Technology 2020

Translate Windows 10 Group Policies into MDM Rules

2019-08-21T08:45:00.001-07:00

Administrators who want to manage PCs like mobile devices could easily do it with Microsoft's new migration tool. Companies looking to manage all of their mobile devices and Windows 10 PCs from a single console can do so with almost any modern mobile device management (MDM) solution. But there is still a difficult hurdle: to enforce the group policy objects defined for desktop administration on Windows 10 with smartphones and tablets. The Microsoft MDM Migration Analysis Tool (MMAT), which is due to arrive in April with the update Windows 10 Creators Update, aims to help with this process.

Jack Gold, director and founder of J. Gold Associates notes that "organizations want consistency in their security policies across all devices."

How MMAT Translates Windows 10 Group Policies

MMAT examines GPOs in Windows 10, determines if there are equivalent MDM policies, and then generates a report that administrators can use. For example, if administrators use Group Policy to impose passwords of at least six characters on all PCs, MMAT will indicate whether there is a corresponding MDM policy that administrators can use. To date, they still have to manually identify MDM policies equivalent to their GPOs.

However, MMAT does not perform the actual process of translating GPOs into MDM policies. And it does not work with other types of Windows desktop management technologies, especially third-party publishers.

However, MMAT can save time for park administrators, believes

Mehran Basiratmand, Technical Director of Atlantic University, Florida, who uses AirWatch for Windows 10 computers and mobile devices. In particular, he considers that MMAT could be useful in minimizing errors in the allocation of MDM policies to users' PCs: "This is particularly interesting for [regulated sectors] such as health care providers or institutions. financial information ".

MDM policies open to workstations

Most organizations do not yet use MDM to administer desktops and mobile devices - an approach known as unified device management (UEM) - but almost all MDM providers offer this option.

"Currently, most companies implement MDM as a stand-alone solution, but continue to manage their workstations with their legacy tools," says Jack Gold: "for them, as long as it works, so many not take unnecessary risk ".

But a growing number of organizations are going to adopt EMU because it makes administrators' work easier and improves security. Therefore, with MMAT, Microsoft takes a step ahead, estimates Gold.

Ric Opal, senior director of Microsoft Partner, SWC Technology Partners, shares this feeling: "Microsoft has collected a large amount of customer testimonials and reviews to identify the bottlenecks encountered. And he's trying to eliminate one. It pushes a new use case for Windows 10 ".

Hyperconverged infrastructures: a step towards Software-Defined

2019-08-21T08:43:00.001-07:00

For the time being, no IT player has a complete SDDC offer (Software-Defined Datacenter). A finding that companies have to do, without their knowledge. To answer this problem, they must assemble a battery of software and hardware, each from different suppliers. While the hyperconverged infrastructures pre-assemble some programmable parts , they can not form a complete SDDC.

Before you buy and implement a complete SDDC, you first need to understand what needs to be met in the enterprise, and which technology may ultimately be suitable.

How to define an SDDC

A Software-Defined Datacenter is a conceptual infrastructure in which each element is controlled via abstraction layers, automated procedures or a set of rules. Infrastructure as Code is a key component of this programmable platform . Traditional IT infrastructure relies on manual configurations of isolated components. An SDDC, on the other hand, uses source files instead to describe the target infrastructure, favoring automation and producing a consistent and reusable configuration. These capabilities are the foundation needed to deliver the services.

A complete SDDC is almost entirely automated. Developers or business departments "consume" the infrastructure services through APIs (Application Programming Interface) - which promotes automation. Most companies are not ready for this, hampered by business processes and the human factor that slow down the implementation of automated procedures.

However, you do not ultimately need a fully automated infrastructure to benefit from SDDC. The latter includes several programmable components, such as:

Hypervisor: Programmable CPU and RAM with certain storage and network functions;

SDN (Software-Defined Network) for the physical and virtual network;

SDS (Software-Defined Storage) to group or segment storage resources;

Configuration management tools for hosts, virtualized OS, VMs and applications;

Software such as Docker or other container management solutions;

Operations, such as backup, disaster recovery, capacity management and performance.

Instead of managing each dimension of the SDDC directly by manipulating the elements of each VM, application or server, the IT administers an SDDC via a list of rules. To manage automation, each programmable element must have an API . With programmable platforms, policies are applied programmatically to things like VMs, compute, network, and data center storage.

The role of hyperconvergence in the SDDC

Hyperconverged infrastructures are initially composed of programmable compute, associated with SDS. All solution providers offer a form of distributed storage over a hypervisor and include provisioning and management of physical servers. The hypervisor brings the programmable network dimension to each of the physical nodes. It's a start, but it's far from complete.

One of the SDDC engines is the API for configuration and provisioning. In the case of a full SDDC, a hyperconverged appliance must allow the automated deployment of additional nodes and this form of automation must be versioned. Ideally, the implementation of dedicated policies should help to bring together or automate the allocation of free capabilities.

Some hyperconvergence providers go further in the SDDC, for example with backup and replication features, which are built into the storage. In a hyperconverged infrastructure, backup and replication must be controlled by policies aligned with business needs. For example, a policy might specify that a backup of a critical system is performed every 4 hours. Another copy of the same system is never done more than one hour after the production version - in a disaster recovery scenario. This approach is key for an SDDC and must be associated with capacity provisioning.

Most solutions on the market do not offer SDNs to interconnect nodes and VMs. None also integrates the configuration of the physical switch. Instead, they rely on the hypervisor for virtual network configuration. None of the hyperconverged platforms manages the OS or applications in the VM; some tools need to be added, such as configuration management tools like Puppet, Chef or Ansible.

If hyperconverged solutions do not offer a complete experience of SDDC, it is because it is not their primary role. On the other hand, they form an adequate platform on which to build a SDDC.

What to Consider When Migrating to a Programmable Data Center

2019-08-21T08:39:00.003-07:00

You've finally made the decision to move to a programmable data center and begin a transition to SDDC (Software-Defined Datacenter). However, this is just the starting point: tugging on your existing equipment can be very frustrating at this stage. What to do with your installations in place and what to do with applications? The answer is obviously not so simple. And as often in IT, it boils down to one: "it depends".

There are actually two transition models: running the two datacenters - the new and the old - in parallel during the transition phase, or integrating your existing equipment into your new SDDC. This second approach actually corresponds to two types of possible responses: integrating a Pod level or rotating the SDDC over the existing one.

The first solution, which involves running both datacenters together, may seem simpler. But there are some issues with migrating the workloads between the two datacenters. How to put this in place? A lot of the answer is in applications, obviously. At this stage, several questions arise:

How does the new fabric meet the needs of each application? It is important to consider the most known issues, such as bandwidth usage or latency, for example. But it is also important to take into account certain services, such as the domain name system, the dynamic management of massive flows (so-called "Elephant flows"), the creation of security zones, network overlays and many more. other factors.

Although many of these problems can be avoided at the design stage, it's hard to avoid them all. Because in the end, the teams in charge of the exploitation know only rarely the nature of the services used by the applications. This may therefore be based only on assumptions - unsubstantiated, therefore - if a possible inventory is drawn up. In this case, it is necessary to set up a migration action plan from day 1.

It is certainly easy to think that all services can be provided by the new fabric. But with this approach, we usually get very bad results. It is best to consider from the outset that the owner of the application may at some point modify or update its application. It would be counterproductive to blame the entire team of network engineers.

Applications determine links between data centers

When both datacenters run in parallel, the connectivity between the two - a DCI (Datacenter interconnect) is paramount. The constraints of each application precisely determine the nature of this interconnection, whether it is an Ethernet-on-top connection or an IP connection that is easier to maintain, for example. As finally all the decisions that we have to take in terms of interconnections.

The second solution, that of integrating a pod level, presents other difficulties. The principle is illustrated below:

If it is not necessary to interconnect the fabrics - which is not likely in most modern networks - one can remove a major problem from the list: the DCI. The other advantage is that it allows you to use simulation to test the design of your SDDC on each application over time. In this case, this involves running the two infrastructures in parallel, moving Legacy applications to the SDDC to evaluate them and leaving them there if they work properly in their new environment . This is in fact what infrastructure operators do.

However, this somewhat complicates the process: how does the SDDC control plan work with the one already in place? The traffic must indeed be drawn from the new SDDC to the equipment in place, and vice versa. If there are few security or traffic management policies in place, it can be as simple as redistributing routing information to both consoles. If on the other hand, it implies the establishment of security zones between the two domains, it can be more complicated. The most likely solution is then to combine the redistribution with a manual or automatic tuning between the two zones.

This allows you to start simply, but get complicated with time and consume more resources than you expect. If this migration path is chosen, it is best to push applications from one environment to another, as a group. This method reduces the interaction area between the two environments.

Rotate the SDDC as an overlay

The last option is to run the SDDC as an overlay over the equipment in place. This is certainly the most prominent solution by SDDC providers. This may seem like the simplest solution, but can very quickly prove to be the most complex.

Using an overlay can be a good option

The basic idea is to use the power of the SDDC to replace the Legacy equipment with the new equipment, but by exploiting the infrastructure in place to serve as the physical layer for the SDDC. Over time, this should not be different than a normal life cycle. Thus, the same tools and processes are applicable from the first day until the legacy equipment is finally up and running. However, there is still a problem: the equipment in place will never be as efficient as the latest SDDC model.

On the physical layer, for example, will the equipment support the southbound interfaces essential to the SDDC? If the SDDC requires Openflow support (at a certain level) to operate properly, is Legacy equipment able to support this level of operation? If this support is claimed by the supplier, has it been tested? To be sure, all equipment in place must undergo new validations in the new environment.

At the control plane level, how does SDDC in overlay interact with those already in place? Can all existing routing plans be integrated into the SDDC?

Administration adds complexity

And the problem is getting worse with the administration. Each point in the network is designed to be specifically managed. Some may have standard interfaces, others only offer CLIs; others still RESTFul interfaces. Others can still be administered through a gRPC interface.

Can the SDDC retrieve information , or push a configuration, to all of these interfaces? Which metrics will you lose on the way? This requires intensive testing.

