Are Data Centres Able to Operate in Tropical Environments?

Article | April 20, 2020

DApps (sometimes called Dapps) are from the blockchain universe and so, logically, the apps part stands for application (obviously) and the D part stands for decentralised (only obvious once you know that we’re talking distributed immutable language here). According to the guides section at blockgeeks, DApps are open source in terms of code base, incentivised (in terms of who validates it) and essentially decentralised so that all records of the application’s operation must be stored on a public and decentralised blockchain to avoid pitfalls of centralisation. So then, Cartesi is a DApp infrastructure that runs an operating system (OS) on top of blockchains. The company has now launched a more complete ‘platform-level’ offering, which is described as a layer-2 solution

Article | March 5, 2020

Software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) is revolutionizing the way that local branches are managed. As we’ve previously pointed out in our article on 4 things you should know about SD-Branch, it is being used to enable faster cloud adoption and greatly improve centralized control over the systems running in branch offices. Unfortunately, these advantages also come with some downsides. As SD-WAN has developed in SD-Branch, the number of IoT and end-user devices connected to these networks has grown exponentially. This means that the surface attack area of the average SD-Branch setup has increased enormously over the past few years. At the same time, business-critical applications are now sharing more data than ever over broadband internet connections, exposing critical data to interception or disruption.

Article | February 24, 2020

In my discussions with clients about their journey to cloud, it’s becoming evident that many of them are viewing cloud as a goal, instead of looking at cloud deployments as a capability. In some cases, line-of-business owners are under corporate pressures to “adopt” a cloud-first strategy. A recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned by IBM, “The Key To Enterprise Hybrid Multicloud Strategy”[1] suggests that “75% [of 350 surveyed global decision makers] have received pushback while advocating for strategies outside of cloud environments.” The result of this, unfortunately, is the lack of continued investment on their on-premises (“on-prem”) environments. From my experience, this type of deployment focus may not yield the expected results. We shouldn’t think about problem solving as “To cloud or not to cloud?” Instead, we should ask ourselves, “What is the problem I’m trying to solve?” and “Are cloud deployments (public or private) going to optimize my solution?”

Article | March 4, 2020

From time to time, we invite industry thought leaders to share their opinions and insights on current technology trends on the IBM Systems IT Infrastructure blog. The opinions in these posts are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of IBM. Gartner forecasts worldwide public cloud revenue will grow 17 percent in 2020[1]. While it’s clear that cloud is still being rapidly adopted, on premises and private cloud are growing as well. My team and I see this on a daily basis as we visit with enterprise clients. To quantify this information and measure its impact, IBM recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate how organizations develop and implement their IT infrastructure strategies. Forrester conducted an online survey of 350 global enterprise IT decision makers across industries to explore this topic.