Category Archives: Cloud

Google Professional Cloud Database Engineer Exam

Google Cloud Platform GCP is Fastest growing Public cloud. Professional Cloud Database engineer certification is the one which help you to advance your career in Cloud Computing & learn about different offering by GCP in database.

Do you want to learn about the how to store terabyte to petabytes scale data in a structured or semi structured manner inside GCP environment .
You want to learn where YouTube & Gmail kind of billion user app store their data.
Do you want to learn about database which can handle billion of request in a second.
Do you want to learn about different Google cloud database product like cloud SQL, spanner, datastore, firestore, bigtable, alloydb.
If yes, You are at right place.
Cloud is the future and GCP is Fastest growing Public cloud.
87 percentage of Google Cloud certified individuals are more confident about their cloud skills.
More than 1 in 4 of Google Cloud certified individuals took on more responsibility or leadership roles at work.
Google Cloud Professional Database Engineer Certification is the best to invest time and energy to enhance your knowledge about GCP Database.

Professional Cloud Database Engineer
A Professional Cloud Database Engineer is a database professional with two years of Google Cloud experience and five years of overall database and IT experience. The Professional Cloud Database Engineer designs, creates, manages, and troubleshoots Google Cloud databases used by applications to store and retrieve data. The Professional Cloud Database Engineer should be comfortable translating business and technical requirements into scalable and cost-effective database solutions.

The Professional Cloud Database Engineer exam assesses your ability to:
Design scalable and highly available cloud database solutions
Manage a solution that can span multiple database solutions
Migrate data solutions
Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud

About this certification exam
Length: 2 hours
Registration fee: $200 (plus tax where applicable)
Language: English
Exam format: 50-60 multiple choice and multiple select questions

Exam Delivery Method:
a. Take the online-proctored exam from a remote location.
b. Take the onsite-proctored exam at a testing center.
Prerequisites: None

Recommended experience: 5+ years of overall database and IT experience, including 2 years of hands-on experience working with Google Cloud database solutions

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Exam overview
1. Get real world experience
Before attempting the Cloud Database Engineer exam, it’s recommended that you have 2+ years of hands-on experience working with Google Cloud database solutions. Ready to start building? Explore the Google Cloud Free Tier for free usage (up to monthly limits) of select products.

Try Google Cloud Free Tier

2. Understand what’s on the exam
The exam guide contains a complete list of topics that may be included on the exam, helping you determine if your skills align with the exam.

3. Review the sample questions
Review the sample questions to familiarize yourself with the format of exam questions and example content that may be covered on the Cloud Database Engineer exam.

4. Round out your skills with training
Follow the learning path

Prepare for the exam by following the Cloud Database Engineer learning path. Explore online training, in-person classes, hands-on labs, and other resources from Google Cloud.

Additional resources
Your Google Cloud database options, explained
Database modernization solutions
Database migration solutions
In-depth discussions on the concepts and critical components of Google Cloud
Google Cloud documentation
Google Cloud solutions

5. Schedule an exam
Register and select whether to take the exam remotely or at a nearby testing center.
Review exam terms and conditions and data sharing policies.

QUESTION 1
You are developing a new application on a VM that is on your corporate network. The application will
use Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to connect to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. Your Cloud SQL
instance is configured with IP address 192.168.3.48, and SSL is disabled. You want to ensure that your
application can access your database instance without requiring configuration changes to your
database. What should you do?

A. Define a connection string using your Google username and password to point to the external
(public) IP address of your Cloud SQL instance.

B. Define a connection string using a database username and password to point to the internal
(private) IP address of your Cloud SQL instance.

C. Define a connection string using Cloud SQL Auth proxy configured with a service account to point
to the internal (private) IP address of your Cloud SQL instance.

D. Define a connection string using Cloud SQL Auth proxy configured with a service account to point
to the external (public) IP address of your Cloud SQL instance.

Answer: C

QUESTION 2
Your digital-native business runs its database workloads on Cloud SQL. Your website must be globally
accessible 24. You need to prepare your Cloud SQL instance for high availability (HA). You want to
follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do? (Choose two.)

A. Set up manual backups.
B. Create a PostgreSQL database on-premises as the HA option.
C. Configure single zone availability for automated backups.
D. Enable point-in-time recovery.
E. Schedule automated backups.

