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Tag: devops

  • Avalon Consulting, LLC Announces “Getting Started” Workshop for Walmart Labs OneOps

    Custom engagement designed to empower enterprises to quickly assess open-sourced application lifecycle management platform from Walmart Labs

    PLANO, Texas, Feb. 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Avalon Consulting, LLC, a leader in delivering business value through information technology, today announced the launch of a high-impact workshop for enterprises interested in evaluating Walmart Labs’ OneOps, a continuous application lifecycle management (ALM) platform for cloud-based workload.  Avalon’s 3-day workshop will enable organizations to reduce cost, time, risk and uncertainty related to suitability of OneOps for their ALM needs. The workshop furthersAvalon’s commitment to supporting full circle DevOps.

    Logo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160218/334831LOGO

    OneOps, the most comprehensive open-source ALM product available, allows developers to build and launch new products and features faster, forklift legacy applications to the cloud easily and maintain applications throughout their entire lifecycle with advanced auto-healing and auto-scaling capabilities. ALM products, such as OneOps, seek to alleviate the friction between business, technology and operations groups in organizations entering the Digital Economy and adopting cloud computing.

    “The promise of executing DevOps consistently and efficiently is in enabling IT to deliver breakthrough business results; OneOps is an innovative, comprehensive Application Lifecycle Management platform that will make that promise a reality for many,” said Brian Johnson, Sr. Director of Engineering, @Platform, Walmart Labs. “A primary challenge an enterprise will face in exploring OneOps due to its comprehensive nature is simply getting started. Workshops, like the one being offered by Avalon, are an excellent way to overcome that challenge in a cost-effective and timely manner and start off down the right path.”

    Avalon’s 3-Day Workshop for OneOps, offered onsite and customized for each client delivery, is designed to guide an organization in assessing OneOps within the context of that organization’s unique business operations and technology environment. The highly interactive workshop offers a guided, hands-on experience with OneOps combined with a facilitated discovery session to capture the organization’s current applications delivery practices. Additionally, the workshop identifies opportunities for optimizing existing Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline and DevOps practices. Where appropriate, the conclusion of the workshop will include a high level outline of tasks and work effort required to achieve successful implementation of the OneOps platform.

    “The tools and techniques used to implement and manage applications in a hybrid multi-cloud architecture like OneOps are nascent and evolving. Technology and training environments that offer education and assistance to do so would be a welcome and valuable resource for those so charged,” said Carl Lehmann, a hybrid IT analyst with 451 Research.

    The tactics required to achieve success with DevOps initiatives are increasingly complex.  Aligning system architects, developers, administrators and business stakeholders to rapidly deliver new features with no downtime but a great return on investment is a growing challenge. Avalon provides expert leadership to guide clients in realizing the benefits of DevOps through accelerated adoption of, and enhancements to, agile development, continuous delivery, architecture, and cloud management processes.  OneOps is designed to offer all stakeholders in a DevOps initiative the easy-to-manage control truly needed to succeed. Avalon’s 3-Day Workshop for OneOps is designed to ensure organizations can get started in a fast and cost-effective manner.

    About Avalon Consulting, LLC

    Avalon Consulting, LLC is a technology consulting leader providing support for businesses of all sizes to maximize and utilize data and analytics in order to grow revenue, drive profit, and compete in a fast-paced global economy. Avalon specializes in enabling full spectrum DevOps. As a result, clients are able to turn data investments into actionable results. Avalon has benefitted over one-hundred organizations, primarily Global 2000 companies, through its four core service offerings: Continuous Delivery, Cloud Automation & Management, Agile Delivery, and Architecture. The volume and variety of data that organizations need to manage and analyze is changing rapidly and Avalon is plays a critical role in enabling our clients to navigate through it all. Headquartered inPlano, Texas, Avalon also maintains offices in cities across the US. For more information, please visit www.avalonconsult.com.

