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Whether your forte is creative writing or on the more technical side, we’re looking for writers with varying degrees of expertise in a realm we like to call ‘creative technical writing’.
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[GUEST POST] I started exploring the cloud computing world around 5 years ago, and I must admit that my initial understanding of the cloud was a disaster. At first, it was difficult to find a comprehensive definition, but I finally settled on one from the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). It clearly defined the cloud’s attributes and models, and removed my doubts regarding what falls under the cloud umbrella. The experience that I had finding this definition made me realize that I wanted there to be an easier way for others to find it, as well. Therefore, I decided to create my own list of cloud guidelines. This was a turning point in my cloud journey, as it pushed me to teach many students and IT professionals about cloud computing.
Stumbling upon AWS is inevitable when discovering the cloud, and just as with the cloud, my first interaction with AWS was not simple, either. I remember the moment of “Eureka!” that came after I was finally able to launch an EC2 instance and deploy a simple application. Sometimes, I laugh at the sheer joy I experienced from such a small achievement, but I realize that this was a stepping stone in my AWS journey and my love for Amazon. I am now able to manage bigger AWS cloud infrastructures, and I’ve consulted for and successfully designed various Amazon projects. I’ve conducted sessions on how to scale applications and how to make scalable applications using Amazon.
I see that two things have remained steady over the past few years: continuous innovations at AWS and my love for AWS. AWS has always kept me motivated to learn new things with its consistent new offerings, and I’d like to share the reasons that I believe make it the immense influence on the cloud that it is today.
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Tech Guru Timothy Fitz on making the jump to Continuous Deployment, the buzz around DevOps, and why GitHub has set back Software Departments by 5-10 years…
BlazeMeter invited me to ask 5 key questions to Timothy Fitz – the man who coined and popularized Continuous Deployment. Here are the results:
Timothy Fitz: This is a great question that isn’t frequently asked, since it is often assumed that they both mean the same thing. Usually, when people refer to continuous delivery, they actually mean continuous deployment.
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The rapid development of SaaS applications in the cloud means more and more people, features and open source applications are combining together into one huge platform. Due to the immediacy of software development, a major challenge for software vendors is to audit changes in their application environments, such as system configurations. The problem is that any `change performed at any stage of an operation can impact other areas of an application. This digital butterfly effect can be very detrimental in today’s fast-paced, on-demand environment. It becomes even more destructive when these changes can’t be found, due to inadequate tracking. Failure to track changes, can greatly affect a company’s revenues and success.
A company with a large scale SaaS platform that provides to large e-commerce, quality buyers started seeing that their revenues dropped about 12% from the previous day. The DevOps team started checking all of the platform components and logs to check for malfunctions. After 12 exhausting hours, they started searching for changes that were made over the past 36 hours and roll back these changes. Eventually, they found out that one of the analyst experts made a change to one of the campaigns.
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Last week, I was invited by Leaseweb to take part in a panel discussion about the evolution of the hybrid cloud. Alongside me sat Robert van der Meulen (Cloud Manager, LeaseWeb), Avi Shalisman (CEO, MoovingON), and Anatoly Atamanov (Director IT Operations, MyThings). As a result of this panel discussion, I’d like to share some of the challenges that IT faces in this seemingly inevitable transition to a hybrid cloud model. Although many things have already been said about the topic, I still feel the need to define what it means (yes…again), as well as what it is not.
I see the hybrid cloud as a sub-section of multi-cloud deployment, meaning IT users use both internal (private cloud) and external (public cloud) environments. While this sounds pretty straightforward, I’ve come to understand that there is no real alignment in terms of the definition of the hybrid cloud. As mentioned above, this article will identify certain challenges that are faced when building a hybrid cloud. While these challenges may (still) keep IT teams from even wanting to begin building a hybrid cloud, the business side of many companies is increasingly moving towards using the public cloud.
There are several incentives of building a hybrid cloud. Some see the public cloud as an extension of their on-premises environment; some simply want to use the public cloud for everything outside of mission critical applications and data that is kept on their trustful on-premises environment for increased security. Regardless of what your incentive is, it’s important to be aware of possible challenges lurking ahead.
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