IDG Contributor Network: Cloud computing and the ‘last mile’

What does food and beverage production have to do with cloud and the last mile?  There are several interesting parallels.Unknown to most people, the food and beverage industry operates on razor-thin margins. As a result, producers look for any advantage they can get through automation, scale and supply chain optimization. Water is both bulky and heavy while also plentiful and cheap. As the percentage content of water increases in a food or beverage, producers are incented to remove the water during production in a way that it can be reintroduced at the point of consumption. From soups to sodas, this model keeps transportation costs low while expanding profit margins.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Developing the Internet of Things

The Internet is undergoing an evolutionary transformation resulting from the explosive growth of things that are interconnected. From humble beginnings connecting single institutions, and then multiple institutions, to the first major computer-networking explosion in the 90’s, we are now in a period of many connected things, not just a traditional server or computing device. From single purpose sensors through wearable technologies to sophisticated computing devices, we are creating, exchanging, and consuming data at rates that would have been inconceivable just a decade ago. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: Developing the Internet of Things appeared first on 'net work.

Docker for Mac and Windows is Now Generally Available and Ready for Production

Today, we are excited to announce that Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows are graduating from beta and are now stable and ready for production.

GE Will Let Developers Run Predix Off-Cloud

Another bauble to dangle in front of developers.

JavaScript keeps its spot atop programming language rankings

U.K.-based technology analyst firm RedMonk just released the latest version of its biannual rankings of programming languages, and once again JavaScript tops the list, followed by Java and PHP.Those are same three languages that topped RedMonk’s list in January. In fact, the entire top 10 remains the same as it was it was six months ago. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Redmonk’s list—compiling the “performance of programming languages relative to one another on GitHub and Stack Overflow”—is that there are so few surprises, at least in the top 10. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Riverbed acquires Aternity to get an end-user perspective

The IT management industry has been highly fragmented with great point products to monitor pieces of infrastructure. There are network management tools, application performance systems and a wealth of other products available to IT buyers.The problem with this model is the point products provide an incomplete view of what and end user might be experiencing. This leads to what I’ve referred to as “swivel chair management” where an engineer plunks himself down in the middle of several management consoles, watches all the activity and tries to correlate the data manually to understand when problems occur. This is difficult, if not impossible, to do because there is simply too much data to try to analyze manually.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thinking Out Loud: My Career Planning

On average I usually think about my career at least 1 time every year and do an honest and deep “career inventory taking”.  More often (sometimes 2-3 times a year) if my job or environment is changing a lot. Are the questions I ask myself each time the same?  No.  Why?  Well cause time has passed.  What do I mean by this?  This means that over the years what I’ve seen is that my 1 year plan, 3 year plan, 5 year plan and 10 year plans have changed as I have changed.

For example ~26 years ago (when I was 25 years old) my plan was to become CEO of IBM by the time I was 35.  LOL!   (But that is a whole other blog: What’s at the “Top” of Your Ladder?)   Obviously, between then (when I was 25) and now my annual “career planning inventory” questions and my focus on what I want as the “wins” in a job for me….. have radically changed.  

What do I mean by “my focus on what I want as the ‘wins’ in a job?”    Well, again, when I was Continue reading

Oracle to buy cloud provider NetSuite for $9.3 billion

Oracle has entered into an agreement to buy NetSuite, which provides cloud-based accounting, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and other business software packages, for US$9.3 billion.The NetSuite package of products is complementary to Oracle's cloud products and the companies' cloud packages will "coexist in the marketplace forever," Mark Hurd, Oracle's CEO, said in a press release.The deal will allow Oracle to serve a broader range of customers, including smaller businesses, and expand to more industries and more countries, the company said. Asked what additional advantages the deal brings, and Oracle spokeswoman said, "We are declining additional comment today."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle to buy cloud software provider NetSuite for $9.3 billion

Oracle has entered into an agreement to buy NetSuite, which provides cloud-based accounting, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and other business software packages, for US$9.3 billion. The NetSuite package of products is complementary to Oracle's cloud products and the companies' cloud packages will "coexist in the marketplace forever," Mark Hurd, Oracle's CEO, said in a press release. The deal will allow Oracle to serve a broader range of customers, including smaller businesses, and expand to more industries and more countries, the company said. Asked what additional advantages the deal brings, and Oracle spokeswoman said, "We are declining additional comment today."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microservices Gone Wild – Tech Dive Part 4

In this last post of my four-part series on microservices, I’ll look at some of the positive aspects of microservices, and how much simpler they can potentially make things once you overcome the up-front effort required to make them work.

