I get so many questions about cloud computing from friends, acquaintances and IT professionals alike. The non-technical folks usually have heard of “the cloud” but have absolutely no idea what it is or even realize how much they interact with it on a daily basis. They don’t realize that their email, phones, videos, music, online […]
The post Cloud Migration Tips #1: Cloud = Confusion appeared first on AppDynamics: The APM Blog.
When VMware announced its hybrid cloud initiative it made perfect sense. The hybrid cloud market could provide substantial growth opportunities for VMware, as discussed in VMware Crosses the Rubicon and Hybrid is a Whole New Cloud. Yet one respected tech analyst has recently suggested that VMware’s hybrid cloud may be too late.
Amazon (AMZN) could be the clearest benefactor of the hybrid cloud operating model if it accelerates the enterprise adoption of off premise cloud services, especially if it occurs before VMware (or Microsoft) is ready with an equivalent offering.
When VMware announced its hybrid cloud initiative it made perfect sense. The hybrid cloud market could provide substantial growth opportunities for VMware, as discussed in VMware Crosses the Rubicon and Hybrid is a Whole New Cloud. Yet one respected tech analyst has recently suggested that VMware’s hybrid cloud may be too late. Amazon (AMZN) could […]
This session by Nicos Vekiarides at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13, 2013] will examine in depth the problems created, common workarounds and why they fail, and how cloud storage can be a simpler, far more effective alternative. Attendees will learn about the common and often devastating issues surrounding the storage and management of data. Among the issues discussed will be offsite backup, offsite active archiving, business continuity, disaster recovery, disaster tolerance and scaling capacities in the data center and in the public cloud.
These days, it seems that every cloud provider claims that cloud is safer than your traditional datacenter. Is it though? In his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York, McAfee expert Rishi Bhargava will help you explore and address the security challenges and considerations for public cloud (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS).
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has revealed her latest surprise, announcing that the company “is now committed to great journalism.”
“With almost 150 million unique visitors per month, our company is the most dominant media presence in the world,” she said. “It’s time for us to commit to serving this massive audience responsibly.”
At least one media critic applauded the move. “The decline of American journalism in the Internet Age is no secret,” said Aprile DiPesce, Associate Professor of Mass Communications at Manhattan City University. “When Yahoo lost its dominance in search to Google, journalism became a mad scramble to get the best Google rankings possible. This became a mad scramble to the bottom.”
“This devolution was accelerated by a culture of publishing things first, rather than getting them right,” DiPesce added. “An emphasis on vapid entertainment stories and misleading headlines emerged as the industry norm. Yahoo’s bold announcement may finally reverse these ugly trends.”
Mayer said the company will drop most of what she referred to as “lame” and “calorie-free” content feeds, in favor of creating “a world-class journalistic infrastructure and team. Not only will our writers and editors be required to know spelling and grammar, they will be expected to write serious, well-researched pieces with multiple sources, quotes, and facts.”
When asked where people should now seek specious gossip, uninformed opinion, and inane sports blogs, Mayer said “people can always visit MSN. The First Amendment allows companies to publish useless garbage. We have simply chosen not to do this anymore.”
A source also indicated that Yahoo comments will be closed down, with the anticipated effect of angering boors, conspiracy theorists, and lunatics throughout the world.
In related news, Google has also issued a strategic statement, saying it is re-committing itself to its original “don’t be evil” mission. The company said it expects to shed 98% of its revenue, with the impact on its stock price remaining unclear.
Last week, there have been few important feature releases from Amazon. Apache CloudStack proudly announces its graduation to Top Level Project. There were also some new releases from StackMob, Scalr and Appcelerator.
Here’s a quick sum up of Cloud happenings over the last week.
To begin with, IaaS leader Amazon has added another powerful security option, the AWS CloudHSM service. The CloudHSM service helps customers to meet strict requirements for key management without sacrificing application performance. Next, they have also announced about the newest version of Amazon Linux AMI. The goal of this version is to ensure that EC2 customers will have a stable, secure, and simple Linux-based AMI that integrates well with other AWS offerings.