Answer: B, D

QUESTION 3
Your company wants to move to Google Cloud. Your current data center is closing in six months.
You are running a large, highly transactional Oracle application footprint on VMWare.
You need to design a solution with minimal disruption to the current architecture and provide ease of migration to
Google Cloud. What should you do?

A. Migrate applications and Oracle databases to Google Cloud VMware Engine (VMware Engine).
B. Migrate applications and Oracle databases to Compute Engine.
C. Migrate applications to Cloud SQL.
D. Migrate applications and Oracle databases to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Answer: A

QUESTION 4
Your customer has a global chat application that uses a multi-regional Cloud Spanner instance.
The application has recently experienced degraded performance after a new version of the application
was launched. Your customer asked you for assistance. During initial troubleshooting, you observed
high read latency.
What should you do?

A. Use query parameters to speed up frequently executed queries.
B. Change the Cloud Spanner configuration from multi-region to single region.
C. Use SQL statements to analyze SPANNER_SYS.READ_STATS* tables.
D. Use SQL statements to analyze SPANNER_SYS.QUERY_STATS* tables.

Answer: B

QUESTION 5
Your company has PostgreSQL databases on-premises and on Amazon Web Services (AWS). You are
planning multiple database migrations to Cloud SQL in an effort to reduce costs and downtime. You
want to follow Google-recommended practices and use Google native data migration tools. You also
want to closely monitor the migrations as part of the cutover strategy. What should you do?

A. Use Database Migration Service to migrate all databases to Cloud SQL.
B. Use Database Migration Service for one-time migrations, and use third-party or partner tools for change data capture (CDC) style migrations.
C. Use data replication tools and CDC tools to enable migration.
D. Use a combination of Database Migration Service and partner tools to support the data migration strategy.

Answer: B

QUESTION 6
You are setting up a Bare Metal Solution environment. You need to update the operating system to
the latest version. You need to connect the Bare Metal Solution environment to the internet so you
can receive software updates. What should you do?

A. Setup a static external IP address in your VPC network.
B. Set up bring your own IP (BYOIP) in your VPC.
C. Set up a Cloud NAT gateway on the Compute Engine VM.
D. Set up Cloud NAT service.

Answer: C

The downside to mass data storage in the cloud

The ability to access Dropcam video footage in the cloud is indicative of a broader trend in cloud computing that is eating away at privacy.

The cloud can be an enormously cost-effective way to increase storage and computing musculature, and also, sadly, a way to further add misery to those seeking privacy—or who just want to be left alone. It’s rare to see organizations stand up and shout, “we’ll not give your data to anyone!” or “the life of all stored data, except opt-in assets you want us to store, is always 90 days!” or “yes, we can determine in absolute certainty that your data has been erased to protect you and your identity.”

The cloud, in some warrens, has become a storage ground for the various factories of “big data,” whose ideals are generally to sell things to consumers and businesses. Correlating facts is huge. Ask Target, whose insight into discovering pregnancies helped them capture a nicely profitable market in the pregnancy and new mother world. Smart, you say. There is a downside to this.

Striking while the iron is hot is a great idea. This means harvesting information on searches to be correlated into ads at the next site you visit. Facebook and Amazon are famous for this, and it’s a huge amount of Google’s total business model. Google’s purchase of Nest last year, which gleefully rats out your utility use patterns, also meant the acquisition of Dropcam.

As ace reporter Sharon Fisher reported at TechTarget, Dropcam’s users allow cameras to send their data into Dropcam’s cloud, where it is archived seemingly indefinitely, to the delights of users, police warrants, and security monitoring individuals, who see the surveillance results at will, from any reasonable IP address. It’s inferred that some users monitor Airbnb suites (shouldn’t they disclose this?) and apparently users forget there’s a camera on and do, well, silly things that they may not want captured on digital film.

Google’s storing this sort of info, Amazon will be listening with Echo, and who knows what Siri knows but isn’t saying. This amounts to a comparative heap of very personal information, as though these were robots whose knowledge base was contained inside the physical unit we see on-premises, but it’s not—it’s in the cloud and not only hack-able, but perhaps being used to analyze us, sell us something, or maybe worse, refuse to sell us something or to used against us in a court of law.

