Navigating Today’s Cloud Market: Consider Infrastructure as-a-Service

Cloud, cloud, cloud. There are so many commercials and advertisements talking about cloud, you could start a new drinking game each time you hear the word. What is this cloud thing we keep hearing about? There are many kinds of cloud offerings today, but the category I want to focus on in this blog post is Infrastructure as-a-Service (IaaS). IaaS delivers hardware, networking, and storage in a virtual form that is rented to customers instead of customers having to purchase and manage these individual components.

Spotlight

The Things Industries

The Things Industries is a full services IoT firm helping companies understanding and implementing LoRaWAN

OTHER ARTICLES
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

PEWC Makes Easy Transition to SAP HANA with Cisco HyperFlex

Article | October 3, 2023

Pacific Electric Wire & Cable Co. (PEWC) is a manufacturer in Taiwan with subsidiaries in China, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. Like many companies, they had been facing the looming change over to SAP HANA. They were ready to switch over from their older SAP software and take advantage of SAP HANA apps and databases. They also had a goal of speeding up operational analytics and insights. But with the change to HANA, they needed all new infrastructure, certified by SAP, to support it.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, IT Systems Management

A Look at Trends in IT infrastructure and Operations for 2022

Article | September 14, 2023

We’re all hoping that 2022 will finally end the unprecedented challenges brought by the global pandemic and things will return to a new normalcy. For IT infrastructure and operations organizations, the rising trends that we are seeing today will likely continue, but there are still a few areas that will need special attention from IT leaders over the next 12 to 18 months. In no particular order, they include: The New Edge Edge computing is now at the forefront. Two primary factors that make it business-critical are the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid workplace models where employees will continue working remotely, either from home or a branch office, resulting in an increased adoption of cloud-based businesses and communications services. With the rising focus on remote and hybrid workplace cultures, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have continued to expand their solutions and add new features. As people start moving back to office, they are likely to want the same experience they had from home. In a typical enterprise setup, branch office traffic is usually backhauled all the way to the data center. This architecture severely impacts the user experience, so enterprises will have to review their network architectures and come up with a roadmap to accommodate local egress between branch offices and headquarters. That’s where the edge can help, bringing it closer to the workforce. This also brings an opportunity to optimize costs by migrating from some of the expensive multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or private circuits to relatively low-cost direct internet circuits, which is being addressed by the new secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that is being offered by many established vendors. I anticipate some components of SASE, specifically those related to software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), local egress, and virtual private network (VPN), will drive a lot of conversation this year. Holistic Cloud Strategy Cloud adoption will continue to grow, and along with software as a service (SaaS), there will be renewed interest in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), albeit for specific workloads. For a medium-to-large-sized enterprise with a substantial development environment, it will still be cost-prohibitive to move everything to the cloud, so any cloud strategy would need to be holistic and forward-looking to maximize its business value. Another pandemic-induced shift is from using virtual machines (VMs) as a consumption unit of compute to containers as a consumption unit of software. For on-premises or private cloud deployment architectures that require sustainable management, organizations will have to orchestrate containers and deploy efficient container security and management tools. Automation Now that cloud adoption, migration, and edge computing architectures are becoming more prevalent, the legacy methods of infrastructure provisioning and management will not be scalable. By increasing infrastructure automation, enterprises can optimize costs and be more flexible and efficient—but only if they are successful at developing new skills. To achieve the goal of “infrastructure as a code” will require a shift in the perspective on infrastructure automation to one that focuses on developing and sustaining skills and roles that improve efficiency and agility across on-premises, cloud, and edge infrastructures. Defining the roles of designers and architects to support automation is essential to ensure that automation works as expected, avoids significant errors, and complements other technologies. AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) Alongside complementing automation trends, the implementation of AIOps to effectively automate IT operations processes such as event correlation, anomaly detection, and causality determination will also be important. AIOps will eliminate the data silos in IT by bringing all types of data under one roof so it can be used to execute machine learning (ML)-based methods to develop insights for responsive enhancements and corrections. AIOps can also help with probable cause analytics by focusing on the most likely source of a problem. The concept of site reliability engineering (SRE) is being increasingly adopted by SaaS providers and will gain importance in enterprise IT environments due to the trends listed above. AIOps is a key component that will enable site reliability engineers (SREs) to respond more quickly—and even proactively—by resolving issues without manual intervention. These focus areas are by no means an exhaustive list. There are a variety of trends that will be more prevalent in specific industry areas, but a common theme in the post-pandemic era is going to be superior delivery of IT services. That’s also at the heart of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, a forward-focused business framework designed to help companies make technology investments for the future.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

