Amazon is about to experience a tidal wave of competition from the likes of VMware, Microsoft and a host of leading service providers who want a piece of the growing cloud pie.
I’ve read about a dozen different sets of predictions for cloud computing in 2013 and will coopt many I consider to be the most credible in order to create my own “hybrid” top four list. They are also influenced by a series of conversations with the team at CloudVelocity as well as a couple dozen briefings with some of the top minds in cloud computing held since October. Are you ready?

1) Hybrid cloud will enter the hype cycle as enterprises cross the process chasm between private and public clouds and data centers. New and existing multi-tier apps will be orchestrated across clouds for cloud migration, cloud cloning and cloud failover as the first generation of enterprise grade hybrid cloud solutions. These solutions will allow high performance IT teams to deliver services faster, more efficiently and reliably than other teams stuck in dedicated hardware lock-in traps. Over time these new solutions will have a powerful impact on how IT teams are organized and how the acquire new technologies, because they represent superior operating models.

read more

«The need to capture and manage Big Data is daunting, but not as daunting as the need to understand and analyze all you’ve captured,» says Jill T. Singer, CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office and an upcoming speaker at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York. «2013 will see increased emphasis on making sense of Big Data rather than just making Big Data,» she adds.

read more

“Most people in the IT industry don’t know that it’s a dirty business. Information takes room and it takes energy to maintain and this information is growing in an exponential fashion,” explained Steven Cangiano, Solar Sales Consultant at Trinity Solar, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

read more

Many organizations are focusing on IT metrics and metering to generate IT cost savings. Here’s a quick summary of how one organization is using metering of IT resource consumption to improve IT cost visibility and move from being a cost center to an internal service provider.
The Company operates a 24-hour cable network that reaches about 100 million US homes and a web site that has more than 60 million users per month. The Company is divided into two primary business units, each with their own P&L.

read more

Guest blog by Joe Manna
Senior Content Strategist at Infusionsoft

There are few words that sound like nails on the chalkboard to a small business owner such as “CRM» (customer relationship management).

At its core, a CRM tool is a database that contains customer and prospect (lead-generation) information. CRMs can range from basic contact managers, all the way up to a sophisticated tool for operating a business.

Yesterday’s CRMs were often installed and hosted “on-site,” and today’s CRM solutions are often hosted through a third-party. Salespeople are often the primary beneficiaries of a CRM, in addition to people who function in a marketing role for a company.

Though the name might be boring, I want to share several reasons why more entrepreneurs are using a CRM tool within their businesses to get organised and thrive.

1. CRM is for “closers.” Salespeople love to stay in touch with their …

A recent whitepaper from IDC sponsored by Microsoft has suggested a widening skills gap for cloud computing, and the trend will continue further through 2013.

In particular the research, of over 600 organisations, showed that as the cloud evolves, cloud-specific skills will grow at six times the rate of overall IT skills, noting that cloud-related skills “represent virtually all of the growth opportunities in IT worldwide”.

According to the paper, worldwide IT jobs will hit just under 30m by the end of 2015; however the 22.3m non-cloud jobs represent a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 0% from 2011, as opposed to the 7m cloud-related jobs having a 26% CAGR, going up from 2.7m in 2011.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, broken down into demographics North America is where the most cloud-oriented jobs will be in 2015 (2.7m), representing a 22% growth over four years. Asia/Pacific (2.3m, 32 …

“Jones, we need an RDBMS strategy implemented immediately!! Oh, and, what’s an RDBMS?”

Thus read the caption to a New Yorker cartoon many years ago, in which a CEO was berating a subordinate.

The same cartoon could run today, with the words “Cloud Computing,” “Big Data,” or “SDN.” All have emerged on the radar screens of every enterprise. By every enterprise, I mean every enterprise.

Certainly, many cloud vendors have targeted the magical SMB market – AWS, for example, is not just for large customers such as Netflix, but for mom and pop and you and me as well. My own verification of this came as I talked to small businesspeople on Main Street USA and at county fairs in Illinois this past summer.

Truly – you might be surprised at how seriously a tacos-and-cotton-candy vendor was studying cloud computing as a way to run his business better. This guy and his wife spend six months lounging around in Florida from the profits they earn every year on their circuit, and he’s well worth listening to.

Furthermore, I now find myself involved with a start-up that is delivering systems-control software through the cloud to custom-built enterprise hardware. Cloud computing is at the center of our conversations, strategy, and execution.

We anticipate collecting terabytes of information annually as well – albeit much of it in pictures and video – but which nevertheless will need to be correlated, analyzed, and acted upon. So Big Data, as we define it, is in the picture.

Which brings me to SDN. A nascent term, really, for most people, and for our start-up. I have a concern that Oracle might “SDN-wash” things this year, rendering the term less useful. I also wonder if this is a technological approach and strategy that’s more important to our cloud vendors than it is to us.

That said, our start-up aims to cover the US, then the world, in a few highly targeted vertical markets, in a way that may command us to have a universal way to deploy relatively vast resources yet make things very easy to manage for our users.

So, now, I become a true student of SDN, as it matters not only to my life as a writer, but also as a start-up guy with skin in the game. And I don’t have a Jones to berate; I need to learn all this on my own.

read more

Gartner has been predicting for last five years that cloud computing will have a transformational impact in next 2 to 5 year! So, it is a good time to step back and ask ourselves… …will cloud computing ever have transformational impact? I think the answer cannot be given in simple black-and-white term like “Yes” or “No”. Like the … Read more

read more

Last year, we saw three trends making lots of noise and a fourth one closely following – Cloud Computing, Big Data, Mobility, and Social networking for the enterprise. Let me comment on each one as we enter 2013.

In cloud computing, the focus shifts to Platform as a Service (PaaS) as SaaS is now accepted into the mainstream. CRM and HR applications dominate the space with SalesForce.com and Workday as leaders. Microsoft, for example, is evolving its Windows Azure from a PaaS to Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Last year, it added persistent-state virtual machine support to Azure, allowing it to accommodate a wider variety of software, including Linux. Microsoft also introduced Hadoop for Azure and support for MapReduce. Amazon’s AWS stack now blurs the boundary between PaaS and IaaS. SalesForce.com wants to be a PaaS player via its Force.com platform for developing any SaaS offering. Besides CRM/HR cloud apps., we have seen emergence of financial apps for midsize companies – Adaptive Planning, Anaplan, Host Analytics, and Tidemark are some example companies.

read more