Really? Already?!? For whatever reason, the term ‘Jump the Shark’ has been jumping out at me recently. From the Jump the Shark Hat Tutorial to watching past episodes of Supernatural on Netflix to Cloud Computing to the many #jumptheshark tags added to tweeps tweets. Originally linked to the Happy Days episode where the water-skiing Fonz […]
Why cloud computing is slowly winning the trust war
Seeing skeptical CIOs agree to cloud-based pilots of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other applications is evidence of how cloud computing is slowly winning the trust war.
Further evidence can be seen from how skeptical many of these CIOs initially were, and how successful pilots led to their gradual trust.
This trust hasn’t come cheap however.
Every one of these CIOs spoken with, across a range of manufacturing companies, learned that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) aren’t sufficient to manage the areas of security, privacy and confidentiality on their own. Cloud computing vendors have used SLAs as a means to imply security standards are met; one CIO told me he had an audit done to see if the SLA targets promised were realistic.
They weren’t and he moved on to another vendor. That is the level of skepticism and lack of trust many CIOs …
Rackspace Hosting Named “Platinum Plus Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that Rackspace Hosting, the open cloud company, has been named “Platinum Plus Sponsor” of 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.
Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company, delivering open technologies and powering more than 205,000 customers worldwide. Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a broad portfolio of IT products, including Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For and is included on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Rackspace was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” Rackspace is headquartered in San Antonio with offices and data centers around the world.
Dell Boomi Takes Next-Generation Master Data Management to the Cloud
Dell Software has launched its next-generation Dell Boomi Master Data Management (MDM) that delivers a comprehensive set of features and capabilities in a single cloud-managed solution. This marks a fundamental shift: now mid-sized companies can take advantage of an MDM solution that simplifies data management, data integration and assurance of data quality—at a fraction of the traditional big-vendor cost.
Dell Boomi MDM offers significant realization of next-generation MDM as defined by The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) Best Practices Research1, and it is a 100 percent cloud-based offering with multi-domain support, near real-time synchronization, bi-directional data flow and includes web service calls that support enriching and validating data.
“MDM tools based on software as a service (SaaS) and/or clouds are still relatively new,” said Philip Russom, research director for data management, The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI). “Even so, there is a growing demand for and trust in cloud-based MDM tools and solutions. For example, a TDWI survey run in 2012 showed that 25 percent of organizations are planning to adopt cloud-based MDM within three years. This amounts to a potential growth rate of 20 percent, which is quite healthy given the current economy. So we can expect cloud-based MDM solutions to be in use by more organizations soon.”
Infographic: Tech Giants By the Numbers
From Staff.com, an infographic comparing revenue, profit, and market cap for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook:
TwinStrata to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that TwinStrata, an innovator in cloud-integrated storage solutions, 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.
TwinStrata delivers cloud-integrated storage solutions that seamlessly combine the flexibility of cloud-based technologies with the robustness of traditional storage. As a result, customers benefit from significant reductions in IT costs, time and administrative requirements. Customers of all sizes use TwinStrata to capitalize on the cloud’s scalability and economy advantages without sacrificing the security, performance and peace of mind of local storage.
Egnyte Leverages New Public Cloud Economies
Egnyte, the file-sharing, file-storage, not to mention backup hybrid cloud for business, is integrating with third-party public cloud storage starting with the ever-popular – and increasingly cheap – Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure and NetApp StorageGrid so its EgnytePlus users can access and share their files in the ether.
The company thinks it’s the first integration of its kind.
EgnytePlus combines Egnyte’s own cloud storage with the user experience and performance of local storage.
The company reckons that the promise of the cloud to deliver competitively priced utility-like service has been unrealized when it comes to SaaS solutions. But since Amazon, Google and Microsoft slashed their cloud storage prices 25%-30% just in the last quarter, this “race to the bottom” signals a commodity market that enterprises have to leverage.
Cisco increases the push for hosted collaboration
Claudio Castelli, Senior Analyst, Enterprise
The highlight of Cisco’s recent C-Scape conference in Melbourne was the news of its collaboration portfolio, which is gaining momentum. The company is engaging with an increasing number of service providers to position its Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS).
HCS offers a clear path to help enterprises migrate their communications to the cloud, and positions uniquely in the market; its delivery model is expected to disrupt the current partner ecosystem. Traditional channel partners will need to rethink their role, while Cisco must evolve its partner program to support this transition.
A unique proposition for telcos
Cisco has a large market share in IP telephony, of which a significant portion is managed on-premise by a service provider. This gives service providers deploying HCS a large addressable market. Enterprises already using Cisco’s on-premise solution Communications Manager can now deploy the company’s collaboration technology with seamless …
Is Cloud Built to Fail or Built to Scale?
There’s been a growing focus on scalability as the Internet of Things has continued its rapid growth. Perhaps due in part to large online failures during periodic or individual events, perhaps due in part to simple growth, the reason is less important than the reality that scalability is a critical technological driver for a variety of new technologies – cloud and SDN being the most often referenced.
But while we’ve been focusing on scalability we may have been overlooking the related and no less important availability factor. These two “itys” are related, as scalability is one way to achieve availability when dealing with growth, rapid or otherwise. But availability also means being sensitive to failure.
Cloud, in general, is designed for scalability. It is specifically architected to provide elasticity – which is scalability both in and out. Cloud is designed to enable resource growth and contraction to match demand.
B2B Cloud Gets $8 Million B Round; Moves to US
Israel’s Nipendo, a B2B trading partners’ cloud that its author fancies is a
disruptive social business network, has gotten an $8 million B round led by
Horizon Ventures.
The investment should let the start-up move to the US and expand into
America. It has already moved its headquarters to Boston.