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How to optimize the hosting of SaaS applications

data-center

How to optimize the hosting of SaaS applications

Vantaggi economici e operativi con provider hosting SaaS

Every day, software houses and system integrators are wondering how they can benefit from the adoption of cloud hosting services for the development and distribution of their SaaS software.

SaaS application providers realize quickly that owning and operating the infrastructure on which they are hosted can be expensive and complex, especially in uncertain’s customer demand.

Main problems of SaaS infrastructures

Years of work in contact with a number of companies providing SaaS solutions have led CriticalCase to identify – and fix – some key issues:

 

  • sizing: correctly size the environment in which to host the software could be an hard work that need specifics skills. In both cases, over-sizing or under-sizing, this can generate additional critical issues related to performances and costs.
  • costs: the capital investments associated with hardware and software purchasing, setting up and managing local data centers, which require server racks, round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, IT experts for infrastructure management – they are quite large;
  • performances: to achieve high performances, continuous resources are required to regularly update the hardware to the latest generation;
  • speed: in case of spikes, large amounts of computing resources may be needed in a few minutes to mantain the system up&running, not easy to achieve
  • Productivity: an on-premises data center typically requires a significant amount of rack organization and assembly effort, which includes hardware configuration, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management tasks;
  • Reliability: you must always be able to provide data backup, disaster recovery and business continuity to customers;
  • security: independently managing the infrastructure of your SaaS means guaranteeing policies, technologies and controls that strengthen overall security behavior, thanks to the protection of data, apps and infrastructure from potential threats.

Why delegate the hosting of your SaaS clouds?

Vantaggi economici e operativi con provider hosting SaaS

For companies that develop and market SaaS applications, delegating cloud hosting to a third party provider such as Criticalcase means first and foremost generating efficiency through the separation of duties between the developer of the SaaS applications and the hosting service provider.

The software house deals only with software development, while Criticalcase offers the infrastructure on which to maintain it, while generating other essential advantages:

  • free TRIAL / POC services and a discount in case of service overlap periods: for example, to the customer who wants to switch to Criticalcase hosting but still has a 2-month contract with the old provider, Criticalcase offers 2 months of free service to carry out migration, without having to pay a double fee;
  • guarantees the SaaS developer markup in software reselling, as no public CriticalCase prices on its website;
  • provides a free development environment;
  • manages the daily maintenance, SaaS allowing the developer to focus on the objectives of its core business: in particular, the IT team no longer have to worry about software installations, licenses, updates and maintenance;
  • ensures rapid commissioning and immediate provision of services to customers, to more readily launch new services on the market;
  • allows you to implement SaaS creators’ applications in various data centers, improving agility for users at the expense of latency;
  • provides backup, monitoring and performance solutions to ensure total continuity of the customer’s business.

 

The added value generated by the service and support from CriticalCase results for the customer:

 

  1. a tailor-made Hosting package, in which storage and reservation are defined together according to needs;
  2. Four touchpoints (presales, sales, support, CTO) to manage every needs at every level, and 24-hour 7/7 telephone assistance;
  3. revenue sharing invoicing;
  4. consultancy, planning and coaching, even in advance, through co-marketing initiatives to support the sale of the SaaS solution;
  5. reporting to the partner of potential customers.

 

So, if from an economic point of view the software is transformed from Capex into Opex, from the point of view of governance all management problems are outsourced: capacity planning, installation, maintenance, updates, security, license management (with the various updates associates), hardware alignment, dedicated staff.

Whether you are a company looking for a cloud environment in which to deploy its existing on-premises solutions, or an application provider looking for a cloud platform on which to deploy a new application or SaaS offering, Criticalcase’s experience will help you.

We can help you transition to the cloud by answering questions such as:

 

  • Can I use the programming language and application platform of my choice?
  • Can I use the operating system and environment in which my applications are already distributed?
  • How quickly can I respond to my customers’ demand peaks and pauses or application workloads?

 

In summary: higher productivity, more speed, greater savings and risk reduced.

 

Don’t give up the benefits of Criticalcase hosting for your SaaS software, contact us now to find out more!

CONTATTACI SUBITO!
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Infrastructure as Code pills with Terraform

Infrastructure as Code pills with Terraform

In this article we will broadly explain the topics touched in the webinar held just over a week ago in which we talked about Infrastructure as Code with Terraform.

What is the target that a company usually sets itself when it wants to make the most of cloud environments?

For Criticalcase it is to achieve the so-called DevOps on the hybrid multicloud, that is to be able to reach a level of automation in various areas involving the internal procedures of the company and the methodologies, in order to change the paradigm and make the most of multicloud environments.

Criticalcase’s approach is a hybrid approach, and it is completely agnostic on any cloud platform.

Starting from Infrastructure as Code, in our opinion, should be the first step that a company must face, as it is the first step in the creation of platforms.

Infrastructure as code (IaC)

It is a process that allows the management and provisioning of infrastructure components both on premise at proprietary or third-party data centers and on the Cloud.

It is accomplished through definition files that are readable by a program such as Terraform.

