Cloud environments have created situations that allow users, customers, consumers, and employees to access Public, Intranet, and Extranet applications from different locations, devices, and as different personas. The focus of all the Internet and enterprise front-end applications today is to enhance the user experience. In addition, with advances in mobility and BYOD, the line between public and private becomes a deep shade of gray.
At the same time, organizations are leveraging SaaS applications, such as Google Apps and DropBox, for their internal business communication and collaboration. This opens up challenges in providing a universal identity for the user, while at the same time retaining the flexibility to segregate access depending on the scenario. While cloud computing environments may offer different levels of abstraction to its users, federated identity management does not leverage these abstractions; each user must set up her identity management solution. This situation is...Mar. 11, 2014 02:39 PM EDT
SYS-CON Events announced today that Ambernet Technologies, the innovative “Cloud Management Center” company, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 14th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 10–12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Ambernet Technologies is a leading global provider of cloud management software (CloudTruOps) and IT professional services to the enterprise, service provider and government markets. CloudTruOps is the industry’s first infrastructure-independent and service-aware software solution that provides a fully transactional single pane of glass for cloud service provisioning & orchestration, governance, policy, security, performance, self-service storefront, and billing/chargeback for multiple clouds. Ambernet's IT professional services provide consulting services, solutions, and support. Ambernet is a global company with headquarters in Dallas, Texas and regional offices in Toronto, Canada, and Bangalore, India.
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.
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...
There are people who take life slowly, accept it on its terms, meditate, read about meditation, and internalize books like "Wherever You Go, There You Are," a bestseller by a guy with a hyphenated name. I'm more of a Malcolm Gladwell fan -- Outliers or his newest book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants."
Maybe I'm just naturally the type that will spend 10,000 hours practicing, sharpening, mastering, thinking about the advantages a startup has over leaders in the market, getting back in the game. I've been in enterprise software for 30 years and the cloud since its formation. A long time ago, I faced the fact that I don't have the basketball gene (although I do coach several boys' sports teams) and I'm pretty sure meditating will not increase my productivity as a start-up CEO. I could be wrong on the meditating part.
Proponents of pure software infrastructures often point to rapid provisioning (like right now, push a button and blam! Instant scale) as one of the reasons to "go software." Superficially this is true. If your infrastructure is all software (or virtual, if you prefer) then when you need more X you can simply grab some available resources and provision more X. No procurement process, no PO, no approvals, no waiting.
But did you notice what's ultimately required for this to happen? Available resources.
The dirty little secret of on-demand scalability is that no matter what, you need available resources. You need a pool of available (idle) resources from which to draw in order to provision, well, anything. Whether you need to scale server, storage, or network services, those services have to be provisioned on some kind of hardware.
The term "Big Data" is quite possibly one of the most difficult IT-related terms to pin down ever. There are so many potential types of, and applications for Big Data that it can be a bit daunting to consider all of the possibilities. Thankfully, for IT operations staff, Big Data is mostly a bunch of new technologies that are being used together to solve some sort of business problem. In this blog post I'm going to focus on what IT Operations teams need to know about big data technology and support.
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,
IoT is not a new concept. Wikipedia says: “The term Internet of Things was proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999 though the concept has been discussed in the literature since at least 1991.” In its early stages, the concept relates to the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and how “if all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, they could be managed and inventoried by computers.” Finally, Wikipedia adds that, “Equipping all objects in the world with minuscule identifying devices or machine-readable identifiers could transform daily life.” And this is exactly what is happening today and also what makes IoT more important than ever.
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.
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.
One of the questions I have been asked for a while is how do you set static IP address in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Well you can!
While it is like a DHCP reservation for the VM itself (the VM is still DHCP configured), it is treated as a static IP to Windows Azure. Now this does involve new Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets. You will need to download and install the Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets (possibly again) to get the new functionality. 
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.
The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) has begun offering an open process that will enable governments, agencies and businesses to create and manage a secure, hybrid IT computing environment quickly and cost effectively.
Known as the NCOIC Rapid Response Capability (NRRC™), the process defines how to build a federated cloud infrastructure that provides a foundation for information sharing within a secure environment, enabling a diverse group of users to exchange data via their different technology applications so they can work on a common project or problem. 
When considering the major benefits of modern cloud computing, the lower operational overhead of the cloud should be high on anyone’s list. But when it comes to sensitive data — such as healthcare, finance, retail or government data — security measures are needed to ensure privacy and abide by regulations. Such security measures may be prohibitive in terms of operational overhead.
Companies are faced with finding the right balance between the lower operational overhead offered by the cloud and the higher operational overhead required by traditional cloud security.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
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