Many organizations want to expand upon the IaaS foundation to deliver cloud services in all forms – software, mobility, infrastructure and IT. Understanding the strategy, planning process and tools for this transformation will help catalyze changes in the way the business operates and deliver real value.
Azure and That Dear Old Crinkle of Green: Bloomberg
In the last 12 months annual revenues for Azure have topped a billion dollars
according to Curt Anderson, CFO of Microsoft’s Server and Tools unit
where Azure is housed.
It’s the first time the Microsoft cloud has hit this storied height and suddenly
people are talking about it being in the running against Amazon Web
Services, which is believed to have done $1.8 billion last year on its eventual
way to $20 billion sometime before the decade ends.
How cloud computing is rethinking control of IT
By Jason Bloomberg
In my role as a globetrotting cloud consultant, I continue to be amazed at how many executives, both in IT and in the lines of business, still favour private clouds over public.
These managers are perfectly happy to pour money into newfangled data centers (sorry, “private clouds”), even though Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its brethren are reinventing the entire world of IT. Their reason? Sometimes they believe private clouds will save them money over the public cloud option.
No such luck: private clouds are dreadfully expensive to build, staff, and manage, while public cloud services continue to fall in price.
Others point to security as the problem. No again. Okay, maybe private clouds will give us sufficient elasticity? Probably not. Go through all the arguments, however, and they’re still dead set on building that private cloud.
What gives? The true reason for this stubbornness, of …
Eucalyptus More Compatible with AWS than Ever
Eucalyptus Systems, Amazon’s private cloud partner, was expected to
announce a new 3.3 release of its open source cloud platform Monday that
promises its greatest compatibility with AWS yet.
Its new capabilities are also supposed to make Eucalyptus the solution for
developing and testing applications built for AWS. Users get new levels
of availability, speed, resource utilization and cost savings across the
application development lifecycle.
What government is teaching us about cloud email
Who said government is stodgy and wasteful?
When it comes to cloud computing, government’s on the forefront—particularly when it comes to cloud-based email. The US Army, EPA, GSA, Interior, Labor, the USDA… they are all among the government organizations moving email to the cloud under Obama’s “cloud first” policy.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs is showing particular prudence by starting out with a relatively small, 15,000-mailbox pilot to make sure it’s properly addressing all the security, compliance, governance and cost-savings concerns that are all part and parcel of the email-in-the-cloud package.
Then, the VA will up the roll-out to 600,000 mailboxes to save what it hopes will amount to about $85 million in maintenance fees, support staff and aging hardware it will no longer need.
I hope other organizations regardless of sector are paying close attention.
Everyone wants to save a buck, of …
Is the age of the digital enterprise upon us?
Matthew Smith, UK director of business solutions, Software AG
Analyst houses IDC and Gartner are of the same mind: the age of the Digital Enterprise is upon us.
In IDC’s view: “For the past several years, the IT industry’s transition to the Third Platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking and big data analytics technologies, has dominated the annual Predictions…for 2013, IDC predicts the transition to the Third Platform will shift into high gear, as the industry accelerates past the exploration phase and into full-blown, high stakes competition.”
Gartner VP and Fellow, David W Clearley, puts it this way: “These strategic technologies are emerging amidst a nexus of converging forces – social, mobile, cloud and information. Although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionising business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders.
«As such, the Nexus of …
Cloud Expo New York: Optimize Your Virtual Environment
Everyone is virtualizing, but are they realizing any of the promised savings? This overview of IBM’s new virtualization optimization solutions will show you how integrated Cloud Solutions like SmartCloud Provisioning and SmartCloud Monitoring can deliver the savings virtualization promises.
Organizations are using intelligent management and analytics to provide the insight needed to optimize their virtualized infrastructure and dramatically improve availability, reduce data storage footprints and streamline patch management.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dan Carr, an Executive IT Architect at IBM, will review lessons learned from real-world experience.
Getting the Most From Hadoop Development and Real-Time Dedicated Clusters
In his session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13, 2013], Intel’s Chris Black will review the background of Apache Hadoop, its application, and methods to accelerate data system clusters with Intel SSD technology. The session will overview the genius of Hadoop and provide an overview of the ecosystem landscape.
