CLOUD APP DEVELOPMENT
Article | June 9, 2022
IBM CloudBurst is a ready-to-use, self-contained service delivery platform that can be deployed fast and efficiently in a data center. It enables the data center to create service platforms for a wide range of workload types with a high degree of integration, flexibility, and resource optimization, resulting in a better request-driven user experience while also reducing costs and expediting time to market for the company. In addition, the GTS installation service is included in IBM CloudBurst, making it a comprehensive bundle of hardware, software, and services to get it up and running in your environment right away.
To quickly integrate cloud computing, IBM CloudBurst combines the necessary hardware, software, and service components. IBM CloudBurst, as a single solution, simplifies the complexities of establishing a cloud computing architecture, allowing businesses to immediately grasp the benefits and financial potential of a dynamic infrastructure. For de-mystifying a cloud computing model, CloudBurst can help enterprises discover the benefits and business possibilities of a dynamic infrastructure more rapidly. As a cloud computing quickstart, IBM CloudBurst allows businesses to demonstrate the benefits of the delivery model in a specific area of their data center or for a single internal project.
Building a Dynamic Infrastructure With IBM Cloudburst
IBM’s Service Delivery Manager Solution for x86 and Power systems is based on a pre-integrated, software-only stack. It is installed as a set of virtual images that automate the deployment of IT services and enables resource monitoring, cost management, and service provisioning in the cloud.
Similarly, depending on your company's needs, you can pick how much capacity to employ by adding cloud bursting to your LSF Cluster. When time is money, the cloud is ready. The meter stops, and the cloud waits when demand is low.
Computing Heavy Workloads With Resource Planning
It's challenging to establish a delicate balance between the expense of computing resources and the cost of delayed judgments. However, with the introduction of cloud bursting, a new level of flexibility has become available to break the impasse. When space in your data center is limited, you can now extend your existing IBM Spectrum LSF cluster to the IBM Cloud, where you can access almost infinite resources and only pay for what you use.
“Automating IT resources to support new applications is critical because at most companies, a business user typically must wait weeks to get access to new IT resources due to the manual processes required to set up resources,” said Lauren States, vice president of Tivoli Cloud Computing for IBM.
This automation not only simplifies the initial creation of a proof-of-concept cluster but also provides the basic toolset for the rapid provisioning and takedown of resources that define cloud bursting.
Conclusion
One of the numerous advantages of the cloud is that you are never tied to a specific piece of hardware. If you choose a storage cluster and later require more capacity or performance, you can always rebuild it with more resources.
Today's businesses can pick from a variety of storage technologies. That is why it is critical to comprehend the many alternatives, their usefulness, and the appropriate use cases for the various storage mechanisms. To meet today's modern business needs, IBM offers a variety of storage options.
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CLOUD SECURITY
Article | June 7, 2022
Elastic announced the launch of Elastic Security for Cloud, extending the capabilities of the existing Elastic Security offering, which included SIEM and endpoint protection, to incorporate cloud risk and posture management and cloud workload protection.
The new solution allows enterprises to manage their security posture for cloud-native and hybrid environments with infrastructure detection and response (IDR) and a machine learning offering that can detect known and unknown threats in cloud environments.
This approach means that enterprises can detect and respond to malicious activity in the cloud as soon as possible to minimize the risk and damage caused by intrusions.
Addressing cloud complexity
The release comes as modern enterprises are struggling to secure cloud environments.
Research shows that not only are 76% of organizations using two or more cloud providers, but also that 35% of organizations have more than 50% of their workloads in the cloud. This means for many organizations, protecting the cloud attack surface is now vital to maintaining operational stability.
In other words, the complexity of cloud deployments has created a need for solutions with cloud detection and response capabilities, so that enterprises can respond to threat actors who are targeting this new attack surface.
“The world has rapidly transitioned to the cloud and chosen operations over security. Cloud infrastructure is stood up and torn down at a blazing rate and many different teams are deploying these cloud instances. Just answering the question, ‘Am I good?’ is an increasingly complex question to answer for CIO/CISOs,”
Mike Nichols, vice president of product for Elastic Security
Elastic’s answer to monitoring these environments, is a cloud posture management and IDR solution that can improve security teams visibility over external threats.
The cloud security market
Elastic Security is competing in the global cloud security market, which researchers valued at $40.8 billion in 2021 and anticipate will grow to $77.5 billion by 2026 as enterprises attempt to keep up with the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, and rise in bring your own device (BYOD) and (choose your own device) policies.
In the realm of cloud security, one of Elastic’s main competitors is Splunk, a cloud and observability monitoring platform that can monitor public clouds, apps, services, on-premise data centers, and edge services. Last year, Splunk announced it had received a $1 billion investment from Silver Lake.
Another competitor in the market is Wazuh, an XDR and SIEM tool designed for protecting endpoints and cloud workloads with vulnerability detection, log data analysis, workload protection, and container security.
