The evolutionary nature of mobile presents a security-centric challenge for businesses with corporate content on these devices. Enterprises put themselves at risk when users access sensitive information through email and applications across smartphones and tablets, while mobile. Organizations can choose to ignore this security threat or enhance employee productivity through secure corporate containers.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Eric Owings, an enterprise account executive at AirWatch®, will discuss best practices and strategies to ensure global security and workforce enablement by leveraging enterprise mobility management (EMM) across the enterprise. He will also provide attendees with a deeper understanding of enterprise mobility in a connected ecosystem, while ensuring security and compliance in the cloud.Mar. 6, 2014 10:00 AM EST Reads: 1,294
Cascading is the popular Java-based application development framework for building Big Data applications on Apache Hadoop. This open source framework allows you to leverage existing skillsets such as Java, SQL, R, and more to create enterprise-grade applications without having to think in MapReduce.
In his session at 5th Big Data Expo, Alexis Roos, a Senior Solutions Architect focusing on Big Data solutions at Concurrent, Inc., will give an introduction to Cascading, how it works, and then dive into how enterprises can start building applications with Cascading. Come and see how companies like Twitter, eBay, Etsy, and other data-driven companies are taking advantage of Cascading and how Cascading is changing the business of Big Data in the enterprise.
The world’s largest and most successful private cloud operations are revolutionizing their approach to demand management. These organizations have recognized that while self-service portals are a component in the overall cloud architecture, these tools do not enable demand management. In fact, in many cases the portals and end-user interfaces don’t actually capture anything to do with demand, but instead force the user to enter the capacity “supply” requirements that they think will meet their demands. This is very different. Large enterprises have recognized the need to look beyond immediate requests to also model the “pipeline” of new demands that will be coming down the road. It is only by capturing new immediate requirements, an understanding of the pipeline and what is running in environments that organizations can possibly hope to accurately model demand and properly allocate compute, storage and network resources. 
Almost everyone sees the potential of Internet of Things but how can businesses truly unlock that potential. The key will be in the ability to discover business insight in the midst of an ocean of Big Data generated from billions of embedded devices via Systems of Discover. Businesses will also need to ensure that they can sustain that insight by leveraging the cloud for global reach, scale and elasticity. Without bringing these three elements together via Systems of Discover you either end up with an Internet of somethings and/or a big mess of data.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Mac Devine, a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, will focus on how to ensure businesses have the right plans in place for Systems of Discovery for the Internet-of-Things world we are entering.
Nominations for participating vendors will be accepted through Twitter at @ThingsExpo. The "Open Cloud Shoot-Out at @ThingsExpo New York," in which leading cloud providers are expected to participate, will be held live on stage at the event. The Shootout will provide the vendors with an opportunity to demonstrate the features and capabilities of their products, with a particular focus on interoperability, scalability, security, and reliability in terms of development, deployment, and management.
As businesses aspire to move more and more application workloads outside of the boundaries of their private cloud data centers, public cloud service providers are increasingly implementing a private cloud staple: resiliency.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, John Roese, SVP and Chief CTO at EMC Corporation, will summarize the key architectural tenets of resilient private cloud architectures. These tenets can be implemented in any service provider cloud implementation, regardless of hypervisor choice (e.g., VMware, Hyper-V, Xen), cloud orchestration software (e.g., vSphere, OpenStack), network implementation (e.g., SDN, NFV), or storage implementation (file, block, object). A resilient public cloud will naturally attract increased workload migration, and the rest of the session will describe foundational technologies that facilitate not only secure and seamless application workload migration, but secure and seamless data set migration as well. 
Fueled by the global economic situation, the government's focus on datacenter consolidation and the "Cloud First" initiative, Cloud Computing continues to be the buzzword of the year. As government agencies start to adopt cloud computing, additional challenges including security in the cloud have become prominent barriers to adoption.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Majed Saadi, Director of the Cloud Computing Practice at SRA International, will focus on providing a quick Cloud Computing technology update with an emphasis on current Cloud Computing security trends and drivers. Examples of these trends include: the utilization and evaluation of Clouds in both active and passive surveillance systems and the use of High Performance Clouds for expanding scientist ability to access data. He will also introduces best practices and lessons learned for securing both public and private cloud environments. It offers insight into how Cloud Computing coupled with other technical advancements i...
