AWS re:Invent 2018: our recap

What a week it was!

Migrate to Azure & get 3 years support for SQL and Windows Server 2008. Check our special offer!

We can help you to get the best and most cost effective migration process.

Nordcloud Endorses the Quantum Software Manifesto

Now as Google and Microsoft are investing massively into quantum computing, we want to be sure to be ready to bring this power to the market as well.

Nordcloud recognised as Google Cloud Premier Partner and Managed Services Provider

We are joining the group of few Google Cloud Premier Partners and MSPs.

Predicting IT incidents in Financial Services

Putting in the tools and resources to identify problems earlier.

Taking SAP to new heights – beyond hybrid

We believe that to truly modernise your SAP, running it on Azure public cloud is the best way forward because hybrid solutions are already a thing of the past.

Creating a business case for Reserved Instances

Reduce your costs by creating a solid business case for using AWS Reserved Instances

Achieving digital transformation by implementing 5 best practices

We aim at maximising value for our customers in the Public Cloud.

Cloud computing news #9: Bimodal IT strategy

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

Cloud Computing News #7: Company culture affects cloud readiness

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

Building operational resilience for FSI businesses

It’s time to re-think, re-imagine, re-invent, and re-organise the mess by embracing the public cloud

Leveraging AWS Greengrass for Edge IoT Solutions

AWS Greengrass has significantly lowered the barrier for edge IoT development by extending familiar cloud technologies to the edge.

Cloud Computing News #6: Cloud Governance is key to success in the cloud

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

How to set up a Cloud Competence Centre

Managing a cloud platform requires ownership, typically a Cloud Owner and a Cloud Steering Group. It also requires a centralised function to onboard cloud customers, do cloud platform development and maintain best practices for cloud deployments.

Cloud Computing News #5: AI, IoT and cloud in manufacturing

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

Take your SAP from slow and painful, to speedy and productive

By running SAP on Azure, enterprises can break free from traditional SAP limitations and become more productive and agile.

Efficiently and securely leverage public cloud platforms with a Cloud Competence Centre

The fastest route to cloud adoption is to form a Cloud Competence Centre.

Cloud Computing News #2: Digital transformation in the cloud

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

Cloud Computing News #1: Financial institutions need cloud

Cloud Computing News is our curated series on news and innovation on cloud adoption.

Why the Financial Services Industry needs to rethink its IT by embracing the cloud

To be relevant in the future, financial institutions should partner with hyper-scale cloud providers and enablers like Nordcloud.

My journey to AWS Certification

I am going to share with you how I prepared for the AWS certification because I believe it's best to hear from the source.

Google brings the Public Cloud to Finland

The first public cloud region in Finland is finally open!

Security in the Public Cloud: Finding what is right for you

What many businesses still don't realise is that the public cloud is a shared responsibility, from both the cloud provider and customer.

Public cloud cost clarity and optimisation – at no additional cost

Ensuring cost clarity and optimisation on any public cloud platform is valuable.

The true cost of private cloud

In public cloud you only pay for consumption, not for development, maintenance etc. The private cloud costs start to stack up over time.

Cloud buying guide: part 1 – infra optimisation

Buying cloud is, on the surface, very similar than fine tuning IT purchasing to outsourcing deals, but also very different.

The myth of the workload movement

Before you invest your time and money into hybrid cloud, you should understand the realities in workload movement between clouds.

How hybrid do you need to be?

Cloud is moving forward so fast that most hybrid cloud platforms and tools will probably be outdated before you get them up and running. Choose carefully what you need as core features, and plug into the knowledge of a company like Nordcloud.

Nordcloud proves leadership in information security compliance

Nordcloud proves leadership in information security compliance through ISO 27001 certification.

Is it safe to use AWS S3 after all the news about data breaches?

There has recently been a lot of news about data breaches on AWS S3 (Simple Storage System). Sensitive data, passwords and access credentials have been exposed to the whole world.

Multi-Cloud: Why stop at one platform?

