How to succeed in an as-a-service world

The cloud conversation is not new. We know by now that the cloud is a prerequisite to shaping scalable and resource-elastic, variable cost-based businesses. However, companies and their CIOs continue to struggle with how to work effectively in this new model, perhaps because they have underestimated the required changes.Successful migration to the cloud is not a trivial milestone. In fact, it may be one of the most significant journeys the IT organization embarks upon. It requires changes to the way the organization functions and delivers – and the speed at which it does so. It calls for a full-scale mindset shift as well as new ways of working - no small feat for most companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: Oracle effectively doubles licence fees to run its stuff in AWS • The Register

Oracle doubles pricing on cloud use in AWS which will ‘coincidentally’ make the high pricing of its own cloud look relatively cheap. Will customers lie down and take this ? Almost certainly, its hard to imagine a bigger commercial sucker than an Oracle customer – its hard to get rid of it once you have it and they love price increases (probably thinking it validates why they bought the product in the first place).

Oracle has changed the way it charges users to run its software in Amazon Web Services, effectively doubling the cost along the way.

Oracle effectively doubles licence fees to run its stuff in AWS • The Register : https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/30/oracle_effectively_doubles_licence_fees_to_run_in_aws/

The post Response: Oracle effectively doubles licence fees to run its stuff in AWS • The Register appeared first on EtherealMind.

Now Cisco can even network your building systems

The latest network hardware from Cisco Systems gives new meaning to the words “light switch.”The Catalyst Digital Building Series Switch is an Ethernet switch designed to link different kinds of building infrastructure over a network. It will be available worldwide in the second quarter. It uses Cisco’s enhanced version of PoE (Power over Ethernet) to run things like lights and cameras while collecting data about those devices over the same standard cable.The switch embodies the merger of IT and OT (operational technology), one of the big enterprise trends that the internet of things is driving. The line is blurring between information systems like servers and building systems like lighting, heating, and physical security. The new technology could make buildings run better. It might also help to turn IT folks and facilities experts into a bit of both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Now Cisco can even network your building systems

The latest network hardware from Cisco Systems gives new meaning to the words “light switch.”The Catalyst Digital Building Series Switch is an Ethernet switch designed to link different kinds of building infrastructure over a network. It will be available worldwide in the second quarter. It uses Cisco’s enhanced version of PoE (Power over Ethernet) to run things like lights and cameras while collecting data about those devices over the same standard cable.The switch embodies the merger of IT and OT (operational technology), one of the big enterprise trends that the internet of things is driving. The line is blurring between information systems like servers and building systems like lighting, heating, and physical security. The new technology could make buildings run better. It might also help to turn IT folks and facilities experts into a bit of both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s Mobility Partner Program comes out of hiding

You won’t find many public references by Apple to its Mobility Partner Program, an expanding effort by the company to unite with software developers/integrators to boost sales of iPhones and iPads to businesses. In fact, Apple reportedly has discouraged partners in years past from discussing MPP out in the open.But the veil of secrecy surrounding the program is thinning. Apple’s public relations department didn't acknowledge my queries about MPP, such as how long the program has actually been around. But CEO Tim Cook has begun citing the program during Apple (AAPL - NASDAQ) earnings calls over the past year: He specified in October that more than 120 partners have signed on worldwide, and that’s up from about 90 at the start of the year. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: BGP in 2016 – Geoff Huston

Geoff Huston taking a withering look at the crapness of BGP in the Internet. As always, its quite crap excluding the fact that it actually works (more or less).

It has become either a tradition, or a habit, each January for me to report on the experience with the inter-domain routing system over the past year, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection fabric of the Internet.

The long predicted apocalypse in the Internet routing table hasn’t come to pass so the those 15-year old Catayst 6500 switches will still be used in the Internet backbone for many years to come. Oh, yay.

None of the metrics indicate that we are seeing such an explosive level of growth in the routing system that it will fundamentally alter the viability of carrying a full BGP routing table anytime soon. In terms of the projections of table size in the IPv4 and IPv6 networks, the BGP sky is firmly well above us, and it’s not about to fall on our heads just yet!

ISP Column – January 2017

The post Response: BGP in 2016 – Geoff Continue reading

Managing Network Services Configuration with Ansible

In the last few weeks I’ve seen numerous questions along the lines of “how do I manage VLANs on my switch with Ansible”. You can look at this question from two perspectives: the low-level details (which modules do I use, how do I push commands to the box…) or the high-level challenges (how do I make sure actual device state matches desired device state). Obviously I’m interested in the latter.

Read more…

All of Ethan’s Podcasts & Articles for January 2017

Packet Pushers Community Blog

Packet Pushers News

Packet Pushers Weekly Podcast

Datanauts Podcast

Citizens of Tech Podcast

Video

NetIntro Book

  • I’m contributing to a book along with Jeremy Filliben and Russ White explaining fundamental networking problems and their solutions. In January, I began work on a chapter on QoS.

