Centilytics releases initial cloud management platform to debut flat fees and widget-based pricing

In the cloud management industry, Centilytics becomes the initial management platform that offers widget-based pricing. With cloud computing having almost limitless benefits, cloud vendors deliver benefits to attract customers; and this strategy is working quite well. Cloud computing is becoming a preferred choice by entrepreneurs, whether for a startup or a well-established enterprise.

It was all a walk in the park up until the first data breach, or an unexpected cloud bill that can shrink the numbers in the bank account, ergo the dawn of cloud management. 

Gartner was the initial vendor to advocate the importance of a cloud management platform. They acknowledge that a management platform is needed to see through the complexities of the cloud. It should be equipped to protect the user's data under industry defined regulations and provide solutions for any additional cost overhead.

Centilytics is a fully-automated SaaS solution that helps organizations with the management and control of their infrastructure. It is an intelligent cloud management platform that enables public cloud users to gain 360-degree visibility, identify loopholes and deploy one-click fixes on their cloud infrastructure.

Cloud Management Platforms (CMP) can safeguard the data and prevent cost leakages from the accounts. Typically, a CMP charges a percentage fee on the cloud consumption; In other words, that's a part of savings.

Which seems to be a conflict of interest, doesn't it?

On a percentage pricing model, the CMP's revenue becomes directly proportional to cloud spending. It means they'll earn more when the cloud bill increases. This conflict has been generalized and never been visible because users have gotten used to it. Cloud already has a complex pricing model, and in no way, percent pricing going to ease that complexity. When Centilytics, noticed this conflict, it went ahead. It introduced a flat fee model for its customers.

Centilytics is the only CMP that eradicates the conflict of interest by charging one fixed amount, which is independent of increased bills.

The users have finally understood the conflict and are now moving away from the percentage pricing. Not only did the previous pricing take away a chunk of there savings but also that they had to pay for the whole platform, even for the services that they were not using.

Centilytics, yet again, disrupt the market by introducing a widget-based pricing model. To offer this pricing, The entire Centilytics platform was broken down to 5 products, 12 services, and 2200+ widgets. With widget-based pricing, the users can pick and choose only those services which they require. They also get the capability to bundle widgets as per their unique infrastructure requirements. This model eliminates the need to pay for the entire platform and genuinely save money.

Lightbits Labs debuts initial NVMe/TCP clustered storage offering that helps protect against data loss and service interruption at scale

Lightbits Labs, provider of NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) software-defined disaggregated storage, advanced  on Wednesday its software solution, LightOS, to deliver the first NVMe/TCP clustered storage solution.

With more companies moving away from direct attached storage (DAS), and with storage requirements typically growing far faster than compute requirements, both public-cloud providers and private-cloud builders are looking for ways to separate storage and compute so each can scale separately. 

One of the limiting factors to scaling disaggregated storage, however, is the need for high availability across clusters of storage and compute. Lightbits LightOS delivers the availability, flexibility and efficiency of hyperscale cloud infrastructure to on-premise data centers.

LightOS provides software-defined disaggregated storage for cloud data centers delivering similar performance as direct-attached NVMe SSDs and up to a 50 percent reduction in tail latency; independent scaling of storage and compute, driving better infrastructure utilization and efficiency and providing unparalleled flexibility; and standards-based NVMe/TCP block storage access protocol for application servers to storage servers communication

LightOS clusters leverage standard NVMe 1.4 multipathing and offers data replications on storage target side, which provides transparency to the client with quick failover. It also includes distributed and durable cluster management with fast failover handling; no single point of failure in data and control paths, and allows multiple LightOS clusters can exist in the same cloud data center and can be aggregated and managed as one large cloud-scale block storage solution.

LightOS is now the first NVMe/TCP storage solution that protects against data loss and avoids service interruptions at scale. In the presence of server, storage, or network failures, LightOS maximizes operational efficiency, ensuring applications continue working in the presence of failures, and failover is handled automatically, keeping data fully consistent and available.

The average cost of IT downtime is enormous. According to Gartner, the average loss is $5,600 per minute. This can add up to more than half a million dollars lost per hour at the higher end.

“At cloud scale, everything fails, so we built LightOS to capture all the benefits of disaggregated storage while providing exceptional durability and availability to prevent service disruption,” said Kam Eshghi, chief strategy officer at Lightbits Labs.

