News, Analysis and Opinion for IT Operations

May 11, 2018 11 May'18

ServiceNow positions Now Platform as workflow engine

ServiceNow made a move to become a major player in the DevOps market by gearing up its Now Platform as a workflow engine that creates cloud-based applications quickly.

May 10, 2018 10 May'18

ServiceNow Virtual Agent looks to bolster AI strategy

ServiceNow's Virtual Agent technology is designed to automate routine IT tasks and free users and IT workers to focus on more important tasks.

May 08, 2018 08 May'18

APM strikes back in Kubernetes monitoring wars

New Relic and AppDynamics up the ante on Prometheus with dashboards that display Kubernetes time-series data, and monitoring alerts that sync with IT automation tools.

May 08, 2018 08 May'18

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform adds CoreOS automation

Red Hat plans to swiftly integrate technology recently acquired from CoreOS into its current product line, but the CoreOS name will stick around.

May 04, 2018 04 May'18

Cisco and CoreOS Kubernetes integrations swell IT buyer choices

Cisco and CoreOS added to a growing number of Kubernetes integration options, prompting enterprise IT buyers to consider whether they should rely on one vendor or take on heavy lifting themselves.

May 03, 2018 03 May'18

Google gVisor serves up container security isolation

There are other VM-like approaches for container security isolation, but Google's Kubernetes cred could make its gVisor a multi-cloud standard for security-sensitive enterprise apps.

May 01, 2018 01 May'18

VMware NSX portfolio aims to unify local and cloud workloads

VMware's NSX strategy aims to help enterprises stitch together data centers and cloud environments, though it could be overkill for IT shops with simpler needs that are more specific.

April 26, 2018 26 Apr'18

Cloud Foundry users grapple with stateful cloud-native apps

Cloud Foundry shops can refactor stateless apps according to cloud-native principles, but would like to bring stateful applications on board as well.

April 24, 2018 24 Apr'18

CF community debates Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes integration

Cloud Foundry PaaS and Kubernetes container orchestration each appeal to DevOps shops, and users want consolidation, as the two camps continue to negotiate.

April 20, 2018 20 Apr'18

Cloud Foundry PaaS shops hone software delivery process

Enterprises that have deployed Cloud Foundry platform as a service found it catalyzed new thinking about the application delivery process and other organizational practices.

April 17, 2018 17 Apr'18

Docker vs. Mesosphere battleground shifts focus to Kubernetes

Kubernetes integrations in Docker and Mesosphere are generally available, vying for enterprise attention with a focus on ease of use.

April 16, 2018 16 Apr'18

Bharti Airtel overhauls test/dev with container infrastructure

Startup AppOrbit's approach to container infrastructure deployment beat out Red Hat's OpenShift as a large Indian telco overhauled its test environments for speedier development.

March 30, 2018 30 Mar'18

Microservices management tools harmonize polyglot chaos

IT ops must replenish its toolkit to standardize infrastructure management and let developers experiment with the latest programming languages and application designs.

March 30, 2018 30 Mar'18

Monoliths-to-microservices move refactors IT ops skills

As enterprises seek speed and efficiency with microservices, IT ops pros must learn skills and consolidate tools to deal with increased infrastructure and application complexity.

March 23, 2018 23 Mar'18

Kubernetes 1.10 release hits mature enterprise container market

Kubernetes 1.10 adds incremental feature updates, but enterprises will look to third-party products to integrate upstream code before they embrace it.

March 21, 2018 21 Mar'18

CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise snags raise roadmap questions

CloudBees' Jenkins software is slated for major updates after strong revenue growth in 2017, but customers and partners report struggles with upgrades, pricing and support.

March 12, 2018 12 Mar'18

EBay's Elasticsearch hack consolidates Kubernetes monitoring

EBay made Kubernetes monitoring more flexible for developers and consistent for ops through modifications that are now part of Elastic's Beats software.

March 09, 2018 09 Mar'18

Aqua Security 3.0 architecture supports AWS Fargate

Aqua Security's MicroEnforcer deployed without a sidecar container supports containers on public cloud services such as AWS Fargate and Azure Container Instances.

March 09, 2018 09 Mar'18

In Google Hangouts Chat, DevOps pros see ChatOps latecomer

Google Hangouts Chat could lead to interesting AI chatbot technology eventually, but G Suite users are already loyal to competitors, such as Slack.

