SAP Touts Qualtrics, Apple ML Integration

SAP kicked off its annual Sapphire conference by tightening integration of its $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition and expanding support for the Apple ecosystem.

SAP CEO Bill McDermott made both announcements as part of a flashy opening keynote that was big on getting SAP customers excited. That flash also included a supporting cast of Qualtrics co-founder and CEO Ryan Smith and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

With Qualtrics, SAP said it has now rolled out 10 new products that combine its operational data (O-data) with experience data (X-data) gleaned from its acquired property. The latest include the integration of the Experience Management platform into SAP’s C/4HANA that is targeted at an organization’s sales, marketing, commerce, and service experience management.

It has also launched three Experience Management services targeted at an organization’s employee management. These can be integrated into an existing human resources platform to support employee lifecycle.

McDermott explained this as managing the “hire-to-retire” aspect of HR. This involved a company’s HR department taking a “regular pulse” on an employee’s satisfaction with their work environment.

In a later question-and-answer session, McDermott noted that Qualtrics tackles the biggest cultural challenges at enterprises because “it provides the why.” During that same session, Smith said that Qualtrics did not want to focus on just gathering insight but to instead have insight “to allow for action.”

SAP acquired Qualtrics last November on the cusp of the latter moving toward a public offering. Smith said the company decided to go the buyout route because of the integration possibilities with SAP.

“We didn’t have too. We had all the options in the world and were one of the hottest IPOs coming into the year,” Smith said. But he explained that the company lacked the operational data to make its experience data more functional for enterprise customers. “We knew we would have to figure out how to partner, but SAP was the only one to go across the four experiences.”

Apple iOS SDK

SAP is also integrating Apple’s CORE Machine Learning (ML) platform into its SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS. This will allow users to create custom iOS applications using SAP’s Leonardo IoT platform. That platform was launched in 2016, and is a collection of software and services that tap into big data, analytics, blockchain, and ML.

The initial launch includes nine applications. In practice, the ML model can automatically download to an iOS device that will allow those applications run in an offline environment. SAP is also expanding application support to Apple’s Mac personal computer ecosystem. Those applications can also be updated when connected to the SAP Cloud Platform.

Apple CEO Tim Cook framed the move by stating that the enterprise “experience has not reached the same level” of the consumer experience. To that end, Cook showed slides of employees using Apple devices running augmented reality applications that use ML to manage industrial machines.

Cook also touched on the importance of security for Apple when it approaches the enterprise market. He cited a similar mindset from SAP that Cook said was key to its work together. McDermott likened his approach to security to that of Cook and Apple, which he said are “kindred spirits” and “like minded in protection and security.”

The security topic was also brought up during the Q&A session with reference to a recent Reuters story that claimed 50,000 companies were open to a vulnerability in legacy SAP systems. McDermott explained that the vulnerability was confronted by security patches issued in 2009 and 2013. He added that following the Reuters story, SAP instituted a more aggressive push to make sure its customers had downloaded those patches.

https://www.sdxcentral.com

Platform9 Packages Kubernetes Tools for On-Prem Environments

Platform9 packaged together a trio of open source Kubernetes tools in a push to ease the deployment and operation of Kubernetes clusters in air-gapped, on-premises environments.

The tools include its etcdadm command-line interface (CLI), nodeadm CLI node administration tool, and cctl cluster lifecycle management tool. Those tools are now part of the Klusterkit package, though they can be used separately or together.

Arun Sriraman, technical lead manager for Kubernetes at Plaform9, explained in a statement that Klusterkit can work with frameworks like Cluster API and kubeadm to help enterprises use Kubernetes to run their legacy applications. In addition to support for on-premises deployments, Klusterkit allows for the recovery of a failed cluster control plane from an etcd snapshot.

The on-premises support ties to a growing desire by organizations to simplify the management of their data resources across clouds and in house. This angle has been targeted by a number of platforms, including Google’s recent Anthos launch.

Tools in the Kit

Platform9 late last year moved its etcdadm support tool into the open source community via GitHub in an effort to generate momentum behind automating the configuration, deployment, and management of etcd clusters used by Kubernetes to store control plane information. Those tasks were previously either part of more broadly-focused efforts put on the shoulders of a Kubernetes user, or cobbled together by developers.

