devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Deborah Schalm

  • Sendbird Responds to Widespread Need for Connecting Digitally With Launch of Supergroup Channel

    Now up to 20,000 people can interact in group chats, reinventing what’s possible for large online communities and live streams

    New Advanced Analytics provide insight into users, channels and messages within Sendbird application 

    SAN MATEO, Calif. — October 06, 2020– Sendbird, the leading interaction API company across chat, voice and video for mobile, and web applications, today announced powerful new capabilities that break chat boundaries. Sendbird’s Supergroup Channels, designed for the world’s largest and most active communities, now enables up to 20,000 users to engage in a real-time private group chat– an industry first at this scale. The company also introduced Dynamic Partitioning for open channels as well as Advanced Analytics, which analyzes user behavior and provides detailed insights into channels and messages within the Sendbird application.

    Supergroup Channel Enables Large Scale Connection Designed for a New World

    While open channels with limited chat functionality have been around for some time, creating a private group with all the richness and engagement features of a chat group has never been achieved at this scale. This new engineering feat for the industry comes as people worldwide seek ways to connect with others, sharing thoughts and perspectives amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Supergroup Channel is already being used by the world’s most prolific communities to facilitate large-scale dynamic and authentic conversations.

    “Scale has been one of the biggest issues hindering new applications for chat and messaging, and we are thrilled to remove this barrier, particularly in the current environment where large in-person gatherings are limited at best,” said Sendbird CEO and Founder John Kim. “Supergroup Channel is the perfect feature for our brave new world, and we are excited to see how communities leverage it.”

    Supergroups debuts as large communities are increasingly looking to deliver new types of human experiences, whether a live-streamed concert or other type of virtual event. Supergroup channels provide a unique option that makes connecting with thousands as compelling as communicating with friends in modern messenger applications. Supergroups are already being used as a destination for thousands who seek advice and tips from influencers and experts in large online communities, while gaming communities are using Supergroups to gather users, find players and exchange ideas to advance game play privately.

    “With Supergroups, Dream11 can engage thousands of users in the same private group chat, letting large communities of fantasy sports enthusiasts bond over moments of play together and drive real-time engagement in the Dream11 app,” Rahul Mirchandani, Chief Product Officer at Dream11, India’s Biggest Fantasy Sports Platform.

    The Power of Supergroups

    Supergroups support standard group chat features, including sending and receiving messages between members, sharing media or file messages, indicating online presence, displaying the last message sent or received and counting unread messages up to 100. Additionally, Supergroup channel management capabilities allow for freezing the channel, banning or muting users and protecting groups from spam. Organizations can apply Sendbird’s industry-leading set of moderation tools to Supergroups as well.

    Sendbird continues to innovate with a new kind of push notification called Smart push for use at Supergroup scale. These notifications keep users active or bring them back into conversations and help Supergroups achieve conversations at scale without compromising on engagement.

    Supergroups further extend the power of Sendbird’s recently introduced Announcements API, which provides the mechanism to market or convey information to exceptionally large groups of active users at one time. Paired together, Supergroups and Announcements offer a powerful toolkit for engaging with and marketing to large audiences, be it a community, a live stream, or a remote workforce.

    “Because Sendbird was built to support embedded chat at industry-first levels of scale, we are well positioned to continue driving the industry forward,” added Kim. “No one can compete with Sendbird’s ability to persistently provide compelling new chat experiences and opportunities to forge connections, nor can they offer the same level of insights into user behavior.”

    In addition to Supergroups, Sendbird announced Dynamic Partitioning for open channels. Dynamic Partitioning can dynamically split large open channel group chats into virtual groups of smaller sizes so users can feel as if they are part of a large group chat, but receive messages at a pace that creates a pleasant experience. Dynamic Partitioning works in the background and has tremendous effects on ensuring an engaging experience at scale in live streaming group chats.

    Advanced Analytics Help Sendbird Customers Understand and Better Serve Their Users

    Sendbird also introduced its Advanced Analytics (AA), a premium feature that goes beyond previously available dashboard analytics. Advanced Analytics provides immediate access to all metrics aggregated since the launch of an application that is integrated with Sendbird Chat. This enables more relevant, meaningful and pragmatic insights to be gleaned from user data.

    Sendbird’s Advanced Analytics depicts user behavior through metrics such as number of messages, messages per user, new users, deleted users, deactivated users, new channels, active channels, message senders and message viewers. With these more advanced, accurate and timely metrics, user behavior can be easily analyzed. Results then can be applied to inform decision making in ways that improve the overall user experience.

    To learn more about how Sendbird is transforming interactive communications please visit www.sendbird.com.

    About Sendbird

    Sendbird is a fully customizable chat and messaging platform with a managed infrastructure for mobile and web applications. It provides the necessary Software Development Kits (SDK) and API, front- and back-end technology so that businesses can launch a customized in-app messaging experience quickly, efficiently and at scale. Sendbird powers in-app chat for the world’s leading companies in industries ranging from marketplaces, on-demand and online communities to gaming, live video streaming and healthcare. It has SDKs for popular platforms, including iOS, Android, Javascript, React Native, .NET and Unity.

    Sendbird’s top global customers include Reddit, Yahoo! Sports, Gojek, Careem, OLA, Headspace, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, YOLO, Dream11, Meetup, Paytm, Grand Rounds, Livongo, Nexon, TriNet, Accolade, Hinge, and Kookmin Bank. It is backed by Shasta Ventures, August Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management, Y Combinator and FundersClub. Sendbird is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

    Please visit https://sendbird.com for more information.

