Since CNCF was founded, Alibaba Cloud has been contributing code to projects under its umbrella, like Kubernetes and containerd. Now, as a Foundation member, Alibaba Cloud plans to integrate relevant CNCF projects into its own products equipping its developers and customers worldwide with agile architecture and dynamic applications.

"Alibaba Cloud is a keen advocate for a cloud native ecosystem that promotes open source technologies and service standardization. We offer a cloud native environment that enables micro-service architecture, which is revolutionizing the way applications are deployed and managed," said Tang Hong, Chief Architect at Alibaba Cloud. "We look forward to contributing to the CNCF community by adopting technologies developed through CNCF projects, contributing code to the projects and collaborating with fellow members."

CNCF is a proud Gold Sponsor of LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen China and will have a booth located at B04 staffed with the Foundation team and member company technologists. At the event, Kohn will present "Migrating Legacy Monoliths to Cloud Native Microservices Architectures on Kubernetes" at 11:40 am CST on Tuesday, June 20 in Room 309A.

Additional Resources

About Cloud Native Computing FoundationCloud native computing uses an open source software stack to deploy applications as microservices, packaging each part into its own container, and dynamically orchestrating those containers to optimize resource utilization. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of those software stacks including Kubernetes, Fluentd, Linkerd, Prometheus, OpenTracing, gRPC, CoreDNS, containerd, rkt and CNI; brings together the industry's top developers, end users and vendors; and serves as a neutral home for collaboration. CNCF is part of The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization. For more information about CNCF, please visit: https://cncf.io/.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media ContactNatasha Woods The Linux Foundation (415) 312-5289 PR@CNCF.io

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https://cncf.io/

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Alibaba Cloud Joins Cloud Native Computing Foundation Announces as Gold Member - PR Newswire (press release)

Gartner has predicted the global cloud-based security services market will hit $5.9 billion this year, saying the segments growth will remain strong.

The analyst firm looked at a variety of segments, with identity and access management (IAM), identity as a service (IDaaS) and user authentication remaining the biggest category. Gartner predicts this area to comprise $2.1bn, or 35.6% of the overall market, this year, going up to $3.42bn, or 38.3% of the overall $8.92bn market by 2020.

Secure email gateway ($702m) and secure web gateway ($707m) were the next largest categories, with the latter expecting to outstrip the former to the tune of almost $100m by 2020. Application security testing, at almost $400m ($397.3m) this year, leads the remaining categories, ahead of security information and event management (SIEM) at $359m and remote vulnerability assessment at $250m. Other cloud-based security services amounted to $1.3bn.

The announcement, which took place during the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit this week, also examined the landscape for businesses of different sizes. SMBs are driving growth as they become more aware of security threats, while enterprises are also on board as they realise the operational benefits derived from a cloud-based security delivery model.

Cloud-based delivery models will remain a popular choice for security practices, with deployment expanding further to controls, such as cloud-based sandboxing and WAFs (web application firewalls), said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner.

The ability to leverage security controls that are delivered, updated and managed through the cloud and therefore require less time-consuming and costly implementations and maintenance activities is of significant value to enterprises, Contu added.

This complements a report issued by fellow analyst firm Forrester Research earlier this month, which said cloud security spending would hit $3.5 billion by 2021 at a 28% annual growth rate.

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Gartner: Cloud-based security services market to hit almost $9bn by 2020 - Cloud Tech

One ofRobert Frost's most popular poemscontains more than a few parallels with what insurance technology executives are grappling with as they look at systems in the cloud compared with systems housed within their own organizations.Consider this classic verse:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I...

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Certainly there are many who are opting for the less-traveled SaaS road, and others who prefer the other road commonly called enterprise.

Within the insurance industry, cloud technologies have been successfully deployed in ancillary areas of the organization such as Human Resources, Accounting, e-mail, and other non-core areas of the business. Typically, those core applications such as policy administration, agent commissions, rating, billing, claims, and agent and customer portals have been firmly entrenched in enterprise or on-premises applications.

