Outsourcing commodity capabilities to the low-cost provider while focusing your strategic value-add on customized offerings is an oft-repeated pattern in the world of business, but it hasn’t really taken hold in the world of IT until the rise of Cloud Computing. The reason it’s taken so long for the techies is because we’ve never been able to separate control and responsibility in the past as well as we can today. Before the Cloud, if we wanted to outsource one, then the other went along for the ride. Any enterprise that outsourced their entire IT operation went down this road. Sure, your technology becomes somebody else’s responsibility, but you end up giving up control as well.
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Cloud Expo New York: Your Secret Weapon in the Big Data War
The cloud is fundamentally changing how organizations build, deploy and pay for Business Intelligence (BI) applications and how they manage the proliferation of Big Data. With cloud-based analytics projected to grow at 85% per year, organizations ranging from Fortune 100 companies to SMBs must move their analytical applications to the cloud to remain competitive and focus on critical business challenges. Learn how MicroStrategy’s customers have improved performance, agility and time-to-market by an order of magnitude, while simultaneously reducing total cost of ownership by millions of dollars.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Bala Chandran, Director of Cloud Products at MicroStrategy, will discuss how Cloud-based BI allows organizations to be more agile, manage Big Data, lower cost and risk, and win the war for relevance in today’s competitive business climate.
How Businesses Can Use the Number Three Social Network (and Do You Know Which It Is?)
Pinterest is a social bookmarking site that allows users to create a visual, online pinboard with images they love organized around topics of their choice by category. It’s the fastest growing social media site in history, the third-largest network after Facebook and Twitter and has over 25 million members and 10 million unique visitors a month, nearly three-quarters of them women.
Karen Leland, author of the new book “Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,” has created a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to hitting the road running and quickly making Pinterest into a valuable source of prospects, promotion and profits.
“Great business brands are about telling compelling, congruent stories, and Pinterest is at its core about storytelling in pictures,” says Leland. “Pinterest has tapped into this visceral lover of visuals, and no small business, entrepreneur or corporation can afford to miss the boat on bringing what they offer beyond words and into images.”
Following her own advice resulted in this infographic:
IBM Named “Diamond Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that IBM has been named “Diamond Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud-based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions based on open standards, and a network of global delivery centers.
Cloud services first: A next-generation shared services policy for government
Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director, IT, Asia-Pacific
We believe it is time for governments to elevate their policy thinking about cloud services to confront their ICT strategy conundrum. They must address increasing fiscal constraints and disappointment with existing approaches to boosting ICT productivity with an approach that enables cross-agency sharing.
Mature enterprise cloud services are “capitalist economy” shared services that work. Cloud services break the cycle of agency investment in dedicated ICT solutions that are difficult or impossible to share. In contrast, each procurement of cloud services incrementally develops the capacity of the vendor to offer the same service to other agencies.
A policy position of “cloud services first” is a strategic commitment by government to the development of the next generation of shared services.
Let’s get realistic about government’s ICT strategy conundrum
Ovum believes it is time for government policy executives to start considering a more visionary …
Cloud Expo New York | Big Data: What It Means for Legal & Risk Management
Big Data has made a huge splash in the enterprise world, but the legal and risk management implications are seldom discussed. It’s critical for businesses to assess these issues and develop a proactive strategy to protect the enterprise from costly errors.
Corporate policies and regulatory compliance require managing Big Data and information governance issues such as data security and privacy. However, to respond to litigation, professionals must ensure that eDiscovery requirements are addressed. Those who handle records management, security, information privacy and IT must know how to collect, assemble, protect and manage Big Data and respond to changing requirements.
Is the Cloud a CDN Killer?
In our Internet-driven world, both organizations and consumers have come to expect fast, always-on data access from any device. As a result, content providers are tasked with delivering massive files and streaming media to tablets and smartphones while simultaneously ensuring superior website performance. To meet the challenges of this digital data deluge, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are often used to efficiently distribute large amounts of content to online users.
The emergence of cloud computing has allowed companies to embrace new, cost-effective approaches to building out their IT infrastructure. The challenge of scaling is no longer prohibitively expensive, and the ability to do so in near-real time allows small and medium-sized businesses to more effectively compete with larger enterprises for market share.
Cloud Expo New York: Backup, Recovery, Archiving, and the Cloud
Backup, Recovery, and Archiving (BURA) are critical elements for IT to address. BURA solutions need to address a broad spectrum of needs including data protection, regulatory compliance, and business continuity. Today’s cloud based solutions can enable customers to procure and consume BURA as a service supported by EMC’s latest technologies.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Rich Place, Lead Partner at SHI Cloud Services, will discuss BURA solutions and delegates will be able to:
Gain a full understanding of Backup, Recovery, and Archiving (BURA), also known as Backup as a Service incorporating EMC’s latest technologies.
Share the experiences of a cloud service provider’s BURA implementations and portfolio
Have an opportunity to ask questions regarding SHI’s Backup as a Service offering and experiences with partners and customers
IBM Buys UrbanCode for Software Updating
IBM said Monday that it’s bought UrbanCode, a Cleveland concern that automates software delivery and is good at releasing and updating mobile, social, Big Data and cloud applications. Terms were not disclosed.
Its technology is supposed to reduce the cycle time it takes to get updates or new applications into market from months to minutes, IBM says. It’s designed to reduce cost and risk, while enabling a company to rapidly incorporate feedback into the overall quality of their applications and services.
IBM describes UrbanCode’s software as a natural extension of its DevOps strategy, designed to simplify and speed the software development and delivery process for businesses.
CA Swallows Layer 7 & Israeli-Based Nolio
Last week Intel said it was buying Mashery, the multi-tenant SaaS API manager, for a reported $180 million.
On Monday CA Technologies said it was buying Mashery rival Layer 7 Technologies on undisclosed terms thought to be in the same neighborhood as Intel’s spend.
CA figures Layer 7’s API management and security widgetry complement its Identity and Access Management suite and DevOps technology. It means to combine them so customers can quickly deliver the cloud, mobile and composite apps that run today’s business services.
CA’s vision extends to the “Internet of things” and imagines the billions of API calls that are already made every day and the billions more that will be made with the increasing proliferation of smart devices like vehicles, meters, TVs and whatnot.