Infrastructure as a code has multiple advantages, among the most important:

  1. Make the infrastructure dynamic, so much so that we can integrate the infrastructure components into the DevOps pipeline
  2. Standardize the infrastructure, so that changes in the infrastructure code level, if applied through IaC, affect the various remote infrastructures without the risk of misalignments
  3. Implement DR policies
  4. Having a single point of view on all resources related to a platform, whether they are SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS
  5.  

Terraform is an opensource project by HashiCorp able to manage any available Cloud platform

  • Automation
  • Workflow management
  • Ecosystem

Having a very large ecosystem, it is easy to approach the cloud directly through Terraform, as there are about 150 official or verified Providers and over 800 communities.

  • OFFICIALS –> are those directly managed by Terraform
  • VERIFIED –> verified suppliers are owned and managed by third party technology partners and approved by Terraform
  • COMMUNITY –>Community suppliers are published in the Terraform register by individual maintainers or other members of the terraform community.

Unlike other IAC (Infrastructure as Code) systems that are born with an imperative approach, Terraform is an important tool born with a declarative approach that allows you to represent infrastructural objects.

The “final state” of the infrastructure is declared from the beginning, meaning that it is well known what it must look like.

Therefore, it will be Terraform itself and its plugins and suppliers, who will take care of the implementation of the infrastructure initially designed.

  1. The main purpose of the Terraform language is to declare the resources that represent the infrastructure objects. All other features of the language exist only to make resource definition more flexible and convenient.
  2. The configuration files (HCL format) describe to Terraform the components that need to run for a single application or for the entire datacenter.
  3. Terraform generates an execution plan that describes what it will do to achieve the desired state, then executes it to build the infrastructure described.
  4. When the configuration changes, the Terraform state changes

The new version 1.0 of Terraform has been out for a few weeks now, introducing several features such as:

  • Greater interoperability between Terraform states
  • Extended maintenance periods
  • Improved update experience

BEST PRACTICE

This is a list of best practices that derive from the experience Criticalcase has had with the use of Terraform

  • MODULES
  1. A module is a container for multiple resources that are used together.
  2. Each Terraform configuration has at least one module, known as the root module, which consists of the resources defined in the .tf files in the main working directory.
  3. A module can call other modules, which allows the child module’s resources to be concisely included in the configuration.
  4. Modules can also be called multiple times, either within the same configuration or in separate configurations, allowing resource configurations to be packaged and reused.
  5. It is also very important to create your own forms.

We at Criticalcase have developed many modules for each type of AWS component that we are going to use when needed.

  • SCALE

The first point to consider when scaling the system is the centralization of the state management and its lock (if used by multiple points).

  • DATA RESOURCES

Data sources allow Terraform to use information defined outside Terraform, it can be defined by another separate Terraform configuration or by different functions.

Each provider can offer data sources along with its own set of risk types.

  • EXTERNAL SOURCES OF DATA

In this case, a resource already present on Terraform will not be used but a program will be run by the developer code.

  • PROVISIONERS

Even if the owner of Terraform (HasciCorp) advises not to use the Provisioners unless you can really cannot do without them, with Terraform it is not possible to manage everything and therefore you will have to intervene on the remote machines (if it is a Server), or perform local actions.

There are 3 types, two of which are the ssh connection to the servers:

  1. Local executive
  2. Remote Exec – Via SSH
  3. File – Via SSH
  • DYNAMIC BLOCK

Some types of resources include nested blocks that can be iterated N times over “settings”, which typically represent separate related (or embedded) objects within the container object.

In addition to all the best practices, there are also warnings that can be summarized in 3 points:

  1. Workspaces: sometimes too risky
  2. Terraform Cloud – Cloud Secrets – Lock-in
  3. Log External Forms – Be Really Aware of What You Are Doing?

If you are interested in learning more about the subject, below you will find the video of the webinar held by our Delivery Manager and Cloud Architect Pasquale Lepera

If you want to learn more about the webinar, or if you want to receive the slides that have been projected, contact us using the following form.

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WEBINAR: Efficient E-Commerce – cyber security, web performance and increase of the conversion rate

WEBINAR: Efficient E-Commerce - cyber security, web performance and increase of the conversion rate

 

Criticalcase organized the webinar “Efficient eCommerce: cyber security, web performance and increase of the convertion rate” in collaboration with partners Akamai Technologies and Netcomm. A panel discussion with the special participation of the Swarovski and 7 for All Mankind who will go through their
case histories.

The webinar will be held on the 3rd of June at 14:15 CEST.

Improve the results of your digital business through security and web performance.

3/06/2021 h. 14:15

Join the webinar

Speakers:

 

Bożena Nawara-Borek – eCommerce Manager Europe/CEEMEA at Swarovski

Enrico Fantaguzzi – Senior Manager eCommerce at 7 For All Mankind

Marco Giusti – Sales Manager Italy at Akamai Technologies

Alessandro Zoncu – VP of Sales at Criticalcase

Paolo Attivissimo (Moderator) – IT Journalist

 

Topics

Over the last year, characterised by periods of lockdown, in-store purchases have suffered, leaving room for double-digit growth in online access.

