YJFX chooses Red Hat OpenStack Platform to build out customer service infrastructure

Red Hat announced that YJFX Inc., a financial subsidiary of Yahoo Group focused on foreign exchange services, has adopted Red Hat OpenStack Platform to build out the company’s private cloud infrastructure. 

Red Hat’s massively scalable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering, Red Hat OpenStack Platform offers YJFX extensive scalability, helping it deliver new infrastructure more quickly as it seeks to bring differentiating applications and services to end users.

YJFX provides online foreign exchange (forex) trading services in 22 currencies as well as investment trust services. As a leading service provider in the forex industry, YJFX constantly seeks new ways to improve customer satisfaction along with the reliability and quality of its offered services, both current and new. To continue enhancing the customer experience, YJFX wanted to drive innovation at all levels of the company’s IT stack, starting with the infrastructure layer.

The company’s existing IT environment for building new services used proprietary virtualization technologies running on public cloud infrastructure. While workable, this strategy made delivering new infrastructure environments in a timely manner difficult. 

The IT teams in charge of the infrastructure had to manually make adjustments to deliver individual environments and servers, increasing time to market of new services while increasing procurement costs. From a cost and time perspective, these challenges limited YJFX’s ability to drive innovation more quickly.

In order to drive down the costs and time associated with delivering new services, YJFX wanted to empower its developers to self-provision their environments more quickly without having to rely on IT operations teams. To do this, the company began exploring options beyond the public cloud in 2018, electing to migrate to a scalable, private cloud built on Red Hat OpenStack.

Built on the open industry standards of the OpenStack project, Red Hat OpenStack Platform delivers the innovation of the OpenStack community to YJFX paired with hardened codes, enterprise security updates and the expertise and support of Red Hat. 

YJFX also participated in a discovery session of the Red Hat infrastructure migration solution, provided by Red Hat. With the support of Red Hat Consulting, YJFX was able to better visualize the issues and effects of the migration project as well as conceptualize an image of the ideal private cloud development environment. 

To deploy the new Red Hat-based private cloud, YJFX enlisted DTS CORPORATION, a systems integrator, to handle the migration work and build out the new infrastructure. After comparing the costs of maintaining and operating its existing infrastructure to the new private cloud platform, YJFX expects to see the associated expenses lowered by 30-40 percent over the next five years. 

The time needed to prepare development environments, which previously could take as long as one month, has now been reduced to a few hours thanks to developers being able to self-provision resources. This has also led to a reduction in workload for IT operations staff while providing a flexible, scalable infrastructure layer that can help drive new application delivery and improve customer service.

The initial migration for the dealing room was completed at the end of April this year.

A10 Networks multi-cloud outline offers automation of Polynimbus secure application services

A10 Networks has outlined its blueprint to enable enterprises and web giants to meet the demands for the security, reliability and agility of applications in a multi-cloud world. 

With applications increasingly distributed across multiple clouds, and users more mobile, managing and securing applications has become more complex than ever. This disparate infrastructure and the increased threat surface create challenges to digital transformation. 

A10’s Polynimbus application services blueprint offers a way forward for enterprises and web giants to bridge the gaps created by diverse application environments that need to be managed and secured. This blueprint can enable greater simplicity, agility, consistent manageability and security for organizations as they tackle the complexities of the multi-cloud world.

A10 addresses the new multi-cloud operational reality with the Polynimbus application services blueprint. It covers secure operations considerations, the most impactful current and emerging multi-cloud technologies, migration from on-premises hardware and software to the cloud, and the requirements to ensure a successful pivot of operations across a multi-cloud environment. It is no longer a case of a few cloud architects simply deploying a couple of applications to the cloud in silos. It is a shift to managing the new reality securely and efficiently as a core reliable IT operation.

“A10 understands the myriad of challenges enterprises and web giants are facing as they enter a new phase in shifting to multi-cloud strategies,” said Lee Chen, founder and CEO of A10 Networks. “Organizations need to move beyond the early siloed deployments of cloud platforms, to adopt intelligent automation to handle the operational challenges of these systems. In this phase, organizations need to adjust their strategy to ensure the business is protected and applications are always reliable.”

Rancher Labs takes Kubernetes to the edge and beyond, as it strengthens its product line

Rancher Labs announced general availability of K3s, its lightweight, certified Kubernetes distribution purpose built for small footprint workloads, along with the beta release of Rio, their new application deployment engine for Kubernetes that delivers a fully integrated deployment experience from operations to pipeline.

Although many enterprises now include Kubernetes in their strategic edge initiatives, Kubernetes in its upstream form is too heavy and operationally challenging for edge use-cases. Rancher Labs originally created K3s as a lightweight Kubernetes distribution designed for use in edge production environments and has been working with Arm to optimize for these workloads. 