How Splunk Helps Maintain Cloud Infra?

Article | October 3, 2023

With the regular increase of data in both cloud and organizations, a way to tackle these data and extract valuable insights is highly in demand. Although there are multiple tools available in the market not all of them can provide a complete resolution. Developed in 2003, Slunk has become the ideal tool for numerous businesses across the globe. It is a software platform that is popular for searching, monitoring, analyzing, and visualizing data in real-time. Slunk performs operations such as gathering, interpreting, and coordinating data to create alerts, dashboards, and graphs instantaneously. Why Splunk? 1. Business Flexibility It improves the way people around organizations identify, predict, and solve problems simultaneously. It helps in answering questions for every part of the business, be it DevOps, IT, or Business Development. It offers capabilities to detect, visualize and collaborate anytime. 2. Enhance Digitization Splunk assists businesses in ensuring the success of their digitization with its artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions. 3. New Opportunities No matter how much data you have gathered, Splunk will help in scaling according to the data volume. It does that with the ecosystem provided by its partners and services. 4. Data-To-Everything It is a platform that enables businesses to detect, monitor, analyze, and work with both structured and unstructured data regardless of their source and timescale. It allows users to ask any question related to insights and take actions accordingly. 5. Fast & Flexible The time to value can be sped up to two days. Companies can deploy in increasing capacity within two days and retrieve their data as long as 90 days. Moreover, the upgrades and updates are handled by the team for them. 6. Maximize Value The subscribers of Splunk do not have to manage infrastructure and they do not even need one. As a service, it offers scarce and valuable resources as required for better performance. 7. Robust Security Splunk is certified and authorized by ISO 27001 and FedRAMP. They proffer dedicated cloud environments with encryption to the customer for robust security as well. Apart from these major advantages, Splunk also grants incredible GUI, reduces troubleshooting time, real-time dashboard visibility, incorporates AI in data strategy, monitors business metrics, powerful visualization, and search. Some of the crucial features of Splunk include development & testing, faster ROI generation, developing real-time data applications, and real-time architecture stats & reports. Be Ready for Splunk-Based Cloud Infra Maintenance At its core, Splunk is an efficient tool for data aggregation that comes with versatile search functionality. Any business can get started with Splunk depending on certain needs they have for data-set monitoring and management. It allows users to take a highly effective data wealth that is pulled from different sources like websites, apps, or IoT. All that is needed to do is getting started with Splunk-based applications for which you can hire developers with relevant knowledge and experience.

Read More

How to backup hyperconverged infrastructure

Article | May 4, 2020

Enterprises running hypervisors on hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) systems typically have backup options available to them that are not available to those running on generic hardware. Such customers may also have additional backup challenges depending on the HCI vendor and hypervisor they have chosen. Let’s take a look.

Read More

Spotlight

The Things Industries

The Things Industries is a full services IoT firm helping companies understanding and implementing LoRaWAN

Related News

Application Infrastructure

dxFeed Launches Market Data IaaS Project for Tradu, Assumes Infrastructure and Data Provision Responsibilities