Many eCommerce businesses found themselves unprepared to handle higher volumes of traffic and consequently failed to make the most of this opportunity to increase their online conversion.

 

Especially for the fashion sector, the performance of eCommerce sites and the user experience have become crucial to increase online turnover.

 DURING THE CONFERENCE, 2 MAIN MACRO THEMES WILL BE ADDRESSED:

1)     Performance

How to make the site hyper-performing and ensure the customer a more effective checkout process? Which parameters must be respected to meet customer expectations? What power can technology have on business growth? What kind of benefits do you have with performing support networks

2)     Safety

How to guarantee a good experience to those who buy? Is customer data safe? The purchase phase is a discriminating factor; are you covered from cyber attacks? With the growth of online purchases, the interest of hackers in the theft of data credentials increases; how can you ensure the integrity of the supply chain you implement on the site? How to defend your eCommerce from the most frequent attacks such as DDos and Botnets?

 

 Round table

During the panel discussion we will listen to the testimonies of Bożena Nawara-Borek – eCommerce Manager Europe/ CEEMEA at Swarovski – and Enrico Fantaguzzi – Senior Manager eCommerce at 7 For All Mankind as outstanding representatives of the fashion and luxury sector.

They will tell us how they managed to optimise web performance and improve the user experience also through the guarantee of data security.

Through their experiences, we will see which trends are the protagonists of the digital transformation and how they are taking action in strengthening the infrastructure development in accordance with the principles of environmental sustainability.

Thanks to the participation of Marco Giusti – Sales Manager Italy at Akamai Technologies and Alessandro Zoncu – VP of Sales at Criticalcase we will be able to understand which are the needs to be covered in order to ensure performance enhancement, which type of significant improvements can be obtained by equipping with high-performance and secure networks, with data in hand.

The meeting will be moderated and made interactive by a great expert in the sector, Paolo Attivissimo – IT Journalist.

 

JOIN THE FREE WEBINAR TO FIND ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS:

·        Is your eCommerce optimised to get the best conversion rate in traffic peaks?

·        Does the site’s loading speed allow a good navigation for the users?

·        Are you exploiting the full potential of your online store?

      ·        Are your customers’ data safe? Do they know?

      ·        Are you covered from cyber attacks?

      ·        Are you using the benefits of available technology to achieve conversions?

 

 

Join the webinar and learn from the experts how to increase your online sales
Register for the Webinar

Speakers:

Ms. Nawara-Borek Bozena, eCommerce Manager Europe/CEEMEA at SWAROVSKI

Ms. Nawara-Borek Bozena, eCommerce Manager Europe/CEEMEA at SWAROVSKI

In Swarovski she is responsible for sales development via online channels, in cooperation with the biggest 3rd Party in EMEA region – online Pure Players (Amazon, Zalando) and through own websites in ME and Turkey as well.

 

She is highly experienced eCommerce and B2B sales strategist with a superior record of Internet revenue generation and key account management. Adept at applying the most current creative techniques to optimize sales development in omnichannel environment. She has been working in e-commerce and marketing industry since 2010. During her professional career she was responsible for planning and implementing on-line performance marketing campaigns, launching e-commerce platforms, preparation and implementation of sales and marketing strategies. She has gained experience in small and medium-sized companies operating on the Polish e-commerce market and while working for a leader of this market – Allegro.pl, as well. Then, in Carrefour Poland she was responsible for all commercial activities in the on-line channel, including the sale of food and non-food products. Furthermore, she was responsible for development of the Marketplace concept, the Collaborative Economy project and M-commerce, as part of the integrated Carrefour.pl platform. In addition, she is experienced e-commerce trainer, speaker and lecturer.

Mr. Enrico Fantaguzzi, Senior Manager e-Commerce at 7 For All Mankind

Mr. Enrico Fantaguzzi, Senior Manager e-Commerce at 7 For All Mankind

14+ years experience in digital marketing, e-commerce and multi-channel commerce, in fashion retail and luxury goods industries.

 

Proven expertise in leading multicultural teams and international projects.

Mr. Alessandro Zoncu, VP of Sales at Critialcase

Mr. Alessandro Zoncu, VP of Sales at Critialcase

Alessandro Zoncu has been taking care of building, optimizing and modernizing a complex offering of Digital Infrastructures and Security, made suitable for the big names of most likely the Fashion industry, over the last 20 years. Alessandro has a strong technical background that has allowed him to position a unique offer with a great added value at the service of the modern customers pains and needs. As VP of Sales Alessandro has, in his long-term experience, ensembled a technological proposition with particular emphasis on the performances of web / E-commerce architectures: loading time matters.

 His team of specialists has decades of experience in the field of Cloud Infrastructures, and has accompanied many prestigious and international customers through Digital transformation projects with an eye to Big Data and AI, allowing them to significantly improve the User Experience for their customers and increase conversion rates.

Mr. Marco Giusti, Sales Manager Italy at Akami Technologies

Mr. Marco Giusti, Sales Manager Italy at Akami Technologies

Marco Giusti is currently Sales Manager for Akamai Technologies Italia with main responsibility over commerce and finance sector.

