The Omnipresent World of APIs
These days, APIs have become an integral part of the digital transformation
journey for all enterprises. Every digital innovation story is connected to
APIs . But have you ever pondered over to know what are the source of these
APIs?
Let me explain - APIs sources can be varied, internal or external, solving
different purposes, but mostly categorized into the following two categories:
Data lakes is a term used to represent disconnected but relevant data that
are used by various business units within an enterprise. APIs are created
as the easy access points for these siloed data lakes. These days,
organizations put in conscious efforts in designing meaningful and
pragmatic APIs for all the apps that get developed internally. API-First or
API Driven Development, where APIs are the first app artifacts to be
generated, are adapted by ent... (more)
Are Your Business Apps Cloud-Ready?
The "Digital Era" is forcing us to engage with new methods to build, operate
and maintain applications. This transformation also implies an evolution to
more and more intelligent applications to better engage with the customers,
while creating significant market differentiators.
In both cases, the cloud has become a key enabler to embrace this digital
revolution. So, moving to the cloud is no longer the question; the new
questions are HOW and WHEN. To make this equation even more complex, most of
the time we are dealing with complex portfolios, many including hundreds of
legacy applications.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, JP Ascenci, a solution specialist at CAST
Highlight, will describe how Application Portfolio Analysis assists to
baseline, quality and engage with cloud migration.
Speaker Bio
JP Ascenci is a solution special... (more)
APIs and Financial Services Innovation
IBM helps FinTechs and financial services companies build and monetize
cognitive-enabled financial services apps quickly and at scale. Hosted on IBM
Bluemix, IBM's platform builds in customer insights, regulatory compliance
analytics and security to help reduce development time and testing.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Lennart Frantzell, a Developer Advocate
with IBM, will discuss how these tools simplify the time-consuming tasks of
selection, mapping and data integration, allowing developers to use IBM
services or combine them with their own data.
Speaker Bio
Lennart Frantzell, PhD, is a Developer Advocate with IBM in San Francisco who
focuses on Fintech, Blockchain and Watson Services. He attends Meetups,
Industry Events and Hackathons and works with startups and developers in the
greater Silicon Valley and California ar... (more)
Risk Tree API: Expose Your Vulnerabilities
Vulnerability management is vital for large companies that need to secure
containers across thousands of hosts, but many struggle to understand how
exposed they are when they discover a new high security vulnerability.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, John Morello, CTO of Twistlock, will
address this pressing concern by introducing the concept of the
"Vulnerability Risk Tree API," which brings all the data together in a simple
REST endpoint, allowing companies to easily grasp the severity of the
vulnerability. He
will provide attendees with actionable advice related to understanding and
acting on exposure due to new high severity vulnerabilities.
Speaker Bio
John Morello is the CTO of Twistlock, leading the work with strategic
customers and partners and driving the product roadmap. Prior to Twistlock,
John was the CISO ... (more)
Getting Public Cloud Benefits Without Public Cloud Drawbacks
You know you need the cloud, but you're hesitant to simply dump everything at
Amazon since you know that not all workloads are suitable for cloud. You know
that you want the kind of ease of use and scalability that you get with
public cloud, but your applications are architected in a way that makes the
public cloud a non-starter. You're looking at private cloud solutions based
on hyperconverged infrastructure, but you're concerned with the limits
inherent in those technologies.
What do you do?
Private cloud infrastructure based on composable technologies result in
environments that are suitable for all your workloads while also providing
you with many of the benefits of the public cloud, and without the pitfalls.
Composable infrastructure is an emerging data center architecture that
provides you with the ... (more)
The What, Why, and How of APIs
By Kameerath Kareem
For over a decade, Application Programming Interface or APIs have been used
to exchange data between multiple platforms. From social media to news and
media sites, most websites depend on APIs to provide a dynamic and real-time
digital experience. APIs have made its way into almost every device and
service available today and it continues to spur innovations in every field
of technology.
There are multiple programming languages used to build and run applications
in the online world. And just like every other language, there is always the
need for an interpreter when trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t
speak the same language as you. This is where APIs come into play, APIs act
like the interpreter helping different independent services interact and
interpret the data shared with each other.
APIs Everywhe... (more)
Introduction to Node-RED
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Greg Gorman is the Director, IoT Developer
Ecosystem, Watson IoT, will provide a short tutorial on Node-RED, a
Node.js-based programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and
online services in new and interesting ways. It provides a browser-based
editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using a wide range of nodes
in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.
There is a large library of contributed nodes that help solve many
challenges, and anyone can contribute back new nodes or join the Node-RED
project and help out!
Speaker Bio
Greg Gorman is the Director, IoT Developer Ecosystem, Watson IoT. His team
creates and runs programs targeted directly to developers and large
ecosystems around silicon vendors, board manufacturers, universities and
software communities... (more)
Is On-Premises Infrastructure Obsolete?
By Joe Michalowski
Have you ever had the feeling of Silicon Valley envy? Think of a company like
Airbnb experiencing exponential growth by making the most of AWS cloud
computing. It would be nice if we could all just leave our legacy-laden
on-premises data centers behind and go all-in on the cloud.
Traditional businesses are moving more and more workloads to the cloud, but
there's one important distinction to keep in mind when comparing yourself to
companies that have avoided on-premises infrastructure.
You're merely adopting the cloud-these new companies were born in it. We want
to think on-premises is obsolete, but it's not going anywhere.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison once said that the "coexistence of cloud and
on-premises computing is going to be a decades-long process, if not forever."
So if we're stuck with on-premises,... (more)
Good Migrations: Five Steps to Successful Cloud Migration
By Laura Winkenbach
Unless you've been living in a cave for the last decade, you've seen cloud
computing spread like fire across every industry. You also probably know that
the cloud plays a pivotal role when it comes to digital transformation.
Whether "the app is the business" is a well-worn subject or not, it doesn't
change the fact that companies are spinning up their apps faster because they
can scale, test, and optimize them in real production environments in the
cloud. But, like any technology, the cloud isn't perfect. If it isn't
configured specifically to your application and business needs, you can find
yourself dealing with performance issues, unhappy users, and one splitting
headache.
On the flip side, developing a successful cloud migration strategy can be a
rewarding experience that reverberates ... (more)
APIs and Financial Services Innovation
IBM helps FinTechs and financial services companies build and monetize
cognitive-enabled financial services apps quickly and at scale. Hosted on IBM
Bluemix, IBM's platform builds in customer insights, regulatory compliance
analytics and security to help reduce development time and testing.
In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Tom Eck, Industry Platforms CTO at IBM
Cloud, will discuss how these tools simplify the time-consuming tasks of
selection, mapping and data integration, allowing developers to use IBM
services or combine them with their own data.
Speaker Bio
As IBM's Industry Platforms CTO, Tom Eck gets to work with incredible people
and killer tools that are shaping the future of financial services
technology. His mission is to help developers create the next generation of
financial services applications rapidly and secure... (more)
A common development challenge is accurately scoping the amount of effort
required when creating new applications. This can occur when an application's
requirements are first being designed, or even before. Since one of the most
frequently-overlooked capabilities of service virtualization is the ability
to rapidly prototype and test the impact of new services directly from
initial user stories, I'm going to address that today.
At the very beginning of an application's lifecycle, there comes a time when
the team meets to discuss what the code should do. Often, there are many
questions surrounding the feasibility of a new application, and the burden
falls on the developer to indicate whether something is possible and to scope
the level of effort required.
When dealing with new technology or a completely new idea, this can be very
difficult or nearly impossible. The de... (more)
