Which multicloud architecture will win out?

You would have to be living under a rock not to notice that multicloud deployments have become the new normal, for many reasons. The core arguments I’m hearing are the notions of avoiding lock-in and picking best-of-breed cloud services. As I’ve pointed out here before, with multicloud comes complexity and the challenge of operationalizing a…

Cloud outages show multicloud is essential

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark—in all of Europe actually—and Amazon has been tight-lipped about it. It seems there might have been a hack or a well-executed denial-of-service attack. I realize this was in October, but Google autocomplete suggests that “AWS DDoS attack” be followed by a year. These things happen frequently. To…

Can Deutsche Bank’s PaaS help turn the bank around?

Back in 2015 – following an executive bloodbath and shortly before it would be deemed the world’s most dangerous bank by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)  – a small team of engineers in Deutsche Bank’s London office were tasked by their new management with transforming the bank into operating “everything-as-a-service.” Now, three years on, those…

Use Azure Cognitive Services to automate forms processing

Microsoft’s Cognitive Services, powered by machine learning, are an easy way to add artificial intelligence to your apps, offering pay-as-you-go access to a selection of useful algorithms. Unlike many other web services, they’re continuously evolving, improving as they ingest more and more labeled data. To read this article in full, please click here (Insider Story)…

Are containers a good choice for your applications?

The application container market is set to grow from $762 million in 2016 to $2.7 billion by 2020. This according to 451 Research’s latest Cloud-Enabling Technologies Market Monitor report. Despite only being a small portion of the overall cloud technologies market, application containers will see the hottest growth, estimated at 40 percent through 2020. Why?…

Can you partition a database between public clouds and on-premises?

I get this request a lot: We have a single, huge database and want to keep part of the data on-premises and part of the data in the cloud. Is that possible?  Of course. Enough time and money can solve all problems. The real question is not “can we,” but “should we?” Here are the…

Cloud computing is even greener than we thought

The idea that cloud computing is green really depends on whom you’re talking to. Some say data center growth is driven by those evil cloud providers. They build huge, ugly structures that consume more power and water than a small town, take up a lot of real estate that could be used for farming, and…

Do you really need Kubernetes?

Oh, sure, Kubernetes is all the rage and of course you need one. Maybe three! But if you ever stop to think, “Why Kubernetes?”, as Paul Johnston did, well, expect lots (and lots) of opinions. One of the primary reasons IT professionals cite for embracing Kubernetes is to reduce lock-in by ensuring portability between clouds.…

Can you put your trust in AIops?

AIops (artificial intelligence for IT operations) is one of those cool buzzwords that is actually part of another buzzword: cloudops (cloud operations), which is a part of the mother of all buzzwords: cloud computing. The concept of AIops and the tool category of AIops are really the maturation of operational tools in general. Most of…

What’s next for serverless architecture?

Serverless services are everywhere. The driving force behind an evolution towards a new way of programming, serverless offerings come in all forms and shapes including application hosting platforms, serverless databases, CDNs, security offerings, etc. Low-level configuration, scaling, and provisioning concerns have been taken away by serverless offerings, leaving distribution as the last remaining concern. Here…