March 07, 2018 07 Mar'18

Datadog log monitoring software branches out as DevOps spreads

Datadog joins competitors such as SignalFx and Splunk in the quest to create Swiss army knife-style tools that track logs, events and metrics in one place for DevOps teams.

March 02, 2018 02 Mar'18

DevOps incident management turns sys admins into SREs

DevOps practices begin with collaboration on application releases, but it's not until something goes wrong with those apps in production that true transformation takes place.

February 23, 2018 23 Feb'18

IT turns to VMware encryption for added VM security

Encryption features in recent vSphere and vSAN updates aim to balance security with simplicity and performance. For VMware shops, there is little standing in the way of adoption.

February 22, 2018 22 Feb'18

Container security tools abound, but IT pros await big vendors

Container security startups peddle unique approaches, but while some early adopters jump on board with fledgling vendors, a majority will watch for industry consolidation first.

February 21, 2018 21 Feb'18

Chef InSpec widens the compliance-as-code possibilities with v2.0

Chef InSpec 2.0 adds infrastructure tests for compliance policy enforcement, and the tool's expansion into more areas of the DevOps workflow won't stop there.

February 16, 2018 16 Feb'18

Enterprises identify 10 essential DevOps tools

Products branded with DevOps are everywhere, and the list of options grows every day, but the best DevOps tools are already well-known among enterprise IT pros.

February 14, 2018 14 Feb'18

VMware NSX integration push ramps up to reinforce IT ties

With tighter integration between its NSX and its cloud and virtualization offerings, VMware aims to reinforce its networking chops with enterprise IT.

February 02, 2018 02 Feb'18

Kubernetes hybrid cloud emerges from Google-Cisco partnership

A Kubernetes partnership from Cisco and Google widens IT pros' container orchestration options in hybrid cloud deployments, but its advantages depend on future software integrations.

February 01, 2018 01 Feb'18

Kubernetes storage projects dominate CNCF docket

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation will host the Rook distributed container storage project -- the first move in a pivotal year for Kubernetes stateful app support.

January 31, 2018 31 Jan'18

Laws to guide the IT career growth of a virtualization admin

Attendees at a Virtualization Technology User Group event learned about five laws for IT career growth that are particularly useful for the virtualization admin in a changing industry.

January 30, 2018 30 Jan'18

IT monitoring strategy, org discipline polish Nasdaq DevOps incident response

At Nasdaq, IT monitoring unified different teams' views of infrastructure, but cultural blocking and tackling are equally important to improve incident response.

January 26, 2018 26 Jan'18

ServiceNow Kingston troubleshoots IT tasks with AI, machine learning

ServiceNow delivers AI and machine learning capabilities to its core platform to eliminate time-consuming manual help desk tasks.

January 26, 2018 26 Jan'18

OpenShift on OpenStack aims to ease VM, container management

In this Q&A, Red Hat's Brian Gracely discusses managing a virtual environment that has both VMs and containers and how OpenShift on OpenStack can help.

January 23, 2018 23 Jan'18

AI apps demand DevOps infrastructure automation

Businesses look to AI apps to gain a competitive edge, but IT teams must make rapid application changes through a DevOps process and embrace infrastructure automation.

January 18, 2018 18 Jan'18

Jenkins pipeline as code example demonstrates DevOps coordination

Ellucian, which makes software for colleges and universities, offers a pipeline as code example that unifies the release process for multiple generations of apps and brings IT security into the DevOps fold.

January 17, 2018 17 Jan'18

Docker Enterprise Edition prospects mull vendor strategy

Uncertain about Docker's future business growth, some enterprise IT pros are on the fence about whether to invest in its container orchestration tools.

January 12, 2018 12 Jan'18

Container infrastructure a silver lining amid Intel CPU flaw fixes

Containers aren't immune to Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, but they could lighten the operational burden of fixes for IT pros.

January 08, 2018 08 Jan'18

Time-series monitoring tools give high-resolution view of IT

DevOps monitoring tools based on time-series databases create a steeper learning curve than traditional monitoring software, but arm IT pros with richer data for troubleshooting.

November 10, 2017 10 Nov'17

Enterprise shops look to AIOps for IT root cause analysis

IT ops pros look to AIOps tools to help find the smoking gun in failing IT stacks, but some call automated root cause analysis more dream than reality.

September 22, 2017 22 Sep'17

HashiCorp DevOps tools add Sentinel for IT policy management

As DevSecOps grows, policy as code will take over where infrastructure as code left off through new tools such as HashiCorp Sentinel.