Is this data tagged so someone knows to kill it? Is there a metadata tag saying this file or this datablock expires on April 19, 2017? Often it’s tied to an account. Does this data get reused somehow? Video, audio conversations scrubbed for keywords? Much is up to the user agreement, and what happens if you’re, say, a medical provider that’s amassing large quantities of personal medical data? Can that be used? Yes, an attorney would say, “stop right here, and let’s disambiguate these questions.” Clear as mud.

The average civilian has no “bill of rights” that’s common to these online personal information services, whose data is accumulated in cloudy locations. Murky might be a better way to think about it. You want to trust data storage providers – one wants to believe that data sources are somehow bulletproof – but with huge, emblematic recent breaches of retailers, insurance providers, and university alumni databases, that’s not so easy. In reality, some have already been hacked and we just haven’t discovered it yet because no one’s offering the information on dark markets….at least right now.

Is there a way for the app industries to have a common agreement about what can be shared, what is a reasonable life expectancy for personal data, how and to what extent personal data can be actually anonymized, and how data destruction can be audited to even a private detective’s satisfaction? I wish there were answers.


 

 

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MBaaS shoot-out: 5 clouds for building mobile apps

MBaaS (mobile back end as a service) is a fairly new product category that has largely supplanted MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms). Over the past two months, I’ve closely examined five MBaaS systems: AnyPresence, Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Kinvey, and Parse. In this article, I’ll wrap up the series by summarizing all five systems, surveying their common ground and key differences, and drawing conclusions.

The general idea of MBaaS is that mobile apps need common services that can be shared among apps instead of being custom developed for each. Mobile apps using MBaaS follow a loosely coupled distributed architecture, and MBaaS systems themselves typically have more distributed architectures than MEAP systems, which tended to be unified middleware servers.
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MBaaS systems typically provide push notifications, file storage and sharing, integration with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, location services, messaging and chat functions, user management, the ability to run business logic, and usage analysis tools. Enterprise-oriented MBaaS systems also provide integration with existing applications and databases.

Back ends don’t exist in isolation, so MBaaS systems provide some level of mobile client support. This ranges from exposing REST APIs to all comers to providing app generation for iOS, Android, some flavors of JavaScript, and perhaps other mobile platforms.

In addition, back ends need to be customized and programmed, so MBaaS systems provide a combination of online and desktop development environments. Finally, back-end services are intended to be in continuous operation, so they need a level of application monitoring and error logging in addition to usage analysis. Monitoring and analytics might be provided directly by the MBaaS vendor or through integration with a third-party service.

For extra credit, MBaaS systems can generate mobile SDKs. This is most useful when a vendor is exposing its services to partners doing mobile app development. In addition, MBaaS systems can support offline operation of their mobile apps and offline/online database synchronization. MBaaS systems may provide their own mobile device management or integrate with an MDM vendor. MBaaS systems may also support device-specific services where appropriate, such as iBeacon on iOS devices.
Commonalities and differentiators

In the course of reviewing FeedHenry, Kinvey, Appcelerator, Parse, and AnyPresence, certain capabilities and implementations became very familiar. For example, all five MBaaS products provide storage using MongoDB, an open source NoSQL document database that stores JSON objects. All of these products provide a data design UI for their MongoDB data store, and these UIs all look similar. It wouldn’t surprise me if the UIs were all based on the same MongoDB sample code.

All five MBaaS systems are available in a multitenant cloud. All have online documentation. All provide push notification and user authentication APIs. All support native iOS and Android apps at some level, and all have some way for developers to implement custom server logic.

The differentiators between these products are telling. For example, their support for integration with enterprise applications and databases ranges from the basic ability to call external REST interfaces that return JSON to deep integrations with common applications and databases. The time required for a developer to implement a given enterprise integration with an MBaaS ranges from days down to minutes, depending on how much of the work a given MBaaS vendor has already done for a specific integration.

Some MBaaS systems are available on-premise, and some are available in private clouds. Some can be hosted in compliance with HIPAA, PCI, FIPS, and EU data security standards. Some have their own testing capabilities, and some offer cloud builds of mobile apps.

Some support HTML5 and hybrid apps. Some compile JavaScript to native device code. Some support PhoneGap, some support Apache Cordova, and some avoid both wrappers for hybrid apps in favor of other solutions, such as generating native apps.

Some run their back ends on Node.js, some on Rails, and some on unspecified platforms. Some support BlackBerry, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, or Unity clients.