Marco started in Akamai in 2012 as Client Service Manager, managing the post-sales for Italian market. Later, as Major Account Executive, worked on strategic costumers and on new customer acquisition. Over the years he has been leading first the Media & Entertainment market in Italy and then the Commerce one (Luxury/Retail and Travel).

 

Before joining Akamai, Marco has covered sales and presales roles in IT and Hi-Tech Industries. He owns a MS in Materials’ Science from Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.

Mr. Paolo Attivissimo (Moderator), IT Journalist

Mr. Paolo Attivissimo (Moderator), IT Journalist

 

Paolo Attivissimo is an information technology writer and journalist, science communicator, public speaker, technical translator and interpreter, and hoax buster. He has written 18 books in Italian on various information technology topics and over 100 articles for Le Scienze (the Italian edition of Scientific American). Since 2006 he hosts the Il Disinformatico radio show on Swiss National Radio and TV (RSI). He is a consultant for RSI and for Italian broadcasters RAI and Mediaset on information technology and media misinformation. He has accumulated over 100 million views on his blog Disinformatico.info and has 410,000 followers on Twitter. Born in York (UK), he lives and works in Lugano, Switzerland, with his wife Elena, one and a half cats and far too many computers and gadgets.

Join the webinar to discover how to improve your e-commerce conversion rates

3 June 2021 h. 14:15
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CLOUD COST MANAGEMENT: Have you ever thought about optimizing the costs of your Cloud?

CLOUD COST MANAGEMENT: Have you ever thought about optimizing the costs of your Cloud?

Cost management, in addition to being a great challenge for companies that use Public Cloud services, is also a great opportunity to promote efficient IT consumption.

With “Cloud Cost Management” we intend to identify, manage, and monitor the causes of costs incurred on Cloud or MultiCloud platforms with some very specific purposes. In this article we want to explain and deepen the approach that Criticalcase adopts and adapts to its customers.

To begin with, it should be noted that managing the costs of the Cloud is not just a question of Operations. Many companies delegate the management and optimization of Cloud costs to the IT Operations body, but the “problem” must be addressed on several corporate levels (Finance, Procurement, Program Management, IT Strategy, etc.) and during the different phases of the life cycle of projects.

 

The following image shows a typical segmentation of “Cloud Cost Management”, this model is effective but incomplete, as it is developed solely at the IT Operation level:

What are the main aspects that drive Cloud costs out of control?

These are some of the main causes that lead to a drift in Cloud costs:

Every Cloud Service Provider has a different billing method and the way in which they apply costs. The bill may include thousands of options and combinations that are difficult to understand also because they can vary during the life cycle of the project.

This complexity increases when a customer uses multiple Cloud Providers as he will have to manage different payment and billing methods.

The invoices are made up of hundreds of items thus making it difficult to reconstruct and allocate costs.

Self-provisioning causes out-of-control growth with unexpected costs. An easy access to the point-and-click web console without constraints can lead to uncontrolled increase in resources.

Cloud providers annually announce the addition of new services and components, new features, and new pricing models, making it difficult to control these changes.

The same application can be developed using many types of different architectures and components which can therefore involve different costs. This implies that companies have more difficulty in calculating and identifying the most convenient alternative to satisfy the customer.

The main Cloud platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have different billing, service, API and management systems and therefore there is no standardization, and this creates difficulties when using multiple platforms.

 

The task of Criticalcase professionals responsible for IT operations and cloud management is to assure:

  • • Make customers aware for what they spend.
  • • Build the foundation for cost tracking using vendor native tags and hierarchies.
  • • Promote cost optimization by monitoring utilization and capacity metrics.
  • • Take advantage of programmatic discounts.
  • • Modernize applications in order to use provider-managed services when they are most convenient.
  • • Deploy native cloud provider tools to manage spending.

Cost Optimization Roadmap

The Criticalcase methodology (which takes its cue from the Gartner framework) provides a framework for managing the costs of the Public Cloud.

This methodology not only provides information on operational aspects such as reducing disk space, turning off machines if not used, etc., but also providing information on architecture, application development, DevOps, and governance.

It is a recursive and structured approach that aims to ensure a balance between costs and the level of service required.

  • PLANNING

In this phase, Criticalcase defines the objectives, direction, and business requirements with the customer, taking into consideration the available budget.

A census of the applications used in the company will be made to understand their value, impact, their complexity, and security constraints.

Cost planning is the key to establishing cloud spend expectations. Ignoring this component of the roadmap without budgeting for applications would cause concern as companies would struggle to hold their customers responsible for their expenses.

 

ASSESSMENT AND ANALYSIS

At this point we analyze the architecture to understand how it was deployed and developed. Once the information is gathered, Criticalcase begins to monitor and measure the workload to understand if there are any oversized or undersized machines and make an analysis of the costs invested.

The technical requirements are also analyzed and will be compared and correlated with the other solutions.

 

COST ANALYSIS

In the cost analysis phase, Criticalcase will focus on the census of the services used by the customer by implementing a labeling strategy. These labels, or more simply Tags, implement metadata that apply to all the elements of the hierarchy of a native provider and are displayed in the supplier’s invoice next to each item to be used to group the various costs.