For cloud-native applications, access to available, performant and deployable infrastructure is key to business agility and application experience, at any scale - regardless of whether deployed as five nodes, five hundred nodes, or thousands of nodes.

Installed on commodity servers in large-scale data centers, LightOS is optimized for I/O intensive compute clusters, such as Cassandra, MySQL, MongoDB, and time series databases. With end-to-end NVMe, LightOS delivers high performance and consistently low latency. The result is a 10 times increase in storage reliability and 50 percent decrease in total cost of ownership (TCO). 

As a standard-based, target-only solution that does not require installing any proprietary software on the client side, the ease of deployment at scale is unmatched. LightOS is built to run in existing data center, requiring no changes to application servers or network infrastructure, so that deploying it at scale is a breeze.

As LightOS provides highly available, flexible, and efficient disaggregated storage, application teams can focus their efforts on developing new services to achieve their business goals, while lowering spend and delivering high performance.

Zadara enhances SQL Server database migration to the cloud, removes complexity, hidden risks and expenses

Zadara Storage announced a new solution that enables enterprises to migrate SQL Server database apps to the cloud – in a phased manner. 

High availability (HA) is imperative to a well-architected SQL Server environment and modernizing business-critical applications. 

While Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition provides a mechanism for doing so, it is costly for organizations that only need its HA features. But according to Zadara, it doesn’t have to be this way. Zadara’s hybrid cloud storage platform is available on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform. 

Zadara’s service offering allows users to meet their high-availability requirements using SQL Standard Edition within the AWS environment – providing them with the ability to maintain HA without the cost of SQL Enterprise Edition. In addition, applications can be migrated to AWS without any code changes.

“Our newest offering is the latest example of Zadara’s ability to deliver real business value,” said Oded Kellner, vice president, product management at Zadara. “We are helping customers navigate the hidden risks and unnecessary expenses that have plagued so many SQL Server migrations to public clouds – with greater reliability, faster performance and increased security capabilities.”

Dell Security lists essential tips to help keep cybercriminals at bay this holiday season

With the start of the holiday season, Dell Security expects consumers to be doing some online shopping. However, cybercriminals are also shopping around the same time.

The uptick in online shopping during the holidays leaves more chances for cybercriminals to steal data. This can happen in any number of ways – visiting compromised websites, clicking on phishing emails or fake social media posts, falling for holiday charity scams and even buying from fraudulent shopping sites. The methods vary and cybercriminals get more innovative each year, but their goal remains the same: steal personal and financial information.

Here are a few precautions that users must take to help protect their information while shopping online. Users must make sure that the website they are using is secure by looking at the URL. If it begins with https:// (there must be an “s” after http), then the website is secure and will encrypt information. Also, strive to use sites with reputable brands which are known and trusted.

Consumers must completely avoid using public computers for online shopping. Public computers, like those in libraries and hotel business centers, may contain malicious software that could steal personal information. At the same time, users must be wary of public Wi-Fi, which may not be secure and could provide easy access for criminals to intercept personal data.

Adoption of strong passwords is critical and important way to securing devices. Use a combination of numbers, letters and symbols to make password complex and difficult to guess, and don’t use names of family members, pets or birthdays. Caution must be exercised and never use the same password across multiple sites. Clients must resist clicking on bogus links and attachments in emails, tweets, social media posts and online advertising are ways cybercriminals can compromise the device. 

If it looks suspicious, delete it. Also, always hover over a link with the mouse and review the destination address carefully before you click.

Users must remain in the know with account alerts by activating fraud alerts with bank, credit cards, and credit bureaus to help detect suspicious activities like new payee, money withdrawal, high-value credit card transaction, activity in unusual locations, etc.

Another precaution users must take is to be sure to ship their new purchases to a secure location. If the user is aware that they won’t be home, ship to the office or to a neighbor to help prevent package theft. Also, packages left on a porch or otherwise in site of the public could be an indicator, users may be away from home and invite criminal activity.

Staying safe online will continue to require vigilance, and the convenience of online shopping will continue to come with risks. But by being diligent when shopping online, users can help combat cybercriminal activity during the holidays and year-round.