    PR Contact:
    Amy Bailey
    E: Email
    P: 800-681-8809 x111

    SOURCE Avalon Consulting, LLC

  • Illumio Introduces Adaptive User Segmentation as the Newest Weapon in the Battle to Reduce Cyber Attack Surface

    Illumio’s Adaptive User Segmentation capabilities dynamically integrate Microsoft’s Active Directory entitlements for hundreds of millions of users, dramatically expanding the reach of the Adaptive Security Platform
    SUNNYVALE, Calif.—February 17, 2016—Illumio today announced it has extended the capabilities of its industry-leading Adaptive Security Platform (ASP)Ô through integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory groups. The new capability, known as Adaptive User Segmentation, dynamically calculates and provisions connectivity rules based on user identity to prevent unauthorized communications with, and access to, any Illumio-protected applications. Illumio ASP now can govern how hundreds of millions of users connect to applications across data centers, clouds or hybrid-cloud compute environments.
    Adaptive User Segmentation is the latest step in Illumio’s core mission to secure data anywhere it resides:
    ·      When Illumio launched in October 2014, it introduced a complete range of adaptive segmentation models to reduce the attack surface, from environmental separation to micro-segmentation. It also introduced “MRI-like” visualizations of data center and cloud environments, as well as policy-driven transport layer encryption.
    ·      During RSA 2015, the company introduced its nano-segmentation capability, which provides process-level segmentation among both physical servers and virtual machines and reduces the surface area of server-to-server communications by over 99 percent. Illumio also extended its policy-driven segmentation model to incorporate F5 Local Traffic Manager and Application Firewall Modules.
    ·      Later in the year, Illumio announced partnerships with Docker and Mesosphere to extend adaptive security capabilities to fast-growing Linux container deployments.
    Illumio’s Adaptive User Segmentation extends to all of these environments and delivers the most meaningful reduction in the cyber attack surface area in computing history. The company has fused governance of both workload-to-workload communications and user-to-workload communications through this technology breakthrough, strengthening the traditional entitlement model in a way never possible before today. According to statcounter.com, Windows 7—the target OS for VDI desktops/laptops connecting to the data center—accounts for just under 50 percent of all desktop operating systems in operation.
    Today, users within an organization can see and connect to most, if not all, applications within the data center or cloud environment, regardless of their Active Directory entitlements. Given heightened challenges to deliver trust and security, relying on central systems of record like Active Directory to ensure users only have access to the appropriate assets is no longer sufficient. The breaches that occurred in the past few years in large enterprises and government agencies underscore that entitlements and authentication alone are unable to provide the protection required by high-value applications and data.
    Leveraging the Illumio ASP approach of writing and delivering a dynamic policy using a whitelist model, the integration of Illumio ASP and Active Directory allows an organization to ensure that only the correct users can connect to the appropriate workloads and applications in the data center, public cloud, private cloud or hybrid compute environment.
    “Illumio’s mission since our founding has been to help our customers regain control over their applications and data,” said Andrew Rubin, co-founder and chief executive officer of Illumio. “With the introduction of Adaptive User Segmentation, Illumio once again is dramatically reducing computing attack surface through dynamic, policy-driven enforcement that allows users to only connect to the data center and cloud compute they are entitled to access.”
    “Illumio’s new capabilities will resonate with security professionals assessing their security posture,” said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Security leaders must deal with both sides of the user/data center equation and are well served to do it together rather than separately.”
    About Illumio
    Illumio delivers adaptive security for every computing environment, protecting the 80 percent of data center and cloud traffic missed by the perimeter. The company’s Adaptive Security Platform™ visualizes application traffic and delivers continuous, scalable, and dynamic policy and enforcement to every bare-metal server, VM, container, and VDI within data centers and public clouds. Using Illumio, enterprises such as Morgan Stanley, Plantronics, NTT, King Entertainment, NetSuite, and Creative Artists Agency have achieved secure application and cloud migration, environmental segmentation, compliance, and high-value application protection from breaches and threats with no changes to applications or infrastructure. For more information, visit www.illumio.com or follow @Illumio.
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    Amber Rowland
  • Flash Mob Inflection: Rugged DevOps Revolution

    Flash Mob Inflection: Rugged DevOps Revolution

    Truthfully, I was never a huge fan of the HBO series “The Sopranos.” It’s not that it wasn’t entertaining; I just didn’t agree with the “best ever” label that so many espoused during the show’s halcyon days.

    This had something to do with living in Hoboken, N.J., at the time and feeling the show was a heavily glamorized caricature of the real-life Mafioso I still perceived to be in my midst. More specifically, it’s hard for anything mob-related to stand up next to “Goodfellas” and “The Godfather”—among my favorite films, ever.

    Either way, I currently find myself identifying with the series’ defining sentiment (copped directly from The Godfather, but hammered home as The Sopranos main theme): “Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.”

    It wasn’t that I assumed that I’d never delve back into the domain of IT security after transitioning into the DevOps market last year; leveraging DevOps methodologies to improve security, policy compliance and related workflows stands as a core element of the overall movement.

