Four frame IBM z15

Talk to any IT administrator about what they look for in a server platform and performance, openness, and security will top the list. Specifically, run my most demanding applications fast, enable my organization to support the range of workloads that power my modern business, secure my environment and protect my data. Ask those same IT administrators who can deliver on these and a combination of vendors will be quoted back, with a third party integrating. However, I believe these characteristics are, in essence, IBMs z15.

Dispel the outdated notion of mainframe technology. I believe IBM Z is a new class of compute platform that is open and well suited to drive the digitally transformed business. In one system, legacy back-office co-resides and integrates with cloud native. Likewise, structured and unstructured data types are integrated to deliver all of the necessary intelligence to the business in a secure, cloudified way. And the z15 is the latest generation platform.

Where the IBM Z brings it

Before getting into the workloads supported, lets cover what I think are the four features that make IBM Z a smart choice for any enterprise IT organization.

Reliability: There is a reason why IBM is the core backbone to the industries that make such large investments in the management and utility of data.Banking, financial services, and healthcare to name just a few. Its because of the confidence around the availability of systems (and the data residing on these systems). Seven 9s availability, serviceability without disruption of operations, and consistency of performance all equals SLA adherence that IBM Z can deliver.

Performance, and consistency of performance: organizations need to be able to rely on their systems to be both performant and consistent in that performance profile. In multi-tenant virtualized and cloud environments, this concept is easier to promise than to achieve. Because of the IBM Z architecture and system software, features like VM isolation deliver not just security, but protection against performance disruptions often associated with noisy neighbors.

Security: Security is more complex than locking down perimeters or user access management. Its about protecting the systems and data that make the business run. Data must be protected in all phases of its existence at rest, at work, and in flight. IBMs pervasive encryption is a hardware based crypto engine that ensure data is protected both at rest and in flight with zero impact to system performance. And Data Privacy Passports is an IBM technology that allows an organization to protect data even as it is shared cross-organization and cross cloud with partners, customers and others. Imagine being able to revoke access to sensitive customer information that was shared with a third party directly from your console? This is Data Privacy Passports and for any company that is concerned with Sensitive Personal Identifying Information (SPII), this feature alone should make the z15 from IBM worth evaluating (I detail this and more in this review of the z15).

Openness: Mainframes populate the vast majority of enterprises and house the applications and data that are considered mission critical. At the same time, these systems and the applications and data housed on them must be able to integrate with newer application and data architectures and span the on-prem to cloud compute model employed by virtually every company. Throw in the thousands of virtual servers and countless containers that drive the everyday functions of the enterprise, and IT becomes very messy.

Contrary to the outdated view some hold of mainframes, IBM Z is perhaps the most open compute platform on the market as it can support this very messy environment.Legacy? Check. Linux? Check. Containerized? Yup. Virtualized? Yup.

So, what are those workloads?

Based on what IBM Z delivers in terms of performance and security, its natural to assume that any workload would benefit. And this is pretty much true. For organizations that run a mixed environment, there are a few workloads in particular that really shine on the Z system, even if not obvious to an IT administrator. Transaction processing and analytics processing (OLTP, OLAP), real time analytics, and massive container and VM consolidation are ideal workloads for IBM Z. Lets dig into these a little bit.

On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) and On-Line Analytics Processing (OLAP): Real time responsiveness to customer orders and inquiries is critical to customer retention. And in this digital economy, real time means, in fact, real time. Because of this, the infrastructure supporting these workloads must be able to vertically scale with needs of the applications that serve customers. This is true for both long-term incremental growth and shorter term bursty and elastic requirements that are more event driven.

Further, the ability to scale appropriately must not disrupt the current application performance. The abstraction of compute from I/O in the Z system allows for this scale without disruption requirement. And Z CPU performance (up to 5.2GHz) with access to massive memory delivers on the requirement for real world performance.

Finally, the Z system tool chain enables IT organizations to better integrate the multiple data types coming from multiple sources. COBOL and Java are not mutually exclusive in the datacenter and any IT professional or data architect that has worked on a project of scale knows that the ability to seamlessly integrate across legacy and modern is an absolute necessity to successfully drive digital transformation.

