The federal government is riding the beginnings of a tectonic shift in computing architecture one that will put smarts and storage out at the networks edge. Current cloud infrastructure places applications and storage on distributed servers accessible anywhere.

Driving the change are 5G networks that promise improved data throughput and lower latency.

Reality is based on computational capacity at the edge of the tower and the ability to move apps in that infrastructure from tower to tower, says Steve Wallace, systems innovation scientist, emerging technologies at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Edge computing could make it possible to deploy an Internet of Things device; add artificial intelligence, computation and storage; and take the action far from the center of the cloud. Thats important on the battlefield, where disruptions in communications are unacceptable.

Another driver is the plummeting cost of sensors, leading the military to push for systems that integrate and track reams of data coming directly from war fighters and their equipment as well as smart munitions.

The Army has an Internet of Battlefield Things Collaborative Research Alliance to fund work with industry and academia, as do the Air Force and Navy. An industrial switch has computing power right on it, says Joe Beel, a senior defense strategist at Cisco Systems. You can take temperature, vibration and speed information constantly.

Essential to it all is a distributed computer architecture that puts processing and storage at the source, says Beel. The volume of data is so massive now that you cant just send everything off to the cloud.

MORE FROM FEDTECH: The Army is exploring smart city Internet of Things tools.

Dell is partnering with Microsofts cloud/edge-based Azure platform and working with the Air Force, Marines and Army Special Forces on predictive maintenance and logistics. IBM is also working with DOD on predictive maintenance for vehicles.

Microsoft is assisting the U.S. Department of Agriculture on collecting next-generation farming data from soil and weather sensors as well as drones, satellites, tractors and combines.

Theres so much spatial variability in a field that we need the data to help us provide site-specific solutions, says USDA Research Ecologist and project leader Steven Mirsky.

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Edge Computing Brings the Cloud to the Data - FedTech Magazine

Siacoin (SC) is a leading cloud storage platform that does not have sign-ups, servers, or trusted third parties. Sia leverages blockchain technology to create a data storage marketplace that is very robust and affordable when compared to the traditional cloud storage providers.

Siaskynet is launching on Tuesday, February 18, 2020. Sia Blog recently wrote in their blog titled The war for free internet, stating how the internet has captured our lives.

Sachy, one of the community members, tweeted that on Tuesday, February 18, 2020, there will be only one breaking news on the internet with an announcement, and that is Siaskynet.

The decentralized storage platform will be able to do 1 Gbps up/down. SiaSkynet and #siacoin are widely discussed as the #hashtag to be closely watched over the next days.

Sydney Ifergan, the Crypto Expert, tweeted: Some of the Siacoin (SC) fans seem to be tweeting GoodBye YouTube, and they state that SiaSkynet will put several projects to bed. Guess it is an exaggeration. Waiting, thought.

Several community members feel that the time for ceremonies is gone and that it is Time for Adoption. Sia facilitates users with the comfort of controlling their private encryption keys and to use their data. Sia encrypts and distributes the files across a decentralized network. Therefore no outside company or the third party will be able to access or control files like in traditional cloud storage providers.

When compared to the rest of the cloud storage providers, the decentralized cloud storage costs 90% less. Since Sia distributes and stores its redundant file segments on the nodes across the globe, it eliminates any single point of failure, thereby ensuring uptime which rivals the traditional cloud storage providers.

The Sia software is an entirely open source. The chief contributors are leading software engineers with a thriving community of developers building innovative applications on the Sia API.

The decentralized market place from Sia makes it possible to get the lowest possible prices among storage providers. Those who rent pay using Siacoin and the token can also be mined and traded. It helps to know a bit of Sia principles and values; the chief of all is its core goal of bringing the same level of decentralization in the data storage process.

While the data belongs to the user, Sia focuses on ensuring that the data cannot be changed by anybody else. The Sia developers have been adamant that no centralization will ever be permitted to the core software.

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Siacoin (SC) Siaskynet will be the only Big news on February 18, 2020, GoodBye YouTube - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

From as-a-service platforms to protection of cloud-based data, the cloud remains a dominant player in top data backup and disaster recovery products. The cream of the crop, though, offers a wide-ranging data protection platform that can handle many kinds of workloads.

The gold winner in the data backup and disaster recovery hardware, software and services category in the Storage magazine and SearchStorage 2019 Products of the Year competition, Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery, protects and restores data "wherever," according to the vendor, and judges praised its comprehensive nature.

As is common with backup and DR products, many of the submissions to this category go beyond data protection and into management capabilities. For example, bronze winner Actifio Go enables analytics, database cloning for DevOps and cloud migration.

As in past years, security was a focus. With ransomware a prevalent threat, many vendors are including some form of cyberprotection. Silver winner Cohesity DataProtect helps fight ransomware with machine learning, for example.

