The Technologies Flashing the Green Light at the Intersection of VM and Kubernetes

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms

Summary Bullets:          

  • Key technologies promote management and isolation of untrusted containerized workloads on par with VM security
  • Watch for new operational management technology supporting advanced ALM capabilities

I’ve been moving outside my comfort zone and attending OpenStack conferences, including next week’s Open Infrastructure Summit in Denver, to gain insight into what enterprise operations teams are up against as they shift from a virtualized world into modern app development scenarios. The success around containerizing applications (by running them on an operating system’s kernel versus hardware) is finally prompting interest in microservices, a new app architecture which breaks cumbersome monolithic apps into smaller, composable services.

 

This intersection of virtualization and Kubernetes, where VMs and application containers are being managed together is not without its security concerns. Vendors have therefore realized a need for technologies which provide an extra level of management and isolation for those untrusted workloads running in containers in order to reduce risk levels. Some examples include Google’s gVisor, which provides secure isolation for containers, and Amazon’s Firecracker, micro-VM technology which leverages modified KVM and manages and secures serverless infrastructures such as Lambda.

Of particular interest to hyperscale providers is Kata Containers, an OpenStack Foundation project which standardizes lightweight VMs that perform like containers but support workload isolation and retain the security benefits of VMs.   Continue reading “The Technologies Flashing the Green Light at the Intersection of VM and Kubernetes” →

Microsoft Unveils Bosque, Throwing Yet Another Stone Into an Ocean of Programming Languages

by Brad Shimmin, posted in Big Data
B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

  • Microsoft’s new Bosque programming language may never rival top-tier options like Python or JavaScript; it might even fail miserably as an active language, drowning amid a sea of available options.
  • But, if that failure improves the state of software development, Bosque will have succeeded admirably.

What’s wrong with JavaScript, Java, C++, C#, Python, Ruby, and the two hundred-plus active programming languages available in the market today? Do we really need one more programming language? Apparently, the folks in Redmond, Washington think so. Continue reading “Microsoft Unveils Bosque, Throwing Yet Another Stone Into an Ocean of Programming Languages” →

IoT Connection Forecasts Point to a Need for New Operator Strategies

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • According to new forecasts from GlobalData, the global number of Internet of Things (IoT) connections will reach 4.5 billion by 2023, dominated by short-range and cellular connections and with a five-year CAGR of 28%.
  • This is only moderately good news for mobile operators, which will see cellular connections grow by only a CAGR of 16% over five years. More importantly, connectivity is only expected to generate 5-10% of total IoT revenues predicted by GlobalData at $317 billion by 2023.

It has been clear for a long time that operators need to move beyond connectivity to make any serious money in IoT. According to new forecasts from GlobalData, the global number of Internet of Things connections will reach 4.5 billion by 2023, dominated by short-range and cellular connections but with especially strong growth from LPWANs. The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for all IoT connectivity types is moderate, at 28%. Continue reading “IoT Connection Forecasts Point to a Need for New Operator Strategies” →

Amazon Catches Heat for Alexa’s Dependence on Human Intellect

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
A. DeCarlo
A. DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Amazon Alexa is relaying recorded consumer speech for analysis by Amazon staff and contractors for product improvements.
  • There is a simple workaround to turn off the default communications between Alexa and Amazon employees.

Alexa apparently needs a little help from human sources to better decipher user requests. Amazon acknowledged that individual staff and contractors in a number of countries including Romania, India, Costa Rica, and the U.S. each evaluate as many as 1,000 recorded requests to Alexa during their nine-hour shift. The staffers feed notes into software that provides better context to requests, which Amazon said will ultimately produce a better user experience. Continue reading “Amazon Catches Heat for Alexa’s Dependence on Human Intellect” →

When Thinking About UC, Don’t Lose Your Voice

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate
G. Barton
G. Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • Despite the growing popularity of video and messaging, voice remains a key communication tool for colleagues and customers.
  • ‘Voice’ now covers multiple platforms and technologies – all of which need managing.

Lost Voice

It is understandable that companies such as Google and Facebook will promote marketing lines suggesting text- and video-based forms of communication are the future while traditional and cloud/IP voice-only services are old hat. And, to a certain extent, they are correct. There is no doubt that as the millennial generation enters the workplace, the preferred methods of communication and collaboration are changing. The change is also not confined to the youngest people in the workplace. RingCentral Glip and Microsoft Teams groups are a standard part of many peoples’ daily work routines. But, this doesn’t mean that the humble voice call is a thing of the past. Continue reading “When Thinking About UC, Don’t Lose Your Voice” →

WiFi 6 and Its Benefits to Enterprises

by Alfie Amir, posted in Communicate, Internet of Things, Mobilize, Network
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

  • WiFi 6 is entering the market and will offer higher capacity, better security, and more efficient resource/device management.
  • As a successor to the current WiFi standard, it will be widely adopted in the mass market. There are also several benefits to enterprises.

