SNIA on Cloud Storage

AIOps Q&A

September 14, 2020September 14, 2020 J Metz Leave a comment

Last month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative was fortunate to have artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Parviz Peiravi, explore the topic of AI Operations (AIOps) at our live webcast, “IT Modernization with AIOps: The Journey.” Parviz explained why the journey to cloud native and microservices, and the complexity that comes along with that, requires a rethinking of enterprise architecture. If you missed the live presentation, it’s now available on demand together with the webcast slides.

We had some interesting questions from our live audience. As promised, here are answers to them all:

Q. Can you please define the Data Lake and how different it is from other data storage models?

The Impact and Implications of Internet of Payments

September 2, 2020September 2, 2020 Jim Fister Leave a comment

Electronic payments, once the purview of a few companies, have expanded to include a variety of financial and technology companies. Internet of Payment (IoP) enables payment processing over many kinds of IoT devices and has also led to the emergence of the micro-transaction. The growth of independent payment services offering e-commerce solutions, such as Square, and the entry of new ways to pay, such as Apple Pay, mean that a variety of devices and technologies also have come into wide use. This is the topic that the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is going to examine at our live webcast on October 14, 2020 “Technology Implications of Internet of Payments.”

Along with the rise and dispersal of the payment eco-system, more of our assets that we exchange for payment are becoming digitized as well. When digital ownership is equivalent to physical ownership, security and scrutiny of those digital platforms and methods takes a leap forward in significance.

Assets and funds are now widely distributed across multiple organizations. Physical asset ownership is even being shared between many stakeholders resulting in more ownership opportunities for less investment but in a distributed way.

In this webcast we will look at the impact of all of these new principles across multiple use cases and how it impacts not only on the consumers driving this behavior but on the underlying infrastructure that supports and enables it. We’ll examine:

Achieving Data Literacy

August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 Jim Fister Leave a comment

We’re all spending our days living in the pandemic and understanding the cultural changes on a personal level. That keening wail you hear is not some outside siren, it’s you staring out the window at the world that used to be. But with all that, have you thought about the insight that you could be applying to your business?

If the pandemic has taught data professionals one essential thing, it’s this: Data is like water when it escapes; it reaches every aspect of the community it inhabits. This fact becomes apparent when the general public has access to statistics, assessments, analysis and even medical journals related to the pandemic, at a scale never seen before.

But having access to data does not automatically grant the reader knowledge of how to interpret that data or the ability to derive insight. In fact, it can be quite challenging to judge the accuracy or value in that data.

The Role of AIOps in IT Modernization

July 23, 2020July 23, 2020 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The almost overnight shift of resources toward remote work has introduced the need for far more flexible, dynamic and seamless end-to-end applications, putting us on a path that requires autonomous capabilities using AIOps – Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations.

It’s the topic that the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is going to cover on August 25, 2020 at our live webcast, “IT Modernization with AIOps: The Journey.” Our AI expert, Parviz Peiravi, will provide an overview of concepts and strategies to accelerate the digitalization of critical enterprise IT resources, and help architects rethink what applications and underlying infrastructure are needed to support an agile, seamless data centric environment. This session will specifically address migration from monolithic to microservices, transition to Cloud Native services, and the platform requirements to help accelerate AIOps application delivery within our dynamic hybrid and multi-cloud world.   

Join this webcast to learn:

Where Does Cyber Insurance Fit in Your Security Strategy?

July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 Paul Talbut Leave a comment

Protection against cyber threats is recognized as a necessary component of an effective risk management approach, typically based on a well-known cybersecurity framework. A growing area to further mitigate risks and provide organizations with the high level of protection they need is cyber insurance. However, it’s not as simple as buying a pre-packaged policy. In fact, it’s critical to identify what risks and conditions are excluded from a cyber insurance policy before you buy.

Determining what kind of cyber insurance your business needs or if the policy you have will really cover you in the event of an incident is challenging. On August 27, 2020 the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) will host a live webcast, “Does Your Storage Need a Cyber Insurance Tune-Up?” where we’ll examine how cyber insurance fits in a risk management program.

We’ll identify key terms and conditions that should be understood and carefully negotiated as cyber insurance policies may not cover all types of losses.

Kubernetes Business Resiliency FAQ

July 13, 2020July 13, 2020 Jim Fister Leave a comment

The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative continued our webcast series on Kubernetes last month with an interesting look at the business resiliency of Kubernetes. If you missed “A Multi-tenant, Multi-cluster Kubernetes Datapocalypse in Coming” it’s available along with the slide deck in the SNIA Educational Library here. In this Q&A blog, our Kubernetes expert, Paul Burt, answers some frequently asked questions on this topic.

Q: Multi-cloud: Departments might have their own containers; would they have their own cloud (i.e. Hybrid Cloud)? Is that how multi-cloud might start in a company?

A: Multi-cloud or hybrid cloud is absolutely a result of different departments scaling containers in a deployment. Multi-cloud means multiple clusters, but those can be of various configurations. Different clusters and clouds need to be tuned for the needs of the organization.

A Q&A on the Impact of AI

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

It was April Fools’ Day, but the Artificial Intelligence (AI) webcast the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) hosted on April 1^st was no joke! We were fortunate to have AI experts, Glyn Bowden and James Myers, join us for an interesting discussion on the impact AI is having on data strategies. If you missed the live event, you can watch it here on-demand. The audience asked several great questions. Here are our experts’ answers:

Q. How does the performance requirement of the data change from its capture at the edge through to its use

Your IoT Questions Answered

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast on IoT explored how the explosion of data generated from IoT devices creates unique challenges in the way we store, transmit and curate data. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it on-demand. This topic generated several interesting questions. As promised during the live event, here are answers to them all:

Q. Do IoT devices consume as much data as they produce?

A. It really depends on the device. There are some like sensors that will only produce data and transmit it on, on the other hand the more intelligence built into these devices the more need there might be to consume data to drive that intelligence. In the future, it’s possible there will be much more device to device (or peer to peer) traffic between IoT devices, cutting out the leg back to the data center altogether for data that doesn’t need to be there.

The Power of Data Aggregation during a Pandemic

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 Glyn Bowden Leave a comment

The new coronavirus that has been ravaging countries and sending us all into lockdown is the most observed pandemic we’ve ever experienced. Data about the virus itself and perhaps more appropriately, the nations upon which it is having an impact have been shared from multiple sources. These include academic institutions such as John Hopkins University, national governments and international organisations such as the World Health Organisation. The data has been made available in many formats, from programmatically accessible APIs to downloadable comma delimited files to prepared data visualisations. We’ve never been more informed about the current status of anything.

Data Aggregation

What this newfound wealth of data has also brought to light is the true power of data aggregation. There is really only a limited number of conclusions that can be drawn from the number of active and resolved cases per nation and region. Over time, this can show us a trend and it also gives a very real snapshot of where we stand today. However, if we layer on additional data such as when actions were taken, we can see clear pictures of the impact of that strategy over time. With each nation taking differing approaches based on their own perceived position, mixed with culture and other socio-economic factors, we end up with a good side-by-side comparison of the strategies and their effectiveness. This is helping organisations and governments make decisions going forward, but data scientists globally are urging caution. In fact, the data we are producing today by processing all of these feeds may turn out to be far more valuable for the next pandemic, than it will for this one. It will be the analysis that helps create the “new normal.”