India Cloud Summit 2020

Posted on February 10, 2020November 3, 2020 by Idexcel Technologies

Event Details: India Cloud Summit is the one place to explore new ideas & learn from industry experts Join us for the event that brings together technologists, executives, customers, partners & Key decision makers from all industries.

Why Attend

Whether you are new to cloud or an experienced user, India Cloud Summit will give you inspiration & technical knowledge for your cloud journey. We have put together a mix of thought leaders & industry experts to cover topics like Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), Alexa, IoT, Migration, Big Data and cloud architecture best practices.

The purpose of the summit is to network, share ideas & have meaningful conversations about how others are implementing Cloud in their organizations, Cloud migration, Devops and more.

Idexcel Keynote Details

Title: AI in the Cloud
Speaker: Viswanath Ravindran – Principal Data Scientist at Idexcel

Event Pictures

[Know more about the event]

Idexcel Achieves AWS Migration Competency Status

Posted on October 15, 2019January 21, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Herndon, VA – October 15, 2019 – Idexcel, a professional services and technology solutions provider, announced today that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Migration Competency status. This designation recognizes that Idexcel provides proven technology and deep expertise to help customer’s move successfully to AWS, through all phases of complex migration projects, discovery, planning, migration and operations.

Achieving the AWS Migration Competency differentiates Idexcel as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that provides specialized demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success with specific focus on Migration Consulting and Delivery. To receive the designation, APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS.

“Idexcel is excited and proud to achieve AWS Migration Competency status,” said Allolankandy Anand, Senior Director of Cloud Services Practice at Idexcel. “This is a testament to our team’s dedication and commitment in helping our customers achieve their technology goals by leveraging the agility, breadth of services, and pace of innovation that AWS provides.”

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.

Idexcel’s cloud migration services help organizations not only undergo a successful cloud adoption journey, but also benefit from a structured well architected framework that guides them through the process of enhanced and accelerated transformation of their infrastructure, processes, people and technology. Our migration approach specializes on aligning architectural design with a data driven approach and AWS WAF (Well-Architected Framework) principles to create an on-demand environment for experimentation and innovation for our customers.

About Idexcel

Idexcel is a professional services and technology solutions provider specializing in Cloud Services, Application Modernization, and Data Analytics. Idexcel is proud that for more than 21 years it has provided services that implement complex technologies that are innovative, agile and successful and have provided our customers with lasting value. Our name, “Idexcel” is a representation of our core principle “Ideas to Excellence” We are relentlessly driven by results and take pride in our customer-centric engagement models. We blend our clients’ needs with proven delivery models and highly talented execution teams to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, Idexcel has offices and delivery locations in the US, Europe and Asia supporting global clients.

How to Minimize Your Cloud Security Risks

Posted on September 3, 2019June 30, 2020 by Idexcel Technologies

State of the Cloud Survey in 2018 revealed that 95% of respondents use the cloud for data storage purposes, with the number of businesses incorporating the technology increasing every day. In presence of such rapid growth, the possibility of cloud security risks also rises. Malware can penetrate your system and affect your system, allowing it to enter the cloud.

Overcoming these threats requires swift strategizing, adequate management of your operations and a well-planned execution. But how can this be achieved without sacrificing other technical elements of the cloud, such as the flexibility it offers your processes? Here are some strategies that will help you minimize your cloud security risk without hampering the pace at which you conduct your business.

1. Train Employees
The most common source of security threat in an organization happens to be the lack of awareness among employees. They lack security-related education necessary for battling such threats. A solid starting point is to hire a professional trainer who will teach your team how to develop and deploy security strategies, how to update your system’s security measures in time, while also demonstrating defense measures against threats.

Since security is the responsibility of every employee, try to involve the entire workforce of the organization into these training sessions. Keep your team updated with response sheets that will test their promptness and adaptability for a security threat scenario. It would also help to run unannounced security drills as this will keep your workers on their toes.

2. Build a Reliable Data Backup Plan
As we rely more on cloud computing, more data is being transferred in and out of the servers. This means that there is a higher chance of data being corrupted or misused. If your data is not backed up in time, you might end up with corrupt files that would compromise your operations. Make sure that you have a secure backup plan ready in case a mishap occurs. Additionally, distributing data and application across multiple locations will further help your offsite storage and disaster recovery needs.

