There’s been plenty written and predicted about the future of cloud and Software-as-a-Service, and it’s hard to argue with its benefits – for both organizations and users. If our cloud-based future is to come true though, we must pay closer attention to the service levels users are getting from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.
Obvious? Maybe not.
As many organizations make their first big move to the cloud with services like Office 365, a few common misconceptions – grounded in the general belief that once we move to the cloud, IT no longer owns direct responsibility for service levels – threaten to put them on a path to protracted outages and frustrated users.
The Seven-Year Itch! Startups, It’s Time to Graduate from Amazon
For about seven years, the IT industry and its pundits have been infatuated with the “cloud” – specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS). Tech startups and their investors have flocked to AWS with inflated expectations on the notion that cloud economics were better than hosting applications themselves. After all, start-up resources are tight, agility is required, and any time not wasted on infrastructure management can be put toward business and product differentiation. It all makes sense, but start-ups and investors alike are now finding that much of AWS’s promise is not being met. After as much as seven years of doing this “cloud” thing, many are having second thoughts about a cloud only solution. AWS was expected to deliver reliability, cost savings, flexibility, and good support, but these benefits have not been realized and it’s the customer that suffers.
Frederick’s of Hollywood: Making a Holistic Move to the Cloud
A trendsetter in intimate women’s apparel, Frederick’s of Hollywood, needed a cloud strategy that merged stability, security and PCI compliance needs with the ability to scale up during retail busy season.
In her session at 14th Cloud Expo, Malorie Lanthier, VP of Information Technology at Frederick’s of Hollywood, will discuss how migrating to the cloud enhanced the scalability, resiliency and flexibility of Frederick’s of Hollywood’s IT infrastructure while elevating the ability to address company-wide business objectives. She’ll also share her cloud evaluation process, successful practices used to make the wholesale move to the cloud and advice for organizations looking to develop and execute a holistic cloud plan quickly and effectively.
Sakura Internet Cloud Datacenter Deploys Amplidata Object Store
Amplidata has announced that Sakura Internet* has deployed an initial 1.3 petabyte object store using AmpliStor® storage software based on a reference architecture from Intel, Amplidata, and Quanta QCT*.
As the adoption of cloud computing soars in Japan, Osaka-based Internet service provider Sakura Internet is delivering a growing range of cloud services aimed primarily at small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) and software developers. Sakura’s customers increasingly require cloud storage services that support archiving, and content delivery for large amounts of unstructured data.
ObserveIT Selected as IBM Beacon Award Finalist
ObserveIT has been selected as one of two IBM Beacon Award finalists in the “outstanding ready for IBM security intelligence solution” category.
The IBM Beacon Awards recognize IBM Business Partners who have delivered exceptional solutions using IBM products and services. By delivering innovative solutions proven to drive business value, Beacon Award winners help transform the way their clients, their industries and the world do business.
ObserveIT’s behavior monitoring software solution is already in use in more than 800 corporations in 70 countries, where it is used for auditing, tracking and recording third–party and internal privileged user behavior with real-time, context-aware video monitoring within any server environment. ObserveIT augments the traditional access management and logging systems by adding video playback of user activities, helping IT management clearly and easily understand who did what and when.
The Internet of Things – There’s no stopping it!
This post was written by ConnectEdu CTO Rick Blaisdell and was originally posted on http://www.rickscloud.com/the-internet-of-things-theres-no-stopping-it/ . You can follow Rick on Twitter @RickBlaisdell
“The Internet of things is coming, be the disrupter or prepare to be disrupted. There’s no stopping it” said Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC, during this year’ Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The term “Internet of Things”(IoT) emerged as a buzzword over the last year to describe the phenomenon of network-connected sensors incorporated into devices that in the past were standalone appliances. Basically, the Internet of things is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to automatically transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
There are many specialists that say just about every business will become an IoT business, and the benefits are so profound that it is inevitable that this will happen. By connecting devices over the Internet and wirelessly over mobile networks, companies can manage a wide range of new services for their customers. This is why Google announced in January that it would pay more than $3 billion for Nest’s smart thermostat and smoke alarm technology.
The numbers being forecasted for the Internet of Things are truly spectacular. BI Intelligence finds that the number of everyday and enterprise devices that will soon be connected to the Internet — from parking meters to home thermostats — will be huge: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018, roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined.
