In an exercise in vendor neutrality – well, kinda – it’s not exactly altruistic – Amazon Web Services is now offering a bunch of pre-built virtual instances of the Windows Server 2012 operating system, the server version of Windows 8, so Windows users can hew to Microsoft’s upgrade roadmap and still adopt Amazon’s cloud all at the same time.
The addition, which includes SQL Server, was announced this week by Amazon’s Windows team leader Tom Rizzo, a recent refugee from Redmond.
Amazon already supports Windows Server 2003 R2, 2008 and 2008 R2 but Server 2012 can be used with Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk automatic application provisioning and deployment service as well as EC2.
Bare Metal Blog: FPGAs – The Benefits and Risks
I was talking with the team working on our yard – they’re putting in new sidewalks and a patio, amongst other things – and we got on the subject of gutters. When we bought this house, it came with no gutters, and that has, over time, caused some serious damage to the base of the house. Wood and plaster do not take it well when water pours down on them at the rate that, oh, say melting snow in the spring sends it down. So I had them get us an estimate for gutters on the entire house. Some of the work they’re estimating is running the gutters right to the storm drain, which is not normally cheap, but they had both the front and back yards all ripped up, so it is a good time to do it, both cheaper and less messy, since the mess is already there.
Bare Metal Blog: FPGAs – The Benefits and Risks
I was talking with the team working on our yard – they’re putting in new sidewalks and a patio, amongst other things – and we got on the subject of gutters. When we bought this house, it came with no gutters, and that has, over time, caused some serious damage to the base of the house. Wood and plaster do not take it well when water pours down on them at the rate that, oh, say melting snow in the spring sends it down. So I had them get us an estimate for gutters on the entire house. Some of the work they’re estimating is running the gutters right to the storm drain, which is not normally cheap, but they had both the front and back yards all ripped up, so it is a good time to do it, both cheaper and less messy, since the mess is already there.
Garbage data in, garbage information out: Big data or big garbage?
Do you know the computer technology saying, garbage data in results in garbage information out?
In other words even with the best algorithms and hardware, bad, junk or garbage data put in results in garbage information delivered. Of course, you might have data analysis and cleaning software to look for, find and remove bad or garbage data, however that’s for a different post on another day.
If garbage data in equals garbage information out, does garbage big data in result in big garbage out?
I’m sure my sales and marketing friends or their surrogates will jump at the opportunity to tell me why and how big data is the solution to the decades old garbage data in problem.
Likewise they will probably tell me big data is the solution to problems that have not even occurred or been discovered yet, yeah right.
However garbage data does not discriminate …
Garbage data in, garbage information out: Big data or big garbage?
Do you know the computer technology saying, garbage data in results in garbage information out?
In other words even with the best algorithms and hardware, bad, junk or garbage data put in results in garbage information delivered. Of course, you might have data analysis and cleaning software to look for, find and remove bad or garbage data, however that’s for a different post on another day.
If garbage data in equals garbage information out, does garbage big data in result in big garbage out?
I’m sure my sales and marketing friends or their surrogates will jump at the opportunity to tell me why and how big data is the solution to the decades old garbage data in problem.
Likewise they will probably tell me big data is the solution to problems that have not even occurred or been discovered yet, yeah right.
However garbage data does not discriminate …
Get Past the Confusion Surrounding Hybrid Cloud Computing
In the already overhyped cloud computing market, hybrid cloud computing is emerging as the next big thing. To get past the hype, IT leaders should assess how hybrid cloud computing fits into their road maps, and determine which of its many forms makes sense (and which don’t) for their enterprises.
Cloud SOA – The Revenue Opportunities
The objective of our new Cloud Revenues program is to build a knowledge base of insights and materials to support Solution Selling new Cloud offerings.
Key insights include those from key thought leaders – For example this piece on the Cloud SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is powerful and timely.
Tom zooms in on the heart of the matter, what the real disruption effect of the Cloud will be, which is that an entirely new vision of IT itself is needed.
Focusing on the SOA as the headline for this he introduces a new iteration of the model to reflect this Cloud wave, what he calls the ‘Distributed SOA’.
Agile Solutions for Cloud, Big Data, Mobility Services
The enhanced adoption of Cloud, Big Data, Mobility is causing more services to be developed and aggregated, hence there is a greater emphasis on Agile for service aggregation. Agile processes have specific methods to manage the rapid development cycles and changing requirements in application development. There are several steps to achieving Agility for the entire lifecycle. The first step is to perform a thorough business analysis and review existing, target business processes. Based on the analysis appropriate services that are reusable can be designed and developed. Services can then be developed at either the Enterprise levels or lower levels. Enterprise services such as email and collaboration have been very popular in organizations and agencies, other services can be developed at the business, application and database levels. The integration and workflow aspects of these services have to be defined and then the services are integrated and assembled with the overall solution.
AT&T & IBM join forces (again)
Mike Sapien, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms, Ovum
In October 2012 AT&T and IBM announced a new strategic relationship that uses the telco’s secure private network to access the tech company’s back-end infrastructure. The goal is to give Fortune 1000 customers access to IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise+ (SCE+) services with AT&T’s VPN network services. IBM and AT&T plan to launch the new service in early 2013. Either company could take the lead, but it seems likely that IBM will drive these opportunities among its Fortune 1000 customers.
This new relationship should take advantage of the earlier AT&T–IBM partnership, known as “Blue Sky”, and leverage the experience of that relationship. In fact, this latest move should ideally be positioned as an extension of the previous partnership.
With the addition of IBM’s SCE+ services, both players could position the new relationship as a unique …
A Cloud Security Conversation with the SMB
Did you know 72% of data breaches worldwide the previous year occurred at companies with 100 or fewer employees — a 63 percent increase. However, with unified security solutions, small businesses can gain enterprise-class safeguards at an affordable price.
I just got off the phone with a friend of mine. His name is AJ and he was particularly grouchy. He had just spent the last 12 work hours scouring month-old machine logs so that he could compile a quarter-end audit that met his company’s compliance requirement. AJ is the Director of IT for what would be considered an SMB. It’s a modest home warranty related company that deals with homeowner end users, finance and loan offices, mortgage companies and manufacturers. It does roughly 15-20 million in business each year and employs about 60 direct employees and maybe 100 contracted agents. AJ has a staff of 3 other IT professionals, but given the workload, could easily double that headcount.
AJ is very proud of his jack-of-all-IT-trades status. He is proficient at writing code as he is virtually installing access on contractor home devices or planning strategic IT footprint expansion. And it’s this proficiency that has been making him grumpy. Because he can work some sort of magic with just about any application, the bosses have him wear many different hats. In fact, one of his online IT forum handles is “The Maddest Hatter.” But it is this reliance on his tribal knowledge and multidisciplinary acumen that keep the C-Levels saying “that sounds like it’s right up AJ’s alley.” AJ’s biggest problem is that there are only 24 hours in a day and he can only prioritize so many projects that are interspersed with hair-on-fire emergencies.