IDG Contributor Network: Delivering agility to Paychex with XebiaLabs

Recently development and DevOps vendor XebiaLabs reached out to me to see if I’d be keen to talk to one of their customers. XebiaLabs wanted to point out that while they are totally amped on their own products and believe they do awesome things for their customers, the best proof of that is to talk to a real life customer and assess the benefits directly from the horse’s mouth as it where.That sounded like a logical proposition to me, and after a concerted effort by their PR agency to get me to agree to a call (because I’m a little bit busy, and a little bit lazy), I sat down with Paychex's Dave Wilson, director of infrastructure, and Mick Whittemore, vice president of IT, to talk about what Xebia helped them achieve.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nexus 9K –ACI Mode – PART 2

Welcome to part 2 of ACI series,  if you want to go through  part 1 of ACI series , here is link for reference  https://crazyrouters.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/nexus-9k-aci-mode-part-1/ Let’s start with the discussion of new terms related to ACI which will be used further during ACI discussion.   Above Pic tells about the different relation between Tenant and […]

25% off Garmin Approach S20 GPS Golf Watch – Deal Alert

On the course, the Approach S20’s AutoShot round analyzer tracks shots, measures distance and records shot locations for post-round analysis on Garmin Connect. View the details for each round or analyze your cumulative stats over time or by club, and view your swing data. It's never been easier to track your progress and share it with friends. You can even save swing sessions for later review. The S20 features more than 40,000 courses. When off the course, your Approach S20 features activity tracking and displays incoming call, text and other alert notifications right on your wrist. The typical list price of $199.99 has been reduced 25% on Amazon to $149.99 right now, making it a good consideration for the upcoming Father's Day holiday. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: SD-WANs Are Necessary For Success With The Internet Of Things

It’s my belief that we will look back at 2017 as a tipping point for the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has certainly been something that most business and IT leaders talk about, but to date, deployments have been limited to key verticals that have been connecting things for years, although we called it machine-to-machine (M2M) before it became cool to say IoT.I’ve long felt that one could tell when a technology tipping point is happening when it no longer seems like a big deal. Remember the early days of virtualization?  IT leaders had to explain why it was better to run workloads on VMs and had to prove it wouldn’t impair application performance. Today, no one thinks about these issues anymore because it’s now the norm. In the consumer world, people used to “ooh” and “ahh” when they saw an iPhone.  Now, no one bats an eye, as they are pervasive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The future of ransomware

Ransomware isn’t new, but it’s increasingly popular and profitable. The concept is simple: Your computer gets infected with a virus that encrypts your files until you pay a ransom. It’s extortion taken to its networked extreme. The criminals provide step-by-step instructions on how to pay, sometimes even offering a help line for victims unsure how to buy bitcoin. The price is designed to be cheap enough for people to pay instead of giving up: a few hundred dollars in many cases. Those who design these systems know their market, and it’s a profitable one. —Schneier on Security

The post Worth Reading: The future of ransomware appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Windows 10 still does a lot of snooping

Microsoft has been roundly beaten up for the aggressive telemetry gathering in Windows 10 (a.k.a. spying) in many quarters, including here. However, the company has proven it’s not tone deaf by working to add greater controls over privacy in its recent updates to the operating system. However, one veteran security analyst and Microsoft MVP said that even a very restricted setup of Windows 10 Enterprise Edition doesn’t go far enough to keep Windows 10 from connecting to Redmond with user data.Mark Burnett, a seven-time MVP and long-time Windows developer (along with many other bonafides), conducted an experiment with Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, the one designed for IT shops with the greatest controls over privacy. He notes that even with documentation, turning off settings can be confusing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Anycast and Latency

One of the things I hear from time to time is how smaller Internet facing service deployments, with just a few instances, cannot really benefit from anycast. Particularly in the active-active data center use case, where customers can connect to one data center or another, the cost of advertising the service as an anycast, and the resulting requirement to keep the backend databases tightly synchronized, is often played as a eating a lot of complexity for the simplicity of having a single address in the DNS system, and hence not losing customer interaction time while the DNS records are timing out so the customer can reconnect to the service.

There is, in fact, some interesting recent research in this area. The research is directed at the DNS root servers themselves, probably because they are publicly accessible, and a well known system that has relied on anycast for many years (so the operators of the root DNS servers are probably well versed in the ways of anycast). One interesting chart from the post over at APNIC’s blog is—

The C root has 8 servers, while the L root has around 144 (according to the article pointed to above). Why is it Continue reading

Interop 2017 Reflections

Interop is changing, thats a good thing. After 31 years, the Interop conference is one of the last independent conferences where the focus is on the person paying for the ticket and less “rolling sales thunder” from the vendors. Thats good for attendees who get to hear genuine, thoughtful content that hasn’t been selected based […]

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IDG Contributor Network: 3 ways big firms can compete with startups for top tech talent

CIOs looking to hire good talent risk being caught in a pincer as fast rising demand runs up against falling supply. Ever more companies and functions need staff with strong tech skills, while the number of STEM graduates in developed countries is in decline. Yet perhaps the most difficult part of the challenge is competition with startups. Startups offer much of what IT employees prioritize when considering an employer – compensation, future career opportunities and ongoing development, according to data from CEB, now part of Gartner (Disclosure: I am employed by CEB, now Gartner).In addition to a competitive salary, many startups attract top talent by offering the opportunity to own a stake in the company. They give employees the opportunity to move ideas quickly from conception to commercialization and to move careers forward at a similar pace, instead of waiting several years. While most big companies talk a good game about innovation and creativity, in reality caution usually comes first. In contrast, creative and independent work is the lifeblood of many startups.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Hi gamut monitors

For the last 20 years, the display industry has settled on a limited, standard range of colors, called the sRGB gamut. If the lopsided, chopped-off-rainbow-disc below (technical name: the “1931 CIE Chromaticity Diagram”) represents all of the colors that human eyes can see, the sRGB gamut is circumscribed by the little triangle in the middle. —Web Designer Depot

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IDG Contributor Network: The future of IoT: Where it’s heading, what to expect

The subject of the Internet of Things (IoT) has an extremely broad range of interpretations. Some immediately think of the “thing” itself as a connected thermostat. Others see it as a means to extend products into services. Most interpretations gravitate toward financial reward through data collection and analysis.I recently attended IoT World in Santa Clara, California, and was struck by this diversity. Every conversation I witnessed had a five-minute preamble/negotiation just to agree on a common perspective. It’s kind of like the three blind men and the elephant parable, but instead of three men, it’s 1,000 people touching a sculpture made of wet clay.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Leveraging SD-WAN for Mergers & Acquisitions

A colleague recently asked me if SD-WAN could be leveraged to expedite network integration as a result of a merger or acquisition. His thoughts were that this could potentially provide a means to securely integration networks in a short amount of time.  At first I thought this made no sense — SD-WAN is not related to this challenge […]

The post Leveraging SD-WAN for Mergers & Acquisitions appeared first on Overlaid.

Unifying Oil and Gas Data at Scale

The oil and gas industry has been among the most aggressive in pursuing internet of things (IoT), cloud and big data technologies to collect, store, sort and analyze massive amounts of data in both the drilling and refining sectors to improve efficiencies and decision-making capabilities. Systems are increasingly becoming automated, and sensors are placed throughout processes to send back data on various the systems and software has been put in place to crunch the data to create useful information.

According to a group of researchers from Turkey, the oil and gas industry is well suited to embrace all the new …

Unifying Oil and Gas Data at Scale was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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