  • Unqork Announces $207 Million in Series C Funding, Raising Company Valuation to $2 Billion

    New investment accelerates enterprise no-code leader’s mission to revolutionize how large organizations build mission-critical software

    New York – October 06, 2020 – Unqork, the leading enterprise no-code platform, today announced it has secured $207 million in Series C funding, raising the company’s valuation to $2 billion. The round is led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and joined by Eldridge, Fin Venture Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors and Sunley House Capital Management, a subsidiary of Advent International. Existing investors including CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, Goldman Sachs, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Aquiline Technology Growth and World Innovation Lab (WiL) are also participating.

    Unqork invented the first completely visual, no-code application platform that helps large enterprises build complex custom software faster, with higher quality and lower costs than traditional approaches––all without a single line of code. Unqork’s platform was designed to meet the complexity, scale and security required to support mission-critical applications at the world’s largest enterprises.

    “At Unqork, we pride ourselves in fearlessly taking on huge challenges with our customers. That’s an important characteristic to have when your mission is to completely change the way enterprises create software by offering a better way without code,” said Gary Hoberman, founder and CEO, Unqork. “The same scale that cloud computing brought to infrastructure, Unqork is now bringing to all enterprise software in every industry. That places Unqork in a unique position to capture the $500 billion wasted annually on custom enterprise code and this funding will accelerate our efforts.”

    Unqork has seen rapid growth as leading organizations in financial services, insurance, government, health care and other industries are increasingly turning to its cloud-based, enterprise no-code platform to solve their most challenging business problems. Unqork has reached a number of milestones in 2020, including:

    • Increasing headcount more than 100%, from 165 to over 350
    • Growing annual recurring revenue (ARR) at a triple-digit rate for the third year in a row, driven by new customer acquisition and ARR expansion within its existing customer base
    • Expanding into EMEA markets with the opening of a London office and operating in North and South America, Europe and Asia
    • Adding to senior leadership with the hiring of the company’s first chief financial officer
    • Partnering closely with leading municipalities to leverage Unqork’s no-code platform to help combat issues caused by COVID-19

    “Unqork has reimagined the way enterprise software is created,” said Michele Trogni, operating partner, Eldridge. “As a no-code platform that is designed to simplify and digitize mission-critical and often highly complex business functions at large organizations, Unqork is uniquely positioned in the market. It makes the buy versus build decision a no-brainer.”

    Unqork’s customers include Aon plc, The District of Columbia, Goldman Sachs, Liberty Mutual, Montgomery County, New York City, Nippon Life, Pacific Life, Rethink Food, Vault and more.

    New customer, Maimonides Medical Center, is the largest hospital in Brooklyn and at the forefront of innovative medicine.

    “We are committed to providing optimal experiences for our patients and the clinicians we work with. As we move to support modern care delivery, Unqork’s broad capabilities made them an ideal technology partner on our digitization journey,” said Ken Gibbs, president and CEO, Maimonides Medical Center. “We are confident that Unqork’s ability to easily integrate with complex internal and external systems, its ability to securely handle health care data, and its support of a high-fidelity user interface that meets the expectations of our patients will give us a unique way to connect with those we serve.

    Unqork will use the new funding to further execute on a number of ongoing initiatives, such as:

    • Growing its global salesforce to meet increasing demand for Unqork’s platform
    • Investing further in the company’s technology created by its world-class engineering team
    • Expanding training and go-to-market partnerships with the world’s leading services firms and systems integrators including Capco, Cognizant, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and Virtusa

    To learn more about how Unqork is shaping the future of enterprise software, visit unqork.com.

    About Unqork

    Unqork is the industry pioneer no-code enterprise application platform that helps large companies build, deploy, and manage complex applications without writing a single line of code. Organizations like Goldman Sachs, Liberty Mutual, the Cities of New York and Washington, DC and Maimonides Medical Center are using Unqork’s drag-and-drop interface to build enterprise applications faster, with higher quality, and lower costs than conventional approaches. To learn more, please visit: https://www.unqork.com.

  • Morpheus v5.0 Brings Self-Service IT to New Customer Segments with Persona-Based Cloud Management / Expanded FinOps Reporting

    Greenwood Village, CO – October 6, 2020 – Morpheus Data, the hybrid cloud application orchestration company, released the next major version of its hybrid cloud management platform which expands access to self-service IT, simplifies cross-cloud cost management, and accelerates integration into enterprise environments.

    Morpheus is recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms (CMP) with the highest critical capability scores in three key use cases[i].  With version 5.0, Morpheus extends that lead and sets a foundation for the convergence of cloud management, container orchestration, and infrastructure automation.  Highlights of this release include:

    • Persona-based ‘anything-as-a-service’ (XaaS) interface to give non-technical users simple self-service IT and expand opportunities for Morpheus partners.
    • Updated cost analytics and reporting engine including invoice data, cloud savings details, and cloud migration planning to give FinOps more visibility.
    • Expanded codeless integrations including new ‘bare metal as-a-service’ options and certification with the latest ServiceNow release to accelerate time to value.

    According to IDC, 84% of enterprises are planning to migrate or repatriate some workloads from public cloud to on-premises private cloud, hosted private cloud, and non-cloud environments in 2020.  Their research also noted that 74% of larger organizations say common cross-cloud management control planes are very important to help scale their operations.[ii]

    These data points are a leading indicator of the growth that Morpheus Data has seen in 2020 despite the global economic impact of COVID-19.  Morpheus has grown over 70% year-on-year in 2020 with over 100% growth in new customers and partners.  To help even more companies simplify hybrid cloud management, Morpheus is announcing a lower-cost ‘Essentials’ package of the software for midsize enterprises.

    “The market for hybrid cloud management and infrastructure automation is converging rapidly,” said Brad Parks, Chief Marketing Officer at Morpheus Data.  “Our vision is to simplify application orchestration with a unified platform that enables self-service IT for all types of users from edge to datacenter to public cloud.”

