December 10, 2012 Off

What does a cloud IT career really mean?

By David

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Rich Hein.

The push is on to put more infrastructure and services in the cloud, but what does that mean for the cloud technology job market? The term cloud computing has become part of the vernacular in companies of all industries and sizes. Over the past few years, more and more companies are moving to the cloud to save money, scale more easily and achieve faster times to production.

If you frequent job boards or listen to chatter about cloud jobs, there is an explosion of career opportunities, but according to David Foote of Foote Partners, a Florida-based analyst firm that specialises in IT analysis and forecasting, cloud roles have yet to be clearly defined. "We’re in a period of transition where we’re moving to the next level of what cloud means," Foote says. The challenge many companies face, Foote says, is that we have yet to define the skills necessary for leveraging all the cloud has to offer, and as a result there’s a lot of confusion over what a cloud role really is…

December 10, 2012 Off

Separating Fact From Fiction in Cloud Computing

By David

Grazed from Data Center Journal. Author: Matt Zieg.

The cloud. The name conjures images of an obscuring mist always out of our reach. The reality of cloud computing can seem just as mysterious. Before hurtling into this nebulous IT frontier, it is important to separate hype from reality. This discussion closely examines the validity of some commonly held beliefs about the cloud and a summary of those findings.

Cloud computing is a powerful and important tool for today’s businesses, but like any tool it must be used properly to realize its true benefit. Responsible businesses and IT departments will take the time to fully understand the risks and benefits associated with the cloud, challenge common assumptions and misperceptions, and make informed decisions that benefit their organizations and their customers. In evaluating these cloud-related assumptions, Emerson Network Power researchers focused specifically on public clouds and posed a simple question: Fact or fiction?…

December 10, 2012 Off

Get a direct connection to the public cloud

By David

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Matt Prigge.

By now, just about everyone is familiar with the potential benefits of the public cloud, even if they haven’t yet decided to leverage it in some way. The elasticity and scalability offered by the cloud combined with pay-as-you-go pricing can be compelling.

However, for heavy cloud users, simply comparing the costs and relative flexibility of running workloads in the cloud versus running them on-premise doesn’t tell the whole story. Potential users must consider how they’re actually going to get access to the systems that reside in the cloud — especially in relation to hybrid cloud and storage-intensive applications…

December 10, 2012 Off

7 Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2013 That Make Perfect Sense

By David

Grazed from Forbed. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Every year at this time, analysts, prognosticators and pundits alike try to size up the year ahead in technology. And — no surprise — cloud computing is this year’s hottest topic. Cloud is already a force to be reckoned with on the business technology scene — IT executives, vendors and analysts alike are trying to keep up to determine what it all really means and where it is taking us.

To that end, I culled analysts’ prediction lists for 2013 and identified some practical predictions that are likely to come to pass, if they haven’t done so already. Here are some of the predictions that really make sense:…

December 10, 2012 Off

Cloud, Control or Both

By David

Contributed Article. Author: Tri Nguyen, CISSP, MCSE, Manager, Product Management in the Windows Management Group at Quest Software (now part of Dell)

Cloud, Control or Both

Everywhere I look, it’s Cloud, cloud, cloud… So it’s clear that the cloud is here, but the question I have is this: if organizations go to Cloud, do they lose control and, secondarily, do they care? Let’s start by defining Cloud. For the purposes of this article, my definition of Cloud is any service with which your important, enterprise data might be stored somewhere that your IT department does not specifically own: Office 365, Google Apps/Docs, Dropbox, etc. There are advantages to leveraging these services, but there also are disadvantages. Some of your challenges go away (hint: they are not all bad things to rid yourself of, but there are new challenges you have to consider, as well). For example:

December 10, 2012 Off

HP Discover: HP Expands Converged Cloud Portfolio With New Solutions

By David

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Hewlett-Packard is building on the HP Converged Cloud portfolio that it announced in April 2012 with new offerings aimed at helping customers drive adoption and usage of hybrid cloud environments. Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager, Converged Cloud at HP, offered first-hand perspectives to Talkin’ Cloud.

