Finally: Easy, Remote IT For SMBs

Setting up and managing an IT infrastructure isn’t what most small and mid-sized business owners signed up for when they opened their doors. At least not voluntarily. After all, IT is an intimidating field filled with fragmented components, esoteric expertise, and expensive hardware. That may be why the most powerful network solutions have felt out of reach for small businesses, only approachable by larger enterprises with deeper pockets.Whether they have the resources or not, though, every business is a digital business in today’s economy. They all rely on a functional IT framework on some scale. And for the 83% of small businesses that don’t have any dedicated IT staff, the ultimate responsibility of running the company network often falls to the person with the most at stake: the business owner. So too do the related concerns of cybersecurity, network reliability, malfunctioning equipment, employee access, and so on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Hyperconvergence and silos

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) promises benefits in several dimensions: streamlining deployments across compute, storage and networking; scaling linearly as needs grow; and unifying and simplifying management. When examining prospective HCI solutions, it’s important to ensure this set of promises is fulfilled, but more importantly that checking those boxes with HCI doesn’t create new IT silos. A careful examination of what causes these silos makes it much easier to identify a solution that blends seamlessly into your architecture and chips away at IT silos, while at the same time ushering in the simplicity and ease that HCI promises. —Kaustubh Das @ The Data Center Journal

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Always test remote app performance with a WAN emulator

Many organizations deploy new applications for their remote site users without testing it on a WAN. Not testing these applications across a simulated WAN increases the possibility of performance issues during the early stages of usage because you have no idea how the application will perform once latency or jitter come in between the communication path of the client and server. If the application uses large amounts of bandwidth that causes congestion, then it can negatively affect the performance of other applications that share the bandwidth. A WAN emulator can enable you to measure the average bandwidth that an application may use before you deploy it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Always test remote app performance with a WAN emulator

Many organizations deploy new applications for their remote site users without testing it on a WAN. Not testing these applications across a simulated WAN increases the possibility of performance issues during the early stages of usage because you have no idea how the application will perform once latency or jitter come in between the communication path of the client and server. If the application uses large amounts of bandwidth that causes congestion, then it can negatively affect the performance of other applications that share the bandwidth. A WAN emulator can enable you to measure the average bandwidth that an application may use before you deploy it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Location, location, location… it matters to the cloud

In real estate, there’s a mantra that most agents use of “location, location, location,” meaning houses that may be equal in many ways will cost more the closer you get to something of value. For example, the San Jose Mercury News recently published a story about a house in Sunnyvale, California, that sold for $782,000 over asking price. Why such a ridiculous amount? Because it’s near Apple’s new campus — location matters.Does location matter with the cloud? Given how fast data travels, one might not think so, but location does indeed matter. A recent report from EdgeConneX and Cedexis, Cloud, Content, Connectivity and the Evolving Internet Edge, shows just how much it actually does. The study conducted uses Cedexis’ RUM-based internet performance measurement tools to test how cloud applications perform in different locations and with various optimization techniques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Location, location, location… it matters to the cloud

In real estate, there’s a mantra that most agents use of “location, location, location,” meaning houses that may be equal in many ways will cost more the closer you get to something of value. For example, the San Jose Mercury News recently published a story about a house in Sunnyvale, California, that sold for $782,000 over asking price. Why such a ridiculous amount? Because it’s near Apple’s new campus — location matters.Does location matter with the cloud? Given how fast data travels, one might not think so, but location does indeed matter. A recent report from EdgeConneX and Cedexis, Cloud, Content, Connectivity and the Evolving Internet Edge, shows just how much it actually does. The study conducted uses Cedexis’ RUM-based internet performance measurement tools to test how cloud applications perform in different locations and with various optimization techniques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Why Net Neutrality can’t be implemented

Suppose for a moment that you are the victim of a wicked ISP that engages in disallowed “throttling” under a “neutral” regime for Internet access. You like to access streaming media from a particular “over the top” service provider. By coincidence, the performance of your favoured application drops at the same time your ISP launches a rival content service of its own. You then complain to the regulator, who investigates. She finds that your ISP did indeed change their traffic management settings right at the point that the “throttling” began. A swathe of routes, including the one to your preferred “over the top” application, have been given a different packet scheduling and routing treatment. It seems like an open-and-shut case of “throttling” resulting in a disallowed “neutrality violation”. Or is it? —Martin Geddes @ CircleID

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Docker Official Images are now Multi-platform

This past week, Docker rolled out a big update to our Official Images to make them multi-platform aware. Now, when you run docker run hello-world, Docker CE and EE will pull and run the correct hello-world image whether that’s for x86-64 Linux, Windows, ARM, IBM Z mainframes or any other system where Docker runs. With Docker rapidly adding support for additional operating systems (like Windows) and CPU architectures (like IBM Z) this is an important UX improvement.