    Enabling a single-click shopping cart for ‘anything-as-a-service’ (XaaS)

    Cloud computing is defined as the ability to get on-demand and elastic access to resources via a self-service portal.  With the massive growth and adoption of hybrid cloud, this self-service IT expectation has moved beyond the realm of developers.  Scientists, marketing teams, and other end-user groups also want on-demand access to their application services.

    With version 5.0, Morpheus has extended its award-winning platform with new interface options aimed at giving self-service IT to less technical user communities who are looking for a shopping-cart approach to application provisioning.  For the first time, a single unified platform can serve enterprise self-service IT needs across all user personas – from a streamlined ‘easy button’ to robust infrastructure-as-code blueprints and everything in between to speed application provisioning by 150x or more.

    Administrators and IT Operations staff can quickly create catalog items using a powerful wizard-driven interface including customized option lists and specs that minimize or even eliminate the need for end-user input.  The new persona-based interface option fits within the existing Morpheus role-based access engine including integration into identity management providers such as Active Directory, Okta, SAML, and more.  This means customers can easily extend self-service to new user communities without any custom programming required.

    Providing FinOps with visibility to manage cloud costs and improve efficiency

    Analytics and cost management continue to play a major role in the demand for hybrid cloud management and this has become even more important in 2020 with finance teams looking at every IT purchase for cost savings and return on investment (ROI).  These teams face challenges in navigating multiple public cloud costing tools and a lack of comparable information from on-premises private clouds.

    In version 5.0, Morpheus is uniquely able to provide a single point of integration for public and private cloud utilization and cost data.  The new Invoices Interface exposes a wealth of data that was previously unavailable to finance teams.  Customers can view highly granular cost data from public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure plus aggregate that same level of information from on-premises hypervisors like VMware and Nutanix.  When combined with Morpheus policy engine and role-based access controls customers can create and export invoice views for cross-charge and show back or export custom views into other tools for deeper analysis.

    The Morpheus reporting engine has also been overhauled with a new interface, additional report types, and a flexible report scheduling feature to manage point-in-time or recurring reports.  New report types for costing and usage include views into AWS Reservation Coverage and Savings Plans as well as a Migration Planning report to compare overall best deployment venue.  Proper utilization of these reports can help organizations reduce cloud costs by 70 percent or more[iii].

    Expanded codeless integrations enable ‘bare metal as-a-service’

    Enterprises are constantly on a modernization journey which means at any given time they have applications running on bare metal servers, virtualization technologies, container platforms such as Kubernetes, and leveraging cloud-native PaaS services.  One of the main struggles is to bridge these heterogeneous platforms in a consistent way and avoid vendor lock-in.

    Morpheus is a 100% agnostic hybrid cloud application orchestration platform.  This means it can provide organizations a strategic advantage when managing vendor relationships with hardware OEMs, hypervisor companies, and public cloud hyperscale providers.

    The version 5.0 release of Morpheus adds Canonical MaaS as a supported cloud type which instantly adds dozens of new bare metal hardware providers as supported options for clouds out at the edge or in the corporate datacenter.  This supports adds to what is already the industry’s largest array of private and public clouds supported within a single automation platform

    In addition to bare metal cloud updates, the release also enhances functionality within existing integrations including VMware vCloud Director (vCD) and NSX-T, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), Microsoft Azure, and Veeam.

    Upcoming Events

    Morpheus will be hosting a webinar on October 15th 8:30 AM Pacific to demonstrate the new capabilities of Morpheus v5.0 and discuss our vision for the next generation of hybrid cloud application orchestration.  Please register here and join us to hear all the details.

    About Morpheus Data, LLC

    Morpheus Data is the market leader in hybrid cloud application orchestration, serving hundreds of enterprises, public sector organizations, and service providers globally.

    The Morpheus software platform gives customers a customizable self-service application provisioning catalog which can span dozens of on-premises hypervisors, private clouds, and public clouds.  Its persona-based feature set meets the needs of CloudOps, SecOps, DevOps, and FinOps teams seeking to modernize applications comprised of bare metal, VMs, containers, and public cloud PaaS services.

    With more built-in integrations and native functionality than any other platform, customers can standardize workflows, reduce tool sprawl, and unify processes across different teams and technologies.

    Request a demo at www.morpheusdata.com/demo.

    [i] Sources: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms, Dennis Smith, Sanjit Ganguli, Padraig Byrne, 13 February 2020. Critical Capabilities for Cloud Management Platforms, Dennis Smith, Sanjit Ganguli, Padraig Byrne, Scott Etkin, 13 February 2020.

     

    [ii] Source: IDC’s Cloud Pulse Q120, March 2020

    [iii] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/what-is-savings-plans.html

  • Eggplant Launches Cloud Platform for AI-Driven Intelligent Test Automation

    Further democratizes end-to-end test automation, improving the quality of the digital experience and speed of deployment on any platform

    Eggplant, the intelligent automation specialist, today announced the launch of its cloud platform, providing enhanced levels of automation and faster time to market, enabling organizations to further accelerate the pace of continuous delivery. This new cloud solution allows businesses to quickly and easily deploy Eggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence (DAI) Platform to automate the entire test life cycle and understand the quality of the experiences that are delivered.

    Enterprises are accelerating the move to the cloud as a result of the pandemic, with 80 percent stating that the cloud is expected to be the most relevant technology, according to Deloitte. As environments grow more complex and interconnected, and with workers distributed, organizations need continuous test automation that is easy to integrate and scale. Eggplant’s cloud solution enables customers to immediately benefit from the platform combining intelligent automation with a feedback loop to optimize the digital experience. Organizations can now quickly and easily quantify the impact of software updates, both pre and post release, to ensure continuous quality that delivers business outcomes.

