IBM has published this infographic that shows its gains from its private cloud. Worth a close look.
Juniper & Seagate Invest in Cloudscaling
Cloudscaling, the four-year old start-up that insists it’s got the most advanced OpenStack infrastructure system, has picked up a $10 million B round from Trinity Ventures and two new investors, new strategic partners Juniper Networks and Seagate.
It reportedly got a $4 million A round from Trinity in 2011.
In April Cloudscaling wheeled out its turnkey Open Cloud System (OCS) 2.5, which it integrated with Juniper’s virtual network control (VNC) technology, JunosV Contrail, signaling their partnership.
The two now plan other joint networking solutions that would support a new generation of cloud-aware enterprise workloads.
The Register thinks Juniper may wind up buying the company.
Cloudscaling also joined the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance Partner program in April and, as part of the program, it and Seagate are focused on developing optimized storage solutions for OpenStack.
Is Free Encryption Worth It?
“The last time I checked, people do not change their social security numbers very often…”
While in constant debate over data encryption and ease of access, I encountered a train of thought that made my jaw drop. A tradeshow attendee suggested encrypting everything, but just use a weak algorithm; so as not to make it impossible to decode if needed in the future.
Before smirking and quoting statistics as truth, I stopped to ponder: was there any merit to the statement, what was the sensitivity level of the data, where was it being stored, who had access to it, what was the definition of a weak algorithm, was this archival data or was it accessed and changed often?
Through conversation, the premise was potentially plausible (with some big question marks), but the logic was still thoroughly flawed. Yes, the data was constantly changing and only updated records were being sent to branch offices via a public cloud file sharing service, but the data did contain personally identifiable information. The last time I checked, people do not change their social security numbers very often and data captured by an intruder will stay in its captured state.
BUMI to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that BUMI (Backup My Info!), the premium provider of managed online backup and recovery solutions for small to mid-sized businesses, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Manhattan-based BUMI (Backup My Info!) is a premium managed service provider specializing in online data backup and recovery. Founded in 2002, the company’s data backup and recovery service is utilized by more than 500 businesses while its partner program currently boasts over 40 active partners. BUMI clients include professional service organizations such as banking, financial, insurance, accounting, hedge funds and law firms. BUMI has won numerous awards including 2011 Customer Service Provider of the Year and 10 Best Companies to Work For (New York Enterprise Report), 2010 “16 Hot Companies Running Under the Radar” (eWeek), 2010 Windows IT Pro Editors’ Best and Community Choice Awards (Best Backup Software Product).
Cloud Expo New York: Migration to the Cloud for Data Intensive Jobs
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dave Eichorn, Global Data Center Practice Head at Zensar, will share a case study describing how a utility services company handled the migration of its Microsoft platform to the cloud. Challenged with the time-consuming task of opening operations out of temporary offices, this company struggled with the need to simultaneously access data that was accumulated from a vast amount of data-intensive jobs. Zensar migrated the company’s application of force.com to the cloud, eliminating the need for front-end infrastructure and allowing access to the cloud. He will describe best practices for cloud migration and explain the benefits of mobility, cost savings and faster time-to-market.
Don’t Let Your Hybrid Cloud Collapse into a Black Hole
A PMTUD black hole can cause a particularly subtle set of issues in hybrid cloud-based environments where the cloud resources are connected to a corporate office or other datacenter via IPSec tunnels. PMTUD black holes basically cause certain (but not all) traffic to not make it through the tunnel.
Before we get down and dirty into the problems with PMTUD, let’s quickly go over what PMTUD is.
PMTUD stands for Path Maximum Transmission Unit Discovery and it is a protocol/algorithm defined in RFC 1191 that determines the best packet size for IPv4 datagrams flowing between any two given hosts. In this way, it attempts to optimize traffic through the Internet by using the largest possible datagram that doesn’t require intermediary routers to fragment the traffic (since fragmentation and, more importantly, reassembly are expensive operations for routers to perform).
Cloud Computing – The Perfect Match for Big Data
“Social, mobile, analytics and cloud can’t be looked at as distinct technology trends; they are facets of the same movement and an everyday reality for consumers and businesses alike,” said Craig Sowell, IBM VP of SmartCloud Marketing, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This means that businesses need to start looking at trends as one: cloud is the delivery, analytics is the unique insight, social is a shareable service, and mobile is the ubiquitous access.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Craig Sowell: Cloud computing is a transformative technology, going well beyond money or time savings. We believe the most important driver for cloud computing is how profoundly the technology can transform business and even entire industries. By offering enterprises scalable and on-demand access to computing power, while delivering broader access to apps and data for partners and customers, cloud computing can help transform an existing business, jump-start a new one, or re-imagine product and service design.
Disaster Recovery on Demand
Our prior post, A Roadmap to High-Value Cloud Infrastructure: Disaster Recovery and Data Protection, discussed both the benefits and limitations of a cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) strategy. As we highlighted last week, traditional disaster recovery options leave open a huge hole: At one extreme are high-cost, quick recovery time options using hosted or colocation sites and at the other extreme are low-cost, long recovery time options such as tape or disk backup.
As a result, organizations who cannot afford a cold or hot standby site have been left to either cobble together a complicated and risky DR strategy or rely solely on offsite data protection, which affords them limited business continuity.
Amazon Cloud Services Cleared for Government Use
Amazon.com Inc has been given a security clearance by the U.S. government that will make it easier for federal agencies to use its cloud computing services. Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, was certified to operate as a cloud service provider for three years under the government’s new FedRAMP program. The accreditation covers all AWS…
Effective cloud operations will make or break your initiative’s success
CIOs, engaged in cloud initiatives, have identified one of their top goals – a need for a cloud strategy.
The reason; cloud initiatives not only directly impact technology but the effect extends significantly to business processes and organisational resources. A strategy that aligns process, technology and business service delivery is critical to the future returns on the initiative.
During the course of IT’s mere fifty years of evolving operational models nothing has accelerated, and to varying degrees disrupted the norms of a CIO’s domain, like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS etc.
Cloud computing changes the IT planning approach, impacts staff, changes costing models, simplifies delivery and visibility of SLAs, and adds new dimensions to operational accountability and governance.
In my CIO days, the move to client server appeared to be technically evolutionary. Cloud, within the context of its potential impact on business is deserving of “business change agent.”
BMC CLM gives …