3. Monitor Data Access
Backing up data is not enough to ensure its sanctity remains protected—limiting its access to only certain employees improves the stability of this data considerably. In other words, the smaller number of hands that touch the data, the better. It also becomes very easy to track down the source of a data breach when portals to access the data are limited and targeted.

This means that, although it is necessary to grant access to some workers, it would not be wise to give them access permanently. In such cases, your IT managers can take command, monitoring the access of data by establishing access controls. This also reduces the number of access codes, which would limit them to only one sign-on (SSO) authentication.

4. Encrypt the Data
So far, we have learned how to store and access data to minimize your cloud security risks. But, the access to such data should never be independent of encryption. No matter how small the data is, it needs to be protected cryptographically. It might seem unnecessary at times, but remember that there is always the possibility of data breach. If the data is encrypted, you will not be anxious of the possibility of improper handling or unauthorized access of the data midway. In short, your data will always be in safe hands.

5. Pilot Scenarios
Once ready with necessary arrangements for cloud data security, never forget to put it to the test. Devise scenarios where you test whether or not the system you have created can be trespassed or tampered with. The best path forward is to hire someone who has not been in the process of system development because they will not be familiar with any developmental codes. All in all, piloting helps in preventing cloud security threats instead of rectifying them. This move also saves time.

Once you apply the strategies outlined above, you will see a newfound fluidity in your workflow—the purer the data, the quicker the response time. Your decisions will be informed, and you won’t have to worry about any data leak in the course of the data transfer process. By taking these steps towards minimizing cloud security risks, you will be able to secure the integrity of your data with a stronger foundation.

Also Read

7 Reasons Why You Should Choose AWS as Your Cloud Partner
Big Data and Cloud Computing – Challenges and Opportunities
Thinking about DevOps culture? Inculcate these 5 must haves to make the most of it
5 Ways Data Analytics Can Help Drive Sales For Your Business

7 Reasons Why You Should Choose AWS as Your Cloud Partner

Posted on August 26, 2019June 30, 2020 by Idexcel Technologies

Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is the world’s largest cloud platform, boasting roughly 1 million customers, and raking in $10 billion in revenue every year. Despite steep competition within the space, AWS Cloud has managed to grow at a consistent pace, now owning approx 33% of the cloud computing market.

Given its recent growth, AWS has quickly risen the ranks to become one of the top cloud providers in the market. Thanks its staggering growth, a lot of companies are migrating their businesses to the AWS cloud, offering them a slew of benefits.

Here are seven of the biggest reasons why your business should also move to the AWS and adopt them as your cloud provider.

1) Location matters… a lot: AWS is arguably the world’s leading cloud platform as its operations can be found in 69 global zones, as well as 22 geographical locations around the world. The company’s outreach is expanding quickly, truly making AWS a market leader. No matter what part of the world you may find yourself in, chances are AWS is already available for business in your neck of the woods. As it continues to expand its outreach, there are endless ways in which AWS helps businesses with their storage needs, regardless of location. The cloud is available anywhere and everywhere, due in large part to AWS.

2) Well defined disaster recovery: Business continuity is one of the most important factors for a business. On the off chance a disaster strikes, it is important for a company to have a recovery system that ensures its day-to-day operations progress without a hitch, preventing any losses from transpiring. Regardless of a company’s risk tolerance levels, no business wants to find itself facing any sort of downtime that creates a breach of trust with its customers over any period. Having said that, AWS has been built to provide a well-defined disaster recovery plan, which is focused on helping its clients keep their business rolling along as planned.

3) Reliability and consistency: Consistency and reliability are two keywords that aptly describe what AWS cloud is about. Despite having some high-profile outages, AWS has always been the most reliable service. In fact, 40% of the product’s downtime was caused by a single outage. This statistic suggests that outages are not very common within the world of AWS.

4) Scalability and flexibility: The list of AWS advantages does not stop at the aforementioned factors of reliability and consistency factors. Providing a business with the flexibility to scale up or down as required makes it an especially strong service for executives seeking to increase or decrease server space in a matter of miliseconds. There is no need for any unnecessary procedures or dealing with the morose task of setting up a physical infrastructure, as everything works as it should—in a sweet, simple and concise manner.

