By Nigel Beighton, VP of Technology, International, Rackspace

Choosing a cloud service provider is an important decision for any organisation. Cloud computing plays a central role in many businesses – from startups and SMBs to global companies – and usually involves entrusting service providers with mission-critical data and applications.

To assess potential providers and make the right choice, conducting due diligence across the following areas is essential.

Financials: As the recent closure of Nirvanix shows, it’s crucial to check a prospective provider’s financial position: past, present and future. If they are to be trusted with your data, they need to demonstrate that they have been, and should remain, financially sound.

So look for evidence of financial stability and growth over time; ask them about their financial prospects. Running a data centre requires major ongoing investment of capital, not to mention the substantial labour costs and operational budget. Are they in …

Because businesses need to respond more quickly to their internal and external customers as well as their competition, the agility and cost-effectiveness of moving applications to the cloud is an increasingly appealing option. Both IT and line-of-business leaders are looking for hybrid cloud solutions that not only connect and integrate their onsite and offsite environments, but also run existing and new applications in exactly the same way.

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LSI Corporation on Wednesday announced that it is working closely with VMware to deliver breakthrough virtual desktop density for VMware Horizon View™ deployments. Collaborative testing with VMware Horizon View using a single LSI® Nytro™ WarpDrive® application acceleration card achieved concurrent support for 200 active virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workloads on a two-node cluster with no storage latency.
“Our testing of the LSI Nytro WarpDrive cards confirms Nytro technology can support demanding VDI workload environments with simplified management and increasing security and control,” said Mason Uyeda, senior director of technical marketing, End-User Computing, VMware. “LSI Nytro WarpDrive cards will help enable our customers to overcome the latency demands of VDI-intensive workloads to deliver high performance and return on investment.”

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By David Linthicum

Continuing our discussion from my last blog in July, perhaps it’s helpful to drive deeper into security approaches and technology for use within clouds that serve the healthcare vertical.  We’ll start by focusing on the fundamentals of cloud security for healthcare.  However, some of this is transferable to other verticals as well.

First fundamental: Understand the data that will reside in the cloud

Healthcare data has something in common.  It’s dangerous to manage, unless you know exactly what you’re dealing with.

As we migrate health data to the cloud, it’s important to understand the data that will reside in the cloud-based systems, in terms of compliance and security requirements.  This means understanding what is PII data, and what is not, as well as dealing with specific security requirements around encryption.  This includes data in flight, and at rest.

Second fundamental:  Identity-based security …

As IT departments get the green light to update systems and implement solutions, cloud computing is increasingly getting a slice of those IT budgets.
Cloud computing is on the list of top IT spending priorities for next year, according to Forrester Research.
Software spending worldwide will continue to grow with a big focus on the cloud, and these worldwide trends reflect the focus of midsize firms, according to an article on MidsizeInsider.com.
The Forrester research found that companies and governments spent more than $2 trillion on hardware, software and services. In the most popular segment, software firms allocated budgets for improving mobile apps, analytics, security and collaboration software. Software spending increased last year by more than $540 billion; it is expected to grow 3.3 percent this year and 6.2 percent in 2014, the largest projection for technology categories.

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As IT departments get the green light to update systems and implement solutions, cloud computing is increasingly getting a slice of those IT budgets.
Cloud computing is on the list of top IT spending priorities for next year, according to Forrester Research.
Software spending worldwide will continue to grow with a big focus on the cloud, and these worldwide trends reflect the focus of midsize firms, according to an article on MidsizeInsider.com.
The Forrester research found that companies and governments spent more than $2 trillion on hardware, software and services. In the most popular segment, software firms allocated budgets for improving mobile apps, analytics, security and collaboration software. Software spending increased last year by more than $540 billion; it is expected to grow 3.3 percent this year and 6.2 percent in 2014, the largest projection for technology categories.

read more

“Welcome to the world’s largest startup!”
Thus tweeted Dell Chairman CEO Michael Dell on taking the company private. Almost 70% of shareholders approved the $25 billion leveraged buyout proposed by Michael, including more than half of shareholders who are not associated with the company.
Carl Icahn, politely referred to as an “activist investor” in many accounts, had tried to wrest the company away from Dell, opining in the Wall Street Journal that “the Dell board for years presided over the loss of tens of billions of dollars in market value at the hands of CEO Michael Dell. Instead of deposing him, the Dell board froze out shareholders.