    But, in recent months and weeks it has become increasingly obvious that the security facet of the larger DevOps revolution appears poised for explosion as the buzz around emerging best practices, business models and solutions providers grows from a low hum into a steady roar.

    After spending a few days talking DevOps security with Derek Weeks of Sonatype at CA World ’15 (we were booth neighbors and dinner mates) and giving more consideration to his company’s angle on securing the systems development life cycle (SDLC) supply chain, the internal gears really got spinning.

    Regardless of whether you buy into Sonatype’s security-heavy approach, the concept of aggressively and proactively addressing security across the DevOps spectrum makes infinite sense. The ultimate downfall of applications security has always been the challenge of securing all the underlying layers of code (and today, microservices), especially as applications are assembled using heavier doses of shared, open source componentry.

    As further evidence, nearly every major solutions vendor focused on the DevOps space—whether oriented toward the vibrant application performance management (APM), configuration management and continuous testing segments, among many others—seems to have launched some initiative aimed at integrating security into their products.

    The rise of security capabilities adjacent to—and supporting inclusion into—the DevOps world, such as container giant Docker’s Content Trust initiative, along with the advancement of related startups including Twistlock, Scalock and StackRoxs, offers more proof of this growing momentum. And that’s only the container security piece of the puzzle.

    Of course, there are also a number of emerging startups aimed at addressing the DevOps security opportunity, backed by well-known venture capitalists. A shortlist might include providers such as Immunio, Prevoty and UpGuard (formerly known as ScriptRock, which recently rebranded itself under the guise of a “DevOps security” provider), and we’re sure to see many more. And don’t forget the growing emphasis on DevOps security among established security industry stalwarts such as CyberArk, Snort and Tripwire, among others.

    For a comprehensive list of the various types of DevOps security best practices and tools that we should expect to see gain wider adoption, this October 2015 blog by noted security analyst Adrian Lane of Securosis serves as a basic framework. Each of the areas of focus that he cites clearly offers significant opportunity for both new and existing methodologies.

    Finally, one need look no further than this year’s RSA Security Conference, to be held in San Francisco at this end of this month, as tacit proof of the continued growth of what people now varyingly refer to as DevSecOps or Rugged DevOps (I prefer the latter as it just sounds cooler).

    In addition to multiple conference sessions, notably a “DevOps Throwdown” between security industry veterans Caleb Sima, Chris Wysopal and Gary McGraw, there’s also the 2nd Annual DevOps Connect: Rugged DevOps Edition. If last year’s event is any indication (standing room only, venue literally at max capacity), this daylong DevOps security track at RSA will be an even more high-profile element of the entire week.

    Further, if DevOps security—or, at the very least, the growing focus on adjacent segments such as container security—isn’t the unofficial theme of this year’s entire RSA show, I’d be extremely surprised.

    Meanwhile (self-serving), my employer CA Technologies absolutely has a lot going on that complements and contributes to this growing DevOps Security market momentum.

    For all of those reasons, here I find myself again, drawn closer back into the security space that I’ve called home for roughly the last decade. I guess that’s just how it goes, as DevOps and security are inarguably two of the most significant trends in IT these days and inextricably linked at their respective cores.

    There are definitely worse fates out there. But, just when you think you’re out …

  • Webinar: 5 Key Metrics to Release Better Software Faster

    Webinar: 5 Key Metrics to Release Better Software Faster

    No matter how often you deploy your application, or how sophisticated your delivery pipeline is, you always need to know the quality status of the software you are building. This can only be done if you measure it. But measure what exactly?

    Join us for this webinar where Andreas Grabner and Brett Hofer, app performance evangelists, will look at five key metrics that will increase your confidence in securing a safe build for production.

    • Learn why metrics can be huge quality gateways
    • Identify key metrics to take back to your team (Dev, Test, Ops and Business)
    • Understand how to use, measure and report these metrics
    • 3 short use cases and how using metrics can help you avoid them

    After this webinar you’ll understand how specific key metrics can be set-up, understood collaboratively across teams, and help you produce better software, faster!