    New additions to Eggplant’s DAI cloud platform include:

    • Cloud-based end-to-end automation: The scalable fusion engine provides frictionless and efficient continuous and parallel end-to-end testing in the cloud, for any apps and websites, and on any target platforms.
    • Monitoring insights: The addition of advanced user experience (UX) data points and metrics, enables customers to benchmark their applications UX performance. These insights, added to the UX behavior helps improve SEO.
    • Fully automated self-healing test assets: The use of AI identifies the tests needed and builds and runs them automatically, under full user control. These tests are self-healing, and automatically adapt as the system-under-test evolves.

    Companies across financial services, healthcare and retail are currently using the Eggplant cloud platform for intelligent automation. In addition to the cloud DAI platform, Eggplant will continue to support and develop the on-premise DAI Platform.

    Quotes and Commentary

    “The launch of our cloud platform is a significant milestone in our mission to rid the world of bad software. In our new normal, delivering           speed and agility at scale has never been more critical. Every business can easily tap into Eggplants’ AI-powered automation platform to accelerate the pace of delivery while ensuring a high-quality digital experience.”

       Gareth Smith, CTO Eggplant

    Additional Resources

    About Eggplant

    Eggplant, part of Keysight Technologies, provides user-centric, intelligent testing and performance solutions designed to optimize the digital experience, delight customers, and drive business success. Only Eggplant enables organizations to test, monitor, analyze, and report on the quality and responsiveness of software applications across different interfaces, platforms, browsers, and devices, including mobile, IoT, desktop, and mainframe. Learn more at Eggplant.

    —

  • Morpheus v5.0 Brings Self-Service IT to New Customer Segments with Persona-Based Cloud Management and Expanded FinOps Reporting

    Greenwood Village, CO – October 6, 2020 – Morpheus Data, the hybrid cloud application orchestration company, released the next major version of its hybrid cloud management platform which expands access to self-service IT, simplifies cross-cloud cost management, and accelerates integration into enterprise environments.

    Morpheus is recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms (CMP) with the highest critical capability scores in three key use cases[i].  With version 5.0, Morpheus extends that lead and sets a foundation for the convergence of cloud management, container orchestration, and infrastructure automation.  Highlights of this release include:

    • Persona-based ‘anything-as-a-service’ (XaaS) interface to give non-technical users simple self-service IT and expand opportunities for Morpheus partners.
    • Updated cost analytics and reporting engine including invoice data, cloud savings details, and cloud migration planning to give FinOps more visibility.
    • Expanded codeless integrations including new ‘bare metal as-a-service’ options and certification with the latest ServiceNow release to accelerate time to value.

    According to IDC, 84% of enterprises are planning to migrate or repatriate some workloads from public cloud to on-premises private cloud, hosted private cloud, and non-cloud environments in 2020.  Their research also noted that 74% of larger organizations say common cross-cloud management control planes are very important to help scale their operations.[ii]

    These data points are a leading indicator of the growth that Morpheus Data has seen in 2020 despite the global economic impact of COVID-19.  Morpheus has grown over 60% year-on-year in 2020 with over 100% growth in new customers and partners.  To help even more companies simplify hybrid cloud management, Morpheus is announcing a lower-cost ‘Essentials’ package of the software for midsize enterprises.

    “The market for hybrid cloud management and infrastructure automation is converging rapidly,” said Brad Parks, Chief Marketing Officer at Morpheus Data.  “Our vision is to simplify application orchestration with a unified platform that enables self-service IT for all types of users from edge to datacenter to public cloud.”

    Enabling a single-click shopping cart for ‘anything-as-a-service’ (XaaS)

    Cloud computing is defined as the ability to get on-demand and elastic access to resources via a self-service portal.  With the massive growth and adoption of hybrid cloud, this self-service IT expectation has moved beyond the realm of developers.  Scientists, marketing teams, and other end-user groups also want on-demand access to their application services.

    With version 5.0, Morpheus has extended its award-winning platform with new interface options aimed at giving self-service IT to less technical user communities who are looking for a shopping-cart approach to application provisioning.  For the first time, a single unified platform can serve enterprise self-service IT needs across all user personas – from a streamlined ‘easy button’ to robust infrastructure-as-code blueprints and everything in between to speed application provisioning by 150x or more.

    Administrators and IT Operations staff can quickly create catalog items using a powerful wizard-driven interface including customized option lists and specs that minimize or even eliminate the need for end-user input.  The new persona-based interface option fits within the existing Morpheus role-based access engine including integration into identity management providers such as Active Directory, Okta, SAML, and more.  This means customers can easily extend self-service to new user communities without any custom programming required.

    Providing FinOps with visibility to manage cloud costs and improve efficiency

    Analytics and cost management continue to play a major role in the demand for hybrid cloud management and this has become even more important in 2020 with finance teams looking at every IT purchase for cost savings and return on investment (ROI).  These teams face challenges in navigating multiple public cloud costing tools and a lack of comparable information from on-premises private clouds.

    In version 5.0, Morpheus is uniquely able to provide a single point of integration for public and private cloud utilization and cost data.  The new Invoices Interface exposes a wealth of data that was previously unavailable to finance teams.  Customers can view highly granular cost data from public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure plus aggregate that same level of information from on-premises hypervisors like VMware and Nutanix.  When combined with Morpheus policy engine and role-based access controls customers can create and export invoice views for cross-charge and show back or export custom views into other tools for deeper analysis.

    The Morpheus reporting engine has also been overhauled with a new interface, additional report types, and a flexible report scheduling feature to manage point-in-time or recurring reports.  New report types for costing and usage include views into AWS Reservation Coverage and Savings Plans as well as a Migration Planning report to compare overall best deployment venue.  Proper utilization of these reports can help organizations reduce cloud costs by 70 percent or more[iii].

