Cloud technologies are moving at a rapid pace. The compelling drivers are the need for on-demand business solutions, lower cost for IT and the ability to deliver the rich experience that users need and expect. Enterprises are wrestling with private vs. public vs. hybrid cloud solutions. The need for high levels of customizability, flexibility, and agility will drive many enterprises to the public cloud. The foundation for this vision will be defined by an open approach that delivers best of breed technologies + flexibility + choice from data center to client.
Intel is bringing together a broad network of leading hardware and solution providers to build and enhance cloud solutions that are interoperable, multi-vendor and embrace standards. This addresses the initial limiters such as security, standards, governance and legacy apps which are increasingly less of an issue.
Veteran CIO Frank Fanzilli Joins 1010data Board of Directors
1010data, Inc., a market leader in sharing, analyzing, and monetizing Big Data, today announced that Frank Fanzilli has joined the company’s Board of Directors. As the first global CIO for Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), Fanzilli has extensive, first-hand experience evaluating, purchasing and implementing ground breaking technology at global organizations. This expertise will be vital as 1010data looks to continue its rapid growth in new global vertical markets such as retail, consumer packaged goods, telecom and financial services with its unique, cloud-based analytics solution.
The World According to Cloud
Are you aware of the new reality that cloud computing is bringing? Cloud is not as global as you might think. Even heaven needs a place on earth and for the cloud to touch base it needs to find the right data center.
In his General Session, Jelle Frank van der Zwet, Manager Cloud Segment at Interxion, introduces some of their customers, case studies and shares insights on key trends in cloud usage and adoption in the US and Europe.
Jelle Frank van der Zwet is Manager Cloud Segment at Interxion. He manages the go-to-market of Interxion’s Cloud Hubs – the pan-European marketing and product development program for Interxion’s sizeable and fast-growing cloud community.
How to Put the Cloud on Your Device
The core realization behind Cloud-Oriented Architecture (COA) is that everything is potentially part of the Cloud. There’s nothing in the NIST definition of Cloud Computing that requires Cloud resources to live in data centers, after all. We don’t mean to say that mobile devices are inherently part of the Cloud, however. To qualify as Cloud resources, it must be possible to provision and deprovision them automatically, with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. We have the technology to dynamically provision and deprovision VM instances on mobile devices, since that’s what remote virtual desktops are all about.
Amazon Delivers Cloud Archive Storage with Glacier
At the end of August 2012, Amazon Web Services released their latest service offering – a long-term archive service called Glacier. As a complement to their existing active data access service S3, Glacier provides long term storage for “cold” data – information that has to be retained for a long time but doesn’t require frequent access.
Is there still a place for the virtual tape library?
Today, a great number of different storage mediums exist whose purpose is to retain information in some manner. One of the oldest data storage mediums, the tape, is a linear storage system that still has great application with today’s revisions to this long standing technology.
Implementing tape storage within virtual storage infrastructure can be a great asset to a backup and recovery solution for many industries.
The tape storage system sequentially stores data on drives that utilise a magnet tape as a storage medium. The core design of tape has existed for many years but has been refined to operate more efficiently and reliably while sustaining the immense amount of information needed in today’s storage solutions.
Most of today’s tape drives resemble the form factor of a cassette tape rather than the big projector-like reels which slowly rotated in the computing labs, seen in early science fiction …
OpenStack Keeps VMware Waiting
VMware, Intel and NEC are still waiting to hear if their applications to join
the open source OpenStack Foundation as dues-paying Gold members have
been accepted.
VMware’s surprise application is considered a particular coup for the
fledgling organization since it was positioned as OpenStack’s proprietary
opposition.
Cloud Archiving and Compliance
This is such a hugely important area for Cloud Providers to develop new services because of the double impact it represents.
First there is the simple facet of the business opportunity. Clients like governments and the finance industry have extensive requirements for archiving and e-discovery.
Secondly and the accelerating factor is that the biggest hold up to Cloud adoption is the lack of maturity in this area. Typically the fears all centre on issues like data residency, where is the data hosted, and what protections are in place to ensure this data is not tampered with and so on.
These are requirements that archiving solutions deal with straight off the bat.
BSA: EU cloud uptake lower than global average
Highest number of cloud users in Romania and Greece, according to research
Research from software advocates Business Software Alliance (BSA) has inferred a surprising lack of cloud usage among European Union computer users.
The figures, surveying 4000 people, showed that across the EU, whilst 86% of respondents used cloud services for personal use, less than a third (29%) used it for business purposes.
Greece and Romania had the most cloud users with 39%, higher than the global average of 24%, with Poland (25%), the UK (21%) and Austria (20%) making up the top five.
The most popular responses to the question “What type of online cloud computing services have you used?” were:
- Email service (79%), compared to a global figure of 78%
- Online word processing aligned with 36% of EU consumers (45% global numbers)
- Photo storage and online games came joint third (35%) with European computer users
The global figures …
Mimecast Signs Over 50 New Legal Customers in Six Months
Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, today announced that it now works with 70 of the top 100 legal firms in the UK and around 130 of the top 200.
Recent additions to Mimecast’s portfolio of legal customers include SJ Berwin, Foot Anstey, Kingsley Napley, Weightmans and Russell Cooke.
Mimecast has signed up 50 new law firms in the last six months and also significantly increased its market presence in UK chambers, with over 25 now Mimecast customers. The Bar Council of England and Wales are one of the latest to use Mimecast’s services for security and long-term archiving.