Month: November 2015

Cloud computing could be perceived as the greatest business tool since the Internet began, or possibly even since the first computer made its way into an office. By eliminating infrastructure and hardware costs and introducing easy, global access to systems, applications and data, it has created a change in the way an everyday business works.

But cloud computing isn’t without its risks. Security remains a key talking point and there are cost considerations to be had. It may be cheaper than setting up your own server hardware, but depending on the servers you use, costs can still be high and in some cases bills might be more than you were expecting.

And what about the Internet? What happens if your Internet stops working for a day? It’s been known to happen. Worse still, depending on the sort of Internet you pay for, it might take a few days to fix.

But despite the risks and worries of cloud computing there are several ways to reduce the overall business risk.

1) Security 

Security is one of the top reasons a business won’t adopt the cloud. However, there are a few things you can do to tighten up your Internet security to ensure not everyone can access your cloud servers and information.

Web applications that are being accessed from multiple places by multiple people are a risk because they have lots of potential entry points for a hacker. What if a user is logging into the application whilst using an unsecure network in a café? Layered security can help with this. The addition of two-factor authentication that needs more than just a password can help to stop unwanted guests on your cloud servers.

Education is also a great way to reduce risk when using the cloud. Make sure people using the cloud servers understand the risks that go with it and how they can avoid security risks. Simple things like not logging into the service or application on an unsecured network or clicking links in phishing emails.

It may even be the case of communicating to anyone using these cloud servers to consider the type of information that they’re storing on these servers – how sensitive is this data? Ultimately, you should avoid placing sensitive data in the cloud i.e. customer’s personal details, unless absolutely necessary.

2) Cost

For some, adopting the cloud is a way to reduce costs. For others, the cloud is better than the alternative computing options and cost isn’t as much of a consideration. Either way, it can be seen as a business risk.

It becomes a risk when companies pay for more than what they need, over-provision and get stung by higher costs than originally calculated.

But there are ways to avoid paying for more than what you need. Research first! Don’t jump in headfirst and get the largest server you think you can afford, it’s a waste. Depending on your needs, do your research and consider the best option and save yourself some money.

The business risk that is a bit harder to reduce is receiving higher bills than you expected. To use an example, when you spin up a new Amazon EC2 server on an on-demand basis, you are charged by the hour. Now it might be easy to think that this is per hour of usage, and technically it is, but it’s your job to make sure the server is switched off when not in use, and that’s a little more complicated than just not using it.

It’s common for a company to spin up a server and leave it running for the couple of months they’re using it (possibly for testing applications) but then receive a large bill they weren’t expecting.

The way to reduce this risk is to use one of the tools out there that help schedule or automate the switching off of servers. Cloud Machine Manager does exactly this with the added benefit of an on/off switch for each server you’re using, making it fully on-demand.

3) Network Dependency

You can’t control how well your Internet works. It’s just the unfortunate nature of being provided a service that you pretty much rely on. The Internet becomes a business risk when it comes to the cloud because it’s the house in which the cloud lives in. No Internet, no cloud.

How do you reduce a risk that isn’t in your control? Buy better Internet. Or, at least make sure your Internet provider can provide what you need. Business broadband can be great for some, but isn’t necessarily the answer if you’re relying completely on the Internet. A broadband package doesn’t necessarily have service level agreements and that means when something goes wrong, there isn’t a rush to fix it.

Dedicated or leased lines usually come with service level agreements that say service will be repaired in a number of hours if it’s down, rather than days. They also provide a solid service that isn’t contended with other businesses locally.

You may not be able to fix the Internet, but you can invest in a more reliable service.

Business risks put people off investing in the cloud, but as long as you plan your investment and think about what could go wrong, there are always ways to reduce the risk.

So now you have an understanding of ways to reduce the business risk of cloud computing, how about some information on a useful tool that actually does this? Cloud Machine Manager is a new software tool that allows you to schedule, automate and instantaneously switch on and off AWS EC2 servers. By having on-demand control of when your servers are switched on and off, you can save a heap of cash.

Check out the savings estimator to see how much you can save with Cloud Machine Manager.

As a business owner, managing the growth of your organization is tough. There’s a lot of decisions to make that are only compounded by budgetary constraints. Every business tool seems like a good idea but eventually the costs of new software mount up and the efficiency and productivity of the business hasn’t changed.