What’s New

WiFi 6, which is based on the IEEE802.11ax standard, is a logical progression of the current WiFi technology (IEEE802.11ac). It comes with various new features and updated technologies to offer higher network capacity and security as well as better device management. WiFi 6 has a theoretical peak speed of 9.6 Gbps, almost triple that of its predecessor (WiFi 5). This is achieved through updated wireless technologies such as orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) and multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) antenna systems. However, the gain in capacity is not just about offering a higher speed, but also about addressing the larger number of WiFi devices served by an access point (AP). Continue reading “WiFi 6 and Its Benefits to Enterprises” →

Open Networking Summit: Despite Cloud Native Advancements, Networking Providers Are Years Away from Offering DevOps Technologies

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms

Summary Bullets:

• Telco is eight years behind enterprise in DevOps related progress

• Beyond OpenStack, infrastructure providers embrace key DevOps technologies

Last week’s Open Networking Summit in San Jose attracted the largest of telecommunications and networking companies, all reiterating the importance of 5G networks for supporting digital transformations and cloud native implementations. Now companies like Ericsson, AT&T, and Huawei are revealing more on their strategies to include DevOps technologies in 5G telecom networks alongside software defined systems and emerging open source software projects including Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) and others.
Continue reading “Open Networking Summit: Despite Cloud Native Advancements, Networking Providers Are Years Away from Offering DevOps Technologies” →

New Market Disruptors Tackle Microservices Network and App Management

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable, IT Leader
C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

  • A new breed of San Francisco startups is addressing microservices connectivity issues head-on.
  • Infrastructure and cloud providers will integrate innovative service mesh technologies into management solutions this year.

A new crop of San Francisco startups is addressing a major sticking point among enterprise app modernization projects: the need for more lightweight connectivity solutions which address those points of intersection between apps and networks. Complexities around infrastructure implementations of modern architectures have finally taken their toll on app modernization projects within enterprises, stalling critical DevOps initiatives and prompting key OSS technologies to come to the forefront along with the disruptive innovators behind them. Continue reading “New Market Disruptors Tackle Microservices Network and App Management” →

TPG Needs the Merger with VHA, and to Grow Business Customers

by siowmeng, posted in Network
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

• TPG is facing headwinds in growing its revenue and there is limited room to expand its margins. It needs to find new ways to grow its business.

• The merger with VHA will give TPG mobile capabilities and greater scale to compete with Telstra and Optus; but it also needs to pursue growth from the business segment.

TPG released its H1 FY2019 results in late March 2019. Total revenue for H1 FY2019 (ended 31 December 2019) declined 1.5% YoY to A$1.24 billion, but underlying EBITDA and NPAT improved 2.8% and 3.5% respectively. Revenue and EBITDA growth was mainly due to improvement in its Corporate division, but the growth was offset by the decline of Consumer division due to the DSL to NBN migration and iiNet home phone decline. Within Corporate, growth was mainly driven by the Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) fibre contract (contributed A$22 million of growth), which will not deliver long-term growth. While TPG has not been able to grow its revenue in H1 FY2019 compared to the same period in the previous financial year, it has been successful in reducing costs to improve its margins including a reduction in employment and overhead costs. With the consumer market challenged by competition and NBN migration, there is limited upside. There is also limited room for further cost reduction, so business-as-usual is not an option for TPG. Continue reading “TPG Needs the Merger with VHA, and to Grow Business Customers” →

NEC Collaborates with UniKL to Gain an Early Advantage in the Malaysia SD-WAN Market

by Alfie Amir, posted in Communicate, IT Leader, Network
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

  • NEC completed its SDWAN trial with UniKL and was selected as the technology partner for the university’s SDx Center of Excellence.
  • While the collaboration offers an early-mover advantage, NEC needs to expand its ecosystem of partners to grab the bigger market opportunity in the country.

NEC Corporation announced the completion of its SD-WAN trial with the University of Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) in Malaysia on March 22, 2019. The initiative, which was funded by the Japanese government, used NEC’s own solution, ‘SD-WAN Security Common Platform,’ and covered several use cases such as virtualization and monitoring of end-to-end network traffic in multivendor environments, dynamic routing optimization based on application requirements, and central configuration of network switches across the university campuses. Following the successful collaboration, NEC has also been selected as the technology partner for UniKL’s newly launched SDx Center of Excellence, which brings together industry experts and researchers to co-develop solutions based on the latest networking technologies such as SDN, IoT, and 5G. Continue reading “NEC Collaborates with UniKL to Gain an Early Advantage in the Malaysia SD-WAN Market” →