Cloud computing has gained momentum and is increasingly being embraced by enterprises of all sizes. But the cloud itself is often its own worst enemy as performance, reliability, and the lack of enterprise-level capabilities have led to obstacles in growth and adoption of this still promising infrastructure methodology. This is only exacerbated by an increasingly mobile and global world, one that is plagued with security concerns.
In his Lunchtime Focus Keynote at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Neil Cohen, Akamai’s VP of Enterprise Application Products, will discuss the challenges you face in the cloud, and how you can leverage both public and hybrid cloud infrastructures without sacrificing security or control.
What Does GRC and Las Vegas Have to Do with IT?
In the spirit of leaving Las Vegas I started thinking about the transformation of Las Vegas from a desert oasis created by organized crime to a billion-dollar industry. How did big business and Wall St. push the mob out of Vegas? Movies and television shows, such as Casino, Goodfellas, and the Sopranos illustrate a side of organized crime that few rarely ever witness or have witnessed. Las Vegas was created by organized crime to service their syndicate with money laundering, prostitution, entertainment and schmoozing services. It worked splendidly; until it didn’t. Something changed and it created a landslide that eventually saw Vegas’ founders ousted and replaced with a larger, more powerful and adept landlord—mega-corporations. How they accomplished this is a lesson that clearly should be noted by IT.
Believe it or not, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) was the tool of choice in ousting organized crime from Vegas. Big business and government made it an inhospitable environment for crime syndicates to operate; at least with regard to gaming and hoteling. The first step was to foster transparency upon the casinos. Long suspected for ‘rigging’ of games, local and federal government initiatives pushed for regulation and compliance for gaming. This had the impact of reducing the ill-gotten gains for organized crime, while lowering the risk for gamblers since the odds were considerably greater in their favor without the magnetic roulette ball or aces tucked under the blackjack table.
Cloud Computing: Symform Announces Sponsorship of Cloud Expo New York
Symform, a revolutionary cloud storage and backup service, on Wednesday announced that it will be speaking, sponsoring and exhibiting at the upcoming cloud and high-tech industry event Cloud Expo New York.
On Monday, June 11 at 5:45 p.m. ET Symform execs Praerit Garg and Margaret Dawson will speak on «The Distributed and Decentralized Cloud.» Dawson is also a featured speaker at the Cloud Boot Camp, where she is speaking on “Extending Your Existing Infrastructure and Data to the Cloud” with Pavan Pant, Director of Product Management at CloudSwitch, Terremark, on Thursday, June 14 at 8:00 a.m. ET. Finally, Symform is sponsoring and presenting a lightening talk at the unconference Cloud Camp Tuesday, June 12.
Data Center Fabric for Cloud Computing at Cloud Expo New York
Enterprise IT organizations want to deploy a virtualized data center fabric that will provide the foundation for agile private cloud computing. Getting there does not have to be difficult, but it does require a new approach to data center infrastructure design – an approach that is non-disruptive, vendor-agnostic, and very adaptable to changing business requirements.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Bruce Fingles, Chief Information Officer and VP of Product Quality at Xsigo, will look at the limitations of traditional thinking, and show how extending the power of virtualization can help maximize performance, minimize complexity, and empower IT organizations with an agile data center fabric.
GoGrid’s Private Cloud Computing Solution Powers Business Services
GoGrid on Wednesday announced its Private Cloud infrastructure solution is powering a new network management application for Orange Business Services, the France Telecom-Orange branch dedicated specifically to business-to-business services.
“We’re excited to work with Orange Business Service as they cloud-enable this important infrastructure monitoring service for their customers,” said Jeffrey Samuels, CMO, GoGrid. “GoGrid’s Private Cloud was an ideal solution for their requirements because it provides true cloud-computing capabilities that can scale as needed and offer the requisite control and flexibility.”
There is Only One Cloud-Computing Myth
The only cloud-computing myth is that there are cloud-computing myths.
Instead, there are many articles about cloud myths, an endless parade of strawman arguments put out by writers, analysts, and marketers that lectures us on why we’re so stupid to believe the “myths” that cloud is inexpensive, is easy to deploy and maintain, that it automatically reduces costs, etc.
Anyone who’s ever written a line of code or approved an enterprise IT contract knows there are no simple solutions and no universal solvents in their world. Never have been and never will be.
However, there are many powerful arguments in favor of enteprises migrating some of their apps and processes to the cloud, and there is a separate consumer-cloud industry that allowed me to listen to Igor Presnyakov rip through AC/DC’s “All Night Long” and Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” on my Android phone last night.
I thank Google for the latter opportunity, even as the company remains as enigmatic as Mona Lisa about what’s going on behind the scenes.
It’s too bad Google is not one of our great sharers, because the enterprise IT shops of the world could no doubt learn a lot more about cloud computing from watching Google at work than it can from using Google Apps.
But enough whining. Each organization needs to find its own cloud, and this should be a rigorous, perhaps time-consuming process. Discussion of particular cloud strategies and vendors should come at the end of this process. First, figure out what you want to do and why.
A nice cost analysis is helpful, of course, but my brain starts to seize up when the term “ROI” is put into play. At this point, it becomes a contest to game the system and produce an ROI forecast that will have a false advertising of direct impacts of the technology on the company’s business. When used to justify technology, ROI and its sinister cousin, TCO, are the enemies of business success.
A nice thing about cloud is that the heated political and religious debates over Open Source have been (mostly) replaced by practical arguments over which specific product, framework, or architecture provides the best option for a particular initiative. If discussion of cloud should come at the end of the overall decision-making process, discussion of Open Source should come at the end of that discussion.