PR Newswire | January 25, 2024

dxFeed, a global leader in data solutions and index management for the financial industry, announces the launch of an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) project for Tradu, an advanced multi-asset trading platform catering to active traders and investors. In this venture, dxFeed manages the crucial aspects of infrastructure and data provision for Tradu. As an award-winning IaaS provider (the Best Infrastructure Provider by the Sell-Side Technology Awards 2023), dxFeed is poised to address all technical challenges related to market data delivery to hundreds of thousands of end users, allowing Tradu to focus on its core business objectives. Users worldwide can seamlessly connect to Tradu's platform, receiving authorization tokens for access to high-quality market data from the EU, US, Hong Kong, and Australian Exchanges. This approach eliminates the complexities and bottlenecks associated with building, maintaining, and scaling the infrastructure required for such extensive global data access. dxFeed's scalable low latency infrastructure ensures the delivery of consolidated and top-notch market data from diverse sources to the clients located in Asia, Americas and Europe. With the ability to rapidly reconfigure and accommodate the growing performance demands, dxFeed is equipped to serve hundreds of thousands of concurrent clients, with the potential to scale the solution even further in order to meet the constantly growing demand, at the same time providing a seamless and reliable experience. One of the highlights of this collaboration is the introduction of brand-new data feed services exclusively for Tradu's Stocks platform. This proprietary solution enhances Tradu's offerings and demonstrates dxFeed's commitment to delivering tailored and innovative solutions. Tradu also benefits from dxFeed's Stocks Radar—a comprehensive technical and fundamental market analysis solution. This Software as a Service (SaaS) seamlessly integrates with infrastructure, offering added value to traders and investors by simplifying complex analytical tasks. Moreover, Tradu leverages the advantages of dxFeed's composite feed (the winner at The Technical Analyst Awards). This accolade reinforces dxFeed's commitment to delivering excellence in data provision, further solidifying Tradu's position as a global leader in online foreign exchange. "When we were thinking of our new sophisticated multi-asset trading platform for the active trader and investors we met with the necessity of expanding instrument and user numbers. We realized we needed a highly competent, professional team to deploy the infrastructure, taking into account the peculiarities of our processes and services," said Brendan Callan, CEO of Tradu. "On the one hand, it allows our clients to receive quality consolidating data from multiple sources. On the other hand, as a leading global provider of online foreign exchange, we can dispose of dxFeed's geo-scalable infrastructure and perform rapid reconfiguration to meet growing performance demands to provide data to hundreds of thousands of our clients around the globe." "The range of businesses finding the Market Data IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) model appealing continues to expand. This approach is gaining traction among various enterprises, from agile startups seeking rapid development to established, prominent brands acknowledging the strategic benefits of delegating market data infrastructure to specialized firms," said Oleg Solodukhin, CEO of dxFeed. By taking on the responsibilities of infrastructure and data provision, dxFeed empowers Tradu to focus on innovation and client satisfaction, setting the stage for a transformative journey in the dynamic world of financial trading. About dxFeed dxFeed is a leading market data and services provider and calculation agent for the capital markets industry. According to the WatersTechnology 2022 IMD & IRD awards honors, it's the "Most Innovative Market Data Project." dxFeed focuses primarily on delivering financial information and services to buy- and sell-side institutions in global markets, both traditional and crypto. That includes brokerages, prop traders, exchanges, individuals (traders, quants, and portfolio managers), and academia (educational institutions and researchers). Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Contact dxFeed: pr@dxfeed.com About Tradu Tradu is headquartered in London with offices around the world. The global Tradu team speaks more than two dozen languages and prides itself on its responsive and helpful client support. Stratos also operates FXCM, an FX and CFD platform founded in 1999. Stratos will continue to offer FXCM services alongside Tradu's multi-asset platform.