The cost monitoring phase is important to gain the visibility on cloud spending which is essential to verify the correctness of expectations and detect any anomalies.

 

REDUCTION

At this point, the cost reduction activity is started by optimizing and downsizing the machines, starting an on-and-off plans, disposing of unused resources and so on.

This step is the quickest way to immediately reduce costs as these practices do not require architectural changes and are easy to apply. Ignoring this component of the framework will increase costs for cloud services and will not allow you to take advantage of the elasticity of cloud computing.

 

OPTIMIZATION

Cloud spend optimization goes beyond the cost reduction techniques mentioned in the previous step. On the contrary, strategic optimization techniques often require architectural modifications of applications to reduce the need for resources.

Although these optimizations may take longer to implement than the previous techniques, they have other advantages such as greater resilience and scalability. By ignoring this step of the framework, savings opportunities cannot be fully maximized, leaving behind the economic benefits of adopting cloud native principles.

Total Cost of Ownership, Stakeholder and Governance Model

In this chart we can see the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

As can be seen from the image, the curve of TCO Oprimization after a while tends to flatten, this means that after a start in which cost optimization is very pronounced, it will tend to stabilize.

It is recommended that each company evaluates and studies its curve well in order to optimize its cost / benefit ratio regarding its applications, constraints, objectives and its strategy.

The basic rules to follow are the following:

Designing architectures and solutions based on cost optimization principles. Efficient use of the IaaS cloud, PaaS, sizing, and optimization of the service.

Follow the cost reduction policies continuously, inform customers about optimization opportunities, and establish reports and dashboards to create cost awareness throughout the company.

Define the requirements to be provided by the application in terms of performance, availability, frequency of updates or intended use.

Provide governance rules for policymaking regarding budget approval and cost allocation.

What analysis tools should be used to optimize costs?

Our suggestion is to use the native tools of the Cloud platforms. These tools are highly integrated with the cloud platform and provide high functionality.

Native tools are available to all customers, some of these tools are free while others must be paid with a consumption-based model, but most importantly, cloud service providers continue to invest in their management toolset, with frequent updates of new features and services.

 

What are you waiting for? Optimize the costs of your cloud, all you have to do is contact us 😉 !

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MULTI-CLOUD: HOW TO MANAGE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

multi-cloud

MULTI-CLOUD: HOW TO MANAGE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

The cloud has reshaped the way we do business. Thanks to this technology, companies have had the opportunity to upgrade system management as well as their overall services. Unfortunately, many companies still don’t use this technology to rise to their full potential.

Decision-makers in many organizations are helpless in front of too many technical details shared online, which, most of the time, remain too hard to understand by the non-tech savvy. That’s why we decided to write a practical guide to multi-cloud, in which we focus on the services offered by cloud technology.

An increased number of companies have decided to replace the limited possibilities of a single cloud system with multi-cloud, as it’s faster and more effective.

multi-cloud

As a result, they registered a 75% growth from the previous year. However, experts recommend a small-step approach to multi-cloud, which allows companies to learn gradually about the various functions of this technology.

 

What is multi-cloud?

The multi-cloud system operates on more public clouds, sometimes offered by multiple third-party providers. The main advantage of this environment is its flexibility, as it can adapt to carry out different tasks in total autonomy.

It’s an ambitious goal, as the system is aiming to connect different types of software or apps (for example, using advanced API or RESTful). At the same time, it should reduce or abolish the so-called vendor lock-in which is the relationship of dependency established between the provider (that tends to tie customers to specific services) and the beneficiaries of the service.

 

The ideal multi-cloud service provider

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all provider of multi-cloud services. But, various general criteria can guide you to the perfect choice. In the era of big data and the Internet of things (IoT), companies are pressed by the need to improve performances on a medium and large scale. This involves the continuous design and re-definition of the architectures that guide various systems. Under this light, the use of the multi-cloud becomes necessary to streamline operations and make them smart.

Multi-cloud service providers must be able to offer a high performing and adequate network infrastructure, based on the Fault-Tolerant paradigm. Therefore, it can perform disaster recovery and fast recovery of backup, as well as ensure a low probability of breakdowns or inefficiencies during use.

Before entrusting yourself to the first provider you find, you should check that it meets these requirements, as well as whether it has qualified technicians available to solve any potential problems. Otherwise, you risk finding yourself handling an ineffective cloud, which is blocked and difficult to manage. You can learn more about the advantages of an effective multi-cloud service by checking out our multi-cloud offer.

 

The benefits of multi-cloud systems

Not only does the multi-cloud give you the possibility of customizing services, but it also tends to enhance workload distribution on multiple nodes of the network, minimizing the risks of congested nodes. As you distribute the work differently, you speed up packet delivery on the network and improve routing management. These features open up scenarios that were impossible to imagine a few years ago.

The multi-cloud has become fundamental for fast and hard-to-predict technological development. As a consequence, companies need to develop an ability to adapt quickly to new technologies, too, to stay competitive and meet the needs of potential customers.

