Why Is the Healthcare Industry Abuzz About Blockchain? Blockchain. A day doesn't seem to go by without seeing articles and discussions about the technology. According to PwC executive Seamus Cushley, approximately $1.4B has been invested in blockchain just last year. In Gartner's recent hype cycle for emerging technologies, blockchain is approaching the peak. It is considered by Gartner as one of the ‘Key platform-enabling technologies to track.' While there is a lot of ‘hype vs reality' discussions going on, there is no arguing that blockchain is being taken very seriously across industries and cannot be ignored. A large percentage of the discussion does seem to focus in the financial services industry. This is not surprising given blockchain's historic legacy (I know, a disruptive technology already has a legacy) with Bitcoin and crypto currencies. In my article, ... (more)

[slides] @MapR's Data First Approach | @CloudExpo #BigData #AI #Analytics

Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Taking a Data First Approach to Real Time Applications To get the most out of their data, successful companies are not focusing on queries and data lakes, they are actively integrating analytics into their operations with a data-first application development approach. Real-time adjustments to improve revenues, reduce costs, or mitigate risk rely on applications that minimize latency on a variety of data sources. Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here In his session at @BigDataExpo, Jack Norris, Senior Vice President, Data and Applications at MapR Technologies, reviewed best practices to show how companies develop, deploy, and dynamically update these applications and how this data-first approach is fundamentally different from traditional applications. He covered examples of how leading companies have identified ways t... (more)

Five Hospitality Predictions for 2018 | @CloudExpo #AI #ML #Cloud

Five Hospitality Predictions for 2018 | Tech, AI and Convenience to Dominate the Industry The hotel and hospitality industry, enabled with advanced technology and more collaboration with associated businesses, will see some important trends in 2018 as hotel brands reinvent themselves to cater to a new type of clientele. Millennial guests will dominate the landscape, and reshape the industry with demands for more automated options and conveniences and the ability to do everything from a smartphone, and hotels - eager to deliver more conveniences to this younger audience - will forge closer alliances with retailers and community destinations. Hotel guests will place increasing priority on booking rooms that are totally connected, fully automated, and with an ability to seamlessly check in, check out, and access services, all through a smartphone app and without the ne... (more)

Keynote at @CloudExpo By @DavidLinthicum | @CloudTP #CloudNative #Serverless #DevOps

How Serverless Computing Changes Cloud, and Your Job In a recent survey, Sumo Logic surveyed 1,500 customers who employ cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). According to the survey, a quarter of the respondents have already deployed Docker containers and nearly as many (23 percent) are employing the AWS Lambda serverless computing framework. It's clear: serverless is here to stay. The adoption does come with some needed changes, within both application development and operations. That means serverless is also changing the way we leverage public clouds. Truth-be-told, many enterprise IT shops were so happy to get out of the management of physical servers within a data center that many limitations of the existing public IaaS clouds were forgiven. However, now that we've lived a few years with public IaaS ... (more)

How to Avoid Cloud Fatigue | @CloudExpo #CloudNative #Serverless #AI #DX

Understanding Cloud Complexities and Avoiding "Cloud Fatigue" We're seeing an emerging trend in the cloud computing world. I've been referring to it as cloud fatigue, but it's more commonly known as repatriation, or moving workloads from the cloud back to on-prem locations. According to a recent 451 Research report, over 21 percent of organizations have plans to pull back from the cloud and return to an on-prem infrastructure in 2017. Considering the vast growth of cloud adoption over the last several years, what's behind this trend? We believe cloud fatigue is the result of deployments going awry. It usually happens when companies quickly adopt one of the leading public cloud platforms (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, etc.) because they're attracted to the promises of ease-of-use, flexibility and low computing costs. What happens next depends on a myriad of f... (more)

[slides] #CloudNative, DevOps and #DigitalTransformation | @CloudExpo #DevOps #Serverless

Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here The CMP 2.0: Bringing Automation, Orchestration and Governance to Cloud Native Apps and DevOps As many know, the first generation of Cloud Management Platform (CMP) solutions were designed for managing virtual infrastructure (IaaS) and traditional applications. But that's no longer enough to satisfy evolving and complex business requirements. Download Slide Deck: ▸ Here In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Scott Davis, Embotics CTO, explored how next-generation CMPs ensure organizations can manage cloud-native and microservice-based application architectures, while also facilitating agile DevOps methodology. He explained how automation, orchestration and governance are fundamental to managing today's hybrid cloud environments and are critical for digital businesses to deliver services faster, with better user ... (more)