With Windows Server 2003 end of extended support approaching, enterprises must begin their migration planning for all affected production applications. There are a variety of approaches and many people will take a “mix and match” approach. Whatever the approach, it’s important to have a migration plan now – 200 business days goes by quickly when some applications take weeks to migrate. This is the perfect opportunity to move those applications to the Cloud. There’s a way to move your applications and modernize (move to the cloud) at the same time.
Software development, like engineering, is a craft that requires the application of creative approaches to solve problems given a wide range of constraints. However, while engineering design may be craftwork, the production of most designed objects relies on a standardized and automated manufacturing process. By contrast, much of what's typically involved when moving an application from prototype to production and, indeed, maintaining the application through its lifecycle remains craftwork. 
Are you re-creating existing technology silos in the cloud? If so, your entire enterprise investment in the cloud is at risk.
From the perspective of IT, organizational silos seem to be the root of all problems. Every line of business, every department, every functional area has its own requirements, its own technology preferences, and its own way of doing things. They have historically invested in specialized components for narrow purposes, which IT must then conventionally integrate via application middleware – increasing the cost, complexity, and brittleness of the overall architecture.
Now those same stakeholders want to move to the cloud. Save money with SaaS apps! Reduce data center costs with IaaS! Build a single private cloud we can all share! But breaking down the technical silos is easier said than done. There are endless problems: Static interfaces. Legacy technology. Inconsistent policies, rules, and processes. Crusty old middleware that predates the cloud. And everybod...
Recent high-profile events (2010 Haitian Earthquake, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami, 2013 Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda) have highlighted the growing importance played by the international community in successful humanitarian assistance and disaster response. These events also showcased the critical importance of quickly providing robust information technology resources to response effort participants. In June 2010, in support of its continuing effort to foster international collaboration, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) initiated a dialog with the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) to discuss this and other aspects of geospatial data information-sharing across the international community. In response to this request the NCOIC through the use of a cloud services brokerage paradigm, built and demonstrated a federated cloud computing infrastructure capable of managing the electronic exchange of geospatial data. The effort also led to the development of ...
Cloud computing is changing our world, sharing common platforms for global information exchange. Self-service computing makes the Internet come alive, helping users visualize and analyze location-aware information. Configurable applications deliver a solution framework for integration, collaboration, and efficiency. Cloud-based applications integrate and synthesize information from many sources, facilitating communication and collaboration, and breaking down barriers between institutions, disciplines, and cultures. Online platforms enable real-time access from everyone. Web connectivity provides a common information source, elaborating, collaborating, and sharing holistic approaches for content awareness. 
Although PaaS is new, it's rapidly gaining momentum, with growth projected at 48 percent annually by Technavio, the research firm, and topping $6 billion in value by 2016. If PaaS is treated as a strategic opportunity to align agendas across IT and across the business, it may well prove to be a ʺonce in a generationʺ opportunity to clarify, improve, and strengthen everything developers do.
As with any new technology or approach to doing business, PaaS will appeal to different groups for different reasons. The clear business value is that PaaS is added at the application layer. For ISVs, PaaS can help extend the availability of a traditional software product or enable organizations to add new capabilities to their existing IT spectrum. It's also helpful to anyone wishing to achieve productivity gains, speed time to results, or reduce their costs. But like any technological shift, PaaS adoption requires changes in how people work and demands collaboration if it is to be as successful as...
This first person “in the trenches” enterprise Public Cloud story candidly examines the project from inception to delivery. Attendees will hear first-hand the real-world challenges, opportunities, lessons-learned, and what it takes to architect and implement a real-world application in the public cloud.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Brian McCallion, founder of New York City-based consultancy Bronze Drum, will focus on the organizational, cultural, and technical hurdles to designing and implementing a strategic application in the Public Cloud in a regulated industry.
Enterprises need an API tier to meet the demands imposed by mobile technology. The impact of next generation of API servers on mobile and middleware development can be equated to the impact J2EE application servers like WebLogic, JBoss or WebSphere had on web development. It enables enterprises to surface business critical data residing in traditional back ends, databases and service tiers on-premises or on the cloud to multi-channel mobile apps.