More and more business and governmental agencies are migrating to the cloud but the reality is that move can often be slow, painful, and complicated. Even expert system integrators are struggling to stay relevant and help their customers use cloud in a practical way. Challenges that siphon away time and money and introduce risk and governance issues include:
Designing and matching different applications to the best cloud offering
Learning to provision and integrate using phone book-sized cloud API guides
I like to organize part of my life around Cloud Expo, coming up again in New York June 10-13. One new tradition is to published our updated Tau Index results at the event. We will be doing this in New York again this year.
We published our original Tau Index results in conjunction with Cloud Expo’s Fall 2010 Silicon Valley event.
The Tau Index takes a relative look at national ICT commitments throughout the world. Our original algorithm relied significantly on World Bank statistics regarding ICT spending, leavened by income disparity and cost of living. The idea was that high income disparity blunts the benefits of technology spending, but a low cost of living multiplies it as technology costs a similar amount everywhere.
How We Started
Our first results showed developing nations topping the list. Bangladesh was our leader, followed by Morocco, Ukraine, Egypt, Hungary, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Senegal, Czech Republic, and Vietnam rounding out the Top 10.
Our Top 25 also included (in this order) South Korea, Pakistan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Thailand, India, Honduras, Slovakia, South Africa, Kenya, Philippines, Tunisia, Iran, and Russia.
The United States finished 46th out of 73 countries surveyed.
We had a subsequent discussion with the World Bank, which decided it would not be using the same source in the future, and in fact wouldn’t be listing ICT expenditures at all. We’re using the term ICT rather than IT, by the way, as it’s in common use in most of the world outside of the US, and because it includes telco.
Telco does still include “plain old telephone service” (POTS) – and in fact my local telco rep used that very term this week in describing options for our upgraded Tau Institute offices in Northwest Illinois. But all the exciting, dynamic stuff with IT is happening in conjunction telecommunications, cable, and satellite companies. Increasingly, the medium is the message in the world of ICT.
Real-World View
Our original research came from my observations as a really lucky guy who’s been able to see large parts of the world. There’s palpable energy on the streets of most Asian countries, for example, more so than dry statistics about income levels and economic growth can indicate. There’s a certain dynamism throughout what most Americans call Eastern Europe, as a variety of nations continue to fight, 20+ years on, through the ravages of their Soviet legacy. There’s new hope springing up in numerous places in vast, vast Africa.
The question arose, “how can we measure and convey this dynamism?”
There are also numerous developed nations that are outshining their regional and economic peers. Our initial results skewed so heavily toward developing nations, we decided we needed to take a renewed look at our algorithms.
Today, we’re up to 102 countries in our analysis. We focus more heavily on bandwidth, Internet access, server installations, and overall economic development than we did originally. Our process still adjusts significantly for income disparity and cost-of-living, but also takes into account factors such as the perception of corruption.
South Korea Rising
Thus, our revised, refined rankings show developed countries faring much better, and South Korea earning what we think is its rightful place at the top of the rankings. We have also created a second, “raw” index that takes less account of social factors and which thus favors many of the developing nations that fared so well in our initial rankings.
We don’t take into account specific government policies or initiatives. We believe that these are a function of the overall dynamism of a country’s ICT activity. But we’re keeping our eye on whether this area should be integrated into our process some day.
We also don’t take into account types of government. Without getting into a political argument, we’ve seen no correlation between the type of government and our rankings – with the obvious exception of a few pariah-state totalitarian dictatorships. (They wouldn’t do well if we could measure them.)
Our current rankings, which I’ve written about extensively, are broken into overall and raw tables, as well as rankings in both categories by region and income tier.
Current View
A quick review of the current Top 10 shows South Korea, Estonia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Vietnam, United Kingdom, and Lithuania. Our raw Top 10 includes Vietnam, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Romania, and Morocco.
The United States continues to languish, currently residing in 34th place in the overall rankings.
We do not wish to understate the serious nature of problems facing many of these countries. We also don’t view our research as an engineering project – it’s far more important to look at specific groups of countries rather than overthink what can be minute differences between countries listed next to one another in our rankings.
We believe in peaceful solutions to all problems, hope our small voice can be heard by global leaders, and wish to start as many conversations as possible. We’ve already engaged with people in a couple dozen of countries, but wish to expand by at least a magnitude in the next 12 months. Our updated rankings and commentaries will be announced at Cloud Expo.