    Expanded codeless integrations enable ‘bare metal as-a-service’

    Enterprises are constantly on a modernization journey which means at any given time they have applications running on bare metal servers, virtualization technologies, container platforms such as Kubernetes, and leveraging cloud-native PaaS services.  One of the main struggles is to bridge these heterogeneous platforms in a consistent way and avoid vendor lock-in.

    Morpheus is a 100% agnostic hybrid cloud application orchestration platform.  This means it can provide organizations a strategic advantage when managing vendor relationships with hardware OEMs, hypervisor companies, and public cloud hyperscale providers.

    The version 5.0 release of Morpheus adds Canonical MaaS as a supported cloud type which instantly adds dozens of new bare metal hardware providers as supported options for clouds out at the edge or in the corporate datacenter.  This supports adds to what is already the industry’s largest array of private and public clouds supported within a single automation platform

    In addition to bare metal cloud updates, the release also enhances functionality within existing integrations including VMware vCloud Director (vCD) and NSX-T, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), Microsoft Azure, and Veeam.

    Upcoming Events

    Morpheus will be hosting a webinar on October 15th 8:30 AM Pacific to demonstrate the new capabilities of Morpheus v5.0 and discuss our vision for the next generation of hybrid cloud application orchestration.  Please register here and join us to hear all the details.

    About Morpheus Data, LLC

    Morpheus Data is the market leader in hybrid cloud application orchestration, serving hundreds of enterprises, public sector organizations, and service providers globally.

    The Morpheus software platform gives customers a customizable self-service application provisioning catalog which can span dozens of on-premises hypervisors, private clouds, and public clouds.  Its persona-based feature set meets the needs of CloudOps, SecOps, DevOps, and FinOps teams seeking to modernize applications comprised of bare metal, VMs, containers, and public cloud PaaS services.

    With more built-in integrations and native functionality than any other platform, customers can standardize workflows, reduce tool sprawl, and unify processes across different teams and technologies.

    Request a demo at www.morpheusdata.com/demo.

    1 Sources: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Management Platforms, Dennis Smith, Sanjit Ganguli, Padraig Byrne, 13 February 2020. Critical Capabilities for Cloud Management Platforms, Dennis Smith, Sanjit Ganguli, Padraig Byrne, Scott Etkin, 13 February 2020.

    2 Source: IDC’s Cloud Pulse Q120, March 2020

    3 https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/what-is-savings-plans.html

  • Two new open source projects, the Space Situational Awareness project and the Kubesat project, give more people access to space tech and democratize access to…

    By Naeem Altaf, Colin Alstad, Minsik Lee

    The 2016 movie, Hidden Figures, highlighted IBM technologists who played a crucial role in NASA’s mission to put a man on the moon. Fifty years later, IBM is still actively working to open possibilities for the new space age. The IBM Blue Tech Innovation, Space Tech Hub team, led by Naeem Altaf, IBM’s Distinguished Engineer and CTO Space Tech, is partnering with space agencies, universities, and space technology companies to design and build framework and technical prototype for cubesats and space situational awareness.

    Today, the Space Tech Hub team is excited to announce two new open source projects, the Space Situational Awareness project and the Kubesat project. By open sourcing these two projects, we hope to give more people access to space tech and democratize access to space for all. Developers with an interest in space technology can help take these projects to the next level. These two containerized solutions are built with cloud-native principles and run on IBM Cloud in the Red Hat OpenShift Platform.

    Space Situational Awareness (SSA)

    Tens of thousands of man-made anthropogenic space objects (ASOs) orbit around the Earth. With the privatization of rocket launches, the rate at which ASOs are put into orbit is set to dramatically increase.

    ASOs range in size from specks of paint that are a few centimeters in diameter to the International Space Station. A small piece of paint might not sound dangerous, but when it’s traveling at speeds around 8,000 meters per second, a collision with a satellite or other crewed vehicle has the potential to be catastrophic.

    The Space Situational Awareness(SSA) project is joint work between IBM and Dr. Moriba Jahat the University of Texas at Austin to determine where ASOs are (orbit determination) and where they will be in the future (orbit prediction).

    State-of-the-art methods for orbit prediction rely on physics-based models. To succeed, these models require extremely accurate data about the ASO and its environment. The trouble is, the location data we get about ASOs from terrestrial-based sensors is infrequent and noisy — and complicated further by the fact that we don’t fully understand how phenomena like space weather and atmospheric density affect ASOs.

    With SSA, our approach is to improve orbit prediction using machine learning methods, not to predict orbits but to create models that learn when physical models incorrectly predict an ASO’s future location. If we were to try and build a ML model that predicted all of the orbital dynamics of an ASO we would need a lot of data to learn orbital mechanics. Physics models know quite a bit of orbital dynamics, so we only need to learn how they get it wrong.

    The below shows a conjunction search, when two objects in orbit are going to get close to each other.

    How SSA works: Leverage reliable data to build machine learning models

    We used data provided by United States Strategic Command(USSTRATCOM) via the space-track.orgwebsite and API to build our baseline models. The data is served in the two-line element setformat which is a fixed-width text format that contains the Keplerian orbital elementsof an ASO at a point in time. For most ASOs in low-earth orbit (LEO), this dataset is only updated once per day, which is infrequent for a moving object.

    We have built two types of baseline models:

    • Physics-based model for predicting orbits of ASOs in LEO. Our baseline physics model is a two-body model that uses Cowell’s formulation) for modeling the perturbation in a ASO’s orbit caused by the Earth.
    • Machine learning model that is trained to predict the errors in the physical model’s orbit prediction. Our baseline machine learning method uses XGBoostto build a gradient-boosted regression treesmodel. This model is then trained on the orbit predictions of our baseline physical model to predict the error of the physics model using the USSTRATCOM data as the ground truth.

