Software Testing / Quality Assurance

Software Testing Demo by ECC [ EITACIES COMPETENCE CENTER] Team @ EITACIES

Course Content: http://eitacies.com/index.php?mainid=6&tid=43

Register: http://eitacies.com/trainings-studentregistration

Careers: http://eitacies.com/company-currentopportunities

Big Data – What is it ?

What is big data?

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data.

Big data spans three dimensions: Volume, Velocity and Variety.

Volume: Enterprises are awash with ever-growing data of all types, easily amassing terabytes—even petabytes—of information.

• Turn 12 terabytes of Tweets created each day into improved product sentiment analysis
• Convert 350 billion annual meter readings to better predict power consumption

Velocity: Sometimes 2 minutes is too late. For time-sensitive processes such as catching fraud, big data must be used as it streams into your enterprise in order to maximize its value.

• Scrutinize 5 million trade events created each day to identify potential fraud
• Analyze 500 million daily call detail records in real-time to predict customer churn faster

Variety: Big data is any type of data – structured and unstructured data such as text, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more. New insights are found when analyzing these data types together.

• Monitor 100’s of live video feeds from surveillance cameras to target points of interest
• Exploit the 80% data growth in images, video and documents to improve customer satisfaction

Big data is more than simply a matter of size; it is an opportunity to find insights in new and emerging types of data and content, to make your business more agile, and to answer questions that were previously considered beyond your reach. Until now, there was no practical way to harvest this opportunity. Today, IBM’s platform for big data uses state of the art technologies including patented advanced analytics to open the door to a world of possibilities.

There will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

We at EITAcies exploring the strategies and technologies to bring the Big Data Platform to the Enterprise

Top 5 Questions Asked by CloudSwitch Customers

New CloudSwitch customers and prospects are coming up to speed every week and there are a number of questions that show up frequently enough that I thought it would be helpful to cover them in a blog. When we work with customers, our goal is to make their experience getting started in the cloud fast and easy, and to make sure they feel comfortable with the ongoing simplicity and security of the CloudSwitch model.

Here are their top 5 questions:

1. How do I move applications to the cloud?

CloudSwitch literally makes moving an application to the cloud a simple drag-and-drop operation. A virtual machine (or group of VMs) is selected from a VM location (vCenter,ESX machine, or CIFS share) in the CloudSwitch user interface, the target public cloud region/zone/location is selected, and the machine is moved over a secure tunnel to the cloud.  Storage for the virtual machine in the cloud is automatically allocated and encrypted, and keys are kept under the customer’s control.

Virtual machines that are moved to the cloud retain their MAC and IP addresses, since the CloudSwitch appliance acts as a layer-2 bridge allowing these machines to appear as if they are running in the data center behind your firewall.

2. What applications should I move to the cloud?

A wide variety of apps are good candidates to be moved to the cloud.  As Ellen Rubin blogged about recently, legacy applications are certainly great candidates for offloading from your internal data centers. Web servers and web applications like SharePoint, .NET, J2EE/SOA, Drupal, WordPress, Wikis, corporate intranets, or batch processing applications are all good candidates as well.

When selecting applications for the cloud, you need to be aware of latency between the data center and the cloud. Latency is a function of physical distance between the data center and the cloud region you’ve selected. For instance, a data center on the East Coast in the US should see around 20ms latency between the various public cloud regions on the East Coast.

Select applications and place them in closest proximity to the virtual machines and data center services that are accessed most by these applications. For instance, a web application that utilizes a database heavily may perform best if the web tier and the database are both deployed to the same cloud and region.  A web application that utilizes a database infrequently and caches results may perform well with the database in the data center and the web tier in the cloud.

3. What changes to my network do I have to make to use CloudSwitch?

Minimal. Outbound port 443 to the Internet has to be opened for the CloudSwitch appliance to create a secure encrypted connection to the cloud. This is outbound traffic only, nothing inbound. There are no changes to your network configurations.

The CloudSwitch appliance requires promiscuous mode and forged transmits set to “Allow” on the Virtual Switch or Port Group for the network adapter assigned to CloudSwitch in your virtual environment. For more information, check out this blog article on networking and ESX.

4. Can I get a virtual physical console to my machine in the cloud?

Yes. CloudSwitch provides a virtual console accessible from the CloudSwitch user interface via a browser that allows you to interact with the base system to make network changes or other tasks one might perform at a physical console. Access to this console can be secured to specific users or groups using Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) in the CloudSwitch user interface.

5. Can I allow traffic from the Internet reach my machines in the cloud directly as opposed to going through my corporate firewall?

