
Could Crowdsourced Testing Be the Future? | @CloudExpo #Cloud
This is how a typical software product lifecycle works : You gather requirements, build a prototype, detail out the architecture and design, develop the product, test it, deploy the product, handle migration and maintenance and ensure product support. This is a closed loop where the Product Support team gathers new requirements which are eventually deployed.
Conficker is commonest criminal in the cloud says ThreatCloud report
Three families of malware account for 40% of all the crime on the cloud across the globe, according to a new report from security firm Checkpoint.
The company’s ThreatCloud report looked at statistics drawn from intelligence feeding in from Check Point’s global presence in October 2015. It identified more than 1,500 different malware families globally active in that month alone. The ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map uses software agents and monitors to tracks how and where cyberattacks are taking place worldwide in real time.
Three malware families, the Conflickers, Salitys and Cutwails, accounted for 40% of all recorded attacks. The report also uncovered a new trend for criminals to try to assume control of networks by focusing on remote control of infected PCs. Increasingly, these are used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) and spamming campaigns against service providers.
Attacks on individuals also rose sharply, though these tended to be concentrated around malware families that are involved in ransomware scams. Identity theft and the stealing of users’ information also rose sharply. The use of kits, such as the Neutrino ransomware exploit kit Fareit malware, which steals user information from web browsers and emails, increased dramatically. In one month this criminal modus operandum rose from being the 93rd most used scam to the 10th most common form of malware seen in October.
International organisations, such as cloud service operators, are most likely to be targeted by Conficker which accounted for 20% of all attacks globally. The UK experienced a lower number of attacks than many countries European nations and was ranked 110th most vulnerable region out of 133 target countries globally. By comparison Germany ranked 93rd, Switzerland 89th, Spain 57th and France 54th. Italy is home to Europe’s most endangered cloud, being the 40th most likely country to house a victim of an attack.
It’s easy for hackers to make small changes to malware code to enable it to bypass conventional cloud defences, according to Checkpoint’s UK regional director Simon Moor. “Companies should consider deploying advanced technologies,” said Moor.
The ThreatCloud database holds over 250 million addresses analysed for bot discovery, over 11 million malware signatures and over 5.5 million infected websites.
China Telecom launches cloud service to Indian market
The Indian subsidiary of China Telecom (China Telecom India) has launched a business cloud service to Chinese businesses operating on the India market. The service, it says, will straddle the public private computing divide and cater to demand for hybrid cloud systems.
The new hybrid cloud service offers professional system management, security and disaster recovery, along with 24-hour, 7 days a week customer service in Chinese.
The launch ceremony took place at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Delhi, India. With over 100 Chinese enterprises among the audience, the launch of the service was overseen by Cheng Guangzhong, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese government.
“We proudly launch this cloud service in India to provide safe, convenient and quality cloud computing services, helping Chinese enterprises to tackle IT deployment problems in the new era. With this cloud service, we can provide new development impetus and create new opportunities for Chinese enterprises in international expansion,” said Alen Wang, Managing Director of China Telecom India.
This service is part of a China Telecom strategy, The Belt and Road Initiative, to invest in cloud-based resources in the core regions and key countries in Asia Pacific, Europe and America, said Wang. “We are committed to building an ecosystem that fosters win-win cooperation and open collaboration, and we partner with world class players in offering cloud computing products and services to the Chinese enterprises expanding overseas,” said Wang.
Hong Kong based China Telecom now has branches in 26 countries across Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is now launching its FD LTE and TD LTE 4G mobile networks across China.
So You Want to Centralize? By @Flint_Brenton | @CloudExpo #Cloud
So you want to centralize your enterprise? Smart choice – but it’s important to take some factors into consideration if you want to have success.
Developers need to ensure representation from each geographic location; understand current development processes and tools; and comprehend the biggest challenges. Furthermore, you need to be aware of, and sensitive to, your project teams’ preferences for existing tools and aversion to change.
Telefónica and Huawei team up over cloud migration
Equipment maker Huawei and B2B service provider Telefónica Business Solutions are to jointly offer a global service migrating clients’ internal IT systems to the cloud, reports Telecoms.com.