Etcd is the primary software-defined storage (SDS) location for Kubernetes and needs to be established before Kubernetes can be run on a system. Sriraman explained in a video that etcd is the “backbone for Kubernetes storage.” The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) late last year adopted etcd as an incubation project.

https://www.sdxcentral.com

VMware Fixes Security Flaws in vCloud Director, Hypervisor Software

VMware late last week released patches for two security flaws, which ranged from important to critical in terms of severity. The fixes resolved vulnerabilities within its vCloud Director platform and within its hypervisor software: ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion.

The first advisory was directed at a remote session hijack vulnerability found within the vCloud Director platform for service providers, which is VMware’s cloud service delivery platform. The vulnerability was found within the tenant and provider portals and allowed attackers to access the portals through impersonation of someone logged into a session.

This vulnerability was ranked as a “critical” security flaw. It was discovered by four faculty members at Dakota State University.

Hypervisor Flaw

VMware, in its second advisory, addressed a number of security issues within its hypervisor software, including three critical issues and one important issue.

ESXi is VMware’s bare metal hypervisor software; Workstation its hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems; and Fusion is its software hypervisor for Macintosh computers.

The first critical flaw affected all three hypervisors and gave malicious actors access to virtual machines (VMs) when a virtual USB controller was present, allowing a hacker to execute code on the host.

The second critical flaw, affecting Workstation and Fusion, was an out-of-bounds vulnerability in their e1000 virtual network adapter. This flaw also allowed the attacker to execute code.

The third, an important fix, also affected Workstation and Fusion with an out-of-bounds vulnerability in both the e1000 and e1000e virtual network adapter. While the flaw could allow code execution from the bad actor, it could also result in denial of service to the actor.

The fourth, and final, critical flaw affected only the Fusion hypervisor. This vulnerability was a result of unauthenticated APIs that could be accessed through a web socket. Bad actors could exploit this by tricking the host user execute functions and perform unauthorized functions on the guest machine where VMware Tools is installed.

https://www.sdxcentral.com

6 Digital Transformation Challenges Enterprises Need To Overcome

Digital transformation strategies have so many moving parts. And as a moving target, it's pretty difficult to pin down, which makes it unsurprising how much attention the process actually gets. 

In a piece in the Harvard Business Review last year on why so many digital transformation projects fail, Thomas H. Davenport and George Westerman defined digital transformation as follows, "Digital transformation is an ongoing process of changing the way you do business. It requires foundational investments in skills, projects, infrastructure, and often, in cleaning up IT systems. It requires mixing people, machines and business processes, with all of the messiness that entails.”

Identifying Digital Transformation Problems
Herein lies the problem. There are so many technologies, so many processes, so many departments and people to pull into the process that somewhere along the line it's all going to break down. Despite this, Eric Hanson, VP of market intelligence at Fuze, said that transformation is a challenge that IT leaders want to take on not only because of its wide-ranging tech benefits, but also because of the impact it could have for their organizations as they usher in the next generation of workers.

However, throughout the integration of a new technology and its impact on a changing workforce, CIOs and other IT decision-makers are faced with the challenge of tech adoption, which goes beyond being solely an IT initiative. They are business transformation projects that require executive sponsorship and cross-functional execution from HR to facilities to marketing and IT. This is not a change that affects a small group of workers; it impacts everyone.

Adoption requires buy-in from every single employee, each with different work and learning preferences, and includes those working outside of the company’s physical space. In today’s increasingly distributed workforce, implementing this roll-out of digital technologies becomes an even larger challenge as leaders face offices with different corporate cultures and processes.

In order to minimize friction around change and accelerate business outcomes, organizations should identify ways to internally promote the benefits of change, set clear expectations, and provide access to ongoing training with options for self-service and live sessions. So what are the challenges? After contacting a number or organizations we were able to identify six major challenges.


1. ‘Blind’ Challenge
Rob Maille, co-founder and head of strategy and customer experience at CommerceCX, argues that when people think about a digital transformation there are three common challenges enterprises must overcome, which impact the planning and cost of the transformation. The first is starting the digital transformation blindly, the second is adding unnecessary technology and the third is believing it is a one-and-done process.

However, starting blindly will kill the process from the start. The digital transformation process is often overlooked by an eager team looking to improve their business. Enterprises must remember to identify where the company currently is in the transformation journey and what is needed before starting. A good place to start is with customer journey maps and collecting user or customer data through observation, research and interviews. The journey maps are meant to help with design thinking and overall business strategy.

2. Short-Term View Challenge
For Michael Graham, CEO of Epilogue Systems, one of the most enduring challenges is ensuring that planning for digital transformation adoption goes beyond planning for the first three to five months. In these cases adoption becomes simply a project task, which threatens to undermine the years of work, millions of dollars invested and organizational disruption endured.