Rio is targeted squarely at addressing the inherent complexity of building, deploying, and managing containerized applications. Designed for use by developers and DevOps teams, Rio makes it fast and easy to build, test, deploy, scale, and version stateless apps in any Kubernetes cluster. 

Capabilities of Rio include lightweight, cloud-native platform that delivers a fully integrated deployment experience from operations to pipeline without taking over the cluster; and easily installed using Rancher’s App Catalog and also runs on any Kubernetes cluster anywhere, even on a laptop, handling all wiring for common services like Istio, Knative, and Prometheus.

It also comes with Rancher’s built-in security capabilities around cluster performance, multitenancy and encryption allow applications to launch with the most secure network configuration possible.

Because of its lightweight design and simple operation, K3s is also being adopted for use cases beyond the edge. 

“Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard for container orchestration,” stated Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO, of Rancher Labs. With our investments in K3s and Rio, and our recently announced Rancher v2.3, we are completing our Kubernetes-as-a-service solution stack for ITOps and DevOps teams.”

Civo, a cloud solutions provider, who has created the initial K3s-powered, managed Kubernetes service. 

“Our #KUBE100 K3s platform is a learning playground where those new to containers can test the water, risk and cost-free,” said Andy Jeffries, CTO at Civo. “K3s is so lightweight we can install it in under two minutes - a fraction of the time it takes to launch a regular Kubernetes cluster. With K3s, developers can spin up new clusters, deploy apps and test easily - at speed.”

Gartner expects global public cloud revenue to grow 17% in 2020, with IaaS secures highest growth due to data center consolidation

The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17 percent in 2020 to total US$266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019, according to data released Wednesday by analyst firm Gartner.

Software as a service (SaaS) will remain the largest market segment, which is forecast to grow to $116 billion next year due to the scalability of subscription-based software. The second-largest market segment is cloud system infrastructure services, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which will reach $50 billion in 2020. 

IaaS is forecast to grow 24 percent year over year, which is the highest growth rate across all market segments. This growth is attributed to the demands of modern applications and workloads, which require infrastructure that traditional data centers cannot meet.

Various forms of cloud computing are among the top three areas where most global CIOs will increase their investment next year, according to Gartner. As organizations increase their reliance on cloud technologies, IT teams are rushing to embrace cloud-built applications and relocate existing digital assets. 

“At this point, cloud adoption is mainstream,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “The expectations of the outcomes associated with cloud investments therefore are also higher. Adoption of next-generation solutions are almost always ‘cloud-enhanced’ solutions, meaning they build on the strengths of a cloud platform to deliver digital business capabilities.”

“The cloud managed service landscape is becoming increasingly sophisticated and competitive. In fact, by 2022, up to 60 percent of organizations will use an external service provider’s cloud managed service offering, which is double the percentage of organizations from 2018,” said Nag. “Cloud-native capabilities, application services, multicloud and hybrid cloud comprise a diverse cloud ecosystem that will be important differentiators for technology product managers. Demand for strategic cloud service outcomes signals an organizational shift toward digital business outcomes.”

Menlo Security now part of VMware SD-WAN security technology partner program to provide secure cloud transformation

Cloud security company Menlo Security has announced a new integration with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud, which offers flexible enterprise SD-WAN architecture. 

The solution delivers Secure Cloud Transformation, which optimizes and secures local Internet breakouts and enables global low latency access to the Internet and business-critical SaaS applications for an enterprise’s entire local and remote workforce. The integration is available immediately to all VMware SD-WAN customers.

VMware SD-WAN customers have simplified their branch office networking and optimized application performance over the Internet. Secure Cloud Transformation, powered by isolation, allows companies to improve security control and visibility across their SD-WAN deployment.

Moving to SD-WAN requires an enterprise to move their security to the cloud since user traffic is not backhauled to a central security stack. Menlo Security Cloud Platform allows users to go directly to the Internet, while ensuring consistent and robust security controls, whether they are connecting from HQ, remote offices, on the road or in a coffee shop.

Menlo Security’s customers include some of the largest enterprises and government agencies. The company’s cloud security platform currently processes more than 500 million web requests per day. Among the company’s customers are seven of the 10 largest banks, four of the five largest credit-card issuers and some of the largest energy and transportation companies in the world.

“Menlo Security helps some of the largest enterprises and government agencies in the world transform their infrastructure and move security to the cloud, while maintaining global visibility and control of their traffic,” said Poornima DeBolle, chief product officer at Menlo Security. “VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud combined with the Menlo Security Cloud Platform powered by isolation redefines security and provides the industry’s most secure solution for Internet and SaaS applications.”