Scalability

When a monolithic app needs to scale, how can that be achieved? Well, for example:

• More RAM (if the app is memory-bound)
• More or Faster CPUs (if the app is CPU-bound)
• More instances of the app (front with a load balancer)

These are all effective ways to scale the application. What if one function within the application could really use a performance boost, even though the others are working just fine? Using a load balancer to distribute work requests can mean that scaling up the ability for a single module to process concurrent requests can be as simple as spinning up a few more containers and sharing the load:

There’s some effort required to allow the main program to issue concurrent calls, but the benefits can be worthwhile. Plus, of course, each of our microservices may be called by other programs, or may call each other as necessary, so there may be more than just one source of activity. Continue reading

Riverbed buys end-user experience monitoring company Aternity

Network and application performance management company Riverbed announced this morning that it would acquire end-user experience monitoring firm Aternity for an undisclosed fee.Aternity, a privately held company headquartered in Westborough, Mass., was founded in 2004 as Gelion Networks. Its core technology, which is currently operating on 1.7 million global endpoints, is real end-user monitoring, which detects performance issues by analyzing user behavior. The idea, according to Riverbed, is to add Aternity’s technology into the company’s extensive existing lineup of monitoring and management capabilities.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Why Belgium leads the world in IPv6 adoption + White boxes are now ready for prime timeTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Riverbed buys end-user experience monitoring company Aternity

Network and application performance management company Riverbed announced this morning that it would acquire end-user experience monitoring firm Aternity for an undisclosed fee.Aternity, a privately held company headquartered in Westborough, Mass., was founded in 2004 as Gelion Networks. Its core technology, which is currently operating on 1.7 million global endpoints, is real end-user monitoring, which detects performance issues by analyzing user behavior. The idea, according to Riverbed, is to add Aternity’s technology into the company’s extensive existing lineup of monitoring and management capabilities.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Why Belgium leads the world in IPv6 adoption + White boxes are now ready for prime timeTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to attract a board-level cybersecurity expert

Suzanne Vautrinot’s impressive cybersecurity experience has been in high demand since she retired from the U.S. Air Force in October 2013. As a major general and commander, she helped create the Department of Defense's U.S. Cyber Command and led the Air Force's IT and online battle group.In the past year alone, she has fielded “more than a handful” of phone calls from company executives and recruiters who hope to attract her to their board of directors, but she doesn’t jump at every opportunity. She has turned down board positions “more than once” because she perceived that the company wasn’t committed to cybersecurity initiatives or that she wouldn’t be active in any board matters beyond security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

9 data security tips for cloud migration

New security challengesImage by Les HainesWhen migrating to a cloud-based environment, companies need to take a hard look at their needs and the security of their providers, as well as their own internal policies. Many companies don’t take time to consider the risks of simply sharing cloud space with other organizations, for example, or how to match cloud security policies to those of the data center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to manage the 7 biggest workplace fears

Workplace stress is common, and at some point in your life, it's likely you'll feel the pressure that can come from maintaining a career. Experiencing anxiety at work is ultimately bad for everyone. Consistent anxious feelings in the workplace can actually lead to underperformance and affect the relationship between employees and their co-workers and managers.Scott Steinberg, bestselling author of Make Change Work for You, cites research around the seven common types of fear people report feeling in the workplace. These fears not only stand in the way of professional development, but they hamper creativity, innovation and business growth as well, according to Steinberg.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Security Sessions: Generational differences in security, privacy attitudes

In the latest episode of Security Sessions, CSO Editor-in-Chief Joan Goodchild chats with Ted Harrington of Independent Security Evaluators about how different generations (mainly millennials and Baby Boomers) view both security and privacy matters. These differences and attitudes can have a big effect on how companies train them on proper security procedures.

Enterprise Networks Bracing For Olympics

Rethinking Your IT Security Strategy

The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)

Wacky storiesImage by Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Beck Diefenbach/Stephen LamYes it's that time again…Time to search the old news-feed and find some of the most interesting and sometimes weird and wacky high-tech stories of the year. This time out we feature a look at everything from fireworks displays in space to Starship Enterprise remakes and mermaid robots – just to name a few cool stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)

Wacky storiesImage by Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Beck Diefenbach/Stephen LamYes it's that time again…Time to search the old news-feed and find some of the most interesting and sometimes weird and wacky high-tech stories of the year. This time out we feature a look at everything from fireworks displays in space to Starship Enterprise remakes and mermaid robots – just to name a few cool stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here