Earlier this year, Gartner published their list of Top 10 Cloud Storage Providers, highlighting key features and differentiators of the top cloud storage providers in the world. More importantly, the report highlights the emergence of a maturing industry of cloud storage providers offering a new option for businesses thinking about their next data storage purchase.
Although each cloud storage provider has a unique set of strengths, nearly all offer a common set of cloud storage benefits that include:
A nearly unlimited supply of on-demand capacity: organizations can avoid the dreaded cycle of refreshes, upgrades and migrations from running out of capacity.
Deploying Hybrid Cloud for Performance and Uptime
In his session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13, 2013], Datapipe VP Ed Laczynski will discuss innovative hybrid cloud strategies being used to address complex IT challenges. The session will examine how you can take advantage of the scalability and efficiencies of the public cloud while addressing data security and compliance requirements through hybrid solutions. Cloud diversity will also be discussed in depth, providing attendees with insight on deploying resilient cloud infrastructure.
Flash Storage and Networking Innovations for Cloud Computing
In the face of explosive data growth and significant pressure on IT budgets, data centers cannot afford the application bottlenecks, stranded capacity, and excessive cost of traditional storage and networking architectures. They are leading the adoption of new flash storage and networking innovations with their unexpected TCO savings.
Understanding SSD Technology to Avoid the Rip-and-Replace Game
The rise of cloud computing has exposed hard drive-based storage as the new data center bottleneck. Combating this, data center managers have deployed SSDs to gain the performance needed to provide real-time access to data. However, due to budget constraints, many have turned to consumer-grade SSDs without understanding that they wear out quickly when processing enterprise workloads. In this session, Esther Spanjer will discuss recent endurance advancements in SSD technology that enable usage of low cost, enterprise-class SSDs, and how this helps organizations lower their storage TCO by avoiding frequent replacements.
Launching Hadoop into the Cloud in Three Clicks
Big Data applications such as Hadoop and Hive are becoming more widely adopted and mainstream. There are increasing numbers of users who will select the cloud – whether private or public – as an efficient and scalable deployment vehicle for these large-scale distributed apps. Hadoop implementations can involve deployment of dozens to thousands of application nodes – a scale that can become very time-consuming to manage.
Enabling Real-Time Analytics Using an In-Memory Data Grid
In-memory data grids (IMDGs) have seen rapid adoption over the last several years driven by the need to help applications scale their performance as workloads grow. Because IMDGs host fast-changing (“operational”) data in memory across a cluster of servers, they also offer the ability to perform real-time analytics on this data as it flows through the grid. Recent advances in IMDG technology now enable Hadoop MapReduce-style analytics to be integrated into the IMDG’s architecture, performing parallel analysis even while operational data is changing. This exciting new capability creates the opportunity for real-time analysis in financial trading systems, credit card fraud detection, power systems monitoring, and many other applications.
This session will explain how to use an IMDG to perform real-time analytics and will describe recent benchmark results that demonstrate its power to deliver fast results for operational systems.
An Investment in Next-Generation Cloud: ProfitBricks Secures $19.5 Million
“We spent two years building a cloud offering that is unmatched in the market. This latest investment represents an investment not only in ProfitBricks but in the future of cloud,” said Achim Weiss, co-founder and CEO of ProfitBricks, as it was announced that his IaaS company has received a $19.5 million investment from its founders and United Internet AG, a leading European internet services provider.
Microsoft’s cloud strategy and roadmap evident at Convergence 2013
Kirill Tatarinov’s keynote this morning at Microsoft’s Convergence 2013 marks a subtle, yet very significant shift in how this technology leader is marketing itself to partners and the outside world. They are humanizing their marketing, messaging and products.
Gone is the Spock-like precision of presentations packed with roadmaps, mind-numbing metrics and intricate feature analysis. The Nick Brophy Band made the keynote complete by delivering excellent sets.
Microsoft is learning that telling a good story trumps terabytes of metrics. They delivered a strong keynote today starting out showing how attendees reached out to the local community and helped Habitat for Humanity.
Kirill then based the majority of his keynote on four customer success stories taken from the Microsoft Customer Excellence Award winners. Chobani, Shock Doctor, Revlon and Weight Watchers shared how they were able to better connect with customers and run more efficient businesses using Microsoft Dynamics.
The only …
From Creative Cloud to iCloud – Kevin Lynch Leaves Adobe for Apple
“We wish Kevin well in this new chapter of his career,” said Adobe – somewhat sparingly – in a statement released as the company behind PDF Acrobat confirmed that just four days after offering his resignation as CTO on March 18, Kevin Lynch will be leaving the company he joined in 2005.
From March 22 Adobe executive Bryan Lamkin will assume Lynch’s responsibilities for cross-company research and technology initiatives.
Who’s the number one cloud computing nation?
The BSA has put together a report which ranks the top 20 countries worldwide in terms of cloud readiness, and it may not be a surprise as to which nation is at the summit…
Japan is the highest ranked cloud computing nation worldwide, according to research published by BSA: Software Alliance.
In its 2013 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, the Alliance aims to “provide a platform for discussion between policymakers and providers of cloud offerings, with a view toward developing an internationally harmonised regime of laws and regulations relevant to cloud computing.”
In other words, the raw figures perhaps are not the be all and end all. But the overall statistics, taking into account such areas as data privacy, security and ICT readiness among others, still make interesting reading.
Japan is the most cloud-oriented nation by some distance according to the study, scoring 84.1 overall. The rest of the …