Thother problem is the ability to quickly resolve incidents. Telemetry allows you to observe network conditions, and solve problems before it affects operations. It is important to review the processes in place to quickly restore services and compare this with SDDC capabilities to determine if there is a difference.

But in the end, the part of the Legacy that will be the most difficult to manage in a transition to the SDDC is the firewall. Overlay an SDDC over an existing equipment is a real problem for him, in terms of tunneling or dynamic policies, for example. In a model built on overlays, the security must be redesigned entirely (the security zones must be migrated from the appliance to the SDDC).

This transition to SDDC can lead to a more optimized network over time, with other options for building and maintaining a network tailored to business needs. The intermediate step can however be complicated. This involves being careful and thorough.

SDDC: what are the stakes

2019-08-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

The marketing noise that currently surrounds the Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) is becoming increasingly deafening in the world and mindsets are beginning to evolve. But an awareness does not necessarily rhyme with acceptance.

The Software-Defined defines an environment in which basic IT functions, such as computation, storage or network, are virtualized. This environment is able to adjust according to the requirements and constraints of other programs.

Virtualizing all the elements of an IT infrastructure (network, storage, CPU and security) is a big change. In the Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC), configuration, provisioning, deployment, and operational maintenance are disassociated from the hardware and implemented programmatically.

All of this is generating some excitement: users are expected to gain increased agility, performance and operational efficiency. Companies that have opted for SDDC can also reduce their management costs and improve the security of their systems.

With SDDC, IT teams are theoretically able to control each application and workload, and to know the optimal configuration for each process (how much memory, storage, computing or network resources). The idea is that these functions adjust themselves to each configuration.

This virtual datacenter concept also includes the fact that each application, each of their components as well as the underlying layers (network and storage) can operate differently from one workload to another, at different times of the day - even adjusted at different geographical locations. You can also provision additional instances of these features to meet rising demand, or "power down" them when demand drops.

These features can also be moved, automatically or manually, from one system to another, from one data center to another, to improve performance, avoid bottlenecks, and network-level malfunctions. or storage. This also includes migration to or from an internal datacenter or operated by a cloud service provider.

Does the SDDC really work?

Technology providers all ensure that their respective solutions operate in an SDDC environment. If a company chooses a single vendor and operates in that environment alone, this concept works and can deliver on its promise.

Obviously, this entails certain difficulties and obstacles to achieving a phenomenon of adoption and mass deployment.

For example, there is a flaw: the lack of international standards that define how each SDDC technology works. The suppliers have for the moment their own approach and this can relate only to a very specific need of the application. Others are focused solely on the network, others on storage. Another group of providers focuses on virtual environments. Containers are today at the heart of some people's issues.

The other problem is the complexity of these environments, and needs so fluctuating. Companies must therefore recruit many specialists. If the SDDC relies on several suppliers, it gets complicated.

In many companies, these silos of expertise are already in place - which is already a problem in itself. Opting for a multi-supplier approach within the framework of a SDDC only reinforces this dimension. Is it better to continue this way and to have pools of experts specialized in a technology (databases, application frameworks, OS, VM, containers, networks or storage)? Or to set up groups with multiple skills in each department?

Demonstrate ability to deploy an SDDC

En prenant une orientation centrée sur le Software-Defined, l’entreprise décide de considérer son IT comme un pool de ressources et que ce pool soit exploité par toutes ou certaines workloads. En surface, cela peut apparaître comme une démarche de simplification. Toutefois, et comme dans de nombreux cas, cela dépend aussi de l’organisation de l’entreprise. Par exemple, mettre en place une unique équipe en charge de tous les achats et des opérations IT convient aux PME, mais pas aux entreprises plus grandes.

It is clear today that technology providers are pushing companies towards Software-Defined, whether they want it or not. The best thing to do is to integrate it. Review the different technologies and examine the architectures that support both your current requirements, but also those of tomorrow. Then develop a progressive plan to migrate to the SDDC.

This approach is far better than migrating IT islands to an incompatible, non-global, programmable infrastructure.

Azure Blockchain: Microsoft Bet on the Future of Blockchains

2019-08-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes known as the Internet of Money, the Blockchain concept is considered as the new great technological adventure capable of transforming the model of many companies.

A Blockchain is a distributed (write-once) database that represents the equivalent of a distributed and redundant registry among all participants. Here we must understand the term register in its ancestral sense: a collection of transactions, a book of operations.

In the physical world, a register is centralized and held by a single entity. The "revolutionary" side of the Blockchain lies in the fully distributed aspect of the register and in the absence of a centralizing authority to validate transactions (we speak of trustless model or organization without single manager). The security of the registry and transactions is here ensured by cryptography.

The use of Blockchains is not limited to electronic money only (crypto-currencies) and extends to all forms of contracts or transactions. The concept can potentially revolutionize all forms of transactions in an all-digital world, be it exchanging goods, values, digital private data, or services.

Blockchain-as-a-Service

The implementation of a complete and extensive Blockchain system is not just a technical problem. It is a challenge that consists above all in setting up a complete ecosystem with its application developers, its users (transmitters and receivers), its "miners", its processors (for example payment in the context of a currency ), etc.

However, the technical implementation is in itself a real challenge. Hence the idea of simplifying it through cloud services. Thus was born one of the first BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) market: Azure

Blockchain.

The service aims at both:

accelerate technical implementations;

accelerate the development of applications that take advantage of it (by reducing the technical entry ticket to master concepts and providing complementary middleware tools and services);
promote the development of an ecosystem (notably through the Marketplace).

Basically, Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service has two main components:

The first is for companies that want to experiment Blockchain applications with "out of the box" solutions. The Azure Marketplace offers a whole catalog of such solutions.

The second is for developers by offering Dev Tests Labs and a set of services and tools (in the cloud or integrated with Visual Studio) to accelerate the development of "smart contracts" and applications based on n any Blockchain technology. For example, the Solidity language (the most popular language for developing Ethereum Smart Contracts) is available in Visual Studio.
Stay open

The primary purpose of Azure Blockchain is to provide one-click provisioning of a Blockchain experiment environment (using predefined templates) to create Blockchains very quickly (whether public or private) and to develop complete solutions. .

Microsoft sees its service as a sandbox where everyone can come to experiment but also as an effective way to expose BaaS solutions worldwide on its Azure platform.

Contrary to popular belief, the publisher's goal is not to eventually create its own protocol but to allow market players (typically banks and players like KPMG, Accenture, E & Y) to apply the technologies. Blockchains of their choice to the case of trades uses.

Moreover, unlike IBM, whose BaaS service relies entirely on Hyperledger (supported by the Linux foundation), Microsoft multiplies partnerships: Alphapoint, Augur, BigChaindb, BitPay, BitShares, CoinPrims, Emercoin, Ethereum, Eris, Flacom, Hyperledger, LibraTsx, Lisk, Manifold, Ripple, Slock.it, Stori, Strato, Syscoin, Tendermint, all and many more are available on Azure and on its Marketplace.

Bletchley Project

However, the publisher intends to bring his own technologies and bricks to the building and bring value add to Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service.

Witness the Bletchley project launched last fall. It can be seen as a modular and open platform that combines all kinds of technologies to build business solutions more easily and quickly using the main blockchains on the market.

Bletchley also provides a general framework defining an evolution of Blockchains 3.0 (Bitcoin being considered evolution 1, and Smart Contracts based protocols as evolution 2).

It focuses however on the idea of blockchains related to consortia.

The Bletchley architecture proposes evolutions to enrich the SmartContracts and brings together a certain number of key services essential to the realization of complete solutions above Blockchains. In other words, Bletchley is also a set of middleware services located between the underlying Blockchain platform and business solutions.

These key middlewares services include gateway services to enable inter-blockchain communications, identification and key management services (to manage access rights to the private blockchain), encryption services, security services, and encryption services. data (analytics, machine learning, cognitive, audits), and a Cryplet Fabric.

Cryptlets (and the accompanying Cryplet Fabric) are Bletchley's main innovation and add to the functionality and potential of Smart Contracts. They are a safer, more standardized and more formalized alternative to Ethereum's oracles. In the Blockchain 2.0 spirit, whenever time events or external conditions must interact with the Blockchain, an "oracle", ie a set of "data + codes" outside the Blockchain, must be called.

The problem: these oracles have no formalization (which complicates multi-party scenarios) and raise many questions about trust and security. Hosted in the Azure Cloud, Cryplets offer a much more formalized alternative in the form of programmable components in any language and run in a trusted and secure cloud environment. It is also via the Cryplets that SmartContracts can interact with the Azures services provided by the Bletchley platform.

In its first release, Bletchley becomes Azure in the form of a Blockchain consortium model that allows a company to mount a private Ethereum network running from a few nodes to several hundred nodes. Implementing such a multi-node distributed network would likely take 3 weeks normally. It suffices here to inform the 8 questions of the assistant and the infrastructure is in place after 5 minutes with the provision of a specific portal to quickly start the development of Cryplets and applications on Ethereum.

However, as we have already said, neither Bletchey nor the Cryplets are intimately related to Ethereum. Other "templates" should appear in the months to come.

COBOL: five questions to master for a job interview

2019-08-21T08:32:00.004-07:00

Candidates for positions involving the use of COBOL language must demonstrate a strong knowledge and experience of divisions, data types, PERFORM instructions and types of research.

Facilitate the test by anticipating these common questions and preparing detailed answers.

1. Which sections comprise the Data Division?

Data division describes the fields, records and files in memory. It defines all the data of a COBOL program.

This division has six sections: FILE, WORKING-STORAGE, LINKAGE, LOCAL-STORAGE, REPORT and SCREEN.

The FILE section contains one or more File Description entries, which consist of level 01 record descriptions. If an entry indicates that all records vary in length, you can read them using the OCCURS DEPENDING ON clause. This clause varies the size of the records according to the number of occurrences they contain.

The working memory (WORKING-STORAGE section) defines the names of the data so that the program can manipulate them. This section describes the data using the OCCURS clause.

The LINKAGE section is part of a called program that links to the data in the WORKING-STORAGE section of the calling program.

