MFX to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York

SYS-CON Events announced today that MFX, a leading provider of IT Infrastructure solutions and business application 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.
Founded in 2001 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, a multi-billion dollar financial services holding company, MFX delivers cost effective infrastructure solutions matching your needs and the dynamic and growing data demands in industry today. MFX offerings meet these demands through a variety of infrastructure solution options priced to match the variability of your business. MFX Infrastructure Solutions are secure, dependable and proven, and are supported by an experienced staff of specialists who deliver our solutions with unparalleled service quality. Speed, Innovation and Technology are what we provide.

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Top Considerations for Your Hybrid Cloud Environment

Over the past five or so years, the phrase “cloud computing” has been tossed around frequently, in various contexts and quite often, meaning different things to different people. If you’re like most enterprises, you’ve already explored what cloud computing means for your organization. Businesses everywhere would love to develop or run applications in a cloud environment that accommodates workload bursts or app testing situations without having to purchase additional server equipment for what could essentially be a very short-lived need. In 2012, cloud computing truly became mainstream – and if you aren’t implementing the cloud in your infrastructure yet, you’re most likely planning for it in 2013.
Alternatively, you might be rethinking your cloud approach. Many organizations have implemented a cloud infrastructure that is impulsive and arbitrary, causing more problems than it solves and costing an IT organization time, money and resources. The development of cloud in the enterprise has proven to have a learning curve – one that will now lead to more and more organizations working to seamlessly combine in-house private clouds with the benefits of public and commercially packaged private cloud services in a hybrid mix.

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Cloud Expo New York: Managing Legal Risks in Cloud Computing

Saas, IaaS, PaaS. Cloud computing is growing at a breathtaking speed and is the fastest-growing means by which technology companies offer their products today. Regardless of the industry, cloud computing is revolutionizing the way companies manage their applications and data processing, while simultaneously being one of the least understood. However, before companies go flying in the clouds, they need to be aware of the significant legal risks and implications associated with cloud computing.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dan Pepper, managing member of Pepper Law Group, examines how cloud computing can be adopted and the dangers avoided on a practical level.

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Axis Communications to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York

SYS-CON Events announced today that Axis Communications, the world leader in network video, 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.
As the market leader in network video, Axis is leading the way to a smarter, safer, more secure world – driving the shift from analog to digital video surveillance. Offering network video solutions for professional installations, Axis’ products and solutions are based on an innovative, open technology platform.

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Public Cloud’s Got a Silver Lining: Gartner

The worldwide public cloud market is projected to grow 18.5% this year to $131 billion, up from $111 billion last year, according to Gartner.
That number includes a 47.3% jump in Infrastructure-as-a-Service to $9 billion. IaaS was up 42.4% to $6.1 billion last year.
Gartner expects $677 billion to be spent on cloud services between 2013 and 2016 and estimates that $310 billion of that will go for cloud-based advertising. Cloud advertising was 48% of the total market last year.
Gartner found that business process services was the second-largest segment last year, accounting for 28% of the cloud market, followed by Software-as-a-Service at 14.7%, cloud system infrastructure at 5.5%, cloud management and security services at 2.8% and Platform-as-a-Service at 1%.

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The Open Source Cloud

“Open source cloud is enabling a vast developer community that is today building applications to solve the points of integration in this growing area,” stated Bennett Bauer, Director of Cloud Marketing at DreamHost, in the exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Pure, built-in-the-cloud applications that resolve the social, mobile, analytics lifecycle through the cloud,” Bauer continued, “and applications that are not hamstrung by trying to integrate traditional corporate data and custom functionality are proliferating.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Bennett Bauer: It’s about both, even in these early days. Shifting workloads gradually over to the cloud, starting from the easiest to the hardest to move, can start the money and time savings immediately. For a few years now we’ve seen development projects, analytics, basic SaaS applications, and ready storage in the cloud served up as needed. The value proposition is already proven: let’s not hold expensive assets that take way too long to provision when you only need them for peak project work, analysis, and maybe seasonal spikes. Throw on top of this the increasing number of software applications written to be cloud friendly, shared among a great many users, available instantly, and eliminating the need to hold expensive licenses, and the value grows exponentially. In summary, we see prices dropping rapidly, and we likewise see ease of use and application scenarios improving. It is the latter, if anything, that will increase the time savings factor and drive adoption.

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The Cloud’s Next Killer Apps

I think the new cloud killer apps for enterprises will leverage cloud-integrated data centers (or true hybrid cloud adoption), and will strategically transform IT operating models. Those killer apps will include cloud-enabled agility, protection and scalability.
The public cloud has been promoted as a low cost alternative to physical data center infrastructure, mostly to small and medium-sized businesses. That has driven the creation of a robust category of cloud migration services which has emerged as these smaller businesses have made considerable investments in moving their apps from colocation and data center environments into public clouds.
Enterprises, however, have been notably slower to invest in public cloud and cloud migration, at least in proportion to their overall IT budgets. There are many reasons for the slower enterprise adoption of public loud (IaaS) and they have been discussed extensively. I think what is missing is a more robust discussion of the next killer apps for the cloud; the enterprise game changers. ­­

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Cloud: Commoditizing End Users

Prioritization. It’s something that’s built into nearly every technology, particularly that which services network traffic. Rate shaping. Queuing. Coloring bits.
We do a lot of interesting gyrations with technology to ensure that some user traffic and requests are more equal than others.
Today we still do the same thing, but it’s done in different ways. Software as a Service charges a premium for “extra” API calls, for example, and if you want access to premium content there’s sure to be a paywall in front of it.
But that’s at the service level. It’s not the same as prioritization of individual users; of affording specific users privileges of some kind based either on their position (No, no, the CEO can’t have his e-mail be delayed – never apply bandwidth limiting policies to him) or on their customer status (They’re a “gold” customer, make sure their requests go to the fastest application instance).

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BYOD: Quick Tips and Facts

By Francis Czekalski, Enterprise Consultant

There’s no doubt that BYOD is a top buzzword and priority for IT decision maker in 2013.  This is certainly a complex issue that requires a lot of planning and commitment if your organization expects positive results. Below are a couple quick points on BYOD that your organization should keep in mind when implementing and monitoring a policy.

  • BYOD programs have the effect of increasing the lifespan of devices because people tend to take care of items better since they are choosing the type of device.
  • Security is a HUGE issue around BYOD. BYOD programs can increase security, but, when not monitored correctly can actually lead to a whole new pathway for data leakage.
  • Offline computing still tends to be an issue so some hybrid model needs to be adopted.
  • It is often believed that with a BYOD program you no longer need to support the clients- this is simply not the case. User productivity will demand that some touch is done on the end user’s computer.

A couple interesting findings from a recent study from Dell (http://tabtimes.com/news/ittech-stats-research/2013/01/22/study-it-managers-must-embrace-byod-or-risk-being-left-behind)…

  • 70% of IT Decision makers believe BYOD helps boost employee productivity and customer response time.
  • 59% of IT Decision makers believe they would be at a competitive disadvantage if they did not embrace personally-owned devices
  • 56% of IT Decision makers believe that BYOD has completely changed their company’s culture

If you’d like some more information on BYOD and mobile device management, download this free webinar.

What’s your opinion on BYOD? Has your organization implemented a policy? If not, do you plan on implementing one? Why or why not?

 

 

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