Some have hosted app and back-end IDEs in their cloud, some provide multiplatform desktop IDEs, and some have desktop command-line interfaces for cloud control. Some support multiple popular JavaScript frameworks, such as Backbone and Angular, and some use their own JavaScript frameworks, which may be adaptations of specific open source frameworks.
MBaaS five ways

As we’ll see, the different MBaaS vendors have targeted slightly different markets and made slightly different technical choices. Nevertheless, they have a high degree of overlap and commonality.

The goal of AnyPresence is not only to help enterprises build back ends for their mobile apps. AnyPresence combines app building, back-end services, and an API gateway.

AnyPresence has an online designer that generates back-end code, mobile app code, and even customized mobile API code. All the generated code can be downloaded, edited, and run on compatible platforms. To cite one of AnyPresence’s favorite customer examples, MasterCard has used AnyPresence to enable partners to easily build mobile apps against MasterCard’s Open
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AnyPresence generates app UIs (or starter kits, if you wish) for jQuery, Android (XML layout), and iOS (storyboard), and it generates app SDKs for Java, Android, HTML5, Windows Phone, Xamarin, and iOS. The design environment refers to the generated JavaScript/HTML5 SDK as “jQuery.” In fact, AnyPresence actually generates CoffeeScript that uses the Underscore, Backbone, and jQuery libraries.

AnyPresence generates back-end servers for Ruby on Rails. In the future it will also generate Node.js back ends, which will be a good development. The AnyPresence environment can generate deployments to Heroku (usually for a Rails back end) to Amazon S3 (usually for HTML5 apps) to native iOS and Android apps with or without Apperian security. You aren’t limited by AnyPresence’s deployment choices, however. The generated code can always be downloaded and deployed elsewhere, assuming you have compatible deployment environments.

The AnyPresence design environment exists online and runs in most browsers. The design environment has a dashboard; a settings screen; screens to create and monitor environments, deployments, and builds; screens to generate and deploy apps, back ends, and SDKs; screens to add and manage data sources and data objects; screens for authorization, roles, and authentication strategy; screens for stock and custom extensions; the interface designer; and a customizable set of themes.
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I found the selection of data sources to be good and the implementation of the provided MongoDB data store to be on par with other MBaaS systems. What sets AnyPresence apart is the way the data model integrates throughout the design environment and into all the generated code.

The place you add most monitoring integrations, such as Airbrake and New Relic, is hidden deep in the Deployments/Add-ons tab. Naturally, monitoring is dependent on the runtime environment, and AnyPresence is designed to be environment-agnostic. For Splunk integration, you have to enable syslog output on the back end to push all the logs/events into Splunk systems for reporting and monitoring.

Appcelerator Titanium has been a player in the mobile development space for several years, with a local development environment that compiles JavaScript to native code for iOS, Android, and other targets. With the release of Appcelerator Studio 3.3 and Appcelerator Platform 2.0 in July 2014, the company added an MBaaS with about 25 APIs, Node.js support, and online analytics. In addition, Appcelerator has published interfaces to its MBaaS that developers can add to apps built with native SDKs, although it hasn’t yet supported native SDKs in its own Appcelerator Studio IDE.

Developers can see a quick overview of app installs, sessions, API calls, and crashes in the online Appcelerator dashboard overview page. Other parts of the dashboard allow for cloud management, testing, performance metrics, and analytics.

The Cloud panel shows usage, exposes data management, displays API request and push notification logs, lists custom services, and allows for cloud configuration. The testing panel uses SOASTA’s TouchTest as an integrated mobile testing solution. The performance panel allows you to monitor your apps and troubleshoot performance, crashes, and exceptions. It also lets you view crash trends, integrate with bug tracking systems, and configure your monitoring.

Appcelerator Platform’s dashboard overview for the demo Field Service application. The crashes were deliberately coded into the app.

Developers can define and view Appcelerator analytics online, as well as optionally publish selected analytics to the Appcelerator Insights app for the iPad, typically for use by a manager.

Appcelerator Platform allows you to build custom back-end services using Studio and Appcelerator’s Node.ACS MVC (model-view-controller) framework. Node.ACS combines Node.js and Express with interfaces to Appcelerator Cloud Services. Appcelerator also allows you to run plain Node.js applications on its cloud platform.

Appcelerator has multiple frameworks on the client side, and multiple API types for the cloud. At the base level on the client, Appcelerator offers the Titanium SDK, which provides an interface between JavaScript and native services. At a higher level, Appcelerator offers the Alloy Framework, which is based on the model-view-controller architecture and contains built-in support for Backbone and Underscore. When you create a new client app from Studio, you typically generate one that uses Alloy.