But that’s where Amazon Web Services makes things a lot easier with cloud computing.

Cloud computing has developed over the last decade to become a mainstream business tool. This isn’t surprising given the range of benefits of cloud computing, including a reduction in capital costs, reduced spending on technology and streamlining processes – all benefits that can increase the efficiency and productivity of the business.

So here’s 3 ways that you can grow your business with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

1) Reduce Costs/Flexible Server Usage

One of the benefits of provisioning servers with AWS is that you can run servers for a low cost, based on Amazon’s ability to achieve huge economies of scale. And with Amazon’s multi-tiered pricing structure, you can pick the right server and pricing package that suits your organization’s budget and business growth needs.

Provisioning servers with AWS allows you to avoid the hassle and expense of having to purchase servers in-house, which can take weeks to get set up.

So with AWS you can use the cost savings to reinvest in other areas of your business, helping you to grow. This is especially great for start-ups who need to spend their capital wisely.

Growing your business with Amazon Web Services can also be achieved through scalability in server usage. One of the problems when developing a new application is that you don’t always know how customers will react to your application and the potential adoption rates of the application. This then makes it difficult to decide just how much server capacity you need to support your application.

But with Amazon Web Services, you have the power to scale your server usage up or down, depending on the needs of your testing/application development. So as your application gains popularity, you can scale up the amount of servers you are using to run the application. And with this flexibility in server provisioning, you can save a whole lot of money, which can be used to reinvest in other areas of your business.

2) Customer Outreach

As your business grows, you may want to broaden your customer base and reach out to customers far and wide, including globally. One of the reasons many organizations don’t do this is because of the costs of trying to deliver a good customer experience to a distributed customer base.

But AWS doesn’t let customers’ geographical distribution hold you back. Amazon Web Services’ global infrastructure extends across 9 regions and within each region there are a series of availability zones where you can launch EC2 instances.

This means that you can deploy your application to customers globally whilst providing a great customer experience with low latency.

3) Support for Start-Ups

For start-ups, it’s not easy to achieve growth in your business and it can take a lot longer than you would like. That’s why Amazon Web Services provide special perks for start-ups to help you get going with your business.

For example, one of the perks of AWS for start-ups is AWS Activate. AWS Activate is a program that helps start-ups to learn about Amazon Web Services and how they can be used to help your business grow. This includes training sessions on how AWS affects cost management.

Another service of AWS that is beneficial for start-ups is AWS Mobile Hub. AWS Mobile Hub provides start-ups with a fast way to build mobile applications, allowing you to configure features such as data storage and backend logic.

And once you’ve finished building your application, AWS Mobile Hub allows you to test on real devices and assess their performance using an analytics dashboard. Ultimately, AWS Mobile Hub is a quick way to develop and monitor apps, without the hassle of managing an entire infrastructure.

So there you have it. Three ways that you can grow your business with AWS;

• Take advantage of AWS’ economies of scale to reduce your IT costs and use the savings to reinvest in other areas of your business.
• With AWS’ global presence, you can provide a great customer experience to customers worldwide, giving you the confidence to expand your customer base.
• With AWS’ perks for start-ups, you can achieve growth in your business without the hassle of dealing with a large infrastructure.

What’s really cool about AWS is that their servers are compatible with a number of software tools out there that can help you to save even more money on your AWS bills. One of these tools is Cloud Machine Manager, the server on/off switch that gives you on-demand control of when your AWS EC2 servers are active. With Cloud Machine Manager, you can save a whole lot of money which can be used to reinvest in other areas of the business, or even more servers!

To see how much money you can save with Cloud Machine Manager, check out the savings estimator.

Why automate my servers?

Are you a developer irritated by slow server speeds? Looking to boost your productivity through AWS automation? Then get ready to win-over your manager, with our quick guide on how to speak their language.

