Tel Aviv-based Gizmox says it’s figured out how to salvage all those scads of Microsoft client/server desktop apps – pointedly the enterprise ones – transform them – relatively painlessly – into secured-by-design HTML5, and move them to the web, the cloud and mobile devices all without rewriting any code or re-engineering anything.
It’s agnostic about what mobile device. It could be Apple or Android as well as the new Windows 8 stuff.
It calls its tool-base solution Instant CloudMove Transposition Studio, a name that will never fit on a marquee. But Gizmox will still know if it gets applause for the downloadable community technology preview (CTP) it’s just put out.
Nine specifications for a Cloud Computer: A call to action
What is cloud computing? We recently asked a number of people in our industry, and got back a range of interesting, and sometimes self-referential, responses. According to our respondents, cloud computing means anything from a single-tenant, multi-user application cloud (also known as software-as-a-service or “Saas”) to multi-tenant, general purpose, on-demand clouds (sometimes called platform-as-a-service or “PaaS”).
I think the world of computing, generally, is moving away from a do-it-yourself approach to accomplish “shared” computing (and by computing is meant anything having to do with servers, in general) towards embracing or, better, stepping into the cloud for most computing the isn’t on the edge of the network.
The migration has begun from dedicated, collocated servers to the cloud. Buyers don’t want to take possession of servers, routers, switches, network drops, racks; they want this from the cloud.
But what is the cloud?
What sort of cloud computer(s) should …
Enhancing Collaboration in a Mobile World
HP has announced technology solutions and services, as well as financing and training programs that enable resource-challenged small and medium businesses to simplify IT.
According to Gartner research, by 2016, at least 50 percent of business email users will rely primarily on a tablet or mobile client instead of a traditional desktop. The trend to use devices to access email and other business data requires SMBs to prepare their infrastructures to support increased mobility.
“We’ve spent a lot of time working with our channel partners,” said Lisa Wolfe, Worldwide Small and Medium Business lead for HP. “They’re facing a fairly new set of IT challenges. Companies have a growing mobile workforce. These new solutions align to a bring-your-own-device world and are designed to help SMBs provide infrastructure to support a growing workforce.”
Roger Sippl’s Back
Roger Sippl, who co-founded Informix a generation ago, then Vantive and Visigenic, all acquired after going public, is staging a comeback with new database widgetry that does real-time data integration from multiple sources in the cloud.
He’s been working on it for four years recruiting along the way 20 guys from the old days who are already rich thanks to Roger but still want to be “useful.”
Elastic Intelligence, the company he started a few years ago, is going to productize this newfangled virtual relational database technology as Connection Cloud, a real-time data connection service infrastructure and all.
Lessons from (IT) Geese
Birds migrate in flocks, which means every individual has the support of others. IT often migrates alone – but it doesn’t have to.
“Lessons from Geese” pdf-icon has been around a long time. It is often cited and referenced, particularly with respect to teamwork and collaboration. The very first “lesson” learned from geese migrations applied to human collaboration is this:
Fact #1: As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the others behind it. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.
Run Recorded Future Foresite in Your Private Cloud
We have previously written about Recorded Future, a company providing new ways of exploring what the web knows about coming events. Mankind knows things about the future and the analytic tools provided by Recorded Future helps extract the meaning and relevance of this knowledge and apply it to organizational missions. Their public cloud-based capabilities are […]
This post by BobGourley was first published at CTOvision.com.
cCommerce Is Coming: PCI-compliant Clouds for Trusted Services
“cCommerce” – Cloud-based eCommerce, will be made possible through Cloud hosting providers achieving compliance with security frameworks like PCI, the requirements for credit card processing. This will unlock the floodgates of Cloud adoption and usher in a new age of IT models. Cloud Security best practices Cloud Providers should be able to provide details on […]
Devops Is a Verb
Operations is increasingly responsible for deploying and managing applications within this architecture, requiring traditionally developer-oriented skills like integration, programming and testing as well as greater collaboration to meet business and operational goals for performance, security, and availability. To maintain the economy of scale necessary to keep up with the volatility of modern data center environments, operations is adopting modern development methodologies and practices.
devopsisaverbCloud computing and virtualization have elevated the API as the next generation management paradigm across IT, driven by the proliferation of virtualization and pressure on IT to become more efficient. In response, infrastructure is becoming more programmable, allowing IT to automate, integrate and manage continuous delivery of applications within the context of an overarching operational framework.
