Category: News

Four Exciting Takeaways from Cisco Live 2023

AppDynamics, Blog, NewsKelly Cooke

2023 is off to an exciting start for JDS, as Australia’s leading Cisco Full Stack Observability partner. There were a host of new product features and announcements which came out of Cisco Live in Amsterdam last month, all focused on fast and secure customer experiences with data-driven insights and action. 

Here are four exciting takeaways from the event that we’re particularly excited about: 

New release for On-premise Platform

AppDynamics have released v23.2 for the on-premise controller and platform components, bringing a raft of security and compatibility updates, and parity for APM & EUM agent functionality with the SaaS platform. Some of our clients have strict requirements around data protection, and AppDynamics On-Premise allows them to gain the same deep level of observability into their apps, while keeping data within their network.

Two-way integration between AppDynamics and ThousandEyes (TE) and TE Open Telemetry support

None of us want to have to scramble to multiple different tools when degradation occurs just to figure out where in the stack something is broken. It adds unnecessary time in determining the root cause and increases MTTR. 

Cisco has made significant improvements by adding support for OpenTelemetry into ThousandEyes, and an out-of-the-box integration to bring detailed network level metrics into AppDynamics dashboards. This allows ThousandEyes to be aware of the application context and show application health status from AppDynamics, alongside network tests. 

This advancement will help to understand much faster whether the network or internet is impacting your application health, and which parts of the application and business are affected when it does. 

Brand new Full Stack Observability data platform

Observing modern application stacks means taking and analysing A LOT of measurements, and it needs to be fast and flexible to allow insights to be gained without onerous number crunching or actions taken. A data platform that can ingest large volumes of ubiquitous data with fast analytics is critical to this, and Cisco’s new Full Stack Observability platform delivers on these requirements.

Highlights of the new platform, slated for release in April 2023, are: 

  • Much more than just a data lake. Correlate data with business and IT context to understand impact and importance.
  • Bring in any MELT data via Open Telemetry. If you can describe it with OTLP, it can be ingested. 
  • Make use of AppDynamics Cloud, built on the FSO platform, to visualise and analyse data, use third party UIs like Grafana, or build your own for your use cases.

Secure the stack with new integrations and intelligence in Cisco Secure App

Secure App leverages the AppDynamics agents to identify vulnerabilities, detect attacks and block them in real time – cutting off new threats immediately, and giving you valuable time to rectify your code. 

This capability has now been expanded with new integrations and intelligence within a range of Cisco Security tools. 

  • Kenna & Talos – leveraging a vast feed of threat and exploit data feeds and known vulnerabilities to assess your risk levels in the context of your app and business
  • Panoptica – providing assessment of 3rd party APIs to understand your exposure to your downstream dependencies such as SaaS services and partner apps. 
  • AppDynamics Business Transaction awareness – understand the business context of threats and which aspects of your applications are at risk.

JDS Australia Named 2022 Splunk APAC Services Partner of the Year

News, SplunkKelly Cooke

JDS Australia announced today it has received the 2022 APAC Services Partner of the Year for exceptional performance and commitment to Splunk’s Partnerverse. The APAC Services Partner of the Year award recognizes an APAC Splunk partner that is actively engaged in services implementations, in addition to having a strong commitment to training and certification of their organisation.   

“We’re thrilled to be awarded the 2022 APAC Services Partner of the Year.  I’m so proud of our team for the recognition, as it is a clear demonstration of their tireless commitment to being the most knowledgable and experienced Splunk partner in the region,” said Brian Grant, JDS Splunk General Manager. “We value our ongoing partnership with Splunk and look forward to another successful year of collaboration.”

“Congratulations to JDS Australia for being named the 2022 APAC Services Partner of the Year,” said Bill Hustad, Vice President of Alliances and Channel Ecosystems Splunk. “The 2022 Splunk Global Partner Awards recognize outstanding partners like JDS that drive positive business outcomes, as well as help our joint customers leverage Splunk to solve their challenges. Additionally, JDS works in collaboration with Splunk and shares our customer-first mentality.”

