On the surface it looks to be a chicken and egg problem. Is cloud driving IT transformation or is IT transformation driving cloud’s growth? The movement to cloud requires a shift in approach for many IT organizations for how to deal with procurement, management, security, etc. In some cases, public cloud offerings are driving IT to change how it delivers services as the business has access to options that don’t require IT’s participation in order to acquire.
The truth is that IT organizations can build and deliver private cloud offerings without changing how they operate internally. Often, these efforts result in less than stellar adoption by the business. Without transformation of the business and operational processes, cloud is just another silo that increases operational overhead and often acts to “prove” the businesses’ point that IT is too slow and difficult for the needs of today’s businesses.
Three main barriers between AWS and businesses
Recently Gathering Clouds’ friend and cloud computing expert David Linthicum dug into a few ways in which AWS continues to create gaps between its offering and businesses.
While Linthicum focused on cost, contract, and utility-based computing issues, we thought we would explore a few other obstacles that still keep AWS from full enterprise adoption.
While we are sure AWS will eventually figure out how to crack the enterprise, (especially as enterprise IT becomes more comfortable with the cloud) there are aspects of the service that still don’t go far enough to fulfill the requirements of the businesses that are still tentative about cloud adoption.
1) Compatibility issues: AWS created*planned* conflicts with integrating with other systems.
Without any compatibility between AWS-specific tools, platforms and environments with in-house systems (no matter which platform a business is running in house – VMware, Windows, Citrix, etc., Amazon won’t be compatible), businesses either …
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: 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 his general session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, will discuss and dispel some of the common myths about cloud computing that still exist today. Attendees will learn about the flexibility and choice that the cloud can offer so that they can make more-informed decisions when choosing the cloud for their business.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The Evolution of Cloud Flexibility
It was supposed to be about flexibility, wasn’t it? Cloud computing lets you alter your capacity as your demand fluctuates, something on-premise solutions could never do the same way. But, is the cloud as flexible as it could be? With cookie-cutter VM sizes, scalability that removes an entire former dimension, and reserved instance pricing that requires prediction we went to the cloud to avoid in the first place, the first generation of public cloud providers don’t go as far as they could.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Pete Johnson, Chief Evangelist for ProfitBricks, will explain how Cloud 1.0 falls short and how Cloud 2.0 offers the flexibility you’re looking for.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Fear & Loathing in the Enterprise Cloud
You want to move your enterprise applications to the cloud, but fear (security, uptime, responsiveness) and loathing (exaggerated claims, undisclosed complexity, etc.) seem to keep getting in the way. It feels like this fear & loathing in the enterprise cloud is resulting in organizations realizing only a small percentage of the potential benefits that can be gained through cloud adoption.
In his general session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Gary Ballabio, Product Line Director at Akamai Technologies, will examine a variety of strategies you can employ to make your cloud architecture better performing, more secure and available. Through a variety of best practices learn how to escape fear & loathing and achieve the optimal reliability for applications running in the cloud.
Five Cloud Encryption Tips
A day doesn’t go by when we don’t hear about sensitive information being exposed or stolen. The culprits could be the government, professional hackers, careless employees with data on mobile devices, or internal employees with unauthorized access to data or unintentional release of data. It seems the wave of data breaches has gained momentum as data has moved from internal servers to the cloud; and access has gone mobile. Though the fact remains that there will be gaps in security, the goal of companies and IT departments should be to make those gaps as small and as difficult to take advantage of as possible.
Encryption has always been viewed as one of the strongest security measures, and its price-performance has become very attractive with the advent of cloud computing. This is because encryption is by far the best way to replace physical walls in the cloud.
SilverSky Selects SoftLayer, an IBM Company, to Power Cloud-Based Email
SoftLayer, an IBM Company, has announced that SilverSky, a provider of cloud-based information security and messaging solutions, has chosen SoftLayer to help power its cloud-based email and Email Protection Suite offerings. SilverSky’s comprehensive security services, running on SoftLayer’s cloud platform and distributed through IBM’s global sales channel, will enable businesses around the world to quickly move email workloads and critical information into the cloud in a secure and cost-effective way.
As a provider of cloud-based information security, secure messaging and collaboration services, SilverSky protects $525 billion in customer assets and handles more than 500 million security events each day. SilverSky’s growing customer base includes 6,700 organizations around the globe in the financial services, retail, healthcare, energy, critical infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.
Cloud Expo: Developers of Cloud Apps Will Change the World of Analytics
According to IDC, we spent over $34 billion on business analytics in 2012. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the GDP of 100 of the world’s countries. And Gartner’s 2013 survey of over 2000 CIOs worldwide puts business intelligence at the top of their technology priorities. Given this spend and focus, it’s shocking to realize that according to the BI Scorecard only 24% of today’s information workers actually have access to BI tools, and that number has stagnated even with the advent of new technologies like data visualization. What gives? The reality is that most information workers don’t spend their day working with a BI tool, nor do they want to. They already have their preferred applications. So, what can be done?
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Karl Van den Bergh, VP, Product and Alliances at Jaspersoft, will discuss how cloud application developers hold the key to making analytics more pervasive within the enterprise. He’ll analyze emerging business models and technologies that are enabling developers to easily and affordably inject intelligence inside the applications they build, bringing information TO knowledge workers rather than expecting them to go find it. He will also look at how some of the world’s leading companies are already doing this and the benefits they’re seeing from this approach.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Overview of Windows Azure IaaS
When Windows Azure was first released a few years ago, it was Microsoft’s PaaS offering in the public cloud space. This has matured and Microsoft recently released a preview of their IaaS offering in Windows Azure. This new offering allows an organization to host a virtual machine with various operating systems (including Linux) and different applications such as Active Directory Domain Controllers or SharePoint Server as an example. These VMs in Azure can also be connected with PaaS instances in Azure or on-premises infrastructure.
In his general session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Matt Hester, Senior Information Technology Professional Evangelist for Microsoft, will provide an overview of this new capability and how to get started.
Install Cloud Apps. Rule the Universe
For the past few months Solar VPS has been conducting an open lab beta test accessible for all Solar VPS clients. The test, known as Cosmo’s Lab, featured a product line called SolarSystem Cloud Apps on Demand, or One Click A.I.
The idea behind the laboratory test was very simple: like Google’s Beta Lab’s, we wanted to release and test a product line which we believe will have a great impact on the Cloud hosting and general marketplace. The product line is Cloud Apps on Demand. In short, SolarSystem Cloud Apps on Demand featured 260 + Cloud Applications which our clients could install with the single click of a button. Just as Softaculous acts as an auto-script installer, we built SolarSystem Cloud Apps on Demand to install the most popular and useful Cloud applications with one click. We wanted to build a solution which was dead simple to use, highly useful and extremely valuable to the marketplace.