Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here DevOps vs SRE vs Cloud Native DevOps is under attack because developers don't want to mess with infrastructure. They will happily own their code into production, but want to use platforms instead of raw automation. That's changing the landscape that we understand as DevOps with both architecture concepts (CloudNative) and process redefinition (SRE). Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Rob Hirschfeld's recent work in Kubernetes operations has led to the conclusion that containers and related platforms have changed the way we should be thinking about DevOps and controlling infrastructure. The rise of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is part of that redefinition of operations vs development roles in organizations. In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 21st Cloud Expo, Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN, explo... (more)

Web Services and SOA

People sometimes ask what a service-oriented architecture enables today that could not have been done with the older, proprietary integration stacks of the past 5 to 15 years, such as those from Tibco, IBM, or Vitria. One such ability is the greater degree of interoperability between heterogeneous technology stacks that is made possible by the standards SOA is built on, such as Web services and BPEL. Although interoperability is only one facet of the SOA value proposition, it is one that has become increasingly more important, due in large part to the evolving IT environment, merger and acquisition activity, and increased partner connectivity. Building business solutions for SOA requires the ability to secure data exchanged over a network, and control access to services in an environment where long-running business processes and asynchronous services are increasing... (more)

The Future of Cloud Computing: Industry Predictions for 2012

With 9th Cloud Expo - Cloud Expo Silicon Valley - still in full swing at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, what is being said about the future landscape of cloud computing? In this round-up we asked a variety of members of the cloud computing ecosystem, from CIOs to independent consultants to marketeers. We asked in each case for their top five predictions. Here are their views on what's in store in 2012: Santa Clara Convention Center is getting ready for Cloud Expo Silicon Valley DIY Service Provision | Cloud of Devices | Security Breach Looms | Personalized SPs | African Growth Lauren C. States | @lauren_states VP & CTO, Cloud Computing & Growth Initiatives, IBM Lauren is responsible at IBM for the technology strategy for the company's growth initiatives, including cloud computing, Smarter Planet, business analytics and emerging markets. Previously she... (more)

Commentary: Sun’s Oracle Merger

Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer With only the ‘you may now kiss the bride’ custom to follow, the Oracle/Sun marriage (or dare I say Sun/Oracle) is now finally complete. After months of legal wrangling which has caused nothing but embarrassment and dwindled Sun’s stature within the market sphere, reports also came out that half of Sun's 27,000 staff will be made redundant. Thus initial indications are clear that Oracle, known for its past agnosticism to open source has an eye for the merger being based on maximizing profit. In the meantime Sun’s competitors are probably smiling wryly as the delay of the merger played into their immediate interests but what threats and challenges does this partnership now pose to the once great open source vendor which did so much for developing the tech and e-commerce industry. One thing which Oracle will most probably do is addres... (more)

Top 50 Bloggers on Cloud Computing

Ever since I first published here my tentative list of Top Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem - now expanded to a list of 250 and growing daily thanks to community feedback via my Twitter account (@jg21) and a very kind mention by ReadWriteWeb - there have been suggestions that another prism through which to view cloud computing might be that of people rather than companies. Now Michael Sheehan has encouraged me to Just Do It, so let me get started...as per the previous Top Cloud Players list, this list will a work-in-progress and is totally porous, so don't hesitate to ping or tweet me if there are folks I have missed. In particular if you are a journalist whose "beat" is Cloud Computing, please let's be hearing from you, and we can maybe widen this list from Cloud Bloggers to Cloud Commentators. For now though let's get started. In alphabetical order - to av... (more)

Cloud Expo New York Preview: The Economic Impact of GovCloud on IT

Cloud Expo 2011 New York $500 Savings here! In December 2010, the U.S. Federal government awarded cloud computing contracts that totaled over $2B in value. It also announced a mandatory "cloud first" policy, requiring every agency to deploy at least three of its services to the cloud. This transition represents a monumental change in Federal IT strategy. It may also threaten the business model of some of the world's largest IT providers. In his session at the 8th International Cloud Expo, Kevin Jackson, Engineering Fellow with NJVC, will explore the economic impact of GovCloud from the position of the information technology and professional services industries. He will also explore the new business strategies for this new environment. Speaker Bio: Kevin Jackson is an Engineering Fellow with NJVC, one of the largest information technology solutions providers suppor... (more)