Don’t try to transform the organization overnight. This will happen on its own as more and more cloud floats into the enterprise. And don’t believe in the myth that there are cloud myths. There aren’t; only more wondrous technology that needs to be examined carefully as you continue the eternal quest to keep things as unscrewed up as possible in your organization.
enStratus Named “Coffee Break Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2012 New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that enStratus Networks, provider of the enStratus cloud infrastructure management solution, has been named “Day 2 and Day 3 Morning Coffee Break Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management solution for deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in public, private and hybrid clouds. enStratus has a multi-cloud architecture that provides governance, automation and cloud independence.
Report Examines Leading Vendors of EMR/EHR Technology for Small Physician Practices
IDC Health Insights has released a new IDC MarketScape report designed to guide firms evaluating electronic medical record/electronic health record (EMR/EHR) vendors providing solutions to small physician practices. The new report, IDC MarketScape: U.S. Ambulatory EMR/EHR for Small Practices 2012 Vendor Assessment (Document #HI234732) provides an assessment of eleven EMR/EHR products from nine U.S.-based vendors that target small physician practices and qualify for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) incentives. In the report, IDC Health Insights provides an opinion on which vendors are well-positioned today through current capabilities and which are best positioned to gain market share over the next one to four years. Vendors included in the report are: ADP AdvancedMD; Allscripts; athenahealth; eClinicalWorks; Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc.; LSS (MEDITECH); Lumeris; Optum (OptumInsight); and Practice Fusion.
IDC Health Insights expects the U.S. market to move from less than 25% adoption in 2009 to over 80% adoption by 2016. This anticipated growth is primarily influenced by regulatory stipulations and government incentives under the ARRA; additional trends include the quality of care improvements that result from using EMRs/EHRs in ambulatory practices, their growing capabilities and use of cloud computing, the use of mobile devices in ambulatory practices, and the consolidation of provider vendors as market saturation increases.
According to Judy Hanover, IDC Health Insights research director, “ARRA presents an unprecedented opportunity for providers in small practices to garner federal incentives for demonstrating meaningful use of clinical applications that will help to improve the quality of care, enhance patient safety and prepare their practices for the future. However, the EHR technology itself, the requirements and deadlines for achieving meaningful use and capturing incentives, and the need to change their business practices and integrate the new technology into practice patterns, present complex issues and challenges. If providers allow the constraints of meaningful use to dictate their technology choices and limit the goals for implementation, they may only see the short-term incentives and not the long-term strategic advantage that EHR can bring to their practices and may fail to compete under healthcare reform.”
With hundreds of small practice EMR/EHR vendors participating in the market, the vendors included in this report were carefully selected to include the top five market leaders in the U.S., and a selection of additional vendors that offer compelling technology, strategies or services, such as advanced software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, innovative pricing or service options, platforms or architecture capabilities. This IDC Marketscape highlights the attributes and key capabilities that providers should look for when selecting an EMR/EHR, and offers a guide for using best practice-based approaches to leveraging an EMR/EHR to build competitive advantage in small practices.
Each product was evaluated against 25 criteria in two category measures for success: strategies and capabilities. Within each of these criteria, IDC Health Insights has weighted specific features of the product or the product’s vendor that are particularly significant for purchasers of the software and for users. A significant and unique component of this evaluation is the inclusion of customer references for all of the products included in the assessment.
Ms. Hanover will review the results of the IDC MarketScape in a one-hour, complimentary Web conference, EHR in the Small Ambulatory Practice: An IDC MarketScape Analysis, on Wednesday, June 6 at 12:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. She will also review best practices for implementing EMR/EHR in small ambulatory practices. Register here: http://bit.ly/JjEGj7.
i2c, KargoCard Partner for Prepaid, Mobile Payments, Loyalty Solutions in China
i2c, Inc., a payment processing technology company, and KargoCard, a Shanghai-based prepaid service provider, have partnered to deliver prepaid, mobile payment and loyalty solutions to merchants in China. i2c will provide payment processing services to enable KargoCard to offer a robust suite of products within China.
“KargoCard is an established leader in their market with a rapidly growing distribution network, strong management team and an impressive client list,” said Amir Wain, CEO of i2c. “Their drive to revolutionize the Chinese payments industry aligns perfectly with i2c’s commitment to bring innovation to global payments.”
In a recent report by Mercator Advisory Group, China was estimated to be the world’s largest prepaid market in terms of market potential. With several high-profile clients like Beard Papa, Happy Lemon and Cloud Nine, KargoCard is set to grow exponentially in this market. To support KargoCard and i2c’s growing presence in the Asia-Pacific region, i2c is building out a new data center in Shanghai.
“Our tremendous growth and aggressive expansion plans require an established processing platform that offers superior flexibility and scalability. i2c’s platform provides this, as well as a rich feature set that will allow us to better serve our customers,” said KargoCard CEO David Suzuki.
Cloud Computing Bootcamp at Cloud Expo New York
Want to understand in just hours what experts have spent many hundreds of days deciphering?
The new, «super-sized» four-day Cloud Computing Bootcamp is a brief introduction to cloud computing carefully created and devised to help you keep up with evolving trends like Big Data, PaaS, APIs, Mobile, Social and Data Analytics. Solutions built around these topics require a sound cloud computing infrastructure to be successful while helping customers harvest real benefits from this transformational change that is happening in the IT ecosystem.