Firstly, let’s quickly recap on why some businesses decide to invest in AWS automation. From start-ups right through to large multinationals, automation is often used as a way to reduce wastage and increase resources with cloud-based PaaS or IaaS organisations, either as part of a planned process, or (more likely) a new decision made after a surprisingly large AWS bill. However, the root-causes of a big bill can be summarised as:

1. Over provisioning – scalability concerns create a surplus of resources
2. Demand fluctuation – servers remain idle after usage without purpose

At the same time, you’ve probably experienced slow server response time during peak demand and a lack of flexible control generally – whilst any requests for a faster server have been ignored by your line manager. This is understandable if you see that your manager (and perhaps their manager), will attribute the cost overheads to the spend on underutilised and inactive servers.

How can AWS automation help?

AWS automation looks to improve these issues by switching off servers when idle capacity is identified, and adjusting them to changes in demand-fluctuation. The benefits of this allow businesses to control the usage of their servers more effectively and subsequently save money and support long term cost-efficiency.

More specifically, automation allows a manager to program when a server should turn on or off – for example outside of normal office hours. This minimises unnecessary costs accrued from idle server time, whilst improving server speeds that benefit project progression.

Automation helps you as a developer because it allows you to spin-up your servers to provide more power, have more flexible management, and generate savings that could go towards funding a faster server.

Businesses can perform server automation through several different methods. Amazon themselves have additional software available to address this, but there’s also range of third-party software that delivers the same dedicated functionality.

Why should my manager listen?

Server automation makes for a compelling argument: it can help towards the completion of the business goals faster and more efficiently. But for any new procedure, what a manager requires more than anything is a clear business case.

Most likely your boss is an I.T manager/head of department, who themselves report to the CEO/business owner. They are probably aware of their increased AWS bill, but for them to support automation, we firstly need to understand their areas of concern, and communicate the benefits to them. So what are these points?

Cost Reduction: Managers are always looking to reduce their expenditure, free-up resources and support reinvestment. Yet, critically, they require the tools to provide control, clarity, and monitor such transactions.

Time Scarcity: In short – they need more of it, and proposed solutions need to work first time, and autonomously. They likely won’t have the time to research these areas as much as you can.

Project Completion: This is the end-goal for any manager; to deliver projects on-time and on-budget. Alongside the valuable factors above, any solution they consider must also work to reduce risk, integrate well with current systems, and be easily adopted by staff (and themselves!).

Great – but how do I convince them?

The easiest way to convince your manager of the need for server automation is by gathering enough relevant materials to ease their areas of concern. By doing so, we’re helping to educate your manager about the benefits of automation, lowering their knowledge barrier, and making it easier for them to agree! You can start to prepare these materials in a number of ways. For example:

#1) Use a savings estimator against your current usage rates, and quantify how much you could be saving now and in the future. If you don’t know this information, perhaps ask your colleagues and start recording your usage rates (you may be shocked).

#2) What do managers like more than potential results? Seeing how well it has worked for others. Case studies, whitepapers, and videos are a great resource to add to your arsenal. If you can’t find the information you need on the internet, try calling and contacting those providers directly. Most organisations will gladly provide you with the information you need to take a proposal forward.

#3) Cherry-pick a handful of suggested solutions – and do the homework for them. However, make sure to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, with a clear knowledge of pricing structures and integration time. Such solutions might also provide a free-trial, allowing you to test their effectiveness.

Keep in mind, server automation doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and is actually just a small part of the larger AWS efficiency argument. Try to predict their concerns, and prepare answers on expanded topics such as AWS on-demand access, server scheduling, interface ease-of-use, and cost reporting. All of which co-exist and support the rollout of automation.

Getting started

When you’re ready to communicate the benefits of automation to your manager, perhaps you should consider the following software – Cloud Machine Manager (CMM). A server management tool with automation and a range of other features, which works to reduce your EC2 bills and deliver real AWS cost savings by up to 90%

To start collecting your materials – try using our savings estimator!

If you don’t work directly with Amazon EC2 services, there is a good chance you don’t know a huge amount about them, but then again, why would you need to know about them if you don’t work with them?

Maybe you are responsible for signing off on the purchase of Amazon Web Services or maybe your business is considering the use of Amazon EC2 servers and you need to know a bit more about them. 

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering and provides scalable computing capacity. It enables businesses to spin up compute services and start adding their own applications to the cloud services for production or testing, without the need for the hardware.

Amazon EC2 was launched in 2006 when AWS was still relatively new and is still a large part of the AWS offering. The functionality and pay-as-you-go nature of EC2 servers benefits businesses, as they don’t have to acquire expensive hardware for the sake of running some application tests.

