Protectionism, free trade and security up in the cloud
The US Ambassador’s rallying cry against “data protectionism” reflects US hopes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Plus, it says a lot about the future of cloud computing.
It was a peculiar piece, out of the blue, from Washington’s man in Australia: yesterday, Fairfax ran an op-ed from US Ambassador Jeff Bleich about “cloud protectionism” and why it was important that the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation currently underway (this week, in Auckland) pave the way for the removal of restrictions on movement of data across borders:
“Like people who once thought keeping their money hidden under the mattress was better than having it in a bank, some voices across the region, and even in Australia, have called for limiting the flow of data across borders, and requiring firms to install local data centres in each market to ensure local ‘control’. This ‘beggar thy neighbour’ protectionism would be just as self-defeating in the digital economy as in every other sector.”…
Apptio keeps track of cloud costs with free tool
Companies worried about their bills for cloud services have a new — and free — option: Apptio’s Cloud Express, which can track usage and costs for cloud services from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Rackspace.
IT departments are increasingly being asked to adopt cloud computing, but they often lack the necessary data and analysis required to make informed decisions, according to Apptio, a company that specializes in tools to help CIOs determine the cost and quality of their IT systems. Gathering cost information on use of public cloud providers is today a labor-intensive process, but Apptio wants to change that with the introduction of the free Cloud Express tool…
Avistar Earns Industry Honors with the Cloud Computing Excellence Award
Grazed from Avistar. Author: PR Announcement.
Avistar Communications (www.avistar.com), a leader in unified visual communications solutions, announced that it has been named a winner of the 2012 Cloud Computing Excellence Award, sponsored by TMC’s Cloud Computing Magazine. The award, which recognizes “companies that most effectively leveraged cloud computing in efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market,” underscores Avistar’s commitment to bring people together and make videoconferencing available to anyone, anywhere on any device.
Powered by the award-winning Avistar C3™ platform, Avistar’s ConnectWare Conferencing, introduced last month, is the industry’s only cloud based voice and videoconferencing platform focused on the OEM, technology and services segment. Avistar ConnectWare Conferencing allows Avistar’s partners to deliver a cloud based and branded voice and videoconferencing experience to their customers. This provides Avistar’s partners with the flexibility to focus on their core solution offerings, while quickly extending the value and capabilities of these offerings with an immersive voice and videoconferencing experience…
EMC follows VMware, rest of world, into OpenStack
With the storage leader now formally aboard the OpenStack Foundation, it’s almost easier to count the IT vendors who have not climbed aboard this open-source cloud bandwagon.
EMC has joined the OpenStack open-source cloud effort. The news hits three months after VMware — 80 percent owned by EMC — signaled its intention to back the initiative. EMC joins as a corporate-level member while VMware is a higher-level gold member…
Job security is a key barrier to uptake of cloud computing by IT managers
A key barrier to the uptake of cloud computing technologies is reassuring and convincing IS/IT managers that their jobs would not become obsolete if they shifted to the cloud, a major study by Lero involving 170 pages of interview case notes has revealed. It also found that the word ‘cloud’ actually scares some people.
According to Dr Lorraine Morgan and Dr Kieran Conboy, who conducted the Lero research at NUI Galway, the key barriers to cloud assimilation can be grouped across six headings: (i) Perceptions of the term ‘cloud’, (ii) Convincing IS/IT management, (iii) Persuading employees to use cloud systems, (iv) Security and privacy issues, (v) Integration, and (vi) Bandwidth and connectivity…
GlobeRanger Announces the Release of iMotion Stratus; Cloud Computing for RFID, Sensor and Asset Management Solutions
Today, GlobeRanger announced iMotion Stratus, the cloud-based version of its award winning iMotion Edgeware Platform. It delivers the features of the proven iMotion server-based platform from the cloud, easing deployment and enabling global capability. Stratus provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) avenue for companies to begin utilizing RFID technology without the upfront costs of RFID software and the servers to run it. It allows for economical small initial deployments with ability to scale up as needed. Deployments can scale from a single location to thousands of locations globally.
iMotion(TM) Stratus(TM) complements GlobeRanger’s premise-based iMotion Edgeware Platform and Edge Controller platform. Stratusintegrates seamlessly with iMotion server-based and network appliance-based deployments to allow the best-suited technology for the specific application to be used, whether an on-premise server or cloud-based…
Cloud Computing: How startup Alegion aims to humanize crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is a great idea in theory, but it hasn’t really lived up to its potential, says Alegion CEO Nathaniel Gates. He thinks with some fundamental tweaks, Alegion can change all that for the better. There’s man and there’s machine. And then there’s Alegion. The Mill Creek, Wash.-based startup launched at Amazon Web Services’ Re: Invent conference in late November with a business model that aims to turn crowdsourcing labor into the perfect blend of human-machine interaction.
Crowdsourcing hasn’t really taken off, Alegion Co-founder and CEO Nathaniel Gates told me, because it’s too complex to do correctly. This is especially true on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, atop which Alegion has built its business. Conceptually, he thinks it’s amazing, but the answer to the question of “Why hasn’t it taken off, why hasn’t it revolutionized labor?” is that compared with the rest of the AWS platform, Mechanical Turk is a bear to use…
Data demands, information storage, and cloud computing in 2012
Grazed from Twinstrata. Author: PR Announcement.
It was nearly a year ago that I predicted 10 hot trends in cloud data for 2012. While there’s a strong temptation to cast old predictions into ancient history and dive into 10 predictions for 2013, I felt it more appropriate to first glance back and reflect on how those past predictions fared.
Much can transpire over the course of 12 months: Hot technologies cool off, fads pass, buzzwords vanish and, of course, some technologies really stick. Without much ado, here are the predicted 2012 trends and how they fared:
1. Hybrid data storage environments which integrate cloud storage into on-premise IT.
2012 brought key validations by cloud service providers of hybrid storage environments via product roll-outs and acquisitions. These included the introduction of the AWS storage gateway and the acquisition of StorSimple by Microsoft. You’ll hear a lot from us at TwinStrata after the end of this year regarding hybrid cloud storage adoption, so stay tuned…
Technology investors betting big on cloud computing startups on hope of strong returns
Technology investors are raising the tempo of investments in cloud computing startups buoyed by strong returns and growing customer demand for software as a service. This week, venture funds closed two more deals in the sector with Norwest Venture Partners putting in $6 million (about Rs 32.6 crore) in first-round funding for Attune Technologies. The Chennai-based startup uses cloud technology for scheduling, billing and management of patient data with a base of 2 million patient records.
Angel investment network Mumbai Angels has made a seed investment of under Rs 5 crore in Pune-based startup MaxiMojo, which provides cloud-based distribution and revenue management solutions for hotels…
Cloud computing: the lessons learned
Just a couple of years ago, some prominent analysts would have had us believe that cloud computing was poised to sweep all before it. Firms would be queuing up to fill roadside skips with newly-redundant hardware, and IT staff would be rede-ployed as strategic information workers, while server rooms would be refitted as high-tech breakouts or Google-esque “snugs”.
While there have been major advances in the use of the cloud, even its most ardent advocates would admit that take-up has not been as rapid or as far reaching as most had imagined…