The category covered data backup and recovery software; cloud backup and recovery services; and on-premises backup and DR, snapshotting, replication and archiving products. Submissions could also include data protection hardware, backup software integrated with hardware appliances, tape libraries and drives, backup media, disk backup targets and deduplication devices.

True to its name, Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery protects workloads across storage locations. It includes DR, snapshot management, endpoint and software as a service (SaaS) support, and archiving.

Updates to the product include optimized scan and multi-node backup for Nutanix File Shares, protection of Splunk clusters, backup and restore of Azure SQL Database managed instances and the ability to convert VMs from Azure to VMware.

Multiple judges described the data backup and disaster recovery product as "comprehensive." One judge called it a well-established product with a proven track record and an "ability to work with a wide range of other systems."

Judges also praised its AI capabilities, which adapt to changes to meet defined service-level agreements. The software analyzes patterns and performance and adjusts to improve outcomes.

Commvault was a finalist last year with its HyperScale Appliance HS1300.

"It is extremely important for Commvault to keep expanding their coverage to maintain their 'most comprehensive' title," one judge suggested.

For the second year in a row, Cohesity Inc.'s DataProtect has won the silver medal. The software-defined product aims to help enterprises get more value out of their data and makes security a focus.

Machine learning plays a major role in this update, aiding capacity optimization and proactive failure prediction. The antiransomware feature includes machine learning-based anomaly detection, as well as multifactor authentication.

Customers can deploy DataProtect on premises on x86 hardware platforms or virtual instances, public cloud or the edge.

One judge called the product a major upgrade with "serious improvements," such as a write-once, read-many feature for snapshots and machine learning predictive storage analytics. Several judges noted the importance of machine learning, for example, in helping enterprises obtain visibility and actionable insights on the data under protection.

"The incorporation of machine learning makes this a strong product in terms of management, security and costs," one judge said. "In addition, its support for Hadoop and NoSQL distributed data sources also makes it a valuable asset for today's workloads."

Another judge noted that the product is pricey "but worth it for large enterprises with fast-growing data footprints."

Actifio was a pioneer in copy data management. With its new product, Actifio Go, the vendor takes it up a level in the cloud and provides what it calls "copy data management as a service."

The SaaS platform offers data backup and disaster recovery, as well as management features such as analytics and migration. Customers can manage copy data in hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environments.

Actifio Go enables enterprises to back up and recover on-premises and cloud VMs to cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM. The product protects mission-critical databases including SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL and MySQL.

One judge called Actifio Go an "ideal SaaS implementation" of copy data management. "Their ability to 'stream' recovery back on premises is particularly impressive," the judge said.

Actifio's SaaS delivery can lower infrastructure costs, one judge noted. "Multi-cloud support -- works with all major cloud vendors -- and live migration increases sources that can be protected, and targets that can be used for backup and restore, while opening up additional enterprise use cases for copy data [test and development, etc.]," the judge added.

Cloud Daddy Inc. is one of the newest entrants in the data protection market. It's made a splash already, securing the first Judges' Choice startup award as part of the Storage magazine and SearchStorage 2019 Products of the Year.

The provider of data protection for AWS workloads tackles a trifecta of data backup and disaster recovery, security and infrastructure management. One judge said Cloud Daddy Secure Backup is one of the more complete data protection products for cloud-native applications.

"Its inclusion of security and infrastructure management is unique and sets it apart from most of its competitors," the judge said.

One judge noted that the product is aimed exclusively at AWS users, but also said that it works as advertised, and the 1.5 release includes important support, such as archiving old backups to Amazon S3 Glacier.

"Cloud Daddy targets one of the biggest pain points associated with the public cloud: managing costs related to long-term data retention and data recovery," another judge wrote. "The more sophisticated data management-related capabilities it adds, including search and tagging, not only help to cut costs, but also improve enterprises' ability to recover from ransomware attacks and to meet compliance requirements."

Learn more about our winning 2019 Products of the Year in all five categories.

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Cloud key to top 2019 data backup and disaster recovery products - TechTarget

As cloud technology becomes mainstream in media, the highly customized applications deployed by early adopters are increasingly being retired in favor of off-the-shelf, multi-tenant SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions. Well-designed SaaS offers economic advantages in terms of much faster onboarding times, orders of magnitude lower TCO and the ability to stay up to date more easily in todays rapidly changing environment. SaaS solutions are updated regularly based on customer feedback and usage data, so as new trends emerge, vendors can respond quickly to the benefit of their customers.

But SaaS is more than just software. The services components are equally important in building long-term partnerships that provide economic value to both customers and vendors. Its the new model for a more technologically advanced and efficient industry. Signiant has learned a lot about best practices in leveraging the cloud.