Yes, CloudSwitch supplies a cloud firewall that allows you to assign a public IP to a virtual machine and control access to VMs in the cloud from the Internet

Blended Cloud Environments – A Financial Services Use Case

One of the most interesting trends in cloud computing is the emergence of “hybrid” solutions which span environments that were historically isolated from one another.  A traditional data center offers finite capacity in support of business applications, but it is ultimately limited by obvious constraints (physical space, power, cooling, etc.).  Virtualization has extended the runway a bit, effectively increasing density within the data center, however the physical limits remain. Cloud computing opens the door to huge pools of computing capacity worldwide.  This “infinite” capacity is proving tremendously compelling to IT organizations, providing on-demand access to resources to meet short and long-term needs.  The emerging challenge is integration—combining these disparate environments to provide a seamless and secure platform for computing services.  CloudSwitch provides a software solution that allows users to extend a data center environment into the public cloud securely without modification of workloads or network configurations.  I’d like to discuss a specific example of how CloudSwitch delivered a solution which spanned environments in a corporate data center and external cloud.

A large financial services company approached us some time ago with an ambitious plan to leverage cloud computing as a strategic initiative within the organization.  Their goals were to reduce operating costs, improve responsiveness to the various business units, and differentiate themselves within the industry through technological innovation.  Security was a fundamental requirement and a number of risk assessment groups were involved throughout the design and evaluation phases of the engagement.  Finally, this company also wanted to leverage a traditional colo environment from their cloud vendor to provide high-speed access to shared storage while also supporting their traffic monitoring equipment.  After a period of technical diligence, we established a reference architecture which satisfied all internal security requirements while remaining true to the fundamental goal of moving to a dynamic cloud environment. The result was a true realization of the hybrid model.

In the customer’s reference architecture, there are three primary components:

1. Internal data center environment hosting the CloudSwitch Appliance (CSA)
2. Private colo environment hosting the CloudSwitch Instance (CSI) and CloudSwitch Datapath (CSD) as well as shared storage for cloud instances
3. Public cloud environment hosting customer workloads

The CloudSwitch Appliance is deployed into the customer’s data center environment to allow central management of one or more colo environments.  Each of these environments supports an isolated cloud deployment, for example for a particular business unit. CloudSwitch’s virtual switch and bridge components are implemented for high-speed connectivity between cloud servers and shared storage.  Finally, the public cloud environment is used to host actual customer workloads (operating systems).  Network communication and local storage are protected through CloudSwitch’s secure overlay network and transparent disk encryption functionality.

This approach yields several benefits:

• Multiple instances of this dedicated environment can be independently deployed to support different business units
• High-speed access to the enterprise cloud environment is available since the colo environment is physically located in the same facility
• Physical infrastructure can be deployed into the colo environment in support of cloud servers—for example, shared storage devices
• Dedicated firewalls can be deployed and traffic inspection is possible, satisfying the security groups’ requirements

Use Business Intelligence Efficiency to Drive Business Results

Profitable growth is a business objective held by nearly every company. After all, higher revenues don’t help much if they don’t come with sufficient margins. But, this goal can be difficult to reach. Competition is stiff, and a recovering economic environment is clouded by memories of the difficult conditions caused by the recession. So, how can you invest in growth without committing too much capital—and assuming too much risk? Well, the answers are already sitting inside your company. Use SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI to learn more about your business.

The challenge most companies have right now, when it comes to finding insights into how they do business, is efficiency. The reports that would be most useful tend to be time-consuming, and thus costly, to prepare. Rather than have an already lean staff take on these projects, they are often skipped completely, in favor of higher-priority activities. It’s a costly decision in terms of future opportunities, but there isn’t always much of a choice: your employees need to keep the business running.

The efficiency supported by SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI changes this.

Reports that currently take hours, or even days, to assemble can be prepared in minutes with SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI. Not only does this put information in your company’s hands faster, it accelerates analysis and decision-making, as well as attendant ROI. The operational efficiency that comes from being able to access your company’s various systems from a single source, pull them into a consistent and manageable report, and automate distribution lowers the costs associated with business intelligence, expanding the ROI that can be generated.

Efficient business intelligence enables your company to make smarter decisions, faster—and at a lower cost. With SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI, you can cut the time and overhead associated with locating and using company insights to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The goal is profitable growth, and streamlined business intelligence will help you get there.

Behind the Name EITACIES

EITACIES INC, The Enterprise Information Technology Edge,  was an organization founded by team of  IT professionals. with a vision to grow, expand services  in Information Technology  reach out to more people and help the global community.

Behind the name, EITAcies:-EIT stands for Enterprise Information Technology; Acies is a Greek word for Skillful Edge. For skilled professionals ask EITAcies, the edge where we bring skill with the experience.

EITAcies provides solutions to the customers to manage, change and transform their business challenges through high-quality and cost-effective business/Enterprise IT services. We are experts in providing high impact custom software development, integration, deployment and implementation services in the domain of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Data warehousing, Mobile and Wireless Systems, and Web Services. We help our clients gain competitive advantage by using Service Oriented technologies to make their businesses more agile, reduce implementation and integration expenses, increase assets reuse and reduce business risk and exposure.

Cheers!

EITAcies  , Enterprise Information Technology Edge

IT Consulting | College Recruiting | Career Edge| Online & Corporate Training