Looking ahead to 2020, Rackspace CTO Joel Friedman offers his predictions

As the New Year 2020 begins, hybrid and multi-cloud will continue to gain traction, as will software as a service (SaaS). Security remains a tough nut to crack, and edge computing will gain ground, but Joel Friedman, Rackspace CTO, predicts more modestly than the current hype may suggest.

PREDICTION 1: HYBRID/MULTI-CLOUD REMAINS ASCENDANT

Smart organizations have locked onto the benefits of running apps and data in the places that make the most sense, whether that’s public or private cloud, colocation or, most commonly, a bespoke combination of these that can evolve as business needs and resources dictate. However, the complexity of managing multiple clouds across the dimensions of cost, security, governance, identity and DevOps patterns will continue to grow in 2020.

This complexity is related to the forced reliance upon a multitude of platforms, the rate of technological change, disruptions to traditional service delivery models and a real shortage of skill sets required to bring it all together. Due to these factors, it is likely that multi-cloud solutions will prevail, while the search for qualified external help will intensify.

Finding external help may prove difficult, as not only will managed service providers need to maintain a multi- or hybrid cloud instance, but internal and external vendors will need to work together to manage a multitude of issues around cost governance, security and tagging, to name a few. Fortunately, 451 Research has found these growing pains can be alleviated with clear communication and flexibility on each partner’s part.

PREDICTION 2: SAAS = PROBLEM SOLVED

On top of infrastructure, one of the cloud strategies I hear on repeat when working with customers is that “cloud first” starts with SaaS. They don’t want to reinvent the (inferior) wheel by developing applications for ‘solved’ problems. Mature SaaS offerings are a culmination of many iterations of customer mandated features, user experience analysis, and just as important, industry best practices around process workflows.

In many cases, organizations choosing to fit their internal process to best match their SaaS vendor’s implementation – as opposed to always opting for customizing the platform to suit legacy workflows. Furthermore, SaaS has a compounding effect with data; once data is in the system, other ecosystem players can offer turn-key integration and add-on services, further enhancing the value proposition of SaaS. 

While this isn’t necessarily a new trend, Friedman predicts this will be the norm in 2020 and expects to see more and more niche, and vertically-focused applications developing a SaaS model.

PREDICTION 3: SECURITY REMAINS A STRUGGLE

When it comes to security, many organizations remain burdened with legacy systems riddled with technical debt and corresponding security vulnerabilities. They understand the need to harness cloud-compatible security frameworks, operating models and tools to operate securely in cloud-native environments, but it can be slow and rough going.

Most industries simply have not reached the place where mature cloud security practices are being implemented, and this creates fertile ground for breaches. Too many are still attempting to apply traditional security controls and methodologies to cloud-native environments and deployments. 

This generally does not work well; not only is the security implementation likely to be ill fit, it also creates drag on the organization’s desired benefits of agility. This sometimes leads to fragmentation, where business units go around central security and implement on their own shadow security. The risks of this should be obvious.

In 2020, Friedman thinks that the cloud continues to present some growing pains to even the most digital-native and forward-thinking organizations. These organizations understand how the cloud can aid their business in moving fast, but they don’t yet have the maturity to implement real-time or just-in-time posture management and ‘least privilege’ protocols in the ephemeral, complex and constantly changing world of multi-cloud. 

While security teams straddle the old world of insecure legacy applications and platforms (those which cannot or should not be modernized), and the relative newness of cloud operating models, I unfortunately expect to see the breach headlines continue in 2020 along with all of the free credit monitoring can handle.

Even when the security teams agree in concept that it’s possible to be more secure in the cloud, many do not have cloud compatible security frameworks, operating models and tools to aid the business in operating in cloud-native environments securely.

PREDICTION 4: CLOUD CONTROL PLANE WILL BECOME THE NORM

There has been a trend over the past few years in which the management plane has been reversing from the datacenter to the cloud. For early cloud adopters, the datacenter was still the central control point. Organizations burst into the cloud or had back-end projects with no internet accessibility. As cloud grew in popularity, more and more greenfield projects became cloud-native.

Granted, many still integrate with on-premises or hosted private clouds for identity, business intelligence or other data enrichment requirements, but the hyperscalers have now moved past denying that hybrid cloud is real (in attempts to capture all workloads), and pivoted their strategy to capture those datacenter workloads where they stand and bring them into their ecosystem. 