A LOCAL-STORAGE section is allocated each time a program is called. It is released when the program executes the EXIT PROGRAM, GOBACK, or STOP RUN instructions.

The REPORT section contains one or more Report Description entries that are self-explanatory.

The SCREEN section is used to create forms on a screen.

2. What are the research techniques and under what circumstances should they be used?

The search is either binary or sequential.

The binary search is faster when the table contains more than 100 entries. Use it if the table entries are listed in ascending or descending order. To ensure proper operation, use the SEARCH ALL statement with the ASCENDING KEY or DESCENDING KEY clause. Include the INDEXED BY clause.

Sequential search organizes the array when the entries are in random order. The SEARCH instruction searches from top to bottom in the table. You must set the index to 1 for the INDEXED BY clause.

3. How is multithreading different from threading on a single CPU?
Multithreading allows a program to simultaneously execute separate threads.

A program runs faster when multiple threads are running on multiple CPUs. To spread a program over multiple threads, use the RECURSIVE clause in the PROGRAM-ID section. All COBOL programs must be compiled with the THREAD compile option so that threads are properly allocated.

Each thread can use the same copy of the data from the WORKING-STORAGE section. If you are using the LINKAGE section, make sure that a copy of the LOCAL-STORAGE section is available for each call of the program. You must release this section when the called program is returned to the main program.

However, multithreading in COBOL has some limitations. For example, avoid unwanted language elements; thus, the ALTER, GO TO, and STOP RUN statements do not work with multithreading.

4. Give some examples of COBOL dialects.

A COBOL dialect contains instructions or compile directives specific to this instance of the language. A dialect of COBOL can not be used in other dialects.

Micro Focus Studio Enterprise Edition for Unix contains dialects that are enabled during compilation.
For example, with Micro Focus, the ACU dialect allows compatibility with ACUCOBOL.

ENTCOBOL specifies that reserved words in IBM Enterprise COBOL for z / OS and OS / 390 must also be treated as such in Micro Focus. Similarly, ISO 2002 specifies that the reserved words in ISO COBOL 2002 must also be in Micro Focus. In this standard, the reference syntaxes of zones A and B are combined in the text box of the program; the text can start anywhere in this area.

5. What is the biggest problem to consider when the main COBOL program calls a C / C ++ subroutine?

The biggest risk is that of a memory overflow in a C / C ++ subroutine called by the main COBOL program during compilation. When the memory used is too large, a stack overflow occurs, all the more serious as the stack size of a given C / C ++ subprogram is reduced. The program therefore has less stack space per thread when running the subroutine in multithreading modes. The less battery space, the more memory is likely to overflow.

The problem is compounded when threads share the heap (or heap). You must therefore make sure that the threads do not try to access the same memory segments at the same time in the C program.

The essentials on Google App Engine

2019-08-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Google App Engine, the fundamental building block of the Google Cloud Platform, is the Paas service with which developers create mobile and web applications. With App Engine, projects of any size can be scaled in real time with automated capabilities from Google. The Mountain View group is responsible for maintaining the servers. This is particularly what attracts start-ups, born with the Cloud.

The services that make up App Engine include load balancing, application monitoring and a host of APIs. The authentication API takes into account both new and existing Google accounts and assigns a unique identifier to maintain visibility in teams. With search functions, which logically follow Google's, users have access to logs and tasks to control their progress.

Paas also provides access to several options for data storage and databases. For example, there is Google Cloud SQL, a cloud service that exposes a traditional SQL database for structuring data, or a NoSQL data store service called BigTable, without a schema. Not to mention Memcache which offers a storage option in memory and therefore temporary.

Google Cloud Platform customers also have free access to the Cloud Security Scanner that automatically scans and detects the most common anomalies and possible vulnerabilities. During a check, for example, the user defines processing areas within an App Engine project and runs a scan - or program one.

The languages supported by Google App Engine

The Standard Environment option supports Java, Python, PHP and Go languages, while the Flexible Environment option (still in beta) offers Ruby, Node.JS and other languages via custom runtimes. The service also integrates with Eclipse, IntelliJ, Maven, Git, Jenkins and PyCharms and offers real-time scaling;

How much does Google's Paas cost?

As usual, there is a free and paid option from Google's Paas service. The free option provides access to 5 GB of storage, 28 hours of instances per day, Memcache, 1,000 basic Search operations, 100 email API access and up to 5 GB of support in the task queue.

The paid edition, meanwhile, proposes a number of hours of unlimited instances at $ 0.05 per instance per hour; $ 0.0071 per GB of memory per hour; persistent storage on disk at $ 0.04 per GB per month; unlimited cloud storage at $ 0.026 per GB per month; free use of Memcache in shared or dedicated mode at $ 0.06 per GB per hour; 10,000 searches for $ 0.50. The cost of the email API varies - Google invites users to contact the sales department.

Several support options

There are also several support options. The Bronze package is free and includes access to an online support center, tutorials and developer communities. Users can also call support through an online form - other support offers are backed by a ticket system. The Silver package, billed $ 150 per month, includes Bronze options, plus architectural best practices, 4-hour work-time response for critical issues, and access to Google. Cloud Support Center for 2 people.

The Gold package, which starts at $ 400 a month, includes Silver options. Added to this are specific use cases, a Break-fix ticket system, 1 hour response time during business hours, 24/7 phone support for critical issues and access to Google Cloud Support. Center up to 5 people. The cost is determined via a specific scale: the cost is calculated according to the level of use of the solution.

Finally, the Platinium package, designed for production services with a high processing volume on the Google Cloud Platform, adds to this unlimited access to the Google Cloud Support Center, a response time of 15 minutes, support 24/7 and access to the Strategic Customer Engineering team. Prices are available through Google's commercial service.

Cloudera spotlights partner success at Strata Data with Partner Impact Awards

2019-07-22T23:30:00.001-07:00

At Strata Data, it appeared that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the promise of game-changing insights from big data were at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Cloudera aimed to demystify the “how” in the AI and big data equation at Strata Data through helpful sessions, anticipated keynotes, and new product announcements to alleviate the mystery associated with leveraging this revolutionary technology. Amongst these activities, the Cloudera Partner Summit is the key event that highlights the Cloudera partner ecosystem and its contribution to AI/ML through real-life use cases.

The Cloudera Partner Summit is the yearly gathering of Cloudera partners, who are also in town attending Strata Data in New York. This year, the Cloudera Partner Summit was held at the New York Stock Exchange on September 11 and the event included sharing of latest news from Cloudera executives, cutting-edge trends in products and technologies (machine learning, analytics, and cloud), updates on Cloudera’s partner strategy, as well as a celebration of partnering success at the partner awards ceremony.

With that, we would like to take this opportunity to once again, congratulate the winners of Cloudera Partner Awards:

Best Solutions Awards

Informatica received the Drive Customer Insights award for driving a solution that breaks down data silos to build a 360-degree view of customers for better marketing, improved loyalty and retention, and/or real-time, personalized recommendations.

MetiStream received the Innovators in Machine Learning and AI award for driving a solution that is powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence to help to save lives, secure our personal and business information, and engage our customers with better relevance.

Streamsets won the Improve Products and Services Efficiency award for driving a solution that drives quantifiable results to organizations by applying data to improve operational efficiencies that generate top-line growth, bottom-line savings, increased competitive advantage, and net new revenue streams.

Accenture won the Modernize IT award for driving a solution that comprises of new and agile technologies built with Cloudera to enable analytics of both old and new data.

Booz Allen Hamilton won the Lower Business Risks award for driving a solution that leverages Cloudera to prevent fraud, manage risks, enforce data security, and meet regulatory compliance with tangible results.

Business Excellence Awards

Microsoft won the Global Partner of the Year award which recognizes the partner who drove the most Cloudera wins in the past year.

Qlik won the Customer-Centric award in recognition of the partner who has the most successful set of publicly reference-able customers.

TCS won the Market Development award, which recognizes the partner who worked with Cloudera to have the strongest year-over-year order revenue growth.

Cognizant won the Invest to Win award which recognizes the partner who is deeply invested in Cloudera and has the largest number of Cloudera certified individuals in the past year to deliver our joint offerings.

Arcadia Data won the Innovator award which recognizes the partner who executed the most effective and creative marketing and sales campaigns with Cloudera.

Everis won the Rising Star award which recognizes the partner who joined within the past year that has the best potential in strengthening our joint customer base.

Semantix won the LATAM Partner of the Year award which recognizes the top LATAM Cloudera partner who drove the most business with Cloudera.

Amazon Web Services won the North America Partner of the Year Award which recognizes the top North America Cloudera partner who drove the most business with Cloudera.

Take Customer Experience Back to the Future with Data

2019-07-22T23:29:00.000-07:00

Delivering a positive and memorable customer experience is the cornerstone of nearly every organization. Failure to do so negatively impacts a company’s bottom line and reputation. Each year, companies invest millions of dollars in programs and solutions that aim to improve the customer experience and provide valuable customer insights, but what if for the answer, they only had to look back to the future?

Not too long ago, when a customer entered their local bank branch, the manager and tellers would greet them by name, ask how their family was doing, how things were going for them at their workplace (calling out the company by name), and discuss other major life events (weddings, home purchase, retirement). In many ways, this made the process of applying for a loan or increasing a line of credit more straightforward because of the bank’s familiarity with the individual. It also conveyed a commitment by the bank, showing that they valued the customer’s business and were invested in their future.

Similarly, when a customer would visit their local department store, the salesperson knew the shopper’s size, style, and spending habits and provided suitable recommendations. They were also familiar with the shopper’s family and would make suggestions for gifts.

In both of these examples, understanding customers, learning from their behaviors, and delivering relevant interactions were central to a company’s ability to deliver a favorable customer experience. These are also what drives the success and value of the Cloudera for customer insights use cases.