SaaS should not imply cloud storage

One thing that often gets confused when we talk about SaaS is storage. Because of popular consumer-oriented services such as Dropbox that bundle storage with their software, people often assume that is true of all SaaS. This is not the case, and in media its a critical differentiator. While SaaS is run in the cloud, the right architecture allows customers to move, access and act on files in any type of storage, whether on-prem or in the cloud.

That is one of the key reasons Signiant Media Shuttle has become one of the top solutions for sending and sharing large files in the industry. It allows users fast, seamless and secure access to content from a browser regardless of where that content is stored. And while many companies are using cloud storage for certain projects, very few companies are considering a wholesale move to cloud storage due to the costs and lack of control. The right SaaS architecture allows for storage independence, providing an abstraction so any storage can be used with a SaaS solution, regardless of type or location.

Off-the-shelf vs. custom software

While many media companies have unique workflows, the days of investing millions in custom solutions appear to be coming to an end in favor of much more cost-effective off-the-shelf products that have most of the functionality required but offer huge economic benefits and far more agility. Additionally, there is a powerful network effect from working with a SaaS leader, especially one with an industry-focus in your market.

As new requirements emerge, well-architected, multi-tenant SaaS products are updated automatically to keep up with the market dynamics. A recent example of this is Signiants introduction of its IMF-Aware capability. As the standard emerged, many Signiant customers were beginning to leverage IMF, so adding support in Media Shuttle was a natural evolution. Any Shuttle customer will have the ability to explore an IMF package in a user-friendly way and download just the content they need. With custom software, you would have to go back to your vendor, spec out the requirements, pay for the new capabilities, and probably wait months before you had access. With multi-tenant SaaS, everyone benefits from being part of the network.

Best practices in customer support

Entering into a partnership with a SaaS vendor that has a high-level commitment to services can provide enormous advantages to customers. Because the software vendor is responsible for operating the cloud environment, it removes the burden of procuring, managing and maintaining on-premises infrastructure, while automatically providing the latest product releases without impacting customizations. Well-executed services also improve the usability of products over time.

But not all vendors are fully invested in the relationship with their customers or their service responsibilities. They may outsource components of them or have in-house service teams that are not integrated with product development, creating disconnect and inefficiencies. Signiant services are delivered through three teams that work alongside Signiant engineers: Customer Success, Customer Support and SRE.

Customer success

With advanced B2B software like Signiant provides, onboarding new users has always been critical to customer success. However, since SaaS does not require the extensive IT preparation that traditional software does, its easy for SaaS vendors to be completely hands off. Every new customer at Signiant is assigned a personal customer success manager to ensure that the product is being utilized in the most efficient way for their business.

Customer support

Customer support is, in many ways, the team that ties all product teams together. Traditionally, support teams are often siloed away from most of the company or even outsourced. Signiants support team works closely with our software engineering team and prides themselves on their close relationship with our customers. This allows any customer issues that arise to be addressed efficiently, and learning can go directly into product improvements. The biggest objective testament to that value are the 97 and 95 Net Promoter Scores earned by our support team in 2017 and 2018, respectively meaning 97 and 95 percent of people who interact with Signiant support would recommend it to others.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

SRE brings together the two crucial elements of software engineering, development and operations. The SRE methodology combines the entire software development, deployment and monitoring lifecycle and ensures 24/7 availability for customers. Ideally, SRE is a cross-functional practice in which developers are actively involved in releasing and monitoring the software they write. With the infrastructure and the code being so tightly coupled, efficiency is improved.

The benefits of SRE services to customers can be simplified into three categories: product updates, monitoring and security. Signiants SaaS customers automatically receive product updates, with no downtime or maintenance windows needed. SRE is also a core aspect of Signiants defense-in-depth security practices and utilizes software packages, audit tools and scanning tools to make sure we are as secure as we possibly can be.

Choose your partners wisely

At Signiant, M&E is our core market and we strive for a customer-centric approach to everything we do and that translates into an appreciation for the partnerships SaaS allows us to have with our customers.

About Signiant

Signiants enterprise software provides the worlds top content creators and distributors with fast, reliable, secure access to large media files, regardless of physical storage type or location. By enabling authorized people and processes to seamlessly exchange valuable content within and between enterprises Signiant connects the global media supply chain. For more information, please visitwww.signiant.com.

The article above is sponsor-generated content from Signiant. To learn more about sponsor-generated content, click here.

Jon Finegold joined Signiant as chief marketing officer in 2017, bringing 20+ years of experience in launching and growing software companies. After working as a software engineer, Finegold became a pioneer in SaaS, helping to launch OpenAir in 1999, one of the first B2B SaaS offerings which was acquired by NetSuite in 2008 (and later Oracle) and remains a leader in its category today. He also led the launch of where.com, a SaaS platform for mobile location aware advertising, which was acquired by PayPal in 2011. Finegold was chief marketing officer at Scratch Wireless from launch through acquisition and then founded and ran a consulting firm called Digital Jolt to offer part-time CMO services to early stage technology companies.

