3 tricks to better manage your public cloud services

Some people call them “cloud hacks,” which is perhaps more accurate than “cloud tricks,” but the enterprises I work with don’t like the term “hack.” Whatever you prefer to call them, here are three shortcuts you can create to achieve specific end states. [ The cloud storage security gap—and how to close it. | The…

IDG Contributor Network: Data at the edge: the promise and challenge

What happens when cloud computing goes away? A bold—and perhaps surprising—question. But one that Peter Levine, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, didn’t shy away from asking during a presentation at the VC firm’s a16z Summit in 2016. Just as the distributed client server model that took off in the 1980s replaced the centralized mainframes of…

IDG Contributor Network: What can be uncovered when big data meets the blockchain

As defined by the World Economic Forum (WEF), “Blockchain technology allows parties to transfer assets to each other in a secure way without intermediaries. It enables transparency, immutable records, and autonomous execution of business rules.” Investments in the blockchain are on the rise. Banks, private businesses, and even governments are investing in the technology. The…

What is Docker? Linux containers explained

Like FreeBSD Jails and Solaris Zones, Linux containers are self-contained execution environments—with their own, isolated CPU, memory, block I/O, and network resources—that share the kernel of the host operating system. The result is something that feels like a virtual machine, but sheds all the weight and startup overhead of a guest operating system. In a…

Nvidia’s new TensorRT speeds machine learning predictions

Nvidia has released a new version of TensorRT, a runtime system for serving inferences using deep learning models through Nvidia’s own GPUs. Inferences, or predictions made from a trained model, can be served from either CPUs or GPUs. Serving inferences from GPUs is part of Nvidia’s strategy to get greater adoption of its processors, countering what…

Don’t bet too soon on the hot cloud technologies

We all know what’s cool now in the cloud: microservices, devops, containers, and machine learning. It’s what guys like me are writing and speaking about. However, the overapplication of these technologies could end up hurting you greatly. Here’s why. On one hand, I want to promote the use of new technology, such as cloud computing…

IDG Contributor Network: Security in a cloud-native environment

In a time where services and their consumers are ubiquitous, security risks to enterprise systems and data are exploding. Security offerings from cloud service providers are promising but still traditional in nature and sometimes soft targets for security attacks. While enterprise CIOs expect applications, infrastructures, and critical data to shift from behind the firewall to…

‘Pick that cloud, lose our business’: What to do

Here’s a shocker: Wal-Mart is telling some technology companies that if they want Wal-Mart’s business, they can’t use Amazon Web Services. (Wal-Mart says it simply doesn’t want customers storing Wal-Mart’s sensitive info on AWS.) That’s a tall order for technology companies that may have invested millions in their tech running on AWS. However, if you…

Best of NoSQL: 7 document databases compared

“The right tool for the right job.” If such wisdom holds true anywhere, it certainly holds true with the choice of database a developer picks for a given application. Document databases, one of the family of data products collectively referred to as “NoSQL,” are for developers who want to focus on their application rather than…

What you need to know about Power BI now

Come microservice, come cloud, the line-of-business application is always going to be with us. We need to know how our businesses are working: how much we’re selling, how much we’re buying, how our customers are feeling, and every one of a thousand little markers that show the pulse of business. And that leaves us with…