As more and more large enterprises start to make public adoptions of cloud and service providers figuring out the role they play in the market, one of the biggest potential cloud adopters has been watching and looking for signs that the market can support one of the most public facing cloud deployments. Yes, Governments have […]
VMTurbo Says It’s OK to Virtualize Critical Apps
VMTurbo has added application delivery visibility to its intelligent workload management software for cloud and virtualized environments.
The new Operations Manager 3.1 basically assures companies that it’s okay to virtualize business-critical applications because it can ensure service and resource availability based on application performance and business priority. That includes transaction time and performance characteristics for multi-tiered applications
The widgetry expands VMTurbo’s patented Economic Scheduling Engine (ESE) model to the ADC environment, ensuring application performance for multi-tiered business-critical applications.
It says its ESE model provides a fundamentally different method for controlling and managing data center and cloud infrastructures by employing a market-based approach that allocates resources, manages capacity and ensures application performance based on business priority.
Cloud Triumphs and Pitfalls at Cloud Expo New York
There’s no substitute for experience. If you could learn from the successes and failures of an early enterprise cloud pioneer, your own cloud journey could avoid similar pitfalls and perhaps reap faster rewards. Years ago, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia made the strategic decision to migrate to an agile IT operating model, adopting “as-a-service” IT delivery wherever possible. Now, the bank is enjoying the benefits of its early commitment. However, the journey was not always smooth. Implementing a successful cloud strategy is dependent on much more than new technologies, and hinges on a well-designed adoption plan spanning organization, operating model, and IT service portfolio changes.
In their session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dave Roberts, VP of Strategy and Marketing at ServiceMesh, and Jon Waldron, Executive Architect at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, will explore key lessons learned by the largest bank in Australia during the rollout of multiple enterprise-wide, private cloud services. Find out what worked and what didn’t so you can apply the same lessons to your own cloud initiatives.
News Round-Up 5/5/2012: What Makes the Cloud Cool, Feds in the Cloud, 10 Things Your Cloud Contract Needs
There have been some exciting announcements and fascinating news articles recently regarding cloud services and service providers. Every week we will round up the most interesting topics from around the globe and consolidate them into a weekly summary.
Cloud Computing Gains in Federal Government
The Federal Government is warming to the speed, agility and functionality of cloud computing.
State companies helping Army with cloud computing
The U.S. Army has turned to cloud computing, and to Wisconsin companies, to improve its intelligence gathering in Afghanistan.
Saas Offering Provides Detailed Analysis of Your Software Portfolio
Are you faced with the need to do a software portfolio analysis but find the prospect daunting given the scattered nature of your operation? A new SaaS-based offering might fit the bill.
SaaS Business Apps Drive SMB Cloud Computing Adoption
Lots of small and medium businesses have discovered the benefits of software-as-a-service. These SaaS applications are driving cloud adoption among SMBs.
Here’s What Makes The Cloud So Cool
Mike Pearl from PriceWaterhouseCooper provides a useful plan of attack for business adoption of cloud computing.
10 Things You Just Gotta Have in Your Cloud Contract
CFO’s guide to the wild and wooly world of cloud services in which contracts are mutable, companies come and go, and politics a continent away could materially impact your business.
Also in the news:
- • BofA Tech Guru Preaches 6 Cloud Truths
- • Google Opens Up Its BigQuery Data Analytics Service to All
- • SaaS Optimization: How WAN Acceleration Speeds Up the Cloud
Cloud and Clear: Please Join Me at Cloud Expo in June
It’s April in Vancouver, which got me thinking about clouds. Although the IT buzz in 2012 has been dominated by mobile and big data, Cloud computing is still a hot topic, especially since it is an enabler for both. In the public Cloud space, Google just launched Drive.
Canadian Cloud 2.0, From Cisco
This week I published our latest Cloud Best Practices white paper, called ‘Microsoft Cloud 2.0‘. The main activity of the CBPN is this vendor matching, i.e. we identify the best practice model, and then describe how different vendors can be used to implement those models. In this case Cloud 2.0 mapped on to the Microsoft […]
Google Street View Wi-Fi Snooping: Commentary
On Saturday, April 28, the FCC released the full un-redacted report on Google’s Street View project. The report is only 25 pages long and can be found at the bottom of this post. I find the following tidbits particularly interesting: “ …Engineer Doe developed Wi-Fi data collection software code that, in addition to collecting Wi-Fi network […]
How to Monetize the OpenStack Wave
After OpenStack was announced at OSCON in the summer of 2010, the degree of momentum behind this new open source platform has been nothing short of spectacular. Startups and enterprises alike have placed their strategic bets to monetize the OpenStack wave in various ways. As an ecosystem insider and one of the founding sponsors of the OpenStack Foundation, I wanted to offer my views on how various organizations are looking to skin this cat.
I’d like to focus on three of the many efforts currently underway. These three, in particular, happen to be the most vocal about their position and represent three distinct strategy camps. They are Nebula with its OpenStack appliance; Piston with its PentOS cloud operating system; and Dell’s Crowbar, an OpenStack installer.