This includes Snowball Edge, AWS RDS of VMware, Azure Stack/Azure Arc and Google Anthos. Expect to see more such services in 2020. And why shouldn’t we? Cloud providers have proven their effectiveness of securely operating at scale, and API-enabling everything.

PREDICTION 5: EDGE WILL GAIN MODERATE GROUND

Edge computing is a new frontier — no player is currently dominating this space, as it is a naturally fragmented market. When choosing locations over platforms to address local markets, data sovereignty, and other use case specific needs, I believe organizations may want to align in a technology-neutral and consistent manner. And based on the trends over the past year, containers and serverless seem like a natural beneficiary for edge.

As Kubernetes dominates in the container orchestration arena, serverless is another story in which, as of yet, there are no victors. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform all have their own flavors of Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), which are embedded within their respective cloud ecosystems. Will OpenFaaS with kNative gain some ground based on open standards, addressing the often spoken lock-in avoidance and mobility potential? We shall see. 

Either way, Friedman predicts that 2020 will see lots of innovation and exploration in the edge space, but he suspects this is the year of gaining momentum and the floodgates won’t open until 2021.

XenData debuts X1 Archive Appliance for LTO, cloud and optical disc to offer archiving functionality in a small footprint

Data storage company XenData launched on Tuesday its X1 Archive Appliance that connects to a network and allows file-based applications to seamlessly archive to LTO external drives, Sony Optical Disc Archive (ODA) drives or cloud object storage. The appliance runs Windows 10 Pro and is powered by XenData Archive Series and FS Mirror software.

The archive appears locally as a single logical drive – the X: drive, and comes with multiple ways to write to and restore files from it. The ‘Share the X’ drives over network and users can write to it and restore from it like any disk-based share. By using the FS Mirror, users can synchronize one or more locally accessible file systems or file shares to the LTO archive. The FS Mirror can create archive drop-boxes on the network that automatically move files to the archive, while using third party applications that integrate with XenData's XML API.

The X1 is available in three models: for LTO external drives, ODA external drives and for cloud. Each model is based on Intel NUC hardware and includes a high-endurance 1.92 TB SSD cache for enhanced performance.

The X1 for LTO connects to an LTO external drive via Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3, and for LTO drives with SAS connections, they may be connected via a Thunderbolt to SAS converter. The appliance manages an unlimited number of LTO cartridges and up to 2 billion files. It enables file transfers that span across cartridges and, when using two or more attached LTO drives, it supports automatic cartridge replication.

The X1 for ODA supports Gen 1, 2 and 3 drives with cartridge capacities up to 5.5 TB. They connect to the X1 via USB 3. As with LTO, the X1 manages an unlimited number of cartridges and it supports file transfers that use the 1.92 TB cache to span cartridges.

The X1 model for archiving to cloud storage supports multiple clouds including AWS S3, Azure and Wasabi S3. The system may be configured to replicate files to different cloud locations and different cloud providers.

The X1 Archive Appliance is immediately available. The models for managing an LTO or ODA external drive are priced at US$5,950 and the X1 for Cloud starts at $2,495.

API Fortress releases unlimited API monitoring for internal APIs

API Fortress announced Monday unlimited internal API Monitoring license, which allows companies to run any number of functional API monitors without paying additional metered usage fees. 

Metered usage pricing has contributed to a significant increase in QA costs for enterprises as their testing centers of excellence have encountered rapidly growing numbers of APIs. Modern apps and platforms need many more APIs, which involve an increasingly complex array of API calls to work properly.

Just because an API monitor returns a 200 does not mean that the API is working. Some APIs even use a 200 to indicate that there is an issue. In this eBook of API Horror Stories from actual API Fortress customers, one of the world's largest retailers believed that their retail app was functioning properly. Then they were mystified by a dip in revenues from certain product lines. 

When they ran API Fortress functional uptime monitors, they became aware of an API bug that their uptime monitors could never have detected - the cache function of their API management platform was causing the wrong data to populate certain product listings.

