NASA’s roadmap towards utilising cloud computing needs a serious rethink, according to an official report from the space agency’s Office of Audits (OA).

In a 38-page report, the OA criticises NASA’s cloud strategy in terms of governance, risk management and security, concluding that “weaknesses…impeded the agency from fully realising the benefits of cloud computing and potentially placed at risk its information stored in the cloud.”

Currently, NASA spends about $10m of its annual IT budget on cloud services – a meagre sum given its overall budget is $1.5bn.

The agency appears to be reticent about going all-in for cloud however, predicting that with a legacy technology overhaul, “up to 40%” of its software could move to the cloud, adding that within five years, up to three quarters of new IT projects could be born in the cloud.

Regardless of the future, the report still damns the …

The prevalence of social media and the power of mobile have quickly turned the business world into a customer-centric one. Sure, there have always been companies devoted to excellent customer service. However, today’s engaged consumer expects all businesses to master customer experience management in addition to their core business.
It’s clear that cutting-edge technology enables companies to more easily deliver on this expectation. The evolution from on-premise contact center architectures to cloud-based technologies as the key customer communications vehicle is a key driver of advances in customer engagement today.

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Mobile cloud computing refers to the combination of mobile networks and cloud computing with an aim of benefiting the network operators, mobile users, and cloud providers. Usually it’s a technology that leverages the elastic resources of network technologies and varied clouds toward unrestricted mobility and functionality. This enables mobile devices to be used anywhere without worrying about their location. Usually, cloud computing involve situations where data and tasks are kept on the Ethernet instead of on individual devices. On the other hand, mobile cloud computing involves other servers and mobile devices that are accessed via the Internet.

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From risks around cybersecurity to supply chain concerns to fast-changing trends around cloud computing, the pace of change and pressures on businesses to adjust well have never been higher. To gain a fuller grip on such risk and complexity, The Open Group is shepherding a series of standards and initiatives to provide better tools for understanding and managing true operational dependability.
BriefingsDirect sat down with the President and CEO of The Open Group, Allen Brown, at the July conference to gather an update on the efforts. The interview was conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

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Remember textbooks: those heavy, constantly out-of-date, more than slightly frayed tomes of knowledge? They are increasingly becoming a thing of the past, along with the many other innovations thanks in large part to cloud computing.

Taking a step back, the concept of a “cloudy” tech has been part of the education industry for a number of years. Blackboard, for example, was ahead of its time by enabling students to access material and collaboration tools. But as the cloud has matured, so has its value proposition for educational business application.
For many schools, the initial application begins with the mission-critical applications being supported. However, where education is concerned, there are many application possibilities for cloud enablement, with whole businesses starting up to appeal to the wide range of “tech-in-classroom” needs.

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Many technical experts believe that cloud computing is capable of reshaping the entire ICT industry in a revolutionary manner. With the introduction and development of cloud computing, the two business entities that emerged include – Cloud Service Providers and Cloud consumers.

Although the consumers of cloud services do not possess much control over the primary computing resources, but it is quite essential for the cloud consumers to obtain necessary guarantees in terms of service delivery standards.

These guarantees are usually provided through SLA (Service Level Agreement) which is negotiated between service provider and cloud service consumer. One of the major requirement of a well defined SLA is its standardization.

It must possess apposite level of granularity, namely the trade offs between complicatedness and expressiveness, so that most of the consumer expectations are covered. An SLA must also be relatively straightforward to be verified, weighted, evaluated.

You cannot rush in the process …

Oligopoly: A market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers.[1] Its parallel in political science, oligarchy, translates to power effectively resting with a small number of people.[2]
A recent Forbes article entitled – “Cloud Computing Market May Become An Oligopoly of High-Volume Vendors”[3] – quotes Owen Rogers, senior analyst at 451 Research, who argues that with a few large players – namely, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM – offering similar types of services, the market may be in for a “Cloud Oligopoly.”
The interesting thing about markets is that they follow patterns quite similar to geopolitical movements. In politics, major movements are constantly afoot, avoiding the emergence or expansion of oligarchies. For instance, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have formed the BRICS[4] alliance, a coalition that is aimed to “balance” their world with the ultimate goal of each member not being such an extreme underdog. This alliance could be in direct response to the financial power of traditional western allies, which by many standards forms an oligarchy.

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With customer expecting information technology to be delivered with new models, systems integrators have to quickly transform themselves to meet these needs.
Over the past few months, I have interacted with several organizations that are evaluating changes to their business model to adapt to the cloud-enabled IT ecosystem. Management is in a quandary over maintaining their profitable lines of business while growing revenue in new and emerging areas. The problem they face is that some emerging business lines are only possible with completely revamped business models requiring significant change.

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“We’ve embraced every version of VMware vCloud Connector released by VMware,” commented Dante Orsini, iland’s SVP of Business Development as Iland announced it’s leveraging VMware vCloud Connector Advanced Edition. Customers will be able to securely connect their VMware environments to iland’s vCloud Powered public cloud and scale up or down according to business requirements.
The recently released vCloud Connector Advanced Edition includes Content Synchronization and Datacenter Extension – two additional features that offer significant improvements for customers leveraging iland to attain their hybrid cloud goals. Orsini observed, “We’re seeing significantly more interest from customers wanting to operate in an enterprise-grade hybrid cloud environment and it’s our job to ensure a smooth transition.”

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CIOs are expected to be heroes. They are responsible for innovating and transforming IT using new technologies that will drive business initiatives forward, but that is far from an easy task given the ongoing evolution of the IT world. This article will discuss the case for hybrid cloud in the enterprise, and suggest how CIOs can strategically develop a blueprint for hybrid cloud deployment.
A few years ago, CIOs were hesitant to move any data outside of their own data center due to lack of security and limited guarantees of availability. But as technology matured, education of CIOs improved drastically. Now, they are becoming increasingly aware of how next-gen solutions fit into their overarching goals, which allows them to leverage public and private/hybrid clouds in the most effective manner. In turn, CIOs are warming up to the idea of a hybrid cloud model, as they realize that acceptable cloud solutions are now available.

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