Cloud Infrastructure Management

Walgreens finishes its trip to the cloud and its retail journey is just beginning

Walgreen Co. | August 16, 2021

Many retailers made plans to move their information technology systems to the cloud prior to the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic last year. But, as with many other elements of their business, this too was accelerated when they found themselves having to deal with changing consumer behavior and other developments that quickly arose as a direct result of COVID-19. Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) is a case in point. The drugstore giant announced that it completed moving 122 enterprise resource planning (ERP) apps to the cloud in May, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Francesco Tinto, global chief information officer at WBA, who joined the company in 2019 from Kraft Heinz, said that the move to the cloud will speed processes across Walgreens’s business, including inventory management, point-of-sale transactions, accounting and more. The company’s migration to the cloud concluded a five-year effort to overhaul the drugstore’s tech systems, specifically related to its retail operations.

The need for speed became particularly apparent in the early months of the pandemic and Walgreens, according to the Journal’s reporting, sees migration to the cloud as a key element in its move. The article provided an example of how setting up a server to run on the cloud now takes a few hours compared to up to a week before.

The new system will integrate functions across the Walgreens organization, giving associates the ability to check store inventory with handheld devices. Employees can now act more quickly than ever before on pandemic-specific challenges, such as access to real-time sales and inventory data on such items as masks and sanitizers.

A forecast from International Data Corp., sourced in the Journal piece, estimates public cloud spending will reach $385.3 billion this year, up from $312.4 billion in 2020, the previous record year for cloud migration.

A KPMG report published last year identified the speed with which many companies were moving their systems to the cloud. Fifty-six percent of technology executives surveyed said that full migration had become an “absolute necessity” for their businesses and that previous “piecemeal migrations” were being abandoned in direct response to facts on the ground resulting from the pandemic.

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The Virtual Floorplan: New Rules for a New Era of Work is a global report analyzing hybrid work, and how it comes with its own set of rules and roles across organizations. The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware, collects global data from 7600 employees, IT, HR and business decision makers from July and


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Cloud Deployment Models

Mirantis’ Lens AppIQ: Upgrading Kubernetes Application Management

Mirantis | September 22, 2023

Mirantis has introduced Lens AppIQ, a new tool designed to simplify Kubernetes application management. Available directly to the 50,000 organizations using Lens, Lens AppIQ offers application intelligence, making it accessible for non-Kubernetes specialists to oversee applications across multiple clusters. Lens AppIQ aggregates information from various configuration files and sources, presenting it in a user-friendly tabbed display. This feature allows cloud-native developers to streamline the deployment and management of Kubernetes applications, offering web-based tools for viewing application details, configuring security measures, and automating deployment processes. With a quick launch time of under a minute, Lens AppIQ swiftly identifies applications in connected clusters and maps their components. Developers can access application architecture, metadata, logs, events, and more through Lens Desktop’s new 'Applications' view or the Lens AppIQ web portal, simplifying debugging, accelerating code releases, and enhancing performance optimization. DevOps professionals, platform engineers, and operators can utilize Lens AppIQ to define, monitor, and enforce policies related to application performance, security, and compliance. Automation features in Lens AppIQ facilitate repeatable deployments and enable effortless application migration to new Kubernetes environments. Miska Kaipiainen, Vice President of Engineering at Mirantis, reportedly stated, While Lens Desktop already provides an incredibly user-friendly experience for Kubernetes management, we understand that cloud-native development doesn't end there. That's why we've created Lens AppIQ. Lens AppIQ complements Lens Desktop by offering real-time intelligence and additional insights into the apps running on your Kubernetes clusters. This not only makes debugging, operation, and security easier but also opens up Kubernetes to a broader audience of developers who can benefit from streamlined processes without having to become Kubernetes experts. [Source – Businesswire] Lens AppIQ is available for free for small-scale and trial use, accommodating up to 10 nodes, two clusters, and two users. A Pro plan is available for larger-scale use, supporting up to 100 nodes, 10 clusters, and 50 users, priced at $35 per node monthly, inclusive of 8 hours/5-day business hours support. Enterprises can opt for a bespoke version with 24/7 support and custom pricing. Lens AppIQ is accessible within Lens Desktop for the 50,000 organizations currently using Lens and is also available as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. About Lens With over 1 million users worldwide, Lens Desktop is a leading tool for boosting productivity in Kubernetes application development and management. This desktop application breaks down barriers for newcomers to Kubernetes while significantly enhancing the efficiency of experienced users. Lens supports all certified Kubernetes distributions on any infrastructure and seamlessly runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. As the world's largest and most advanced Kubernetes platform, it provides real-time workload management, development, debugging, monitoring, and troubleshooting across multiple clusters. Built on open-source principles, Lens enjoys a strong community with over 20,000 stars on GitHub. About Mirantis Mirantis is a leading company streamlining code delivery on public and private clouds with a ZeroOps approach to Kubernetes. It serves global enterprises, enhancing developer productivity and offering secure cloud solutions. Its clients include Adobe, DocuSign, PayPal, and others across diverse industries. Mirantis contributes to open-source projects like Lens and Kubernetes, empowering businesses to tackle complex challenges.

