Two of the biggest stars in business collaboration software in the last few years have been Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Server respectively. However, running these in-house can suck up 70% of your IT department’s time and help contribute to server sprawl as you attempt to keep legacy servers and software up to date. Consider using a ‘blackbox’ approach to running your IT infrastructure through managed hosting services.   Here are the top five benefits of adopting this approach.

Pure Infrastructure

Very few hosting providers can offer pure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).  Virtual Internet goes beyond this providing blended dedicated and cloud servers to match your business profile.

Orchestrate and innovate

Seal IT complexity inside a VI black box that allows you to orchestrate all your IT assets under centralized dashboards supported by engineers on call 24/7/365.  Further opportunities exist to innovate your systems including automating security, disaster recovery and server …

Over a year ago, I wrote my initial thoughts on VMware's CloudFoundry PaaS platform. Over the past year, the platform has read more

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just six weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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When designing applications for the cloud, or extending on-premise applications into the cloud, it should go without saying that you can’t just deploy and expect good results.

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Like other trends in technology, cloud computing is constantly being redefined and re-understood. The fact of the matter is that, while we have a general agreement on what cloud computing is, the term has come to mean many things to many people. The advent of cloud storage services and even Apple’s iCloud has only served to further muddy the waters, even in IT.

In the most basic sense, cloud computing refers to the use of an app or service that’s hosted in a non-traditional, non-server-based manner. In that sense, however, cloud computing is very broad, and perhaps that’s the right approach.

Here are some ways we commonly look at cloud computing, not all of which are completely compatible with one another:

• Cloud computing as the way to solve past IT mistakes. For years, pundits have pushed cloud solutions as a way to get IT out of difficult situations. While that may be true, not all previous IT decisions that didn’t work out correctly did so because they didn’t use the cloud.
• Cloud computing as data center outsourcing. There is a sense in which using cloud solutions allows an organization to outsource many of its data center functions. That being said, there are some basic IT services that will – and should – forever be housed internally. Add to that the fact that internal clouds are an option, and this definition makes less and less sense.
• Cloud computing as virtualization. Virtualization has certainly made its impact on IT and the data center, just as cloud computing has done. Good cloud implementations will rely on virtualization technologies, but the two are not coterminous. There are some cloud solutions that shouldn’t run in a virtualized environment, and virtualization doesn’t automatically put something in the cloud.
• Cloud computing as Internet based solutions. From the consumer perspective, cloud computing seems to be the use of specific services via the Internet. Certainly, you can make a case that online storage providers, or even implementations like QuickBooks Online are the only cloud solutions many consumers will ever see.

At its core, cloud computing is about the correct use of IT resources, about mitigating risk, and about providing users with the solutions they need when and where they need them.

Register today for our upcoming webinar: Introducing Infortrend: Storage Tiering for the SMB.

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One of the problems of proliferating SaaS apps might be termed Clutter 2.0 – the end result can be a handful or more of new apps in your world in a mishmash, each with its own integration and IT management costs.

Daniel Saks, Co-CEO of AppDirect, aims to end all that through the company’s Marketplace-as-a-Service, “a unified environment with single sign-on, centralized user management, and consolidated billing,” he says.

San Francisco-based AppDirect is almost three years old, and allows enterprise users to “find, buy, and use” apps, according to Saks, in fields such as communications/collaboration, HR, sales & marketing, and financial management.

SaaS apps appearing in the marketplace include Google Apps, Webex, Microsoft 365, TribeHR, Clockspot, Simplicant, Uberview, WorkETC, Salespod, SendGrid, New Relic, Yendo, FreeAgent, and Wave. The company makes the apps available through a network of service providers, including IBM, Google, Bell Canada, AppCelerator, BestBuy, and Visa.

“AppDirect is the only platform that connects developers and channel partners with small businesses through custom marketplaces,” according to Saks. “No other company makes it easier for small businesses to find and manage all the cloud services they need from one central location.”

Less confusion in the cloud? (Gasp.) Sounds revolutionary to me.

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Convirture has updated its ConVirt Enterprise Cloud virtualization and cloud management software to include support for the latest version of OpenStack (Essex). Support for CloudStack will be available in an update to the software that is planned for the third quarter of this year. ConVirt Enterprise Cloud also is also now certified to run on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
The company also released ConVirt 2.1 Open Source, an update to the free, open source version of its management software.

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For many of the same reasons that Software-as-a-Service is catching on with enterprise buyers, delivering web services on top of Infrastructure-as-a-Service architectures is appealing to the SaaS developers. Operational agility, lower CapEx, and a broad array of tools and services are on tap that make both public and private IaaS clouds a great platform to build on. But how do you do this securely, especially in the public cloud where you have no access to the network or hypervisor your servers are running in?
Furthermore, for many SaaS providers, the person charged with security considerations isn’t a CSO or IT specialist, but rather, a “DevOps” guru – someone with their hands in both development and operations. While the traditional security professional is focused on compliance and security rules, this new crop is more concerned with continuous development and high availability.

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The opportunity for today’s IT leaders is to transform IT by leveraging the new ecosystem of services that liberate IT from a technology focus to an information and innovation focus.
In his general session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Rich Taggart, Lead Partner at SHI, will offer a step-by-step approach to revitalizing IT as an innovation leadership organization.
Rich Taggart has over 25 years of experience in a variety of roles in IT and management. Prior to joining SHI, he was the Senior Vice President and Corporate CIO at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. In this role, he was responsible for support of the Disney Corporate organization which included brand management, human resources, legal, and other corporate functions and for support of departmental and global shared services applications.

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Whatever your course, meet Cloud complexity head on with a unified approach to handle extreme performance, reliability, availability, and simplicity.
In her session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Ayalla Goldschmidt, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle, will reveal the underpinnings for the Oracle Public Cloud as well as technology best-practices for developing private and hybrid cloud architectures using Oracle’s Engineered Systems together with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete array of technologies enabling you to embrace the paradigm shift of cloud computing and take full advantage of the cost savings and improved agility they promise. Together with Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata provide the world’s first and only integrated engineered system, which provide enterprises the best possible foundation for running enterprise applications with the performance, elasticity, reliability, and scale characteristics expected for cloud-based applications.

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