Real Time Analytics: Real time is the operative element of real time analytics. In order for real time analytics engines to be effective, they must be able to access multiple data sources simultaneously. And in the age of edge and cloud computing, security is a must.

While the z15 hardware specifications are impressive, what I find most interesting about IBMs approach to enabling real time analytics across the enterprise is the tools developed for IT organizations. The company developed tools to execute real time queries against standard SQL environments and the mass of unstructured data flooding the business, and provides an environment where data scientists can quickly develop and deploy on the tools they are familiar with Java, Scala and Python with Apache Spark, Anaconda, and the like.Sounds like a win.

Enterprise VM Consolidation: Consolidation of Linux VMs on the z15? Serious? Yeah. Running Linux on IBM z15 enables organizations to literally consolidate hundreds of Linux based VMs on a single server, reducing the space requirements and management headaches enterprise IT faces on a daily basis, while at the same time cutting roughly in half the power required to run the same workloads. What is LinuxONE? Think the z15 running Linux to support your enterprise needs. Its worth checking out.

IBM makes some incredible claims around z15 supporting virtualized environments 7x better per core performance (versus x86) and 4.8x better workload performance with z/VM memory. What this adds up to is near native performance. But equally compelling to me is the way this virtualized environment is made more performant and resilient through the VM security and isolation that results from IBMs Pervasive Encryption technology, disk mirroring and overall system design.

Am I forgetting a couple workloads?

You may notice a couple of obvious workloads missing from the above list. Specifically, digital asset management (DAM) and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML). I really wanted to highlight a few of the workloads that were maybe not the obvious candidates for IBMs Z system. However, the support for DAM and AI/ML has never been stronger on the z15.

The integration of compression and pervasive encryption combined with Data Privacy Passports make the z15 the most formidable IBM Z platform for digital asset management and custody as they enable the highest levels of asset protection without compromising on performance.

Likewise, IBM has long been on the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) market (raise your hand if youve seen a Watson commercial). The company has built a framework and toolchain that enables enterprise IT to quickly deploy Watson machine learning (ML) on IBM Z to better enable real-time operations such as fraud detection for banking and finance.

Wrapping up

Enterprises have long viewed the mainframe as critical to the business due to its reliability, resilience, scale and performance supporting line of business applications. As IBM developed the z15 to align the evolving needs of the enterprise transformation, openness and security became key capabilities to expand. And with the z15, the company has done just that. Perhaps this is why IBM saw Z system revenue increase by 60% in its latest quarterly earnings.

The world runs on the mainframe. Whether well-established banks, healthcare providers, government organizations or the partners and customers that digitally interact with these organizations. Even more sophisticated startups and newer companies should consider deploying Z system, as I do believe all will benefit from how IBM has embraced openness and the tightest security in the z15. From a die-hard server-only guy for nearly 30 years, I hope that means something.

Note: This analysis contains contributions from server and compute analyst Matt Kimball.

Disclosure: Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided paid research, analysis, advising, or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including Amazon.com, Advanced Micro Devices,Apstra,ARM Holdings, Aruba Networks, AWS, A-10 Strategies,Bitfusion,Cisco Systems, Dell, DellEMC, Dell Technologies, Diablo Technologies, Digital Optics,Dreamchain, Echelon, Ericsson, Foxconn, Frame, Fujitsu, Gen Z Consortium, Glue Networks, GlobalFoundries,Google,HPInc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HuaweiTechnologies,IBM, Intel, Interdigital, Jabil Circuit, Konica Minolta, Lattice Semiconductor, Lenovo, Linux Foundation, MACOM (Applied Micro),MapBox,Mavenir, Mesosphere,Microsoft,National Instruments, NetApp, NOKIA, Nortek,NVIDIA, ON Semiconductor, ONUG, OpenStack Foundation, Panasas,Peraso, Pixelworks, Plume Design,Portworx, Pure Storage,Qualcomm, Rackspace, Rambus,RayvoltE-Bikes, Red Hat, Samsung Electronics, Silver Peak, SONY,Springpath, Sprint, Stratus Technologies, Symantec, Synaptics, Syniverse,TensTorrent,TobiiTechnology, Twitter, Unity Technologies, Verizon Communications,Vidyo, Wave Computing,Wellsmith, Xilinx, Zebra, which may be cited in this article.