    Recording

    Slides

    [seoslides embed_id=”5481e89ca9d5″ script_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud/embed-script/5-metrics-release-better-software-faster/13511/” overview_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud/slides/5-metrics-release-better-software-faster/” site_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud” site_title=”devopsy.kinsta.cloud” title=”5 Metrics to Release Better Software Faster” /]

    

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Application Analytics for DevOps will be Presented by Nastel Technologies at IBM InterConnect 2016 in Las Vegas
    
			
    Join us and learn about analyzing shared metrics and tracking transactions in order to reduce support costs and deliver continuously. Visit Nastel in booth #660
    

    Melville, NY (PRWEB) February 18, 2016
    

    Nastel Technologies, a global provider of software for Application Performance Monitoring (APM), delivering real-time application analytics, transaction tracking and forensics will present “Application Analytics for DevOps” at IBM InterConnect 2016 in Las Vegas. The presentation will be delivered on February 22nd at 7 pm in the Expo Theater in the Mandalay Bay Solution Expo.
    

    Many organizations struggle with adopting DevOps. These businesses have invested in a large assortment of tools to make this work and yet there is still finger-pointing instead of collaboration. Nastel AutoPilot provides forensics for IT. Analyze the data from multiple sources, compare behavior across different times and locations, create metrics and search for the patterns that emerge.
    

    Join Nastel Technologies and learn how AutoPilot can help by providing: continuous monitoring, tracking and analytics. Nastel AutoPilot creates and analyzes shared metrics across HDFS, Logstash, Flume, Syslog, Kafka, MQ, Spark, Log4j, JMS, Java and other data sources; tracks transactions across applications; and provides an easy-to-use natural language to inquire or subscribe to live metrics.
    

    Nastel is also exhibiting at IBM InterConnect 2016 in booth 660. Nastel will be demonstrating its new AutoPilot Insight solution and end-user monitoring capabilities. AutoPilot Insight helps businesses gain instant insight into application performance by providing: a unified application analytics platform, automated transaction tracking, a wide array of data collectors and an English-like query language. All of this is built on an elastic architecture using clustered computing and NoSQL.
    

    jKool will also be presented in the Nastel booth and show a solution that provides real-time analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT).
    

    “2015 was an outstanding year for Nastel, with large wins, happy customers and new product innovation. Our laser focus on ensuring the highest levels of customer satisfaction combined with our relentless technical innovation has been the key to our revenue growth. With the addition of our new cutting edge analytics and forensics capabilities we are excited to provide continued competitive advantage to our global customer base” said Charley Rich, VP Product Management at Nastel Technologies.
    

    Recently, Nastel was honored by Gartner’s recognition of its accomplishments in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring Suites
    

    The chosen APM solution for over 200 Fortune 500 and Global 2000 corporations, Nastel AutoPilot has earned a reputation for helping companies significantly reduce the frequency and duration of costly application outages. By providing real-time analytics and transaction tracking across multiple event sources, Nastel AutoPilot is able to evaluate situations in IT Operations as a whole as opposed to just individual events. This powerful approach can infer a root-cause from multiple events and deliver meaningful, actionable alerts at the same time it prevents false alarms.
    

    About Nastel Technologies
    

    Nastel Technologies is a global provider of application performance monitoring solution with real-time analytics, comprehensive transaction tracking and forensics. Nastel is a privately held company headquartered in New York, with offices in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Mexico, and a network of partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. For more information, visit us at http://www.nastel.com.
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Red Hat Brings DevOps to the Network with New Ansible Capabilities
    
			
    

    

    

    Red Hat extends Ansible’s agentless automation framework to network infrastructure devices; At launch, Ansible supports devices from Arista, Cisco, Juniper, and more
    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    RALEIGH, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it is bringing DevOps to networking by extending Ansible – its powerful IT automation and DevOps platform – to include native agentless support for automating heterogeneous network infrastructure devices using the same simple human and machine readable automation language that Ansible provides to IT teams. With expanded Ansible networking capabilities, Red Hat is aiming to help customers orchestrate entire application infrastructures, including network devices, with one automation tool.
    

    The 2015 “SDx Cloud Management Report: OpenStack and More,” highlighted the results of a recent survey on cloud architectures and platforms, stating, “When asked what they felt was the most immature component in cloud management, the overwhelming response was the network at 76%.” By including network devices as part of the overall architecture of Ansible, Red Hat customers can benefit from increased IT agility through operational efficiency, bridging the traditional divide between IT operations and networking teams, and advancing agility and modernization efforts.
    