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More than software: SaaS is a relationship - NewscastStudio

Tom Scott, Chief Financial Officer of HST Pathways

Its clear that 2020 Healthcare will be the year of big market disruptions. With data-rich players such asAmazonandGoogleentering into the healthcare market space, many traditional health care systems are reviewing their own strategic plans with an eye towards staying relevant. According to a recent analytics survey by HIMSS, 32% of respondents said that population health is a top focus moving forward, and nearly 60% are eager to make improvements in care.

Most traditional healthcare organizations recognize the importance data analytics play in better health management and patient outcomes, but many fall short in actively using these analytics to impact care. A2019 pollfound that 84% of healthcare executives believed analytics would be critical for success in the next three years, yet one out of every three of the healthcare organizations surveyed did not have a comprehensive strategy for analytics in place. Additionally, there is a huge potential to apply data analytics to areas beyond clinical care a separate 2019 pollamong health leaders found that while 90% of respondents report using data analytics in clinical areas, only 28% used analytics for effectiveness of care projects, only 22% were using it for population health, and a mere 11% were using it for chronic care management.

Because healthcare is often separated from the world of IT, few organizational leaders understand how to invest in advanced business analytics in a way that is sustainable and affordable. Here are three ways that healthcare organizations can build their data analytic infrastructure while still keeping costs affordable:

Business Analytics Requires Business Intelligence Software

Unsurprisingly, powerhouse players in healthcare have a powerful asset in their corner data. Andlots of it. Additionally, because these companies were born out of technology, the IT infrastructure and IT staff available to operate and support these systems is lightyears beyond what most health organizations are currently equipped with. And unlike health care, investment in IT infrastructure for these tech giants does not come at the expense of other necessary spending for patient care.

There are two main options for building the data infrastructure needed for storing and analyzing data on-premise and cloud-based. Most organizations, when starting out choosing IT infrastructure, dont realize that business analytics requires business intelligence software, which is not comprised of a database alone. Business intelligence software can quickly become extremely expensive because of storage requirements, and if its through an on-premise server, this software will be subscription-based. More cost-effective solutions are cloud-based, with data stored in servers that are off-site and built to handle massive information sets.

Maintaining an Operable System 24/7

Healthcare is a 24/7 business, and similarly, so is the necessity of IT updates and ongoing maintenance to the systems that keep it going. On-premise servers need to be replaced every 4-5 years, at minimum. In addition to the high costs of purchasing and installing a new server, there are significant risks associated with moving data from the old server to another. Cloud computing makes server upgrades a thing of the past, and the responsibility is on the vendor to manage system upgrades. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can consume a massive amount of data, usually measured in terabytes (1 terabyte = 1000 gigabytes) because of the imagery and volume that amasses within each patient record over time. Moving to cloud-based platforms allows organizations to avoid the disruption that would happen with moving information onsite to a new server.

Using a third party can significantly decrease costs with added benefits.

On-premise servers require 24/7 IT support to maintain backups, deploy updates, and be available to respond in the event of a cybersecurity breach, server outage, or system failure. On-premise systems typically do not provide for system redundancy, encrypted data bases, and co-location service, which are all things that a cloud-based platform can provide at an efficient price. Especially in small healthcare settings, the costs tied not only to implementing an on-premise server will mainly be incurred from the upkeep required to maintain it. This puts an enormous strain on in-house IT to manage interfaces.

In the case of cloud-based platforms via a third party vendor, the vendor can set up the required interfaces, make sure the firewall is set up and up-to-date, recognize the endpoints that are at risk of cybersecurity threats, and automatically detect and defend against a data intrusion. While these functions can also be done in-house, vendors will often have the benefit of customer volume to be able to keep costs low through bulk purchasing of infrastructure something that is likely impossible in the case of a small health center.

Healthcare is moving into a new era of the digital age, and while its not necessary to be an IT expert to be a healthcare leader, understanding the fundamentals when it comes to choosing a data management system can save health organizations from avoidable and costly headaches down the line. By ensuring that data is being collected in a manner that is reliable, consistent, and cost-effective, health leaders can focus their attention on designing and implementing strategic plans to utilize that data for better patient care.

About Tom Scott

Tom Scott is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) ofHST Pathways, a top-ranked software solutions company for the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) industry. Scotts broad experience in the industry helps to align solutions with the unique needs of the ASC industry. Scott brings more than 25 years of experience in the outpatient surgery center industry to his role as CFO. Prior to joining HST Pathways, he was Vice President of Development and Operations at Surgical Management Professionals, where he oversaw strategic development and operations for surgery centers.

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Looking to Keep Data Analytics in Healthcare Affordable? The Answer is the Cloud - - HIT Consultant