Keeping data around — and readable — for a long, long, time is tough. For users Amazon’s Glacier offers freedom from specific hardware issues. We will no longer be stuck with unreadable zip drives or tapes. But that just moves the problem to Amazon. This interview talks about how they are tackling that problem.
The interview also touches on Amazon’s expectation that if they provide the back-end third-party developers will step and provide archiving and indexing tools.
See how a common data architecture and fast SaaS delivery benefits combine to improve the efficiency, cost, and result of IT support of end users.
Our examples are intelligent energy-management solutions provider Comverge and how it’s extended its use of Salesforce.com into a self-service enabled service desk capability using BMC’s Remedyforce.
We’ll also hear the story of how modern furniture and accessories purveyor, Design Within Reach, has made its IT support more responsive — even at a global scale — via cloud-based incident-management capabilities.
Learn from them more about improving the business of delivering IT services, and in moving IT support and change management from a cost center to a proactive IT knowledge asset.
Alexsis Madrigal offers an inside look at what Google is doing with Maps and all those Streetview photos they’ve amassed. It’s jaw-dropping in its scope and audacity — and in its implications for the future:
“…as my friend and sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan put it to me, “I maintain that this is Google’s core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere.”
Read the article.
Well, heck, no wonder Pat Gelsinger took the job running VMware after he was promised he would be made CEO of VMware parent company EMC when Joe Tucci retired, the very reason he bolted Intel.
Tucci just doesn’t want to go.
After saying he would go this year and then saying he would go next year, late Thursday it became clear from an SEC filing that he won’t step down until February of 2015 when he’s just supposed to be chairman of both EMC and VMware.
He’s going to get another $8 million in restricted stock from the remade employment contract tied to performance over the next two years.
I worked extensively in the telecommunications area to lead large nationwide mobile application and portal rollouts that included mobile platforms, applications, services and integration mechanisms. With the proliferation of smart phone and tablets, mobile devices are accessing new and innovative applications everyday and the amount of data and processing requirements have exploded. Millions of devices are being added each year. Plug in a Cloud into this situation and you can reap its benefits of on demand access and scalability. Software as a service applications are the most common ones that are being made ready for mobile devices. Vendors are now cloud enabling their applications not just for traditional access but also for mobile access since with 4G services, there is lower latency and better data storage capacity.
QLogic on Thursday announced new technology that seamlessly combines its storage area network (SAN) host bus adapter (HBA) technology with server-based, industry-standard solid-state drive (SSD) flash storage. The Mt. Rainier project brings server-based SSD caching performance to SAN storage, simplifying deployment and management while delivering scalable performance to I/O hungry applications running in single and clustered server environments.
According to Simon Biddiscombe, president and CEO of QLogic: “Mt. Rainier builds on our leading market position and unique expertise in high performance data center connectivity to bring a new category of scalable, performance-enhancing solutions that are easy to deploy and address some of the most performance-challenged environments in the data center.”
No, not colonial as in Battlestar Gallactica or the British Empire, colonial as in corals and weeds and virtual machines
I was out pulling weeds this summer – Canada thistle to be exact – and was struck by how much its root system reminded me of Cnidaria (soft corals to those of you whose experience with aquaria remains relegated to suicidal goldfish). Canada thistle is difficult to control because of its extensive root system. Pulling a larger specimen you often find yourself pulling up its root, only to find it connected to three, four or more other specimens. Cnidaria reproduce in a similar fashion, sharing a “root” system that enables them to share resources. Unlike thistles, however, Cnidaria has several different growth forms. There’s a traditional colonial form that resembles thistles – a single, shared long root with various specimens popping up along the path – and one that may be familiar to folks who’ve seen Finding Nemo: a tree formation in which the root branches not only horizontally but vertically, with individual specimens forming upwards along the branch in what gives it a tree-like appearance.
By Greg Schulz
I’m always interested when I hear or read a software vendor or their value added reseller (VAR) or business partner claim that their solution eliminates vendor lock-in.
More often than not, I end up being amazed if not amused over the claims which usually should be rephrased as ‘eliminating hardware vendor lock-in.’
What is also amazing (or amusing) is that while some vendors make claims of eliminating (hardware) vendor lock-in, there is also some misdirection taking place.
While some solutions may be architected to cut hardware vendor lock-in, how they are sold or packaged can force certain vendors technology into your solution.
For example, the EMC Centera software in theory and architecture is hardware vendor independent, however it is sold as a solution (hardware and software), similar to how Dell sells the DX which uses software from Caringo and – you guessed right – Dell hardware, among …
Close to a year has passed since the UK government published their Cloud Computing Strategy which included a ‘cloud first’ policy similar to the one implemented in the United States. In this ZDNet blog, Steve Ranger examines the government’s progress and concludes that while the plans are progressing in some areas, the cloud-first policy hasn’t been widely adopted.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), Fujitsu, Verizon, and eBay are working together on developing best practices and standards for Big Data security and privacy, according to this FierceTelecom article.
Analyst firm IDC predicts that as many as 30% of cloud providers in the cloud market today may not be around in 2015, according to this Channelnomics article. You can read the IDC press release on IDC.com.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced that government agencies can now purchase cloud-based email services from 17 approved providers, according to this gov.AOL article. GSA was the first federal agency to migrate to cloud-based email and the agency expects to save $15 million from the switch over the next 5 years.
Gartner Report: Hype Cycle for Big Data, 2012
Big data is one of the most hyped terms in the market today. The first Big Data Hype Cycle helps enterprises develop strategies to address the growing business need for insight from datasets of increasing volume, velocity and variety. You can read the full report on Smart Enterprise.
Delivering value the DirecTV way: Aligning IT with the business
By Derek Stevens, CA Technologies
What happens when the business starts provisioning cloud services without consulting IT?
A credit card number is all that is needed for the business to bypass IT and purchase a cloud service. The growing trend of line of business services purchased without the input of IT is leading to many new problems that the IT department must deal with, from integration to security. It also raises the question of who is responsible for the ongoing maintenance and management of services which haven’t been approved by the IT department.
This topic was broached by Andi Mann and George Watt in a recent episode of CloudViews Unplugged when they discussed a survey which revealed that, in many organizations, the IT department is becoming responsible for cloud services that the business or employees purchased without consulting IT. Read the full article.
Where will the impact of cloud computing be felt the most? In this New York Times blog, Quentin Hardy discusses how cloud computing may dramatically impact the poorest countries in the world, giving countries without constant electricity and proper sanitation the ability to use cloud supercomputers.
Are cloud companies copying each other? In this InfoWorld blog, David Linthicum says he sees a growing trend of cloud companies playing it safe and mimicking each other. He calls for more innovation and creativity among cloud providers to create game changing services.
The MSPmentor 250, 2012 report was published this week on MSPmentor. The annual list contains what MSPmentor declares are the “world’s top” MSP experts.
How should systems integrators position themselves to take advantage of cloud computing now and in the future? In this Talkin’ Cloud blog, Justin Crotty discusses the ways in which systems integrators can approach cloud infrastructure.
In the past two years, international IT giants, including IBM, Oracle, EMC and SAP, have been engaged in an upsurge of acquisition in the big data market, spending more than $1.5 billion in acquiring related data management and analysis companies. Big data becomes a new hot term after “cloud computing” in the IT and financial sectors.