“Continuous delivery with CI/CD was the start of an important trend for test automation. That trend has continued to evolve, and now companies are asking why can't their functional API tests constantly test and monitor business-critical APIs? With API Fortress, they can,” said Patrick Poulin, CEO and co-founder of API Fortress. "With our unlimited monitoring, companies can detect API flaws early and diagnose API flaws quickly. You can schedule API monitoring on our platform without a CI (continuous integration) platform. We also let our customers deploy monitors on-premises, keeping all test and monitor data behind the firewall."

Intel debuts GPU architecture with HPC and AI acceleration, and oneAPI software stack for heterogeneous architectures

Intel unveiled its vision for extending its leadership in the convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) with additions to its data-centric silicon portfolio and an ambitious new software initiative that represents a paradigm shift from single-architecture, single-vendor programming models.

Addressing the increasing use of heterogeneous architectures in high-performance computing, Intel expanded on its existing technology portfolio to move, store and process data more effectively by announcing a new category of discrete general-purpose GPUs optimized for AI and HPC convergence. 

Intel also launched the oneAPI industry initiative to deliver a unified and simplified programming model for application development across heterogenous processing architectures, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and other accelerators. The launch of oneAPI represents millions of Intel engineering hours in software development and marks a game-changing evolution from limiting, proprietary programming approaches to an open standards-based model for cross-architecture developer engagement and innovation.

The oneAPI initiative Intel launched will define programming for an increasingly AI-infused, multi-architecture world. oneAPI delivers a unified and open programming experience to developers on the architecture of their choice without compromising performance and eliminating the complexity of separate code bases, multiple-programming languages, and different tools and workflows. oneAPI preserves existing software investments with support for existing languages, while delivering flexibility for developers to create versatile applications.

oneAPI includes both an industry initiative based on open specifications and an Intel beta product. The oneAPI specification includes a direct programming language, APIs and a low-level hardware interface. Intel’s oneAPI beta software provides developers a comprehensive portfolio of developer tools that include compilers, libraries and analyzers, packaged into domain-focused toolkits. 

The initial oneAPI beta release targets Intel Xeon scalable processors, Intel Core processors with integrated graphics, and Intel FPGAs, with additional hardware support to follow in future releases.

Sony Electronics adds APIs to its aibo robotic companion; delivers further customization and feature enhancements

Sony Electronics has announced an extensive software update for its autonomous robot puppy companion, aibo. The software update, Version 2.50 for the ERS1000 aibo model, opens the device to developer customization and feature enhancements, reflecting Sony's ongoing commitment to the continued evolution of aibo. 

Both U.S. and Japanese aibo owners now have access to exciting new programmable resources with the update, as well as several new whimsical capabilities, such as the ability to virtually feed aibo cookies, potty train it and more. 

The Version 2.50 software update introduces a new aibo web-based application programming interface (API), which provides owners access to both the "aibo Developer Program" for more seasoned developers and the "aibo Visual Programming" for beginner programmers. The web-based API can be used free of charge and allows owners to program aibo's actions. aibo's personality cannot be altered by any web API programming, so while users can program aibo to perform different actions, they cannot change the emotion, character or mood of aibo through programming.

Sony is looking to developers to continue building on aibo's abilities and create greater possibilities for aibo in the future with the aibo Developer Program. It is a licensing program that is accessible through a Web API to any aibo owner with the desire to create new applications, traits and experiences for alibi. 

Developers can utilize this program to create services and applications that can be linked with aibo. The mechanism of this API is the same as a general REST API, and it can be implemented in almost any system with an Internet environment. 

aibo Visual Programming is an easy-to-use tool that allows owners to create original movements and tricks for aibo. The tool features a drag and drop block coding user interface for beginners making it easy to utilize. 

By encouraging programming and development through the Web API, Sony Electronics aims to expand and promote collaboration with products and services provided by various creators, companies, organizations and educational institutions. In the future, Sony plans to enable developers who use aibo's software API to provide cooperative applications that can be shared by aibo users. 

In addition to the programmable options made available through the API, Sony has included other new enhancements for aibo owners. Now, owners can have virtual fun feeding aibo through the My aibo App using the new mealtime feature, "aibo Food." 

The aibo Food feature can be enjoyed for free using "bonus coins," which can be exchanged for meals called "aibocrisps." Owners can earn "bonus coins" by signing into the My aibo App at specific intervals or during special events. Should an aibo owner run out of coins and wish to virtually feed aibo more frequently, more coins can always be purchased for a fee via the My aibo app.  

