Start-ups have been formed by leveraging cloud resources but enterprises are taking note and adoption rates are increasing.
While attending the Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference last week, I spoke to enterprise customers who described how they benefited from AWS cloud services. One customer converted a $70K bid from a systems integrator for a hosted website and implemented it on AWS for less than $7K. Another customer estimated the cost of acquiring an on-premises business intelligence solution for $200K plus maintenance compared to under $10K a year on AWS. Savings like this will prompt enterprises to assess and migrate applications to the public cloud while addressing privacy and security concerns.

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Add another fill-in-the-blank-as-a-service that’s making waves in the cloud.
Verizon, which just recently launched a major overhaul to its cloud platform, announced plans to integrate the VMware/EMC-backed Cloud Foundry open-source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) initiative into its offering, according to an article on Networkworld.com.
Here’s why that news is important: the PaaS market is getting awfully crowded, awfully fast. Seen by many as a secondary player in the cloud compared to the much larger and more robust IaaS and SaaS markets, the PaaS industry has in recent months become a focus for many of the leading cloud computing vendors. PaaS could be an important initiative in the cloud because of what it enables.
Most PaaS are a cloud-based application development platform used to build apps that are hosted in the cloud. Others view the PaaS market, especially open source PaaS tools like Cloud Foundry and others, as being an intermediary that acts as a portal to access infrastructure from Amazon, OpenStack or other IaaS. More vendors are getting in on the PaaS action.

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Data in the cloud is increasingly viewed as the reality of IT infrastructure management.

With such ubiquitous data storage on cloud-based, cloud-based is at odds with the naysayers who continue to cite security concerns as a reason not to move data to the cloud.

So we have a discrepancy – cloud data storage is widely used, yet there are concerns about the security (compliance and privacy also) of the data itself.

What gives?

The rapid rate of cloud adoption has given rise to the natural necessity to have some data generated live on cloud-based platforms. For other data driven processes, i.e. big data analytics, cloud is the natural storage platform of choice, given the scope and scale of data and the costs of storing it in anything beyond the cloud.

This shifting reality, however, has not mitigated the need for organizations to ensure the security of their data. The difference …

When the NSA PRISM revelations hit back in June, it initially spelled bad news for many cloud industry players, especially in the US. With analysts speculating that the damage to the US cloud computing industry could go as high as $35bn, it was a fractured period of time.

For San Jose-based cloud information protector CipherCloud, however, it was a different story.

CEO and founder Pravin Kothari and senior vice president Paige Leidig were both at a Gartner summit in Washington DC when the news broke, and Leidig told CloudTech that the benefits to the company were instant.

“Because of that news, our local sales team on the East Coast brought us in to basically half a dozen different opportunities, directly related to that news,” Leidig said, adding: “Ever since then it’s been a significant driver to generate awareness and importance of protecting data in the cloud.

“It’s helped …

While articles on cloud computing are popping up everywhere, very few actually understand what it is and how it can help in business. In reality, cloud computing is all about making access to data easier regardless of your location.

Cloud computing enables users to store files and software remotely, instead of keeping data on a server in their office where it is inaccessible. In reality, many employees may be already using cloud computing without even realizing it. For example, Skype is a form of cloud computing. An example of business-focused clouding computing can include utilizing CRM systems (customer relationship management). Both examples house the data in a remote location and the user “logs on” to access it from any location. Companies that offer cloud computing solutions, such as service cloud from Salesforce, have experience in understanding what is needed for a company to succeed with cloud computing and can then develop and implement a solution that will work for any size company.

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While articles on cloud computing are popping up everywhere, very few actually understand what it is and how it can help in business. In reality, cloud computing is all about making access to data easier regardless of your location.

Cloud computing enables users to store files and software remotely, instead of keeping data on a server in their office where it is inaccessible. In reality, many employees may be already using cloud computing without even realizing it. For example, Skype is a form of cloud computing. An example of business-focused clouding computing can include utilizing CRM systems (customer relationship management). Both examples house the data in a remote location and the user “logs on” to access it from any location. Companies that offer cloud computing solutions, such as service cloud from Salesforce, have experience in understanding what is needed for a company to succeed with cloud computing and can then develop and implement a solution that will work for any size company.

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These days, users are growing more and more accustomed to expecting that they can accomplish productive work from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. As a result, IT professionals are increasingly faced with the challenge of balancing convenience with security, in an effort to provide users with the necessary remote access to corporate applications and data being demanded. In the “old days”, organizations could easily restrict access to internal business data to only corporate-managed Active Directory Domain-Joined PCs, but this is fast becoming an outdated mode of operation.

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You’ve seen the AWS re:Invent videos:
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Find F5
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Bursting Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Migration Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – F5 AWS Solutions (feat. Pearce & Huang)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Federation Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – LineRate Systems (feat. Moshiri)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – That’s a Wrap

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You’ve seen the AWS re:Invent videos:
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Find F5
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Bursting Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Migration Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – F5 AWS Solutions (feat. Pearce & Huang)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – Cloud Federation Reference Architecture (feat. Pearce)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – LineRate Systems (feat. Moshiri)
AWS re:Invent 2013 – That’s a Wrap

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Red Hat Directory Server is an LDAP-compliant server that centralizes application settings, user profiles, group data, policies, and access control information in a network-based registry.
In this webinar, you’ll learn more about how Red Hat Directory Server can:
Reduce administration costs and increase availability, providing the scalability and information control to manage access across partner, supplier, and customer relationships.
Simplify user management by eliminating data redundancy and automating data maintenance.
Improve security, enabling administrators to store policies and access control information in the directory for a single authentication source across enterprise or extranet applications.

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