An API tier is technology “super glue” that ties together endpoints of disparate enterprise systems, then exposing a uniform API to all clients. The clients include web browsers, mobile smartphones, tablets, and wearables. Each has its own set of capabilities and limitations and therefore unique user experiences. An API tier works on top of existing data and services to leverage existing systems in the context of mobile and next-generation clients. It acts as a natural bridge between front end and back end, providing for increased efficiency...
In our last post "OpenNebula vs. OpenStack: User Needs vs. Vendor Driven" we stated that"OpenStack penetration in the market is relatively small compared with the investment made by vendors and VCs". We have received several emails from people asking for the numbers that support this statement. This conclusion arises from the comparison between OpenNebula and OpenStack user base, a well as between the resources invested in development and marketing by each of them.
Gordon E. Moore's famously predicted tech explosion was prophetic, but it may have hit a snag. While the number of transistors on integrated circuits has doubled approximately every two years since his 1965 paper, the ability to process and transact on data hasn't. We're now ingesting data faster than we can make sense of it, leaving computing at an impasse. Without a new approach, the innovation promised by the combination of big data and internet scale may be like the flying cars we thought we'd see by 2014. Fortunately, this is is not the case, as in-memory computing offers a way to bridge this impasse.ning the doors to mass adoptiong of in-memory computing through open source.
If the future of federated controllers is based on service layering, then how do multiple controllers manage the same device? Is there a requirement for state synchronization? Do they share information about device operation or configuration? Is there a need for controllers that are managing different aspects of the same device to be coordinated in what they do?
As with anything worth asking, the answer is: it depends. It is certainly the case that in a tiered controller architecture where one controller is managing things like basic configuration and another controller is working higher up the stack (managing a service, for instance), there is not a need to keep high fidelity replications of state across both controllers. Specific configuration information that might be important to the lower-level controller can likely be spared from the services controllers. In the cases that the services controller needs to know things like configuration state (it might be required to know VLAN provisioning, for instance), the services controller can likely query the device to get the state.
One of the most often questions/feedback we get regarding Windows 8.1 is where is my start menu. These conversations can get very passionate, and usually turn into a commentary around on how much we miss our start menu. I am sure some folks want to punch the screen.
I totally understand your frustration and I went through this as well. While Windows 8 does provide a big change to how we do things in the interface, it did make me re-think why I used my start menu. What I learned from my own usage and talking to all you wonderful folks, is that the start menu is used for small common set of minimum tasks. Here is a list of the most common things folks like yourselves have told me, and I personally had problems finding in Windows 8.1:
•Shutdown and Sign Out
•Search
•Launch and Find Recently Installed Applications
Like all of you once I learned how to get around Windows 8 and find these basic tasks, I found that I will never need my start menu again. In this article, I am here to help show you how to accomplish these tasks with ease in Windows 8.1. In the end I hope you learn some new tips and tricks to improve how you use Windows 8.1,
Back in the noughties I made the conscious decision as a Storage guy to immerse myself into what was being termed server virtualization and understanding the product offerings of a relatively new company named VMware. To this day I remember the incredulous looks and responses I received from my Storage counterparts, who were convinced that the VMware fad was nothing more than a system admin tool. Indeed the organizations that were early adopters of VMware ended up assigning the virtualization responsibility to the system admins team; at no point was there ever a thought that a dedicated virtualization team could or should be established. Fast forward to 2014 and virtualization teams are the norm and Storage administrators are constantly being hard pressed to have a better understanding of VMware as they provision and manage virtualized environments. Such a culture change was unthinkable 10 years ago, yet here we are again with the emergence of another silo, the Converged Infrastructure team.
Previously in this series, I explained the evolution of unstructured data and how storage requirements have changed over the past decade due to changes from above and below: the massive growth in unstructured data, mostly immutable data, requires cost-efficient, easy-to-scale storage architectures without the complexity of file systems. I noted that object storage was designed for this purpose, and that in addition to scalability and efficiency benefits, object storage also provides great benefits when it comes to accessibility as REST and other protocols make it very easy for applications to connect to the storage directly and give users access to their data through all sorts of mobile and web applications.