In the consumer space, many products and services have already crossed over into the IoT, including kitchen and home appliances, lighting and heating products, and insurance company-issued car monitoring devices that allow motorists to pay insurance only for the amount of driving they do.
Here are some of the top business-to-business and government applications for the IoT:
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Connected advertising and marketing – How would Internet-connected billboards look like? This will sure be one of the top three IoT categories, along with smart factories, and telecommuting support systems.
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Intelligent traffic management systems – Machina research sees $100 billion in revenue by 2020 for applications such as toll-taking and congestion penalties. A related revenue source will be smart parking-space management, expected to drive $30 billion in revenue.
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Waste management systems – According to BI’s research, in Cincinnati, residential waste volume fell 17% and recycling volume grew by 49% through use of a “pay as you throw” program that used IoT technology to monitor those who exceed waste limits.
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Smart electricity grids that adjust rates for peak energy usage – These will represent savings of $200 billion to $500 billion per year by 2025, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
Finally, what we need to keep in mind is that the Internet of Things is a vision, it is being built today. The stakeholders are known, the debate has yet to start.
Photo credit: www.switchscribe.com
Data transfers from the EU: Ensuring protection in hosted solutions
By Kenneth N Rashbaum Esq. and Jason M. Tenenbaum of Rashbaum Associates, LLC.
This blog post is for informational and educational purposes only. Any legal information provided in this post should not be relied upon as legal advice. It is not intended to create, and does not create, an attorney-client relationship and readers should not act upon the information presented without first seeking legal counsel.
Among the European responses to the release of documents by Edward Snowden was a plethora of proposals to create cloud providers that would host data exclusively on servers located in Europe. The basis of this reaction may be found in the European privacy laws, which place severe constraints upon disclosures of personal data (data that can be linked to an identifiable person). For reasons steeped in history, the greatest concern of many countries is the prospect of the U.S. government accessing personal data of …
IBM’s cloud strategy: Will it become the best in the business?
Feature IBM wants your cloudy dollars – and it’s making an extremely aggressive play to be the market leader in enterprise cloud computing.
In some minds, however, it already is.
Exhibit A: chief executive Virginia Rometty, in an open letter to investors published as part of the company’s 2013 annual report, spelled it out: “IBM today is the leader in enterprise cloud.”
The reason? Investment. Big Blue has shelled out $7bn on 15 acquisitions, with Rometty singling out the purchase of IaaS provider SoftLayer above all else. The latest move was earlier in March, when the company announced it was to push $1bn of resources and investments into cloud, rolling out SoftLayer in new geographies and providing a developer-friendly PaaS offering called BlueMix.
In other words, the 102-year-old International Business Machines now sees itself as a cloud company first and foremost. For Doug Clark (left), cloud leader at IBM …
Compuware Deepens Investment in APM for SAP Solutions
Compuware Corporation on Tuesday announced that effective February 1, 2014, it has opened a new Center of Excellence for SAP solutions in the Partner Port, located near SAP headquarters, where more than 100 SAP partners and other companies with close relationships with SAP have office space in Walldorf, Germany. Compuware has also increased its investment in R&D and expertise to support the fast-growing base of companies using SAP® solutions.
Compuware APM for SAP Solutions is a non-invasive solution that comes out-of-the-box, with zero configuration. The solution discovers processes and user transactions performed with SAP software and captures important performance parameters of non-SAP components in heterogeneous ERP landscapes. All transactions are monitored 24/7, without placing additional load on the servers or network. Additionally, this solution can be extended to monitor cloud, big data, Citrix and mobile environments as well.
Managing Consumer Identities in the Cloud
Cloud environments have created situations that allow users, customers, consumers, and employees to access Public, Intranet, and Extranet applications from different locations, devices, and as different personas. The focus of all the Internet and enterprise front-end applications today is to enhance the user experience. In addition, with advances in mobility and BYOD, the line between public and private becomes a deep shade of gray.
At the same time, organizations are leveraging SaaS applications, such as Google Apps and DropBox, for their internal business communication and collaboration. This opens up challenges in providing a universal identity for the user, while at the same time retaining the flexibility to segregate access depending on the scenario. While cloud computing environments may offer different levels of abstraction to its users, federated identity management does not leverage these abstractions; each user must set up her identity management solution. This situation is further aggravated by the fact that no identity federation solution is able to integrate all abstraction layers (i.e., IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS). The overwhelming challenge is to manage the user’s identity effectively and in a compliant manner while retaining the richness of the user experience.