The Alloy framework handles some of what you need for offline/online data synchronization, but not all of it. Appcelerator lacks preconfigured, vetted enterprise data connectors other than for SAP and Salesforce.com. However, because it can run Node modules on its Node.ACS service, developers can draw on modules from the Node.js community. Appcelerator’s only commercial sync server is currently limited to a Microsoft Dynamics connector.

FeedHenry, with a focus on supporting enterprise line-of-business apps, is a Node.js-based, enterprise-oriented MBaaS and mobile application platform. It has a wide array of integrations, both online and offline development options, collaborative app building, and a drag-and-drop form builder. FeedHenry was spun off from the Irish Research Institute in 2010 and acquired by Red Hat in September 2014.

FeedHenry claims to have global infrastructure on all major clouds and support for on-premise, back-end deployment. The FeedHenry online environment integrates directly with GitHub for collaboration and version control.

FeedHenry 3 supports native SDKs for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8, along with hybrid apps using Apache Cordova, HTML5 mobile Web apps, and Sencha, Xamarin, and Appcelerator Titanium. The way the JavaScript interface to the FeedHenry cloud works, it would be hard to find a JavaScript framework that isn’t compatible.

When writing for FeedHenry in JavaScript, you include the feedhenry.js script in your HTML, initialize it with $fh.init, then call cloud functions from the $fh namespace. FeedHenry can import existing apps from a Zip file or Git repository.

FeedHenry includes an online editor, supporting offline tools, and a command-line interface. Here we see the mobile app, with a code editor in the middle of the screen and a preview at right. You can configure the back-end service in another pane of the online interface.

The FeedHenry build service, which functions along the same lines as Adobe PhoneGap Build, can turn an HTML5 app into binaries for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, iOS (universal), and Windows Phone. Each binary can connect to one of your MBaaS instances, and it can be built for development, distribution, release, or debugging, depending on the platform.

FeedHenry has a drag-and-drop form builder with a good assortment of templates to use as starting points. However, at the time I reviewed FeedHenry, it had few full-fledged app templates.

FeedHenry lists more than 50 Node.js plug-ins in its curated modules list. That list includes interfaces to most major relational and NoSQL databases. Should the curated list not include what you seek, the much larger list of Node community modules is likely to yield a match.

FeedHenry runs on all major public and private clouds, and on a wide range of IaaS and PaaS infrastructures. FeedHenry operates a HIPAA-compliant cloud and live clusters in both Europe and North America.

Kinvey bills itself as a complete mobile and Web app platform. It has extensive client support, integrates with the major enterprise databases, and offers a back-end data store, a file store, push notifications, mobile analytics, iBeacon support, and the ability to run custom code on the back end.

Kinvey sells to IT as its primary customer because it provides an enterprise platform, not for one or two apps but for tens or hundreds of apps for an enterprise. However, it also engages and supports the developer community app by app.

Kinvey supports native, hybrid, and HTML5 apps. It has native toolkit support for iOS and Android. In addition, it supports Angular, Backbone, Node.js, Apache Cordova/PhoneGap, and Appcelerator Titanium, and it provides a REST API. Kinvey integrates with apps through libraries and API calls, and expects you to edit your app locally.

Kinvey cloud code is written in JavaScript, although not Node.js, and edited online. In addition to using standard JavaScript and external services, it can use Kinvey APIs for logging, accessing collections, sending push notifications, sending email, validating requests, date and time functions, asynchronous processing, rendering a Mustache template, and obtaining the back-end context. Cloud code can live in hook processing functions and custom endpoints. Cloud code is versioned internally in Kinvey.

Kinvey supports deploying on almost any cloud, including private clouds. That includes deploying to HIPAA-compliant facilities and to facilities located entirely in the EU. Even Kinvey’s multitenant cloud is considered secure enough for most apps, as the company does end-to-end encryption, and customers that use data links can keep their data in databases behind their own firewalls. If you have a Google App Engine server, you can link it to your Kinvey back end.

Authentication can be done internally by Kinvey or through LDAP or Active Directory in the business and enterprise versions. Kinvey also supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn identities through OAuth.

