The CEOs of leading companies are already striving to create an agile business model — one that responds quickly to competitive pressures and shifting market demands. Commercial agility often requires a corresponding accelerated business technology deployment. Meaning, the IT requirement is for applications to be provisioned in hours — not weeks or months.
That’s a tall order for many corporate IT departments. Regardless, it must be done. More often than not, it’s accomplished via a cloud services-based methodology.
Savvy executives that proactively migrate their IT infrastructure to a cloud-centric architecture will generate new revenue that could surge by a factor of three from 2011 to 2017, according to the latest market study by IHS.
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Tech News Recap for the Week of 3/31/2014
Here’s a quick IT news recap from around the web for the week of 3/31/2014. Enjoy!
- Microsoft #Azure Matches Amazon’s Price Cuts And Introduces New “Basic” Tier
- Analysts forecast Global VDI market to grow at a CAGR of 9.04 percent over the period 2013-2018
- Mistake in CryptoDefense ransomware leaves decryption key accessible
- Enterprise Software, Devices to Drive IT Spending Growth This Year, Gartner Says
- Google claims that its collection of data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks was legal
- #Cloud Computing Trends and Latest Stats
- Amazon Just Pushed Game Consoles One Step Closer to Death
- March Madness Final Four: NCAA Basketball & #Microsoft Ending Extended Support
- Bring your own wearables on the way, Google exec warns CIOs
- Are You Ready for a Project Management Office? Part 2 – Players and Pitfalls
- How Boeing is using the cloud
- Cisco’s CIO Calls For Speed And Agility At Interop
- The must-have iPad office apps, round 8
Would you like to learn how you can cut costs by transforming your IT Department into a broker of IT services? Download this whitepaper to learn more.
Skills gap hindering government cloud adoption, survey finds
According to the latest research from government cloud provider Eduserv, a lack of awareness and skills around cloud computing is halting its adoption in central government.
The research, conducted in January and February of 829 civil servants, found that nearly nine in 10 (88%) required some form of training in order to take advantage of cloud computing, whilst three quarters (75%) believed the benefits of their cloud were a mystery to the company as a whole.
The survey results also shed some doubt on the process of migration, even if government organisations wanted to do it.
More than half (51%) of respondents said they didn’t think their department had the technical skills to move to the cloud, while a similar number (54%) said their project management skills were fit for purpose.
The overall effect is one of indecision and panic. Of course, given the survey is conducted by a …
Six of the best: Scams, shams and snoopers
The latest edition of CloudTech’s look at the best links from around the web has a slightly nefarious tint to it, with stories of scammers, snoopers and sham artists. Thankfully though, there are some good news stories further down, proving good things come to those who wait.
1) Beware: The cloud’s Ponzi schemes are here [Infoworld]
David Linthicum, writing for Infoworld, sheds light on an announcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who killed off a worldwide pyramid scheme targeting Asian and Latino communities in the US and abroad, promising return on investment for purchasing cloud computing services.
“Investors were told they would receive ‘points’ for making investments or enrolling other investors,” a release from the SEC explained. “The points would be convertible into equity in initial public offerings of high-tech companies their money would help launch.”
Did these philanthropic companies stick to their word? Of …
MBO Partners Spotlights GovCloud Founder Kevin L. Jackson
I am the CEO and founder of GovCloud Network, LLC. In a consultative role, I help companies develop and execute targeted media strategies via social media channels to over 1.5 million professionals across 20 industry verticals. With a specialty in cloud computing, we and our partners also provide the critical technical training and business education needed to thrive.
Tune into the Cloud
In the cloud lock-in is often a greater concern than lock-out*, but both should be top of mind for organizations looking to deploy cloud seriously, or better said, for organizations that want to deploy cloud for serious business.
Lock-in is the phenomenon that it is often difficult (lengthy and expensive) for user organizations to switch suppliers, often because after some time the software becomes so closely linked with the way the organization works that saying goodbye to the vendor becomes virtualy impossible. It is no coincidence that there are only two industries (IT vendors and drug dealers) that routinely refer to their customers as “users”.
How to Architect and Optimize Your Cloud for Consistent Performance
Performance is the intersection of power, agility, control, and choice. If you value performance, and more specifically consistent performance, you need to look beyond simple virtualized compute. Many factors need to be considered to create a truly performant environment.
In his General Session at 14th Cloud Expo, Marc Jones, Vice President of Product Innovation for SoftLayer, will explain how to take advantage of a multitude of compute options and platform features to make cloud the cornerstone of your online presence.
Hybrid Cloud – Best Practices and Use Cases/Proof Points
Hybrid cloud refers to the federation of a public and private cloud environment for the purpose of extending the elastic and flexibility of compute, storage and network capabilities, in an on-demand, pay-as-you go basis. The hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.
Hybrid cloud environments involve complex management challenges. First, organizations struggle to maintain control over the resources that lie outside of their managed IT scope. They also need greater infrastructure visibility to help reduce maintenance costs and ensure that their company data and resources are properly handled and secured.
Mobility, Cloud, Analytics Highlight Federal IT Trends
IBM has identified mobile devices, cloud computing and four other trends that are looking to shape the federal information technology of the future, according to Jane Snowdon, director and chief innovation officer at IBM Federal.
In an op-ed for Federal Times, Snowdon writes that mbility will continue to forge ahead to help enterprises and industries get closer to their customers, improve communication and elevate productivity.
Cloud computing seems “inevitable” as well, Snowdon says, as companies migrate from traditional, legacy systems to cope with big data.
Snowdon also pointed to multimedia such as a standard data format, big data, analytics and cognitive systems to get insights out of burgeoning information.
Reduce Complexity and Accelerate Innovation with IaaS and PaaS
Are you interested in accelerating innovation, simplifying deployments, reducing complexity, and lowering development costs? The cloud is changing the face of application development and deployment, with enterprise-grade infrastructure and platform services making it possible for you to build and rapidly scale enterprise applications.
In his session at 14th Cloud Expo, Gene Eun, Sr. Director, Oracle Cloud at Oracle, will discuss the latest solutions and strategies for application developers and enterprise IT organizations to leverage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to build and deploy modern business applications in the cloud.