In the age of cloud, digital transformation, application modernization, and the mobile economy, the network is the lifeblood behind enabling excellent customer experiences. Network Operations (NetOps) and IT Operations (ITOps) teams are constantly aware that a disruption in core network systems performance can have a massive impact on their business.

When we discuss cybersecurity and the threat of cyber attacks, many may conjure up the image of skillful hackers launching their attacks by way of undiscovered vulnerabilities or using cutting-edge technology. While this may be the case for some attacks, more often than not, vulnerabilities are revealed as a result of careless configuration and inattention to detail. Doors are left open and provide opportunities for attacks.

Modern software development increasingly relies on distributed, service-based architectural patterns to achieve scalability, reliability, and rapid build, test, and release cycles. Two of the most popular service-based approaches are service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices. In this article, we will examine both approaches to identify their similarities and differences as well as some use cases for each.

Kotlin is one of the most versatile programming languages available, in large part because of the Kotlin team’s focus on bringing it to as many platforms as possible. It is the primary language for developing Android applications and is popular for JVM backends. Kotlin also features targets for native binary compilation with Kotlin/Native, and for web through Kotlin/JS. One of its most promising features is the ability to target multiple platforms it compiles to.

SquaredUp recently launched a PowerShell tile that lets you visualize data returned from a PowerShell script. This has opened virtually infinite doors to the sources you can get data from. PowerShell can work with crazy text formats obscure databases, and endpoints that are open on the internet. If you can access it, PowerShell can work with it. And SquaredUp lets you leverage that power so you can get the information you need and visualize it in a format that makes sense.

xMatters is part technology, part service reliability, and a little bit of magic. If you’ve spent time on the xMatters website, you’ll likely have seen a number of valuable use cases for the platform—it can alert SREs when there’s a website outage, it can accelerate product development for DevOps teams, it can manage on-call schedules and alerts for support teams.