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes boosts production-ready infrastructure as code for developers

Pulumi announced availability of Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes, an open source collection of frameworks, tools and user guides that help developers and operators work better together delivering production workloads using Kubernetes. It supports managing Kubernetes infrastructure across public clouds including AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Google Cloud Platform Kubernetes Engine (GKE), in addition to application delivery to those environments using built-in best practices. 

Pulumi is a modern infrastructure as code platform that lets developers author infrastructure and application configuration, using general-purpose programming languages. This approach unlocks access to ecosystems of tools such as IDEs, test frameworks and package managers, helping teams to share and reuse patterns and practices. Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes extends Pulumi’s core infrastructure as code capabilities by providing support for production Kubernetes architectures.

“Pulumi enables our teams to deploy, scale and manage Kubernetes clusters in a fraction of the time that it took them previously, by giving them the ability to work with the languages they already know, bypassing YAML and unwieldy DSLs,” said Fernando Carletti, head of DevOps at Credijusto. “It helps bring together application and infrastructure developers by eliminating silos and reducing friction in their workflows and interactions. We're excited that Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes will simplify our infrastructure provisioning even further, advancing application lifecycle management throughout our organization.”

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes lets teams provision infrastructure for any platform -- public, private, or hybrid -- across many clouds and deploy Kubernetes application consistently, use the entire Kubernetes API across all versions, objects, CRDs and Helm charts, with new feature support on the same day that Kubernetes releases new versions, and provides author infrastructure and application configuration in TypeScript, JavaScript, or Python, using infrastructure as code techniques. 

The solution also leverages the new library, Kx, to streamline authoring and help developers and infrastructure engineers innovate faster together; deploys continuously using one of a dozen integrations, including GitLab, Jenkins, CodeFresh, Octopus, Azure DevOps Pipelines, GitHub Actions and more; gains key insights using a collection of new operations tools, Kq, that extend the core Pulumi engine to query live Kubernetes resources in realtime; and utilizes user guides that capture industry best practices based on tried-and-true experience with dozens of real customers going to production with Kubernetes.

Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes is open source and available on GitHub. Pulumi also offers premium editions for enterprises wanting advanced policies and controls, including integrating deployments with identity providers such as Azure ActiveDirectory, Okta and GitLab. 

It allows users to enforce security and compliance requirements, self-host on-premises or in their own cloud accounts and implement advanced automation with webhooks, among other features. Pulumi also offers support and training.

“Our customers tell us that the hardest thing about Kubernetes is getting from the initial decision to use it, to having production- and team-ready infrastructure,” said Joe Duffy, Pulumi co-founder and CEO. “We’ve learned a lot by helping dozens of customers get up and running over the past year and have taken an approach of empowering developers and operators to work better together. Pulumi Crosswalk for Kubernetes captures those learnings in a reusable and open source form that benefits the entire Kubernetes community. We look forward to seeing where customers and end users take us from here.”

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.”

DXC Technology improves IT acceleration for large enterprise clients with Virtual Clarity acquisition

DXC Technology announced it has acquired the outstanding shares of Virtual Clarity, provider of IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) transformation advisory services. This acquisition further positions DXC as a leading provider of IT modernization services for applications and infrastructure and strengthens DXC’s ability to assess, design and manage transformations to cloud.

The addition of Virtual Clarity also builds on DXC’s acquisition earlier this year of Luxoft as clients increasingly are seeking industry specific application development and innovation as part of their IT modernization approach.

Founded in 2008, Virtual Clarity is comprised of a blend of enterprise IT experts with knowledge of modern tools, techniques and industries – including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and telecommunications.

“I am excited to welcome Virtual Clarity’s talented team to the DXC family,” said Mike Salvino, DXC’s president and CEO. “Virtual Clarity is a solid fit with our growth strategy with proven expertise in IT transformation and cloud migration. The company complements and enhances DXC’s capabilities in cloud, platforms and IT modernization, enabling DXC to help our clients with their digital transformation journey and improve their business outcomes.”

“From inception, we’ve been obsessed with customer outcomes,” said Virtual Clarity CEO Steve Peskin, who will report to Salvino. “Our approach to help clients transform their business quickly, seamlessly and safely complements the ability of DXC to execute globally at scale. Together with DXC, we create an immensely powerful and compelling opportunity for clients to unlock new value and competitive agility across the enterprise. We will make a real difference for clients, partners and our industry.”