Looking back to one of my predictions for 2014, I had posited that traditional storage solutions labeled cloud will no longer fly this year, and some of the big-iron vendors will be forced to offer their wares as pay-as-you-go services. Perhaps this was stating an obvious eventuality as the market moves to a more cost-effective consumption model – but lo and behold, only two months into the year, it is already happening.
You may have seen that a large vendor introduced a pay-as-you-go model for their on-premise storage. While geared toward managed service providers seeking to provide cloud storage to their customers, this new payment model is the first volley in what will likely be a pay-as-you-go tidal wave for hardware. Such models are certainly laudable efforts, bestowing customers the benefit of not having to purchase multiple years’ worth of capacity from day one at the current pricing.
I’ve been traveling the last few weeks shooting some videos for VMware PEX and RSA. When that happens, my browser tabs get crowded with the various stories I’m interested in but will read later. This time they all seemed to hover around Identity Theft. When I got home, in my awaiting physical mail was a letter from Target. I also returned something to a national hardware store and the cashier tried to crumple my credit-card-info-having receipt into a trash can. Kismet.
It's that time of the year, when resolutions promising grand changes in our lives are made - and more often than we'd like to admit, broken. Along with the resolutions comes advice on how to make them "stick." In other words, how to make them habitual.
Many folks still cite the old "21 days to form a habit" wisdom that has, in more recent research, been proven to be less than accurate. Turns out it takes longer than that for most people, with only a few actually able to form a habit that quickly. Unless it's something bad for us*. Then it seems to become a habit in under 2 days. Go figure. 
If you thought that cyber security threats were troubling in 2013, then you should brace yourself for the onslaught that's very likely in 2014. A new generation of security threats stemming from progressive business technology trends -- such as BYOD, mobility and cloud services adoption -- will expose organizations to a multitude of new risks.
According to the findings of a global security survey sponsored by Dell, the majority of IT leaders around the world say they don’t view these threats as top security concerns and they're not prioritizing how to find and address them across the many points of origin.
Today’s blog post is headed back to the basics. I’ve been using and talking about APM tools for so many years sometimes it’s hard to remember that feeling of not knowing the associated terms and concepts. So for anyone who is looking to learn about APM, this blog is for you. 
In part one of this three-part series I summed up how the way we produce and consume data has evolved over the last three decades, creating a need for new storage methodologies that can help enterprises store and effectively manage massive pools of data. I concluded that the immutable nature of unstructured data storage holds the key to solving the scalability and availability problems of traditional file storage.
Unstructured data has traditionally been stored in file-based systems, which enable users to access files simultaneously and modify them. This is great functionality for office environments, where multiple users might indeed be updating each other's spreadsheets, but it is complete overkill when storing data that will probably never be changed again. DDN developed our Web Object Scaler (WOS) solution with this "unchanging" aspect of data in mind.
Convincing the astute executive who is cautious in not making an impetuous decision on an APM investment can prove to be challenging. Consider the amount of due diligence that is brought to bear in the decision making process. The wide array of APM technologies that need to be reviewed can be intimidating.
The selection criteria for application monitoring doesn't have to be an arduous one, lending credence to the idea that an APM solution can be simplified, understood, and implemented. I'm suggesting that the critical success factors in the adoption of APM center around the End-User-Experience (EUE) and the integration touch points with existing ITIL/ITSM processes.
Application developers are aware (you are aware, aren't you?) that when applications are scaled using most modern load balancing services that the IP address of the application requests actually belong to the load balancing service. Application developers are further aware that this means they must somehow extract the actual client IP address from somewhere else, like the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header.
Now, that's pretty much old news. Like I said, application developers are aware of this already.
As SDN moves closer to large-scale deployments, the issue of controller scaling is becoming a hotter topic. The consensus seems to favor some form of distributed cluster environment, likely in the form of federated clusters. But how should these federations be formed?
The first thing to think about is the blast radius for controllers. Even if a controller could scale to manage every node in the network, it is unlikely that you would want that to be the design. It simply creates too large a maintenance and failure domain. Even with a redundant controller, the issues with expansive failure domains are prohibitively scary.
So most people understand that typical large-scale deployments are likely to utilize a multi-controller architecture. But how do you decide how many controllers you need?
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