Before we talk about the cloud of tomorrow, Kevin Clarke, Director of Cloud Platform Engineering for Verizon Terremark, describes, in his General Session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, what core characteristics compose the cloud of today, and discusses three fundamental features: independent architectures, multi-tenant infrastructures and the concept of ‘different controls.’
While the cloud is able to house different applications in terms of complexity and criticality, most enterprise applications are not apt for virtualized environments, such as cloud computing. Clarke explores the challenges that exist in running enterprise applications, or what he calls the “hard stuff” and the ideal features future cloud offerings should provide enterprises. These include security, dependencies, application management and performance.

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Legacy apps are surely the albatross of the modern cloud-enabled IT department – you put them there, and now you have to live with them.

Short of scrapping millions of dollars of worth of investments, something needs to be done with these apps, especially when cloud adoption is altering the efficiency and cost landscape for IT.
The first thing is to consider is why the move needs to take place. The reality for most companies is that there is a finite amount of space they can utilize in the data center. Companies have certain apps that they want to run locally, which is often the most mission critical aspects of their business. If its healthcare that’s EMR, if tis retail that’s the point of sale platform. These applications need as low latency as possible since there will always be someone in the organization that’s doing something very important and needs that data as quickly as possible.

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CloudPassage, the security SaaS start-up, has gotten a big, embracing US patent on its Halo cloud infrastructure security technology. It’s patent No. 8,412,945 B2.

It’s reportedly the first company to get a US patent on universal cloud infrastructure security.

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Zynga, the high-profile cloud-based games maker, is in trouble deep enough

to raise questions about its continued survival.

It can’t keep up with the defection of its user base to mobile rivals – which

is impacting its bookings again this quarter – and so it’s going to cut back by

firing 520 people, roughly 20% of its workforce, more than it’s done since

starting to lay people off last year.

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Zynga, the high-profile cloud-based games maker, is in trouble deep enough

to raise questions about its continued survival.

It can’t keep up with the defection of its user base to mobile rivals – which

is impacting its bookings again this quarter – and so it’s going to cut back by

firing 520 people, roughly 20% of its workforce, more than it’s done since

starting to lay people off last year.

read more

Agile enterprises are increasingly moving towards Platform as a Service (PaaS) due to its ability to instantly provision resources for application delivery, elastic storage and database services. But PaaS not only allows cost and labor efficiency, it can also drive innovation and revenue opportunities.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Jeff Hobbs, CTO and VP, Engineering, at ActiveState, will explain how PaaS can be implemented across a range of cloud infrastructure models – whether private, public or hybrid – and how it enables enterprises to mobilize resources towards dynamic web applications, faster customer response and transformative productivity gains.

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Agile enterprises are increasingly moving towards Platform as a Service (PaaS) due to its ability to instantly provision resources for application delivery, elastic storage and database services. But PaaS not only allows cost and labor efficiency, it can also drive innovation and revenue opportunities.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Jeff Hobbs, CTO and VP, Engineering, at ActiveState, will explain how PaaS can be implemented across a range of cloud infrastructure models – whether private, public or hybrid – and how it enables enterprises to mobilize resources towards dynamic web applications, faster customer response and transformative productivity gains.

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OpenStack is quickly becoming the de facto standard for Open Cloud platforms. What makes OpenStack the future of Cloud Computing and how can someone get started learning this new technology?
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Ken Hui, an Open Cloud Architect at Rackspace, will walk participants though the basics of OpenStack and offer practical suggestions and resources for learning the foundation of the new Open Cloud.

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OpenStack is quickly becoming the de facto standard for Open Cloud platforms. What makes OpenStack the future of Cloud Computing and how can someone get started learning this new technology?
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Ken Hui, an Open Cloud Architect at Rackspace, will walk participants though the basics of OpenStack and offer practical suggestions and resources for learning the foundation of the new Open Cloud.

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Telecommuting at one time meant little more than working from one’s kitchen table, saving files onto a floppy disk, and possibly sending them into the office via dial-up modem. There was no videoconference, no softphones to move your office extension to wherever you were sitting at the moment, and no Google Hangouts, Chatters, or virtual meetings with colleagues.
Under such circumstances, telecommuting was relegated to second-tier employees that were cut out of the water-cooler loop. Because that early telecommuting lacked any semblance of true collaboration, and also because there was no oversight mechanisms built in, companies were reluctant to embrace it in any meaningful way.

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