Wazhu currently has more than 10 million downloads per year and is used by a range of companies including Verifone, Walgreens, Rappi, Grubhub, Intuit, and more.
Although, one of the key differentiators between Elastic Security is that the solution is built on the Elastic Search Platform, with analytics, SIEM, endpoint protection, XDR and cloud security all offered as part of one single offering.
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CLOUD APP DEVELOPMENT
Article | May 20, 2022
Database Management in the Cloud Computing Era
A cloud computing database is ideally a service that is built, deployed, and delivered via a cloud platform. A cloud platform as a service (PaaS) delivery model allows organizations, end-users and applications to store, manage and retrieve data using the cloud. When seen from a structural and design perspective, a cloud database is not very different from one that operates its business using its own on-premise servers. However, ever since big data has entered space, database management has become a little more complex. In addition to all the traditional and structured data, we also have semi-structured and unstructured data coming in from almost all directions.
In recent times, there has been significant adoption of cloud platforms, infrastructures and services. The idea of the blend of cloud technology with database services has garnered more demand with respect to management.
Cloud databases, which arealso widely termed Database-as-a-Service (DaaS), offer various added options for organizations to choose. With the current rate of adoption, experts have a strong feeling that DaaS will, just like any other "as-a-service", will become the standard solution for all highly sensitive and mission-critical data.
How Can Cloud Database Management Help Your Business?
Every organization has the constant need to manage its data in the most efficient way possible. A cloud database effectively fulfills all the needs of any organization with respect to data, ranging from keeping the information secure, accurate and consistent for resource utilization and optimal performance. Cloud data management is constantly changing the way organizations think about data. The cloud helps bring in the required versatility, security, and professional data management assistance that is required. For any business to survive and succeed, it should ensure that the data is healthy so that everyone in the organization has access to the data they need, when they need it.
"Line-of-business leaders everywhere are bypassing IT departments to get applications from the cloud (also known as software as a service, or SaaS) and pay for them similar to a magazine subscription. And when the service is no longer required, they can cancel that subscription with no equipment left unused in the corner." - Daryl Plummer, Gartner analyst
Effective Strategies forDatabase Management in Cloud Computing
Using a cloud-based database ensures that it is easy for your database to grow along with your needs and requirements, in addition to scaling up or down on-demand to accommodate specific peak-workload phases. Ideally, before procuring a cloud data management system, it is essential to have a solid strategy that would suit best with your organization's ecosystem and, at the same time, would also help you getthe most out of the system you select.
Exploring the Best Practices for DBM in Cloud Computing
With the idea ofeffectively developing, monitoring and managing database infrastructure, there are various methods that organizations can use. These days, organizations also have the option for a ready-made database management system or picking a tailored solution as per their requirements. Keeping all these aspects in mind, it is also essential that these organizations enroll themselves in the best practices followed to ensure optimum results are achieved.
Some of the best practices for database management in cloud computing are mentioned below:
Before moving to the cloud, build a robust data management architecture.
Give cloud data integration requirements the first priority.
Regardless of the data's platform or location, govern it comprehensively.
Use encryption and VPN to protect data in transit.
Automate database management tasks to keep track of them.
Why Is Cloud DBMS the C-Suite’s Pick?
While it is more than evident that in today's age and time, data management is one of the most crucial components of any organization, it is also right up the area of value addition for all the top executives in an organization. Every industry relies vastly on data and its management, with the significant shift towards cloud servicestaking place constantly several organizations and the c-suite are now evaluating what cloud services bring to their table, especially on the data front. Once the core pain points are assessed and the c-suite gets the picture of how cloud database management systems would help them become more efficient, there wouldn't be any other obvious choice.
Microsoft Consulting Services, along with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), partnered with Walgreens to create the Information, Data, and Insights (IDI) platform powered by Azure.When patients or medical providers initiate the prescription fulfilment process, Azure Databricks and Azure Synapse Analytics move hundreds of related data points through the IDI. Pharmacists can access information through a centralized dashboard interface and request data visualizations.Pharmacists gain real-time insights, and the system can scale as needed to meet current needs. During peak times, the platform can handle more than 40,000 transactions per second. Compared to Walgreens’ previous solution, the private cloud-based architecture, saves an enormous amount of time on every transaction — prescription data that once took about 48 hours to reach its data warehouse can be handled by Walgreens within minutes.
Conclusion
With the next big things being data and the cloud, how can an amalgamation of both be wrong? Having said this, everyone willhave their own share of concerns and questions. But with what is being built and functions being worked upon, this space is bound to bring in numerous opportunities. So when the world is slowly makingthis shift, it's time you reconsidered, if you haven't already, before you get overwhelmed at the helm of data!
FAQ
What Are the Best Features Available in Cloud Database Management?
While there are numerous features that one can leverage using Cloud Database Management, the top 5 of its features are listed below:
Elasticity
Scalability
High availability
Easy data reduction
Redundancy
Which Is the Most Popular Cloud Database?