As they near the end of a digital transformation initiatives, many enterprises also make the mistake of not planning for project fatigue. Digital transformation projects involve so many people (internal and external) over such a long period of time that exhaustion — staff exhaustion, budget exhaustion, time exhaustion — is inevitable. Once key internal players reach exhaustion, and external players like systems integrators and project management consultants are gone, end users are left to live with the changes when a company reaches the go-live date. “Without the dedicated resources in place before go-live to ensure end users are properly equipped…adoption will be irrevocably hurt,” warns Graham.

3. Culture Challenge
Shaping organizational culture is a crucial-and often undervalued-factor in enabling successful digital transformation, said Melissa Henley, director of customer experience at Laserfiche.

Changing culture will always be more difficult than changing technology, and that's why it's important to proactively address the changes needed to instill a digital culture. Digital transformation affects every area of the business and requires teams to coordinate and collaborate like never before. To successfully lead digital transformation, leaders must be intentional in building a digital culture, including changing legacy technology and structures that hinder transformation.

4. Aligning Business and IT Challenge
However, no project should begin until the goals of both IT and business have been aligned, said John Mullen, North America CEO at Capgemini. One of the biggest obstacles companies face is the lack of connectivity between business and technology — the two are now indistinguishable. Businesses need to understand that it’s no longer a question of if businesses are going to use technology to transform for their customers, but rather how and when and how quickly can they do it at scale.

Another issue that plagues businesses is the fear factor of the transformation process. Companies need leadership who will embrace the risk-taking required to transform their operations and adopt an ongoing culture of innovation. While companies are making progress on evolving their customer experience, they are struggling to transform their back-end operations. "It’s imperative that organizations gain alignment between IT and the business. It is no longer possible for the CIO and the IT organization to operate separately from other C-Suite leaders," he said. 

In addition to alignment at the top, companies also need to include and engage their employees every step of the way in the transformation agenda. Companies will achieve digital leadership if they succeed in balancing the technology with retraining their workforce to realize new skills.

5. Technology Integration Challenge
Culturally, organizations have been built around certain technologies, with specific policies and procedures developed to support them, said Jeff Looman, vice president of engineering at FileShadow. The integration process for new technologies causes delays as employees face acceptance, training and getting accustomed to new data management techniques. Having multiple data silos may result in redundancy of work and confusion between disparate groups with regards to effective collaboration. Different approaches to data storage make cohesive blending laborious.

6. The Data Challenge
For MemSQL CEO Nikita Shamgunov, data is the principal challenge. The data economy has shifted into a “decision economy” where the business that makes the best insight-driven decisions faster than its peers will gain a competitive edge. There are two data challenges in digital transformation journeys:

• Infrastructure - No matter what the next digital initiative is — AI, multi-cloud, streaming analytics or other emerging technologies — having the right infrastructure built to scale these modern applications will be key to digital transformation success.
• Information Management and Security - As enterprises advance in their digital transformation journeys, data centralization will be key to ensuring that the enterprise’s digital foundation is scalable for its business without compromising data management simplicity and security.

https://www.cmswire.com

Microsoft Rolls Out Edge Pay-As-You-Go Hardware, Compute, and Storage

Microsoft jumped onboard the compute-and-storage-box-for-data-at-the-edge train with its aptly named Azure Data Box Edge, which is now generally available.

It’s an 1U rack-mountable device designed for edge locations, but customers don’t buy the hardware. Instead it has a pay-as-you-go model like other Azure cloud services. And it comes with local compute, a built-in storage gateway (and the ability to automatically transfer data between the local device and Azure cloud storage), and an Intel Arria field programmable gate array (FPGA) built for machine learning.

It’s also cloud-managed, which is another key edge consideration. Customers can order the device and manage these capabilities remotely from the Azure portal.

If this all sounds familiar, it is. Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its edge storage and compute device, called AWS Snowball Edge, in 2016. It also includes on-board storage and compute, and it allows customers to transfer data between the edge and the AWS public cloud.

Microsoft previewed Data Box Edge at Ignite in September. Since then, customers including retail giant Kroger and location information software company Esri have trialed the edge device in different scenarios, wrote Dean Paron, general manager of Azure Data Box, in a blog post. “Data Box Edge can be racked alongside your existing enterprise hardware or live in non-traditional environments from factory floors to retail aisles,” he wrote.

