Cutting through the hype of cloud vendors starts by evaluating how ready their cloud services, enabling technologies and professional services are to serve customers today.

That’s one of the key take-aways from a recent webinar I attended titled How Cloud Computing Changes the Vendor Landscape by David Mitchell Smith, VP and Gartner Fellow last week.  The slides are available for download here (Free for download after Gartner registration if you are not a Gartner client).

What made this webinar unique and worth mentioning is the framework that was presented for evaluating vendors.  Beginning with the well-known Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) structure, Gartner added in a Business and Information Systems layer that includes brokerages, management and security. 

This is the layer where Gartner says they are seeing enterprise clients most concentrate on emerging technologies.

The cloud vendor landscape is defined by cloud services, professional services for consumption …

Amazon Web Services has launched AWS OpsWorks to help developers manage the complete application lifecycle.
The move recognizes that more and more applications are running in the cloud and that developers have been using third-party tools – perhaps at the expense of flexibility, control or custom tooling – at least that’s Amazon’s story – to manage resource provisioning, configuration management, deployment, monitoring and access control.
OpsWorks is supposed to automate things end-to-end so developers can orchestrate the tasks required to model, deploy, scale and maintain their applications.
It’s said to support a variety of application architectures and any software with a scripted installation.

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Faced with migrating applications from Windows Server 2003 to Windows 2008 or 2012 when adopting the cloud?
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Greg O’Connor, President & CEO of AppZero, will demonstrate new “up-level OS” migration capabilities. This technology allows users to effortlessly move server applications from old operating systems to new ones as part of a cloud migration. With Windows Server 2003 end of life approaching, companies will be faced with moving large numbers of enterprise applications. See how you can modernize (OS up level) and transform (move to the cloud) at the same time.

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This is the second part of a two-part article entitled Supporting CIO Strategies and Priorities from the Cloud. In case you have not done so, READ PART 1.

However, to briefly recap: in support of a recent Gartner study that basically states that the function of the modern CIO is in flux and that his or her future focus must incorporate digital assets (aka cloud-based data and applications) to remain relevant, I have taken their listed priorities and illustrated how they could securely work in a cloud-centric model.

In last week’s entry, I make the case that this means the CIO must evolve from overseeing physical resources and installation and refocus on becoming a  facilitator of strategic business goals through the means of digital acquisition and expansion. To this end I use cloud-based security as an example of how the technical and business priorities stated in the survey can …

I note interesting debates about the need for a next-generation EA framework. However I am disappointed by the less than radical nature of debate that, at least I, have observed. I submit a good place to start is with the fundamental nature of business and how it is evolving and to consider what the enterprise of the future looks like. There are many indicators that we are entering a new phase of IT exploitation that will represent a real paradigm shift. Paul Krugman suggests IT is at last becoming significant, enabling a technology revolution to rival previous technology revolutions. Krugman cites driverless cars as an example of the technology moving into the physical world that has the potential to power growth. I will also instance a wave of disruptive technology delivering high bandwidth always on connectivity for billions of workers and consumers, mobility, BYOD, social networks, Big Data and next generation analytics, robotics and Cloud. And the widespread adoption of Agile methods is also highly significant.

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I note interesting debates about the need for a next-generation EA framework. However I am disappointed by the less than radical nature of debate that, at least I, have observed. I submit a good place to start is with the fundamental nature of business and how it is evolving and to consider what the enterprise of the future looks like. There are many indicators that we are entering a new phase of IT exploitation that will represent a real paradigm shift. Paul Krugman suggests IT is at last becoming significant, enabling a technology revolution to rival previous technology revolutions. Krugman cites driverless cars as an example of the technology moving into the physical world that has the potential to power growth. I will also instance a wave of disruptive technology delivering high bandwidth always on connectivity for billions of workers and consumers, mobility, BYOD, social networks, Big Data and next generation analytics, robotics and Cloud. And the widespread adoption of Agile methods is also highly significant.

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The growth of cloud services for business has been a hot topic for years now, but 2012 was the year when the cloud went from market hype to mainstream deployment. Most organizations have now adopted a private cloud of some kind, but caution is preventing them from taking full advantage. Exploring the potential benefits of new tools is vital if IT departments hope to see real performance gains.
Recent Gartner research highlights the importance of digital technologies for CIOs in the coming year. Gartner’s Mark McDonald described the problem succinctly, “IT needs new tools if it hopes to hunt for technology-intensive innovation and harvest raised business performance from transformed IT infrastructure, operations and applications. Without change, CIOs and IT consign themselves to tending a garden of legacy assets and responsibilities.”

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The growth of Big Data has, in many ways, come as a result of changes in the way we use the Internet. Today’s Internet is as much a repository of data as it is a way for individuals and organizations to connect with others. As this change has taken place, changes have also come to how businesses keep up with storing all of that data and making it available wherever its personnel need it.
Not that long ago adding storage space to an enterprise meant adding devices and adding media with larger capacities. Hard drives, tape drives, optical media, USB drives and even the old faithful floppy disk provided additional storage. The tech has improved over the years, adding to capacity – as well as demand.

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