 
 
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WEBINAR: MULTICLOUD IAC ON TENCENT CHINA, ISSUES AND BEST PRACTICE

WEBINAR: MULTICLOUD IAC ON TENCENT CHINA, ISSUES AND BEST PRACTICE

Criticalcase and Polytechnic University of Turin present Webinar: Multicloud IaC on Tencent China, Issues and best practice

22nd of February at 17:00 CET

REGISTER TO WEBINAR

Recent studies show China as the new digital frontier: an ever-growing market for the sale of products and services by the western world, but also a place in which are emerging new businesses, technologies and consumption models, bound to become popular at international level.

In addition, in China we can find three of the Internet giants: Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

China excels in the industry of e-commerce with an incidence of 35% on the global market.Chinese users prefer make purchases by mobile devices and look for services and experiences more than for simple products.

Currently considered the largest market for Western countries, China will be a space of continuous and significant economic growth and technological innovation, and it will have an increasingly strategic role in the digital world and in the development of new business models.

Based on a Use Case for a big player on fashion industry, the webinar will focus on:

 

1) Cloud environment with global diffusion (China related issues). DEMO (Tencent Cloud)

2) How to structure and launch an IaC terraform project. DEMO

3) How to exploit the multicloud (lamba and S3). DEMO

4) Secure the access: Bastion host. DEMO

5) How could this kind of project evolve by integrating into a DevOps.

 

Webinar is open to anyone interested in this topic, we kindly invite you to register and book your place!

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SASE ARCHITECTURE: 6 USE CASES

SASE ARCHITECTURE: 6 USE CASES

What is SASE Architecture & Use Cases

Companies are digitizing, which means the time has come to think about managing optimized access to data and applications, both on-premise and in the cloud, and the increasingly mobile global workforce.

Criticalcase has chosen to partner with Cato Networks because it is the first implementation of Gartner’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework that has identified in a global and cloud-native architecture the way to provide secure and optimized access to all users and applications.

The Cato solution enables companies to move from traditional networks such as MPLS to global, secure, agile and affordable modern networks.

Cato Cloud connects all corporate network resources, such as branch offices, mobile workforce, on-premise datacenter and cloud services, providing a global, secure and controlled SD-WAN service. With all the traffic WAN and Internet consolidated in the cloud, Cato offers a suite of security services to protect all the traffic.

01

Migration from MPLS networks to SD-WAN

01
  • Migration from MPLS networks to SD-WAN
  • MPLS networks are expensive, inflexible and limited in capacity. Using Cato Edge SD-WAN, businesses increase usable capacity and improve resiliency at a lower cost per megabit. Companies with a global footprint are leveraging Cato’s private global network backbone to replace the global MPLS network and the unpredictable Internet. Migrating to SD-WAN allows you to optimize performance and maximize the throughput of on-premise and cloud resources.

02

Optimized global connectivity

  • We offer a private global backbone with an integrated WAN network to ensure a predictable, SLA-guaranteed, high-performance network experience everywhere. Using Cato we can offer an excellent user experience for accessing on-premise and cloud applications.

03

Secure Internet access at branches

  • We provide a complete network security stack built into Cato Cloud. By connecting all offices to the private global network backbone through the Cato Edge SD-WAN platform, all traffic, both Internet and WAN, is fully protected by Cato Security as a Service, thus eliminating the cost and complexity of specific solutions security, appliance or cloud services.

04

Cloud acceleration and control

  • We accelerate access to the cloud by routing all cloud traffic to the Cato PoP closest to the cloud destination. Since Cato’s PoPs share the footprint of the data centers of major cloud providers, the latency between Cato and these providers is essentially zero. Optimizing cloud access only requires a single application-level rule that determines where cloud application traffic should leave the Cato Cloud. Enough of the hassle and cost of deploying cloud appliances or creating regional communication hubs in an effort to extend the SD-WAN to the cloud.

05

Mobile network security and optimization

  • Cato’s global network and security capabilities extend to a single mobile user’s laptop, smartphone or tablet. Using a Cato Client or clientless browser access, users dynamically connect to the nearest Cato PoP and their traffic is optimally routed over Cato’s private global network backbone to on-premise or cloud applications. Cato’s Security as a Service protects mobile users from threats anywhere in the world and enforces access control to applications.

06

Work from home

  • Cato supports work from home for all employees, always. Companies quickly connect their on-premise and cloud data centers to the Cato Cloud and enable self-service provisioning of Cato Clients to all users who require access for work from home or remotely. Unlike traditional VPN and SDP products that are not adaptable to support the entire enterprise, Cato’s global and cloud-scale platform is designed to optimize traffic to all applications with a private global backbone, continuously inspect traffic for threats and perform access control with Cato’s security stack.

Webinar: Why SASE is the future of SD-WAN and security Thursday, 26th of November 2020, h. 11:00 CET

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CLOUDCONF 2020 – EUROPE’S LARGEST CLOUD CONFERENCE

Cloudconf 2020 - Thursday 5 November 2020 - Live Streaming

CloudConf, one of the most expected events in Europe on Cloud Computing returns once again for an online edition that will be held on Thursday 5 November. 

This year at Cloudconf are expected thousands of participants and over 30 talks and keynotes on topics such as scalability, IoT, Docker, Kubernetes, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Microservices, Serverless, Performance, Cloud Development and much more. 