For example, Sunrise Technology, a wholly owned division of Kroger, plans to use the edge server to improve its retail platform with new features such as at-shelf product recommendations, guided shopping, and other personalized shopping capabilities. Additionally, the device’s live video analytics can help store employees identify out-of-stock items more quickly.

And Esri is looking to use the edge device to help first responders in disconnected environments. The goal is to improve response effectiveness at wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters. “Data Box Edge will allow teams in the field to collect imagery captured from the air or ground and turn it into actionable information that provides updated maps.” Paron wrote. “The teams in the field can use updated maps to coordinate response efforts even when completely disconnected from the command center.”

https://www.sdxcentral.com/

IBM Taps Kubernetes to Unleash Watson Across Clouds

IBM is using Kubernetes to help unleash its Watson artificial intelligence (AI) platform to work across any cloud environment, including private, public, or hybrid multi-cloud environments. This expansion also includes support for cloud ecosystems powered by IBM rivals like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

The move will see Watson applications like Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale integrated with IBM’s Cloud Private (ICP) for Data and run as microservices using Kubernetes. This will allow for those microservices to be portable across the different infrastructure types and cloud ecosystems.

For IBM, the move allows it to broaden the reach of its Watson AI platform. It will also allow organizations to use the Watson platform to help analyze and manage data across all of their data sources.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty during a keynote at this week’s IBM Think event said the move makes Watson “the most open, scalable AI for business in the world.”

IBM launched its ICP platform in late 2017. It’s built on a Kubernetes-based container architecture and solidified IBM’s envelopment of Kubernetes.

The vendor early last year announced the ICP for Data extension. It allows companies to glean insight from their data resources on their way to supporting enterprise AI services. IBM has since been slowly layering in different Watson AI capabilities onto the platform, including Watson Speech-to-Text and Watson Assistant last year.

The Watson Assistant platform helps developers and non-technical users create conversational AI products, ranging from simple chatbots to complex enterprise-grade products for customer service. Watson OpenScale is IBM’s open AI platform for managing multiple AI instances.

The move could also boost IBM’s unique cloud positioning. A recent Synergy Research Group report found that IBM had lost market share among cloud infrastructure service providers during the fourth quarter of last year compared with the previous year. This made IBM the only cloud provider among the market’s five largest providers to post such a loss.

However, John Dinsdale, chief analyst at SRG, noted that IBM has a slightly different focus than its rivals “as it remains the strong leader in the hosted private cloud services segment of the market.”

Banco Santander Deal

In addition to expanding the reach of its Watson platform, IBM this week also announced a five-year, $700 million deal with Banco Santander to help the company update its IT architecture toward a hybrid cloud environment. The deal will see Santander use Watson to improve customer service and employee production.

Santander will work with IBM to enhance the bank’s recently created Cloud Competence Center. It will also use IBM’s DevOps and API Connect platforms to help develop, iterate, and launch new or upgraded applications.

IBM is working with a handful of banks on similar migrations, including ICBC Argentina, Lloyds Banking Group, and Royal Bank of Canada.

https://www.sdxcentral.com

Career Shift from a Tester to Business Analyst – A Step by Step Guide

A testing professional is required to thoroughly test the software developed to ensure if the software meets the end requirements of the customer.

A Business Analyst is also responsible to verify whether the software built and delivered meets the end customer requirements. This aspect of both the roles make it easier for a tester to switch to a business analyst role.

If BA and tester switch their roles, then each of them can unleash their skill sets which can benefit the project itself. When it comes to testing the software system, both tester, and BA work as two sides of the same coin.

Why Business Analysis?
Testing professional has a thorough knowledge and understanding of a software and its betterment along with the attention for minute details. This skill set opens the door for a tester into many roles in the IT industry today.

By having a good understanding of the development lifecycle and process, they can choose to become release manager, automation engineer, QA Strategist, solution architect, senior manager and of course business analyst.

Having said that, a career switch in business analysis is a much more promising one in today’s scenario. Business Analysis is a much larger role when compared to testing or any other roles mentioned above.

It’s a promising career avenue and a lucrative one too. A tester who loves to travel across the globe can really enjoy a challenging and satisfying BA role. A business analyst can further climb the ladder to become Lead/Senior Business Analyst, Consultants, Product Owners or Product Managers which are quite glamorous.

I strongly recommend Business Analysis as a career switch option for testing professionals if they have excellent analytical, documentation and communication skills, enjoy customer interaction, like a pinch of glamour in work profile and of course, love being a globetrotter.

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