Cloud Expo/Big Data Expo delegates will learn how the Hadoop framework and SSD technology augment cloud data systems ranging from analytics to on-line transaction processing (OLTP) to data warehousing. Best known applications of SSD technology to development, real-time query, and main Hadoop clusters will be presented. The resulting balance of processing, networking, SSD storage, and Hadoop optimization results in improving big data sort responsiveness from hours to minuets.
When APM Meets Big Data – Making Your Hadoop Jobs Faster
Analyzing Hadoop jobs and speeding them up is often a tedious and time consuming effort that requires experts. In his upcoming session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [10-13 June, 2013], Michael Kopp will be showing how proven APM techniques can be used to speed up Hadoop jobs at the core, without going through tons of log files, beyond just adding more hardware and within minutes instead of hours or days.
Locking Down the Cloud
Guest Post by Pontus Noren, director and co-founder, Cloudreach.
The good news for cloud providers is that forward-thinking CIOs are rushing to embrace all things ‘cloud’, realising that it provides a flexible and cost-effective option for IT infrastructure, data storage and software applications. The bad news is that the most significant obstacle to implementation could be internal: coming from other parts of the organisation where enduring myths about legal implications, security and privacy issues remain. The reality is that today such fears are largely unfounded. CIOs need help in communicating this to their more reluctant colleagues if they want to make the move to the cloud a success.
Myth No 1: The Security Scare
In many cases, moving to the cloud can in fact represent a security upgrade for the organisation. Since the introduction of cloud-based computing and data storage around ten years ago, the issue of security has been so high profile that reputable cloud providers have made vast investments in their security set-ups – one that an individual organisation would be unable to cost-effectively match due to the far different scale on which it operates.
For example, data stored in the cloud is backed-up, encrypted and replicated across multiple geographically distributed data centres in order to protect it from the impact of natural disasters or physical breaches. All this takes place under the watchful eyes of dedicated data centre security experts. If you compare this to the traditional in-house approach – which all too frequently sees data stored on a single server located somewhere in the basement of an office – it is not difficult to see which is the most secure option. By working with an established and respected cloud provider, such as Google or Amazon Web Services businesses can benefit from such comprehensive security measures without having to make the investment themselves.
Myth No 2: Data in Danger
Security and data privacy are closely related, but different issues. Security is mainly about physical measures taken to mitigate risks, while ‘privacy’ is more of a legal issue about who can access sensitive data, how it is processed, whether or not it is being moved and where it is at any moment in time.
Concerns around compliance with in-country data protection regulations are rife, especially when dealing with other countries. Across Europe, for example, data protection laws vary from country to country with very strict guidelines about where data can be stored. A substantial amount of data cannot be moved across geographical boundaries, so the security practice of replicating data across the globe has far-reaching compliance applications for data protection. However, data protection legislation states that there is always a data processor and data controller and a customer never actually ‘hands over’ its data. This doesn’t change when the cloud is involved – all large and reputable cloud services providers are only ever the data processor. For example, the provider will only ever process data on behalf of its customer, and the customer always maintains its ownership of its data, and role of data controller.
However, much of data protection law predates the cloud and is taking a while to catch up. Change is most definitely on its way. Proposed European legislation aims to make data protection laws consistent across Europe, and with highly data-restricted industries such as financial services now starting to move beyond private clouds into public cloud adoption, further change is likely to follow as organisations start to feel reassured.
So what can CIOs do to change perceptions? It comes down to three simple steps:
- Be Specific – Identify your organization’s top ten queries and concerns and address these clearly.
- Be Bold – Cloud computing is a well-trodden path and should not be seen as the future, rather as the now. Having tackled company concerns head on, it is important to make the jump and not just dip a toe in the water.
- Be Early – Engage reluctant individuals early on in the implementation process, making them part of the change. This way CIOs can fend off ill-informed efforts to derail cloud plans and ensure buy-in from the people who will be using the new systems and services.
The cloud has been around for a while now and is a trusted and secure option for businesses of all sizes and across all sectors. In fact, there are more than 50 million business users alone of Google Apps worldwide. It can hold its own in the face of security and privacy concerns. CIOs have an important role to play in reassuring and informing colleagues so that the firm can harness the many benefits of the cloud; future-proof the business and release IT expertise to add value across the business. Don’t let fear leave your organisation on the side lines.
Pontus Noren is director and co-founder, Cloudreach.