    The SSA project combines the two models, using the physics model to make an orbit prediction and then using the machine learning model to estimate the error. Finally, we adjust the physical model’s prediction by the predicted error.

    We employed an IBM Cloud Bare Metal Server with 16 Intel Xeon Processors; 120 GB RAM; two Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs (each with 16GB of RAM) to run the physical models to predict the orbits of all ASOs in LEO, train ML models to learn the physics model error, and infer the future orbits of the LEO ASOs using the physics/ML combined model. We also used Cloud Object Storage to store the data from USSTRATCOM, the physics model predictions, and the final combined model predictions.

    Get involved with the Space Situational Awareness project

    The modeling and impact prediction of anthropogenic space objects is a defining problem of the space 2.0 age. By open sourcing a full pipeline for making orbital predictions and viewing the results, you can now join our mission to solve the “space junk” problem.

    Contribute to SSA – https://github.com/IBM/spacetech-ssa

    KubeSat, a cognitive autonomous framework

    Startups and research groups that intend to use satellite swarms — groups of satellites that work together to accomplish specific tasks — as a modular, low-cost alternative to a more traditional larger satellite need underlying technology that can create and control the swarm, as well as support additional software for their specific goals.

    Enter IBM’s KubeSat, a cognitive autonomous framework.

    KubeSat is a cognitive autonomous framework designed for swarms of cube satellites that allows for the simulation and optimization of multi-satellite communications.

    The project:

    • simulates accurate orbital mechanics for each object via Orekit
    • uses these calculations to place restrictions on communications between satellites, groundstation, and ground sensors
    • incorporates NATS messaging services; optimizing their communications via reinforcement learning
    • publishes these communications to a UI
    • uses Kubernetes as the core platform with microservices

    This framework follows principles of swarm intelligence like awareness, autonomy, solidarity, expandability, and resiliency.

    The screenshot below shows the simulation of cubesats forming clusters and interacting with ground stations.

    Why we are open sourcing the KubeSat cognitive autonomous framework

    Open sourcing KubeSat Cognitive Autonomous Framework democratizes the satellite swarm industry and allows for smaller operators to take advantage of space tech, particularly in the satellite swarm industry, that was previously out of reach.

    Innovation in space industry can benefit from this framework. Reinforcement learning models for specific use cases can be built with this framework as the underlying software for many satellite groups. Collaboration and communications between those satellite swarms can be autonomous, allowing for swarms to integrate or separate as needed. This modular swarm creation is a key component of our software, allowing satellites utilizing our software to have the maximum impact.

    We are also open sourcing the application code our team developed together with undergraduate students from Stanford University to Orekit, the base library for orbital mechanics. These extensions are used to simulate the satellite-to-satellite, satellite-to-ground station, and satellite to ground sensor communications over a meshed NATS messaging platform. A visualization layer written using Cesium and Carbon is also available

    Contribute to Kubesat – https://github.com/IBM/spacetech-kubesat

    Advancing the future of space innovation

    Our team is committed to advancing the future of space innovation. With the proliferation of satellites of all sizes in lower earth orbit in space, enormous amounts of data will be produced related to earth observation, to space traffic management, to space situational awareness. This data needs to be protected, analyzed, transported, and correlated.

    This is where edge computing in space can provide inferencing and data filtering capabilities, basically processing of data in satellites. Next, cloud will come into the picture, to receive the aggregated and raw data via ground stations from constellation of satellites for further processing.

    We’ve been busy laying the groundwork for this space technology, and now it’s your turn to help us take this work to the next level by contributing to our open source projects.

  • New ESG & JumpCloud Study Uncovers IT’s Biggest Identity and Security Challenges Due to COVID-19

    Global shift to remote work and rise of mixed platform use increases complexity of securely managing identity, access, and devices

    LOUISVILLE, CO – Oct. 2, 2020 –  A new ESG Research Survey sponsored by JumpCloud, “Trends in IAM: Cloud-driven Identities”, shows that 97% of organizations plan to expand, or continue existing spending levels on identity and access management (IAM), a market forecasted to reach $13B in 2021. The spike in spending is driven by the rise of remote work and growing complexity of securely managing multiple types of end user devices, applications, storage systems, and networks. IT teams are struggling with the plethora of piecemeal extensions required to secure and manage user identities across every needed resource. The new study underscores the need to simplify identity, access, and device management through consolidation of disparate security tools.

    ESG’s Cahill and JumpCloud’s co-founder Rajat Bhargava will be hosting a webinar on the study, “2021 State of IAM and Security: Opportunities and Threats” on Tuesday, October 13 at 8:00 am PT/11:00 am ET. The webinar will address security readiness for a remote work environment, including the biggest identity and access management challenges and security threats introduced by different levels of cloud services (SaaS, Iaas, PaaS). Registration is available here.

    The JumpCloud-sponsored ESG survey found:

    • Growing IAM spending: 97% of organizations plan to expand, or continue existing spending levels, on identity and access management (IAM). 77% are going to increase spending, while 20% plan to keep IAM spending at the same level.
    • Vendor consolidation in IAM: Almost half (49%) of respondents said they plan to consolidate IAM controls, using fewer security vendors.
    • Demand for new policies and technologies: 80% of respondents agree that a new set of IAM policies and technologies are needed to manage the access of cloud applications, existing applications, infrastructure, and DevOps tools.
    • Biggest IAM challenges: When asked about the biggest IAM challenges created by cloud services, respondents said the three biggest challenges were 1) “maintaining security consistency across our own data center and public cloud environments” (33%); 2) “an increase in remote users as a result of the coronavirus pandemic requires access to a diverse range of applications” (32%), and 3) “the use of cloud applications to share data with external third parties increases risk” (24%).About JumpCloud

      JumpCloud has reimagined directory services to transform how IT delivers workers secure and easy access to technology. The rise of cloud, web apps and remote work made it hard for IT to secure employees while supporting their need to work however and wherever they want: as a result IT teams have wrestled with an increasing number of identity, access, and device management products as they try to recreate what Active Directory achieved in an on-premise only world. The JumpCloud Directory Platform gives IT and devops a modern solution to securely manage and connect users to IT resources regardless of platform, provider, protocol, or location. With JumpCloud, organizations increase employee productivity and protect identities, while enabling convenient connection.