Scalability is also a selling point for Amazon when it comes to EC2 as users can upgrade their servers or spin up new instances (an instance is a virtual computing environment) as they need. This in turn can lead to faster development and deployment of new applications and services.

It is also possible to scale down, for example when a business is coming up to the end of an application build process, they might reduce the number of servers they are using for testing as some are no longer needed.

Different EC2 Instance Types

Different businesses have different computing needs and Amazon EC2 caters for this with multiple types of EC2 Instance types you can spin up.   

• General Purpose Instances

General Purpose Instances come in three variations: T2, M4 and M3.

T2 instances are ‘Burstable Performance Instances’ that offer base level CPU performance but with the ability to go above or ‘burst through’ the base level. These types of servers are commonly used for web servers, developer environments, small databases and other services that don’t require the full CPU consistently.

M4 instances are based on custom Intel processors and offer fixed performance to users with resources that provide a high level of consistent processing performance, but on a low-cost platform. They are great for applications that require balanced CPU and memory performance.

M3 instances also provide a fixed performance and are mainly used for applications that require balanced CPU and memory performance. For example: coding, content management systems and enterprise applications might rely on M3 instances.

• Compute Optimised Instances

Compute Optimised Instances consist of 2 server types: C4 and C3.

Both C4 and C3 instances are designed for compute-intensive applications. C4 instances in particular are designed to offer the highest level of compute performance that EC2 has to offer.

• GPU Instances

GPU Instances were a later addition to the Amazon EC2 offering having been launched in 2013. The G2 instances provide graphics processing units (GPUs) coupled with high CPU and network performance. They are designed for applications that use 3D Graphics, rendering and media processing applications.

• Memory Optimised Instances

Memory Optimised Instances deliver large memory sizes that might be used by memory reliant applications such as scientific computing, databases or analytics solutions. They come in the form of R3 servers.

• Storage Optimised Instances

Storage Optimised Instances provide very high disk I/O performance or proportionally higher storage density per instance. I2 and D2 servers ensure that applications that benefit from high sequential I/O performance across large datasets can run properly. These instances also provide high levels of CPU, memory and network preferences.

See more information here about the different types of EC2 instances.

For all of you visual people out there, check out this infographic for a breakdown of the history of the development of AWS EC2.

Pricing Options

Depending on what a business needs Amazon EC2 services for, there are different pricing options from pay-as-you-go type options to yearly contract type pricing.

On-Demand Instances:

On-Demand Instances are effectively pay-as-you-go. You pay a set price by the hour for the services you need. The idea behind this is that you only pay for what you use and you aren’t tied into long-term costs, which can be great if you’re only running a test environment for a few months.

Reserved Instances:

Reserved Instances provide you with a capacity reservation for the servers you need. A business might choose this option if there are going to be running applications for a longer period of time as it can offer significant discounts.

There are three ways to pay for reserved instances; the first is an All Upfront Option in which you pay for the entire reserved instance. The second is a Partial Upfront Option in which you pay some upfront and the rest on a discounted hourly rate. The final way to pay for reserved instances is through the No Upfront Option in which you pay a discounted hourly rate for the duration of the reserved instance.

Spot Instances:

Spot Instances are slightly different as they allow you to bid for unused Amazon EC2 capacity. They’re usually cheaper as instances are charged the spot price, which is set by Amazon EC2. You can request a Spot Instance based on what you want to run and the max price you want to pay per instance hour.

Find out more about Amazon EC2 Pricing here.

Making a decision on new cloud tools and servers can be tricky, especially if you’re an FD who doesn’t work on the technical side and might not know as much about what each instance or server does.

It is worth noting that whilst On-Demand Instances are great for testing environments, businesses can get stung by higher than expected AWS costs. This is actually the result of the servers being left on for the entirety of a project or build. But there are tools out there that can help you to avoid incurring such high AWS costs, one of which is Cloud Machine Manager. Cloud Machine Manager is a tool that allows ease of control over switching your servers on and off to save money on your AWS bills.

You can learn more about how it works here.

Within the dynamic role of a business owner, knowing how well your Amazon Web Services (AWS) is performing should be a small but important part of your overall management responsibility. As such, ideally you need to understand the importance of server efficiency, and how it can affect your overall objectives for business growth.