5) Simple, automated scheduling facilities: Scheduling and automation are common needs that companies expect out of cloud service providers nowadays. Guess what? The ability to schedule jobs not only allows things to be automated with ease, but also paves the way for a business to run smoothly. The whole idea is to ensure that there’s plenty of bandwidth available to run jobs without interruptions, especially when it comes to manual supervision.

6) Pay-as-you-go: Not many cloud providers have the pay-as-you-go option in their cloud packages. AWS, on the other hand, has, making it the go-to point that people turn to when seeking to save costs, while also helping them benefit from the excellent range of facilities offered within the AWS suite. Start and stop instances within the product according to your needs, and pay only the time spent on the cloud. Adjust your usage levels, scale up and down, and avoid the trouble of setting up a physical infrastructure while having your technical ends meet.

7) Security: No matter what kind of a company you own, whether it’s a startup or an enterprise level conglomerate, chances are security is of the utmost importance to you and your clients. AWS eliminates this fear, offering you world class security that follow the highest regulatory standards. It provides you with dozens of compliance programs built within AWS that pertain to its infrastructure, which are included per each service offered. There’s more, as the services also provide extensive security and support networks geared towards flagging suspicious activity on the accounts, and thereby raising revealing vulnerabilities within the systems.

Thinking about DevOps culture? Inculcate these 5 must haves to make the most of it

Posted on August 23, 2019January 21, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Digitalization has reached a new level, especially as the demand for better experiences has increased. In order to develop and deploy their software production, brands are constantly making use of DevOps to streamline their production cycles and make them more robust.

Let’s discuss what DevOps is all about, and how accepting the DevOps culture can help an organization achieve its goals in the best possible manner.

What is DevOps?

DevOps can’t be classified as a “thing” per se—it’s a set of principles that are necessary for laying the foundation of the developer culture. When one talks about objectives, the first thing that comes to mind is that DevOps is a methodology that is used to speed up the time to market, and further apply incremental improvements within the software space.

DevOps is a set of principles geared towards cross-training a multitude of teams involved in software development and infrastructure operations. In other words, it is a domain responsible for the design, deployment and maintenance of continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI/CD frameworks.

The best way to integrate the two streams is by involving the development team and the operations team. This way, a channel of communication is opened, fostering a partnership between the two teams. In order to facilitate such communication channels, here is a list of key principles that need to be incorporated to find success in the DevOps space.

Foster a Collaborative Environment

The first and most important principle behind DevOps is the successful collaboration between the operations and the development teams. By creating a unilateral team, the DevOps team can focus on delivering the organization’s common goals and achieve its purpose. The fundamental idea behind this concept is to ensure both the team work together and communicate with each other so that they can share ideas and solve problems together.

This way, one can break down silos and align their people, processes, and technology towards achieving organizational goals. By aligning processes, such specialized teams can create a fluid experience, which can facilitate a culture of developments and deployments across the whole organization.

Create a culture to sustain end-to-end responsibility

Traditionally, developers and operations worked separately, within limited to no interaction between the different teams. However, in the DevOps environment, both teams are forced to work together to achieve the common goals and work as a centralized team. Nevertheless, with the shift in the DevOps culture, there is a different approach to this concept. Inefficiencies are addressed, plus there is a place for everything and everyone within the teams.

Facilitate continuous improvement

With added end-to-end responsibility, there is an additional need to adapt to the changing circumstances in order to evolve with the emergence of new technology, customer needs and any shifts in legislation.

DevOps focuses on continuous improvement, which is aimed at optimizing performance, speed, and cost of delivery.

Automate everything possible

Automation has become the need of the hour. As there is a growing awareness amongst consumers, continuous improvement is needed to meet customer demands. Keeping this thought in mind, there have been notable developments with respect to adopting tools that support automaton, as well as in streamlining the processes which include configuration management, the CI/CD pipeline, and more.

Throughout the automation process, several processes can be automated to perform efficiently with the given resources. This would include infrastructure provisioning, building new systems, software development and deployment, as well as conducting various tests that pertain to functionality and security compliance.

Through DevOps, teams can develop their own automated processes aimed at reducing the development and deployment turnaround time. Machines can be trained efficiently to deploy software quicker than their usual turnaround time, while keeping their reliability intact.

