Through a great deal of research on enterprise cloud adoption and security, I’ve learned something telling. As you would expect, CISOs’ opinions about cloud strategy are quite varied. While many folks recognize their company’s use of SaaS for HR, sales, communication, and other applications, they are fairly divided about the use of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and how secure these environments are in keeping company data safeguarded. After many talks with these technology leaders, I’ve determined that each fall into three distinct categories.
The first group is the server huggers and they make up a very small percentage of the respondents. They simply have no reason to leverage IaaS. Their applications are very resource intensive and expensive, and their businesses are highly predictable, so the need for scalable capacity just doesn’t exist. However, the time may come where they have company needs to bring the cloud into the mix. If so, they should be well informed on how to take advantage of cloud services and realize the ways to protect data during and after that migration.
Cloud Expo New York: How to Stop Worrying and Love Your Cloud
The key drivers behind the Cloud Revolution are faster delivery of IT solutions, access to ‘unlimited’ on-demand capacity, and lower operating costs. Still, many struggle with the variables behind the Cloud, including data management, portability, and public, private, hybrid, and virtual private clouds.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Tim Halpin, Director Cloud Services – Adoption and Utilization at AT&T, will show how you can leverage cloud solutions to minimize risk and investment as you execute your overall IT strategy and move your production workloads into the Cloud.
Bye-Bye Tivoli, Welcome Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure: A New Brand in IBM
In an internal reorg, IBM’s Tivoli, Maximo, TRIRIGA, Endpoint Manager, and Netcool branded offerings, as well as its SmartCloud service management offerings, are now to be clustered under an “overarching umbrella” called IBM Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure. The new division, says IBM, reflects the evolution of client needs and IBM’s portfolio.
Migrating On-Premise Controls to the Cloud
The scale and automation of cloud computing deliver economies of scale – and price points – that can’t be matched by traditional computing platforms. Managers can minimize capital expenses and align operational costs to business demands with scalable, flexible resource deployments. Those same factors enable innovation through rapid prototyping and testing of complex systems that aren’t feasible – or affordable – with established approaches. It’s little wonder the cloud has emerged as the first choice of infrastructure for many IT managers and practitioners.
Security and compliance play just as critical a role in the hybrid cloud as they do in more conventional environments. So it’s unfortunate that as organizations move operations to the cloud they tend to mirror the protection efforts they employ with their physical, on-premise systems. It’s a mistake because in many cases existing controls don’t migrate well to the cloud. As a result, they fail to provide the requisite protection and diminish – or even eliminate – anticipated cost and operational benefits of cloud computing.
Cloud Expo New York: APIs and Services – One Platform or Two?
A growing number of organizations looking at building APIs are wondering what existing capabilities they can leverage. Many concepts are common to APIs and Services while others are not, but should be.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, will discuss this changing market and predict how it might come together for the benefit of both.
Alistair Farquharson is a visionary industry veteran focused on using disruptive technologies to drive business growth and improve efficiency and agility within organizations. As the CTO of SOA Software Alistair is helping to shape and mature the enterprise API and SOA industry. Alistair is responsible for product strategy and development for this leading Enterprise API and SOA Governance company. He spends a great deal of time and energy shaping customer and industry direction with regular conference keynote appearances, discussions with customers, and even the occasional foray into writing code. Alistair has been at the forefront of many technology waves from enterprise web architecture, through web services and SOA, and now into APIs. His expertise spans a wide range of technologies and businesses, and he brings a unique global focus to everything he does.
Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage and Project Management Software
The demand for distributed data and services is increasing as big companies are more and more spread across the world.
Cloud services are raging from simple storage and up to complex computing processes. Depending on the needs there are products that run completely into the cloud while others are just storing the data into the cloud. In the last few years there is a battle that is given between desktop based applications and cloud based ones.
The notion of web-based products refers to software that runs within a browser on the client side. Generally the central computing part is kept entirely (computing and storage) within the cloud on the software provider side. However for certain offerings like RationalPlan it is also possible to have the central computing unit as a server module on the customer side. This might be a security measure for some customers.
Upcoming Eucalyptus Release To Include "Features…Other Cloud Platforms Are Only Dreaming of"
“In June of 2013 we are shipping Eucalyptus version 3.3 and again we present features to you that other cloud platforms are only dreaming of,” blogged Eucalyptus CEO Mårten Mickos today. “We are adding three new services for scalable cloud workloads,” he continued, “Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, and CloudWatch.”
Go Beyond IaaS to Deliver "Anything-as-a-Service"
Many organizations want to expand upon the IaaS foundation to deliver cloud services in all forms – software, mobility, infrastructure and IT. Understanding the strategy, planning process and tools for this transformation will help catalyze changes in the way the business operates and deliver real value.
Azure and That Dear Old Crinkle of Green: Bloomberg
In the last 12 months annual revenues for Azure have topped a billion dollars
according to Curt Anderson, CFO of Microsoft’s Server and Tools unit
where Azure is housed.
It’s the first time the Microsoft cloud has hit this storied height and suddenly
people are talking about it being in the running against Amazon Web
Services, which is believed to have done $1.8 billion last year on its eventual
way to $20 billion sometime before the decade ends.
How cloud computing is rethinking control of IT
By Jason Bloomberg
In my role as a globetrotting cloud consultant, I continue to be amazed at how many executives, both in IT and in the lines of business, still favour private clouds over public.
These managers are perfectly happy to pour money into newfangled data centers (sorry, “private clouds”), even though Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its brethren are reinventing the entire world of IT. Their reason? Sometimes they believe private clouds will save them money over the public cloud option.
No such luck: private clouds are dreadfully expensive to build, staff, and manage, while public cloud services continue to fall in price.
Others point to security as the problem. No again. Okay, maybe private clouds will give us sufficient elasticity? Probably not. Go through all the arguments, however, and they’re still dead set on building that private cloud.
What gives? The true reason for this stubbornness, of …