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: "It's Almost Sexy"

"#CloudExpo looks super interesting (almost sexy)," tweeted Xochi Adamé ‏(@xochiadame) recently, referring to the Cloud Expo due to be held Nov 5-8 in Silicon Valley. "Who's going?" Adamé continued. She is just one of dozens of IT professionals who are using Twitter right now to connect with other like-minded Cloud & Big Data experts and compare notes as they prepare to attend The Largest Cloud & Big Data Event in the World...11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley. Cloud Expo Silicon Valley is co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo Here are just some of the past few days' tweets hashtagged #CloudExpo, including Adamé's: #CloudExpo looks super interesting (almost sexy). Nov 5-8 in Silicon Valley. Who's going? cloudcomputingexpo.com/general/sponso… #ARChat — Xochi (sōchē) Adamé (@xochiadame) September 25, 2012 Cloud Expo One of the biggest events in Cloud Comp... (more)

Your DevOps Flavor | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #ITIL #Microservices

If there is anything we have learned by now, is that every business paves their own unique path for releasing software - every pipeline, implementation and practices are a bit different, and DevOps comes in all shapes and sizes. Software delivery practices are often comprised of set of several complementing (or even competing) methodologies - such as leveraging Agile, DevOps and even a mix of ITIL, to create the combination that's most suitable for your organization and that maximize your business value. Our top 10 industry posts this week cover all the bases of software development/delivery and dig deep to discover more on the roles of Agile development teams, ITIL in FinServ and the emergence of microservices and containers as buzzwords. As always, stay tuned to all the news coming from @ElectricCloud on DevOps and Continuous Delivery throughout the week and retw... (more)

Focus on SOA...and Orbitz Uses Jini and EJBs, Says CTO Hjelms

Without SOA, says Orbitz's chief technology officer, his company - founded in 2000 and successfully IPO'd since then - wouldn't be able to leverage its main competititive advantage: speed to market. Helms then began to unpack this broad-stroke observation for a packed keynote hall at Day One of EDGE 2004, "Development Technologies Exchange" - the Java, XML, .NET, MX and Web Services techfest being served up in Boston's Hynes Convention Center Tuesday through Thursday this week. Making this as much a case study as anything, Hjelms first established the parameters of the Orbitz operations: 800+ production servers (usually commodity PCs), 3.9 million lines of code on its Web site, and 110,000 lines of code being added or deleted on a weekly basis. "Getting your architecture right enables you to do more things faster," Hjelms observed: in Orbitz's case, that above all mean... (more)

For Sale on eBay: Home Once Occupied by Little Boy Who Became President.

The Associated Press is reporting that the residence where Bill Clinton lived for three years, starting when he was about 5, is up for sale on eBay. The bidding has risen in one week, the report says, from $45,000 to $215,700. The auction will close April 7, says the home's present owner, Gary Johnson. The house is located on a corner lot, has 950 square feet of living accommodation, and is for sale because Johnson - and his mother who shares the house with him -are looking for a bigger place. The auction will close April 7.  Johnson told the AP that the original floor plan remains intact despite the addition of siding, carpeting and new ceilings. "It has had a lot of cosmetic surgery done on it because of President Clinton living there," he said. "If it hadn't been for that, it would probably be a rundown, late-40s little rent house." "The house was for sale 10 years... (more)

SOA Editorial - A Little Help from My Friends

It's sometimes funny to write about service-oriented architecture. One of the things I say often and believe is that you can't buy a service-oriented architecture. SOA is not just technology, it's philosophy, organizational change, and business transformation. There's no place to buy that kind of dramatic, deeply impacting change. The funny part, at least to me, is that you can, however, buy or acquire a good deal of infrastructure to set this up from a single source. In the industry, we call that a platform. And that's what this month's issue is about - SOA platforms. Service-oriented architecture is a powerful concept - at its base, it replaces the concept of an application with the concept of a service. This isn't trivial. For 40 or more years, we've dealt with computers in the context of applications (I've left a few years off my count to account for the years... (more)