Focusing on customer’s needs
Brands that don’t innovate continuously can’t survive their customer’s demands. For this very reason, brands need to act like a lean startup, which need to innovate as the time changes. DevOps teams must always be on the move to meet their customer’s requirements. The data gathered from the automated processes can be analyzed to check if performance targets are met, which would ultimately delivery customer satisfaction.

Schedule Your Free DevOps Assessment

Big Data and Cloud Computing – Challenges and Opportunities

Posted on August 19, 2019January 21, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Two of the biggest IT trends making the rounds in today’s day and age include cloud computing and Big Data. Have you wondered what happens when you combine the two? Something positive may come out of it, while other times, not so much. Let’s explore and see what opportunities and challenges the union of these two worlds present to the users.

Big Data and Cloud Computing: Bridging the Gap

Big Data and cloud computing each have their own set of rules and specifications. However, when used together, they are capable of simplifying large datasets, offering value to businesses in a variety of industries and of different sizes. Big Data and cloud computing each offer their own set advantages while also including their own inherited challenges. Nevertheless, both technologies are still in the process of evolution, which is a double-edged sword in each case.

Regardless, there are plenty of companies using the two technologies in tandem to bolster how they operate. The combination of the two offers a number of benefits as they can increase a business’ revenue, while also reducing costs effectively. The cloud is all about providing infrastructure, and Big Data offers data solutions. Together, they can provide organizations with an advantage over the competition.

Advantages of Using Big Data and Cloud Computing Together

Agility: Lugging around heavy servers to store data is no longer feasible in the present. In other words, if one has to set up a traditional, physical infrastructure, chances are you will end up burning a hole in your pocket. With cloud computing, setting up the infrastructure is easy, convenient, and more hands-off. Cloud computing caters to businesses’ growing need for data management, which makes it easier for companies to optimize how they utilize their resources.

Elasticity: What is one of the best features of cloud computing? The ability to scale servers up and down as data needs change has to be one of them. Data is a volatile variable as it can look completely different from one minute to another. A good service provider needs to be able to accommodate these storage changes at a moment’s notice. This way, an organization can alter their storage space as their data needs change.

Data processing and efficiency: Data can be structured or unstructured, depending on the source it stems from. Data from social media is usually unstructured. Such data needs an efficient system to process it and to derive meaningful insights from it. Cloud computing can be seen as the answer to such problems. When Big Data is used to amass information from social media, cloud computing can be used to efficiently process this data and unearth meaningful insights that can adequately address a business’s needs.

Cost reduction: Cloud computing is a great solution for enterprises looking to make use of their technological tools, especially when on a limited budget. Big However, data platforms can be a little expensive, especially when it comes to managing such data. However, cloud computing makes it so customers need to pay only for the resources they use, with no upfront capital expenditure. It’s also worth considering that as a business’ servers scale up or down based on its data needs, it will only have to pay for the storage space it uses thanks to the cloud.

Simplifying complexities: Cloud computing is well known for its ability to automate business operations. With the various components available to users, there is no shortage of options for organizations looking to reduce the complexity of their operations, while also automating repetitive tasks.

Challenges of Using Big Data and Cloud Computing Together

Security concerns: There are security concerns to consider with the union of these technologies, as organizations begin to wonder how to safeguard sensitive, customer information against hackers and fraudsters. Addressing the cloud security risks inherent in cloud computing requires a shared responsibility model. Cloud service providers are responsible for the security of the cloud, while customers are responsible for Security in the cloud.

Conclusion
The cloud has become the go-to option for organizations looking to beat the competition and benefit from the immense technological advancements the cloud provides. Once such advancements are successfully mastered, there is a wonderful opportunity for organizations to reduce costs, use their technologies tools, and manage their data. The end result is often is organizations are able to meet their business goals, making the combination of the cloud and Big Data an ideal one.

Also Read

Thinking about DevOps culture? Inculcate these 5 must haves to make the most of it
5 Ways Data Analytics Can Help Drive Sales For Your Business
How Cloud Computing is changing the Business World
Best Practices for Ensuring DevOps Security

5 Ways Data Analytics Can Help Drive Sales For Your Business

Posted on August 12, 2019January 21, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Companies that concentrate on their customers can attain incredible sales figures for several reasons. The current generation of consumers is not impressed with traditional advertising strategies. Instead, they want to feel valued as an individual, meaning they want the company to anticipate the customers’ needs in a personalized an accurate manner. And this level of personalization is something that data analytics can help a company achieve.

