You probably know from personal experience how tough it can be to change from one service provider to another. Think about the last time you changed your Internet service or gym membership. It was probably a pain, and there’s a reason. Most vendors don’t want you to have a seamless transition from their product to a competitor’s.
vendor lock in cloud software. But you might not know that some less-trustworthy vendors build roadblocks specifically designed to lock customers into their service. They make it hard for you to switch vendors so they can raise prices or change policies without worrying too much about losing customers—a practice called “vendor lock-in.”
How to Select a Cloud Provider Effectively
Moving your data storage to the cloud is a smart move as there is an explosion of data day by day and systems are struggling to store all that data effectively and securely. Cloud computing has proven not only to be cost effective but also frees the businesses to concentrate on the daily workings while the cloud takes care of details such as security, support, maintenance and the ever-so-important backup. Therefore, the demand for cloud computing is also growing and there are many companies sprouting up by the minute. So the consumer ends up in a dilemma of how to choose the right one.
To select the right type of cloud for you, analyze what type of data you are basically dealing with. For example, videos, photos and online documents will require software based cloud services. Other type of cloud services include Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) where the customer can transfer his data with virtually no changes made. All that the customer needs to manage is the operating system and its applications. When the customer wants to use the cloud or offer it as a service to others, then the Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is the right choice.
People power: Why staff are driving cloud adoption
By Eoin Jennings, General Manager Hosting Services, Easynet
As St Jude raged around the UK last month felling trees and bringing commuter trains to a standstill, a collective sigh could be heard: cloud naysayers finally admitting defeat.
Whether or not businesses had a mobility or cloud strategy, those tech-savvy employees across the country armed with BlackBerries, tablets and Dropbox accounts were comfortably and productively working away, and their organisations were thankful. For many businesses, it will take these 90mph winds to blow in the seeds of change.
Businesses are adopting cloud services, albeit more cautiously than anticipated. Much has been written about vendors hyping cloud services, and adoption rates not living up to the propaganda. Indeed TechTarget’s Cloud Pulse Survey found that public and private clouds have reached the same level of market penetration at around 25%.
Adoption is moving in the right direction, though, and research from ISG …
IBM patent offers greener cloud computing options
IBM has patented a solution which the tech giant claims is a “green button” that distributes a cloud service to lower power systems to help save environmental costs.
According to the Armonk firm, patent 8,549,125 took its inspiration from energy firms offering consumers alternate, environmentally-friendly energy streams.
“We have invented a way for cloud service providers to more efficiently manage their data centres and, as a result, significantly reduce their environmental impact,” said Keith Walker, IBM master inventor.
In a supporting blog, Walker goes into more detail about the idea behind the patent, stating that there would be an ‘environmentally friendly option’ on the CSP’s setup wizard.
“It’s like purchasing a computer – you have the choice of buying a high speed hard drive, but do you need it for what you actually plan to do with the computer?” Walker wrote.
“Would something less powerful, but more …
The Time Is Now for 21st Century Leadership
I’ve just had the opportunity to preview my good friend Melvin Greer’s newest effort, «21st Century Leadership: Harnessing Innovation, Accelerating Business Success». Now in pre-release, this book highlights the compelling linkage between internet scale technology, advance business models and the need for forward thinking leadership.
From the vantage of hindsight, I can see how my own professional career has been molded by the global changes Gartner describes as the Digital Industrial Revolution. In my consulting engagements, I’ve characterized this environment as the confluence of four major transitions:
Rackspace Enhances Hybrid Cloud with New Performance Cloud Servers
Rackspace® Hosting has announced its architecturally redesigned public cloud with Performance Cloud Servers. These new servers are designed to deliver enhanced levels of application performance with greater speed, throughput and reliability. This public cloud offering creates a powerful hosting platform for a variety of workloads, ranging from basic web hosting to large scale NoSQL data stores like MongoDB and Cassandra.
“In today’s world of instant demand, applications must be capable of scaling fast, and performing at scale without compromise. As a cloud provider, our role is to enable that without customers having to over-provision and constantly re-architect their applications,” said Rick Jackson, chief marketing officer at Rackspace. “Our mission is to provide our customers with the best-fit infrastructure to optimize the performance of their applications, and today we are redefining the benchmark for performance in a public cloud offering as part of our hybrid cloud portfolio.”
Rackspace Enhances Hybrid Cloud with New Performance Cloud Servers
Rackspace® Hosting has announced its architecturally redesigned public cloud with Performance Cloud Servers. These new servers are designed to deliver enhanced levels of application performance with greater speed, throughput and reliability. This public cloud offering creates a powerful hosting platform for a variety of workloads, ranging from basic web hosting to large scale NoSQL data stores like MongoDB and Cassandra.
“In today’s world of instant demand, applications must be capable of scaling fast, and performing at scale without compromise. As a cloud provider, our role is to enable that without customers having to over-provision and constantly re-architect their applications,” said Rick Jackson, chief marketing officer at Rackspace. “Our mission is to provide our customers with the best-fit infrastructure to optimize the performance of their applications, and today we are redefining the benchmark for performance in a public cloud offering as part of our hybrid cloud portfolio.”
Big Data, unification, and JSON share spotlight at Teradata user conference
Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Software – Information Management
Teradata’s data warehousing and analytics strategy continues to be heavily influenced by Big Data, which took center stage at its annual Partners user conference in Dallas, Texas, last week. While Teradata didn’t make any major new product announcements at the event, it did spotlight four areas: enterprise data warehousing (EDW), Aster Data Discovery, unified data architecture, and analytically-driven marketing optimization. For the first time, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) figures heavily in Teradata’s future, reflecting the increased amount of semi- and unstructured data that organizations are looking to push into Teradata databases.
A three-pronged strategy driven by Big Data, unification, and JSON
There are three main elements to Teradata’s overall strategy: core EDW, Big Data analytics, and integrated marketing management, three of the fastest growing segments of its business. Teradata is well positioned in each. Big Data is clearly forcing …
CIOs still reluctant to adopt cloud, says new survey
A new report from sourcing providers Alsbridge has revealed that, in the UK, cloud computing accounts for only one fifth of the IT budget.
This puts doubt in the thinking that cloud adoption in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market is accelerating – or, more particularly, that executives see cloud as the cornerstone of a bright, shiny IT future.
Last month research from Robert Half Technology revealed how cloud computing is the most lucrative skill to have in the IT job market.
Yet this survey, of 50 UK senior IT decision makers, indicates a relatively slow uptake. IaaS is the smallest cloud market in terms of investment, with 20% of respondents using compute and only 14% using storage-based adoption.
That’s not to say companies aren’t in the cloud full stop; 92% of companies are using cloud, with software as a service (SaaS) at 70% uptake and platform as …
Ten Myths of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is transforming the way businesses think about and leverage technology. As a result, the general understanding of cloud computing has come a long way in a short time. However, there are still many misconceptions about what cloud computing is and what it can do for businesses that adopt this game-changing computing model. In this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, discusses and dispels some of the common myths about cloud computing that still exist today.