Cloud Computing can be approached purely at a technical level, using it for cheaper IT or for hosting of ad-hoc applications. Or it can be approached at a strategic level, by CIO’s looking to drive innovation and be a leader of organizational change. Transformational Cloud Computing is where the technology is combined with some form […]
11th Cloud Expo: A–Z of Big Data & Cloud Computing Topics
What’s “Cloud 2.0”? Who’s behind “SHadoop”? Why is the Cloud so important to the Big Data boom? Are you turning your data into dollars? Which cloud model is right for your company? Register to attend 11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley and get your questions answered November 5–8.
Virtualization as a Differentiator in Southeast Asia
This post is part of our ongoing Parallels Partner Series, featuring the insights of service providers who are growing by meeting the cloud computing needs of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs).
Vodien chose Parallels to be our virtualization partner, and it has been a fruitful partnership on our journey to become a top web hosting provider in Singapore and across the Southeast Asia region.
Our key strengths lie in providing product flexibility to customers along with a superior customer support experience. A significant enabling component of our strategy is based on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, and we leverage this technology to enable a complete range of web hosting products, from shared hosting to cloud services.
What makes us popular as a provider to web hosting customers is that the virtualized hosting environment helps them immediately scale based on their current needs. As web applications and demand grows, customers can choose to select a higher-tiered web hosting package, and all of this can be accomplished immediately with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. This allows our customers to enjoy both a cost savings and a more controllable upgrade process, even amidst unpredictable resource-usage.
This flexibility based on Parallels technology, combined with Vodien’s 24×7 Super Support team (who provides 2-hour resolution of any customer issue), and our Service Level Agreements (that guarantee the up-time of our network and hardware) truly differentiates our web hosting offering in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Bill Poh
CEO, Vodien
www.vodien.com
NoSQL Pioneer Pino de Candia Taking Aim at Virtual Networking
Wired has a good article today on some of the geniuses and startups in the Virtual Networking space, and how they might “remake the internet.”
Together with Dan Dumitriu — another Amazon vet steeped in the science of massive computing systems — de Candia is one of the key engineers behind a company called Midokura. Much like the oft-discussed Silicon Valley startup Nicira, Midokura deals in virtual networks — computer networks that exist only as software.
Over the past decade, VMware, Microsoft, and others have helped move the world’s computing applications onto virtual servers — machines that exist only as software — and now, a new of wave of companies is fashioning software for building complex virtual networks that tie all those virtual servers together. That’s a hard concept to grasp, but basically, these companies are moving the brains of the network out of hardware and into software.
SLAs: Are you trapped in the cloud?
Buyer beware
You would consider it somewhat careless to take out a mortgage or buy a new car without fully understanding the extent of the contract – so why are so many companies choosing to outsource their entire IT estate without fully understanding the terms and conditions?
Business would dictate a buyer beware attitude when it comes to purchasing anything and this mentality needs to be adopted when it comes to the cloud.
It is vital that a company looks at its business needs, ascertains what is considered mission critical, and signs a contract that has the SLAs in place to deliver upon those needs.
It is far too simple in the first instance to glance over a contract and assume it matches your criteria, but in reality, the first draft will usually fall in favour of the proposer.
Whilst you may resent the initial cost of employing a lawyer, in …
Cloudy data sovereignty in Europe (part two)
Part one can be found here. Part two examines the ‘safe harbour’ approach to cloud data, and answers the question: who’s ultimately responsible for data in the cloud?
In 2000, the US Department of Commerce created the Safe Harbour framework to ensure organisations put appropriate controls in place for the protection of data when handling European and UK companies’ data that may be stored in the USA (for example an American company who may have regional offices in the UK, France and Germany that keeps employee data such as employment, tax and personal details centrally in the USA).
The Safe Harbour directives consist of seven rules that have been established specifically for US companies to comply with EU data storage directives.
The ‘safe-harbour’ approach, which allows for data on EU subjects to be moved out of the EU, does not have the adoption you may think, even if you …
Size Doesn’t Matter. Controlling Big Data Through Cloud Security
The issue of Big Data seems very prevalent these days. How to store it. How to manage it. And, how to best secure it. But Big Data is much more complex than a voluminous amount of information. It requires a new paradigm in application, process, and security…all from the cloud.
There’s data. And then there’s BIG DATA. Many of us have been bombarded with the term in many frameworks. There are some professionals that chalk it up to marketing hype or meaningless buzzword. Personally, I prefer the way Gartner categorizes it. That it is more than size. It is a multi-dimensional model that includes complexity, variety, velocity and, yes, volume.
The Problem with Consumer Cloud Services…
…is that they’re consumer cloud services.
While we’re all focused heavily on the challenges of managing BYOD in the enterprise, we should not overlook or understate the impact of consumer-grade services within the enterprise. Just as employees bring their own devices to the table, so too do they bring a smattering of consumer-grade “cloud” services to the enterprise.
Such services are generally woefully inappropriate for enterprise use. They are focused on serving a single consumer, with authentication and authorization models that support that focus. There are no roles, generally no group membership, and there’s certainly no oversight from some mediating authority other than the service provider.
This is problematic for enterprises as it eliminates the ability to manage access for large groups of people, to ensure authority to access based on employee role and status, and provides no means of integration with existing ID management systems.
IBM Eyes Amazon, Salesforce Cloud Turf
Amazon and Salesforce are getting so popular they’ve started infiltrating top accounts that have historically belonged to IBM. Amazon’s new partnership with the Nasdaq announced the other day is a good for instance.
So IBM has decided to fight fire with fire by going after the mid-sized businesses – concerns with less than a 1,000 employees – where Amazon and Salesforce are quite at home and peddle these companies Big Blue clouds they probably never knew IBM had or thought they could afford given IBM’s penchant for carriage trade pricing.
Reportedly IBM is going to adjust its pricing and trust its reputation and techno-smarts to make up any difference.
Big Blue is apparently hoping little sales – little by its lights – will add up to something substantial.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claims IBM has lost its mojo and told the Wall Street Journal it “doesn’t own the technology like they did in the last wave.” He certainly hasn’t been seeing IBM in his accounts.
IBM, however, will be using partners such as Infor, Highland Solutions and 1,400 MSPs to penetrate his flanks with IBM PureSystem technology and rebranded OpenStack-beholden SmartCloud software for building public, private, and hybrid cloud. Naturally there will be analytics too.
They will be using their own data centers and IBM’s money (in the form of zero percent loans).
IBM has got so-called centers of excellence in Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and Germany where MSPs can get training and aims to devote a “substantial part” of a $100 million marketing budget to the cause.
IBM is depending on the cloud as well as emerging markets, analytics and smart cities to increase its revenue stream.
Gartner estimates the sale of cloud computing services will reach about $58 billion this year, up about $8 billion since 2011.
Is cloud computing the future for EU economy?
Neelie Kroes hopes to make the EU the ‘e-EU’ with new strategy
The EU has launched a new cloud strategy, entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, designed to increase the use of and speed up cloud computing in Europe.
“Cloud computing could offer a huge lift to the European economy, but only if users can understand and trust it,” said EU digital agenda VP Neelie Kroes to open her speech yesterday.
The figures: a yearly 160bn Euro (£127.6bn) boost to the European gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020 – the equivalent of a few hundred euros per citizen – and a net gain of 2.5m jobs.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that Kroes called the cloud “a game-changer for our economy”.
According to the EU, one of the most important aspects of the strategy is to “cut through the jungle of technical standards”, with necessary standards to …