Information technology is undergoing a major shift due to new paradigms and a variety of delivery channels. The drivers for these technologies are social networks, proliferation of devices such as tablets and phones. Social business and collaboration are continuing to develop further to enhance productivity and interaction. All these technologies are like a volcano ready to erupt and the key to surviving a volcano is preparation and knowledge. Hence there has to an emphasis on sound preparation to leverage these technologies.
The first step is to develop an organization or agency wide strategy, mission and vision that addresses these areas to achieve business agility. The business strategy, business cases and plans should incorporate the cost, benefits and risks of these technologies. However one shoe size doesn’t fit all, hence specific areas where these can be applied should be identified and communicated. There may be internal or legacy applications that don’t need to be updated due to the substantial cost and integration concerns.
Securing clouds and taking educated steps
The most common objections for holding back SaaS (Software as a Service) adoption, as reported from end customers, are ‘security’ and ‘reliability’.
This is interesting when you consider that SaaS Security is consistently reported as the fastest growth area of SaaS. This ‘security’ objection usually stems from the customers’ perspective; they are concerned about the security of their data held outside their perimeter by the cloud provider.
Yet despite these concerns there has been a thunderstorm of growing noise surrounding cloud computing in the past 24 months.
Vendors, analysts, journalists and membership groups have all rushed to cover the cloud medium, although everyone seems to have their own opinion and differing definition of cloud computing. Similar to many new sectors of technology, the key is to separate the truth from the hype before making educated decisions on the right time to participate.
While still evolving and changing, cloud computing is …
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Freeing Cloud Data – SQL for SaaS
As data as a service providers are emerging to aggregate and manage large data set sources from multiple sources to make this information more easily available and usable to businesses, it is increasingly imperative to enable an easy-to-use service for data connectivity. As customers put more of their data assets in the hands of cloud vendors, they will demand readily available visibility into the source of their data and how it is used.
The challenge of managing multiple cloud and enterprise data sources is becoming increasingly more complex. With a diverse set of solutions such as CRM, B2B, EAI, accounting, and more becoming more prevalent in the cloud, working together and sharing data can be daunting to IT departments that are used to managing their solutions in-house.
The Intersection of Big Data and Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing provides the technology foundation to capitalize on Big Data for corporate success. The flexible infrastructure offered through Cloud Computing–combined with increased storage and processing power of new technologies in the Cloud—provide the rich, agile compute platform to handle the volume, variety, velocity, and validity needs of Big Data. Insert a fourth layer into the Cloud Computing stack (Knowledge as a Service) between PaaS and Saas to reduce human-intensive ontology work in favor of automated, algorithm-driven features designed to exploit disparate data in the Cloud.
Examining Corruption & Technology
Good government makes for wealthy countries. This may seem to be self-evident, but is it true?
One way to address the question is to look at the Corruption Perceptions Index, produced by Transparency International, and which we incorporate into our algorithm in the research we’ve been doing for the past two years.
The Corruption Perceptions index, like any measure, is controversial, in this case because it measures only the perception of something that would be difficult to measure rationally in any case.
But perception is often reality, and corruption, like porn, is something that you know when you see it.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem: does corruption cause poverty, or does poverty cause corruption? And are there examples of countries which are relatively wealthy but rated as corrupt? Are there any poor countries rated as not corrupt?
Of the top 20 highest-income nations among the 99 we’ve surveyed, 15 rate a 7.5 or higher on Transparency International’s 10-point scale. The exceptions are two oil-rich nations (Kuwait and the UAE), the United States, France, and Italy, the latter at a lowly 3.9.
The developing, hot-growth economies do not rate well. Take the BRICS, please: Brazil (3.8), China (3.6), India (3.1), and Russia (2.4). Russia maintains the highest income in this group, although it could be argued that it remains a declining superpower rather than an emerging economy. There’s also plenty of discussion in the world about how China’s Communist dictatorship remains (allegedly) less corrupt than India, the world’s largest democracy.
Other hot-growth countries fare poorly in this CPI, including Indonesia (3.0), Vietnam (2.9), the Philippines (2.6), and Nigeria (2.4), all of which have per-person incomes raning from 3% to 7% of the United States. Some emerging countries do better, including Lithuania (4.8) and Jordan (4.5).
