All posts by Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal

Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting as a Service

This is a continuation of my series of articles on Industry SaaS. This term ‘Industry SaaS’ can be interchangeably used with BpaaS (Business Process as a Service). However, the term ‘Industry SaaS’ meaning a Software as a Service meant for a specific industry is stressed for wider attention, as the term BpaaS has yet to mature with a clear definition.
Business Planning and Forecasting refers to the set of activities where business is planned against the strategy and what forecast activities or results of the organization may occur from operational execution during a particular time period. The following are the functions of this business process.

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Looking “Inward” to the Private Cloud at Cloud Expo New York

As the use of public cloud resources has proven effective across a diverse set of use cases, organizations have begun looking inward to find ways to more effectively and efficiently use their existing compute, storage, and networking resources in a similar model.
This desire for internal resource utilization has given rise to numerous private and hybrid cloud technologies that provide tools for on-demand procurement of compute, storage, and networking resources above and beyond what was available previously in both classic and virtualized datacenters.

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The Ever-Expanding Role of Big Data

“Security standards for moving data into and out of the cloud and for hosting it within the cloud will dramatically help accelerate adoption of the cloud as a secure computing platform,” observed Dr. William L. Bain, founder and CEO of ScaleOut Software, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. Bain also noted that “additional standards for creating elastic clusters that are physically co-located and use high speed networking will also help in hosting applications that analyze Big Data.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – “While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.”
Dr. William L. Bain: Agree. The cloud opens up huge opportunities for everything from cloud bursting to meet peak demand to hosting a scalable data analysis platform. This full range of use cases serves to enhance business agility.

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Cyber Security in the Cloud: Trends, Challenges & Solutions at Cloud Expo

Information Security and Risk has become a top concern of IT organizations and consumers alike. Concern about inadequate Info Security remains the #1 obstacle to greater adoption of Cloud Computing, according to Intel’s research. The rapid growth of Mobile and IP-connected Embedded devices, Cloud Computing, Social Networks, and “Consumerization of IT” is being met with, and in some cases contributing to, an escalating number and complexity of Cyber-threats. Tenants of the cloud need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Steve Orrin, Sr. Security Architect & Principal Engineer for the Cross Platform Technology group at Intel Corp., will describe the technologies and capabilities that provide reporting on the configuration of the virtual infrastructure used by the customer VMs and tie this to a verifiable measurement of trust in the hardware and hypervisor. This allows customers to be sure the provider is following security best practices, can pass a regulatory audit, and be assured that the provider’s platforms are booting from a secure root of trust, protected from root-kits and other malware. He will also describe the hardware and software methods by which these measurements, configuration of the virtual infrastructure, and events reported by the infrastructure are used to generate dynamic and detailed compliance reports and enforce security policies.

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Cyber Security in the Cloud: Trends, Challenges & Solutions at Cloud Expo

Information Security and Risk has become a top concern of IT organizations and consumers alike. Concern about inadequate Info Security remains the #1 obstacle to greater adoption of Cloud Computing, according to Intel’s research. The rapid growth of Mobile and IP-connected Embedded devices, Cloud Computing, Social Networks, and “Consumerization of IT” is being met with, and in some cases contributing to, an escalating number and complexity of Cyber-threats. Tenants of the cloud need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Steve Orrin, Sr. Security Architect & Principal Engineer for the Cross Platform Technology group at Intel Corp., will describe the technologies and capabilities that provide reporting on the configuration of the virtual infrastructure used by the customer VMs and tie this to a verifiable measurement of trust in the hardware and hypervisor. This allows customers to be sure the provider is following security best practices, can pass a regulatory audit, and be assured that the provider’s platforms are booting from a secure root of trust, protected from root-kits and other malware. He will also describe the hardware and software methods by which these measurements, configuration of the virtual infrastructure, and events reported by the infrastructure are used to generate dynamic and detailed compliance reports and enforce security policies.

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Cyber Security in the Cloud: Trends, Challenges & Solutions at Cloud Expo

Information Security and Risk has become a top concern of IT organizations and consumers alike. Concern about inadequate Info Security remains the #1 obstacle to greater adoption of Cloud Computing, according to Intel’s research. The rapid growth of Mobile and IP-connected Embedded devices, Cloud Computing, Social Networks, and “Consumerization of IT” is being met with, and in some cases contributing to, an escalating number and complexity of Cyber-threats. Tenants of the cloud need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Steve Orrin, Sr. Security Architect & Principal Engineer for the Cross Platform Technology group at Intel Corp., will describe the technologies and capabilities that provide reporting on the configuration of the virtual infrastructure used by the customer VMs and tie this to a verifiable measurement of trust in the hardware and hypervisor. This allows customers to be sure the provider is following security best practices, can pass a regulatory audit, and be assured that the provider’s platforms are booting from a secure root of trust, protected from root-kits and other malware. He will also describe the hardware and software methods by which these measurements, configuration of the virtual infrastructure, and events reported by the infrastructure are used to generate dynamic and detailed compliance reports and enforce security policies.

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Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Sinclair Schuller – Apprenda

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just eight weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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What’s So Big About Big Data?

It’s almost a strange sounding phrase isn’t it? The rise of the term “Big Data” has been popularized to describe those data sets we now juggle with in the new world of cloud computing and massively distributed databases, fueled as they are by the multiplicity of desktop and mobile devices that now interconnect with our global data mountain.
The question now is whether companies are having Big Data problems… or whether they are perhaps having Big Data problems, with Big Data.
It is widely agreed that the secret to coping with Big Data is analytics. Without analytics, Big Data is just lots of data. With analytics we can bring contextualized qualitative and quantitative meaning to our data and this means we can start to extract value from it.

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Cloud Expo New York: Cloudbursting…A Game Changer for the Little Guy

There’s been much hype over benefits of the “Cloud” but it’s now becoming a game changer for smaller businesses. Previously, rendering movies, developing new drugs, or prototyping new designs required a large data center, buying numerous servers, storage/switches, and hiring an army of IT “ants” to manage the environment – reserved for larger/wealthier companies.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Scott Houston, Founder and CEO of GreenButton, will show how Cloudbursting helps smaller companies avoid expensive capital infrastructure purchases, rent infrastructure, acquire software licenses, etc., to offset costs.

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Safe Driving in the Cloud: A "Black Box" for Cars

When an aircraft crashes, investigators are able to retrieve useful information about what went wrong from the flight data recorder, more commonly known as the black box. (The data recorder itself is actually not black, not until it’s retrieved from charred remains.) Statistically speaking, plane crashes are rare occurrences compared to car crashes, so why not install a black box for cars?

That’s exactly what Japanese telemetrics company Crew Systems developed: a driving data recorder for cars and trucks. A big market exists for these in Japan, since businesses with more than five vehicles are required by law to produce daily reports on the driving habits of their drivers.

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