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Running These Workloads? You Should Take A Look At The IBM Z15 - Forbes

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We talk to the UKFast director about the UK cloud landscape and how companies can maximise efficiencies, protect critical data and ensure cloud costs are kept under control

Chris Folkerd is Director of Enterprise Technologies at UK cloud hosting company UKFast. Conceived in the bedroom of a tiny flat just off Manchesters Oxford Road over twenty years ago, UKFast has grown into a multi-million-pound business which, via its five UK data centres, hosts the critical infrastructure of a raft of big-name organisations, including Chester Zoo and the NHS.

As UKFast is such a pivotal figure in the UK cloud market, the company provides a useful barometer of the state of the nations cloud investments. Folkerd described the UK cloud market as vibrant and told me that strong uptake has now matured to wholesale adoption across the board.

This adoption is translating into greater maturity, he said. Companies are increasingly asking about containers and security, and have become more clued up about service providers and compliance obligations.

People are asking a lot about what containers are, how they can benefit business, or if the business is a bit further along its journey, how containers can be implemented alongside, or as an alternative to, traditional virtualised platforms, he added.

When it comes to security, Folkerd said customers are asking more questions about the security of UKFasts underlying architecture and infrastructure, and how they can go about reinforcing the security of their applications.

Despite growing maturity, Folkerd cautioned a lot of customers are still failing to get the most from cloud investments. He said enthusiasm about cloud should always be tempered by aligning adoption to business goals.

We like to keep customers focussed on achieving the end goal, rather than having a specific piece of buzzword technology they want to adopt or adopting lots of different services just because theyve read that theyre the next big thing, he said.

Another issue is that many companies are not picking cloud billing models that fit their needs, whether fixed monthly cost or elastic scaling.

While initial calculations may appear cost-effective, businesses can end up spending a lot more than initially planned when load and utilisation are factored in. For instance, if a customer on a PAYG model experiences rogue SQL queries which get stuck in a loop on a database server, it could cost them 50,000 overnight.

Making sure you pick the right providers means doing your research and working in consultation with them to choose the right technologies and then writing your code in a way that efficiently utilises those resources, Folkerd added.

There are lots of different ways of doing things in the cloud and its about making sure the one you adopt works for you, does what you need and is the most efficient. Having the right technology platform makes a big difference. It sounds obvious, but businesses get it wrong on a regular basis.

Another key piece of education Folkerd has for businesses is ensuring the cloud software stack is optimised for the hardware it sits on.

The first risk is efficiency. If hardware and software are not in sync, it can lead to wasted compute resources. Its not just about cost, but security, too. Folkerd said its crucial organisations have a full-stack view when developing in the cloud and work closely with providers to plug any gaps.

We always say security is a partnership. You can be sitting on the most secure, world-class infrastructure, but if your code is weak or poorly written, hackers will get in. Having a partnership around security, around resource provisioning, around technology and around APIs will help you get the most out of your platform.

Despite the rising popularity of cloud-native development and deployment, to take advantage of clouds potential in the coming decade, Chris said its still vital that organisations maintain a broad range of tech skillsets.

The popular skills at the moment are around serverless compute for rapid, dynamic, scalable applications and DevOps, he said. But at the same time, probably 80 percent of the code base out there isnt cloud native. So its really a spread bet across the entire tech spectrum.

One of Folkerds key messages for end-uses is around what he calls catastrophobia mitigating the dangers of outages with disaster recovery and ensuring applications are designed with high-availability in mind whether thats local site in the event of hardware failure, geographic resilience, or for performance capabilities when serving customers in different locations.

Theres a lot of different strategies out there and lots of different vendors offering different solutions. Have a chat with our UKFast teamto make sense of the different options best for you.