    Using Ansible’s simple, powerful, and agentless approach, organizations will have the ability to unify operational methodologies across their IT infrastructure in a new way – by orchestrating compute, applications, virtualization, and now, networking. This approach offers many customer benefits, including:
    

      

    • For network teams looking to apply more agile DevOps methodologies to network infrastructures, Ansible can enhance their ability to build and operate heterogeneous network devices, freeing them up to focus on evolving the network to meet the changing business needs instead of manually pushing network configuration.
      • 

    • For systems and applications teams that wish to include network devices in a holistic approach to application workload management, Ansible’s native network device support enables them to extend their DevOps tools and practices to heterogeneous network devices.
      • 

    • For executives and senior management concerned about their organization’s ability to automate and orchestrate solutions in an increasingly complex IT environment, Ansible provides a framework that integrates diverse network devices without introducing vertically integrated, vendor specific applications and operational methodologies.
      • 

    

    At launch, Red Hat’s Ansible networking framework provides support for:
    

      

    • Arista Networks – Arista EOS;
      • 

    • Cisco Systems – Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI); Cisco IOS-XE®; Cisco IOS-XR®; and Cisco NX-OS;
      • 

    • Cumulus Networks – Cumulus Linux;
      • 

    • OpenSwitch.net – OpenSwitch; and
      • 

    • Juniper Networks – Junos OS.
      • 

    

    Availability
    

    Support for automating network infrastructure devices in Ansible is available immediately.
    

    Supporting Quotes
    

    Todd Barr, general manager, Ansible, Red Hat
    

    “Today’s networks are complicated, and largely comprised of multi-vendor solutions, making them rather inflexible and slow to react to business changes. Bringing a DevOps mindset and approach to the network gives customers the ability to make network operations a repeatable, more predictable, and automated process. By bringing the power of Ansible, the popular open source IT automation solution, to the network, we’re giving customers the ability to solve their complicated networking automation and workflow problems in a new way.”
    

    Jay Lyman, research manager, Cloud Management and Containers, 451Research
    

    “The cloud and automation offer a significant opportunity to evolve and advance the network, bringing together once disparate technologies and teams. Through Ansible’s new networking automation capabilities, Red Hat is bringing the benefits of DevOps to a new area of IT, and aiming to help customers do a better job with their networks.”
    

    Joe Hielscher, director of Business Development and Alliances, Arista Networks
    

    “Red Hat and Arista share a goal of enabling joint customers to focus on improving their businesses, rather than learning complex proprietary tools. Arista EOS and CloudVision, combined with Ansible by Red Hat, deliver standards based tools for datacenter administrators, enabling enhanced operational efficiency and application of DevOps methodologies for cloud networking.”
    

    Mike Cohen, director of product management, Cisco
    

    “The trends of cloud, big data, and microservices demand ever increasing speed, scale, and flexibility in network infrastructure. By building on Cisco’s open software architecture and open APIs at the core of our IOS-XE, NX-OS and ACI platforms, Ansible offers our customers an extremely powerful IT automation tool to pave the way for adopting the DevOps model.”
    

    Brian Ortbals, vice president, Advanced Technology, World Wide Technology (WWT)
    

    “Ansible is an integral part of World Wide Technology’s network automation strategy. Network automation and programmability using Ansible is a key component of the training curriculum of WWT professional services Cisco ACI deployment engineers. WWT has developed a solution using Ansible to consistently and efficiently configure Nexus 9000 series switches to customer specifications in our Integration Technology Center (ITC). This announcement further solidifies the relationship between WWT and Red Hat to help realize the operational efficiency of #netdevops for our customers.”
    

    Additional Resources
    


    Connect with Red Hat
    


    About Red Hat, Inc.
    

    Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more athttp://www.redhat.com.
    

    Forward-Looking Statements
    

    Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
    

    Red Hat, Ansible and Shadowman logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
    

    

    

    Contacts
    

    Red Hat, Inc.
    
Anna Eusebio, +1-919-754-4519
    
aeusebio@redhat.com
    

    

    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Designing A DevOps Strategy: A Balanced Scorecard Framework
    
			
    Designing A DevOps Strategy: A Balanced Scorecard Framework
    
			
    Despite all the hype about DevOps, little has been written on a formal DevOps strategy. Too often DevOps initiatives starts with tooling discussion and gets stalled in technology.  The larger vision is rarely discussed. The goal of this article is to provide enterprises, large and small, with a framework for creating that vision and unlocking the promise of DevOps.
    

    Elements of a DevOps Strategy
    

    A holistic DevOps strategy, at the most basic level, must answer the following questions:
    

      

    • Where should we focus our efforts? Where do we begin?
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    • What are we trying to solve?
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    • What is our goal? How are we going to solve it? How long will it take?
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    • How is this going to impact the larger enterprise? Who are our stakeholders and what do they value?
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    • Is this worth doing it? What are the benefits and costs?
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    If implemented correctly a good strategy provides an organization with focus, creates a common (unbiased) view of the current problems, develops the future state, unveils opportunities for growth and results in better business outputs.
    

