Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Radhika Nallayam.

Years from today, when historians tell our children the story of IT circa 2012, the shift to opex models is going to be an important milestone and they will point to cloud computing as the incendiary that lit the first flame.

Like many historians, they will be wrong; opex models have existed before cloud computing. But it’s hard to blame them for thinking that. While the cloud isn’t the first opex model, it’s definitely served as a tipping point for the opex-IT movement. It’s what fired CFO imaginations as they dreamed of a world where sunk IT costs were a thing of the past…

Grazed from UCStrategies.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

The latest CIO Tech Priorities research reveals that head IT-decision makers intend to heighten spending over the next year. It is anticipated that the biggest amount of this spending will go towards cloud computing services, mobile technology, and finally, business intelligence and analytics (BI&A). According to the most recent CIO Magazine Tech Poll/Tech Priorities survey, IT budgets are expected to increase in the next year and mobile technology investments are likely to take the biggest portion. The other realms that are expected to use a significant share of the increased budget include cloud computing services and BI&A.

The CIO survey results discovered that 48 percent of the respondents believe that the next year will bring a surge in IT spending. Thirty-nine percent reported that budgets will remain the same, and the additional 13 percent expect budget cuts for IT…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

With a string of new customers and alliances with strategic partners for its cloud-based medical image archive platform, Dell has been recognized as one of the largest healthcare cloud computing providers in the industry.

In September, Frost & Sullivan recognized Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences with its 2012 North American Company of the Year Award, based on the firm’s analysis of the enterprise imaging informatics market. "In addition to operating the industry’s largest public cloud for medical imaging, Dell is also ideally positioned for the implementation of private clouds within multisite hospital and imaging center networks," said Nadim Daher, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan…

Grazed from ComputerWorldUK. Author: Forrester.

James Staten and I wrote this vision of the future of cloud computing. The full report is available to Forrester clients at this link. The research is part of Forrester’s playbook to advise CIOs on productive use of cloud computing and is relevant to application development and delivery leaders as well.

This research charts the shifts taking place in the market as indicated by the most advanced cloud developers and consumers. In the future, look for the popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) models to become much more flexible by allowing greater customisation and integration…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panetierri.

What’s next for the HP Public Cloud? Senior VP Zorawar ‘Biri’ Singh will deliver the answers during HP Discover 2012 (Dec. 4-6, Franfurt, Germany). Sure, CEO Meg Whitman will assure customers and partners that HP is on the mend following a brutal write-down tied to the 2011 Autonomy acquisition. But for established and emerging cloud partners, Singh’s words will matter most.

As senior VP and general manager, HP Cloud Services, Singh has been working to effectively position his company against entrenched rivals (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, etc.) and old foes that are moving into cloud computing (Dell, IBM, Oracle). He explained the strategy — including channel partner considerations — to Talkin’ Cloud during the OpenStack conference in April 2012…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

Cloud computing is now in heavy use in the industry and even the consumer market is starting to consider the benefits of cloud computing. Even though it is using the same technology that we have since more than 10 years ago, the cloud computing paradigm made all of the difference by simply changing the implementation of networking technology. But what exactly drives the development of cloud technology, what motivates its constant update, and what prevents people from adopting it?

Well, the biggest driver of cloud computing has always been economics. Because of changing market trends, heavy competition, and a failing world economy, IT organizations, companies, and other businesses need to be able to adapt to the rapid changes in order to stay afloat and make profit. Cloud computing brings with it immediate advantages because of cost savings.

The following are cost saving benefits are immediately felt by a business the moment they implement cloud computing technologies…

Email Overload from the Exchange Admin’s Point of View

Grazed from Wired. Author: Nick Kephart.

From technology startups to multinationals, cloud computing has arrived, and the change is evident. According to Gartner, nearly 20% of companies are using cloud computing for most of their production applications.Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is already a $6 billion market and it’s growing nearly 50% per year. The popularity of IaaS means that more applications and services are being delivered via the cloud by an ever­expanding group of business units, teams, developers, and systems administrators.

IaaS consumers are now looking to cloud management platforms to help manage their growing portfolio of cloud applications. A cloud management platform enables organizations to deploy, manage, monitor, and control applications across public and private clouds ­ ensuring that companies can achieve both agility and cost savings. Here are six key capabilities you should look for in a cloud management platform:…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Jeff Cogswell.

When working with a cloud installation, costs can easily skyrocket — whether you build a private cloud or adopt public cloud computing services. Though enterprises factor in initial purchasing costs, they often overlook costs associated with building and managing clouds, as well as ongoing maintenance they require from IT teams.

There are ways to keep the costs of cloud computing down, but with proprietary software, in-house development and open source options, the right choice is not always clear. Though there is no one-size-fits-all answer for controlling cloud costs, with the right information, an enterprise can choose an option that works…