So when members of your I.T and financial teams raise questions about poor server speed, wasteful management, and a lack of available budget for new hardware, you should strive to be on the same page in terms of understanding both the financial and technical pressures – especially, as the decisions you make might contain a level of investment, risk, and perhaps a change in server procedures!

Why the need for AWS learning?

Sometimes when an AWS issue arises, you might receive an unclear description of the problem from your I.T manager, along with a recommended solution. Yet, if you don’t have the background knowledge to understand these issues, or haven’t had AWS explained to you, it’s likely that any suggestion involving a solution like server Automation, Scheduling, or On-Demand control, won’t mean much to you.

Sometimes, you need to understand it for yourself.

For beginners new to AWS, the seemingly overwhelming amount of technical knowledge required to understand ‘The Cloud’ might seem daunting, but it needn’t be with the right support. So to contribute meaningfully to the wider conversation with your team, sometimes it means hitting the books. Or in our case, the internet.

To help you through this, we’ve already done some of the hard work, and curated a specialised AWS resources list (below), for beginners like you. So we’ll save you from wasting valuable time on unproductive internet searches, and quickly bring you up-to-speed on all things Cloud related.

Our Top 3 AWS Resources:

#1 Articles

The majority of AWS knowledge available on the web is mostly produced in article formats, so it’s also a great place to start as a beginner. You just need to know where to look.

A great ‘grass-roots’ article that we’d recommend is “The Beginners Guide to the Cloud”, from Mashable – a popular website that specialises in digital news content. However, while Mashable isn’t exactly a go-to resource for extended cloud information, this article does a fantastic job of clearly explaining what the cloud is.

For more in-depth reading, your next stop should be visiting specialised Cloud websites such as TechTarget, and Cloud Pro, both providing comprehensive resources for AWS information, with up-to-date news, cloud analysis, and a selection of in-depth case studies.

Latterly, Amazon themselves also provide some relevant content, which evidently leans their way, but nonetheless is a worthwhile destination for anything AWS related. So, in addition to reading though these suggested resources, perhaps try some of your own searches, and explore the results.

#2 Videos

For all you visual learners, AWS video tutorials offer a great alternative to written copy. Unsurprisingly though, YouTube remains the best place to find content, with a large amount of accessible and content rich videos available for AWS beginners.

In this regard, the frequently updated and official ‘Amazon Web Services’ channel produces some great content here. With two videos in particular – “What is Cloud Computing?” and “What is Amazon Web Services?” providing simple and easy to understand introductions into the AWS field.

An alternative to Amazon that we also recommend is CBT Nuggets – specialists in online training for system admins, DevOps and network engineers. They have an exceptional popular channel with over 75k subscribers (23k more than Amazon), and amongst producing other video tutorials, have a great playlist dedicated solely to AWS. Try viewing their video “What is AWS?” for a different explanation of the system.

#3 Podcasts

Lastly, the third suggestion in our AWS resources list are podcasts, perfect for supplementing the information you have gained above. Podcasts are a fantastic medium for passive learning, consumable on the go, and great for keeping yourself (and your I.T team) up-to-date.

In particular, the Cloud Computing Weekly by David S. Linthicum – a thought leader within the cloud industry, has an accumulation of 62 broadcasts, focusing on all things Cloud and an invaluable resource for boosting your knowledge.

Additionally, the Enterprise Initiatives podcast from Mike Kavis – a principal architect at Cloud Technology partners, covers some more in-depth topics such as DevOps, PaaS, and the IoT, but nonetheless offers great information when you’re ready for it. These podcasts are also available through both SoundCloud and iTunes, so there’s no reason to miss out.

AWS Explained

If you’re now feeling more confident about AWS, and looking to grasp the larger issues at hand, then take a look at Cloud Machine Manager (CMM). An on-demand software tool that automates and schedules server activity, for cloud cost-efficiency, and flexible control from a single to hundreds of servers.

The pace at which we’ve come to regard cloud technologies as an everyday utility is staggering. But the combination of maturing technology and market dynamics is driving further change in the way the cloud operates, with particular developments in on-demand cloud computing.