    DevOps Strategy Map: A Balanced Scorecard Framework
    

    A Balanced Scorecard typically consists of four high-level perspectives that highlight key practices and objectives that are needed to build a strategy.  We choose this framework primarily because it does three things really well.  First, it provides a disciplined approach towards creating a strategy.  Second, it links the key activities together and describes the cause and effect between them.  And third (and most important), its easy to use and follow.
    

    A scorecard is usually read from the bottom up.  Enclosed below is a Balanced Scorecard modified for DevOps.
    

    DevOps Strategy Map
    DevOps Strategy Map
    

    1. People, Process & Technology
    

    In DevOps we have the luxury of plenty: an abundance of applications, technologies, competing initiatives, bottlenecks, nebulous problems, tools, etc. The objective of this dimension is to narrow down the application options (system of record vs. system of engagement) and target the problems that really matter (value stream mapping exercise). By doing so, we bring clarity and focus to the organization and greatly improve the chances of success.
    

    2. Critical Capabilities
    

    The next step consists of three activities – create a vision (which includes a future state value stream), determine where to invest, and build an implementation plan. Three things to keep in mind as you go about doing this exercise.  First, pick hard targets for your vision. Instead of “improve speed” try to get to “improve speed by 25 percent”. Second, pay particular attention to capabilities gaps.  Gaps can then be used to determine areas of investment, approximate budget, and a key input into your ROI model. Third, make sure to prioritize the bottlenecks. Putting the priority list on a timeline can be quickly translated into an implementation plan.
    

    3. Perception by Key Stakeholders
    

    Identifying your key stakeholders, determining their priorities, and aligning your strategy accordingly is the next crucial step. Some of the key stakeholders to consider are business/end customer, CIO and the IT leadership, development, operations and security. Once identified, match the value drivers from the vision to each stakeholder. This along with the output from the previous section will highlight pitfalls of your future state solution, its feasibility, and political objections.
    

    4. Value to the Organization
    

    The financial benefits section serves as the keystone for the balanced scorecard.  By using output from the previous sections the business case brings the entire strategy together.  As for the benefits themselves, they come in both hard and soft forms. The most common benefits we see are listed in the chart above.  To get to ROI, combine the hard benefits with the investments from the previous section.
    

    One Last Thing
    

    The strategy map is meant to be iterative—the great thing about a DevOps solution is that it is not a “one size fits all” approach. Play around with all of the above steps. Move things around, change scope, update solutions and redefine vision until you come up with an objective that is both transformative and achievable for your organization.
    

    DevOps is a journey that’s two steps forward and one step back. Good luck!!
    

    Special thanks to Sunil Joshi and Emily Pence for helping create the Strategy Map. To find out more on how to use this map, joins us at IBM Interconnect.
    

    About The Author/Mustafa Kapadia
    

    Mustafa-KapadiaMustafa Kapadia is the Service Line Leader for IBM’s DevOps practice, a business advisory practice focused on helping large enterprises transform their software & application delivery.  He has over 17+ years of experience in the tech. space, both as a service provider and a management consultant.
    

    Prior to joining IBM, Mustafa was a management consultant with Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations practice. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area, is an avid blogger (when time permitting), a speaker, and adviser to start ups.
    

    Connect with Mustafa LinkedIn | Twitter
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Live Blogging Container World
    
			
    Live Blogging Container World
    
			
     
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    New Context Pioneers Concept of Lean Security with Book Debut
    
			
    SAN FRANCISCO–(Business Wire)–New Context Services, Inc., the leading provider of Lean Security for software and infrastructure development, today announced the forthcoming publication of the book “Lean Security” by New Context CEO, Daniel Riedel, and New Context vice president of security services, Andrew Storms.
    

    Lean Security applies the “lean” management concept to the world of cybersecurity. New Context has now implemented Lean Security practices and processes with its clients in the United States and abroad, and its experiences with these implementations inform the book’s subject matter and takeaways.
    

    “The ‘lean’ concept has proved incredibly effective for organizations from manufacturing facilities to startups,” said Riedel. “When these principles are harnessed for security, the result is a cohesive environment that ensures continued innovation within a secure framework. Considering that cyberattacks will never cease to exist, this is the only viable model for the future.”
    

