Rackspace Hosting on Monday announced new features and enhanced service offerings for open cloud platform customers.
For more than ten years, Rackspace has served customers who are looking for a partner to help them reduce the complexities of building, deploying, optimizing, maintaining and troubleshooting complex web applications to serve their business needs. Rackspace is now offering that same Fanatical Support® to customers across its entire portfolio, including the company’s new open cloud platform, through Managed and Critical Application Services.
“Providing the highest level of service in the industry is central to our values as a company,” said Rackspace President Lew Moorman. “Cloud computing customers tell us they want good pricing and exceptional service, and offering one without the other simply won’t cut it in today’s environment.”
Exploiting the mobile cloud via mobile browsers
Recent research has shown that mobile browsers can take advantage of cloud hosting, permitting the use of multiple servers in order to complete complex tasks which would be impossible using mobile technology alone.
Due to their limited computational capabilities, smartphones and tablets are not able to carry out complex tasks, however such mobile browser cloud servers could alleviate this problem. Complex tasks can be carried out via the cloud thus sending the user information on a web page.
This could however have repercussions. For instance, a cybercriminal could anonymously hack and crack computer networks via a mobile based system, according to William Enck a professor of North Carolina State University. Enck said that «Because the person getting the bill for that computation is really the cloud browser provider, it gives those using the resources anonymously for other purposes an added advantage.»
Enck and his researchers were able to exploit a …
Cloud 2.0: The SaaS Opportunities
One of the most powerful as well as practical ways to demonstrate the trend of Cloud 2.0 and how it will re-invent IT areas like CRM, is to consider the SaaS opportunities this presents. Greenfield Applications First In summary this is best captured from the Canadian E-Health Cloud strategy.
How Amazon benefits from applying lean principles to the cloud
Those of you who followed my blog for a while know that the idea of applying manufacturing best practices to cloud computing is a favorite topic of mine*. This week the topic popped up in a fireside chat (the popular term for keynotes delivered from a set of armchairs, often with no fire in sight) between Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogel and CEO Jeff Bezos at re:Invent, the first Amazon Web Services customer conference.
I won’t cover the conference here – many blogs and media sites already did – but in the chat Bezos made a number of interesting points on how principles of lean manufacturing are guiding Amazon’s overall endeavors and how cloud computing both supports and benefits from this approach.
He discussed how – for developers- this approach turns the cost of infrastructure operations from an abstract overhead-like concept into a very visible direct cost they can directly …
Take Two Apps and Call Me in the Morning
I have been especially excited about the recent Canada Health Infoway Cloud strategy document, because I understand their importance in the overall “supply chain” of Canadian e-Health technologies like EHR – Electronic Healthcare Records, and what large scale challenges this particular sector faces.
This scale and these challenges has been very effectively discussed in this feature article from the Globe’s latest Report on Business supplement – Take Two Apps and Call Me in the Morning.
The article pulls no punches in any of the questions it asks about the issue as a whole, especially noting just how expensive it could be for Canada if they get e-Health wrong
Net Optics, Inc. to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Net Optics, Inc., the leading provider of Intelligent Network Access and Monitoring Architecture, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Net Optics is the leading provider of Intelligent Access and Monitoring Architecture solutions that deliver real-time IT visibility, monitoring and control since 1995. As a result, businesses achieve peak performance in network analytics and security. More than 7,500 enterprises, service providers and government organizations – including 85 percent of the Fortune 100 – trust Net Optics’ comprehensive smart access hardware and software solutions to plan, scale and future-proof their networks through an easy-to-use interface. Net Optics maintains a global presence through leading OEM partner and reseller networks.
Security Is Not the Only Barrier to Cloud Adoption
Migrating from VLANs to the public cloud is not trivial.
So public cloud adoption should be a no-brainer, right? Oh wait, but Andy omitted security in the public cloud – how can I trust that my customers’ sensitive data is secure in the public cloud?
I agree, the message wears thin that enterprise businesses are apprehensive to store sensitive customer data in the public cloud, and thus hesitant to adopt the cloud at all. (By the way, it was also very refreshing in Jassy’s keynote to see NASA’s JPL use of the public cloud, as the Netflix story also gets old.)
Maybe it’s the network ?
Enterprises might not be able to migrate their applications to the public cloud, because of how their datacenter servers are connected and secured. A customer came over to our booth at AWS re:invent and while very excited about the AWS public and our announcement, wanted to know “What do I do about my VLANS? My physical and virtual servers are isolated at layer 2? And my servers have two networks: one network for data and applications, the second network only for administrators – how do I architect this in AWS?”
AWS Might Do $1.5 Billion This Year
RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian takes Amazon Web Services for a “potentially under-appreciated asset” although he thinks it’ll do $1.5 billion in revenue this year.
It takes a lot of capital outlay to support, roughly $500 million or about 50% of total 2010 capex, Sebastian thinks, and says its profitability is unproven.
Amazon doesn’t break out AWS numbers but has put its IaaS market share at about 60% and AWS boss Andy Jassy said this week that the cloud unit has the potential to be Amazon’s biggest business, outgrowing its online retail parent.
Using Cloud for Disaster Recovery
Use of cloud for DR solutions is becoming more common, even the organizations which are not using cloud for mission critical production applications are moving towards using cloud for application DR.
Faster Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Typically DR requires lengthy manual processes to fully restore the business applications at the DR site. Having backup data and servers at the DR site is easy, however, restoring the entire application or service takes time. E.g. full application restoration requires starting services in specified order, performing dns and other configuration updates etc. In Cloud, the IaaS APIs provide ability to use automation solutions like Kaavo IMOD to fully restore the business applications automatically without manual intervention. As a result organizations get predictable recovery and reduced RTO. Automating the service or application recovery can reduce RTO to minutes from hours or days.
The Cure for the Common Cloud-Based Big Data Initiative
There is no doubt that Big Data holds infinite promise for a range of industries. Better visibility into data across various sources enables everything from insight into saving electricity to agricultural yield to placement of ads on Google. But when it comes to deriving value from data, no industry has been doing it as long or with as much rigor as clinical researchers.
Unlike other markets that are delving into Big Data for the first time and don’t know where to begin, drug and device developers have spent years refining complex processes for asking very specific questions with clear purposes and goals. Whether using data for designing an effective and safe treatment for cholesterol, or collecting and mining data to understand proper dosage of cancer drugs, life sciences has had to dot every “i” and cross every “t” in order to keep people safe and for new therapies to pass muster with the FDA. Other industries are now marveling at a new ability to uncover information about efficiencies and cost savings, but – with less than rigorous processes in place – they are often shooting in the dark or only scratching the surface of what Big Data offers.