By Sharon Florentine

The cloud is the perfect companion for startups.

No, really.

There are as many reasons for startups to embrace cloud computing technology as there are for enterprises. As Janakiram Mocherla, cloud-technology consultant, evangelist and author outlines, there are ten main reasons why startups should consider going to the cloud.

10. Self service: For startups, the ability to provision and de-provision resources all by yourself, without relying on a third party, is very powerful.

Most cloud platforms include a dashboard or management console that you can use to acquire and launch resources as you need them. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a trusted cloud provider in your corner.

Rackspace has devoted an entire solution set to supporting startups, and knowing you can turn to their expertise can be very reassuring.

9. No CAPEX: Captial Expenditures (CAPEX) may be the biggest hurdle for budding entrepreneurs, especially …

What is a “hybrid cloud”?

Is it 1) an environment where applications and processes exist both in the public and private cloud and on premise? Or is it 2) a combination public/private cloud without an on-premise component?

For the sake of this discussion, we’ll concede definition 1.

Clarifying this concept is important because the vast majority of cloud-adopting organisations – which is to say the vast majority of organisations, period – are about to become hybrid-cloud-adopting organisations, and for good reason: they’re not ready to simply switch off their existing on-premise systems – legacy systems that already have significant business and operational value – and re-invent them in the cloud.

Let’s clarify this hybrid notion with a simple example of a business process nearly all organisations are familiar with: the HR onboarding process.

1. Onboarding begins: A cloud-based recruiting system is used to identify a candidate. When the candidate is hired …

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 North Virginia cloud went down for approximately four hours yesterday, due to ‘elevated packet loss’.

The issue was first reported on the AWS Service Health Dashboard at 0208 PDT (0908 GMT) on October 15, with the dashboard cautiously noting “possible network connectivity issues” for EC2.

‘Possible’ became confirmed at 0219 PDT (0919 GMT), with a further update at 0320 PDT (1020 GMT) adding that it was due to elevated packet loss.

Only at 0514 PDT (1214 GMT) did Amazon confirm the problem had been fixed, adding that some APIs (application programming interfaces) had experienced increased error rates and latencies.

Some of the AWS customers affected included iSharingSoft, who tweeted that it was “experiencing network issues with #AWS”, and Cirrus Insight.

The Twitter sphere appeared, if anything confused at the lack of information on AWS’ global status page. Giedrius Banaitis tweeted that “as always, Twitter …

A new report has suggested that cloud computing is generally a better option than on-premise when looking to save energy, but it isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), alongside WSP Environment and Energy looked at how on-premise computing compared to the cloud in terms of energy efficiency – in particular power usage effectiveness (PUE) of the server room or data centre; how much of the server’s hardware is utilised; and carbon emissions.

Overall it was revealed that while running an app in the cloud is generally more energy efficient than running it in your server room, variables such as PUE and hardware utilisation are vital to cloud’s carbon footprint.

“The results confirm claims that running a business application in the cloud is generally more energy and carbon efficient than running it on-premise…however, this study demonstrates that this is not always the case and …

The most common objections for holding back SaaS (Software as a Service) adoption, as reported from end customers, are ‘security’ and ‘reliability’.

This is interesting when you consider that SaaS Security is consistently reported as the fastest growth area of SaaS. This ‘security’ objection usually stems from the customers’ perspective; they are concerned about the security of their data held outside their perimeter by the cloud provider.

Yet despite these concerns there has been a thunderstorm of growing noise surrounding cloud computing in the past 24 months.

Vendors, analysts, journalists and membership groups have all rushed to cover the cloud medium, although everyone seems to have their own opinion and differing definition of cloud computing.  Similar to many new sectors of technology, the key is to separate the truth from the hype before making educated decisions on the right time to participate.

While still evolving and changing, cloud computing is …

In my experience, those tasked with making such business-critical decisions about what size cloud provider to opt for are confronted with several opinions on the matter, often from sources with their own biases on the subject.

To my knowledge, there is only one overriding advantage of a large cloud provider, namely price. Whilst companies who build bigger data centres can drive down the unit price offering cost savings to customers, flexibility in the contract is usually compromised as a result.

With large cloud providers it is nigh on impossible to get a contractual change, let alone a contract that is designed specifically for the needs of individual businesses.

Due to the sheer levels of governance in place, even the smallest of changes remain impossible as the system does not allow for flexibility – they operate on a “this is our offer, take it or leave it” basis.

In the case of …

AMD, a chip designer, is now pushing a lot of money into Ciinow, a cloud based game streaming firm. Ciinow has stated that it will use its AMD Radeon graphics cards due to the fact that AMD is pumping a lot of cash into the firm.

Excitement for Both Parties

This is a joint venture that has excited both companies and with the gaming market expected to reach $81bn by 2016, it’s easy to understand their excitement!

The corporate VP of Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions at AMD, Manju Hegde, has been quoted saying: “Ciinow is on the cutting edge of online game streaming technology, and it’s clear we share the same vision to drive the cloud gaming industry forward and ultimately provide the best gaming experience.”

He went on to add: “AMD’s investment signifies our mutual drive to liberate gamers from today’s constraints and move …

A new survey from Navint Partners has revealed that many CIOs of larger organisations are happy with the results of moving to the cloud.

The survey, which predominantly interviewed chief execs of companies with over 5,000 employees, found that despite the general contentment there were still some misgivings about migration, with security predictably near the top of the list.

Nine out of ten respondents said they had gotten all of the predicted savings when their companies adopted cloud technology, with nearly two in three (64%) noting that bringing in the cloud has had a significant impact on process efficiency and effectiveness.

Four out of five said that the cloud gave their company a competitive advantage.  

But the good news is that most CIOs think the public and private clouds will explode. 36% of respondents thought that the budget for public cloud will increase by up to 20% over two …

There is no doubt that open source clouds are on the minds of both open source communities/projects and commercial entities.

With 3/4 of 2012 behind us, we thought it was time to get some feedback on The State of the Open Source Cloud.

We polled more than 100,000 community members to determine the prevailing sentiments concerning open source cloud deployments, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of this technology as well as to gain insight into future open cloud deployments within IT departments. You can download a copy of the full report here.

Highlights from the survey include:

Maturity Hampers the Deployment of Open Clouds

• 82.9% of respondents said they are not using an open cloud.
• Maturity (38.5%), lack of support (30.7%), and security (28.9%) were most commonly selected as reasons why respondents are not using an open source cloud.

OpenStack Dominates Adoption Plans …