    Storms added: “It’s been a long-standing misconception that it is nearly impossible for a company’s software development team to meet the trifecta of being able to push code to production faster, develop more secure code and still reduce costs within the software development lifecycle. Our Lean Security practices buck that notion and are proving to be an effective model for our clients to meet their strategic goals.”
    

    The book is co-authored by longtime security journalist Ericka Chickowski and will be published later this year. Available via www.leansecurity.com, it will explore the five principles of Lean Security, which include:
    

      

    • Environmental Awareness: In order to adopt Lean Security principles, everyone – from engineers to architects, line-of-business managers to the C-suite – must keep IT security considerations in mind throughout the entire development lifecycle.
      • 

    • Automate or Die: Just as with DevOps, automation is the keystone to Lean Security. In order to establish a continuous delivery pipeline, organizations must develop an entire automated tool chain to push bite-sized pieces of code to production through automated integration, test and deployment. Automated security testing and approval processes must be built into this tool chain to achieve Lean Security.
      • 

    • Measure Everything: Feedback is crucial for developing quality applications and eliminating waste from the engineering process. As a result, developers, security teams and operations personnel need to be able to measure application and related infrastructure performance on a continuous basis in order to constantly improve the application accordingly.
      • 

    • Simplify Engineering: Complexity is the enemy in development. It makes code messier, more expensive and less secure. The goal of Lean Security is to simplify engineering through more savvy use of third-party components and less frequent reinvention of the wheel.
      • 

    • Lean Security Is Not Invisible Security: Security should never be opaque to the user. Users are increasingly aware of security risks today, and it is incumbent upon engineers to show them that security measures are baked into their software.
      • 

    

    “If we shift software engineers’ thinking to focus on building security deep into their developmental practices, then we stand a better chance of maintaining operational resiliency when we run,” said Craig Rosen, CSO of FireEye. “I’m excited about Lean Security because it is a model that creates a sustainable environment where engineers, product and finance people can cultivate innovation together amid an increasingly turbulent and dangerous threat landscape.”
    

    Doug Rhoades, director of information security at Sempra Energy, added: “As someone who understands how Andrew and Daniel work and build infrastructure, I’m excited to see them push Lean Security against the current status quo. Cybersecurity is one of the biggest challenges facing critical infrastructure, and it’s key that everyone involved in the development process is included and that it is automated into the business infrastructure. Lean Security does both.”
    

    New Context currently provides Lean Security consulting and services to financial services, energy, infrastructure protection and healthcare organizations. Its partners include thrv, Apigee and Delphix, among others.
    

    About New Context
    

    New Context delivers Lean Security™ through hands-on technical and management consulting. We are a team of experts with extensive backgrounds in information security and scalable, secure application development. Our tools and processes streamline development frameworks to ensure transparent and secure IT software development within DevOps processes. New Context is headquartered in San Francisco.
    

    Web | http://www.newcontext.com/
    
Twitter | @newcontext
    
LinkedIn | New Context
    

    


    for New Context
    
Brenda Patterson, 440-623-9581
    
brenda@shevrushpr.com
    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
  • 
		
		
    
			
    Shouldn’t DBAs Be Part of the DevOps Inner Circle?
    
			
    Shouldn’t DBAs Be Part of the DevOps Inner Circle?
    
			
    DevOps is changing the culture of IT.  This movement is bringing application development and operations teams to the same table and the same time, working to understand and overcome the challenges facing the entire application delivery process—not just their piece. Development and operations teams are forging new bonds and alliances in the spirit of accelerating software release cycles.
    

    However, while quickness to market is paramount to success, businesses can’t forget about the internal implications of accelerated release cycles. With that in mind, there is one conspicuously empty seat within the “DevOps Inner Circle,” and that’s the database administrator’s (DBA).
    

    DBAs hold the keys to one of businesses’ most important assets: the database. But database change innovation has not kept pace with agile development methodologies and DevOps tooling that enable continuous delivery of software updates and changes. The vast majority of enterprises are still updating databases the same way they have been for the better part of the last three decades: through manual script review, validation, execution and individual heroics. As a result, application release cycles ultimately slow down at the last mile—the database.
    

    It’s time for a better approach. It’s time databases and their stewards, DBAs, be part of the DevOps Inner Circle. Including DBAs can create better, more efficient teams; save time and money; and even help companies create better solutions for their customers’ needs or their own.
    