Kinvey data links connect to Kinvey’s MongoDB data store. In most cases, customers forward the CRUD requests directly to the real back end, but some cache the data in MongoDB. Kinvey currently has data links for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce CRM, Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server.

Kinvey has an automated control setup for offline data synchronization, in which data is automatically pulled from the cache if the application is offline. If the application is online, data is pulled from the network and stored in the cache. Using automated control, your Kinvey app will attempt to synchronize any locally stored data when the device goes online again, but if the server data has also changed you’ll have a conflict. You can set your conflict resolution policy to clientAlwaysWins, serverAlwaysWins, or a custom conflict resolution function.
Parse

Parse was once the poster child for MBaaS, and despite its acquisition by Facebook, it is still a viable, low-friction mobile back end for limited-volume consumer apps. On the plus side, it is well-documented, with good native client support and a JavaScript client SDK based on Backbone. Parse also runs JavaScript code on the back end, which offers developers the option of an all-JavaScript application stack. On the minus side, Parse is missing big pieces necessary for business apps, such as data integration, offline operation, and online/offline synchronization. At the same time, its pricing seems geared to lower-volume apps.

Parse supports native mobile, JavaScript, and desktop apps. On the mobile side, it has native support for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8. On the desktop, it has support for OS X and Windows 8 (.Net), as well as Unity games.

Parse lets you run JavaScript code in the cloud using the same Parse JavaScript SDK as the client. Rather than have you routinely edit your cloud code in a browser, as FeedHenry and Kinvey do, Parse supplies a command-line tool for managing code in Parse Cloud and allows you to use your favorite JavaScript editor on your computer. However, you can view your code and your logs in your dashboard. The command-line tool is an app scaffold generator, app deployment tool, log printer, app rollback tool, and self-updater.

The Parse Cloud data browser lets you import bulk data; add classes, columns, and rows; and view filtered data.

Parse can send Push notifications to iOS, Android, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8. In each case, you’ll have to provision your push server, then provide the certificate or credentials to your app.

Parse has a fairly complete user system predefined, including the usual sign-up mechanism with email verification and a provision for anonymous users. A system of ACLs controls what data individual users can read and write. For more complicated use cases, Parse supports a hierarchy of roles, with a separate layer of ACLs for the roles.

Parse has nine integrations with other services. Three of them — Mailgun, Mandrill, and SendGrid — are for sending email. Stripe is for charging credit cards. Twilio sends SMS and voice messages. Third-party modules are available to integrate Parse with Cloudinary, Instagram, and Paymill.

As far as I can tell, implementing enterprise data integration with Parse requires writing a REST Web service wrapper for the data source and a JavaScript module for Parse. I haven’t seen any options for hosting Parse other than using its own multitenant cloud.

As you can see from the scores listed at the bottom of the first page of this article, AnyPresence earned the highest marks: a combined score of 9.1 and an Editor’s Choice badge. I feel that AnyPresence offers more value than the others for enterprises that need to integrate their existing systems with mobile applications, as it generates customized SDKs, along with apps and back ends, from your model and design. Costing a “low six figures” per year, however, it won’t fit into every company’s budget.

FeedHenry, which earned an overall score of 8.6, is also an enterprise-oriented MBaaS. FeedHenry has a nice integration with Git for collaboration and version control, and I like its hosted app build service, its Node.js back end and curated Node modules list, and its drag-and-drop form designer. Like AnyPresence, FeedHenry may not fit into every company’s budget.

Kinvey, with an overall product score of 8.3, engages as a company with the developer community, as well as with corporate IT departments. I like the way Kinvey does enterprise data links through its internal NoSQL database API, and I appreciate the way it has structured its hooks for back-end business logic.

I criticized Appcelerator for its apparent lack of effort to curate data integration modules, and considered that its high price relative to FeedHenry and Kinvey may diminish its overall value, giving it a net score of 7.8. However, Appcelerator as a company only recently pivoted into the MBaaS space. It may yet fill in its product’s missing functionality and adjust its pricing to be more competitive.

Finally, I consider Parse suitable for building and operating back ends for consumer-facing mobile apps, and not business apps, given its lack of any data connectors other than a basic REST client. My other major reservation about Parse is its usage-based pricing, which lets a developer get started easily but could potentially bite an underfunded startup that suddenly had a viral hit on its hands without a real business model. Its score is 7.6, the lowest in this group.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t use Parse. It’s a viable, low-friction way to get started with back end as a service. However, if you choose to use it, go in with your eyes open, monitor your costs, and be prepared to throttle or eliminate service calls that are running up bills you can’t afford.