Industry Dynamics of Online Storage and the Decade Ahead
Guest Post by Eric Greenwood
Eric Greenwood is a technophile whose interests have led him to study all things related to the cloud computing movement from online storage to software as a service. Get more tips and advice on his Cloud Computing blog.
Online, or cloud storage, is a massively growing industry, already poised to change the way we use our computers. By 2016, consumers are predicted to be spending as much $16 billion on cloud storage annually.
Big names are flying into the cloud. Oracle and Hewlett Packard are rushing to sell cloud computing tools; Amazon’s cloud services division has earned an estimated $750 million from cloud services in 2011 – and predictions are for earnings of $2.5 billion by 2014 from all cloud services including their Simple Storage Service. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggests potential for Amazon Web Services could surge to match that of its retail earnings, which last year topped $25 billion. Rackspace’s cloud servicing is also surging.
While currently only approximately 10% of global spending IT goes to cloud computing, the shift to cloud storage is a growing trend and market.
Popular cloud storage service Dropbox already has over fifty million users, and $250 million in venture capital; and Google Drive’s new online storage is poised to rival them. Like Dropbox’s chief competitor, Sugar Sync, Drive offers 5 GB of free storage, over doubling the free storage amount provided by Dropbox.
Storage competitors are also likely to follow Dropbox’s option of gallery pages that allow users who follow a link to see photos, presentations and videos without downloading each individual file. Dropbox is valued at approximately $4 billion, currently. The company’s CEO recently turned down a reported nine-figure offer from Apple. Apple of course maintains its own online storage system, iCloud, free to all users of iOs5. iCloud’s seamless interface with Apple products keeps this cloud storage service somewhat above the competitive fray.
Dropbox was recently voted “startup of the year,” and is reportedly the fifth most valuable web start-up, globally. But along with iCloud, SugarSync, and Google’s new drive, competition is fierce from other online storage startups ranging from Box.net, now known simply as Box, to Microsoft’s massive SkyDrive, Carbonite, which offers solid data backup services, and SpiderOak, which offers data encryption. Each of these cloud storage companies have greatly benefitted from the decline in pricing for online storage. Clearwell Systems research estimates that the storage cost for 1 gigabyte of information that cost $20 in 2000 is now approximately ten cents. HTML 5 has also greatly accelerated the growth of cloud storage companies. The cost and technology trends that have made cloud computing expand will only accelerate over the next ten years.
Dropbox’s popular rival SugarSync is an outgrowth of Sharpcast, the 2006 creator behind Sharpcast Photos, utilized for synching photo images to multiple devices. SugarSync’s differentiation with its competitors is based on its use of an automated refreshing process which means users don’t need to update their own synced files.
Microsoft’s recent overhaul of its SkyDrive online storage has doubled the storage file limit size, and made sharing as well as file management simpler for users. Just last month, Microsoft released a desktop app for SkyDrive, and allows direct file sharing to Twitter.
On the downside, there may only be a finite amount of users willing to store their data in the cloud, and a lot of competitors vying for a slice of the same pie. What’s good for consumers in terms of free storage or service perks may be difficult to sustain an entire industry of cloud storage competitors. Consolidation of some companies may be necessary.
A recent cautionary note was also founded when the file storage and hosting business Megapuload in Hong Kong was shut down by the U.S. Justice department for assisting in the violation of U.S. copyrights due to the ability of users to upload copyrighted material and distribute a link to it.
Megaupload’s violations bring up a key point in cloud storage, leading to the question as to whether or not Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, and all their competitors must scan files for copyright violations. Should this occur, the market will likely improve for Google with its Content ID already in place. Privacy and trust issues are also key in cloud storage growth. The only online storage company that claims to be unable to view users’ stored data is SpiderOak.
Online storage may be still in a speculative stage, but with data volumes predicted to multiply over forty times by the year 2020, data storage in one form or another is not only here to stay, it’s here to grow. Publicly traded companies such as EMC Corporation, NetApp, Isilon, Amazon, and CSC are providing expanded cloud storage options, and growing in financial leaps and bounds. IBM is working on a cloud system that can create virtual machines, able to integrate data without the costs of standard IT development, and simplifying cloud resources.
Complete data management through the cloud is clearly coming in the near future. Personal computer users and businesses multi-national to mom and pop size, must address data storage. Cloud storage is the go-to storage of the future, protected from human error, disasters, theft, and hardware malfunctions.
Cloud Computing in Higher Education
The irony about cloud computing in the higher education environment is that most schools have already been using it to some extent but may not even realize it.
Gmail is one example. Yahoo Mail is another. The fact is web-based applications, which many schools rely on for daily communication, don’t always register with most people as being part of the cloud computing trend. But they are, given that they essentially fit the layman’s rudimentary explanation of the cloud: where storage and computing capacity exist (provided by a vendor) so all that is needed on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone is a browser. There are more “technical details” to actual cloud infrastructure, platforms and delivery, but for the purposes here, we will stick with the basic view.
There’s no question that cloud computing usage has exploded and will continue unabated. An article in the September 30, 2011 issue of Campus Technology stated that a new industry forecast is predicting that cloud computing will account for 33 percent of all data center traffic by 2015 – tripling the current percentage and about 12 times the total current volume.