Read More

IT Systems Management

ICANN ANNOUNCES GRANT PROGRAM TO SPUR INNOVATION

PR Newswire | January 16, 2024

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit organization that coordinates the Domain Name System (DNS), announced today the ICANN Grant Program, which will make millions of dollars in funding available to develop projects that support the growth of a single, open and globally interoperable Internet. ICANN is opening an application cycle for the first $10 million in grants in March 2024. Internet connectivity continues to increase worldwide, particularly in developing countries. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an estimated 5.3 billion of the world's population use the Internet as of 2022, a growth rate of 6.1% over 2021. The Grant Program will support this next phase of global Internet growth by fostering an inclusive and transparent approach to developing stable, secure Internet infrastructure solutions that support the Internet's unique identifier systems. "With the rapid evolution of emerging technologies, businesses and security models, it is critical that the Internet's unique identifier systems continue to evolve," said Sally Costerton, Interim President and CEO, ICANN. "The ICANN Grant Program offers a new avenue to further those efforts by investing in projects that are committed to and support ICANN's vision of a single, open and globally interoperable Internet that fosters inclusion amongst a broad, global community of users." ICANN expects to begin accepting grant applications on 25 March 2024. The application window will remain open until 24 May 2024. A complete list of eligibility criteria can be found at: https://icann.org/grant-program. Once the application window closes, all applications are subject to admissibility and eligibility checks. An Independent Application Assessment Panel will review admissible and eligible applications and the tentative timeline to announce the grantees of the first cycle is in January of 2025. Potential applicants will have several opportunities to learn more about the Call for Proposals and ask ICANN Grant Program staff members questions through question-and-answer webinar sessions in the coming months. For more information on the program, including eligibility and submission requirements, the ICANN Grant Program Applicant Guide is available at https://icann.org/grant-program. About ICANN ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secured and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world.

Read More

Application Infrastructure

Legrand Acquires Data Center, Branch, and Edge Management Infrastructure Market Leader ZPE Systems, Inc.

Legrand | January 15, 2024

Legrand, a global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures, including data center solutions, has announced its acquisition is complete of ZPE Systems, Inc., a Fremont, California-based company that offers critical solutions and services to deliver resilience and security for customers' business critical infrastructure. This includes serial console servers, sensors, and services routers that enable remote access and management of network IT equipment from data centers to the edge. The acquisition brings together ZPE's secure and open management infrastructure and services delivery platform for data center, branch, and edge environments to Legrand's comprehensive data center solutions of overhead busway, custom cabinets, intelligent PDUs, KVM switches, and advanced fiber solutions. ZPE Systems will become a business unit of Legrand's Data, Power, and Control (DPC) Division. Arnaldo Zimmermann will continue to serve as Vice President and General Manager of ZPE Systems, reporting to Brian DiBella, President of Legrand's DPC Division. "ZPE Systems leads the fast growing and profitable data center and edge management infrastructure market. This acquisition allows Legrand to enter a promising new segment whose strong growth is expected to accelerate further with the development of artificial intelligence and associated needs," said John Selldorff, President and CEO, Legrand, North and Central America. "Edge computing, AI and operational technology will require more complex data centers and edge infrastructure with intelligent IT needs to be built in disparate remote geographies. This makes remote management and operation a critical requirement. ZPE Systems is well positioned to address this need through high performance automation infrastructure solutions, which are complementary to our current data center offerings." "By joining forces with Legrand, ZPE Systems is advancing our leadership position in management infrastructure and propelling our technology and solutions to further support existing and new market opportunities," said Zimmermann. About Legrand and Legrand, North and Central America Legrand is the global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. Its comprehensive offering of solutions for commercial, industrial, and residential markets makes it a benchmark for customers worldwide. The Group harnesses technological and societal trends with lasting impacts on buildings with the purpose of improving lives by transforming the spaces where people live, work, and meet with electrical, digital infrastructures and connected solutions that are simple, innovative, and sustainable. Drawing on an approach that involves all teams and stakeholders, Legrand is pursuing its strategy of profitable and responsible growth driven by acquisitions and innovation, with a steady flow of new offerings—including products with enhanced value in use (faster expanding segments: data centers, connected offerings and energy efficiency programs). Legrand reported sales of €8.0 billion in 2022. The company is listed on Euronext Paris and is notably a component stock of the CAC 40 and CAC 40 ESG indexes.