Cloudconf will be a real streaming conference, participants will attend quality talks and technical keynotes with high-profile speakers, group chats and mentoriship, surveys and also many interesting prizes! Several rooms will host discussion groups on technology topics, allowing participants to interact, discuss and exchange views, as well as post questions to speakers and get expert opinion. 

 Sponsors of the event are the leading brands in the world of cloud computing at an international level and of course Criticalcase will be there.  

As every year, Criticalcase is  participating as an event sponsor and we want to welcome everybody to visit our virtual stand and get to know us better, our staff will be available for any information.

Our speaker at Cloudconf will be Tito Petronio, Digital Solutions Director at Criticalcase, he will talk about the deployment of the global project in the cloud. Tito will guide you in detail through all the issues related to performance, safety, regulations and best practices. And of course, as always, we’ll share helpful tips & tricks for a successful deployment.

Register for the Cloudconf event directly online https://2020.cloudconf.it/ to be able to participate in the live conference on November 5 and follow Criticalcase talk.   

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MPLS, SD-WAN AND SASE: WHAT WILL BE YOUR NEXT WAN?

MPLS, SD-WAN AND SASE: WHAT WILL BE YOUR NEXT WAN?

MPLS, SD-WAN and SASE, the future of WAN

WAN is the backbone of the business. It ties together remote locations, headquarters, and data centers into an integrated network. The role of the WAN has evolved significantly in the past years: beyond physical locations, we now need to provide optimized and secure access to cloud-based resources for a global and mobile workforce.

The existing WAN optimization and security solutions were designed for physical locations and point-to-point architectures, and are no longer able to support this transformation. 

 

First Generation: Legacy WAN Connectivity

Currently, there are two WAN connectivity options, which balance cost, availability and latency: MPLS and Internet. 

MPLS

With MPLS, a telecommunication provider provisions two or more business locations with a managed connection and routes traffic between these locations over their private backbone. In theory, since the traffic does not traverse the Internet, encryption is optional.  

Because the connection is managed by the telco, end to end, it can commit to availability and latency SLAs. This commitment is expensive and is priced by bandwidth. Enterprises choose MPLS if they need to support applications with stringent up-time requirements and minimal quality of service (such as Voice over IP, VoIP). 

To maximize the usage of MPLS links, WAN optimization equipment is deployed at each end of the line, to prioritize and reduce different types of application traffic. The effectiveness of such optimizations is protocol and application specific (for example, compressed streams benefit less from WAN optimization)  

Advantages of MPLS: Low Latency and High availability 

Disadvantages: high price 

Internet

Internet connections procured from the ISP, typically offer nearly unlimited last mile capacity for a low monthly price. An unmanaged Internet connection doesn’t have the high availability and low-latency benefits of MPLS but it is inexpensive and quick to deploy.  

IT establishes an encrypted VPN tunnel between the branch office firewall and the headquarters/data center firewall. The connection itself is going through the Internet, with no guarantee of service levels because it is not possible to control the number of carriers or the number of hops a packet has to cross. This can cause unpredictable application behavior due to increased latency and packet loss. 

Advantages of Internet: Low price 

Disadvantages: Unknown latency and low availability 

Second generation: Appliance-based SD-WAN

The cost/performance trade off between Internet and MPLS, gave rise to SD-WAN. 

SD-WAN is using both MPLS and Internet links to handle WAN traffic. Latency sensitive apps are using the MPLS links, while the rest of the traffic is using the Internet link. The challenge customers face is to dynamically assign application traffic to the appropriate link.  

SD-WAN solutions offer the management capabilities to direct the relevant traffic according to its required class of service, offloading MPLS links and delaying the need to upgrade capacity.  

SD-WAN solutions, however, are limited in a few key aspects: 

  • Footprint: similar to WAN optimization equipment, SD-WAN solutions must have a box deployed at each side of the link 
  • Connectivity: SD-WAN can’t replace the MPLS link because its Internet “leg” is exposed to the unpredictable nature of unmanaged Internet connection (namely, its unpredictable latency, packet drops and availability) 
  • Deployment: SD-WAN, like the other WAN connectivity options, is agnostic to the increased role of the Internet, cloud and mobility within the enterprise network. It focuses, for the most part on optimizing the legacy, physical WAN. 
 

 

Third Generation: Secure Access Service EDGE (SASE)

With the rapid migration to cloud applications (Office 365, Slaesforce), cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, Criticalcase cloud) and a mobile workforce, the classic WAN architecture is severely challenged.  

SASE (Secure Access Service EDGE) is the convergence of wide area networking, or WAN, and network security services like CASB, FWaaS and Zero Trust, into a single, cloud-delivered service mode

According to Gartner, “SASE capabilities are delivered as a service based upon the identity of the entity, real-time context, enterprise security/compliance policies and continuous assessment of risk/trust throughout the sessions. Identities of entities can be associated with people, groups of people (branch offices), devices, applications, services, IoT systems or edge computing locations.” 