For business apps, AnyPresence and FeedHenry lead the pack in both ease and capabilities. Kinvey is not far behind, and its pricing is more favorable for smaller businesses.


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2014’s most significant cloud deals have OpenStack at heart

The most important cloud acquisitions this year have one thing in common: OpenStack.

2014’s slate of cloud deals reflect a few important trends in the market for the open source cloud software. One is that traditional enterprise vendors continue to see potential in OpenStack and they’re willing to shell out the cash to buy the expertise and technology they need to pursue the market.

The second is that despite interest from those big vendors, actual adoption of OpenStack hasn’t happened as quickly as some people might have hoped. The result is that some of the startups, even trendsetters like Cloudscaling, are open to acquisition as they realize they may not be able to make it on their own.

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The impact of these deals is still unknown. On the downside, the acquiring vendors all have other flagship businesses they need to protect. In many cases, that means they’ll limit customers of their new OpenStack products and services to using their legacy products. The result is users won’t have as much choice as they might like.

The upside, however, is that the traditional vendors know how to ship stable, well-supported products. That’s a plus for any business that’s been reluctant to go with an OpenStack startup.

Here are the top five cloud deals of the year, so far:

EMC buys Cloudscaling for an unconfirmed $50 million

The rationale: With more workloads moving to the cloud, EMC knows its storage products have to be in the running for businesses building cloud operations. While EMC is an obvious option for VMware shops given that it owns VMware, it’s not always top of mind in the open source world. With its platform for building private OpenStack clouds, Cloudscaling gives EMC a foot in the door in the OpenStack community.

It remains to be seen if a culture clash will lead to hiccups, however. Cloudscaling, with its outspoken founder Randy Bias, has a reputation as a scrappy upstart. EMC, on the other hand, is more of a staid, traditional vendor.

Who cares? It’s possible that Cloudscaling won’t be quite so open once it gets absorbed by EMC.Cloudscaling currently names EMC competitors including Dell, HP and Supermicro as partners on its web site, and Nexenta’s CEO is on Cloudscaling’s board. Also, Cloudscaling’s platform allows users to build hybrid clouds with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. Given that those businesses compete with EMC or VMware in some way, it wouldn’t be a surprise if EMC restricts Cloudscaling’s openness in the future. That could be a disappointment for potential Cloudscaling users.

Impact: With the backing of a giant like EMC, Cloudscaling is likely to stabilize and become more attractive to enterprises. But being backed by a giant often means slower innovation. Combined with the potential for less choice for users, this deal slightly tips negative in terms of potential benefit to users.

HP buys Eucalytpus for an unconfirmed $100 million

The rationale: HP’s press release about the deal focused heavily on the fact that Marten Mickos, Eucalyptus’s CEO, will run HP’s cloud business. There was essentially no mention of Eucalyptus’s technology – a private cloud platform that’s compatible with AWS. It’s hard not to think that HP bought Eucalyptus primarily to get Mickos, who was also previously CEO of MySQL.

Who cares? If Mickos gets his way, users might get a unique and valuable capability. In an interview on the day the acquisition was announced, Mickos said his hope was to use Eucalyptus technology to bring AWS compatibility to HP’s OpenStack cloud products. That could be attractive for businesses that want to build private OpenStack clouds that burst to AWS when additional resources are needed.

Impact: The fact that Eucalyptus couldn’t go it alone seems to prove that a community-based open source project like OpenStack has a better chance of success than an open source platform driven by one company, like Eucalyptus. Chalk this up as a win for the OpenStack community.

Cisco bought Metacloud for an undisclosed sum

The rationale: With Metacloud, Cisco gets a unique technology that delivers an OpenStack private cloud as a service, remotely managing the cloud for customers. Cisco has actually had its own OpenStack distribution for years, but you’d be forgiven for not knowing it existed. The Metacloud deal lets Cisco sell customers server hardware combined with a well-known platform for running a cloud.

Who cares? VMware might. Cisco and VMware have had a curious relationship over the past few years, at one moment, partners, and the next, competitors.