Automated and do-it-yourself options continue to emerge as must-haves, but certain situations require attention from customer experience representatives, branch managers, or department executives. In both automated and face-to-face interactions, a brand’s ability to understand—and remember—the customer’s preferences and history is critical to:

quickly resolving issues
providing relevant offers/next-best actions
boosting the share of wallet (SOW)
preserving lifetime value (LTV)

Organizations grapple with how to increase loyalty, minimize churn, and/or proactively resolve issues. Fortunately, data can be used to improve each of these scenarios. When properly leveraged, data is a powerful tool that drives BI around customer insights, drives strategic growth, and takes the customer experience back to the future.

The key is leveraging data of all types, sizes, and velocities. By breaking down data silos, the most complete and comprehensive view of customers—at the individual level—is generated. This then provides actionable insights based on a variety of dimensions and data points. The more insights from data the better. It helps precisely predict user behaviors and deliver new solutions and/or resolve issues—in real-time. The Cloudera platform empowers organizations to do just that, transforming complex data into clear and actionable insights through its machine learning and advanced analytic capabilities.

Cloudera’s custom or pre-built offerings make it easy for organizations of all sizes to embark on the journey to cultivating customer insights from their data.

The recently-launched Customer 360 powered by Zero2Hero™ solution is a powerful, packaged solution that simplifies the path to customer insights and:

Combines the technologies and offerings of Cloudera, Qlik, Trifacta, and Bardess making it easy and fast to start
Can be deployed on the Microsoft Azure cloud in minutes
Is scalable to meet the needs of the LOB and the organization

To learn more about the Customer 360 powered by Zero2Hero solution, how it simplifies the journey to customer insights, and takes the customer experience back to the future, visit the Cloudera Solutions Galleryor register to attend our upcoming webinar.

And the 2019 EMEA Partner Summit Award Winners are…

2019-07-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

Last week Cloudera hosted over 150 attendees at our annual EMEA Partner Summit in Amsterdam with attendees from over 21 countries across the region. Representatives from across the Cloudera ecosystem came together to hear from company executives and EMEA leadership as well as interactive sessions on Machine Learning, AI and Data Analytics, Cloud and Platform as well training and certification opportunities.

It also was a night to celebrate partner support from the past year and recognise some of the incredible achievements of the team and we were so pleased that we could recognise some of the work and talent in the region.

Alex Picker, Director of Channel and Alliances in EMEA commented: “I am thrilled to be able to recognise the work of our EMEA partners this year. Cloudera’s partner ecosystem is large and fast-growing, enabling customers to achieve their goals and support mission-critical workloads across all industries and regions. We want to thank all the applicants for their investment and their collaboration in delivering impactful solutions to customers.”

The winners in each category were selected by members of the Cloudera EMEA Partner and Alliances team and award winners were announced at the Cloudera EMEA Partner Summit 2018 in Amsterdam on September 26th.

This year the EMEA Partner of the Year went to Accenture to recognise them as a Digital Transformation Advisor and collaborative partner in some of Cloudera’s largest accounts in Europe. Accenture Applied Intelligence, part of Accenture Digital, have consistently supported increased investment in hiring and training and certifying employees on our platform to deliver an outstanding experience to our customers.

We were also pleased to award category winners to:

EMEA GSI Partner of the Year – Deloitte

EMEA Machine Learning Partner of the Year – Data Reply, Germany

EMEA Analytics Partner of the Year – Cognizant

EMEA Cloud Partner of the Year – Microsoft

EMEA Invest to Win Partner of the Year – PUE

Central EMEA Partner of the Year – Oracle

South EMEA Partner of the Year – Sferanet

North EMEA Partner of the Year – Tata Consultancy Services

EMEA Solution of the Year – Qlik

EMEA Solution of the Year – Agile Lab

Rising Star of the Year – Claranet

Training Partner of the Year – Xebia, France

Partner Instructor of the Year – Mauro Pazienza, PUE

Congratulations to them all and everyone that attended a truly memorable night.

Cloudera + Hortonworks, from the Edge to AI

2019-07-22T23:27:00.002-07:00

We’ve just announced that Cloudera and Hortonworks have agreed to merge to form a single company. I want to explain the thinking behind the deal and the combination. Rob Bearden from Hortonworks has written up a post sharing his thoughts, as well.

First, remember the history of Apache Hadoop.

Google built an innovative scale-out platform for data storage and analysis in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and published research papers about their work. Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella were working together on a personal project, a web crawler, and read the Google papers. The two of them started the Hadoop project to build an open-source implementation of Google’s system.

Yahoo quickly recognized the promise of the project. It staffed up a team to drive Hadoop forward, and hired Doug. That team delivered the first production cluster in 2006 and continued to improve it in the years that followed.

In 2008, I co-founded Cloudera with folks from Google, Facebook, and Yahoo to deliver a big data platform built on Hadoop to the enterprise market. We believed then, and we still believe today, that the rest of the world would need to capture, store, manage and analyze data at massive scale. We were the first company to commercialize the software, building on the work done at Yahoo and other consumer internet companies.

Three years later, the core team of developers working inside Yahoo on Hadoop spun out to found Hortonworks. They, too, saw the enormous potential for data at scale in the enterprise. They had proven their ability to build and deliver the technology at Yahoo.

Since 2011, our two companies have each innovated to build better products and win more business. In the competitive world of data management, we can each look with respect at the success of the other. I’m proud of what we’ve done at Cloudera, and I’m impressed at what the team has accomplished at Hortonworks.

Open source software has made the competitive dynamic more interesting than it is for most companies. While we’ve each worked hard to create differentiation, we share an enormous amount of code in our products. Our development teams have collaborated on the original Hadoop software, and on newer entrants to the ecosystem like Apache Hive, Apache Spark and more — a large and growing collection of projects aimed at massive data storage and analysis.

In the years since Cloudera and Hortonworks started, the competitive landscape has changed tremendously. Today, the market includes a growing collection of companies who recognize what we both knew early — big data is a big deal. In the data center and in the cloud, there’s a proliferation of players, often building on technology we’ve created or contributed to, battling for share.

The opportunity has only grown with the advent of practical Internet of Things applications. The tremendous growth in both unstructured and structured data overwhelms traditional data warehouses. Machine learning brings new challenges, but also transformative power, to our customers. We have each innovated separately in those areas. We are both convinced that a scale-out, shared-nothing architecture — the foundation of Hadoop — is essential for IoT, data warehousing and ML. We both plan to help enterprises embrace those capabilities.

Besides that, our enterprise customers want us to deliver projects like Apache Nifi, Apache Spark and Apache Impala in the data center and in the public cloud. Efforts like the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and the embrace of containerization and orchestration in the Hadoop ecosystem, making the platform easier to use and simpler to operate, behind the firewall and in the cloud.

That’s a future we can pursue better together. We remain committed to open source. Within our increasingly competitive space, we can innovate more effectively together than we can alone, collaborating in every way to deliver cloud-native products in the data center and in the public cloud, can continue to lead the market and innovate in the way we each have done independently for so long.

I couldn’t be more pleased about bringing these two companies together. Here’s what you can expect in the months to come.

We’re announcing the combination today, but we don’t expect the deal to close for several months. We’ll undergo the normal regulatory review that any merger of scale involving public companies gets, and the shareholders from both companies will have to meet and approve the deal.

Between now and the close date, we remain independent companies. Our customers are running our respective products. Our sales teams are working separate from each other with current and new customers to win more business and to make those customers successful. We’ll both continue to do that.

Customers who are running CDH, HDP and HDF are getting a new promise. Those product lines will each be supported and maintained for at least three years from the date our merger closes. Any customer who chooses either can be sure of a long-term future for the platform selected.

Our partners should find that the combination helps them, too. We each have large partner communities. Our partners will benefit from a single standard to build on, and a larger company with more customers to work with.

We have each recently made major new platform releases. Hortonworks version 3 and Cloudera version 6 both shipped this past summer. That turns out to be a fortunate coincidence. We’ve both rebased our latest products on the current open source project releases, meaning our development lines are closer than they’ve been in some time. We expect to move quickly to combine the two into a single “unity” release at some point after we close the transaction.

Over the long term, we’ll enhance that single coherent platform to include all the features we each had developed separately, so that customers can safely upgrade from their current Hortonworks or Cloudera installations to the new product. Given our maintenance promise, those customers will be able to make that decision when it makes business sense. Their current workloads are safe.

In the meantime, each of us also has unique product offerings. Hortonworks offers its Hortonworks DataFlow, or HDF, product for streaming and IoT workloads. Cloudera offers the Cloudera Data Science Workbench (CDSW) and Workload Experience Manager (Workload XM). We’ll work quickly to cross-port those products so they work with both our respective platforms, so that current customers of either company have access to all the innovative products of both.

Both companies started because we believed deeply in the power of data. Since the very earliest days of Hadoop, we’ve worked — separately, as companies, and together, in the open source community — to prove that belief correct.

Together, we’ll accelerate innovation for our customers and the community. Working as one, we’ll extend the broad Hadoop ecosystem with containerization and orchestration, making it more elastic and more self-service. We are uniquely positioned to deliver the first enterprise data cloud, from the edge to AI.

Forward!