RoboMQ announces availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Business Central API integration on Connect iPaaS platform

RoboMQ announces general availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Business Central API connectors on its Connect iPaaS platform. This collaboration makes Connect iPaaS a very useful tool for integration and business process automation to the users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Business Central.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides CRM and ERP capabilities to businesses providing a complete suite of products covering sales, marketing, service, operations, finance, commerce, and HR. Business Central provides the same capabilities to the small and medium businesses (SMB) to run their business operations on this comprehensive solution. 

RoboMQ is a Message Queue as Service platform hosted on cloud and also available as an Enterprise hosting option. This Software as a Service platform is an integrated message queue hub, analytics engine, management console, dashboard and monitoring & alerts; all managed and hosted in a secure, reliable and redundant infrastructure.

Businesses often use processes that are accomplished by multiple systems and applications in addition to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Business Central. Connect iPaaS fills the gap by offering data and API connectors to several SaaS, cloud, and enterprise applications. 

Some of the widely used applications on Connect iPaaS are Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, SmartSheet, Workday, Magento, Nexmo, Coupa, Office 365, SharePoint, PagerDuty, QuickBooks, Slack, Twilio, analytics and databases, and more. 

With Connect iPaaS users can build complex value-creating business workflows using the data and API from many of these systems. Common use cases include supply chain automation, sales automation, employee on-boarding, and revenue enablement and reconciliation.

With its modern, intuitive, no-code user experience (UX), Connect iPaaS provides the line of business users and citizen integrators a platform to build business processes by integrating SaaS, cloud, on-premise and IoT applications. Common application integration workflows that solve everyday challenges faced by enterprises can be deployed in a matter of minutes using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

CloudVector introduces API Threat Protection with automated and continuous discovery

CloudVector announced launch of its namesake solution, which discovers, monitors and secures APIs to prevent data breaches. The proliferation of APIs have encouraged threat actors to target this new attack vector, increasing the risk of major data breaches. 

Existing Web Application Firewall (WAF) and API Management gateways are unable to provide API Threat Protection because of inherent limitations in their architectures.

To move beyond the gateway, CloudVector encourages organizations to adopt an API Threat Protection solution that is able to automatically discover APIs, monitor for deviant behavior, and secure data from exfiltration. CloudVector is the first API Threat Protection platform to deliver this full feature set.

CloudVector is purpose-built for modern application architectures, and is deployed with zero impact to inline performance, with no changes required to applications or DevOps processes. In fact, CloudVector eliminates the need for manual API specification to deliver immediate time to value.

The CloudVector’s API Threat Protection platform include discover with API Inspection Modules (AIM) that provide fully automated microsensor modules enable the continuous discovery of all APIs connected to enterprise assets—even shadow APIs. 

It also monitors with Deep API Risk Trackers (DART) that apply proven machine learning to customer-specific API blueprints that drive automatic identification of API risks and, real-time detection of reconnaissance attempts, and provide real-time response modules enforce targeted policies against API abuse—the only solution to entirely address the OWASP API Security Top 10.

CloudVector, which was formerly known as ArecaBay, also announced the appointment of Ravi Khatod as co-founder and CEO. Ravi is a seasoned Silicon Valley security executive with more than 15 years of experience focused on building foundational teams and strategy, driving sales success and customer excellence, and delivering growth at category-defining vendors including IronPort, CipherTrust, and AppSense. Prior to CloudVector, he served as CEO of Agari, a next-generation email security company, where he drove 300 percent in revenue run rate growth in three years.

“APIs have become mission critical for organizations as they move to the cloud and embrace digital transformation initiatives. Attackers have also recognized this new and broad attack surface. As we’ve seen with recent high profile data breaches API security has become a predominant challenge,” said Khatod. “The shortcomings of existing gateways represent a multi-billion dollar market opportunity for CloudVector, which is advancing the state of the API Threat Protection market with its solution.”

CloudVector has raised more than US$5 million in seed funding round led by SignalFire, which it is aggressively investing in the growth of its R&D, sales and marketing teams.

“CloudVector delivers API Threat Protection we couldn’t find in any other vendor, without negatively impacting DevOps—it automates tedious manual processes to discover APIs and secure them,” said Abhijit Oak, vice president, Software Development, Katerra. “This product enables us to simplify our security structure and spend.”