New E.U. Guidelines to Address Cloud Computing
The European Commission’s panel on privacy is expected to endorse Monday the concept of cloud computing as legal under the Continent’s privacy law and to recommend for the first time that large companies and organizations police themselves to assure that personal information kept in remote locations is protected.
The panel, known as the Article 29 Working Party, is expected to make the recommendation as part of its long-awaited guidelines on cloud computing, which have the potential, some industry experts say, to allay concerns over data privacy and pave the way for wider adoption of the remote-computing services that are more common in the United States.
The report will highlight the advantages of using cloud computing to encourage innovation and economic efficiency, said a person with knowledge of the recommendations, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak for the group. This would reflect a new, more practical approach by European officials to remote computing’s role in the broader economy….
The enterprise needs a better network to the cloud
While much of the networking industry today is focused on improving speeds and feeds inside the data center, we need to recognize the importance of improving the networks that connect enterprise data centers to each other, and to the public cloud. If the industry can deliver an elastic network with programmable performance, then the walls between data centers could effectively disappear.
Trying to overlay cloud services on the same pipe being used for best-effort internet is going to disappoint users, and limit cloud service adoption. Specifically, we need to add speed and intelligence to these networks, and several factors are driving this requirement. For example:…
Next Stop in Cloud Computing: How Can It Be Implemented?
Cloud computing is being embraced by most enterprise IT shops – at least according to attendees and vendors at the 10th Cloud Expo in New York, writes Roger Strukhoff of Cloud Computing Journal. Many organizations now want to know how to harness the strengths of cloud computing.
The word of the day at Cloud Expo was "multi-cloud," Strukhoff explained:
"It turns out that enterprise IT is complex, and that cloud is not going to eliminate that complexity, at least with larger shops. However, it will continue the push in recent years to eliminate silos, decouple and loosely recouple services, get a grip on measuring things, and provide the vaunted ‘single pane of glass’ through which IT management can view and manage what’s going on," he writes…
Eastern Storms Disrupt Amazon.com Data Centers
Large electrical storms on the east coast disrupted power for Amazon.com Inc. cloud-computing operations Friday night, causing outages for customers such as Netflix Inc. and photo-sharing service Instagram.
The Seattle-based online retailer operates data centers with servers that manage the Web operations of many other companies, a practice often called cloud computing. Power outages caused by catastrophic storms that blanketed the east coast affected Amazon’s operations in Virginia.
On Saturday afternoon, Amazon was still reporting performance issues for what it calls its elastic cloud compute, relational database and elastic beanstalk services. The problems appeared to have begun appearing on the site at around 11:21 p.m. EDT on Friday…
Microsoft Can Use Yammer`s ‘Freemium’ Model to Sell Office: Analyst
As Microsoft moves forward with its acquisition of enterprise social networking company Yammer, industry analysts are starting to identify opportunities for the upstart Yammer to help the software giant to make a faster transition to cloud computing.
Microsoft’s $1.2 billion deal to acquire enterprise social media company Yammer still has some people scratching their heads about the synergy the two companies will generate, but Yammer could actually teach Microsoft a thing or two, an industry analyst says.
Microsoft built its fortune by selling software licenses to computer makers, businesses and consumers. Yammer built its business into something worth paying $1.2 billion for by what’s called the “freemium” model…
Crazy Weather And The Real Cost Of Cloud Computing
What a Cloud-a-palooza! I am neither a climate scientist or cloud computing expert, but I know that many of our readers are those things and more. To me, as a commentator on how the distribution and format of content effects user experience, the Amazon cloud outage raise some really pressing questions for the technology industry. Since I have more questions than answers, I will limit myself to asking some (perhaps leading) questions and hope that our own expert cloud of readers and contributors can fill in the (perhaps contentious) details:…
Cloud computing for the people? It’s called SaaS
Cloud-based servers simple enough to be at the beck and call of every Joe Schmo off the street are a compelling vision, but presently not a realistic one. At this point, in fact, one could argue that the holy grail of the consumer cloud has already been realized. In the business world, it’s called software as a service, but the rest of the world just knows it as “the cloud.”
In a blog post on Thursday, Anil Dash laid out a vision that pretty much boils down to this quote: “[W]e need a consumer cloud offering. An app store for EC2 or a marketplace for Rackspace. The same one-click stores that offer us easy apps on our own local devices should let us purchase consumer-friendly apps that run on our own individual cloud servers.” It reads well, but until cloud computing prices drop far enough that individual servers cost next to nothing, the vision seems infeasible. That’s why multitenant cloud services, what Dash calls “centralized services,” are proving so popular….
Cisco launches Smart Wi-Fi routers with cloud computing features
Cisco has introduced new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers (EA4500, EA3500 and EA2700) that deliver the latest in home Wi-Fi technology and offer a range of prices and performance. Cisco also unveiled Cisco Connect Cloud, a software platform that redefines and dramatically simplifies how consumers connect, control and interact with their connected devices, including personal entertainment and home appliances. The pricing details are as follows; the EA4500 will cost you Rs.14,999, the EA3500 will cost you 12,499 while the EA2700 will cost you 9,499.
The new routers are ideal for active online homes, easily handling everything from streaming HD video and multiplayer gaming to downloading large files, adding storage or printers and connecting multiple devices. After creating a password protected Cisco Connect Cloud account, consumers can enjoy anytime, anywhere access to multiple home networks from their mobile, tablet app or web browser and give guests Internet access, set parental controls or add new devices to their network…
TwinStrata Publishes “A Snapshot into Cloud Storage Adoption” from 2012 Cloud Computing Expo
In June, TwinStrata conducted a survey at the 2012 Cloud Computing Expo in New York to gauge the state of cloud storage among the represented organizations. The area of greatest cloud computing growth reported in the survey is cloud storage, with 46% of respondents indicating future plans to use cloud storage. Five out of six respondents indicated that they were either already using or plan to use cloud storage in some capacity.
The report is based on 101 responses from attendees, a sample which TwinStrata notes is biased towards organizations favorably disposed toward cloud computing. 73% of respondents have implemented some form of cloud computing already, with more than a quarter (28%) having done so for three or more years. The greatest adoption of cloud computing is coming from small organizations (between 51-250 employees) and large enterprises (more than 5000 employees). TwinStrata is itself an enterprise-class data storage vendor…
The Federal Government’s First Foray into Cloud Computing, Circa 1965
There’s really nothing new about federal cloud computing — other than a few zeros added to the costs.
Some 47 years ago, the US federal government was considering a secretive plan to consolidate its data centers into a single mega-center, thereby eliminating all the agency silos that were springing up.
The price tag for the new center would have been $2 million a year to start — a real bargain compared to today’s $80 billion-a-year IT budget. Details of the plan, first formulated in 1965, are offered in a paper recently presented by Rebecca S. Kraus, Ph.D. of the US Census Bureau…