DXC will combine its deep cloud and application engineering services and strategic partnerships with Virtual Clarity’s IT modernization capabilities to enable enterprise clients to accelerate their digital transformation, harness technology to improve efficiencies at scale, and drive business innovation, while accelerating customers’ digital transformation journeys with Virtual Clarity's Precision Guided Transformation services and unlocking the value of DXC’s application migration and modernization capabilities.

Aligning IT-as-a-Service to the needs of the business-lines quickly and safely.

It also helps turn IT innovation into business value for customers with Virtual Clarity’s “Air Traffic Control” offering – a combination of unique tools, highly experienced enterprise IT leaders, and provide deep understanding of what it takes to implement change in complex enterprises.

The DXC and Virtual Clarity alliance has assisted in the moving of several thousand applications for a large bank holding company to a hybrid cloud and clearing regulatory concerns by implementing a solution based on migration factory (cloud assessment, architecture, and air traffic  control) and automated IT platform. 

It also accelerated IT application modernization for a North American commercial bank by delivering a new, dynamic IT platform and migration factory which boosted implementation and safeguarded the outcome. The client realized an 80 percent-plus reduction in IT unit costs and a 50-fold increase in the speed of change

Migration of 7,000 applications to the public cloud for a Fortune 100 telecommunications leader. DXC and Virtual Clarity analyzed the IT applications platform, assessed options and charted the most effective course of action to rapidly migrate the 7,000 applications to the public cloud.

IBM releases financial services- ready public cloud platform to meet specific compliance and security requirements

IBM announced this week that it has designed a financial services-ready public cloud. IBM will welcome financial services institutions, and their suppliers, to join the financial services-ready public cloud. 

The financial services-ready public cloud is expected to run on IBM's public cloud, which uses Red Hat OpenShift as its primary Kubernetes environment to manage containerized software across the enterprise, and includes more than 190 API driven, cloud native PaaS services to create new and enhanced cloud-native apps. 

The project draws upon technology and financial services industry experience earned through IBM's relationships with 47 of the Fortune 50 companies and the 10 largest financial institutions globally.  Additionally, to help promote a regulatory compliant environment, IBM and Bank of America are working with Promontory, an IBM business unit and provider of financial services regulatory compliance consulting. 

Bank of America will be a committed collaborator to use the platform built on IBM's public cloud. The Bank will host key applications and workloads to support the requirements and privacy and safety expectations of its 66 million banking customers. 

The financial services-ready public cloud has been designed to help address the requirements of financial services institutions for regulatory compliance, security and resiliency. This will help financial institutions transact with technology vendors who have met the platform's requirements. 

It is the only industry-specific public cloud platform that can provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support and proactive and automated security, leveraging the industry's highest levels of encryption certification.

To help develop the control requirements for the platform, IBM has collaborated intensively with Bank of America. The financial services-ready public cloud can potentially enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers – from the smallest FinTechs to more established vendors – to focus on their core offerings to financial institutions with the controls for the platform put in place.

"This is one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space," said Cathy Bessant, chief operations and technology officer, Bank of America. "This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision making. By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly-confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched."

The collaboration with IBM marks the next step in Bank of America's seven-year cloud journey and reflects the Bank's unwavering commitment to the security and privacy of banking customers while also creating an opportunity to address the unique regulatory and compliance requirements of the financial services industry.  

"The financial services-ready public cloud represents an ongoing focus from Bank of America, IBM and Promontory to help develop a technology ecosystem where regulations can be addressed," said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain, IBM. "Together we plan to help our customer address their ongoing compliance requirements, coupled with highly scalable, standardized capabilities that will be built to help serve today's modern financial services industry." 

"We recognize that we must help create an environment where financial services institutions can address their regulatory requirements and expectations," said Gene Ludwig, Promontory Founder and CEO. "Bank of America, IBM and Promontory are uniquely suited to help give the industry and vendors confidence in the quality of this cloud platform." 

The financial services-ready public cloud will help give financial institutions an opportunity to more efficiently assess the security, resiliency and compliance of their technology vendors. Participating financial services software providers may benefit from the platform's security validation. Only ISV or SaaS providers that demonstrate they comply with the platform's policies will be eligible to deliver offerings through the platform.