Organizations across the world are increasingly starting to see the benefits of moving more and more services to the cloud. The focus on the cost-saving potential of cloud is rapidly shifting to completely transforming the business with cloud. As organizations are investing enormous sums on technology they are starting to realize that in order to maximize the return on investment and accelerate the business transformation process the first area of focus should be people. By ensuring the organization is ‘cloud-ready’ the organizational adoption will be much faster and much better. A workforce ready and eager to maximize the potential value and benefit will more readily embrace a cloud strategy.
OK, Google, What Do I Need To Know About I/O Cloud Announcements?
With all the focus on Google Glass, new Maps features and Star Trek-ish conversations coming to Google Search everywhere (“OK Google…”) let’s not forget Google’s cloud computing moves:
Google Compute Engine – now available for everyone
New Compute Engine features:
- Sub-hour billing charges for instances in one-minute increments with a ten-minute minimum, so you don’t pay for compute minutes that you don’t use
- Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads
- Advanced Routing features help you create gateways and VPN servers, and enable you to build applications that span your local network and Google’s cloud
- Large persistent disks support up to 10 terabytes per volume, which translates to 10X the industry standard
ISO 27001:2005 international security certification for Compute Engine, Google App Engine, and Google Cloud Storage.
Google App Engine adds PHP runtime
Google Cloud Datastore (AKA NoSQL)
Google Cloud Datastore is a fully managed and schemaless solution for storing non-relational data. Based on the popular App Engine High Replication Datastore, Cloud Datastore is a standalone service that features automatic scalability and high availability while still providing powerful capabilities such as ACID transactions, SQL-like queries, indexes and more.
You can catch today’s live streams for two Google Cloud talks, or watch recordings of yesterdays, here.
This time next year we’ll probably just open up the Google home page, tap the mike, and ask, “OK, Google, what do I need to know about Google Cloud?”
The Buzz Around Software Defined Networking
By Nick Phelps, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p51KAxPOrt4
One of the emerging trends in our industry that is stirring up some buzz right now is software defined networking. In this short video I answer the following questions about SDN:
- What is Software Defined Networking or SDN?
- Who has this technology deployed and how are they using it?
- What does SDN mean to the small to mid-market?
- When will the mid-market realize the benefits from SDN based offerings?
- When will we hear more? When should we expect the next update?
What are your thoughts on SDN? I’d love to hear you’re comments on the video and my take on the topic!
Supporting CIO Strategies and Priorities from the Cloud
A recent Gartner study states that the function of the modern CIO is in flux and that his or her future focus must incorporate digital assets (aka cloud-based data and applications) to remain relevant. Towards the goal of riding the sea change a compiler of stacks to a broker of business needs, security from the cloud is used as the example of this new prioritization and strategic thinking.
Team Collaboration Over the Cloud
We are all familiar with collaboration in a local area network (LAN) environment, which was fulfilled by a Windows File Server or some device that provides a network share. This is a device in the office that people can all map a network drive to the
Don’t Believe the Hype: Getting to the Promise of Big Data
Companies around the world are collecting massive amounts of data everyday that’s sitting around and not being utilized. Take for example the fact that companies collect demographic and location-based data via mobile devices all the time, but have to figure out how to monetize that data. In this session, Joyent CTO and founder Jason Hoffman will examine the state of Big Data, taking a look at what we’re doing now to discussing what’s on the horizon, as companies prepare and realign their business strategies for new streams of revenue.
NoSQL: Another big data acronym or a strategic differentiator?
Cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Fast Data, NoSQL, PaaS…while this economy cannot produce jobs, it can definitely produce jargon at the speed of light.
As a tech-savvy business person who is not an engineer, I’m always trying to figure out how these new technologies and trends help my customers.
So when I had the opportunity to work on a press release announcing ServiceSource as a MongoDB customer, I wanted to understand the value for my market. Even though MongoDB sounds like something you’d see in the X Games, I knew it must be a differentiator for our business.
I went to the MongoDB website and found “MongoDB in a Nutshell.” When I clicked on it, this is what I saw
"name" : "mongo",
"type" : "db",
"doc_links" : {
"installation" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/installation/",
"tutorial" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/getting-started/",
"reference" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/"
},
versions ...
NoSQL: Another big data acronym or a strategic differentiator?
Cloud, SaaS, Big Data, Fast Data, NoSQL, PaaS…while this economy cannot produce jobs, it can definitely produce jargon at the speed of light.
As a tech-savvy business person who is not an engineer, I’m always trying to figure out how these new technologies and trends help my customers.
So when I had the opportunity to work on a press release announcing ServiceSource as a MongoDB customer, I wanted to understand the value for my market. Even though MongoDB sounds like something you’d see in the X Games, I knew it must be a differentiator for our business.
I went to the MongoDB website and found “MongoDB in a Nutshell.” When I clicked on it, this is what I saw
"name" : "mongo",
"type" : "db",
"doc_links" : {
"installation" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/installation/",
"tutorial" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/getting-started/",
"reference" : "http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/"
},
versions ...
Greatest Hits Rundown of Everything Google Offered at Google I/O
On Wednesday, Google held its annual developer-focused conference, Google I/O, in San Francisco, California. As expected, the tech giant made tons of big announcements, highlighting updates to existing products and showcasing new programs and hardware. All of the conference’s biggest announcements have been highlighted on this site already, but if you’re looking for a greatest…
Mimecast server goes down, putting 100% SLA in tatters
Email management provider Mimecast has experienced a UK-based outage due to a hardware network failure today, with customers being temporarily unable to send or receive emails.
The first reports of irregularity occurred at approximately 1100GMT, with Mimecast acknowledging the problem at 1215.
Around forty minutes later, the company further tweeted that a fix was on the way purportedly on a tower-by-tower basis, with the majority of servers back up and running at the time of printing.
Yet the outage itself does not explain the full story. Mimecast, for better or worse, promises a 100% uptime service level agreement (SLA) – which now is torn to shreds after today’s unfortunate difficulties.
To rub further salt into the wound, a blog post dated May 8 from Orlando Scott-Cowley concerning Postini Services notes: “Any downtime can be expensive and disruptive.
“That is why Mimecast offers a 100% uptime SLA to our customers, because …