The Splunk Global Partner Awards recognize partners of the Splunk ecosystem for industry-leading business practices and dedication to constant collaboration. All award recipients were selected by a group of the Splunk executives, theater leaders and the global partner organisation. 

What It Means To Be CREST (Intl) Accredited

Blog, JDSSecurity, News, Secure, TestKelly Cooke

Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can set themselves up as a penetration testing or cyber incident response service provider.  These could include irresponsible organisations that do not have in place policies, processes and procedures to ensure quality of service and protection of client based information.  The individuals employed by these companies may have no demonstrable skill, knowledge or competence in the provision of security testing.

CREST is an International not-for-profit accreditation and certification body that represents and supports the technical information security market. CREST requires a rigorous assessment of business processes, data security and security testing framework to demonstrate a level of assurance that the information security methodologies used can competently and securely provide customers with a robust assessment of their cyber security posture.

As a result, CREST only provides accreditation to highly trusted professional services organisations, and their employees who provide the often sensitive and high-risk penetration testing, cyber incident response, threat intelligence and security operations centre services.

All CREST accredited member companies are required to submit policies, processes and procedures relating to their service provision to provide added assurance for the buying community.  These policies, processes and procedures include:

  • References for certified individuals
  • Assignment preparation and scope processes
  • Assignment execution processes
  • Technical methodology
  • Reporting templates
  • Data storage and Information Sharing policies
  • Post technical delivery methodologies
  • Asset/Information/Document storage, retention and destruction processes

The buying community needs to be in a position where it can procure services from a trusted company with access to demonstrably professional technical security staff.  CREST provides the buying community with a clear indication of the quality of the organisation and the technical capability of staff they employ.

JDS is a proud CREST (Intl) accredited member company who can confidently provide our customers the added reassurance that our services meet the highest professional and security standards.

JDS and the GO Foundation

AppDynamics, Atlassian, Big Picture, JDS People, JDSSecurity, New Relic, News, ServiceNow, SplunkKelly Cooke

The Go Foundation is an inspiring organisation empowering young Indigenous Australians by providing scholarships from primary school through to University.

Co-founded by Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin in 2009, the foundation offers mentoring, leadership, networks and support to GO students on their journey to employment.

JDS is immensely proud to have committed to donating $30k to the GO Foundation over the next three years.

It is an organisation that really resonates, as we recognise the vital importance of ensuring that all Australians have equal opportunity to participate socially, culturally and economically.

Extensive research has revealed that the completion of further education by Indigenous Australians can lead to increased earning capacity, greater employment opportunities, improved health and wellbeing outcomes, and reduced interaction with the justice system. The benefits that can come from Indigenous Australians going further beyond high school with their education can stretch beyond improving and enriching the lives of Indigenous communities – they can benefit everyone.

Positive enabling factors that are likely to increase Indigenous participation in further education include enhancing the quality of school experience for Indigenous students to ensure that culture is recognised, and the aspirations of each student is developed. Additionally, providing access to career advice and guidance, and information on the various choices and pathways available for Indigenous students is linked to increasing the quality of the school experience for Indigenous Australians.

The GO Foundation’s scholarship program provides financial assistance, tools and resources for Indigenous students to ensure their journey through school is rich and rewarding, and a broad range of career options, work experience and paid internships ensures the assistance continues well after the scholarship has ended.    

We hope that by dedicating our long-term support, we are contributing to generational change and opportunities for many students for many years to come.

Splunk

Blog, Case Study, News, Splunk, Tech TipsKelly Cooke

As a Splunk Premier partner, JDS has a dedicated Splunk practice with expertise spanning ITOps, AIOps, and Security. JDS has proven to be trusted advisors and provide a safe pair of hands to architect, implement and manage Splunk for many organisations across a wide range of use cases.