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities law that are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Words such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “project,” “intend,” “believe,” and words and terms of similar substance used in connection with any discussion of future plans, actions or events identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that include, but are not limited to: (i) Cloudera or Hortonworks may be unable to obtain stockholder approval as required for the merger; (ii) other conditions to the closing of the merger may not be satisfied; (iii) the merger may involve unexpected costs, liabilities or delays; (iv) the effect of the announcement of the merger on the ability of Cloudera or Hortonworks to retain and hire key personnel and maintain relationships with customers, suppliers and others with whom Cloudera or Hortonworks does business, or on Cloudera’s or Hortonworks’ operating results and business generally; (v) Cloudera’s or Hortonworks’ respective businesses may suffer as a result of uncertainty surrounding the merger and disruption of management’s attention due to the merger; (vi) the outcome of any legal proceedings related to the merger; (vii) Cloudera or Hortonworks may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; (viii) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; (ix) risks that the merger disrupts current plans and operations and the potential difficulties in employee retention as a result of the merger; (x) the risk that Cloudera or Hortonworks may be unable to obtain governmental and regulatory approvals required for the transaction, or that required governmental and regulatory approvals may delay the transaction or result in the imposition of conditions that could reduce the anticipated benefits from the proposed transaction or cause the parties to abandon the proposed transaction; and (xi) other risks to consummation of the merger, including the risk that the merger will not be consummated within the expected time period or at all. Additional factors that may affect the future results of Cloudera and Hortonworks are set forth in their respective filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including each of Cloudera’s and Hortonworks’ most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and other filings with the SEC, which are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. See in particular Item 1A of Part II of Cloudera’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended July 31, 2018 under the heading “Risk Factors” and Item 1A of Part II of Hortonworks’ Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2018 under the heading “Risk Factors.” The risks and uncertainties described above and in Cloudera’s most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and Hortonworks’ most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q are not exclusive and further information concerning Cloudera and Hortonworks and their respective businesses, including factors that potentially could materially affect its business, financial condition or operating results, may emerge from time to time. Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating these forward-looking statements. Readers should also carefully review the risk factors described in other documents that Cloudera and Hortonworks file from time to time with the SEC. The forward-looking statements in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, Cloudera and Hortonworks assume no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, even if new information becomes available in the future.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any vote or approval with respect to the proposed merger or otherwise. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

In connection with the proposed merger between Cloudera and Hortonworks, Cloudera intends to file a registration statement on Form S-4 containing a joint proxy statement/prospectus of Cloudera and Hortonworks and other documents concerning the proposed merger with the SEC. The definitive proxy statement will be mailed to the stockholders of Cloudera and Hortonworks in advance of the special meeting. BEFORE MAKING ANY VOTING DECISION, CLOUDERA’S AND HORTONWORKS’ RESPECTIVE STOCKHOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS IN ITS ENTIRETY WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE AND ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS FILED BY EACH OF CLOUDERA AND HORTONWORKS WITH THE SEC IN CONNECTION WITH THE PROPOSED MERGER OR INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE THEREIN BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND THE PARTIES TO THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain a free copy of the joint proxy statement/prospectus and other documents containing important information about Cloudera and Hortonworks, once such documents are filed with the SEC, through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. Cloudera and Hortonworks make available free of charge at www.cloudera.com and www.hortonworks.com, respectively (in the “Investor Relations” section), copies of materials they file with, or furnish to, the SEC. The contents of the websites referenced above are not deemed to be incorporated by reference into the registration statement or the joint proxy statement/prospectus.

Participants in the Solicitation

This document does not constitute a solicitation of proxy, an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. Cloudera, Hortonworks and their respective directors, executive officers and certain employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of Cloudera and Hortonworks in connection with the proposed merger. Information regarding the special interests of these directors and executive officers in the proposed merger will be included in the joint proxy statement/prospectus referred to above. Security holders may also obtain information regarding the names, affiliations and interests of Cloudera’s directors and executive officers in Cloudera’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2018, which was filed with the SEC on April 4, 2018, and its definitive proxy statement for the 2018 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on May 16, 2018. Security holders may obtain information regarding the names, affiliations and interests of Hortonworks’ directors and executive officers in Hortonworks’ Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, which was filed with the SEC on March 15, 2018, and its definitive proxy statement for the 2018 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on April 24, 2018. To the extent the holdings of Cloudera securities by Cloudera’s directors and executive officers or the holdings of Hortonworks securities by Hortonworks’ directors and executive officers have changed since the amounts set forth in Cloudera’s or Hortonworks’ respective proxy statement for its 2018 annual meeting of stockholders, such changes have been or will be reflected on Statements of Change in Ownership on Form 4 filed with the SEC. Additional information regarding the interests of such individuals in the proposed merger will be included in the joint proxy statement/prospectus relating to the proposed merger when it is filed with the SEC. These documents (when available) may be obtained free of charge from the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov, Cloudera’s website at www.cloudera.com and Hortonworks’ website at www.hortonworks.com. The contents of the websites referenced above are not deemed to be incorporated by reference into the registration statement or the joint proxy statement/prospectus.

Doing a 180 on Customer 360 – The Preferred Path to Customer Insights

2019-07-22T23:25:00.003-07:00

The abundant growth of data, maturation of machine algorithms, and future regulatory compliance demands from the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will shift the landscape for creating a single source of the truth for customer data. Historically, companies used combinations of CRM systems, master data management (MDM), and data lakes to create that one source, but all have failed to live up to the expectations, especially for front-line business users in areas such as marketing, customer care, and digital commerce. Businesses have primarily invested in systems of record, such as legacy CRM and ERP, to serve this purpose. While these types of systems are critical for managing internal operational processes, they are typically not effective for consolidating customer information at the rapid pace of business change. Additionally, they only provide one piece of the puzzle.

Structured data from operational data stores now provides a small slice of the overall data needed to improve customer experience. IT departments previously invested in MDM and data warehousing technologies to consolidate information associated with customer profiles. However, the emergence of additional unstructured data, further relegated traditional CRM, MDM, and other systems to just another silo. This further illustrated the need for next-generation marketing platforms that leverage all available data to deliver a better customer experience.

Looking ahead, it is clear that the new requirement will be an investment in customer intelligence platforms (CIPs). These next-generation applications do more than consolidate a single view of the customer; they add a layer of data governance, synthesis, and identity, which powers a dynamic customer graph to fulfill the vision of contextual experiences. Additionally, CIPs utilize technologies such as machine learning and AI to quickly and accurately deliver customer insights to the organization and enhance the experience for the customer.

Advancements in predictive ML intelligence build on a variety of algorithms to achieve real-time, one-to-one capability, ideally in fewer than 20 milliseconds (see Figure below). CIPs are not just about the data, but also the potential for delivery of dynamic rich media content, including images, videos, and voice, which can greatly differentiate and influence the customer journey.

Customer Intelligence Platform For Next-Gen Customer 360

Source: 451 Research

Improving customer experience demands an approach that takes into account all of the tools, processes, and data across the customer journey. This complex process usually involves dynamically maintaining a single source of truth about each customer to drive personalized experiences based on individual preferences and behaviors.

Why is this important? Because it’s virtually impossible to plan for all potential customer journeys because each is essentially a nonlinear, self-directed interaction across a customer’s channel of choice. Given that 80 percent of online purchases in 2018 will be influenced by mobile technology and that, within a decade, the average person will have more conversations with bots than other humans each day, organizations must rise to the occasion to deliver differentiated customer experiences that increasingly demand real-time context and user preferences to enable personalized customer experiences.

Cloudera Data Warehouse – A Partner Perspective

2019-07-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

Among the many reasons that a majority of large enterprises have adopted Cloudera Data Warehouse as their modern analytic platform of choice is the incredible ecosystem of partners that have emerged over recent years. In this new blog series, we will take a closer look at some of the most innovative partners, and how the Cloudera platform is helping them deliver groundbreaking solutions to our customers.

At Cloudera, we’re lucky to work with some amazing partners, and in the data warehouse category in particular, we see a couple of key trends:

New innovation in the Cloudera ecosystem: Several new companies have emerged that tightly integrate with our platform, effectively betting their business on our own success, which is humbling! According to Crunchbase, our closest Cloudera-native partners have raised over $260M based on our tight alignment.
Incumbents are adapting to modern platforms: More established vendors are building or buying tools that leverage the Cloudera platform more effectively. Informatica’s Big Data Manager and Qlik’s acquisition of Podium Data are just 2 examples.
Sophisticated specialists are emerging: As the use cases for Cloudera Data Warehouse become more sophisticated, so do the partners. We are tracking very interesting development in areas like security, catalogs, data masking and more.

In this post, we’ll focus on one of our Cloudera-native partners, Arcadia Data. Their software is a great example of how Cloudera’s platform can be seen not only as a massively scalable data store but as a complete data warehousing platform on top of which their BI application is built.

The main Arcadia Data product, Arcadia Enterprise, is a BI and visual analytics tool that leverages the power of Cloudera. One of the key Arcadia Enterprise tenets is that data should be analyzed where it resides, and unnecessary data movement should be avoided in the analytic lifecycle. As a result, customers get a fast, scalable and secure (with Apache Sentry integration) analytics deployment on Cloudera that gives users, including non-technical business users, easy access to all the data without excessive IT intervention.

In addition, Arcadia Data is one of the first partners who have certified on Cloudera 6, which will open up a wealth of new possibilities for discovery & operational data warehouses where the combination of structured SQL-based queries with Analytic Search on (often fast moving) unstructured data can be extremely valuable.

Cloudera and Arcadia Data have teamed up to solve business challenges that require massive scale and hybrid compute interfaces. Cybersecurity, supply chain analysis, operations optimization, and predictive maintenance are only a few examples of how we’ve jointly helped customers.

Arcadia Enterprise, combined with Apache Impala and Apache Kudu, work well for data warehouse use cases. We’re also seeing growing interest in that stack for near real-time analytics on Internet-of-things streaming data. Arcadia Enterprise also integrates with Cloudera Search for analytics on textual/unstructured data formats like log files. This provides BI-style analytics on data that was typically limited to a technical user base.

The shortest and most economical route to prestigious universities in the United States

2019-06-17T22:27:00.001-07:00

According to the International Education Research Institute IIE, the percentage of Vietnamese students accounted for 12% of the total number of students studying in the US, of which 60% chose to study at Community Colleges ( CDC). So what attracted international students in general and Vietnamese students in particular to prioritize the choice of studying at Community Colleges?

5 outstanding advantages of community colleges cannot be ignored:

1. Requires easy breathing input

One of the main reasons students choose CDC is due to an open enrollment policy to welcome international students. Therefore, the entry requirements and conditions of these schools are relatively low, less competitive than the 4-year universities. Applicants only need to meet one of the following criteria:

- At least 16 years of age by the time of admission

- Complete 10th grade program or high school graduation.

In addition, students who attend college colleges are not required to have IELTS / TOEFL / SAT certificates when applying, instead of the entrance exam for 2 subjects in English and Math when enrolling in the US to Identify appropriate routes and disciplines for students.