We deal with a number of major providers, each with its own outstanding features and strengths. A business just has to identify its needs and pick the service that best meets those.

AWS Fargate – Bringing Serverless to Microservice

Microservices architecture has been a key focus for a lot of organisations in the past few years.

State of AI for digital business in 2018

'Anything that a typical person can do in less than one second AI can learn. This is an imperfect rule, but holds pretty well.'

GDPR: The drought for your data lake

So does that mean there is a chance your data lake could dry out very soon? Don’t worry, here are some relatively easy ways to address this challenge.

“SAAS over PAAS over IAAS over my own data centre” – some thoughts

There might be a service for each of your needs, but how are you going to win overall in the marketplace?

Machine learning? Yes, we can!

Our aim is to take a pragmatic approach and use best-of-breed algorithms, libraries and tools, fine tuning them to make truly remarkable, smart applications and digital services.

Three main uses of machine learning

The beauty of applications that employ machine learning is that they can be extremely simple on the surface, hiding away much complexity from users.

Agilifying the release cycle of a business-to-business service

Customer needs are nearly impossible to predict when developing new products.

Four UI Design Guidelines for Creating Machine Learning Applications

This post introduces four general design guidelines that can help on the way to start to build applications.

NEW MACHINE LEARNING SERVICES ANNOUNCED AT THE RE:INVENT KEYNOTE

Last Wednesday, AWS's CEO Andy Jassy held his traditional keynote, and on the machine learning front, there were several interesting announcements.

How to accelerate digital transformation with culture, APIs, and cloud

Modern cloud platforms offer not only infrastructure, but also building blocks that enable developers to focus on the development of the actual service.

ARCHITECTURE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY GENERATION – THIS TIME, RE:IMAGINED

Much like the last 5 years at re:Invent, we were treated on the Thursday to a keynote by Werner Vogels, speaking at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Day 2 at Re:Invent – Builders & Musicians Come Together

When Werner Vogels makes bold statements, expectations are set high. So when Vogel's tweeted 15 minutes before the start of re:Invent's day 2 keynote, we had to wonder what was coming.

AWS RE:INVENT 2017 KICKS OFF IN LAS VEGAS

AWS re:Invent kicked off in Vegas yesterday, and a number of the Nordcloud team have travelled across the pond to attend what is probably the biggest Cloud event on the planet.

What is data-driven service design?

Contemporary service designs acknowledge the potential – and danger – in big data, but the tools to transform the potential into a revolution in the ways of working is still missing.

Market leaders always push the envelope

I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how Nordcloud Germany have managed to stay on top of the industry for the last year or two.

New Amazon CloudFront Edge location arrives in Finland!

Amazon CloudFront benefits include extensive integration with other AWS services, ease of use, a cost effective pay-as-you-go pricing scheme, and a growing global distribution network.

Throwback – AWS Tech Community Days Summit, Cologne

For the first time ever the largest and most technical gathering of the German AWS community took place in Cologne.

Everything you needed to know about spot instances

AWS recently announced some more features for Spot instances, an exciting prospect for anyone wanting to make some significant savings. In this blog, we'll take you through what Spot instances are and how they differentiate from Reserved instances.

App Service environment isolated: Making security & internal network connectivity easier and cheaper

Azure App Services is arguably the most popular Azure PaaS service, allowing you to host Web Sites and App Functions in a fully managed service.

How can I decrease my costs? Enable centralised billing using AWS organisations

AWS Organizations provides policy-based management for AWS accounts.

5 AWS services that help you create and monitor secure environments in the cloud

One typical concern when moving your infrastructure to Amazon Web Services is that you may lose control over it, but the truth is quite the opposite.

GDPR and the public cloud industry

As of May 2018 a new data regulation law will be put into place by the European Union.

How to build a business case for the cloud in financial services

In today’s unsteady economy, financial services are not just looking for ways to cope with cost pressures; they’re looking to invest in innovative technology to help them.

How to support cloud and digital transformation? Build an agile company

Agile cloud platform allows your business to respond quickly to changes in the market and embrace digital transformation.