IT Service Intelligence / Business Service Insights

Customisable business dashboards, mapped to key performance indicators, can provide invaluable real-time visibility into the health of your digital services. Our skilled JDS team have extensive experience in implementing Splunk’s unique platform to assist organisations ensure uninterrupted access to critical services.


IT Operations, Analytics and AIOps

JDS can transform your entire IT Ops approach with a suite of tools that put AI and machine learning at their core, allowing you to predict and prevent, instead of triage and react.  We enable a genuine understanding of the complete environment to get ahead of issues before they occur.


End to End Application Visibility

Gaining End-to-End Visibility means unifying business, application and infrastructure health for full-stack observability of critical apps and services.  With JDS and Splunk, gain the ability to visualise the health of your services at a glance, and make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Enterprise Security and Analytics

Splunk is renowned for its Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities and JDS has the experience to establish and build out these capabilities along with the integrations to related systems.


Call Centre Visibility

Having insights into how your call centre is responding to customers can improve efficiency, effectiveness, quality of service and the overall customer experience. Using Splunk’s Contact Center Analytics, JDS can unlock this vital visibility, whether you’re working with centralized call centres or remote agents.

Splunk Cloud Migrations

JDS will help you to minimise downtime whilst maximising your architecture when migrating to Splunk Cloud. Our experts lead a collaborative engagement to make the transition as seamless as possible, while maintaining full visibility into your infrastructure before, during and after migration.

Success Stories

Helping one of Australia’s largest banking institutions migrate seamlessly to Splunk Cloud >

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JDS Appoints John Banks as National Sales Director

Industry News, JDS People, News, SalesKelly Cooke

JDS Australia has appointed former IBM and Micro Focus executive, John Banks as the National Sales Director.  John will be responsible for all aspects of growth and customer success for JDS, reporting to Managing Director, John Bearsley.

“We have undergone a major realignment of JDS towards a practice model,” Bearsley said.  “In this new role, John will add a new edge to the team, bringing new names to the organisation, whilst expanding or engaging with our loyal customers.  He brings a wealth of industry and business growth experience to the JDS team.”

John Banks has over 35 years of ICT industry and management experience across 40 countries.  As Vice President for GBM Software in Dubai, he managed teams throughout the Middle East.  He has held IBM executive positions over 16 years in outsourcing and software divisions across Asia Pacific, and most recently served as Sales Director for Micro Focus here in Australia.

“In the current climate of ‘onshoring’, Australian companies need partners that they can rely on for delivery, but they also need trust,” said Banks. “Being an Australian-owned company staffed entirely by Aussies, JDS is now perfectly positioned to build upon the history they have developed with their customers over the last 17 years.  I am very excited to have the opportunity to be a part of this next phase of JDS’s story.”

The Australian Defence Reserves Support Council Awards JDS

NewsJDS

Lt. Samuel Abdelsayed receives the 'Employer Support Award - Medium Business' on behalf of JDS.
Lt. Samuel Abdelsayed receives the ‘Employer Support Award – Medium Business’ on behalf of JDS.

JDS has again been awarded by the Australian Defence Reserves Support Council, an organisation which assists Reservists both within Australia and overseas.

This is the second time JDS has received an ‘Employer Support Award’.  Staff member, Lieutenant Samuel Abdelsayed, nominated JDS for being supportive of his Reserve activities and enabling him to attend all training activities and courses.

JDS Managing Director John Bearsley says that Sam’s service in the defence forces is to be highly commended, highlighting the role of service in developing professionalism and problem-solving skills.

Thanks go to both the Defence Reserves Support Council, and to Sam for his demonstration of leadership and commitment.

 

Read more:

 

JDS is now a CAUDIT Splunk Provider

Higher Education, News, SplunkJDS

Splunk Enterprise provides universities with a fast, easy and resilient way to collect, analyse and secure the streams of machine data generated by their IT systems and infrastructure.  JDS, as one of Australia’s leading Splunk experts, has a tradition of excellence in ensuring higher education institutions have solutions that maximise the performance and availability of campus-critical IT systems and infrastructure.