Fighting Ransomware with Disaster Recovery Planning | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Security

2017 was the year of ransomware. Ransomware has been around for years, but the victims were typically non-technical consumers: the impact, although serious from the victim's perspective, was limited. In 2017 we've seen huge ransomware attacks close down hospitals and businesses, putting lives and billions of dollars at risk. 2018 has to be the year we fight back. The organized crime groups behind ransomware won't stop any time soon. For them, it's easy money. Attacks will increase in sophistication and tenacity. Businesses have to be ready. What does it mean to be ready for a ransomware attack? Any business that follows security and disaster recovery planning best practices has an infinitesimally small chance of being successfully targeted with ransomware. If you're smart about it, you won't have to pay a ransom even if your network is infected and your data encrypt... (more)

Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Nanocrime | @CloudExpo #Bitcoin #FinTech

Bitcoins are a digital cryptocurrency and have been around since 2009. As a substitute for legal tender, they are becoming a rage for investors and others but because there is no government agency auditing or performing regulatory oversights, you wonder if it is the perfect breeding ground for electronic nanocrime? Since the introduction of the Bitcoin, some competitors have emerged and the whole segment of cryptocurrencies are defined as Altcoins. Altcoins include: Dogecoin, Ethereum, Feathercoin, Litecoin, Monero, Novacoin, Peercoin, and Zetacoin. Some of these cryptocurrencies are considered improvements on the original Bitcoin algorithm structure, and they are gaining some traction as well. Some financial experts and analysts, including Warren Buffett and Ben Stein, are leery of the overall cryptocurrency market. Is it because it doesn't fit into their more tr... (more)

[session] Enterprise #IoT and #DigitalTransformation | @ThingsExpo #IIoT #M2M #DX

Enterprise IoT Has Created a New Economy Enterprises have taken advantage of IoT to achieve important revenue and cost advantages. What is less apparent is how incumbent enterprises operating at scale have, following success with IoT, built analytic, operations management and software development capabilities - ranging from autonomous vehicles to manageable robotics installations. They have embraced these capabilities as if they were Silicon Valley startups. As a result, many firms employ new business models that place enormous importance on software-based innovations. They require not only skilled occupations, such as data analysts and DevOps professionals, with more technical skills, but also middle-level employees with more software and computing acumen. Both large and small firms operate differently. These are the "green shoots" of a new economy. It is characteri... (more)

[video] Edge Storage with @VivintHome | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #Sensors

"Space Monkey by Vivent Smart Home is a product that is a distributed cloud-based edge storage network. Vivent Smart Home, our parent company, is a smart home provider that places a lot of  hard drives across homes in North America," explained JT Olds, Director of Engineering, and Brandon Crowfeather, Product Manager, at Vivint Smart Home, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held Oct 31 - Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. CloudExpo | DXWorldEXPO have announced the conference tracks for Cloud Expo 2018, introducing DXWorldEXPO. DXWordEXPO, colocated with Cloud Expo will be held June 5-7, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, and November 6-8, 2018, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorld Expo within the program. Successfu... (more)

[video] Cloud Evolution | @CloudExpo @IBMcloud‏ #DX #AI #ML #Cloud

View Opening Keynote: ▸ Here Cloud Evolution In his Opening Keynote at 21st Cloud Expo, John Considine, General Manager of IBM Cloud Infrastructure, led attendees through the exciting evolution of the cloud. He looked at this major disruption from the perspective of technology, business models, and what this means for enterprises of all sizes. View Opening Keynote: ▸ Here Speaker Bio John Considine is General Manager of Cloud Infrastructure Services at IBM. In that role he is responsible for leading IBM's public cloud infrastructure including strategy, development, and offering management. To date, IBM has launched more than 50 cloud data centers that span the globe. He has been building advanced technology, delivering "as a service" solutions, and managing infrastructure services for the past 20 years. John joined IBM in 2015 as the Vice President of the IBM Cloud... (more)