Link:
Pushing the cloud to the limit, with UKFast's Chris Folkerd - Techerati

New York, March 18, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Malware Analysis Market to 2027 - Global Analysis and Forecasts By Component ; Organizational Size ; Deployment ; Industry Vertical" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05875886/?utm_source=GNW The increasing vulnerabilities, advancements in digital transformation, and others are making a substantial impact on the malware analysis market. The cyber attackers are finding new ways of attacking systems by enhancing their attack capabilities, resulting in increased sophistication of malware attacks, which is a crucial factor driving the malware analysis market.

Application of machine learning (ML) in deep learning (DL) is gaining immense attraction for malware classification from academia and industry.ML antimalware software cannot be customer-driven, as a customer PC or mobile device is exposed to limited and smaller samples of malware.

Proper ML requires Big Data processing as well as cloud-based systems. Presently, cloud servers are far cheaper and easily available, so ML malware analysis is expected to become more accessible than before.

With proliferation in remote and mobile work, and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend, the hackers have expanded their target from a few employees to the entire network with the help of private mails.Furthermore, as the enterprises continue to make strategic shift to cloud, they have raised the demand for new and innovative methods to enhance the security of their networks.

These included, encryption, email archiving solutions, URL Defense, and mobile defense among others. Also, as the diversity in whereabouts of the employees continue to expand, the companies are expected to invest in robust security measures driving the growth of malware analysis tool market.

The most prominent region in global malware analysis market in 2018 accounted for North America, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific.Middle East and Africa, and South America held the fourth and fifth position in terms of market shares in malware analysis market.

According to Recorded Future, a cyber-security company, the US government agencies are witnessing rise in the number of targeted ransomware attacks.Since 2013, the company has listed ~170 ransomware incidents on state and local governments.

Further, hospitals in the country also noticed rise in the number of targeted ransomware attacks in 2019.The rise in number of attacks caused major disruptions, operational as well as financial impacts for governments and hospitals across the country.

In October 2019, CNN reported that ~140 local governments, hospitals, and police stations, were attacked by ransomware since January 2019.

The overall malware analysis market size has been derived using both primary and secondary source.The research process begins with exhaustive secondary research using internal and external sources to obtain qualitative and quantitative information related to the malware analysis market.

It also provides the overview and forecast for the global malware analysis market based on all the segmentation provided with respect to five major reasons such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America.Also, primary interviews were conducted with industry participants and commentators in order to validate data and analysis.

The participants who typically take part in such a process include industry expert such as VPs, business development managers, market intelligence managers, and national sales managers, and external consultants such as valuation experts, research analysts, and key opinion leaders specializing in the malware analysis industry. The major companies operating in the malware analysis market globally includes AT&T Inc., AO Kaspersky Lab, Broadcom, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., CrowdStrike Holdings Inc, FireEye, Inc., Fortinet, Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Inc., Qualys, Inc., and Trend Micro Incorporated, among others.Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05875886/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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The global malware analysis market was valued at US$ 2.55 Bn in 2018 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.2% during the forecast period 2019 -...

Spectro Cloud Co-Founders

Saad Malik (CTO), Tenry Fu (CEO) and Gautam Joshi (VP of Engineering)

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today Spectro Cloud, an enterprise cloud-native infrastructure company, emerged from stealth and unveiled its first product: Spectro Cloud. Spectro Cloud provides scalable, policy-based management of Kubernetes for enterprises that need a high degree of control over their infrastructure, whether it is in public cloud, private cloud, bare metal or in any combination. The product has been in private beta since January and will be generally available next quarter.

Enterprises are struggling to realize the promise of Kubernetes due to its operational complexity. While the managed Kubernetes services solve this problem for those that want/need a completely pre-packaged approach, for the majority, they can become too restrictive for the varied needs that enterprises have. Spectro Cloud has created a flexible solution that provides the scalable automation and ease-of-use of the managed services, but enables enterprises to retain greater control, said Roy Illsley, Distinguished Analyst, Enterprise IT, Omdia.