The CAUDIT Splunk offering provides Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) Member Universities with the opportunity to buy on-premise Splunk Enterprise on a discounted, 3-year basis.  In acknowledgement of JDS’ expertise and dedication to client solutions, Splunk Inc. has elevated JDS to a provider of this sector-specific offering, meaning we are now better placed than ever to help the higher education sector reach their data collection and analysis goals.

What does this mean for organisations?

Not-for-profit higher education institutions that are members of CAUDIT can now use JDS to access discounted prices for on-premises deployments of Splunk Enterprise.  JDS are able to leverage their expertise in Splunk and customised solutions built on the platform, in combination with their insight into the higher education sector, to ensure that organisations have the Splunk solution that meet their specific needs.

Secure organisational applications and data, gain visibility over service performance, and ensure your organisation has the information to inform better decision-making.  JDS and Splunk are here to help.

You can learn more about JDS’ custom Splunk solutions here:  JDS Splunkbase Apps

JDS wins AppDynamics Partner Award

AppDynamics, NewsJDS

JDS Win AppDynamics 2016 Emerging Markets Partner of the Year Award

We are delighted to announce JDS have received the AppDynamics 2016 Emerging Markets Partner of the Year Award at AppSphere 2016 in Las Vegas on the 15th Of November. As a team, we are very proud of this award as it is the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of talented people at JDS.

John Bearsley, Managing Director of JDS said, “AppDynamics has stormed the market in the past few years as one of the leading next generation Application Performance Management Tools. We have seen first hand how it can transform the monitoring landscape for our customers providing them great visibility into the end user experience and the performance and availability of their business critical applications. AppDynamics is a vendor we are proud to support and we look forward to helping many more customers derive its significant benefits in the years to come”.
appd-awardv2

To see how JDS can help ensure it works with AppDynamics check out our AppDynamics Page.

 

Completing the APM picture with AppDynamics EUM

AppDynamics, NewsJDS

How are your customers really experiencing your apps right now? How is your business reputation, loyalty and revenue being affected by the world between your application servers and your customer? AppDynamics End User Monitoring (EUM) completes the APM picture by letting you See, Act on, and Know about your customers' real experiences in real time.

With EUM, AppDynamics extends the valuable insights it provides by tracing all the way out to the browser or mobile app giving complete end-to-end visibility for every customer experience.

Watch this session to learn:

  • Why you need to understand the full customer experience on top of what is happening in your data centre.
  • The customer experience metrics that matter most.
  • How AppDynamics EUM gives visibility of the complete picture from your customer's devices to and through your backend APIs and applications.
  • How EUM Synthetics further helps you to Know at all times that your apps are working at their best.

Discover exactly how your end users experience and engage with your applications.

How operational health builds business revenue

News, SplunkJDS

Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) is a next-generation monitoring and analytics solution that provides new levels of visibility into the health and key performance indicators of IT services. Use powerful visualizations and advanced analytics to highlight anomalies, accelerate investigations and pinpoint the root causes that impact service levels critical to the business.Join this session to learn how to:

  • Translate operational data into business impact.
  • Provide cross-silo visibility into the health of services by integrating data across the enterprise.
  • Visually map services and KPIs to discover new insights.
  • Transform machine data into actionable intelligence.

What is Service Intelligence?
IT operations is responsible for running and managing the services that businesses depend on. Service intelligence improves service quality, helps IT make well-informed decisions and supports business priorities.

Why Splunk IT Service Intelligence?
Splunk ITSI transforms machine data into actionable intelligence. It provides cross-silo visibility into the health of services by integrating data across the enterprise, visually mapping services and KPIs to discover new insights, and translating operational data into business impact. With timely, correlated information on services that impact the business, Splunk ITSI unifies data silos, reduces time to resolution, improves service operations and enables service intelligence.

ensure IT works with