2. Tuition is only equivalent to 50% of universities:

According to Top Universities statistics, the average tuition of universities in the US for the 2018 school year is $ 20,000 - $ 30,000 / year for public schools and $ 35,000 - $ 50,000 / year for private schools. Meanwhile, tuition fees at vocational colleges are only 20% - 80%, only about $ 10,000 - $ 15,000 / year . Besides, students with outstanding achievements also have the opportunity to receive scholarships of $ 2,000 - $ 5,000 (depending on the policy of each school).

Thus, for those of you with limited financial resources, choosing the '2 years of CD + 2-year college' pathway to fulfill your American dream will save you a lot of time and cost of studying abroad. , instead of directly studying 4 years of college.

3. Opportunity to get a "double" degree in Washington state

"Have you ever thought about holding an American university degree at the age of 20?" - This question may seem impossible, but in fact it's easy to imagine if you choose to study the program " Double colleges ”in some states like Washington, New Jersey, or New York.

Students are allowed to participate in the "Double College" program when they are 16 years old (ie finish 10th grade in Vietnam). At the end of the two-year study program, students will receive two American High School and Transitional Diploma at the same time . With this college degree, students only need to study for the next 2 years to complete a bachelor's degree in the US.

This 'dual' choice program will help parents and students to optimize in terms of time and cost of studying in the US. However, not many colleges with this dual program are for international students. So, to know which schools in the United States enroll students in Vietnam under this program, you register here to know the details.

4. Opportunity to transfer to prestigious universities in the United States

Understanding the expectations of parents about college degrees for their children, American colleges and universities are committed to transferring students to prestigious universities in the US, such as Stanford, Northeastern, UC Berkeley. , .... After completing 2 years of college, students are allowed to transfer the accumulated credits in the last 2 years of a university program, called a 2 + 2 transfer program . Besides, students can choose from hundreds of different professions from Business Administration, Computer Programming, Nursing, Fashion Design, Hotel Management, Engineer, or Advertising Art. ..

5. Opportunity to practice through OPT or CPT

Students are allowed to work an additional 20 hours per week on campus during their study. After completing the 2-year CDC, students have the opportunity to work for 1 year under an optional practical training program (OPT) according to their specialization under federal law. In addition, for STEM students (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) , if they continue their bachelor's degree, they will have a chance to stay for 29 months under the extended OPT program.

In addition, when studying at the bachelor's degree, students can choose to participate in the CPT program (a practical internship program), supported and developed by prestigious American universities such as Portland. State, Arizona State. CPT allows students to work at large companies and corporations in the United States, with the aim of adding experience in the real working environment as well as building relationships in the workplace, thereby improving the brand. results of acquiring and applying knowledge from the school.

University graduates with the CPT program will have twice the opportunity to search for jobs in the US thanks to practical experience throughout the learning and working process. These internship programs also help students have less income to cover part of their living expenses each month. In addition, some cases also provide opportunities for talented students to settle in the United States.

Update visa policy and study abroad scholarship for UK 2019

2019-06-17T02:52:00.004-07:00

GSE-beo Overseas Study Consultancy Group is a strategic partner of the British Council during the past 10 years and has been continuously voted as the " Top Performing Agent " (Top Performing Agent). This is the highest annual award of the British Council, based on 4 criteria, including:

The number of students successfully studying in the UK

Innovation attempts to promote English education

Services and added benefits for students and partners

Assessment from British Council and UK Immigration and Visa Administration (UKVI)

On April 9, 2019, GSE-beo attended a meeting between overseas study consultants and representatives of the UK Immigration and Visa Administration (UKVI) - Mr. Harry Booty and Dave Ratcliffe, organized by the British Council. Here, representatives of UKVI announced the latest 3 changes in the UK student visa policy in 2019.

An extremely positive first change for international students, starting in June 2019, the visa Tier 4 General Student visa application is not required to be interviewed as before . However, there will still be a few cases of random interviews to ensure the quality and truthfulness of the application. This will significantly reduce the risk of being denied a visa when applying for a UK study in 2019.

In addition, the application process for student visa applications in the UK has now been simplified by allowing online paperwork to be submitted before making an appointment to get fingerprints at the VFS office, instead of filing a visa real original as before.

For students pursuing a bachelor's and master's degree at 27 universities that are eligible for Visa Pilot (as regulated by the UK Ministry of Home Affairs) , there is no need to prove finance when applying for a visa studying in the UK and will be given 6 more months to stay in the UK after graduation to increase the chances of finding suitable jobs, instead of 4 months as students studying at other universities. According to the latest information, the draft of granting 6-month visas for all universities in the UK is still in the process of waiting for approval, the official results will be announced at the GSE-beo website. after having issued documents from the British government.

Call GSE-beo immediately at 024 3771 3561 (Hanoi) or 028 3820 7759 (HCMC) to get the latest information on the UK student visa policies and the list of schools in the area. Priority does not prove financial in 2019!

It can be seen that the door of studying abroad in the UK is now more open for Vietnamese students, not only with positive changes from the government, but also the prestigious universities here also provide the quantity. "terrible" scholarships for international students in general and Vietnam in particular. Compared to many other English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Singapore, universities in the UK have more scholarship programs, which are automatic scholarships for students when Apply for admission from £ 1,000 to extremely competitive scholarships of up to 50% - 100% of tuition for students with outstanding academic achievements, such as:

100% tuition scholarship: Exeter University, Leeds University, Queen's Belfast University, Stirling University, Westminster University, ...

50% tuition scholarship: Durham University, Nottingham Trent University, Huddersfield University, Kent University, Sheffield Hallam University, Lincoln University, Bournemouth University, ...

Update US study abroad scholarship of American Scholar Group Education Group

2019-06-16T08:42:00.001-07:00

With the goal of creating opportunities to learn and interact with the outstanding culture of the country of chess and to equip the 'vital' skills for international students to quickly integrate with the learning environment in the United States, American Scholar Group Education Group (ASG) was founded in Pennsylvania, USA. ASG is currently a partner of 8 public high schools, 7 private high schools and 11 US universities and colleges. Below is the most up-to-date list of the Group's high school and college scholarships.

A / High School Scholarship for schools in American Scholar Group system:

$ 5,000 - $ 10,000 scholarships and maintenance throughout the following years, after the scholarship costs about $ 37,000 - $ 38,000 / year (Residential Style / Dorm Style)

No IELTS is required - students only need to interview with ASG representatives and submit transcripts for admission

Students attending a 12th grade year at the ASG Public Schools will graduate with a US High School Diploma

Students may choose to study for one year at public schools and the following years transfer to private schools within the system

Homestay program at Neshannock Hishschool public school : 1 year cost of $ 27,000

Successfully transfer 100% of all universities in ASG after completing the High School program with FULL scholarships for University years

Transfer to a career program at Pittsburgh Technical College to get a green card after 2 years after completing the high school program

B / University Scholarships for schools in the American Scholar Group system:

1 / Allegheny College

Ranked 76 out of liberal arts schools (Liberal Arts) in the United States, Allegheny College has an outstanding strength in Environmental Sciences (ranked 2nd in the United States). The school is also one of the few schools in the United States to implement the 3 + 2 program , giving students the opportunity to receive 2 University degrees after completing the undergraduate program. In particular, students enrolled from ASG will have the opportunity to receive scholarships of up to $ 35,000 / year , reducing tuition fees to $ 27,000 - $ 28,000 / year, an extremely reasonable cost for a year of study in the country. Flower flag.

2 / Gannon Univesity

Gannon University - the university ranked 9th among the most prestigious universities in the region, has implemented a scholarshipprogram worth up to $ 30,000 / year exclusively for students enrolled in ASG. Post-scholarship costs lead to $ 22,000 / year . In particular, students who complete the Engineering program at the school will have the opportunity to participate in the OTP program . In addition, the school also has strengths in the health and nursing sectors.

3 / La Roche Univesity

Dubbed as one of the best universities in the Northeast region , La Roche has extensive experience in training business, engineering and design. This year, scholarships worth up to $ 17,000 / year will be awarded to students with good performance enrolled from ASG (after the scholarship costs only $ 23,500 / year ).

4 / Pittsburgh Technical College

With the first rank, Pittsburgh Technical College has affirmed its position in the field of high-skilled professionals such as nursing, kitchen, hotel services, and STEM sectors in Pittsburgh. In order to create opportunities for students to come into contact with the real working environment right in their study time, the school is committed to all students will be practiced before graduation . Post-scholarship costs $ 26,000 / year .

C / OPT and skilled residence programs: trained under the system of schools designated by ASG

Students studying at any US College / University can transfer to ASG's skilled migration programs . After completing a college or university program, students will have the opportunity to participate in the OPT program (with pay) , along with the opportunity to settle depending on the roadmap of skilled students. ASG will review each specific application and interview before accepting students into the program. The cost of each route varies according to the student's study and experience

5 REASONS FOR SINGAPORE STUDY

2019-06-14T23:33:00.002-07:00

Singapore is an ideal country to study abroad not only because of the miraculous growth of the economy during the past decades, but also because the route to study abroad for Vietnamese students is the shortest path and most economical. So let's study abroad with GSE-beo to find out more reasons why Singapore has become the first choice for international students!

Favorable geographical location

The advantageous geographical position is a huge advantage of Singapore, especially for parents who orient their children to study early. The geographical distance is very close to Vietnam (only 3 hours away from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City) and the climate and cultural similarities are tools to help international students easily beat the culture shock and be an antidote gods for parents who are still not safe for their children to live in a whole new environment. Air ticket prices to Singapore are also inexpensive , creating favorable conditions for parents to visit their children.

High quality education quality

The whole world is always surprised by the spectacular transformation of Singapore from a barren land to one of Asia's dragons. One of the reasons behind the development of psychology is the investment in human capital . The Singapore government has constantly invested huge amounts of budget for the education system, raising the level of training quality of the lion island nation to an international level. With many universities reaching high rankings on the world rankings such as the National University of Singapore (57th) or Nanyang Technological University (106th), the degrees of universities in Singapore are widely recognized worldwide.. In addition, many prestigious international universities such as Wharton, MIT and Stanford have developed programs that link with many local universities, opening up opportunities for international students to access their education. Western countries with easy breathing costs . Qualifications in Singapore also help international students easily transition or attend higher education in other educational powers such as the UK, Australia, and the United States.

