Cloud in a box is the ultimate oxymoron. Purchasing new infrastructure is both costly and time-consuming, which defeats the purpose of moving to the cloud in the first place. However, there are ways to build highly available and highly secure private or public clouds that leverage your existing infrastructure investments while removing the inherent availability and security risks that cloud introduces. For instance, IT organizations need to consider the ramifications of keeping the entire multi-tiered business service that runs across virtual and physical infrastructure, highly available and protected even in the face of a disaster.
In their session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, VR Satish, VP and CTO for the Security and Availability Management Group at Symantec, and Dan Graves,Cloud CTO at Symantec, will discuss what is needed to build a highly available, resilient, safe and compliant cloud that keeps costs in check and provides IT services at the speed required by your business.
Cloud Computing: Amazon Demands Fee to Escape Ads
After swinging back and forth like a garden gate in the face of online criticism, Amazon finally decided it would let customers who don’t want ads on their widgets opt out if they pay an extra $15 for the new Kindle Fires it brought out last week. Amazon is using ads to keep the price of the tablets between $199 and $499 less than iPads. Ad-free Kindle e-readers cost $20 more. The company claims from its e-reader experience that “very few people choose to opt out.” Oh, by the way, it appears the high-end Kindle, due to ship November 20, doesn’t have FCC approval yet probably because of the skinny newfangled 4G modem Amazon designed for it.
SmartTV, Smartphones and Fill-in-the-Blank Employees
Right off the bat, I know the title sounds like it’s all connected but they are only slightly related so I’ll give you the option of dropping out now. Still here? Cool. I’ve been traveling over the last couple weeks and stories catch my eye along the way that I probably would’ve written about but didn’t. Until now. Besides it’s always fun to roll up a few stories in one to get back on track.
TVs are becoming cutting edge multimedia devices that reside on your living room wall. You can stream movies, browse the web, check weather, plug in USBs for slideshows/video, play games, home network along with simply catching the latest episode of your favorite program. This article from usatoday.com talks about many of the internet enabled TVs and their capabilities. For instance, some TVs are now including dual-core processors to make web browsing more enjoyable since many TVs don’t have the processing power to load web pages quickly, or at least what we’re used to on our computers. Also coming out are TVs with screen resolutions four times greater than full HD screens – these are the 4K sets. These new 4K sets apparently has dampened any lingering 3D enthusiasm, which seems waning anyway. In addition to TVs, other appliances are getting smart, so they say. There are new refrigerators, air conditioners, washers, and dryers which are all app-controlled. Users can turn them on and off from anywhere. I know there are mobile ‘apps’ but it would be a easy transition to start calling our appliances, apps also. Close enough. How’s the clothes cleaning app working? Is the food cooling app running? I’ve mentioned many times that while all this is very cool stuff, we still need to remember that these devices are connected to the internet and subject to the same threats as all our other connected devices. It’s only a matter of time when a hacker takes down all the ‘smart’ refrigerators on the East Coast. I also think that TVs, cars and any other connected device could be considered BYOD in the near future. Why wouldn’t a mobile employee want secure VDI access from his car’s Ent/GPS display? Why couldn’t someone check their corporate email from the TV during commercials?
Report: Green Data Center Market $45 Billion by 2016
The combination of rising energy costs, increasing demand for computing power, environmental concerns, and economic pressure has made the green data center a focal point for the transformation of the IT industry as a whole. According to a recent report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, the worldwide market for green data centers will grow from $17.1 billion in 2012 to $45.4 billion by 2016 – at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 28 percent.
“There is no single technology or design model that makes a data center green,” says research director Eric Woods. “In fact, the green data center is connected to the broader transformation that data centers are undergoing—a transformation that encompasses technical innovation, operational improvements, new design principles, changes to the relationship between IT and business, and changes in the data center supply chain.”
