Close to a year has passed since the UK government published their Cloud Computing Strategy which included a ‘cloud first’ policy similar to the one implemented in the United States. In this ZDNet blog, Steve Ranger examines the government’s progress and concludes that while the plans are progressing in some areas, the cloud-first policy hasn’t been widely adopted.
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), Fujitsu, Verizon, and eBay are working together on developing best practices and standards for Big Data security and privacy, according to this FierceTelecom article.
Analyst firm IDC predicts that as many as 30% of cloud providers in the cloud market today may not be around in 2015, according to this Channelnomics article. You can read the IDC press release on IDC.com.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced that government agencies can now purchase cloud-based email services from 17 approved providers, according to this gov.AOL article. GSA was the first federal agency to migrate to cloud-based email and the agency expects to save $15 million from the switch over the next 5 years.
Featured Content
Gartner Report: Hype Cycle for Big Data, 2012
Big data is one of the most hyped terms in the market today. The first Big Data Hype Cycle helps enterprises develop strategies to address the growing business need for insight from datasets of increasing volume, velocity and variety. You can read the full report on Smart Enterprise.
Feature article
Delivering value the DirecTV way: Aligning IT with the business
By Derek Stevens, CA Technologies
What happens when the business starts provisioning cloud services without consulting IT?
A credit card number is all that is needed for the business to bypass IT and purchase a cloud service. The growing trend of line of business services purchased without the input of IT is leading to many new problems that the IT department must deal with, from integration to security. It also raises the question of who is responsible for the ongoing maintenance and management of services which haven’t been approved by the IT department.
This topic was broached by Andi Mann and George Watt in a recent episode of CloudViews Unplugged when they discussed a survey which revealed that, in many organizations, the IT department is becoming responsible for cloud services that the business or employees purchased without consulting IT. Read the full article.