On-demand computing is a broad category that includes concepts such as grid computing, utility computing, autonomic computing, and adaptive management. So what do cloud customers actually expect from a true on-demand service – and is there anything out there that fits the bill?

So what’s happening in on-demand cloud computing?

To date, on-demand computing has mainly focused on automation software, scheduling software, and scalability management. And these features are heavily associated with reducing costs of server usage as well as wasted server usage. Specifically, many cloud users may not realise that when servers are not in use, they’re still switched on.

This means that cloud users are paying for servers they’re not actually using and for which they are incurring unnecessary fees.

This is where apps that can provide better control of servers are coming into their own, particularly for smaller companies with limited manpower or technical resources.

So if we start with automation, servers can be automatically turned off based on low usage rates, meaning you would no longer incur unnecessary costs for unused servers.

In a similar fashion, scheduling can provide the same benefits, although you would need to manually programme servers to be active for particular periods of time. For example, if an organization only needed servers to be on between the hours of 9-5, then servers could be scheduled to be active for these particular hours.

Scheduling allows end users to plan ahead and tailor their cloud server usage to their day-to-day activities and usually includes some level of automation. Ultimately, this means you avoid both wastage server usage and unnecessary costs.

But scheduling server activity is nothing new and is widely available.

So let’s go one step further. Imagine if in addition to automating and scheduling server activity, you could turn your servers on and off instantaneously, just for when they were needed and for no longer?

Such are the potential savings from switching virtual servers off when they are not required that products that enable real time on-demand scheduling are rapidly being developed for the marketplace. In fact, many industry experts expect on-demand computing to become the most popular cloud computing model within the next few years.

Real time, on-demand control

Having such real-time, on-demand control of server on/off states would provide significant cost savings, as well as working flexibility. For example, it would enable late-working employees to have servers turn on to finish up their work, and turn off again when they leave the premises.

On-demand control of cloud servers also provides huge benefits when it comes to testing and development. Speed and agility in the testing environment is paramount to ensuring products are developed quickly to enable a short time to market. However, in efforts to achieve speed, flexibility and convenience in cloud computing, the corresponding increase in AWS server costs usually dents enthusiasm. But with on-demand control of cloud servers, the potential to achieve huge cost savings opens up the possibility to reinvest in provisioning bigger and better servers. So for no extra cost, developers can achieve a more agile and flexible testing environment.

But do products like this exist that can provide all of these services in one app – automation, scheduling and on-demand control?

Actually, there is – and we believe it is the first web app to enable real time on-demand control of servers that can be utilised by non-technical staff once it’s customised to the needs of the company. And that product is Cloud Machine Manager.

Cloud Machine Manager uses Scheduling, Automation and a unique On-Demand feature to reduce AWS EC2 bills by anything up to 90%.

It’s currently only available to Amazon Web Services users, but this will change, says the company, as the service is rolled out.

Amazon are constantly making changes and updates to their web services. As Compute continues to be a big part of AWS, EC2 has it’s own huge list of updates and when you have a busy agenda of your own, it can be tricky to keep up with what’s going on.

For your convenience, here is a list of 5 AWS EC2 Updates that you might have missed in October.

1) EC2 Dedicated Hosts

In early October, Jeff Barr took to the AWS blog to introduce dedicated hosts for EC2.

In his blog, Jeff explains that the Dedicated Hosts model will “allow you to allocate an actual physical server (the Dedicated Host) and then launch one or more EC2 instances of a given type on it.”

Dedicated Hosts not only allows you to ‘Bring Your Own Licence’ (as Amazon call it) to the cloud to reduce costs, but also adds the benefit of being able to remain compliant with regulatory requirements you might have to adhere to.

2) The Introduction of Spot Instances for Specific Duration Workloads

Yes, it’s a mouthful, but it’s also a new addition to Amazon EC2 that allows you to request EC2 Spot instances for up to six hours continuously at a flat rate.

This should help you reduce costs when you’ve got tasks that will only take a certain duration, such as modelling, encoding and rendering and batch processing etc.

3) EC2 Container Service Update – Container Registry, ECS CLI, AZ-Aware Scheduling, and more

The EC2 Container service (which supports Docker containers and allows you to easily run applications on a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances) has had a few updates introduced in October but here are a few of the headlines:

a) Amazon EC2 Container Registry (Amazon ECR)

This is a fully managed registry that will address issues flagged up by the user community and will make it easier to store, manage, distribute and collaborate around Docker container images.