Why Infrastructure Technology Is Challenging
One of the most challenging things about being an advocate for a broad horizontally applicable technology is that it does not solve a particular business problem. Instead, it solves about 100,000 business problems. That means that everyone is impacted by it, yet nobody is particularly interested in it.
What’s the solution? Perhaps it’s to reframe the discussion around specific business or technology problems that people face – like Legacy Application Modernization, Quote to Cash automation, the Recruit to Retire process or Procure to Pay.
The Euro Must Change: An IT Perspective
The Euro was started so that Germany would never attack France again. This was an historical diplomatic breakthrough.
But today, although Europe’s financial leaders have not sought my advice on either economic policy or hotel behavior, it is clear that the Euro must let some of its members go.
The root problem is that a continent of Eurocrats could not leave well enough alone. They were compelled instead to extend the new currency into Europe’s fabric as deeply and widely as possible. Doing so furthered grand notions of a “united” Europe, and addressed paranoic fears of Franco-German economic domination. Only the UK among the larger nations of Europe resisted the Euro’s sales pitch.
The Euro is used by a group of unequal nations. You can contact me for the details I’ve compiled on the topic if you’d like, but the basic fact is this: the Euro makes it more expensive to live in the less wealthy Eurozone countries than it should be. This distorts the costs of housing, labor, and many other goods, thus making it very difficult for, say, Portugal and Greece to compete with Germany and France.
Furthermore, there may be open borders, but the language barriers and cultural traditions make it difficult for a truly free flow of labor, such as is found in the U.S.
So, after an experiment lasting more than 16 years now, it is clear that the Euro works fine for Germany, France, and the Netherlands, less so for Spain, Italy, and others, and doesn’t work at all for Greece and perhaps Portugal.
A dramatically shrinking drachma or escudo would cause screaming headlines and TV shoutfests for a few weeks, but in the end would allow their issuers to grow on their own terms. This assumes that the countries’ investment climates would be liberal, ie, foreigners would be allowed to invest very freely in markets, real estate, and businesses.
Unleashing less wealthy Eurozone nations should also cause a dramatic rise in the value of the Euro – with the ironic rebuttal to earlier fears that German and French businesses would have to work harder to keep their products competitive in a world market.
I say all these by peering through the lens of the research I’ve been conducting for the past 18 months. By weighing countries’ ICT expenditures on a truly relative basis, I’ve found the Eurozone to be lagging.
Sweden and the UK – both non-Eurozone countries – lead the wealthy Western European nations. Estonia is the leading Eurozone country, and in fact leads both Sweden and the UK. But it lags many of its Eastern European neighbors, something that I think it would not do if it still had the kroon in place.
Among the larger Eurozone countries, the Netherlands stands first, followed by Germany and Finland. With the latter, I see another Euro-drag – had it stayed with the markka, would Finland have finished closer in the rankings to neighboring Sweden?
The non-Euro countries of Central and Eastern Europe are the big winners in my rankings, as they have shown a commitment to IT purchases, have relatively low costs of living, have maintained relatively income parity, and continue to shed their corrupt Communist pasts.
And a final note: halfway across the world from Europe, phenomenal South Korea tops my rankings overall. Its currency, the won, has steadily shed value over the decades. At 1150 to 1 USD today, it has lost about 99.99% of the value of its original post-WWII currency.
Floating freely since 1997, the won’s exchange rate has little to do with the absolute value of its country’s issuer. I can’t imagine the country would do as well as it has, by all world measures, if it was somehow yoked into some sort of currency zone.