"VMware SD-WAN provides the optimal combination of intrinsic security in the multi-service Edge for corporate traffic as well as SD-WAN optimized access via our Network of Clouds Service gateways to the innovative Menlo Security Cloud Platform powered by isolation," said Steve Woo, senior director of product management at VMware. "Access to cloud and SaaS applications is automatically provisioned, optimized for performance and secured with VMware SD-WAN and Menlo Security Cloud Platform."

JFrog provides end-to-end DevSecOps offerings in the Microsoft Azure marketplace

JFrog announced on Monday availability of the JFrog Platform package Cloud Pro X in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. 

Cloud Pro X delivers JFrog Artifactory and JFrog Xray solutions in a single, integrated bundle, allowing customers to take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform, while managing and securing their software artifacts with JFrog.

JFrog is the creator of Artifactory, the heart of the end-to-end universal DevOps platform for automating, managing, securing, distributing, and monitoring all types of technologies. JFrog products are available as open-source, on-premise, and on the cloud on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. 

The JFrog platform empowers customers with trusted and expedited software releases from code-to-production. JFrog is trusted by more than 6,000 customers, and various brands such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Uber, VMware, and Spotify depend on JFrog to manage their binaries for their mission-critical applications. JFrog is privately held with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

JFrog Cloud Pro X empowers DevOps teams to increase their productivity and efficiency while accelerating velocity and delivering high-quality, trusted software faster. Optimized performance is achieved as a security scanning tool, JFrog Xray, natively integrates with Artifactory, providing automated and continuous scanning to identify and prevent known security vulnerabilities and open source licensing violations from making it to production.

Cloud Pro X supports Kubernetes, the latest orchestration tool in the industry, for automating deployment, scaling, and management of microservices and containerized applications. It also manages microservice deployments and gain insights into dependencies using Artifactory as Kubernetes registry, while Xray scans all container layers, validating the information stored in Artifactory and recursively peels away the different layers and their dependencies, ensuring that every software artifact that is included in the Docker image has been scanned for all known security risks. Cloud Pro X meets business model needs supporting hybrid, cloud, and multi-cloud environments.

The Azure Marketplace is an online market for buying and selling cloud solutions certified to run on Azure, helping to connect companies seeking innovative, cloud-based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use.

"As the world continues to move towards cloud and services, businesses are increasing their adoption of DevOps and DevSecOps to accommodate continuous delivery and constant deployments," said Casey O'Mara, senior director of cloud alliances at JFrog. "We are excited about the latest step in our collaboration with Microsoft, which will help bring JFrog Cloud Pro X to the growing ecosystem of Azure Marketplace customers."

"Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure," said Sajan Parihar, senior director, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft. "We're happy to welcome JFrog Cloud Pro X to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem."

OnApp releases Cloud Platform-as-a-Service that slashes time, cost and complexity of running own cloud platform

OnApp launched Wednesday Cloud Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS), a new way for service providers and enterprises to get a ready-to-use cloud platform. 

OnApp CPaaS gives companies a complete cloud platform for running their own public, private or hybrid cloud services, without the cost and complexity of having to build, manage and support the underlying hardware and software infrastructure. 

The whole cloud platform is provided as a managed service. CPaaS is built with the OnApp Cloud platform, which automates all of the virtualization, software-defined storage and networking, provisioning, RBAC, template, pricing, backup and management functions that let users deliver public, private or hybrid cloud services. Everything is controlled through an intuitive, rebrandable control panel.

OnApp CPaaS offers automated deployment and configuration of the OnApp cloud management platform using hyperscale cloud infrastructure at AWS, datacenters from OVH, or the global network of OnApp clouds. 

The OnApp cloud platform combines virtualization, software-defined storage and networking, cloud orchestration, cloud management, metering and billing in one white label self-service portal. It also enables easy migration of workloads between different types of cloud infrastructure; with CPaaS, customers can take advantage of hyperscale performance without locking themselves into a single ecosystem.  

Three different CPaaS packages are available at launch. Each includes a full managed service package and an OnApp cloud control panel deployed at a customer's choice of AWS location. 

Customers then choose compute infrastructure according to their use case and price/performance needs CPaaS Light provides compute infrastructure from the cloud marketplace built into the OnApp cloud platform, with more than 40 locations available; CPaaS Pro offers dedicated compute infrastructure hosted at OVH, with a range of server sizes and locations available; and CPaaS Hyper provides compute infrastructure using bare metal servers at AWS, for the most demanding workloads. 

Each package is available now from OnApp. In future, customers will be able to order CPaaS Light and Hyper through a self-service cloud builder at cloud.net, for delivery in as little as two hours. OnApp plans to expand its range of CPaaS services in the future, providing similarly rapid delivery of other ready-to-use, ready-to-sell services.