One of the topics we covered this week at the Cisco Packet Optical Networking Conference was cloud computing. A benefit of cloud computing is that the physical infrastructure – the storage and compute resources – can be located almost anywhere as long as there is reliable network access. Several countries are leveraging their low cost green power to grow their economies with new data center facilities. A publicly announced example of this is Facebook which has built an enormous facility in northern Sweden.height=»1″ width=»1″/>

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In an article I read this morning, «Luis Cesar Verdi, President of SAP Brazil, told Computerworld UK that Brazil currently has 1.5 million end users for its mobile applications, but plans to increase this rapidly to 20 million by 2015.  To achieve this, Verdi plans to target the general public by going through enterprise customers that currently use its ERP systems and mobile applications.»

I wrote about this multilevel enterprise mobility strategy last year and believe it will be effective.  B2C mobility is and will continue to be a fast growing market for mobility vendors, and SAP has the opportunity to touch billions of mobile users through B2C mobility.  Let’s think about it.  SAP is big in utilities, consumer packaged goods and other industries with large customer bases.  Providing mobile IDEs (integrated development environments) through SDKs through partnerships and acquisitions will make it easier for mobile vendors to extend SAP out to these users.

Mobility is going to touch every industry, supplier ecosystem and customer base.  Companies need to start developing their strategy for supporting these groups sooner rather than later.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobility Analyst and Consultant
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

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The Canada Cloud Network (CCN), a new industry consortium intent on establishing Canada as a world leader in the field of Cloud Computing, is pleased to announce their formal launch and the immediate availability of membership services including ‘Social Cloud PR’.

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Talk of so-called “sea change developments” and “paradigm shifts” has long been rife among the IT media and the web’s wider technology commentary channels.
Right now we’re all talking about cloud, mobile empowerment (let’s not forget the Bring Your Own Device tagline here) and virtualized computing resources as we re-align many of the mechanics that drive our collective IT resources. But does all this talk of “new compute models” leave us at risk of forgetting other large-scale departmental changes, which still have to be brought to bear by the CIO?
I’m simply talking about security here.
The CIO is now also being joined by a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer), although in many cases this turns out to be one and the same person. The CIO’s security remit now must encompass absolutely all of the people, processes and technology that impact the day-to-day running of the business and this is no small matter.

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Security concerns are the biggest thing holding back cloud adoption, but Intel says it’ll take it and its pricey $7.68 billion McAfee acquisition at least another five years to bring cloud security up to the best-in-class traditional enterprise security available now.
Not very reassuring is it.
Intel also says, “A private cloud added to your IT infrastructure is like adding another door to your house – it’s another entry point for bad guys to get in.”
Oh, great, just what we need.
Despite those sobering thoughts Intel is still expecting more than three billion connected users – that’s a B, dear, as in billion – and 15 billion connected devices to be driving more than 1,500 exabytes of cloud traffic by 2015, and IDC figures that about 20% of all digital data – roughly, say, 1,400 exabytes – a mammoth load – will be stored or processed in the cloud.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Big Data Insight Group has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Big Data Insight Group aims to provide a forum for members, from across the business and IT spectrum, to come together and exchange ideas, expertise and best practice on Big Data. Big Data Insight Group’s aim is to get beyond the technology and the hype, to understand the business value of big data and help members answer questions.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that EffectiveUI has been named Gold Sponsor of SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
EffectiveUI is a full-service user experience agency that architects and delivers custom software and applications that translate into exceptional digital experiences.
Our technology services team – the largest dedicated to user experience in the industry – has a passion for innovation and simplifying complex systems. We dive deep into technical challenges, bringing perspective to the big picture and quality to the details of every product.

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Cloud facilitates a new generation of technology and related impacts that have never been seen before. With utility computing and on demand capabilities, many organizations want to jump on the bandwagon as soon as possible. As the Chief Executive, there are some tough decisions to be made. There will be people in your organization who say that Cloud is the best thing that happened since the emergence of the internet. Others will paint a picture of gloom and doom by citing issues such as security, privacy, control over data etc. Cloud can enhance productivity by providing the infrastructure or application platforms and related tools to respond to customer needs quickly, giving organizations an edge over others that have not assessed such mechanisms, and the on-demand capabilities can lead to efficient utilization of resources. Cloud also facilitates mobility services since such services are available at a cheaper cost to the enterprise.

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HP, the public cloud’s Johnnie-come-lately, made its first public cloud services available in public beta Thursday and, to make up for lost time HP is going to charge utility prices to use the beta albeit at half what it’ll cost when it goes GA.
The widgetry, which reportedly went to private beta in September, is not the homegrown cloud of HP’s dreams that it was working on a year ago. It frankly didn’t have the technology in-house to build it and was lucky that the open source effort to produce the OpenStack public cloud infrastructure came along.
Of course, OpenStack is not supposed to be quite ready primetime yet so HP’s widgetry will stay a beta until it proves it can scale and HP can figure out its SLAs.

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