A principle theme of our next upcoming webinar is how to engineer an accelerated ‘DevOps’ environment. DevOps represents a fusion of the traditionally separate departments of software Development and Operations management. In short the teams who write software and those who then run the servers and hosting to run the software. Each is armed with […]

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NJVC announces the release of NJVC SaaS Accelerate, a specialized infrastructure hosting and managed services offering designed to support the business needs of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.

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Following earlier cloud conversations posts, cloud computing means many things from products to services, functionality and positioned for different layers of service delivery or capabilities (e.g. SaaS, AaaS, PaaS, IaaS and XaaS).

Consequently it is no surprise when I hear from different people their opinion, belief or perception of what is or is not a cloud, confidence or concerns, or how to use and abuse clouds among other related themes.

A common theme I hear talking with IT professionals on a global basis centers around conversations about confidence in clouds including reliability, security, privacy, compliance and confidentiality for where data is protected and preserved. This includes data being stored in different geography locations ranging from states or regions to countries and continents. What I also often hear are discussion around concerns over data from counties outside of the US being stored in the US or vice versa of information privacy laws.

Cost is also coming up in many conversations, which is interesting in that many first value propositions have been presented around cloud being cheaper. As with many things it depends, some services and usage models can be cheaper on a relative basis, just like some can be more expensive. Think of it this way, for some people a lease of an automobile can cheaper on monthly cash flow vs. buying or making loan payments. On the other hand, a buy or loan payment can have a lower overall cost depending on different factors then a lease.

As with many cloud conversations, cost and return on investment (ROI) will vary, just as how the cloud is used to impact your return on innovation (the new ROI) will also vary.

This brings me to something else I hear during my travels and in other conversations with IT; practitioners (e.g. customers and users as well as industry pundits) is a belief that governments cannot use clouds. Again, it depends on what type of government, the applications, sensitivity of data among others factors.

Some FUD (Fear uncertainty doubt) I hear includes blanket statements such as governments cannot use cloud services or cloud services do not exist for governments. Again it comes down to digging deeper into the conversation such as what type of cloud, applications, government function, security and sensitivity among other factors.

Keep in mind that there are services including those from Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as their Government Cloud (GovCloud) region. Granted, GovCloud is not applicable to all government cloud needs or types of applications or data or security clearances among other concerns.

Needless to say AWS GovCloud is not the only solution out there on a public (government focused), private or hybrid basis, there are probably even some super double secret ultra-private or hybrid fortified government clouds that most in the government including experts are not aware of. However if those do exist, certainly talking about them is also probably off-limits for discussions even by the experts.

Speaking of AWS, here is a link to an analysis of their cloud storage for archiving and inactive big data called Glacier, along with analysis of AWS Cloud Storage Gateway. Also, keep in mind that protecting data in the cloud is a shared responsibility meaning there are things both you as the user or consumer as well as the provider need to do.

Btw, what is your take on clouds? Click here to cast your vote and see what others are thinking about clouds.

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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While much of the market attention on cloud services adoption tends to be focused on private enterprise applications, government agencies potentially have a lot to gain from its widespread use.

The cost-savings and scalability advantages of the cloud have been clear to those savvy IT leaders that are informed, but government adoption has been hampered by some unique challenges — and the absence of a compelling mandate. That is, progress was slow until the “Cloud First” initiative was launched.

IDC has released a status update that details the growing demand for cloud services and enterprise architecture resources among U.S. government agencies. Their latest market study focuses on the results of an IDC Government Insights survey, which measured the progress of cloud solutions at government agencies — while also examining the related architecture needs.

The results of the comprehensive survey revealed that despite the growing demand for cloud services, many IT managers are unsure of their organization’s overall cloud strategy and the resources available to purchase and implement cloud services.

The Strategic Imperative for Cloud Services

The IDC report of the market study findings also highlighted that government employees now realize cloud solutions are becoming important for IT strategy. However, apparently many decision makers are still evaluating what cloud solutions will specifically mean to them and their organization.

In addition, in spite of the fact that managed cloud service offerings have been made available to government agencies for some time now, more than a third of the survey respondents lacked knowledge of cloud services budgeting.

IDC Government Insights finds that extensive government employee outreach is necessary to boost the comprehension or understanding of cloud migration strategies and related budgetary requirements.

Other findings from the latest IDC report include:

• Across all levels of government 90 percent anticipate cloud services will have impact on computing infrastructure.
• Local government participants were the least optimistic about cloud, with 14.7 percent saying cloud wasn’t at all important.
• Despite the fact that CFOs are often the people who drive their group’s transition to cloud (due to potential cost savings) 60 percent of chief financial officers are only somewhat familiar with their organization’s cloud strategy.
• Indicating the presence of some progressive thinking, 15.2 percent of respondents said they would dedicate between 1 and 10 percent of their agency’s IT budget to cloud services.
• When it comes to cloud providers, there is a clear preference across all levels of government for large IT vendors versus smaller, specialty providers.

“Survey data indicates that significant progress already has been made for cloud services, but overall progress will only accelerate once several important issues have been addressed,” said Shawn McCarthy, research director at IDC Government Insights.