Under the terms of their agreement they will help enterprises to outsource the running of their own computing, storage and backup services to Telefónica’s data centres without making any infrastructure investment. The cloud services offered will be charged on a pay per use basis. According to a Huawei statement, the virtual servers will be run as ‘bare metal’ (i.e. without hypervisors.) Telefónica and Huawei will jointly run a Cloud innovation centre with the aim to contribute to the OpenStack community and help to create new cloud services.
The logistics of the arrangement involve Huawei using Telefónica’s Open Cloud service based on OpenStack in eight Telefónica data centres. Telefónica will use Huawei’s knowledge and experience on its public cloud service in the Chinese market. The first countries targeted for the service are Brazil, Mexico and Chile, where it will be launched in the first quarter of 2016. Five additional locations are planned for the same year.
Telefónica will be in a better position to serve its enterprise customers with an easily scalable system at a competitive cost, according to Juan Carlos Lopez-Vives, CEO Telefónica Business Solutions. “The combination of Telefónica’s and Huawei’s capabilities represents the best guarantee for our customers,” said Lopez-Vives.
Testing Challenges of IoT | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #API #InternetOfThings
The tech industry has been abuzz about the potential of the Internet of Things for the past several years, and with good reason. As more devices become connected to one another, society steps even closer to the ultimate goal of an overarching, cohesive network facilitating communication between everyday objects and tools. The possibilities of a fully realized IoT are practically endless – so too, however, are the concerns surrounding IoT when it comes to software test management.
Why You Need Usability Testing By @Pavankodedala | @CloudExpo #Cloud
Usability testing helps you to identify whether the product meets the user expectations and needs. It allows delivering a product that is more intuitive to use. You must test your website for its usability. If you haven’t got any complaint on your website, it doesn’t mean that all the visitors are using your website to their full satisfaction. In fact, they are quickly navigating away from your website.
Why culture change is essential to fulfil the promise of digital-first public services
(c)iStock.com/Tuomas Kujansuu
This month the CBI published a major report outlining its vision for the future of public services.
For anyone in local government, it is well worth a read. Not only does it stress the critical importance of getting our public services online but it also points out that while we are making progress, there is much more that needs to be done.
Here there are three clear areas for local government to focus on.
The first is in doing a better job of understanding and meeting the expectations of citizens when it comes to the way services are delivered. While 77% of people go online to find or use services every day, only 41% interact with public authorities in this way. Councils are already falling short of expectations.
The second area for focus is what appears to be a lack of digital literacy among public sector leaders. The CBI’s figures show some 75% of council leaders think their councils embrace technology to improve local services. Ask the public if that is the case and only 29% share that view. Without greater digital literacy among local government managers and leaders, the sector is unlikely to be able to accelerate the delivery of digital services in the future.
The last issue comes from the way the public sector builds digital public services. Here, it is clear that the old ways of procuring services and managing projects aren’t necessarily fit for today’s digital purposes. To reshape local government, we need to take a fresh approach to planning and strategy.So how can local government leaders address these issues?
Organisations need to build knowledge among managers and teams who deliver services so they understand what the digital-first agenda means for them
A first step is for leaders in local government to ensure they and their teams retain a clear understanding of what digital by default really means for organisational strategy.
Strategy which is focused on simply using technology to cut costs will not be sufficient to deliver digital public services in the long term. Digital by default is about putting technology at the heart of the way councils plan and do business, something which demands deeper change than simply ‘lifting and shifting’ existing services online.
A second area to focus on is in bridging the digital skills deficit at all levels of local government.
At the top of organisations, councils need to make sure their leaders have a full appreciation of the role technology must play. This means giving the chief information officer and technology experts a greater role and influence in the planning and delivery of services so that digital is ‘baked in’ to the decision making process from beginning to end.
More broadly, organisations need to build knowledge among managers and teams who deliver services so they understand what the digital first agenda means for them.
By investing in knowledge and skills, a more ‘digital-centric’ culture will evolve. To support this culture it’s important to remember that transformation of public services and the organisations that deliver them cannot happen without investment in technology.
Here, finance directors, chief executives and those leading service areas or directorates need to look at the kind of investments that the likes of Bristol City Council and Maidenhead and Windsor are making to transform and reinvent the way the organisations work in order to understand the crucial role technology plays in service transformation.
There is no doubt that delivering digital public services will stretch and challenge local government in the coming years. But if there is one thing we have learnt during the past four years of budget cuts, it is that local government is a sector with a track record of rising to and overcoming the big challenges when it matters.