Spectro Cloud lets enterprises customize a Kubernetes infrastructure stack for specific business needs by using a declarative model to define cluster profiles. Spectro Cloud uses these cluster profiles to automate deployment and maintenance of clusters across the enterprise. Canary deployments, patterns for rolling out releases to a subset of users or servers, ensure Kubernetes upgrades dont break dependencies on other ecosystem components while keeping everything consistent with enterprise-wide standards.

Sbastien Morissette, P.Eng., IT Architect Specialist Infrastructure, Security and IT Services at Intact Financial Corporation, Canadas largest provider of property and casualty insurance, said: Our business units end up choosing different Kubernetes providers as they all have different niches and varying maturity levels in different fields like AI, machine learning, public cloud vs on premises offerings, etc. Operationally, this becomes a nightmare because IT needs multiple support structures to address the different infrastructure stacks.

Morissette continued: A platform like Spectro Cloud addresses both the day 1 and day 2 operations of our Kubernetes ecosystem by normalizing the way IT deploys, operates and manages Kubernetes clusters over a broad spectrum of endpoints, both on premises and in the cloud. The control IT gets from Spectro Clouds cluster profiles means they can customize offerings to each business unit while maintaining responsibility for overall operations.

Weve seen enterprises struggle with managed Kubernetes options, and weve also seen them waste time and money trying to do everything in-house. With Spectro Cloud, were giving enterprises a way to run Kubernetes at scale without having to convert their entire way of working to whatever one large vendor thinks is correct. Theyve been burned by that approach before, said Tenry Fu, co-founder and CEO of Spectro Cloud. Fu most recently led the architecture for the Cisco CloudCenter Suite and Cisco Container Platform after his previous company, CliQr, was acquired by Cisco. CliQrs technology enabled applications to run more efficiently across public and private clouds.

Instead of converting their entire business to a single way of working, enterprises can experiment with new approaches at the pace that makes sense for them. Developers can work at the speed they need, while security and audit controls are embedded into the process, regardless of where clusters are deployed. Enterprises can make use of public cloud, private cloud, whatever suits their needs at the time, and change their mind as circumstances require.

With Spectro Cloud, the promise of Kubernetes can finally be realized.

Today Spectro Cloud also announced $7.5 million in seed funding led by Sierra Ventures with participation from Boldstart Ventures.

The market for Kubernetes has crossed the chasm. What weve heard from our CXO Advisory Board of Global 1000 IT executives is that enterprises are still struggling with the operational complexity that comes with Kubernetes. Spectro Clouds team has a deep understanding of the needs of enterprises and has found a unique way to make Kubernetes easy to use for its rapidly growing customer base, said Mark Fernandes, managing director at Sierra Ventures.

From our dozens of conversations with Fortune 500s, it was clear that deploying Kubernetes was a top priority but there was still no solution that met their needs. Spectro Cloud is the first company that not only gives customers fine grained control, flexibility and multi-cloud capabilities for their Kubernetes stack but also the ease of use and scalability of a managed SaaS platform. The teams deep background in cloud infrastructure (founded CliQr - sold to Cisco) and their design first ethos has been well received by large enterprises, and were thrilled to be partnered with Spectro Cloud as they redefine the infrastructure ecosystem, said Ed Sim, founder and managing partner at Boldstart Ventures.

About Spectro CloudSpectro Cloud is an enterprise cloud-native infrastructure company that makes Kubernetes manageable at scale for enterprises that need superior control and flexibility. Spectro Cloud provides solutions that help enterprises run Kubernetes their way, anywhere. Spectro Cloud is founded by multi-cloud management experts and is backed by Sierra Ventures and Boldstart Ventures. For more information, visit https://www.spectrocloud.com or follow @spectrocloudinc.

Media and Analyst Contact:Amber Rowlandamber@therowlandagency.com+1-650-814-4560

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1d1d8da7-1631-4c09-b40d-7d838fa5a037

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Spectro Cloud Launches With $7.5 Million to Help Enterprises Realize the Promise of Kubernetes - GlobeNewswire