I’ve not met Mr. Icahn, but I have met with Michael Dell, and spoke on a conference panel with him in Japan many years ago, when I was young and he was younger. He was an exuberant, cocksure person who took pride in a company that he had founded, as PCs Limited, in his college dorm room.

He seems to maintain that enthusiasm today, as the company has weathered the migration of the “personal computer” as an integral component of enterprise computing, the commoditization of its core product line, and now, the advent of cloud computing.

By going private, Michael and his team – in a global enterprise that employs more than 100,000 people and generates more than $50 billion in annual revenue – can focus on how to win a significant share of the global cloud market without being subject to the whimsy of the enormous casino known as the stock market.

As for Mr. Icahn, perhaps he can explain how the acumen that served him so well in taking TWA private many years ago should’ve, could’ve, would’ve been applied to his vision of a glorious future for Dell.

read more

“Welcome to the world’s largest startup!”
Thus tweeted Dell Chairman CEO Michael Dell on taking the company private. Almost 70% of shareholders approved the $25 billion leveraged buyout proposed by Michael, including more than half of shareholders who are not associated with the company.
Carl Icahn, politely referred to as an “activist investor” in many accounts, had tried to wrest the company away from Dell, opining in the Wall Street Journal that “the Dell board for years presided over the loss of tens of billions of dollars in market value at the hands of CEO Michael Dell. Instead of deposing him, the Dell board froze out shareholders.

I’ve not met Mr. Icahn, but I have met with Michael Dell, and spoke on a conference panel with him in Japan many years ago, when I was young and he was younger. He was an exuberant, cocksure person who took pride in a company that he had founded, as PCs Limited, in his college dorm room.

He seems to maintain that enthusiasm today, as the company has weathered the migration of the “personal computer” as an integral component of enterprise computing, the commoditization of its core product line, and now, the advent of cloud computing.

By going private, Michael and his team – in a global enterprise that employs more than 100,000 people and generates more than $50 billion in annual revenue – can focus on how to win a significant share of the global cloud market without being subject to the whimsy of the enormous casino known as the stock market.

As for Mr. Icahn, perhaps he can explain how the acumen that served him so well in taking TWA private many years ago should’ve, could’ve, would’ve been applied to his vision of a glorious future for Dell.

read more

There is a burst of creative ideas emerging in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) space or what has become more affectionately known as the Internet-of-things world. With so many opportunities around the globe to connect devices and assets, many companies are starting to stake out claims in the M2M space. However, while much of the attention has been focused on the machine part of the equation, people are the ultimate stakeholders. After all, it is the individual who will benefit and have the power to act on the information through smart apps. Some of the most promising opportunities are in the automobile, smart metering, eHealth, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and home security industries, but many more examples are emerging.
In many of these cases actual deployment is still minimal, but the potential is there for creative and exciting large-scale implementations, some of which may even start locally and grow into global solutions.

read more

There is a burst of creative ideas emerging in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) space or what has become more affectionately known as the Internet-of-things world. With so many opportunities around the globe to connect devices and assets, many companies are starting to stake out claims in the M2M space. However, while much of the attention has been focused on the machine part of the equation, people are the ultimate stakeholders. After all, it is the individual who will benefit and have the power to act on the information through smart apps. Some of the most promising opportunities are in the automobile, smart metering, eHealth, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and home security industries, but many more examples are emerging.
In many of these cases actual deployment is still minimal, but the potential is there for creative and exciting large-scale implementations, some of which may even start locally and grow into global solutions.

read more