Roadmap to optimize cost and time

Students who finish 10th grade in Vietnam can attend a university preparatory course in Singapore lasting 6 months, then continue to study Diploma (8 months), Advanced Diploma, and finally study program bachelor's degree (from 12-18 months). Thus, international students can earn a university degree after only 3 years , ie at the age of 19, 3 years earlier than their peers. The total tuition for the entire roadmap falls into about VND 900 million . Living expenses are relatively comfortable, only fluctuating around 500 million for 3 years. In addition, some schools also offer scholarships of up to 25% of tuition

Simple visa procedure

Singapore's visa application process is relatively easy and quick. In particular, families for children studying abroad in Singapore do not need to prove financial. In addition, the rate of passing visa to study in Singapore is almost absolute.

Safe living environment

According to The Economist, Singapore is the safest city in the world behind Tokyo with a civilized lifestyle, low crime rate and stable political situation. The streets, train stations and public spaces are tightly controlled by the government, helping students reduce their troubles on security or social evils and truly enjoy the city life. most modern in Southeast Asia.

Microsoft is working on cloud-based recommendation service

2019-06-13T08:31:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has been developing Project Sage for two years. The cloud-based recommendation service is now in a build-up phase as a product group. Sage should provide, among other things, recommendation services for publishers and for personalized advertising. The foundation is CloudML, which stands for cloud machine learning.

Microsoft is intensifying work on a cloud-based recommendation service. According to one job description , Project Sage is a "generic recommendation-as-a-service solution that enables customers to leverage a state-of-the-art recommendation engine in a simple and intuitive way".

Further details on Project Sage are unknown, but ZDNet.com author Mary Jo Foley believes it can be used as a publisher referral service. Google is supposed to be working on a similar service . She also expects an offer that recommends customized and personalized advertising.

Two years ago, Project Sage (CloudML Recommendations) started as an incubation project. It has now reached a build-up phase as a product group. The developer team works in Israel and has its roots in CloudML (cloud machine learning). For example, the CloudML Algorithms team at Redmond develops algorithms that are used by Microsoft product groups. It's part of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise space. This manages Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie.

Microsoft Research has been focusing on machine learning for some time . In addition, machine learning is one of the key technologies for CEO Satya Nadella's "Mobile and Cloud First" strategy.

One of the stated responsibilities of Microsoft's Research Center New England R & D (NERD) is to make cloud-based machine learning available to businesses, scientists, developers, consumers, and devices. Access to a machine learning platform should enable the development of web services based on cloud computing. In addition, NERD and Microsoft's research lab in New York are collaborating with the Bing team. Together, they want to use CloudML for predictive analytics. On May 13, NERD will host its third annual New England Machine Learning Day .

Bull delivers petaflop calculator to Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum

2019-06-13T08:30:00.003-07:00

By 2016, the new supercomputer at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) will achieve a processing capacity of 3 petaflop / s and a storage capacity of 45 petabytes. The blade system should be particularly energy-efficient thanks to hot water cooling.

Currently, an IBM supercomputer based on the Power6 is in operation at the German Climate Computing Center in Hamburg.By 2016, the existing system will be replaced by a Bull Blade computer with hot water cooling. The new calculator will deliver a performance of 3 petaflop / s and deliver 45 petabytes of storage capacity. Source: DKRZ

The German Climate Center (DKRZ) gets a new high-performance computer. By 2016, the computer based on Bullx B700 DLC Blades should be able to perform 3 quadrillion calculationsper second (3 petaflop / s). Thus, the calculator could theoretically process 10 million DVDs per second. As memory, the calculator will have a capacity of 45 petabytes.

The DKRZ wants to replace according to own data in the next two years with the new computer the existing high performance computer based on IBM Power6.

The aim of the calculator is to improve climate models and, of course, the question of how the climate will evolve in the future. The scientists use computer-aided climate models.

"Only with high-performance computers adapted to the latest technology can improved climate predictions be made. With the Bull calculator, we hope to gain new insights, especially in predicting cloud formation ", emphasizes Prof. Dr. med. Jochem Marotzke, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, main user of the DKRZ's social facilities.

Also for the efficient input and output and processing of large amounts of data (big data) the computer should be used. The higher performance also allows for better model resolution, giving science new opportunities to model even small scale processes in global simulations.

According to DKRZ, the new computer will improve the performance of the currently used system by a factor of 20. As of 2016, a total of 60,000 processor cores will be responsible for the computing power in around 60 racks. The Bullx B700 Blade is currently based on Intel Xeon. In addition, the blades also supported co-processors from Intel, codenamed Phi, and Nvidia Tesla GPUs. In addition to Intel, which will contribute Haswell and Broadwell processors to the project, the DKRZ also mentions Xyratex for storage systems and Mellanox for high-speed networking as another technology partner.

At 45 petabytes, the future climate computer has one of the largest storage systems. With 3 petabytes, the climate calculator would currently be on Top500.org among the five fastest supercomputer Germany.

A Bull Blade System B700 at CEA in France. Source: Bull

Thanks to the concept of Direct Liquid Cooling , a hot water cooling system , the Bull Blade system can achieve high energy efficiency despite its high performance. The manufacturer promises a PUE value of 1.2.

In addition, Bull also relies on a cooperation project with the TU Dresden in the Bullx B700. The name of the project is: HDEEM, High Definition Energy Efficiency Monitoring. The goal of this cooperation is the development of HPC algorithms that are designed to further reduce power consumption.

The project is estimated to cost € 41 million, two-thirds of which comes from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and one third from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. At the 1987 founded DKRZ are currently about 70 employees.

IBM's Elastic Storage

2019-06-13T08:29:00.002-07:00

The idea for the storage solution Elastic Storage comes originally from the Watson project. This software-defined storage solution makes it possible to store data on any medium without central administration.

IBM Introduces New Elastic Storage Software-Defined Storage Technology . According to IBM, this solution is able to scan 10 billion files on a system in 43 minutes and collect data through virtualization. Elastic Storage also uses hardware components such as Flash. A central administration is not necessary for this. As a result, according to IBM, this solution can deliver continuous services even in the case of faults in individual hardware components.

According to the manufacturer, the underlying technology comes from the supercomputer Watson, who won the US quiz show Jeopardy against human opponents had and IBM feverishly to its commercialization is working . By combining main memory and storage, the system gets results very quickly. At the Jeopardy site, Watson processed 200 million pages of data - and 4TB of information.

Software-defined storage manages data independently, providing fast access while leveraging virtualization and scaling with cloud and on-premises installations of any size. Essentially, Elastic Storage is based on the IBM Global File System software. In addition to online storage management and scalable access, the solution also provides integrated data governance tools that can manage large volumes of data.

The main task of Elastic Storage is to distribute data as economically as possible to storage possibilities. It is tailored for data-intensive applications such as earthquake prediction, financial data analysis and weather forecasting. Access via OpenStack allows as well as APIs for Hadoop and other Big Data tools.

In addition, the software offers its own encryption and a sophisticated deletion function. This makes it possible that data is not abusive to find. This also meets regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Elastic Storage is only the first product in a whole range of IBM. IBM also plans to make Eleastic Storage available as a service through SoftLayer . IBM had the Infrastructure-as-a-service provider SoftLayer year ago scarce bought . Also EMC and AT & T should have been interested.

A push towards software-defined storage was made only two weeks ago by Red Hat's acquisition of Inktank for some $ 175 million. With Ceph, this company has an enterprise solution in the program that helps to realize object and block storage in public or private clouds. His clients include, in particular, companies that rely on OpenStack cloud solutions at an early stage.

Red wants to make a name for itself as a reliable provider of open, software-defined storage. It plans to combine Ceph Enterprise with its own storage offering based on GlusterFS. Ceph runs on standard hardware. In addition to Red, other manufacturers, such as EMC with Project Liberty, are also introducing new software-defined storage solutions.

Red Hat's cloud management ManageIQ is now open source

2019-06-13T08:28:00.001-07:00

Red Hat Opens the Cloud Management ManageIQ. Already in December 2012, it bought the proprietary solution. A community should now contribute to ManageIQ. Subsequently, Red Hat uses it as the basis for the commercial CloudForms. It should create a similar relationship as between Fedora and RHEL.

As part of OpenStack, Red Hat has made the code of management software ManageIQ open source. The publication was already expected earlier. Red Hat acquired ManageIQ in December 2012. The provider had an eponymous and then proprietary cloud management program on offer. So far only Red Hat's CloudForms have been implemented.

Infrastructure Group Senior Vice President Tim Yeaton announced the release of the program code at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta . Before the code could be released, sources of ZDNet USA had to undergo significant revisions and changes.

Yeaton did not comment on this topic. However, he said that although ManageIQ integrates with OpenStack - such as the commercial offshoot CloudForm - it can leverage all types of clouds, including Microsoft Azure.

In addition to Red Hat in Zukfunft, partners such as Booz Allen Hamilton, CiRBA and Chef Code contribute to ManageIQ. Red Hat also wants to provide additional content for integration and orchestration of Lab Automation. Thus, OpenStack-based clouds should be easier to develop and test.

However, ManageIQ's source code is not yet open to the public, said Joe Fitzgerald, general manager of cloud management at Red Hat. During the quarter, the project will be the first full open source release.

In addition, ManageIQ should be a community project in the future. The developments of the ManageIQ community will be used in the future for CloudForms, said Yeaton. The model is Fedora, which has laid the foundations for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

"Some companies in the industry are focused on creating an open source cloud infrastructure with OpenStack, selling expensive, proprietary management software. But we believe that the full cloud should be open, without backing. So we're contributing this valuable code base to open the management stack for the first time. "

Way to the Cloud makes redundancies necessary

2019-06-13T08:26:00.003-07:00

For the second time in the history of the company, SAP apparently wants to divorce employees on a larger scale. Observers suspect that several thousand jobs are to be dismantled. However, SAP emphasizes that the focus is on the cloud and the redundancies are "targeted" measures.