Newsletters

EthanCBanks.com

Apple crosses Samsung in smartphone market, helped by Note7 debacle

Apple has regained the top place in the smartphone market helped by the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, while rival Samsung Electronics grappled with the recall of its flagship Galaxy Note7 over overheating batteries, according to a research firm.The iPhone maker shipped 78.3 million smartphones in the fourth quarter for a market share of 17.8 percent in comparison to 77.5 million smartphones shipped by Samsung, which had a market share of 17.7 percent, Strategy Analytics said Tuesday.For the full year, Samsung was the clear winner with shipments of 309.4 million smartphones to Apple’s 215.4 million, in part because Apple saw shipments of the iPhone drop in recent quarters.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Linux Migration: Final Linux Distro Selection

In my Linux migration initial progress report, I provided an early assessment of the Linux distribution that I thought I would use moving forward. At that time, I had selected Ubuntu. Since that time, though, I’ve pivoted a bit and selected a different Linux distribution as the operating system (OS) for my primary laptop moving forward. In this post, I’d like to describe why I selected Fedora.

My original reasons for selecting Ubuntu 16.04 were as follows:

  • Hardware support
  • Performance
  • Leading but not bleeding edge
  • User interface

These are all valid reasons, but as I continued to compare Ubuntu against Fedora 25 I realized that some of these factors weren’t as critical as I’d originally thought:

  • Hardware support: I initially targeted Ubuntu because it runs really well on Apple hardware. Fedora, on the other hand, doesn’t run quite as well on Apple hardware. Since I’m coming from the OS X world, I initially placed some emphasis on support for Apple hardware. The reality is, though, that I need a Linux distribution that does a great job of supporting my new work laptop, not one of my leftover Mac laptops. My experience with Fedora 25 on the Dell E7370 Continue reading

How to make PC security alerts better? Make them twirl, jiggle

Have you ever ignored a security alert on your PC? You’re not the only one.The warnings are designed to save us from malware infections and hacking risks, but often times we’ll neglect them. It could be because we’re too busy or we’ve seen them too many times, and we've become conditioned to dismiss them -- even the most serious ones, according to Anthony Vance, a professor at Brigham Young University.Vance has been studying the problem and he’s found that introducing certain small, but noticeable changes, can make the alerts more useful and harder to ignore.  "Our security UI (user interface) needs to be designed to be compatible with the way our brains work," he said at the USENIX Enigma 2017 conference on Tuesday. "Not against it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to make PC security alerts better? Make them twirl, jiggle

Have you ever ignored a security alert on your PC? You’re not the only one.The warnings are designed to save us from malware infections and hacking risks, but often times we’ll neglect them. It could be because we’re too busy or we’ve seen them too many times, and we've become conditioned to dismiss them -- even the most serious ones, according to Anthony Vance, a professor at Brigham Young University.Vance has been studying the problem and he’s found that introducing certain small, but noticeable changes, can make the alerts more useful and harder to ignore.  "Our security UI (user interface) needs to be designed to be compatible with the way our brains work," he said at the USENIX Enigma 2017 conference on Tuesday. "Not against it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Anuta Networks NCX: Overcoming Skepticism

Anuta Networks demonstrated their NCX network/service orchestration product at Network Field Day 14.

Disclaimer
Anuta Networks page at TechFieldDay.com with videos of their presentations

Anuta's promise with NCX is to provide a vendor and platform agnostic network provisioning tool with a slick user interface and powerful management / provisioning features.

I was skeptical, especially after seeing the impossibly long list of supported platforms.

Impossible!
Network device configurations are complicated! They've got endless features, each of which is tied to others the others in unpredictable ways. Sure, seasoned network ops folks have no problem hopping around a text configuration to discover the ways in which ACLs, prefix lists, route maps, class maps, service policies, interfaces, and whatnot relate to one another... But capturing these complicated relationships in a GUI? In a vendor independent way?

I left the presentation with an entirely different perspective, and a desire to try it out on a network I manage. Seriously, I have a use case for this thing. Here's why I was wrong:

Not a general purpose UI
Okay, so it's a provisioning system, not a general purpose UI. Setup is likely nontrivial because it requires you to consider the types of services Continue reading

BrandPost: The business case for continuous delivery

Originally posted on the Puppet blog, and republished here with Puppet's permission.We’re often so focused on crafting code that we forget the reason why: to deliver a better experience for our users and help our business grow. Let's take a step back and look at how continuous delivery can help your organization reach its goals. And when you’re done here, make sure to get even more details on continuous delivery in the full ebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 Common tech hiring mistakes to avoid

This contributed piece has been edited and approved by Network World editors

Finding the right hire for IT can be a chore, and if you get it wrong, the consequences can be substantial. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire costs at least 30% of the initial annual salary, but that number is believed to be much higher. It’s a mistake that companies simply can’t afford to make in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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