The Importance of Monitoring Containers By Kevin Goldberg With the rise of Docker, Kubernetes, and other container technologies, the growth of microservices has skyrocketed among dev teams looking to innovate on a faster release cycle. This has enabled teams to finally realize their DevOps goals to ship and iterate quickly in a continuous delivery model. Why containers are growing in popularity is no surprise — they’re extremely easy to spin up or down, but come with an unforeseen issue. However, without the right foresight, DevOps and IT teams may lose a lot of visibility into these containers resulting in operational blind spots and even more haystacks to find the presumptive performance issue needle. If your team is looking towards containers and microservices as an operational change in how you decide to ship your product, you can’t afford bugs or software issue... (more)

Microsoft's Ballmer: "I See Nothing But Opportunity"

Steve Ballmer presented a lengthy keynote and partner session at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Minneapolis. Below is the complete transcript of the session. Steve Ballmer It is my honor, privilege, excitement, to be here with you today. For all the things I do -- and many of you have had a chance to hear this many times as I travel the world -- but everything I get to do working for Microsoft, there's one thing that's most energizing for me -- one thing, one thing -- meeting with our partners. And you say, this guy gives this line to every audience he meets with. Nooo. What's special about this group? What gets me particularly pumped up? What is particularly exciting? Our partners are a unique blend, you are, of two elements. Number one, you've made a bet on us. You believe in us, you want us to win, you need us to win. You're kind of like employees... (more)

Who Are The All-Time Heroes of i-Technology?

I wonder how many people, as I did, found themselves thrown into confusion by the death last week of Jean Ichbiah (pictured), inventor of Ada.  Learning that the inventor of a computer programming language is already old enough to have lived 66 years (Ichbiah was 66 when he succumbed to brain cancer) is a little like learning that your 11-year-old daughter has grown up and left home or that the first car you ever bought no longer is legal because it runs on gasoline in an age where all automobiles must run on water. How can something as novel, as new, as a computing language possibly already be so old-fangled that an early practitioner like Ichbiah can already no longer be with us? The thought was so disquieting that it took me immediately back to the last time I wrote about Ichbiah, and indeed about Ada Lovelace for whom his language was named. It was in the context ... (more)

Application Performance Management Done Right

What is Application Performance Management (APM)? Like a lot of good questions, it depends on your business needs.  What is the goal of an ideal APM?  Does it mean 99.999% availability?  Perhaps it is a favorable overall end user experience when using the application but, as compared to what? My point is that Application Performance Management / Monitoring means different things to different businesses and it can even depend on the application involved. What is the Goal of APM “Begin with the goal in mind.” I wish I could take credit for that quote.  What is the goal of the APM? Have you listed out the objectives you hope to obtain from your APM strategy?  This approach will help your team ensure satisfaction with the final solution chosen.  Here are some examples. Minimum of 99.999% availability with lower Mean Time To Know (MTTK) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) Less ... (more)

The Hype About .NET

You've heard the hype about .NET. You've read a couple of vague articles about dynamic discovery and invocation, service-oriented architecture, and how SOAP and a handful of other XML standards are forever changing the software industry. These ideas have intrigued you and you're interested in learning more - or at the very least, you recognize the importance of being able to add these acronyms to your resumé. In either case, you want to explore the world of .NET, but are unable or unwilling to fork over a thousand bucks for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET product. This article is for you. The Eclipse Project Visual Studio .NET is not the only option for exploring .NET in a commercial-quality integrated development environment (IDE); it's just the most expensive one. On November 5, 2001, IBM released the Eclipse project (with an estimated value of $40 million worth o... (more)

Identifying and Brokering Mathematical Web Services

An important part of the Web service vision being promoted by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and others is that of automated service discovery, the idea being that when we need a particular kind of service we will no longer have to go out and search for it manually; our computer will do it for us. Nowhere is this more necessary than in scientific computation. International collaboration here is already the norm and is increasingly being supported by the Grid, where specialized resources are connected by high-speed, high-bandwidth networks. To realize this vision requires mechanisms for describing what services actually do, and for reasoning about those descriptions in the presence of a user's problem. MONET: Mathematics on the NET The MONET project is a two-year investigation into how service discovery can be performed for mathematical Web services, funded by the ... (more)

