10 Ways To Boost Cloud Performance
From block-and-file storage to AI-powered document processing to Kubernetes enrichment for log management, here are 10 offerings from tech’s dynamic cloud sector.
The coronavirus pandemic has proved an endorsement of the need for organizations to move to the cloud to maintain business continuity, service their customers and ensure their remote workforces remain connected and can access the right tools to stay productive.
The percentage of overall IT spending dedicated to cloud is expected to continue to increase at an accelerated pace post-pandemic, with Gartner forecasting that cloud spending will account for 14.2 percent of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1 percent this year.
Cloud providers, independent software vendors and solution providers continue to churn out new products and services to meet the rising demand and expand organizations’ cloud capabilities.
Here’s a look at 10 recent offerings from Amazon Web Services, Cockroach Labs, CyberArk, Google Cloud, HashiCorp, LogDNA, Microsoft Azure, NetApp, SkyKick and TriggerMesh that fit that bill.
Amazon Web Services Gateway Load Balancer
AWS’ Gateway Load Balancer is designed to make it easier and more cost-effective to deploy, scale and run third-party virtual appliances such as firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems and deep packet inspection systems on AWS. It provides a single gateway to distribute traffic across virtual appliances while scaling them based on demand to increase availability and eliminate potential points of network failure. It performs health checks on the virtual appliances and reroutes traffic flows when it discovers unhealthy ones.
Cockroach Labs CockroachDB 20.2
CockroachDB 20.2 is the latest version of Cockroach Labs’ cloud-native, distributed SQL database. It includes new capabilities for spatial data for net-new workloads for IoT, transportation and environmental applications; a new CockroachDB for Kubernetes option that packages the database with a custom operator optimized for orchestrated deployments; and the addition of enterprise backup-and-restore functionality to the free community option. The release extends CockroachDB’s TPC-C Benchmark performance up to 140,000 warehouses with a maximum throughput of 1.7 million transactions per minute, a 40 percent improvement over the past year, according to the company.
CyberArk Cloud Entitlements Manager
The cloud-agnostic CyberArk Cloud Entitlements Manager is a privilege-based, artificial intelligence-powered service designed to strengthen the security of cloud environments by removing excessive cloud permissions. It continuously detects hidden, misconfigured and unused cloud permissions to improve security through a least-privilege, zero-trust approach. It features a centralized dashboard with a single view of permissions across Amazon Web Services—including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service— Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure environments.
Google Cloud Document AI
Google Cloud’s serverless Document AI platform is a unified console for document processing that allows users to quickly access all of the cloud provider’s form, table and invoice parsers, tools and offerings—including Google Cloud’s Procurement DocAI and Lending DocAI—with a unified API. The document understanding offering uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to classify, extract and enrich data from scanned and digital documents at scale, including structured data from unstructured documents, making it easier to understand and analyze.
HashiCorp Waypoint
HashiCorp Waypoint is a new open-source project providing developers with a consistent workflow to build, deploy and release applications across any platform. It enables developers to get their applications from development to production in a single file and deploy them using a single command: waypoint up. Waypoint supports Kubernetes, HashiCorp Nomad, EC2, Google Cloud Run, Azure Container Instances, Docker and Buildpacks, among others. It can be extended with plugins to target any build/deploy/release logic.
LogDNA Kubernetes Enrichment
LogDNA’s new Kubernetes Enrichment for log management provides detailed insight into Kubernetes cluster environments. It’s designed to enhance existing application logs in LogDNA with Kubernetes events and resource metrics, empowering developers to resolve deployment issues without deep specialized knowledge of Kubernetes tooling. It provides development teams with a single-pane-of-glass observability experience between a user’s underlying Kubernetes infrastructure and deployed services.
Microsoft Cloud For Healthcare
Microsoft Cloud For Healthcare is designed to help health-care customers and partners deliver better patient experiences, insight and care while improving workflow efficiency, streamlining collaboration and connecting data across sources. It incorporates offerings from Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform in addition to partner health-care solutions. Its architecture has built-in governance and privacy capabilities supporting compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, HITRUST CSF and other regulatory requirements.
NetApp Spot Storage
Spot Storage by NetApp is a fully managed, continuously optimized block-and-file storage offering for cloud workloads. It automatically matches storage volume size and performance to application requirements, using NetApp technology for volume shaping, thin provisioning, compression and deduplication to deliver storage volumes that reduce storage costs. It will be integrated with Spot optimization products including Ocean (for containers and Kubernetes) and Elastigroup (for virtual machines) to allow automated, application-driven storage and compute management.
SkyKick Cloud Manager
The new Cloud Manager is SkyKick’s next-generation no-code and low-code automation, workflow and management application designed to help IT service providers securely administer and manage their cloud customers across SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and devices. Features include Command Center, a help desk automation application to aid tier one support desks in resolving cloud tickets faster; and WorkBench, a lowcode workflow automation engine that enables admins to turn PowerShell into Command Center applications with a click.
Triggermesh Cloud Native Integration Platform 1.0
TriggerMesh Cloud Native Integration Platform 1.0 automates Kubernetes, cloud-native and on-premises infrastructures. The architecture-agnostic, production-ready SaaS offering allows users to integrate services, automate workflows and build event-driven applications out of any on-premises application or cloud service. Features include a declarative API, event transformation to forward events from one format to another, and new bridges to automate infrastructure and bridge workflows between Salesforce, OracleDB, Zendesk, Datadog, Oracle Cloud Security Logs, Splunk and others.