September 21, 2017 21 Sep'17

An IT operations job description written for the future

Forward-looking IT ops jobs require more Python and less cable management. To reach valued positions in the IT organization, align your skills with these popular job requirements.

August 16, 2017 16 Aug'17

Docker-supported OS list expands with Enterprise Edition update

Docker Enterprise Edition fired back at Kubernetes with new support for mixed clusters and applications, as well as advanced security features that target large enterprises.

May 19, 2017 19 May'17

ServiceNow roadmap extends ITSM technology with AI, machine learning

A leader in the IT systems management market, ServiceNow looks to expand into new applications markets. Farrell Hough, in charge of ServiceNow's product operations, lays out the roadmap.

May 12, 2017 12 May'17

Justify CMDB ROI with these strategies

IT pros can easily list off CMDB benefits. But when it comes to convincing the business to pay for a CMDB implementation, you'll need to discuss ROI.

December 01, 2016 01 Dec'16

CMDB best practices remain out of reach for many IT shops: Free chapter

Most IT pros know what a CMDB is, but mastering the database and asset management is difficult -- though not impossible.

October 27, 2016 27 Oct'16

2017 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards

The 2017 MI Impact Awards recognize the top products, technologies and services in seven categories. Here are the finalists that made the cut.

August 17, 2016 17 Aug'16

Aviva’s annual Hackathon – the customer is key

One insurance company organizes an annual hackathon, where cross-discipline teams form to create features that employees dream up. In 24 hours, it's all over, but the lessons learned persist much longer.

July 19, 2016 19 Jul'16

The real future of IT infrastructure lies in abstraction

Future IT infrastructure will be so abstracted from the applications using it that, while always a misnomer, serverless computing will be a reality.

July 01, 2016 01 Jul'16

DevOps automation boosts Rosetta Stone's app delivery

The language learning company uses multiple tools to make its DevOps environment run smoothly, but Docker has been the key to streamlining application releases.

March 16, 2016 16 Mar'16

Mad about microsegmentation

The tech industry seems fixated breaking things apart into ever-smaller units for greater levels of "granularity." Traditional standalone applications are maligned as "monoliths" that must be broken apart in to their component pieces, or "...

February 17, 2016 17 Feb'16

Windows workloads leap to cloud

Regardless of hype, there are quite a few areas where cloud remains very much a work in progress. Take cloud bursting. This has long been IT's holy grail for cloud -- the ability to seamlessly expand capacity constrained workloads to outside of your...

January 20, 2016 20 Jan'16

The 2016 MI Impact Awards

It's January, people, and you know what that means -- awards season! Not one to be left out of the party, Modern Infrastructure is happy to announce the winners of its third annual Impact Awards, where readers, industry experts and editors weigh in ...

July 16, 2015 16 Jul'15

Lift and shift vs. re-platforming cloud apps

When evaluating a new technology, some people like to go all in, with gusto, and adopt it hook line and sinker. Then there are folks whose MO is to take baby steps: Dip a toe in the water and do a lengthy proof of concept. What's right for any given...

June 16, 2015 16 Jun'15

Can hyperconverged systems transform the enterprise?

It's hard to predict which novelties will become mainstays, and which will be has-beens. One current hot technology is hyperconvergence, the subject of Alex Barrett's article in our May issue, "The Hyperconvergence Effect." Is hyperconvergence a ...

May 19, 2015 19 May'15

Container technology thrives for IT

Just when you thought you had driven the last nail in the coffin of old-school IT, you find out it's back -- albeit with a twist.

Remember operating system-level virtualization? This method of server virtualization is back with a vengeance ...

May 15, 2015 15 May'15

Facebook completes Chef DevOps migration, shares lessons

The mistakes, best practices and tools that Facebook shares from its migration to Chef configuration management apply to your DevOps shop too.

April 14, 2015 14 Apr'15

Big data workloads live on-premises

Seven years after its birth, the frenzy around cloud is beginning to subside. IT organizations have embraced public cloud for some workloads, and built private clouds for others.

IT is having productive discussions about which applications to ...

March 17, 2015 17 Mar'15

The new face of scale-out storage

There are plenty of new approaches to address ever-growing data needs, including scale-out vs. scale-up designs, the shift from hierarchical file systems to object storage, and the Hadoop Distributed File System. Pretty soon there will be absolutely...

February 16, 2015 16 Feb'15