Microsoft & Nordcloud: Partners with remarkable cloud experience

Cloud computing is often viewed as a trend which is fully utilized by pioneers or early adaptors. That statement is very overdue.

The future is innovation: 5 cloud predictions for 2017

We’re well into this particularly dark and chilly New Year.

Why do companies stay with on-premise hosting?

There are a few reasons for staying with on-premises hosting.

Deliver your content quickly with Amazon Cloudfront

In today's world, people don't have time or patience for unnecessary delays.

How the cloud is changing the IT sourcing game

Today, all hosting providers are competing simultaneously with AWS, Azure and Google

AWS WELL ARCHITECTED FRAMEWORK UPDATES

A little over a year after AWS published the Well Architected Framework, it has had its first update. The Framework was developed from AWS’s experiences helping organisations architect, test, develop and deploy into AWS.

Transforming enterprises through cloud infrastructure

A bi-modal strategy for enterprises

THE GARTNER DBMS MAGIC QUADRANT

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a report published by Gartner, a US-based research and advisory firm, the aim being to provide an unbiased analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants.

Nordcloud integrates Trend Micro security into its cloud infrastructure offering

“We chose Trend Micro as our strategic partner, as they are the clear leader in Server Security"

Integrating quickly to Nordcloud culture

Our Cloud Architect from the Amsterdam office, Martijn Scholten talks about Nordcloud culture.

Nordcloudians’ international opportunities

Time for Nordcloudian story of Senior Cloud Architect Hans who moved from Nordcloud UK to Nordcloud Sweden!

#NordcloudianStories: “Constant new improvements”

Welcome to follow another Nordcloudian story; this time with our Cloud Architect Hamin Mousavi in Sweden.

Pinja’s day at Talent Acceleration

What is talent acceleration actually and what it’s like to recruit people in a rapidly growing company like us?

#NordcloudianStories: “Legends and union of cloud architects”

Warm welcome to follow a new project with fellow Nordcloudians

Captain’s Log @ Nordcloud Talent Acceleration

An inside look into week 1 for one of new Nordcloud Talent Acceleration programme attendees..

Meet our first graduates from Nordcloud Talent Acceleration

Our first cloud superheros from Nordcloud Talent Acceleration, Cloud Engineer track, graduated 10.8.2018.

Taking the fast-track to become a Cloud Expert

Training to become a cloud engineer with Nordcloud’s first Talent Acceleration program.

Want to be a part of the next cloud generation?

Are you interested in the latest cloud technologies? We have developed a new way of on-boarding,  a six-week-long course, Nordcloud Talent Acceleration, in which you will be able to gain the skills you need to work with the cloud.

Nordcloud: Just another IT company with great benefits, projects and people?

- Developer Leo Lehtonen tells what makes a workplace different

How is life on top of the cloud?

- Cloud Architect Jani Eränen is not afraid to prove himself wrong

Looking ahead: what’s next for AI in manufacturing?

How does AI benefit manufacturers?

Lambda layers for Python runtime

What is AWS Lambda and Lambda Layer?

Four compelling reasons to use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Microservices use containerisation to deliver more agile, scalable applications

How containerized applications boost business growth

Businesses need to balance innovation, security and UX against the cost of development

Notes from AWS Chalk session at AWS re:Invent 2018 – Lambda@Edge optimisations

Look into the optimisations you can do before the function is invoked by the event.

Web application development with .NET Core and Azure DevOps

Setup of the full CI/CD pipeline in Azure DevOps for ASP.NET Core MVC web application.

What is Amazon FreeRTOS and why should you care?

Amazon FreeRTOS could radically simplify your IoT edge solutions.

10 examples of AI in manufacturing to inspire your smart factory

How will AI revolutionise your industry?

Microservices and containerisation: 4 things every IT manager needs to know

Microservices use containerisation to deliver more agile, scalable applications

Azure DevOps Services

Cloud based platform for collaborating on code development from Microsoft.