It will become available later this year and will be easy to integrate into your current set up.

b) Amazon EC2 Container Service CLI

ECS CLI is a command line interface for Container Service and it provides high-level commands that help to streamline the creation, updating and monitoring of clusters and tasks from a local dev environment.

c) Scheduling is Now Aware of Availability Zones

In Jeff Barr’s blog about these updates, he explains, “the service scheduler is availability zone aware. As new tasks are launched, the service scheduler will spread the tasks to maintain balance across AWS availability zones.”

4) AWS Lambda Supports Python & Versioning

This update means that you can now develop your AWS Lambda function code using Python. You can simply upload the Lambda Python code as a ZIP file using the AWS CLI or AWS Lambda console and AWS will take care of the rest.

In this update, it also possible to maintain multiple versions of your Lambda function code. This means you can easily control which function version is used in your different environments.

5) AWS SDK for Unity now supports AWS Lambda and Amazon Simple Email Service

Another mouthful – The AWS SDK for Unity now supports AWS Lambda. This means you can perform cloud functions from your games built on Unity without the need to provision infrastructure.

As well as this, the AWS SDK for Unity now also supports the Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) meaning you can send transactional emails from games built in Unity.

These are just some of the highlights of AWS EC2 updates in October and you can find out more about all of the many updates across AWS on their website.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to churn out new applications for enterprise, organizations often want to take advantage. But it’s not easy for DevOps teams to apply these developments into the business infrastructure, especially when you consider the huge integrations required.

IoT is estimated to create $19 trillion of value for companies in 2015, so it’s no wonder many organizations are quick to adopt IoT technology. It’s easy enough for management to demand this new technology, but it’s DevOps teams who have to do the hard work of integrating this technology into the organizational infrastructure.

So here’s 3 ways to overcome some common problems of IoT for DevOps teams.

1) Increase compatibility of IoT Devices

Management and DevOps don’t always see eye to eye, especially when management set goals that are pretty difficult for DevOps to achieve. This might include requests for particular types of information that customers want to see.

To attain this data, a lot of Internet of Things projects require the installation of controllers in manufacturing processes. The problem is that these controllers are physical hardware, and in IoT, hardware is pretty tough to upgrade.

It often starts with management hearing of a competitor employing a new controller device and so management just have to have one. It then comes down to DevOps to integrate this new device into the current system. But as you may have experienced, these devices don’t tend to be compatible with the current systems you use.

One way to get around this is to set up an R&D team that includes DevOps to work together in sourcing the right IoT technology that satisfies management and the overall IT function. This at least gives you the opportunity to seek out controllers with features that are compatible with your current systems.

2) Customizing IoT Devices

Another problem when it comes to Internet of Things devices, is the potential to customize these devices to provide specific data reports to customers. Although this may adhere to customer demands, customizing IoT devices is a time consuming and costly process.

So here’s the solution; customize as little as you possibly can. Keep the controller as standardized as possible, and when it comes to retrieving the data/reports collected from the controller, this information can be customized at the end of the process. The standardization of controllers also helps to side-step compatibility issues.

3) Optimize security for IoT Projects

The fact that IoT devices are connected through the internet poses the common technology problem of threats to security and privacy. But there are some solutions to consider.

The first step to overcoming security threats is to think about the types of information that IoT devices will be working with. Is it sensitive data such as customers’ personal information? If so, you may want to reconsider whether this data should really be handled by IoT devices.

If your IoT devices really do need to be working with sensitive data, then a more practical solution is to organically build security into your IoT devices and software, whilst consistently applying security updates. Building an encryption into the IoT application wouldn’t go amiss either, as it affords yet another layer of protection.

So as much as IoT presents DevOps with a few challenges, there are a number of solutions out there.

• Working with R&D to get the right IoT technology enables you to eliminate, or at least reduce the chances of compatibility issues with your current system.
• Keeping customization of IoT devices to a minimum help to keep costs down, but also avoids compatibility issues.
• Building security into IoT devices and combining this with encryption can also reduce the risk of security threats when it comes to handling sensitive data.