In particular, two powerful trends in IT are shaping the evolution of data centers, Woods adds: virtualization and cloud computing. Virtualization, the innovation with the greatest impact on the shape of the modern data center, is also recognized as one of the most effective steps toward improving energy efficiency in the data center. In itself, however, virtualization may not lead to reduced energy costs. To gain the maximum benefits from virtualization, other components of the data center infrastructure will need to be optimized to support more dynamic and higher-density computing environments. Cloud computing, meanwhile, has many efficiency advantages, but new metrics and new levels of transparency are required if its impact on the environment is to be adequately assessed, the report finds.
The report, “Green Data Centers”, explores global green data center trends with regional forecasts for market size and opportunities through 2016. The report examines the impacts of global economic and political factors on regional data center growth, along with newly adopted developments in power and cooling infrastructure, servers, storage, and data center infrastructure management software tools across the industry. The research study profiles key industry players and their strategies for expansion and technology adoption. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Pike Research website.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Serious Help for the Scalably Challenged
Big Data and Web applications are putting serious pressure on the transactional performance, availability, and size of relational databases, and nearly everything is changing about app development and deployment. Companies are putting an emphasis on agile and lean development and increasing the shift to private, public and hybrid clouds.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Sergei Tsarev, CTO and Co-Founder of Clustrix, will discuss the issues around Legacy relational databases currently representing the weakest part of the cloud stack, and how companies are using the scale, availability or simplicity needed from their cloud databases. He will discuss new DBaaS solutions for Cloud-Hosted Big Data Apps, citing case study examples of companies with seasonally variable business that can now focus on innovation and building more interesting customer-facing functionality.
Microsoft Enters Cloud Backup with Updated Online Preview
Microsoft just made a splash in the cloud backup space with the announcement of their Window Azure Backup Service Preview this month. While I’m sure other traditional software and appliance vendors will be partnering with Microsoft to offer a more application coverage, I haven’t heard any announcements so we’ll just have to wait and see. For the time being thought, it’s an exciting time for customers using one of the three products eligible for the preview. Below I’ve summarized how customers of each of the three products can become eligible for the preview.
Cloud Computing: Salesforce Buys Data Mining Start-Up
Salesforce.com bought a shadowy three-year-old Israeli data mining start-up called BlueTail in July according to All Things Digital, and made co-founder and CTO Alon Talmor chief data scientist at its Data.com unit.
The joint’s other co-founder Koby Ben-Zvi is now VP, product strategy at Data.com. Other personnel have also been picked up.
Little is known about BlueTail. It used to be called Mined Analytics.
Talmor used to consult for Check Point Software.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Cloud & the Network – A Match Made in Heaven
The importance of an enterprise-grade network at the center of cloud services cannot be overstated. Without it, private clouds are closed systems and public clouds are vulnerable to security breaches. The optimum cloud is one that is network-based, where cloud services are actually embedded in the network. A network-based cloud allows cloud services and applications to be managed and delivered as part of a total solution straight down to any device just like voice and data.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Jay Upchurch, Executive Director of Product Marketing Management at AT&T, will discuss how this unique approach can offer enterprises the scale and flexibility of the cloud, without sacrificing performance, reliability and security.
ManageIQ: IT-as-a-Service for All Species of Cloud
This’ll resonate.
ManageIQ says that when the management majors – and you know who that foursome is – saw the cloud bearing down on them like a Kansas tornado they ducked into the basement and scrawled cloud all over their wares to salvage their position.
Its point is you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Legacy stuff ain’t cloud-worthy.
A few days ago ManageIQ announced EVM Version 5, a unified cloud management scheme that provisions and manages IT services across physical, virtual, private and public cloud infrastructures including Amazon.
The release builds on ManageIQ’s experience servicing enterprise IT organizations, including some Fortune 1000s they can name, so they can adopt and manage virtualized private clouds.
Network Add-Ons for Web Traffic and Cloud Technology
There was a time – perhaps a decade ago, perhaps more – when the network was simply the network. It was routers and switches and cables and power. It was responsible for carrying data to and fro, and for acting as a hard wall gatekeeper that would prevent data from getting from one place to another.
As time went on, the network added more functions. It connected the network to the Internet, it measured traffic, it acted as a firewall, blocking traffic based on any number of criteria. It dabbled in security, as well.