For instance, Cisco, EMC and VMware started VCE, which offers packaged compute, storage and networking from those three companies. (Just this week Cisco reduced its stake in VCE to 10%.) Cisco also makes it easy for users of its server hardware to run VMware’s cloud products. With Metacloud, however, Cisco now opens the door for customers to go OpenStack instead of VMware.

Impact: Customers and potential customers lose another independent service provider, which offered users lots of choice, but gains a backer determined to be successful in OpenStack. This one is a wash.

Red Hat buys eNovance for $95 million

The rationale: Red Hat wants to dominate OpenStack and with eNovance it gains deployment expertise, since eNovance is in the business of helping customers build OpenStack clouds.

Who cares? While eNovance was open to using the best technology to meet a customer’s needs, including sometimes recommending AWS instead of an OpenStack cloud, that’s likely to change under Red Hat. For instance, eNovance will surely steer customers to Red Hat’s OpenStack distribution rather than any available from competitors.
No deal!

This year has also been a year of cloud-related acquisitions that didn’t end up happening. For instance, for months there was buzz around Rackspace looking for a buyer. Eventually though, Rackspace said it had decided to continue go it alone.

There were also rumors about EMC wanting to acquire HP. There’s more to both companies than the cloud, but after HP’s announcement of earmarking $1 billion for OpenStack, it’s clear the cloud is becoming an important business for the company.

Impact: The presumed loss of choice for eNovance customers pushes this deal into the negative column for customers.

Red Hat buys Inktank for $175 million
The rationale: Adding Inktank’s Ceph object and block storage software to its existing Gluster file system storage gives Red Hat a more complete portfolio of storage offerings. Also, as Ceph is popular among OpenStack users, the deal makes sense as part of Red Hat’s enthusiastic support of OpenStack.

Who cares? Red Hat tends to do its best to herd customers exclusively toward its own products, but it has pledged to keep Ceph open. For instance, Red Hat has said that Ceph will continue to run on non-Red Hat operating systems.

Impact: If Red Hat does indeedallow Ceph to continue to support non-Red Hat products, this deal should be a solid win for OpenStack users. Ceph has proved valuable to the OpenStack community and can benefit from Red Hat’s experience running open source projects and delivering open source products.



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CloudFlare offers free DDoS protection to public interest websites

A project launched by CloudFlare, a provider of website performance and security services, allows organizations engaged in news gathering, civil society and political or artistic speech to use the company’s distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection technology for free.

The goal of the project, dubbed Galileo, is to protect freedom of expression on the Web by helping sites with public interest information from being censored through online attacks, according to the San Francisco-based company.

“If a website participating in Project Galileo comes under attack, CloudFlare will extend full protection to ensure the site stays online — no matter its location, no matter its content,” the Project Galileo website says.

The company will not publicly name the sites enrolled in the program to keep them safe “from potential backlash,” but said that participants include minority rights organizations, LGBT rights organizations in Africa and the Middle East, global citizen journalist sites, and independent media outlets in the developing world.

To be accepted into Project Galileo, CloudFare said, websites need to be engaged in news gathering, civil society, or political/artistic speech; to be the subject of online attacks as a result of those activities; to belong to non-profit organizations or small commercial entities and to act in the public interest. CloudFlare has partnered with over a dozen civil society organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and American Civil Liberties Union to help it make those determinations.

According to the company, websites accepted into the program should on average be up and running with DDoS protection in several hours, but the process can take as long as a couple of days in some circumstances.

CloudFlare named its project Galileo after Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian physicist and astronomer whose writings in support of heliocentrism — the astronomical model where the Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun — were deemed heretical and banned by the Catholic Church.

“Like Galileo, websites espousing politically sensitive — even heretical — speech are often victims of suppression,” said Kenneth R. Carter, counsel at CloudFlare, in a blog post Thursday. “Like Galileo, most of these sites dont have the resources to protect their discoveries from being suppressed.”

DDoS attacks have frequently been used by hackers and other groups as a tool for both censorship and protest. Hacktivist group Anonymous is famous for its DDoS campaigns driven by political motives against pro-copyright organizations, governments and religious groups.

In May, Firedoglake.com, which describes itself as a “progressive news site, online community, and action organization,” asked its readers to make donations so it can fend off DDoS attacks.

CloudFlare is not the first security company to offer free DDoS protection to websites serving the public interest. In October 2013, Google launched Project Shield, an initiative that allows websites dealing with news, human rights and election-related content to use the company’s infrastructure and DDoS defenses.


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