It is no longer sufficient to think in terms of physical locations being the heart of the business, and here is why: 

  • Limited end-to-end link control for the cloud 

With public cloud applications, organizations can’t rely on optimizations that require a box both end of each link. In addition, cloud infrastructure (servers and storage) introduces a new production environment that has its own connectivity and security requirements. Existing WAN and security solutions don’t naturally extend to cloud-based environments. 

  • Limited service and control to mobile users 

Securely accessing corporate resources requires, mobile users to connect to a branch or HQ firewall VPN which could be very far from their location. This causes user experience issues, and encourages compliance violations (for example, direct access to cloud services that bypasses corporate security policy). Ultimately, the mobile workforce is not effectively covered by the WAN.  

SASE is aiming to address the challenges of traditional WAN. It is based on the following principles:  

– The perimeter moves to the Cloud: The notorious dissolving perimeter is re-established in the cloud. The cloud delivers a managed WAS backbone with reduced latency and optimal routing. This ensures the required quality of service for both internal and cloud-based applications. 

– The network “democratic” and all-inclusive: all network elements plug into the cloud WAN with secure tunnels including physical locations, cloud resources and mobile users. This ensures all business elements are integral part of the network instead of being bolted on top of a legacy architecture 

– Security is integrated into the network: beyond securing the backbone itself, it is possible to directly secure all traffic (WAN and Internet) that crosses the perimeter – without deploying distributed firewall. 

Download the paper to learn network transformation strategies and how to migrate from MPLS to modern SASE solutions. 

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How to migrate from MPLS to SD-WAN

 By adopting SASE companies gain numerous benefits in terms of agility, collaboration, efficiency and cost reduction. 

Criticalcase has formed a strategic partnership with Cato Networks, the world first and only SASE platform. At your disposal we always have numerous engineers available to answer any of your question or add the information you might have missed. Fill out the form below to get in touch

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AN ONGOING “MEOW” ATTACK DELETS THOUSANDS OF DATABASES

AN ONGOING “MEOW” ATTACK DELETS THOUSANDS OF DATABASES

Thousands of unsecured internet-facing databases have been damaged and destroyed by the wave of attacks called “Meow”. After the attack is over, it leaves no explanation and no notes on what and why has happened, except for the only one word: Meow. 

Meow-attacks started at the end of July 2020 and are still an ongoing issue, till now nearly 4000 DBs have been completely deleted, the majority are MongoDB and ElasticSearch but are not the only ones, also  Cassandra, CouchDB, Redis, Hadoop, Jenkins, and Apache ZooKeeper have suffered Meow attacks. 

Meow is an automated attack, it consists of a bot script that attacks a site by probing for known vulnerabilities such as unsecured ports and vulnerable files. Automated Meow attacks are targeting unsecured installations, for example, the ones without SSL encrypted communication, or the installations that are not protected by a firewall/WAF and are exposed to the public. 

It is not quite clear what is the source and the motivation for Meow-hackers since such attacks do not have “global” menaces and do not contain any ransom threats, therefore malicious actors most probably are just doing it for fun, since hacking is becoming more accessible and easy year after year.   

Bob Diachenko, a researcher and cybersecurity expert, was the first one to notice a strange wave of attacks that were taking advantage of the vulnerabilities the systems have. On his Twitter account, the researcher has presumed that most probably the hackers not only want to have fun but also want to teach a lesson and to make DB admins more sensible to IT security topics and pay more attention to securing the data.

However, even if the intentions may seem noble, the hackers have created serious damage to the companies. A huge Indian travel and online booking company have lost personal data of over 700.000 users, while a famous cosmetics brand Yves Rocher has lost millions of customer data.  

How can you protect your data from Meow-like breaches?

1) Protect against script attacks – web sites rely heavily on scripts to run services and access data and the hackers always find a way to exploit those scripts to steal sensitive customer information. Malicious code can come from many sources, a solution that can detect script behavior will provide the most effective protection from these types of attacks. 

Criticalcase in collaboration with Akamai Technologies implements Page Integrity Manager that takes a detection-first approach so that you can quickly mitigate compromised scripts and update policy controls to stop zero-day attacks and recurring attacks. 

2) Use Multi-factor authentication (MFA) – today relying on just a username and password is no longer enough. The best solution is the one that can easily turn on MFA for any application with only one click — no development, testing, or maintenance required.  

3) Assume all the data in your database is sensitive data and treat it accordingly. You need to know exactly where the data is and manage its security in an effective and easy way having control over the whole life cycle of the data. 

4) Make sure key people in the company know who is responsible for database security.

5) Secure your data and apps with a WAF (Web Application Firewall), it inspects the traffic before it reaches your application and protects your server by filtering out threats that could damage your site or compromise data. 

A WAF is an advanced solution that can protect you not only from any data BREACH but as well from SQL injection, Malicious file execution, Cross-site scripting, and more. A cloud-based WAF can scale to protect against the largest DoS and DDoS attacks. Criticalcase together with Akamai Technologies implements security solutions to eliminate any risks of downtime, data theft, and security breaches for its clients.  

6) Work with a trusted technology partner that can provide you with a tailor-made and fully managed security solution.  

 

Here you can read more about the advantages of cyber security solutions.

 
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