The vendor introduced the new and updated solutions at its HP Discover conference in Frankfurt, Germany. HP also says more than 100 channel partners and ISVs (independent software vendors) now back the HP Cloud effort. Included in the announcement are new versions of HP CloudSystem, HP Cloud Service Automation and HP Continuous Delivery Automation — each of which got an incremental update. HP also unveiled new and enhanced public cloud services under the HP Cloud Services portfolio…

December 10, 2012 Off

Encrypting data in the cloud

By David

Grazed from I.T.WorldCanada. Author: Dave Webb.

We’re in the midst of analyzing some survey data for an upcoming report on cloud computing strategy and have discovered that, thus far into the cloud computing era, security is till the No. 1 concern among companies debating going to the cloud. But a cloud environment isn’t inherently less secure than an on-premise environment; it’s all in the implementation.

Encryption of data is one way to mitigate the risk of data exposure, a major security and compliance concern. This article by Thomas Trappler, director of software licensing at UCLA, examines the questions to ask a cloud provider about how encryption is implemented in their environment, and introduces two new encryption concepts being developed on the cloud provider side: distributed file systems and data obfuscation…

An interesting takeaway from the article is the importance of the handling of encryption keys. If they’re stored local to the data, they can be retrieved by an attacker and used to de-encrypt data. But if they’re stored elsewhere and lost, the data becomes useless.

December 10, 2012 Off

The Community Cloud: Are Microsoft Dynamics Customers Ready to Join?

By David

Grazed from MSDynamicsWorld.com. Author: Bridget McCrea.

As cloud computing continues to mature, the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, has become a popular software option for firms of all sizes and across all industries. A newer entrant to the cloud family – known simply as the "community cloud" – is now catching the eye of companies interested in connecting with business partners, vendors, customers, and even competitors via the Internet.

This idea of forming close ties and alliances across industries isn’t new. Companies have been connecting with one another in the offline world – and via network-based, industry-focused buying and selling communities that formed during the dot-com era (and some of which eventually faded) – for decades. Now some of them are using the same concept in the cloud…

December 9, 2012 Off

Frost & Sullivan: Australia Leads Cloud Adoption in APAC

By David

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The Australian cloud computing market was worth US$ 882.4 million in 2012 and is expected to reach US$ 3.33 billion in 2016. Frost & Sullivan expects this market to grow at a CAGR of 40.3% from 2011-2016. According to Andrew Milroy, Vice President, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, cloud computing is witnessing growing traction in Australia. Indeed, Australia is leading cloud adoption in the Asia Pacific region.

"Almost a third of businesses in Asia Pacific today use cloud computing. In Australia, 43% of businesses have adopted cloud computing, the highest in the region," said Milroy at Frost & Sullivan’s ICT outlook briefing 2013 held in Sydney today. The increasing use of cloud computing together with mobility, big data and social media are transforming the ways in which organizations and individuals engage with one another. They are also transforming the way business is conducted. Key changes include a reduction in the size of IT departments and much greater cross industry convergence…

December 9, 2012 Off

Forrester – Cloud Predictions for 2013

By David

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Xath Cruz.

Now that we’re nearing the end of the year, there is one key takeaway from the cloud computing industry: enterprise use has finally arrived. The use of Cloud Computing is no longer hidden from plain sight and IT departments are now very upfront about their company use, resulting in legitimate cloud budgeting taking place. In fact, the latest Forrsights Surveys state that half of all enterprises in North America and Europe are planning to create budgets for cloud related investments in 2013.

This means that cloud usage will finally get real in 2013. It marks the end for all the speculation and the cloudwashing, as corporations and organizations start getting down to the real business of incorporating cloud technology into their formal IT portfolios. Some of the most important predictions about cloud technology in the coming year include:…