It is over five years since the term ‘cloud’ was first adopted into the mainstream to describe a fundamental change in how – and where – information technology is deployed.

Cloud’s building blocks had been developing for several years prior: the rise of the Internet as a backbone for service delivery; hardware platforms so powerful that they could run multiple web scale workloads; and the opening of standards for application and infrastructure architecture; all contributed to the cloud phenomenon, which went beyond simple hosting or application service provision.

The ability for providers to create massively scalable, homogeneous computing platforms enabled new delivery models which, it was clear, would reach beyond what had previously been possible in terms of processing capability, at the same time as making costs more affordable. No wonder, then, that industry players were so excited. 

Cloud – the current state of play

In principle, there is plenty to like …

Open cloud provider Rackspace has rolled out a complete revamp of its public cloud with Performance Cloud Servers – and according to Nigel Beighton, international VP technology and product, it represents a serious shift in how companies use their servers.

The architectural redesign of the Rackspace Performance Cloud Server comes with four times the total RAM, double the CPU performance and 132 times the I/O of its competitors, according to benchmark tests.

But Beighton argues that simply drooling over the figures is the short-sighted approach.

“The more interesting sub-context here is that this is responding to the changing nature of applications on cloud,” Beighton told CloudTech.

“When I look back over six months worth of data, we’ve had an increase of 200% over that six months of people taking what we call ‘fat slices’, which fundamentally takes the whole machine.

“What you are seeing here is a shift, a …

For half a century, the trajectory of computing has followed a “faster, smaller, cheaper” arc. In his Day 3 Lunchtime Keynote at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Tim Park, Director, Platform Strategy at Microsoft and alumnus of Nest Labs, will look at how that trajectory is both accelerating and changing course as computing begins to infuse many of the everyday items in our lives. He will walk through the hard problems you need to think about when deploying devices and services for the Internet of Things and walk through a framework for Windows Azure that helps cover some of these hard problems so you can focus on your device or application.

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A day in the life of the future. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Lanlogic’s Joe Foos will show how your entire organization can:
Achieve Seamless Communication – voice, video, email and messaging … without playing tag
Enjoy Real Collaboration – meet, work, and share … anytime, anywhere
Enable Unlimited Potential – your cloud will never run out of space, power, or capability
See exactly how the California Strawberry Commission and thousands of other organizations globally, large and small, gained:
Greater Productivity

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Nowadays, a large number of sensors and devices are connected to the Internet. Leading-edge M2M technologies integrate various types of sensor data to create a new value for several business decision scenarios.
The transparent cloud is a model of a new M2M emergence integration service platform in which many service providers store and access various types of sensor data in order to create and find out new business values by integrating such data.
In their session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Ikuo Nakagawa, Executive Chief Engineer at Intec, Inc.; Shinichi Shibata, Executive Manager, Research & Development Division, Ubiquitous Corporation; and Hideaki Imaizumi, Senior Researcher, TOYOTA InfoTechnology Center USA, will introduce the concepts and challenges of the transparent cloud: transparent API to store, access and process data, policy management for protecting privacy information, and business models between service providers.

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AppZero, the fastest and most flexible way to move server applications from the datacenter to the cloud, will be at the Cloud Expo Conference from Monday, November 4 – Thursday, November 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The conference features technical and strategic breakout sessions, General Sessions, Industry Keynotes, “Power Panels” and a vast Expo floor.
AppZero will showcase its “Up-level” OS migration, new technology that provides one step migration of applications running on Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012. With Windows Server 2003 end of life approaching, companies will be faced with moving large numbers of enterprise applications. AppZero provides the only way to upgrade existing server applications from WS2003 to WS2008 or WS2012 in a cost effective and time saving way.

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AppZero, the fastest and most flexible way to move server applications from the datacenter to the cloud, will be at the Cloud Expo Conference from Monday, November 4 – Thursday, November 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The conference features technical and strategic breakout sessions, General Sessions, Industry Keynotes, “Power Panels” and a vast Expo floor.
AppZero will showcase its “Up-level” OS migration, new technology that provides one step migration of applications running on Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012. With Windows Server 2003 end of life approaching, companies will be faced with moving large numbers of enterprise applications. AppZero provides the only way to upgrade existing server applications from WS2003 to WS2008 or WS2012 in a cost effective and time saving way.

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With the launch of Cisco’s software-defined networking startup Insieme expected tomorrow, our industry is about to hear a lot about “application-centric” everything. So what does “application-centric infrastructure” mean?
First, some basics: Networking is about connecting computing devices and systems so they can share data. Networking infrastructures are built with a combination of hardware such as gateways, routers, and switches that manage the movement of the data as well as software applications that enable you to do things like access the Internet and send email.
As you could probably guess, application-centric infrastructure is a type of networking that is based on the application. In an application-centric network, the network administrator manages a system for a specific application rather than managing individual servers and routers like they did in the past.

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Many organizations are realizing the benefits that come with moving data to the cloud, including faster implementation, elasticity and reduced costs. But the path to the cloud isn’t always smooth. Finding the right cloud service provider takes research, and data security is always a primary concern, especially for organizations that are regulated by privacy laws.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Steve Pate, CTO & Co-Founder of HighCloud Security, will speak to the safest ways to transition to a public cloud and address key capabilities that might help in the search for the right public cloud for your company.

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New developments in cloud technologies have revolutionized the way organizations interact with their customers. Today it is all about consumer experience, consumer insights, consumer behavior, consumer journey. With rich media, the very focus of digital marketing and commerce has shifted from product-centric to consumer centric.
Cloud computing has enabled the global access for consumers across the world – for the right person, at the right time, and the right content. The side effect of this is consumers are more empowered and therefore have much higher expectations. And the omni-channel nature of basic consumer interaction leads to very high demands on the ability to consume, analyze, and repurpose data to deliver a much more personalized consumer experience. Without the advancement in Big Data technologies, this would quickly become an infeasible and unmanageable situation.

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