However, with the success of cloud-based software in those non-mission critical areas,SaaS systems are becoming the favored choice for deployment in certain core insurance areas. But for those core tasks that are truly mission critical, have deep integration requirements and importantly, are processor intensive, IT executives are taking a go-slow approach before they commit to putting those systems or business processes into the cloud.

Why the concern? The short answer is that enterprise software is "owned" by the insurance carrier, and the risks of a data breach of sensitive information is relatively low when the application is housed behind the insurance companys firewall. Insurance companies are huge repositories of customers personal information. And that information is entrusted to the insurance company with the expectation that it will remain private and confidential.

In short,enterprise software deployments merit a certain kind of securitythat is hard to duplicate in a cloud-based system.

Another aspect to consider is processing horsepower. Saving and retrieving data such as we see in popular CRM systems like Salesforce.com is not particularly processor intensive. Tasks with intensive calculation requirements, such as commissions and bonus calculation, are another matter. These systems can often have more than a hundred integration points both up- and downstream, and managing them in the cloud is a major concern to many insurers.

According to recent research from Novarica, the key driver for carriers adopting SaaS systems was "the speed of deployment and the ability to sunset current applications." (Photo: iStock)

Among the common drivers for carriers to adopt SaaS system, according toNovarica, were standardization paired with release management, which reduces support costs and ultimately lowers the cost of ownership. However, that standardization, call it efficiency, is largely a trade-off between having key business processes undifferentiated from competitors that are on that same SaaS application and having a custom designed application that preserves competitive differentiation.

Large companies see being able to differentiate from competitors as a key advantage of the on-premises model. Additionally, large companies havevery large IT staffs that are capable of implementing and managing new applications.

Cost is clearly another factor in making SaaS a viable choice for many core insurance applications. For mid-tier and smaller insurance organizations, the advantages of SaaS are clear:

No infrastructure costs;

Software is on a subscription model that includes maintenance and upgrades; and

Provisioning is very easy.

With SaaS, a smaller insurance company can readily compete with the 'big guys.' While some simple back-of-the-napkin analysis can show advantages for SaaS, the analysis is really an apples-to-oranges comparison. A more detailed look at cost and a few other items show that cost may not be the main concern.

You may not appreciate the importance of some of the items buried in the fine print of SaaS solution provider contracts. Items such as transaction volume, number of processes allowed per month, data storage fees, data transformation costs and other items can result in significant additional fees levied by the vendor that must be met for subscription compliance.

If you dont understand and carefully quantify each item in the SaaS agreement, fees can easily double or triple but you might not realize the impact until the solution is implemented and in full production and you receive your first over-usage invoice. (Photo: iStock)

In order to get a full assessment of hosted versus on-premises factors such as implementation, customization,upgrade cycles, support and maintenance, security,scalability, and integration(s)must be understood. For example, implementing a SaaS application is relatively easy, since it is using a ready-made platform that has already been provisioned, while on-premises applications take resources, equipment, and time to set up a new environment. In essence, the financial choice is whether the new system will tap the operating expense budget or the capital expense budget.

The key in assessing the advantages and disadvantages of SaaS or on-premises is one that is common to all technology acquisitions the vendor. At the outset, the absolute key requirement is that the vendor has extensive experience withininsurance technology. There are many vendors that purport to have deep domain experience in insurance. From what Ive observed, however, in many applications sold to insurance companies vendors are very likely taking a horizontal application and providing some level of uniqueness that makes it salable to insurance companies. This is very common in CRM and commissions applications, where vendors have created hundreds of applications from managing sales to managing human resources to managing inventory. Vendors will claim insurance expertise, but a look under the hood will usually reveal an application that was built for, say, telecommunications or pharmaceuticals and verticalized to make it acceptable to insurance carriers and distributors. Its the old "one-size fits all" mentality.