Chile (7.1), Uruguay (7.0), and Estonia (6.8) are the only developing nations with respectable CPIs. An odd case is found in South Korea, which is somewhere between a developing and developed nation and has a mediocre CPI (5.4).
Our research focuses primarily on Internet access and bandwidth, data servers, income disparity, and local cost-of-living. The CPI is an additional ingredient. South Korea and Estonia lead the current rankings. Vietnam ranks #9, and Bulgaria (3.3) comes in at #17. The rest of the Top 20 are well-developed nations with high CPIs.
When we examine the technological factors only, removing CPI and other societal factors from the algorithm, we find a Top 15 that has a very high correlation with very poor Corruption Perceptions. Romania (3.6) and Morocco (3.4) are the “leaders” in this group.
The correlated CPIs do rise dramatically in the next group of 15. But it’s clear that corruption is not a highly mitigating factor when it comes to technology-driven economic development, nor does it seem to be an enormous hindrance to the global investment community. An argument could be made that societies become less corrupt as they progress, and in the modern era of technology-driven transparency, will do so more quickly.
Certainly my experience living in Southeast Asia and traveling the region showed many societal and bright spots in countries that do not fare so well in the CPI. In my view, where there’s a nicely developing technology infrastructure, there’s hope.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Backup Strategies to the Cloud
Cloud-based enterprise backup solutions offer a plethora of benefits. Yet many companies face an uphill battle when it comes to using cloud-based solutions to back up critical business information. Whether due to data security concerns or strict compliance requirements, a standard cloud-based approach isn’t always feasible. But there are ways to reap the benefits of cloud-based backup while abiding by corporate security and/or compliance mandates.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Andrew Renz, Senior Systems Engineer at Code 42, will outline how companies can leverage a variety of cloud backup strategies to confidently secure enterprise information. He will share wisdom gained from his experience selecting and/or deploying enterprise backup solutions for Apple, Oracle, Expedia and Intuit.
Does size really matter when it comes to the cloud?
In my experience, those tasked with making such business-critical decisions about what size cloud provider to opt for are confronted with several opinions on the matter, often from sources with their own biases on the subject.
To my knowledge, there is only one overriding advantage of a large cloud provider, namely price. Whilst companies who build bigger data centres can drive down the unit price offering cost savings to customers, flexibility in the contract is usually compromised as a result.
With large cloud providers it is nigh on impossible to get a contractual change, let alone a contract that is designed specifically for the needs of individual businesses.
Due to the sheer levels of governance in place, even the smallest of changes remain impossible as the system does not allow for flexibility – they operate on a “this is our offer, take it or leave it” basis.
In the case of …
FreshBooks Adds Balance Sheet Tool for Small Business Accounting
As part of FreshBooks shift from online invoicing only to cloud accounting for small businesses, they’ve expanding on their accounting offering with the release of Balance Sheets, a tool at helping businesses prepare to apply for loans, grants, submitting taxes, or seeking investors.
The new Balance Sheet tool allows users to see a summary of assets, liabilities, and equity and easily determine the health of their business.
FreshBooks claims more than 5 million users in 120 countries, and says “No one in North America has more paying users online other than Intuit’s QuickBooks Online. ”
More info on Balance Sheets is available at the FreshBooks Blog.
Symform to Exhibit and Speak at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Symform, a revolutionary, distributed cloud backup service, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 11th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Symform is a revolutionary and secure cloud backup service. The Symform Cloud Storage Network protects your files, your business, and your bottom line: when you contribute to our network, we provide you unlimited cloud storage and backup for free. Unlike traditional data center storage, Symform’s network encrypts, shreds, and globally distributes data. This disruptive technology provides more secure, more cost-effective, and higher-performing cloud backup than any alternative today. Customers join the Symform network by contributing excess local drive space and, in exchange, receive free cloud backup.
Virtualization Takes Cloud to the Next Level
BancVue creates the services that empower its customers to beat the giants in their field by better leveraging agile IT.
The first thing we wanted to do was to abstract the applications and the operating system from the hardware so that a hardware failure wouldn’t bring down our systems. For that, of course, we went to virtualization. We experimented with various virtualization products. Out of those trials, vSphere was the best software for a heterogeneous environment like ours, where we had Windows and different flavors of Linux.