Much of the dialog over net neutrality seems rather dated. This is understandable, since the debate has been going on since last century.
The January 14th Federal Appeal Court decision in favor of the Internet access providers gave those companies (apparently) a degree of latitude to selectively block or prioritize edge provider services. We know that they want to do this, even though they might be coy about admitting it. Verizon, the plaintiff in the recent appeal case, issued a statement saying that nothing much will change as a result of this decision. We all expect Verizon and the other ISPs to take advantage of this change to the maximum extent they can. If they don’t their shareholders might be a bit upset, after spending all that time and money.
Why Nirvanix Doesn’t Mean the End of Cloud Storage
By Randy Weis, Practice Manager, Virtualization & Data Management
By now everyone is familiar with the Nirvanix fiasco. Now that the dust has settled, I decided to talk about the implications this has had, and will have, on the cloud storage market as well as to highlight some silver linings organizations can take away from the meltdown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtQmGQBWzbc
If you’re looking for more content around storage and information management check out my recent posts “A Guide to Successful Big Data Adoption” as well as “10 Storage Predictions for 2014.”
Do you have questions for Randy about storage & data management? Email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com
Survey: Organizations Measure Disaster Recovery Time in Days, Not Hours
TwinStrata on Wednesday announced the results of its «Industry Trends: Data Backup in 2014» survey. Conducted between December 2013 and January 2014, the report analyzes responses from 209 IT personnel.
The results indicate an urgent need for organizations to make significant improvements to their backup strategies with one in five organizations experiencing back-up failures at least monthly and one in 10 weekly. As a result, 53 percent of organizations plan to make changes to their backup strategy this year. Incorporating cloud storage was the remedy most often cited by these respondents.
Top Cloud Security Threats
To say that cloud security for cloud computing is gaining traction would be the understatement of our era. Whether in public clouds, private clouds, or hybrid scenarios – it seems like everyone is in the cloud. Healthcare providers, eCommerce, disaster recovery services, data storage . . . the types of cloud services available seem to cover every base. What would Darwin think about his “Survival of the Fittest” evolving from animal species to businesses who take advantage of the flexibility, elasticity, and cost-effectiveness of cloud computing?
SkySQL CEO Patrik Sallner on MariaDB, MySQL and why structured data won’t go away
Patrik Sallner, the CEO of Finnish database proprietor SkySQL, wants to make something clear. His company’s latest product, MariaDB Enterprise, was not designed with a certain Redwood-based relational database provider in mind.
“We’re not specifically targeting Oracle or anybody else here,” he tells CloudTech. “We’re just making an offering available which we clearly know there’s a strong demand for.”
This appears to be the company line, although other tech outlets, from The Register to ZDNet, thought otherwise.
The MariaDB Enterprise product, announced last week, is built upon the open source MariaDB Server and Galera Cluster software, on the Linux OS, and is offered as a renewable one year subscription package either on-premise, virtualised or in cloud.
Sallner instead describes the update as “something which is feasible for somebody without deep MySQL expertise”.
The product’s high availability comes from being able to cluster databases without a …
Goldie Locks and the Three Clouds: The Rise of the Enterprise Cloud
We all know the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, but have you heard the one about Goldie Locks and the three clouds? This tale is playing out throughout the IT marketplace.
Goldie Locks – an IT executive for a state government – has once again found herself in a dilemma. “If only I could choose one of the three options,” she sighs. Goldie’s dilemma is a result of competing requirements within her enterprise. Regarding infrastructure costs, Goldie has been told to “do more with less.”
“If someone says that one more time, they’re going to have porridge thrown at them,” she huffs. Goldie knows that standardizing infrastructure requirements to serve the business and its processes securely, reliably and quickly is a proven way to reduce capital and operational costs. On the other hand, various business units and their departments have specific requirements for their mission-critical applications. They are resisting giving up control.
Building Trust & Transparency with Personal User Data in the Cloud
Olivier Amar loves the Internet and the experience that a good application can provide by accessing your data. But with years of experience in online performance marketing for companies like AIG, WSOP, Harrahs, ElAl, GetTaxi and Toyga Financial, he understands how exposed our personal information is in apps and in the cloud, and how breaches of trust that can occur when we ignorantly trust a developer with our private information.
With over 700K applications on both the Android and iOS market, tens of millions of sites and services using connection protocols, and rough privacy guidelines for developers to follow at best, there is simply no real way for an end user to know whether or not they should trust an application or the developer to use their data securely and ethically.
The Grand Challenge: Simplifying IT to Unleash Innovation
I don’t listen to music before I buy it anymore. I don’t need to – as long as I’m purchasing it from Amazon. Based on algorithms that crawl my purchasing history, the online retailer knows what I like as well as I do and, dare I say, better than my wife.
A company develops this intimate knowledge by using Big Data to improve the customer experience in an economical and adaptable way. Amazon has integrated this agility into every aspect of its business, from running its warehouses to its revolutionary ability to publish on demand.
Game-changing innovation happens when you simplify everyday processes. But managing a large, traditional application portfolio – however crucial it is to your business – disrupts innovation.
The cloud virtualizes your software, protecting you from the inefficiencies associated with IT. As a result, you spend less time and money introducing and maintaining applications and more resources innovating and advancing your business. Whether you implement a software-designed data center, a hybrid cloud approach or and end-user computing strategy, you’re taking the burden off of your own team and into the virtual world.
IBM refocuses hardware strategy on high-value technologies
Roy Illsley, Principal Analyst, Ovum Software
IBM has announced that it will invest more than $1bn in the new IBM Watson Group, as well as $1.2bn to expand its global cloud computing footprint to 40 data centers worldwide in 15 countries across five continents. On January 23, 2014, IBM also announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Lenovo to sell the Chinese company the majority of its x86 server business in a $2.3bn deal that includes System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking, and maintenance operations.
This represents the biggest ever technology acquisition by a Chinese company, and sees IBM exit server manufacturing in all but the System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances markets.
Is Lenovo IBM’s strategic partner for …
Top Five Cloud Computing Challenges for 2014
For most organizations, developing a cloud strategy is no longer a matter of “if,” but a matter of how. The right cloud strategy can significantly reduce costs, offer instant scalability, and improve business agility. But to get the most from the cloud and position their businesses for the future, IT leaders must understand the trends that are shaping the rapidly changing landscape. Here are five considerations that should be top of mind for any IT decision-maker in the coming year.
1. Providing the best possible user experience. When it comes to cloud, there’s only one thing that matters and that’s the user experience. It’s easy to forget about the end user while getting caught up in the “arms race” of building and brokering cloud services. When consulting about cloud strategy for a healthcare R&D firm, my colleagues and I were asked the question: “Amazon offers these services, so why don’t we?”