Unlocking Your IT Data & Building on the EPoS Now Platform

There will be Free burgers, hot dogs and the usual free drinks!

6.00pm - Free Food and Drink
7.00pm - Introduction
7.10pm - Unlocking Your IT Data
7.55pm - Break
8.10pm - Building on the EPoS Now Platform
8.55pm - End

There are Priorities, Priorities, and then there are PRIORITIES.

Today IT is generally seen as a critical if not essential part of our daily live’s, the data that it generates is readily accepted to be of essential importance. From mundane user generated data such as word documents (but only mundane as its content), to critical infrastructure regulating electricity supplies (but only critical if service affecting). One of the challenges we face is how do we understand what data is of critical importance and what is not. In addition another layer of added complexity is that one departments criticality is anothers nuisance, so how do we advise and decide as IT professionals what an organization really needs? Firstly in order to make an ‘informed’ decision we need to be….. Informed.

We at Sumo Logic (https://www.sumologic.com/) will enable you to create a platform which enables you to collect the right information in the right context, at the right time.

Organizational DNA - How do we do this?
IT Systems similar to a living organism produce waste or "Digital Exhaust". A biological parallel could be drawn with secretions like sweat, saliva, or other less palatable waste matter. Historically this waste or digital exhaust (machine data) was largely discarded and ignored. In the event that it was looked at it was only interrogated when something went wrong. Although just like any biological system we have found that you could derive forensic data from this output and gain a granular detailed understanding of a system from the waste produced by that system. Similar to a clinician assessing the health of your kidneys from a urine sample. From an IT perspective conventional SIEM’s would digest this exhaust and utilise this data for security forensics ‘digital fingerprints’. While operation and development teams within the same organization would use a totally separate platform for operational intelligence use cases, but both platforms would utilise large sets of very similar data. Sumo Logic utilises ALL data collected and provides differing views of that data aligned to the differing audiences without duplication of effort. In doing so to use another clinical analogy we have moved from sampling blood to unlocking the genome of an organization.

Clive McDonald CISSP,MSc Info Sec
(@sumologic) (https://twitter.com/SumoLogic?lang=en-gb)

I would describe myself firstly as an IT Data evangelist, while this can be seen as a quite generic description within a professional context, I think it is quite apt with regards to where I am in my career… In previous positions I have built and managed global teams,designed & implemented various technical enterprise wide solutions,and won multi-million pound contracts within both start-up companies and global enterprises. This work was done under various guises such as a EMEA Manager or a senior security professional/architect, predominantly dealing with FTSE 50 companies across a wide range of verticals. The reason I have chosen such a generic description for myself is simply because IT data and its use within the world has gone through a seachange, the use of ‘Big Data’ has blured the previous delineations that existed between security, operations and auditing as an example. With this in mind I provide a breadth of expertise and experience in unlocking the potential contained within IT data for the enterprise within any context.

Building on the EPoS Now Platform

April 2015 celebrates 3 years of software development at local tech company EPoS Now. The business has had great success from introducing Software as a Service and some great developer tools.They are soon to extend this by offering Platform as a Service, which will allow developers to build, host and resell their creations.

In this talk Wayne will demonstrate how to build and host a simple JavaScript app using real-time data from multiple APIs. As well as exploring the approach and scalable technology used to build the platform.

Wayne Taylor
(@wtaylor509 (https://twitter.com/wtaylor509))

Wayne works as Head of Software at EPoS Now where he has helped to create the successful SME from a fledgling start-up. Day to day means managing, coaching, problem solving, architecting, designing, watering the plants, keeping an ear to the ground and an eye on competitors... and every once in a while he still gets to write some code. He is very proud of the department he has built and is often amazed by the fantastic people he gets to work with.