Read More

Application Infrastructure

dxFeed Launches Market Data IaaS Project for Tradu, Assumes Infrastructure and Data Provision Responsibilities

PR Newswire | January 25, 2024

dxFeed, a global leader in data solutions and index management for the financial industry, announces the launch of an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) project for Tradu, an advanced multi-asset trading platform catering to active traders and investors. In this venture, dxFeed manages the crucial aspects of infrastructure and data provision for Tradu. As an award-winning IaaS provider (the Best Infrastructure Provider by the Sell-Side Technology Awards 2023), dxFeed is poised to address all technical challenges related to market data delivery to hundreds of thousands of end users, allowing Tradu to focus on its core business objectives. Users worldwide can seamlessly connect to Tradu's platform, receiving authorization tokens for access to high-quality market data from the EU, US, Hong Kong, and Australian Exchanges. This approach eliminates the complexities and bottlenecks associated with building, maintaining, and scaling the infrastructure required for such extensive global data access. dxFeed's scalable low latency infrastructure ensures the delivery of consolidated and top-notch market data from diverse sources to the clients located in Asia, Americas and Europe. With the ability to rapidly reconfigure and accommodate the growing performance demands, dxFeed is equipped to serve hundreds of thousands of concurrent clients, with the potential to scale the solution even further in order to meet the constantly growing demand, at the same time providing a seamless and reliable experience. One of the highlights of this collaboration is the introduction of brand-new data feed services exclusively for Tradu's Stocks platform. This proprietary solution enhances Tradu's offerings and demonstrates dxFeed's commitment to delivering tailored and innovative solutions. Tradu also benefits from dxFeed's Stocks Radar—a comprehensive technical and fundamental market analysis solution. This Software as a Service (SaaS) seamlessly integrates with infrastructure, offering added value to traders and investors by simplifying complex analytical tasks. Moreover, Tradu leverages the advantages of dxFeed's composite feed (the winner at The Technical Analyst Awards). This accolade reinforces dxFeed's commitment to delivering excellence in data provision, further solidifying Tradu's position as a global leader in online foreign exchange. "When we were thinking of our new sophisticated multi-asset trading platform for the active trader and investors we met with the necessity of expanding instrument and user numbers. We realized we needed a highly competent, professional team to deploy the infrastructure, taking into account the peculiarities of our processes and services," said Brendan Callan, CEO of Tradu. "On the one hand, it allows our clients to receive quality consolidating data from multiple sources. On the other hand, as a leading global provider of online foreign exchange, we can dispose of dxFeed's geo-scalable infrastructure and perform rapid reconfiguration to meet growing performance demands to provide data to hundreds of thousands of our clients around the globe." "The range of businesses finding the Market Data IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) model appealing continues to expand. This approach is gaining traction among various enterprises, from agile startups seeking rapid development to established, prominent brands acknowledging the strategic benefits of delegating market data infrastructure to specialized firms," said Oleg Solodukhin, CEO of dxFeed. By taking on the responsibilities of infrastructure and data provision, dxFeed empowers Tradu to focus on innovation and client satisfaction, setting the stage for a transformative journey in the dynamic world of financial trading. About dxFeed dxFeed is a leading market data and services provider and calculation agent for the capital markets industry. According to the WatersTechnology 2022 IMD & IRD awards honors, it's the "Most Innovative Market Data Project." dxFeed focuses primarily on delivering financial information and services to buy- and sell-side institutions in global markets, both traditional and crypto. That includes brokerages, prop traders, exchanges, individuals (traders, quants, and portfolio managers), and academia (educational institutions and researchers). Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Contact dxFeed: pr@dxfeed.com About Tradu Tradu is headquartered in London with offices around the world. The global Tradu team speaks more than two dozen languages and prides itself on its responsive and helpful client support. Stratos also operates FXCM, an FX and CFD platform founded in 1999. Stratos will continue to offer FXCM services alongside Tradu's multi-asset platform.

