How often is an environment unavailable due to factors within your project's control? How often is an environment unavailable due to external factors? Is the software and hardware in the environment up to date with the target production systems? How often do you have to resort to manual workarounds due to an environment? These are all questions that you should ask yourself if testing environments are consistently unavailable and affected by outages. Here are three key metrics that you can track that can help avoid costly downtime. Metric: Availability and Uptime Percentage QA and staging environments seldom require the same level of uptime as production, but tell that to a team of developers working 24/7 on a project that has an aggressive deadline and you will have a very unhappy team. As a test environment manager, you know that when a QA system is unavailable, you ... (more)

Start Learning About Quantum Computing | @CloudExpo #AI #ML #DX #Cloud

Quantum Computing is becoming quite the hot topic lately.  With research being done by Google, IBM, Microsoft, universities, and a number of other players, it’s looking this is really going to happen.  In fact, Google may just be weeks away from announcing the Quantum Supremacy milestone.  If you aren’t familiar with the concept of Quantum Supremacy yet, it’s basically the point where a quantum computer can complete a computation in a short time where a classical computer can’t complete it at all.  This is a big deal.  While there are some simple quantum computers out there right now (you can try out IBM’s via the Q Experience), this will be a big deal. Now, quantum computing isn't for everyone.  I'm pretty sure it's not even for myself, but I am interested in the technology so I am intrigued to learn more.  The point of this post isn't to teach you all of the detail... (more)

[session] @Nordstrom’s #DigitalTransformation | @CloudExpo #DevOps #DX

Nordstrom's Cloud Transformation - From Brick to Click Nordstrom is transforming the way that they do business and the cloud is the key to enabling speed and hyper personalized customer experiences. In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Ken Schow, VP of Engineering at Nordstrom, will discuss some of the key learnings and common pitfalls of large enterprises moving to the cloud. This includes strategies around choosing a cloud provider(s), architecture, and lessons learned. In addition, he'll go over some of the best practices for structured team migration and discuss ways to control cloud costs. Speaker Bio Ken Schow is VP of Engineering at Nordstrom, focused on modernizing digital platforms through the use of open source technologies and multi-cloud elastic infrastructure. In his current role, Kenneth is responsible for establishing the vision, architectural strateg... (more)

Developing Mobile Apps for iOS and Android | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud #Mobility

Developing mobile apps has never been an easy task. Creating a mobile app for iOS means owning strong programming skills about Objective-C or Swift and knowing their APIs. Android-based apps are not so different: you have to know Java and the Android Platform and its API. The learning curve is not fast and it includes how to create nice and interactive user interfaces, connecting embedded features like GPS, camera, showing maps, images and so forth. To make it more complex, it is pretty common to connect the app with a server where central data is saved or fetched and where other services must be connected, like a central database, documents repository or other information systems. Consequently, creating a mobile app requires a team of experts able to work with a variety of different technologies, including mobile app development, networking, server-side technolo... (more)

[slides] Leveraging AI for Mobile Enterprise Apps | @CloudExpo #DX #Chatbots #ArtificialIntelligence

Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Leveraging AI for Mobile Enterprise Applications Mobile device usage has increased exponentially during the past several years, as consumers rely on handhelds for everything from news and weather to banking and purchases. What can we expect in the next few years? The way in which we interact with our devices will fundamentally change, as businesses leverage Artificial Intelligence. We already see this taking shape as businesses leverage AI for cost savings and customer responsiveness. This trend will continue, as AI is used for more sophisticated patterns, and chatbots replace the traditional mobile apps. Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Michael Meiner, an Engineering Director at Oracle, looked at this evolution of mobile computing, along with the underlying enterprise technolog... (more)

How Much Does a Mobile App Cost? | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Mobility

How much does it cost to make an app is almost as popular a question as it is confusing. No one tries to learn the exact costs of, say, making a movie: people realize that there's an overwhelming amount of variables involved on which they depend. But almost every day a new inquiry is posted on a tech forum, Quora, or Reddit, as to how much it'd take to build a mobile business app. Such calculation, in many ways, is even harder to make. Is there a way to tackle the question properly? First we want you to understand that any exact figures couldn't possibly be given straight away, without the details, and that all the so-called online app development cost calculators are, essentially, just marketing baits. That said, there is still some info you can analyze to get a frame of reference; to get a rough idea about a budget you can squeeze an app in. Here's what you should ... (more)