    Shattering Silos
    

    One of the founding principles behind DevOps is the breakdown of silos between development and operations teams. Product managers can easily translate customer needs and communicate that feedback to developers in a way they understand—using epics and themes, for example. This helps bring everyone on the same page so that application updates or changes can be quickly coded, tested and delivered. But before application updates can be released to users safely and effectively, they have to be translated into the changes that will update the database. This is where the DevOps breakdown occurs. DBAs often have to rely on manually intensive, timeworn, error-prone processes and tools to make sure the right changes are made to the database.
    

    By inviting DBAs into the DevOps Inner Circle, database updates that go against business policy and will ultimately lock the database or “break the build” (think inserting a new column with a default value when the row count exceeds a million) can be found faster and addressed by the development team well before that change reaches the database. Having DBAs involved in release cycles sooner can help ensure developers are coding with corporate compliance in mind, ultimately making changes to the database smoother while adhering to guidelines that DBAs have typically policed.
    

    There was a time when databases needed protection from changes made by creative problem-solving in development, but DBAs simply cannot stand against the deluge of changes necessitated by accelerated cycles. Inviting DBAs into the DevOps Inner Circle enables teams to consider the implications of new changes and updates across the entire technology stack. Breaking down silos and making teams more aware of catchpoints in the last mile of the release process lets them anticipate and avoid database issues—which means faster releases and fewer headaches for everyone.
    

    Saving Time (and Time is Money)
    

    Faster release cycles are good for business, and not just because they get applications in front of end users sooner. Continuous delivery cycles are designed to cut costs associated with application development considerably by saving man-hours. Still, while development timelines keep getting shorter, the workload and time to deploy database changes gets longer.
    

    Enterprises can have multiple database configurations, so each change needs to be checked for compatibility. As the complexity of data repositories grows, so too does the time it takes to review and approve changes. In a 2015 IOUG survey on database manageability, 41 percent of respondents said changes took a week or more to approve. With multiple change requests coming to DBAs each month, each week or maybe even daily, it’s clear that sheer manpower can’t keep up with continuous delivery forever. Relief for DBAs is nonexistent without automation.
    

    Remember our earlier example, where we ran the risk of locking the database by inserting a new column with a default value when the row count exceeded a million?  Database automation software protects against outcomes like this by forecasting the impact application changes will have on the database. DBAs can use forecast reports generated by automation software to pinpoint any issues without expensive hours or days of searching.
    

    As part of a DevOps team, the DBA equipped with automation can do more than save time and headaches for themselves. Protecting against errors that could break the build saves teams from spending time to find and fix the source of a breakdown, and also saves a business from losing revenue while the fix is made. If so much time, money and potential frustration ride on DBAs’ ability to implement changes at the speed of continuous delivery, why are they still on the outside of the DevOps Inner Circle?
    

    Freeing Up Time for Innovation
    

    Flashes of inspiration rarely come about when you’re just trying to keep your head above water, and for so many DBAs, that’s the reality of work. Today, enterprises fight a war of attrition with the database, throwing manpower at the final hurdle of the release cycle. In addition to the attractive benefit of saving money on man-hours, bringing DBAs into the DevOps inner circle and automating some of their tasks also creates time and space for innovation.
    

    The relational database is nearly a 50-year-old innovation, one that changed the way people and computers interface through data. After so much time, and with so much on the horizon, the next innovation seems imminent or perhaps even overdue. The advent of quantum computing may bring with it a fundamental change to the way databases interact with one another. It’s certain to bring a shift in the way data is stored and retrieved, though at this point experts expect only the most complex business processes will benefit from quantum computing. So, while future tech remains out of reach, DBAs will be vital in the effort to innovate faster, more streamlined ways for dealing with zeros and ones.
    

    The first step to innovation, then, is addressing the needs of DBAs alongside those of customers and developers. Breaking down walls and increasing efficiencies between existing DevOps teams and DBAs will give teams more opportunity to create novel solutions to both their users’ problems and their own. Add another seat to the Inner Circle, save time and money, get quality applications to market even faster, and create innovative solutions to the problems of today and tomorrow.
    

    About the Author
    

    Derek Hutson HeadshotDerek Hutson joined Datical as CEO in 2015, bringing more than 15 years of leadership experience in enterprise software. Before joining Datical, he led multiple companies through extended periods of rapid growth and also held several executive roles at IBM. There he served on the leadership team for IBM’s acquisition of Telelogic, and was responsible for due diligence and integration of the acquired sales functions globally. He currently serves on the board of Hart InterCivic and Charity Dynamics. Other board or advisor positions have included CoreTrace (acquired by Lumension), Innography, StreamStep (acquired by BMC) and Phurnace (acquired by BMC).