Few things in this world are guaranteed, but when it comes to the health of a small business, guaranteeing you’re backed up in the event of a disaster is of the utmost importance.
There are so many ways that cloud computing can streamline a business, yet one real advantage often goes overlooked until it’s too late.
It would be difficult to think of many organizations that could stay afloat for long periods of time where crucial information and technology was unattainable, especially for small businesses.
Following the increasing impact of natural and man-made disasters on the growing data cache required for managing a modern business effectively, it makes sense to think about combating this.
The beauty of cloud computing is it enhances «disaster readiness.» It does this in a number of ways, such as accessing files in the event of a disaster of any kind is usually a lot more speedy than if you needed to get hold of these another way. In some cases you simply would not have stored these anywhere but the potential disaster zone in physically accessible formats. Cloud computing solves this problem by allowing you to get at backed up information quickly and easily.

read more

Access policies must be a part of any company’s risk assessment and security policy because unsecured, unmonitored access by former employees can only lead to trouble.
Earlier this month I attended a local cloud developers group, and I met a gentleman who consults with companies to engage in deep dive forensic examinations of their networks. He looks for the virtual fingerprints of misdeeds, fraud, and misdoings that can be used for e-discovery in legal cases. He essentially gets down to the bits and bytes of how much information flows to certain IP addresses to ascertain whether or not proprietary data has been tampered or stolen.

read more

Does the Fear of the Cloud and Big Data Threaten Your Job?

What is the biggest threat to your job?  Is it what you do?

Or what you don’t do?

I have a really long commute to and from work.  And I when I say long, I mean an hour and a half or more long. Needless to say, I have a lot of time to listen to the news.

This week, I was listening to CNBC on satellite radio, and the show was about how fear motivates people much more than opportunity.  The show used examples of big companies that only bring innovations to market when they are under competitive threat. They don’t innovate because of new market opportunity or better customer service. The research shows that most companies are motivated primarily by fear.

Remember when Facebook acquired Instagram for $1billion dollars? Everyone speculated why since Instragram …

CloudTech caught up with Sven Denecken, VP cloud solutions at SAP at the SAP UK & Ireland Forum earlier this week, to discuss what the term ‘hybrid’ really means, the advantages of HANA Enterprise Cloud, and where SAP truly sees itself

One of the more interesting flashpoints from the opening morning of the SAP UK & Ireland Forum in Birmingham this week was at the end of Rob Enslin’s keynote.

As reported by CloudTech in an editorial, Enslin told SAP customers and partners that, when he was asked what SAP’s main focus is – ERP, cloud, big data, mobile apps – he replied that it was all of them.

So with that in mind, and given that HANA, SAP’s data aggregation technology with in-memory capability, is referred to widely throughout the company, would customers be confused about what they’re actually getting?

Sven Denecken, VP of cloud systems at SAP, told …

Examining the Core Components of a Private Cloud

– Brought to you by 2X Cloud Computing guest blogger Brien M. Posey –

Private cloud environments tend to be made up of a number of different components. One of the keys to building an effective private cloud environment is to understand what these components are and what they do. This blog post is intended to serve as a beginner’s guide to some of the most commonly used private cloud components.

The first component that you need to be familiar with is the Web Portal. One of the challenges that administrators face when building private cloud environments is that of accepting connections from Internet based clients, but without compromising security in the process. Doing so usually means creating a DMZ environment that can be used as an entry point for Internet based clients.

Typically the DMZ will contain a server that is acting …

More and more companies are transferring sensitive data to the cloud, according to the latest report from Thales e-Security and the Ponemon Institute on cloudy data encryption.

Over half (53%) of survey respondents said they were transferring such data, with a further 31% stating they were looking to push ahead in the next 12 months.

The report, one in a series of overall encryption trends, concludes that organisations, instead of not noticing the cloud security warnings, or even simply ignoring them, are aware that their security is being threatened, but are still pushing ahead with change.

35% of those polled said that moving sensitive and confidential data to the cloud has “decreased their security posture”, with 15% saying the opposite. The previous year’s survey revealed that 39% felt cloudy data transfer had weakened security, which, although hollow, is something of a victory.

Similarly, companies feel more confident in cloud …

“It already is the year of the APIs and because it depends so much on what cloud is about and what mobile is about I think people will be driven to an API economy whether they want to or not,” stated Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

read more