The SaaS Customer Lifecycle: Seven Pitfalls

Software vendors transitioning from a license software model to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model have the opportunity for a more sustainable and predictable business model but face the potential for significant customer lifecycle missteps in the transition. Current SaaS providers know that improvements in the customer lifecycle can have a substantial impact on their profitability. Selling to the right people and nurturing long-term relationships with these decision makers is a continuing challenge and is one of the keys to success. Ongoing efforts to achieve this in an effective, repeatable, and efficient manner will result in happy customers and a more profitable SaaS business. Whether you are a current SaaS provider or are just converting here are some pitfalls in the customer lifecycle: 1. Successfully Selling to the Wrong People A key attribute of a successfu... (more)

Examining the True Cost of Big Data

The good news about the Big Data market is that we generally all agree on the definition of Big Data, which has come to be known as data that has volume, velocity and variety where businesses need to collect, store, manage and analyze in order to derive business value or otherwise known as the "4 V's." However, the problem with such a broad definition is that it can mean different things to different people once you start to put some real values next to those V's. Let's be honest, Volume can be a different thing to different organizations. To some it is anything above 10 terabytes of managed data in their BI environment and to others it is petabyte scale and nothing less. Likewise velocity can be multi-billions of daily records coming into the enterprise from various external and internal networks. When it really comes down to it, each business situation will be qu... (more)

11th Cloud Expo: A–Z of Big Data & Cloud Computing Topics

What's "Cloud 2.0"? Who's behind "SHadoop"? Why is the Cloud so important to the Big Data boom? Are you turning your data into dollars? Which cloud model is right for your company? Register to attend 11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley and get your questions answered November 5–8. Here's what you can look forward to, expressed numerically: 1 Convenient Venue – Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA 2 Interlocking Themes – Cloud Computing & Big Data 4 Content-Packed Days – November 5–8, 2012 6 Industry Keynotes 8 Distinct Parallel Tracks 174 Breakout Technical & Strategy Sessions 203 Expert Speakers & Panelists 90,000 Square Feet of Expo Floor and 1 Not-To-Be-Missed Opening Night Welcome Reception on Nov 5 ! The event is co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo. Registration includes both events. Whether you are a large enterprise, a growing busines... (more)

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Keynote Speaker Profile: Jonathan Bryce – OpenStack

With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in two weeks' time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA - co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo - let's introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the West Coast conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing & Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud and/or Big Data solutions that are transforming the world of Enterprise IT? CLOUD EXPO SPEAKER NAME: Jonathan Bryce TWITTER: @jbryce ORGANIZATION: OpenStack Foundation 11TH CLOUD EXPO OPENING KEYNOTE TITLE: Open Cloud – Place Your Bets! SESSION DESCRIPTION: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/23909... (more)

WebRTC, #IoT and #API Gateways | @ThingsExpo #UCaaS #RTC #WebRTC

Defining Web 3.0 and Developing the Fastest Enterprise Mobility Apps I value a strong opinion.  Especially when the opinionated is an expert and willing to stand up and place a flag in the sand.  In this article, my ambitious friend, programming guru, gamer, colleague, bona fide geek and mobility expert Peter Rogers shares his opinions on the meaning of Web 3.0 and how it will impact mobile application development and the enterprise.  While he is English and prone to use words like whilst, that should not be held against him. I have two ambitions in life: to be the first person to define Web 3.0 in a meaningful way; and to be able to reform Atomic Kitten to sing at my next birthday. Only one of these is achievable so here goes. The Web is changing quite drastically and there are ten key factors that define the next "Web" hereafter as Web 3.0: The dropping of legacy b... (more)