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Cloud Security

Lacework Unveils Cloud Security Community to Unite Customers and Peers

Lacework | September 07, 2023

Lacework, a trailblazer in data-driven cloud security, has introduced an innovative community platform, expanding its arsenal of cutting-edge technical resources. This dynamic community is a hub for Lacework's customers, support teams, and fellow cloud security experts. The Lacework Community is a multifaceted network comprising discussion forums, comprehensive documentation, a knowledge base, immersive events, and educational resources. Members are empowered to delve into a wealth of documentation through the platform's federated search or initiate unique discussions to glean insights from Lacework experts and industry peers. Jay Parikh, CEO of Lacework, said they were always looking for new ways to help their customers succeed and that the community would connect them with their peers and partners to learn and share faster and more broadly. He also added that customers would experience a new level of support from Lacework through the discussions, documentation, and engagement. Key features accessible to users of the Lacework Community include: Discussion Forums: Covering a broad spectrum of Lacework and cloud security topics Knowledge Base: Hosting numerous articles addressing common support issues How-to Guides: Curated by Lacework's Customer Success Architects Product Updates: Summarizing monthly releases and offering in-depth feature insights Networked Events: Featuring daily office hours and marketing events Integrated Documentation: Housing thousands of articles indexed for seamless federated search functionality John Turner, Senior Security Architect at LendingTree, said that things changed fast in the cloud security world and that companies faced new daily threats and tactics. He also noted that quick learning and peer feedback could significantly affect any company's security posture. He added that Lacework's community would provide that critical input and elevate the cloud security conversation. The Lacework Community is now open to both existing customers and potential prospects. Lacework is a platform providing comprehensive cloud security, including threat detection, anomaly identification, and compliance management across multi-cloud systems, workloads, and Kubernetes. However, it faces challenges for a few users as visibility is lacking and compliance-related metrics and IAM security control could be improved. IAM security management controls and detection of deviations and misconfigurations are critical, but have yet to be developed in Lacework. There is no data governance or data visibility. About Lacework Lacework, a data-driven cloud security platform, automates security at scale with its Polygraph Data Platform. This platform uniquely collects, analyzes, and correlates data across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes, pinpointing crucial security events amid vast data streams. Clients rely on Lacework for revenue growth, safer product launches, and consolidated security solutions. Lacework strengthens cloud security, enabling faster innovation by scaling with an organization's dynamic cloud data, including code, identities, containers, and multi-cloud infrastructure. It offers security and development teams prioritized insights on significant risks.

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Cloud App Management

CoreStack Unveils New Cloud Assessment Product for MSPs

Business Wire | September 29, 2023

CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance provider, today announced the release of CoreStack Assessments, a product that simplifies and streamlines multi-cloud assessments for managed services providers and their enterprise customers. CoreStack Assessments equips MSPs and SIs to run multi-cloud assessments at scale against cloud-native Well-Architected Frameworks as well as custom frameworks, enabling them to quickly and easily identify and resolve issues across security and compliance, cost, and operations. As organizations progress their cloud transformation, it’s imperative that they continue to operate in an optimized and well-architected manner, said Cyril Belikoff, GM of Azure and Industry GTM at Microsoft. CoreStack Assessments hits the mark by empowering single and multi-cloud customers with a comprehensive evaluation of architectural alignment with industry best practices. “We are thrilled to introduce CoreStack Assessments to our partners – and to simplify delivery of cloud assessments,” said Saba Arumugam, CoreStack’s Chief Technology Officer. “Armed with these powerful assessment capabilities, our partners will be able to capitalize more quickly on the opportunities that matter and help their customers realize the full potential of their cloud investments. This solution provides our partners a robust, flexible, and streamlined assessment experience so they can help customers embrace cloud best practices in the most efficient way possible.” Purpose-built for partners, CoreStack Assessments provides out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Azure, AWS, and GCP frameworks. Partners can also import existing custom frameworks, create custom assessment frameworks based on hyperscaler frameworks, or create new frameworks from scratch. With multi-level hierarchy and identity isolation, a clear and centralized workflow, and highly automated issue detection and recommendations, CoreStack Assessments provides MSPs new levels of assessment flexibility and scalability. The solution also provides powerful collaboration, evidence tracking, and reporting features. “For Cloudelligent, CoreStack Assessments has been a game changer,” said Dwayne Lyle, Chief Revenue Officer at Cloudelligent. “It has reduced the internal costs to deliver a Well-Architected Review and automated many of our manual activities, accelerating delivery of these assessments by 50% and helping us ensure our customers are always well-architected. Ultimately it has improved the customer experience and differentiated us from other AWS Well-Architected Partners who deliver reviews in a more traditional way.” CoreStack Assessments is offered alongside CoreStack NextGen Cloud Governance, a powerful set of solutions that leverage AI to provide continuous and autonomous governance for FinOps, SecOps, and CloudOps through one unified dashboard. CoreStack NextGen Cloud Governance is designed to help customers leverage best-of-breed cloud platforms with the least friction possible, boosting top-line revenues and bottom-line efficiencies whether they’re running AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, OCI, or a combination of cloud providers. CoreStack was recently named one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., ranking 835th on the Inc. 5000 List for 2023. CoreStack's inclusion on this prestigious list underscores its striking growth and transformative influence within the cloud industry. CoreStack comes in 120th in the Software category and is the 10th best performing company in the Seattle area and 12th in Washington State. CoreStack has also been recognized by Frost & Sullivan, Forrester, Gartner, S&P Global, and IDC as an innovator and leader in cloud management. About CoreStack CoreStack provides a NextGen Cloud Governance platform that empowers enterprises to predictably increase top-line revenues, improve bottom-line efficiencies, and gain a competitive edge through AI-powered real-time cloud governance on autopilot. CoreStack's FinOps, SecOps, and CloudOps solutions embrace, enhance, and extend native-cloud capabilities, enabling reporting, recommendation, and remediation and providing single pane-of-glass governance across multi-cloud. Through executive dashboards for comprehensive real-time insights, CoreStack delivers transformative value such as 40% increase in operational efficiencies, 50% decrease in cloud costs, and 100% security assurance and compliance. CoreStack helps 750+ global enterprises govern $2+ billion in annual cloud consumption, and $300 million in cloud cost savings. Frost & Sullivan, Forrester, Gartner, S&P Global, and IDC have recognized CoreStack as an innovator and leader in cloud management. CoreStack is backed by strategic advisors, including the ex-CEO of Wipro and ex-CIO of Microsoft. The company is a Microsoft Azure (Legacy) Gold Partner, Amazon AWS Technology Partner with Cloud Operations Competency, Oracle Cloud Build Partner, and Google Cloud Build Partner. To learn more, visit www.corestack.io