[session] Reinventing the Edge Tier | @CloudExpo #CloudNative #DevOps #DX

The Reactive Edge: Reinventing the Edge Tier Using a Reactive Communication Protocol There is a huge demand for responsive, real-time mobile and web experiences, but current architectural patterns do not easily accommodate applications that respond to events in real time. Common solutions using message queues or HTTP long-polling quickly lead to resiliency, scalability and development velocity challenges. In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Ryland Degnan, a Senior Software Engineer on the Netflix Edge Platform team, will discuss how by leveraging a reactive stream-based protocol, we have been able to solve many of these problems at the communication layer. This makes it possible to create rich application experiences and support use-cases such as mobile-to-mobile communication and large file transfers that would be difficult or cost-prohibitive with traditional ne... (more)

[session] #DX and Google Cloud Mobility | @CloudExpo @GoogleCloud #AI #IoT

Introducing Google Cloud Mobility Solutions As businesses evolve, they need technology that is simple to help them succeed today and flexible enough to help them build for tomorrow. Chrome is fit for the workplace of the future - providing a secure, consistent user experience across a range of devices that can be used anywhere. In her session at 21st Cloud Expo, Vidya Nagarajan, a Senior Product Manager at Google, will take a look at various options as to how ChromeOS can be leveraged to interact with people on the devices, and formats they already love to use. Speaker Bio Vidya Nagarajan is a Senior Product Manager at Google. She leads Chrome and Android efforts that are purpose-built solutions, including Chromebox for meetings, Digital Signage, General Kiosks and solutions for the Internet of Things. She started as a Product Manager on Chromebooks for Education and... (more)

Microsoft's #MachineLearning | @CloudExpo #BigData #AI #ML #DL #DX

How Microsoft Is Making Big Impact with Machine Learning During the last two years, Microsoft has upped the ante on Machine Learning and Analytics. From hiring top notch data scientists to acquiring niche startups, Redmond has made the all the right moves to transform Azure into one of the best analytics platforms. These investments have started to pay off for the company. It has been successful in articulating and demonstrating the value of data-driven insights to governments, medical institutions, and public sector organizations. Emerging markets that are turning technology savvy are becoming the hotbed for evaluating the upcoming trends such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. With its strong presence in India, Microsoft is partnering with the state and central government to bring the benefits of technology to the masses. The company is making Cloud,... (more)

Ongoing #DigitalTransformation | @CloudExpo #Agile #CIO #IoT #AI #ML #DL

Systems of Innovation for Ongoing Digital Transformation Information technology (IT) advances are transforming the way we innovate in business, thereby disrupting the old guard and their predictable status-quo. It’s creating global market turbulence. Industries are converging, and new opportunities and threats are emerging, like never before. So, how are savvy chief information officers (CIOs) leading this transition? Back in 2015, the IBM Institute for Business Value conducted a market study that included the findings from over 1,800 CIO interviews from around the globe. The resulting insights are worthy of revisiting today, as we consider the digital business transformation outlook in 2017. Introduction to the Torchbearer CIO CIOs realize the barriers between formerly distinct industries are collapsing, as organizations in one sector apply their expertise to others ... (more)

[video] #IoT Keynote: Are You Seeing DOTS? | @ThingsExpo #M2M #BigData

Are You Seeing DOTS? - Data Ownership and Transparent Surveillance View Keynote: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here The explosion of new web/cloud/IoT-based applications and the data they generate are transforming our world right before our eyes. In this rush to adopt these new technologies, organizations are often ignoring fundamental questions concerning who owns the data and failing to ask for permission to conduct invasive surveillance of their customers. View Keynote: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Organizations that are not transparent about how their systems gather data telemetry without offering shared data ownership risk product rejection, regulatory scrutiny and increasing consumer lack of trust in technology in general. View Keynote: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here In his keynote at @ThingsExpo, Peter Vanderminden, Principal Industry Analyst at ... (more)