  • 2020 BMC Mainframe Survey Results

    Adapt, Automate, and Secure are Key Strategies to Empower Digital Success

    HOUSTON – October 1, 2020 – BMC, a global leader celebrating 40 years of delivering IT solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, today announced results of its 15th Annual Mainframe Survey. The results show overwhelming support for mainstreaming the mainframe, new strategic priorities, and a resurgence of next generation mainframe talent.

    The largest survey of its kind, this bellwether study queried over 1000 executives and practitioners on their priorities, challenges, and growth opportunities for the platform. High-level insights include:

    • 90% of respondents see the mainframe as a platform for growth and long-term applications.
    • 68% expect MIPS, the mainframe’s measure of computing performance, to grow.
    • 63% of respondents say security and compliance were their top mainframe priorities.
    • More than half of survey respondents increased mainframe platform data and transaction volume by 25% or more, signaling its ongoing importance in the digital business environment.

    “The Mainframe Survey validates that businesses see the mainframe as a critical component of the modern digital enterprise and an emerging hub for innovation,” says Stephen Elliot, Program Vice President, Management Software and DevOps, IDC. “They’re putting it to work more and more to support digital business demands as they strive to achieve greater agility and success across the enterprise.”

    Top Mainframe Priorities
    With mainframe enterprises competing to bring new, digital experiences to market to delight customers, the survey’s themes are resoundingly strong: Adapt, Automate, and Secure.

    Adapt
    Responses indicated that enterprises’ need to adapt spanned several areas:

    • New processes to keep up with digital demand.
    • Technology demands such as application development/DevOps across the mainframe; 78% of respondents want to be able to update mainframe applications more frequently than currently possible.
    • Changing workforce, as the number of next generation mainframe talent increases along with the number of women working on the platform.

    Automate
    Mainframe modernization continues to play a key role in priorities among respondents with the need to implement AI and machine learning strategies jumping by 8% year over year.

    Secure
    While the mainframe has a reputation of being a naturally secure platform, respondents are seeing the growing need to fortify its “walls.”  Security trumped cost optimization as the leading mainframe priority among respondents for the first time in the 15-year history of the survey.

    “Early results were shared with leading industry analysts and key customers from our Mainframe Executive Council in order to validate findings with market sentiment,” states John McKenny, SVP of Mainframe Innovation and Strategy at BMC. “These conversations further solidified the study’s findings that the platform’s positive outlook and growth is largely due to the need to create intuitive, customer-centric digital experiences. The mainframe continues to shine as innovative, agile, and secure and is a vital component to digital success.”

    Workforce Demographic Shifts
    The survey revealed the demographic shifts in mainframe operations, as younger, less experienced staff replaces departing senior staff, and a higher proportion of women respondents than last year.

    “The IBM Z ecosystem continues to evolve to support a modern, hybrid cloud. But it’s more than that, because the practitioners who run IBM Z are shifting as well to represent the modern workforce – with 40% representation from women and over one-third representation from those with less than 5 years experience on the Z platform,” says Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM Z and LinuxONE.

    Resources

    • Learn more detail about mainframe priorities, challenges, and growth strategies by registering for the October 6th webinar detailing results from BMC’s 15th Annual Mainframe Survey here
    • Learn more about the BMC AMI portfolio at www.bmc.com/ami

    About BMC
    From core to cloud to edge, BMC delivers the software and services that enable over 10,000 global customers, including 84% of the Forbes Global 100, to thrive in their ongoing evolution to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

    BMC, BMC Software, the BMC logo, and other BMC marks are the exclusive properties of BMC Software, Inc. or its affiliates and are registered or may be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or in other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©Copyright 2020 BMC Software, Inc.

  • BMC Enhances Mainframe Resiliency and Advances Enterprise DevOps

    Modern data management portfolio for Db2® and intelligent automated testing empowers business resiliency for digital transformation

    HOUSTON – October 1, 2020 – BMC, a global leader celebrating 40 years of delivering IT solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, today announced enhancements to the Db2® management solutions as part of the BMC Automated Mainframe Intelligence (AMI) portfolio. The BMC AMI Data Management, Compuware Topaz for Total Test, and ISPW solutions include capabilities that help enterprises protect uptime and availability while intelligently managing their mainframe data and streamlining application development as part of their enterprise DevOps strategies.

    Increased Availability, Operational Resilience, and Agility
    Intelligent Data Management for Db2
    The BMC AMI Data Management for Db2 solutions powered by intelligent automation provide world-class data management that enable 24/7 availability, foster greater resiliency, and drive the agility needed to provide a transcendent customer experience. BMC’s data shows that BMC AMI Data Management for Db2 solutions help customers to:

    • Manage Db2 databases easily in BMC AMI Command Center, with an intuitive, persona-based experience, which brings developers and database administrators together to enable DevOps processes.
    • Improve time to recover data by up to 80% with BMC AMI Recovery for Db2, which also has integrations with BMC AMI Command Center for Db2 to ensure business resiliency and compliance.
    • Continually improve the response time of applications with BMC AMI Performance for Db2 SQL, providing a lightweight, real-time tuning tool that offers actionable information.
    • Boost the speed of test data refresh by up to 85% with BMC AMI Load for Db2 and BMC AMI Unload for Db2, increasing development velocity.
    • Increase agility and velocity of the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines through automating database changes via integrations with Jenkins and soon with IBM® UrbanCode®.