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Cloud Security

Tenable Acquires Ermetic to Boost Cloud Security with CNAPP and CIEM

Tenable | September 11, 2023

Tenable Holdings, Inc. is strengthening its focus on cloud security through the acquisition of Ermetic Ltd., a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) company specializing in cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM). This strategic move aims to enhance Tenable's Exposure Management Platform by providing improved risk visibility, prioritization, and remediation solutions for both cloud and on-premises environments. Ermetic's CNAPP offers comprehensive contextual analysis, simplifying the identification of critical issues like privileged access to exposed, vulnerable workloads. The integration of Ermetic's capabilities into Tenable One will broaden Tenable's offerings for hybrid environments, addressing the complex challenge of managing identity-based threats in the cloud. According to the Cloud Security Alliance's 2022 Top Cloud Threats report, identity-based threats are a top concern in cloud security. Tenable's acquisition of Ermetic seeks to simplify the process of understanding access risks and permissions in the cloud, making it more accessible for security professionals with varying levels of expertise. “We will have an opportunity to put additional market-leading cloud security capabilities into the hands of tens of thousands of customers,” said Amit Yoran, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tenable. “Together, we will be able to deliver a holistic view of the modern attack surface and help organizations reduce exposure and risk, using identity as an essential foundation,” he further added. [Source: Globe News Wire] The combined offerings of Tenable and Ermetic will include a unified CNAPP solution for asset discovery, risk analysis, remediation, and compliance, as well as a robust CIEM solution for managing human and service identities in cloud infrastructure. The integration will provide context-aware risk prioritization across all cloud and on-premises resources and simplify the remediation process. The acquisition, valued at approximately $240 million in cash and $25 million in restricted stock and RSUs, is expected to close in early Q4 2023. Tenable will finance the cash portion of the acquisition using existing funds. However, Ermetic's financial results in Q4 2023 are not anticipated to significantly impact revenue or billings but are expected to increase non-GAAP operating expenses by $4–6 million. The combination of Tenable and Ermetic is poised to offer unparalleled visibility and value in managing cloud environments, simplifying the complexity of cloud security management. About Tenable Tenable is a prominent player in the computer and network security industry, headquartered in Columbia, MD. With a global footprint, the company serves approximately 40,000 organizations worldwide, including Fortune 500 giants, Global 2000 firms, and government agencies. Leveraging its renowned Nessus vulnerability expertise, Tenable offers a pioneering platform for comprehensively securing digital assets across various computing platforms. Its specialties encompass vulnerability management, continuous network monitoring, compliance, and a range of security solutions for web applications, containers, the cloud, industrial technology, IoT, and more.

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Spotlight

The Virtual Floorplan: New Rules for a New Era of Work is a global report analyzing hybrid work, and how it comes with its own set of rules and roles across organizations. The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware, collects global data from 7600 employees, IT, HR and business decision makers from July and

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