SAP is focused on the cloud and on HANA. The organizational realignment will probably also result in some layoffs. These should not be mass redundancies, but targeted actions.

Not only technologically is SAP facing big changes. Following the surprising departure of Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka, the announced end of the dual leadership from the end of May and the resignation of Werner Brand as Chief Financial Officer in summer, the personnel realignment of the Walldorf-based company now apparently also reaches its employees.

Observers expect several thousand saved jobs across sectors. The company itself did not want to give any figures, but the redundancies are said to have already started in some areas. Currently, SAP employs around 67,000 people.

However, company spokesman Christoph Liedke states in an email to silicon.de, "There are no plans for mass redundancies, as reported by some US media yesterday, but rather targeted adjustments to simplify and streamline our organization to make SAP better align the cloud. "

SAP wants to continue to grow and is fully committed to the areas of cloud and HANA. "The aim of this initiative is to further simplify SAP for the benefit of our customers," continues Liedtke. "It's clearly not about job cuts. In fact, we will employ more people by the end of 2014 than at the beginning of the year. "

After sales change dramatically as a result of switching to the cloud, SAP also needs to adapt the organization. In addition, SAP expects growth in traditional on-premise business. So it must be examined, so Liedtke in conversation with silicon.de, how the realignment can be organized. Therefore, it is still too early to give exact figures, areas or regions that are particularly affected. The restructuring would rather move through all areas.

Liedtke: "At the beginning of the year, the SAP Executive Board formulated a clear goal: to further simplify SAP to become THE Cloud Company. Our goal is to become simpler, more agile and faster. It's an enterprise-wide approach to making SAP more effective, building on our innovation leadership, and further simplifying collaboration, especially for customers. "However, achieving some of that goal would not prevent some restructuring, says the SAP spokesperson.

Only recently, SAP chief technology officer Vishal Sikka had surprisingly left the company for "personal reasons" . Sikka played a vital role in the development and commercialization of HANA database technology . Cloud Sales Director Shawn Price will also leave the company on May 15 . Rumor has it that Price did not voluntarily leave his post. In the future, SAP will no longer distinguish between cloud and on-premise in sales. Coinciding with Price's departure, Bill McDermott establishes the new SAP Global Partner Operations (GPO) division, which will focus on driving executive board initiatives to strategic partner companies. Head of this new department is Rodolpho Cardenuto.

After the Annual General Meeting on May 21, 2014 co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe wants togive up his post, making Bill McDermott the sole CEO.

The successor Sikkas as chief technical officer now joined Bernd Leukert. In addition to Leukert, Sikka also named Rob Enslin to the SAP Executive Board. Both were previously members of the Global Managing Board, an extended board of SAP, so to speak. Some industry observers also expect further new appointments in the leadership of the market leader in enterprise software.

SAP is currently in the process of rebuilding the classic license business model in favor of the cloud. Only a few weeks ago, SAP had presented the figures for the first quarter . And these numbers seemed to make the top management optimistic. "We are well on our way to becoming the cloud company based on SAP HANA because our cloud business is growing fast and we are achieving global market penetration with SAP HANA as the platform for real-time enterprise applications," said Board Spokesman Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe the

Canonical presents mobile cloud cluster

2019-06-13T08:24:00.005-07:00

Canonical launches the Orange Box, a cloud cluster in a transportable box on the market. The device consists of ten nodes with two cores each and a 120 GB SSD. As operating system Ubuntu 14.04 is used. It is supported by the orchestration tool JuJu and Canonical's Metal as a Service.

Canonical has introduced the mobile cloud cluster "Orange Box". The box-shaped device has 20 cores (40 threads) and 10 knots. It is equipped with carrying handles for easy transport. With Orange Box, companies can set up cloud and distributed compute clusters and experiment with Ubuntu Linux as the foundation of a cloud solution.

As operating system Ubuntu 14.04 with Long Term Support in the 64-bit version is preinstalled. The system is supported by the Ubuntu JuJu cloud orchestration tools . Also included is Canonical's Metal-as-a-Service solution . It makes hardware configurations easier.

Canonical recommends using software for the OpenStack infrastructure service or the Cloud Foundry platform. The company also recommends the use of Hadoop clusters. According to Canonical, JuJu also offers hundreds of examples of typical cloud deployments.

Each node of the cluster has an Intel Core i5-3427U processor , 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, the Intel HD 4000 graphics, a Gigabit Ethernet controller and a 120 GB SSD. Up to four of the ten nodes can be equipped with larger flash memory or a hard disk with up to 2 TB. A single node comes standard with such a drive and also has an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 WLAN adapter .

The nodes are connected to a D-Link Managed Gigabit Ethernet Switch (DGS 1100-16). It also supports 802.1q VLAN. The Orange Box has six Gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB and one HDMI port. A single power supply powers the entire cluster. It supports 100 to 240 volts. Empty, the box weighs 17 kilograms. Is she fully equipped she brings 32 kilograms on the scales. The dimensions are 45.5 times 29 times 21.3 inches.

Currently, the Orange Box is apparently only available through the British dealer Tranquil PC . The price is 7575 pounds excluding VAT. Converted and with a surcharge of 19 percent VAT, these are about 11,030 euros - without the aforementioned storage extras. The shipping is free. In addition, several Orange Boxes can connect via Gigabit Ethernet.

Buyers of the Orange Box will have the opportunity to attend two-day training sessions on using Ubuntu, MAAS and JuJu from Canoncial. There is also advice on how they can be used profitably in companies. Last but not least, the Orange Box serves as an advertisement for the use of Ubuntu and its additions in the cloud sector.

ICF construction may prove effective in saving lives

2011-05-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

With all the extreme climatic weather across our country's mid-section, we must start to consider better building practices. Especially in areas where the weather is as dangerous as we have seen lately in Mississippi and Alabama. The lost of life is tragic and most unfortunate.

Building with Insulated Concrete Forms in no way guarantees that every life will be saved. We can’t know what nature can whip up to keep us humble. However the chances are greater for survival and reduction of property loss if we build with materials that can stand against such forces.

We are starting to collect more and more information on the durability of ICF structures every season as we see them survive numerous conditions. We see examples of homes left standing after a tornado….. "We lost the roof of the garage and screened-in porch, and all the windows were broken, but the rest of the house [was] fine," says homebuilder Randy Settersten.

The Sundberg's home construction was 85% complete, when hurricane Katrina slammed into the area on August 29 with a huge storm surge and reported sustained winds from 125mph. The water reached an elevation of 28 feet.

ICF Home in Stoughton, WI is the one that survived the F3 tornado that leveled its wood frame neighbors.

This development in CA was ravaged by a ground fire. Only the ICF homes survived.

You can surf the Internet and find many examples of these structures surviving conditions their close neighbors did not. It's a growing testament to this kind of construction and how sustainable they can be.

Below is a site that shows the strength of ICF walls compared to traditional construction. This will open your eyes, you must see this. Really….you need to see these videos!!!!!

http://www.carrollsbuildingmaterials.com/pages/university.html

Feel free to contact me if you have any queries on ICF and their design or use.

Ray Evans

iDesign, Inc.

700 East Union Street

Jacksonville, FL 32206

904-665-0080

Rebuilding in Tornado Alley, you should consider ICF construction.

2011-04-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

ICF or Insulated Concrete Forms, are capable of resisting higher wind forces than traditional stick framing. Easily available anywhere in the US, there should be no reason why we aren't using these materials more often. ICF has proven to be a system that can truly stand up to Hurricane and Tornado wind forces in the past, and really should be looked at by insurance companies as an alternative to wood framed construction when rebuilding the homes lost in Alabama and the South on April 28th, 2011.

Using ICF makes sense, seeing that it's benefits out way any cost difference over wood framed construction. Albeit, most of the homes destroyed were more than likely built when the building code was less stringent and not so conscious of wind forces.

Imagine, your home built using ICF construction and because of the rebar integrated in the concrete, the entire exterior wall is mechanically tied to the concrete slab and foundation. Creating a monolithic structure that is much harder for wind forces to pick up or move. Nothing is indestructible, but some of the ICF structures that have survived these kind of storms are very impressive. It could mean the difference between losing your property completely are just suffering repairable damage. Let alone the lives that could be saved.

ICF construction has been around for more than 60 years and is used in almost every part of the world. Some of the other benefits are it’s:

Fire resistance: It does not support fire. The flame simply goes out, unless you have a blow torch aimed at the structure, shooting a stream of fire constantly at the wall, there will be no fire. No harmful fumes, No flame spread.

Bullet proof: because of the concrete in the walls, most bullets will not penetrate the wall.

Superior Insulation: The forms are a polystyrene product, no VOC’s, which act as the insulation. Increasing the R-Value as between R25 to as much as R40 in some cases. Much higher than the R16 of most wood framed walls.

Mold and Mildew resistant: The Polystyrene dose not support mold or mildew growth. It just can’t survive.

Termite resistant: Termites don’t eat Polystyrene, nor concrete, which is what you structural walls are made of. Treatment is still required as the bugs will try to make a path around the material. But you won’t have damage to the exterior wall structure due to these pest.

Sound insulation: Improved sound reduction. The insulation and the concrete reduces sound decibels so your home is much quieter than a conventional home.

So beyond the obvious benefit of Wind Resistance, you will have all the added features I just listed above.

Roof types, interior and exterior finish materials, floor plan layout, window and door sizes have no effect on the use of ICF construction. A designer can definitely work to allow for less waste when planning the project, but there are no constraints.

ICF home look no different than any other homes. You can’t even tell by looking at them. You can tell if you rap on the walls and sense the solid construction or stand inside one and notice the quietness. Plus, there are no special craftsman or specialized tradesman required. ICF construction is easy to learn so most contractors can pick up on the techniques in two days. The blocks are lightweight, so no heavy lifting. Openings are simply stacked or cut into place. So simple to use.

If you are affected or know someone that has been, you would be doing them a great service by introducing them to ICF construction for their replacement home. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or see any of the links found on this Blog for more information.