Docker Official Images are a curated set of container images that include:

The official images have always been available for x86-64 Linux. Images for non x86 Linux architectures have also been available, but to be fetched either from a different namespace (docker pull s390x/golang on IBM Z mainframe) or using a different tag (docker pull golang:nanoserver on Windows). This was not the seamless and portable experience Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: What is a data fabric and why should you care?

What is a data fabric? The concept of a "data fabric" is emerging as an approach to help organizations better deal with fast growing data, ever changing application requirements and distributed processing needs.The term references technology that creates a converged platform that supports the storage, processing, analysis and management of disparate data. Data that is currently maintained in files, database tables, data streams, objects, images, sensor data and even container-based applications can all be accessed using a number of different standard interfaces.A data fabric makes it possible for applications and tools designed to access data using many interfaces such as NFS (Network File System), POSIX (portable operating system interface), a REST API (representative state transfer), HDFS (Hadoop distributed file system), ODBC (open database connectivity), and Apache KAFKA for real-time streaming data. A data fabric must also be capable of being enhanced to support other standards as they emerge in importance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What is a data fabric and why should you care?

What is a data fabric? The concept of a "data fabric" is emerging as an approach to help organizations better deal with fast growing data, ever changing application requirements and distributed processing needs.The term references technology that creates a converged platform that supports the storage, processing, analysis and management of disparate data. Data that is currently maintained in files, database tables, data streams, objects, images, sensor data and even container-based applications can all be accessed using a number of different standard interfaces.A data fabric makes it possible for applications and tools designed to access data using many interfaces such as NFS (Network File System), POSIX (portable operating system interface), a REST API (representative state transfer), HDFS (Hadoop distributed file system), ODBC (open database connectivity), and Apache KAFKA for real-time streaming data. A data fabric must also be capable of being enhanced to support other standards as they emerge in importance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How IoT can drive a productivity revolution in US manufacturing

The Internet of Things, which has captured the attention of investors and futurist alike as it continues to reshape our markets and everyday lives, is now generating buzz around a new topic: manufacturing. Business and tech analyst are increasingly coming to realize the boon that the IoT can offer to U.S. manufacturing, a fact the wealthiest companies and savviest innovators are already exploiting.So how exactly can the IoT drive a productivity revolution in U.S. manufacturing? Is it grand conjecture that’s driving this growing consensus that the IoT will reshape manufacturing, or does this idea have a serious basis of reality? A brief review of the IoT’s impact on U.S. productivity shows just how significantly it can optimize American manufacturing, and how little time we have until all of our production is seamlessly integrated with our internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 5 software licensing challenges in the next generation network

Every day we hear how the network is changing. Virtualization, Cloud, Software-defined Networking, the Internet of Things — it’s clear big transformational change is happening.   The technical aspects of these solutions seem to get the most attention, but if you manage IT/Network cost and delivery for a living, your success may depend more on understanding the changing network business models that accompany these new technologies and how to adapt your IT operations.I’ve assembled below what I think are five of the top operational challenges facing IT managers in the next generation network. Some of these are blocking and tackling fundamentals (excuse the seasonal American football analogy), while others are more strategic in nature. I’ll present a short rationale for why these are my top 5. I’d love to hear your perspective.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 5 software licensing challenges in the next generation network

Every day we hear how the network is changing. Virtualization, Cloud, Software-defined Networking, the Internet of Things — it’s clear big transformational change is happening.   The technical aspects of these solutions seem to get the most attention, but if you manage IT/Network cost and delivery for a living, your success may depend more on understanding the changing network business models that accompany these new technologies and how to adapt your IT operations.I’ve assembled below what I think are five of the top operational challenges facing IT managers in the next generation network. Some of these are blocking and tackling fundamentals (excuse the seasonal American football analogy), while others are more strategic in nature. I’ll present a short rationale for why these are my top 5. I’d love to hear your perspective.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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