As customers’ demands grow, so should your product line. By predicting your customers’ needs, you can get ahead of the game, ensuring that your customer conversion and retention rates remain high. Having said this, it’s necessary to study your competition and how other players in your industry are using customer data to their advantage. If data is not used in a targeted and actionable manner, there’s a good chance your brand will lose traction in your space, paving the way for the competition to increase their share of the market at the expense of yours.

How can data analytics drive sales for your company?

1) Enabling segmentation: Segmentation is the key to building a well-catered product line. One size does not fit all in business these days; if you are trying to sell your products to every population segment, your marketing strategy will likely fail to hit the mark with some customers. A product’s popularity varies based on multiple factors, including buying habits, age, sex, product usage, etc. Through effective segmentation, you can personalize your marketing strategy according to the needs of a specific customer segment. This technique can help you go a long way in deciding what product is best-suited for which customer group, expanding your customer base and increasing your company’s sales figures.

2) Product development: Customization is the key to a good sales strategy. In order to stay ahead of the competition, companies need to compile and analyze data about their customers. Examining customer feedback is an effective way to determine how to sell your product as you can use this information to inform your marketing strategy. Using this information allows companies to work out any inefficiencies in their sales strategies, ensuring they emerge victorious in the competition. For example, companies such as Netflix and Amazon look at the viewer response rate for their shows and use this data to decide which shows to highlight on the homepages of their streaming services.

3) Help customers decide what they want: The best thing about data analytics is its power to make accurate predictions. By using strong predictive algorithms, companies can forecast what customers might want in the future. Not only is this an integral part of the sales prediction model, but it can also go a long way in helping retain the right customers. Customers might want to order the products being showcased and continue doing business with a company if the products they suggested appeal to them, which ultimately bolsters a company’s revenue and profitability. This approach helps companies retain customers as they are constantly reminded of products they may find appealing.

4) Pricing the products right: Pricing plays an integral role in helping companies put their products forward to the customers. Some industries can be extremely competitive, which means that a company can fail if it does not have the right data to inform them what the right prices are for each product. Through the use of data-driven pricing strategies, the right price can be easily unearthed by analyzing the competition, making it possible for companies to set the right prices on the right products. Pricing decisions can also be influenced based on customer spending patterns, allowing the company’s sales teams to ensure a price that is both profitable and affordable is set to a product.

5) Email campaigns: There is no denying that emails are one of the best ways to reach your customers. Having said this, one could also say that analytics can be used to capture which email subject phrases and words are most likely to capture the interest of the customers. This can only be achieved through the use of analytics. Understanding response rates, as well as the best days and times to send emails are useful ways to determine how to advertise products or services to customers via email campaigns.

Analytics can help businesses understand their data, while also helping them conduct a deeper dive into the ways and means in which this data can be used to enhance business operations. The more a company understand the data, the more effectively it can be used. Due to this very reason, it is important for businesses to use the right tools and unearth the right insights in order to inform their decision-making. When done right, this leads to higher customer retention rates and a higher profit margin.

Also Read

Thinking about DevOps culture? Inculcate these 5 must haves to make the most of it
How Cloud Computing is changing the Business World
Best Practices for Ensuring DevOps Security

AWS Summit – New York

Posted on June 28, 2019January 21, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Event Details: The AWS Summit New York is a free event designed to bring together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Summits are held in major cities around the world and attract technologists from multiple industries, segments, and learning levels who want to learn how AWS can help them innovate with speed and deliver services with scale, flexibility, and reliability.

Featured Topics: Choose from 120+ technical learning opportunities ranging from introductions to deep dives and includes small group hands-on workshops, lecture-style sessions, and open Q&A chalk talks. Topics will cover, but are not limited to, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Serverless, Compute, Databases, Security & Compliance, and more.

[Know more about the event]

About Idexcel: Idexcel is a Professional Services and Technology Solutions provider specializing in Cloud Services, Application Modernization, and Data Analytics. Idexcel is proud that for more than 20 years it has provided services that implement complex technologies that are innovative, agile and successful and have provided our customers with lasting value.

James Markham – (Regional Cloud Executive at Idexcel) will be attending this event. For further queries, please write to james.markham@idexcel.com