IDC believes that these outstanding issues include lack of knowledge by some participants on the level of funding available to spend on cloud solutions — as well as the needed IT architecture changes that can help agencies move more aggressively into cloud.

Furthermore, by focusing on greater outreach efforts to bring all IT employees in line with enterprise cloud plans, government agencies can begin to benefit from the readily available cloud computing services.

The IDC survey was conducted in the late spring of 2012 and measured the responses of more than 400 government information technology employees at various levels of the U.S. government. About half of the participants work for the federal government, with the remainder working in either state or local government.

More…

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Stand by, we’re in for another IT infrastructure transformation if a Massachusetts start-up by the clumsy name of SimpliVity has anything to say about it.
It’s been three years in the oven and finally declared itself done enough to sample the other day in public beta.
It means to take on the convergence crowd like Cisco-EMC and HP with a product called OmniCube, whose patent-pending OmniStack, 60 engineering-years in the making, is supposed to “assimilate all the functionality of today’s disintegrated IT infrastructure in a single platform, whose focal point is the virtual machine and the VM administrator.”

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Are you suffering from double vision in your IT? As odd as it sounds, this is a common occurrence. Line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders often use a different set of criteria to measure IT than IT uses to measure itself. This can lead to a kind of “double vision”that can hurt IT prospects. A cloud-centric IT maturity model is a useful tool for evaluating present IT capabilities and planning future growth. It is increasingly being used to establish present and future success criteria for IT in a common language understood by all parties. In this article, we will discuss three essential dimensions of IT maturity and how they can be applied to help IT decision makers achieve their goals.

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We’re updating our research at the Tau Institute, something that I launched earlier this year in Asia and the US with sponsorship from Cloud Computing Journal and Computerworld Philippines. We’re aided by an advisory board with members from the US, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

I started this research late in 2010 with the mission of developing a relative index of national ICT competitiveness that measures things on a “pound-for-pound” scale. Its aim was to go beyond traditional measures that, in the end, simply list rich countries on the top, poor countries on the bottom.

Our method accounts heavily for per-person income levels and local cost-of-living; we’re seeking those countries that do the most with what they currently have. Today, we are integrating several publicly available measures into a series of indices, covering 85 nations. Among the measures integrated into the research are per capita income adjusted for local cost-of-living, Internet access and speed, income disparity, overall development, and corruption levels.

We incorporate a number of exponential and logarithmic iterations that smooth these different measures into curves that reveal which countries are leading the world, which are lagging, and which have the greatest potential.

Global Leaders
We’ve found that the countries who’ve done the best job in developing their ICT infrastructures given their available resources include South Korea, Estonia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Vietnam, the UK, Lithuania, Germany, Taiwan, Canada, and Poland. The USA finishes slightly above the middle of the pack.

Countries that we see having the most potential for continuing rapid development (irrespective of their current development level) include Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Romania, Morocco, Mongolia, Senegal, Serbia, Egypt, Lithuania, China, the Philippines, and Hungary.

We don’t account for population, so a very small superstar like Estonia (with only 1.5 million people) will not be as attractive in many cases as the USA and other developed powers or lagging giants such as India and Indonesia. We also realize there are well-apparent challenges in each member of the latter group.

Our research is intended simply to start conversations rather than finish tem. In a chaotic world we think we’ve isolated the true superstars, while also developing a list of places we’d recommend for the intrepid, whether you seek markets, sources, subsidiaries, or investments.

We’ve created a “PerfectLand” as a benchmark, which has optimal statistics in all categories. No countries exceed PerfectLand in overall excellence, while, as expected, PerfectLand runs in the middle of the pack when it comes to continuing potential.

Beyond the Basics
In addition to the overall indices, we’ll create rankings by income level, region, and special categories such as “BRICS+” and “ASEAN+”. We also plan to develop detailed country and regional reports for sponsors who require them.

Another big initiative will be to add several dimensions of social media to the research, something that should benefit avidly social countries such as the Philippines, India, and others.

We’ll have full results in time for Cloud Expo November 5-8 in Santa Clara. Meanwhile, contact me through Twitter if you’d like to know more.

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Undoubtedly one of the key reasons for so many innovations happening in the information technology space is consumerization. While some feel that consumerization has reached the tipping point, consumers (and businesses as well) are still looking for newer avenues to do things more intuitively and effectively. Video is emerging as the new commodity to enhance the overall experience of how information and knowledge is shared and also how consumers and businesses collaborate. Voice is becoming passé and video has the potential to replace it.
Building solutions that are centered on video has its own challenges and some of these can be well addressed by cloud computing. Before finalizing on the roadmap for any future video-based solutions, it’s important to understand and develop the right perspective on the role of cloud computing for video.

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Liaison Technologies has acquired Hubspan figuring that the merger of the two integration companies will create the pure-play leader in the fast-growing cloud-based business integration sector.
Terms were not disclosed.
Hubspan was founded in 2000 and is credited with building the industry’s first cloud-based single-instance multi-tenant integration platform delivered on a subscription basis.

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