Cloud computing solutions present businesses of all sizes with tremendous opportunities for efficiency and cost savings. It’s no wonder that we seem to have hit a tipping point, where more cloud solutions than ever before are being implemented. Cisco estimates that cloud computing traffic will increase by a factor of 12 between now and 2015.

Still, it’s important to carefully consider your cloud solutions. Not all solutions are created equal. Here are five criteria you need to be considering:

1. Cost of ownership. If a cloud solution doesn’t lower your TCO, you need to think twice about investing in it. Make sure you’re looking at the total cost comparison of an in-house versus cloud solution. A given cloud solution might require additional Internet bandwidth or infrastructure upgrades, while an in-house solution might require equipment, as well as personnel to manage the equipment.
2. Reliability. When you turn data needs over to a provider, you need to be able to depend on them. Make sure your cloud solutions provider has a solid record in terms of uptime, and that their support staff are knowledgeable and available when you need them.
3. Mobile access. One of the major benefits provided by cloud solutions is the ability to access them from multiple types of devices and in myriad locations. Verify that the solution is accessible via smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and any other Internet-capable device your organization might use.
4. Scalability. Cloud solutions need to be able to expand with your growing business. As your needs increase, it should be as simple as a phone call to your provider to add capacity.
5. Forward compatibility. One of the downsides to an in-house solution is that the solution is in many ways stuck in time. Unless you replace your server, you probably aren’t going to be able to make significant leaps forward. Cloud solutions should move forward at the pace of technology, keeping up with the latest innovations and making them available to you.

Choosing the right cloud solution for your organization means spending some time going through each of these criteria with potential providers, and then deciding which most suit your needs.

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If you haven’t already, many IT organizations are migrating some of their applications to the cloud to become more agile, alleviate operational complexity and spend less time managing infrastructure and servers. The next question you may ask yourself is, “How will we monitor these applications and where should we even begin with so many monitoring tools on the market?”

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Google is very likely to launch a cloud services platform at its annual developer conference, Google I/O next week in San Francisco. It was one of the topics of discussion in the hallways of our Structure 2012 conference. We have since confirmed with multiple sources who are familiar with Google’s plans which include a more comprehensive offering that its current app engine and storage offerings.

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CIO.com recently published its list of 9 open-source technologies to watch. Hadoop is first on the list, and second up is the R Project: R is an open source programming language and software environment designed for statistical computing and visualization. R was designed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand beginning in 1993 and is rapidly becoming the go-to tool for statistical analysis of very large data sets. It has been commercialized by a company called Revolution Analytics, which is pursuing a services and support model inspired by Red Hat’s support for Linux.

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There has been a push for Shared services adoption across organizations for a while. since such services reduce duplication and can result in cost savings. However there have been challenges to proposing and implementing shared services. Cloud is enhancing the pace to shared services migration and it naturally facilitates the use of shared services since a cloud service can be more easily leveraged by multiple consumers. Cloud is the true manifestation of a service delivery mechanism and has significantly sped up the transition to consolidation and shared services. Cloud can be termed as the next generation of shared services since it adds the dynamic computing, elasticity, self-service, measured aspects in addition to other aspects for rapid provisioning and on demand access. Cloud solution may offer lower lifecycle costs based on usage and the monitoring aspects can lay out a holistic view of usage, cost assessments and chargeback information. All this information can enhance the ability of the organization to plan and react to changes based on performance and capacity metrics.

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Dublin-based Vordel has spun up a newfangled API Server offering the enterprise a single platform to deploy APIs to cloud services and mobile users.
The widgetry builds on its application gateway technologies.
The company sees it as a simpler, more agile way to deploy apps and a quicker way to drive revenue.
The APIs Vordel has in mind are the lightweight REST and JSON APIs used to enable mobile, web and cloud applications; SOAP APIs for SOA; and file-based interfaces for B2B integration.
Architecturally the API Server could replace or stand in front of an application server. It can be deployed in traditional data centers or in an elastic cloud environment, including public, private and hybrid clouds.

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Cloudreach announced the launch of its Salesforce connector tool at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2012. This new tool is designed to automatically sync data between customers’ Salesforce and Google accounts, making wasted time and missed opportunities a thing of the past for sales teams.

AluminaConnect, the first in the Alumina Tools series from Cloudreach designed to improve connections in the Cloud computing space, has been developed in conjunction with clients to help them work more effectively, accurately and seamlessly. Teams will be able to work between apps, by synchronising mail, contacts and calendar over any device with their Google accounts. Automation of mundane tasks via a 2-way sync will bypass any duplication of effort, allowing sales teams to be more productive and focus on converting opportunities into sales. AluminaConnect is enterprise grade, which means that businesses benefit from a resilient and reliable tool that is fully secure and compliant.

Pontus Noren, CEO of Cloudreach, said: “We have worked with clients to develop and optimise AluminaConnect for numerous individual requirements. At Cloudreach we recognise that sometimes the simplest solutions are the best and we have been careful to keep this tool simple and easy to use. Further, AluminaConnect is cost effective and promises users an even greater return on their Salesforce and Google investments as it will be enhanced from a reporting to a delivery tool.”

As a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ set-up has become increasingly popular with British businesses a lack of linked apps can be problematic. Windows of opportunity can bypass sales teams, and agents can wind up red-faced after calling contacts a colleague dialled hours earlier. This Salesforce connecting tool is set to help British businesses streamline their operations.

Virtustream wants to move mission-critical legacy apps to the cloud where they’ll be 60% cheaper to run on-demand especially since they won’t have to be rewritten.
So it’s put out xStream 2.0, an update, which is supposed to move both web-scale applications and legacy applications to a public, private or enterprise-class hybrid cloud take your pick. Stuff, it says, you can’t do on Amazon.
It’s for the enterprise and solution providers.
For the effort they’re supposed to get enterprise-class security and compliance, application SLAs, consumption-based billing and our old friend cloud efficiency, pretty much the whole point of the exercise.

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