    “Organizations that rely on Db2 for z/OS® require highly available, resilient systems, and the tools to keep them that way. Automation that BMC delivers with its BMC AMI solutions can help to assure that enterprises have optimal access to their vital mainframe data,” said Craig S. Mullins, President, Mullins Consulting, Inc.

    Intelligent Automated Testing to Accelerate Agile Development
    A new integration between Compuware Topaz for Total Test and Compuware ISPW empowers development organizations to quickly build sophisticated CI/CD pipelines that automate the build, deployment, and testing of mainframe applications. Through the new integration, pipelines automatically execute the right tests based on changed source code only. Organizations are empowered to:

    • Improve code quality and speed software delivery by taking the guesswork out of determining which tests should run.
    • Reduce the skills necessary to create advanced CI/CD pipelines.
    • Optimize the development process and break down silos between teams by leveraging a modern, open development environment. Source code can be stored on the mainframe, or Git can be used as the application source code and test case repository by extending the existing ISPW/Git integration.

    By driving intrinsic automation throughout a mainframe-inclusive CI/CD pipeline, developers are freed up to focus 100% on delivering critical digital innovations.

    “We are excited that we can deliver on our quarterly release cadence together as one company. BMC has successfully delivered more than 300 mainframe product releases over the last three years, and this marks Compuware’s 24th consecutive quarterly release,” said John McKenny, SVP of Mainframe Innovation and Strategy at BMC. “We are committed to helping our customers automate their application development and operations processes so they can meet the needs of their business. We will continue to deliver innovative and open solutions that leverage advances in AI and machine learning to enable enterprise DevOps and modern, self-managing, and self-healing mainframe systems capable of scaling to meet workload demands.”

    Additionally, BMC introduced BMC AMI Cost Management (formerly BMC Cost Analyzer for zEnterprise®) to deliver new Tailored Fit Pricing (TFP) reporting and analysis – offering enterprises insight and management of their monthly TFP cost drivers.

    The introduction of these new innovations from BMC address a rapidly changing and evolving mainframe market where 68% of executives and technical professionals responding to the 2020 BMC Mainframe Survey expect MIPS to grow, 54% report higher transaction volumes, and 47% report higher data volumes.

    Additional Resources:

    • Learn more about the BMC AMI portfolio and Compuware solutions here
    • Learn more about mainframe priorities, challenges, and growth strategies by registering for the October 6th webinar detailing results from BMC’s 15th Annual Mainframe Survey here
    • Share ideas and connect with BMC executives, customers, and partners at BMC Exchange, October 20-22, by registering at exchange.bmc.com
    • Discover what it takes to be an Autonomous Digital Enterprise at www.bmc.com/ade

    About BMC
    From core to cloud to edge, BMC delivers the software and services that enable over 10,000 global customers, including 84% of the Forbes Global 100, to thrive in their ongoing evolution to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

    BMC, BMC Software, the BMC logo, and other BMC marks are the exclusive properties of BMC Software, Inc. or its affiliates and are registered or may be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or in other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©Copyright 2020 BMC Software, Inc.

    IBM, Db2, UrbanCode, z/Enterprise, and z/OS are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

    BMC—Run and Reinvent
    www.bmc.com

     

  • Coralogix Raises $25M To Fix Observability Pricing Model

    Company aims to help Elasticsearch’s 200 million user install base utilize ELK stack capabilities without the use of storage.

    SAN FRANCISCO — SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 — Coralogix today announced it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round, bringing the company’s total amount raised to $41.2 million. New investors Red Dot Capital Partners and O.G. Tech Ventures (backed by Eyal Ofer) co-led the round with participation from existing investors Aleph VC, StageOne Ventures, Janvest Capital Partners, and 2B Angels. Barak Salomon of Red Dot Capital partners and Roy Oron of O.G. Tech Partners will join the board of directors.

    Coralogix also announced today the launch of ‘Streama’, its real-time analytics solution. The new release challenges the cost model of observability by allowing customers to pay according to data priority instead of solely on volume. By re-engineering the Elasticsearch engine, Coralogix is able to offer queries, alerts, and its ML capabilities without the use of storage.

    “Over the last few years, companies have had to forgo observability due to prohibitive costs,”  said Ariel Assaraf, CEO and co-founder, Coralogix. “As a result, monitoring and log management has become increasingly difficult, not to mention it has forced companies to compromise on stability and security. By creating a real-time pipeline that analyzes and queries logs using the Elasticsearch syntax, and powering it with our ML engine, our customers can benefit from all the great visualization and alerting capabilities Elasticsearch offers without its limitations and massive storage costs.”

    Already thousands of Coralogix customers, fast growing companies and large enterprises, are seeing cost savings of up to 70 percent.

    “Coralogix offers more than just a best-in-class platform. Their customer service is unmatched and has proven critical to our business,” said Sheel Kapur, Director of Platform Engineering, Masterclass.

    “As an organization that caters to 10 million users, Coralogix has scaled to meet our accelerated growth seamlessly and has demonstrated extreme focus on their customers’ needs,” said Shamasis Bhattacharya, Chief Software Architect, Postman.
    “It was almost impossible to see the full picture before Coralogix, now we are able to get all the data cleaned up and centralized for faster response times,” said Ben Yitzhaki, Infrastructure Engineer, Monday.
    ABOUT CORALOGIX
    Coralogix is a Log Analytics platform that empowers teams to autonomously manage and analyze data in cloud applications. The platform’s machine learning engine enables users to improve their stability, and accelerate their version delivery without paying for the noise their systems generate. Thousands of global-leading companies including Masterclass, Monday.com, BookMyShow, Postman, and PayU use Coralogix to power their businesses. For more information, please visit https://coralogix.com/