One of the most popular and widely used cloud databases is the Microsoft Azure cloud database. It provides services in computing, networking, databases, analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.
In Cloud Computing, What Is Database Management?
Cloud data management is a technique for managing data across cloud platforms, either in combination with or instead of on-premises storage. Disaster recovery, backup, and long-term archiving can benefit from using the cloud as a data storage tier. In addition, resources can be acquired as needed using cloud data management.
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CLOUD STORAGE
Article | March 28, 2022
Why Opt for Cloud Storage?
Earlier, storing data was one of the biggest challenges that users and organizations faced equally. The first hard drive, which was introduced in 1956 by IBM, weighed over a ton and almost occupied a whole room. The hard drive had acapacity of just over 3700 kilobytes. Whatmight seemtoo little in contemporary times was considered a technological revolution back inthose days.
The introduction of cloud computing and cloud storage completely changed the landscape of storing data. Cloud storage is the storageof data across multiple servers instead of a physical device. Cloud storage has been in great demand since organizations have begun migrating to cloud platforms. Cloud storage scores big byproviding businesses with a virtual infrastructure that is highly effective in accessibility, scalability, and data customization.
What Difference Would Cloud Storage Make in Your Business?
Cloud storage offers businesses various benefits that would help them improve their overall functionality. Using cloud storage, companies can effectively increase their accessibility while reducing the overall expense of data storage on local servers. Even though many organizations have seen positive results in shifting to storing data in cloud, several organizations are still skeptical about making this shift.
We'll now be talking about how cloud storage would aid businesses in addressing these lingering doubts.
Cost-Efficient
The first and foremost benefit is moving to storage in cloudwould help organizations cut down on their storage costs. Cloud storage is generally more affordable as the cloud service provider divides the cost of infrastructure among multiple businesses. In addition, moving your business to the cloud reduces the organization's hardware and maintenance costs.
Enhanced Security
By opting to store data on the cloud, organizations would be using cloud storage housed in a data center that provides enterprise-level security compared to having hardware within the office premise. Additionally, there is absolutely no single point of failure in the cloud as data is backed up onmultiple servers.
Scalable Service
One of the most important features of cloud data storage is the option of a pay-per-demand feature that organizations can avail. With this, youneed to pay for what you want to use.This eliminates the need to estimate how much storage space you would require for the year and risk paying for storage space that can remain unused.
Cloud computing is a great euphemism for centralizing computer services under one server.
Evgeny Morozov, author and technology skeptic
Features Offered by Corporate Cloud Storage Providers
While you are trying to evaluate how effective cloud storage would be for your organization, it is essential that you also weigh the features offered by cloud storage providers. To ease you throughthis step, we have listed some of the most renowned cloud data storage providers and their salient features.
Microsoft One Drive
One of the most widely used cloud storage services, Microsoft One Drive, connects files across Office 365. They also provide users with complete visibility and control oversecurity. OneDrive for business also offers capabilities like syncing reports and managing migrations.
Google G-suite
Built on Google's robust and secure global infrastructure, remote teams can easily stay connected and do it all with utmost safety. Their built-in security features help keep data, devices, and users protected, and along with that, the files are also automatically backed up in the cloud.
Amazon Web Services
AWS ensures that organizations get a flexible and secure cloud platform where they can go about their business. Using best-in-class encryption and little downtime, AWS ensures that customer information, identities, applications, and devices are protected.
How Does Cloud Migration Assist the C-suite?
Several businesses and IT professionals worldwide are constantly shifting from on-premise infrastructure toa scalable, economical, and agile infrastructure by migrating to the cloud, especially those inclined towards using cloud storage.
According to IBM's research, 60% of the 380 CIOs and CTOs polled stated that their IT infrastructure isn't entirely prepared for the future or large-scale disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moving data to the correct cloud solves communication, collaboration, security, storage, and data availability issues.
Features of cloud storage that the C-suite can leverage are:
Flexibility in Operation
Increase in Transparency
Enhanced Risk Management
Improved Security
Conclusion
When you see the overall picture, using cloud storage would, in many ways, improve the functioning of organizations. Once you have cracked how to use cloud storage, the rest of the process is a mere cakewalk to leverage its benefits. Using cloud storage can help businesses drastically reduce infrastructure and maintenance costs with the right strategy.
FAQ
What Does Cloud Storage Mean?
Cloud storage is the cloud computing model that stores data on the internet through a cloud computing provider who manages and operates data storage as a service.
What Are the Types of Cloud Storage Available?
There are four types of cloud storage services:
Public cloud storage
Private cloud storage
Hybrid cloud storage
Community cloud
Why Do We Need Cloud Storage?
Using cloud storage helps you make your data highly accessible. With cloud storage, you can access your files from anywhere with an internet connection. This also helps you cover major issues like hardware failure or any other kind of malfunction.
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