How to use Azure API from Go SDK

In this post we will go through some basic example on how to use Azure SDK in Go.

Developing Serverless Cloud Components

Using AWS CDK, Serverless Components and Pulumi to develop serverless cloud components.

Cloud-Native Development (AWS CodeStar with AWS Cloud9)

Recently, I have had the pleasure to play with AWS CodeStar. But before we begin, let me give you some background on what the service actually is.

Leveraging AWS Greengrass for Edge IoT Solutions

AWS Greengrass has significantly lowered the barrier for edge IoT development by extending familiar cloud technologies to the edge.

Amazon SQS as a Lambda event source = all the fun!

Amazon Simple Queue Service is a distributed, fully managed message queueing service which was released as one of the first AWS services. Here's how you can put it to use with Lambda.

Containers on AWS: a quick guide

Containerisation allows development teams to move quickly and deploy more efficiently. Instead of virtualising the hardware stack (like virtual machines), containers run on top of the OS kernel, virtualising at the OS level.

Cloud security: Don’t be a security idiot

Don't be a Security Idiot - you are the first line of defence! Know if the data is being stored in a secured manner by using encryption and if backups are being stored offsite or in an isolated location.

Container security: How to differ from the traditional

Containerisation in the industry is rapidly evolving. Fortune 500 organisations all use cloud containers because they provide portability, simple scalability, and isolation.

SSM parameter store: Keeping secret information structured

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store (SSM) provides you with a secure way to store config variables for your applications.

Control your environment with Azure policy

Building a secure environment is one of the most important aspects of the Public Cloud.

General availability of VNet service endpoints for Azure SQL database

This month, Microsoft announced the general availability of Virtual Network Service Endpoints for Azure SQL Database in all Azure regions.

AWS Fargate – Bringing Serverless to Microservice

Microservices architecture has been a key focus for a lot of organisations in the past few years.

Persisting Docker Volumes in ECS using EFS

- using EFS as a means to persist your Docker Volumes in your ECS cluster

How to set up an Azure AD identity provider in AWS Cognito

This post describes step-by-step how to set up an AWS Cognito User Pool with an Azure AD identity provider to allow your application to leverage single sign-on with Azure AD.

How Amazon’s IoT platform controls things without servers

- A fast and easy way to get started on the Internet of Things.

Azure Global Vnet Peering – A Step Closer To MPLS Replacement

Global VNET peering enables customers to connect Azure networks in different regions by easily leveraging Azures global networking backbone.

If your cloudformation deployments are failing, this is why

The latest version of aws-cfn-bootstrap package aws-cfn-bootstrap-1.4-25.17.amzn1.noarch that was signed November 2 around 21:00 UTC changed how cfn-signal works. 

Keeping up with the latest skills: AWS IoT, Polly, and Rekognition

Improving skills and know-how around the ever-expanding technology selection in modern IT environment

How to create stateful clusters in AWS

With stateful clusters, the idea is to create storage and network interface before a VM is created.

Microsoft Azure has launched two new sets of virtual machines

Last week, Microsoft launched two new series of virtual machines, the D_v3 and the E_v3 which are follow-ups to the D_v2-Series

AWS Lambda@Edge: Running Lambda code in Edge locations

AWS has recently introduced Lambda@Edge which gives you the possibility to run Lambda code in Edge locations. What does it mean for CloudFront users and what can you achieve with it?

Update: A new generation of EC2 instances from AWS

AWS announced yesterday they had released a new set of EC2 GPU-powered instances specifically geared towards graphic intensive applications

Design AWS API Access with Care – Case Onelogin

The recent Onelogin breach showed us that account access permissions can be devastating if not done right.

Run Lambdas functions from Slack for fun and profit with Opsidian.AI

In this blog post we want to describe some of these aspects and encourage all of you to take a look at opsidian.ai in the near future.

How to fully automate retrieving TLS certificates with Kubernetes

Writing Kubernetes controllers when problems arise

5 Things To Know When Starting To Use DynamoDB & NoSQL Databases

What is DynamoDB and how can you use it?