Where the rubber hits the road invendor selectionis in looking at a vendors expertise in integration and security. As experienced insurance IT managers are aware, insurance infrastructure can be a hodge-podge of technologies and applications that run the gamut from fairly modern to legacy. A vendor that doesnt have a track record of successful implementations with a variety of technologies is one that probably shouldnt be on your short list. As a starting point, look for applications with embedded integration platforms that you (not the SaaS IT/Support team) will have full access to. The same thing can be said regarding the privacy and security of data and personal and private information.

Insurance carriers are very aware of the security implications of SaaS, where security is dependent on the vendor. A corollary to the vendors experience in integrations is the vendors experience in implementing fixes of the software or migrating existing clients to new versions of the software. Again, vendors that have dozens of satisfied clients are more likely to have the experience and talent to become a credible business partner. One more tip on vendor selection.

Ask for a report detailing system outages for the last two years that shows the nature of the outage, core issue and time to resolution. If the vendor refuses to deliver this document, think again about adding them to your short list.

Some large vendors in our space have recently dropped their on-premise solutions and 'gone all in' for the cloud. It might be a safer to go with a vendor that can provide cloudoron-premise solutions, leaving the final hosting decision in your hands. You can always migrate to the cloud later if youre not comfortable with the change. The choice between the cloud and on-premises is very much like choosing between the two paths that 'diverged in the wood.'

There are certainly advantages to each alternative, but ultimately the key driver is whether the vendor can accommodate both software delivery models, on-premises and SaaS. Vendors that have the capability to work with clients with unique requirements that mandate enterprise software or SaaS are vendors that have the overall experience to help you choose which path to take.

John Sarichis an industry analyst and VP of Strategy atVUE Software. He is a senior solutions architect, strategic consultant and business advisor with over 25 years of insurance industry experience.He can be reached atJohn.Sarich@VUESoftware.com.

Originally published on PropertyCasualty360. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Pressing Tech Issue: Enterprise software vs. cloud computing? - Credit Union Times

Artificial intelligence research is still in its infancy, at least as compared to computer science in general, but the concept of unlimited computing resources is accelerating the field.

As someone with nearly unlimited computing resources at his disposal, this is something Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI at Amazon Web Services, is watching play out. Last week Sivasubramanian walked GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit attendees through the array of artificial intelligence and machine-learning services that his team has developed for AWS customers and Amazons own internal services as well.

If youve been through a few tech cycles, youve already heard a lot about artificial intelligence. Much has been promised from this research field over several decades, but the enormous amount of data now moving into cloud computing services like AWS and others allows researchers like Sivasubramanian to make real breakthroughs that werent possible when data sets were scattered and siloed.

Many of these algorithms, especially like deep learning neural nets, papers were written about even two decades ago. But what has accelerated adoption of it is that we have specialized compute infrastructure, such as GPUs, specialized CPUs, FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), you name it, he said. The combination of huge data sets and powerful computing engines is making AI concepts previously confined to science fiction a reality.

Take two AWS customers: CSPAN and the sheriffs office of Washington County in Oregon. Using the companys Rekognition image-recognition service, both were able to automate tasks that required painstaking human labor. CSPAN can now automatically identify Congresspeople speaking on the floor of the House or Senate, saving someone from having to manually annotate those videos, and Washington County is using the service to help it process photo tips when it is looking for a person of interest in an investigation.

But its still very early days for AI applications: Sivasubramanian joked that this world is about where the field of databases was when btrees were invented in the early 1970s. Thats about to change, however, as we gain a greater understanding of how AI models work and develop more sophisticated ways of training these systems to accomplish real goals.

Watch the full video of Sivasubramanians GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit talk above, and stay tuned for more highlights from the event in the days ahead.

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Amazon Web Services AI exec: How cloud computing is driving artificial intelligence breakthroughs - GeekWire