Read More

IT Systems Management

ICANN ANNOUNCES GRANT PROGRAM TO SPUR INNOVATION

PR Newswire | January 16, 2024

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit organization that coordinates the Domain Name System (DNS), announced today the ICANN Grant Program, which will make millions of dollars in funding available to develop projects that support the growth of a single, open and globally interoperable Internet. ICANN is opening an application cycle for the first $10 million in grants in March 2024. Internet connectivity continues to increase worldwide, particularly in developing countries. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an estimated 5.3 billion of the world's population use the Internet as of 2022, a growth rate of 6.1% over 2021. The Grant Program will support this next phase of global Internet growth by fostering an inclusive and transparent approach to developing stable, secure Internet infrastructure solutions that support the Internet's unique identifier systems. "With the rapid evolution of emerging technologies, businesses and security models, it is critical that the Internet's unique identifier systems continue to evolve," said Sally Costerton, Interim President and CEO, ICANN. "The ICANN Grant Program offers a new avenue to further those efforts by investing in projects that are committed to and support ICANN's vision of a single, open and globally interoperable Internet that fosters inclusion amongst a broad, global community of users." ICANN expects to begin accepting grant applications on 25 March 2024. The application window will remain open until 24 May 2024. A complete list of eligibility criteria can be found at: https://icann.org/grant-program. Once the application window closes, all applications are subject to admissibility and eligibility checks. An Independent Application Assessment Panel will review admissible and eligible applications and the tentative timeline to announce the grantees of the first cycle is in January of 2025. Potential applicants will have several opportunities to learn more about the Call for Proposals and ask ICANN Grant Program staff members questions through question-and-answer webinar sessions in the coming months. For more information on the program, including eligibility and submission requirements, the ICANN Grant Program Applicant Guide is available at https://icann.org/grant-program. About ICANN ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secured and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world.

Read More

Application Infrastructure

Legrand Acquires Data Center, Branch, and Edge Management Infrastructure Market Leader ZPE Systems, Inc.

Legrand | January 15, 2024

Legrand, a global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures, including data center solutions, has announced its acquisition is complete of ZPE Systems, Inc., a Fremont, California-based company that offers critical solutions and services to deliver resilience and security for customers' business critical infrastructure. This includes serial console servers, sensors, and services routers that enable remote access and management of network IT equipment from data centers to the edge. The acquisition brings together ZPE's secure and open management infrastructure and services delivery platform for data center, branch, and edge environments to Legrand's comprehensive data center solutions of overhead busway, custom cabinets, intelligent PDUs, KVM switches, and advanced fiber solutions. ZPE Systems will become a business unit of Legrand's Data, Power, and Control (DPC) Division. Arnaldo Zimmermann will continue to serve as Vice President and General Manager of ZPE Systems, reporting to Brian DiBella, President of Legrand's DPC Division. "ZPE Systems leads the fast growing and profitable data center and edge management infrastructure market. This acquisition allows Legrand to enter a promising new segment whose strong growth is expected to accelerate further with the development of artificial intelligence and associated needs," said John Selldorff, President and CEO, Legrand, North and Central America. "Edge computing, AI and operational technology will require more complex data centers and edge infrastructure with intelligent IT needs to be built in disparate remote geographies. This makes remote management and operation a critical requirement. ZPE Systems is well positioned to address this need through high performance automation infrastructure solutions, which are complementary to our current data center offerings." "By joining forces with Legrand, ZPE Systems is advancing our leadership position in management infrastructure and propelling our technology and solutions to further support existing and new market opportunities," said Zimmermann. About Legrand and Legrand, North and Central America Legrand is the global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. Its comprehensive offering of solutions for commercial, industrial, and residential markets makes it a benchmark for customers worldwide. The Group harnesses technological and societal trends with lasting impacts on buildings with the purpose of improving lives by transforming the spaces where people live, work, and meet with electrical, digital infrastructures and connected solutions that are simple, innovative, and sustainable. Drawing on an approach that involves all teams and stakeholders, Legrand is pursuing its strategy of profitable and responsible growth driven by acquisitions and innovation, with a steady flow of new offerings—including products with enhanced value in use (faster expanding segments: data centers, connected offerings and energy efficiency programs). Legrand reported sales of €8.0 billion in 2022. The company is listed on Euronext Paris and is notably a component stock of the CAC 40 and CAC 40 ESG indexes.

Read More

Events