The Enterprise Cloud: Are We There Yet?
A major theme of last month’s EMC World 2012 conference was accelerating access to the hybrid cloud. Although a lot of progress has been made on this front, we’re still a long way from broadly implementing full enterprise-class clouds. Is this an indictment of the whole cloud movement, or simply part of the normal course of events?
Although some might prefer the former, the more accurate answer is the latter. In fact, Joe Tucci, president and CEO of EMC, told analysts at EMC World that moving to the enterprise cloud is a 10-year project, and we’re only a quarter of the way there–and he’s absolutely right. Valuable benefits have already been achieved (such as broad adoption of server virtualization), so don’t be discouraged. Just be realistic…
T-Systems to Offer Customers VMware vCloud Datacenter Services
T-Systems join forces with VMware to provide customers with easier, quicker and more manageable access to cloud computing. The companies announced their strategic partnership today at the VMware vForum 2012 in Frankfurt.
On average enterprises have virtualized more than 50 percent of their servers, leading to sizable gains in efficiency and manageability over the past few years. That enterprises are increasingly choosing VMware’s virtualization and cloud solutions to realize these benefits speaks to the trust that customers place in VMware cloud infrastructure. Yet the promise of cloud to access IT capacity on-demand without a fixed investment is better fulfilled when a service provider offers the same quality of IT infrastructure in the cloud that enterprises are used to on-premise…
Is ROI the Right Measure of Cloud Success?
Is a positive return on investment (ROI) ever the wrong measure of success? When it comes to measuring the impact of cloud services on your organization’s bottom line; perhaps.
Here’s the deal: ROI is usually a measure of hard monetary return on the use of products or services. The soft side of ROI is almost always underplayed or ignored entirely. However, with cloud computing, stipulating that a hard-money ROI will be achieved, in the form of savings, is likely to net you more heartache than cost break.
But if ROI isn’t the best measure for cloud computing success, “What is?” The hard answer is the age-old consultant’s response: “It depends.” For simplicity’s sake, though, let’s generalize and say the answer is “value.” Value indeed is the most appropriate measure for cloud computing success…
Amazon spruces up cloud support options
Amazon is looking more like an enterprise tech vendor all the time. On Thursday, it announced spruced-up support offerings for the Amazon Web Services’ cloud. For example, all AWS customers are now automatically enrolled in the free Basic support tier and Amazon cut prices on its higher-level paid support tiers.
In late January, Amazon rolled out new premium paid support options and a Trusted Advisor service that monitors customer usage of AWS, recommending configuration changes and new services to streamline operations and close security gaps such as open ports or unprotected Amazon Machine Images.
Now AWS is renaming its tiered support from precious metals to Basic, Developer, Business and Enterprise plans. Old plans had the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum designations. The Trusted Advisor services still come with the top-tier Business and Enterprise options which now also offer new chat-based support…
Parallels Expands Partner Program Benefits to Smaller and Growing Web Hosters and Website Designers
Parallels (www.parallels.com), the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced expanded access of its Partner Program specifically for smaller and growing web hosters and website designers. Parallels’ unmatched depth of valuable expertise, best practices, tools and other go-to-market resources are now available to hosters seeking to grow their businesses by delivering cloud services.
“Smaller and growing web hosters and design firms now have access to the best resources available for accelerating their revenue and profitability,” said John Zanni, Vice President, Service Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels. “Key benefits of our program include expertise on how to implement proven strategies and tactics for improving customer value through better operations and for delivering a broader set of hosted services and applications.”
Claranet scoops award for its “click-and-provision” Virtual Data Centre
Data sovereignty issues still weigh on cloud adoption
Large enterprises that embrace cloud computing for many tasks still refuse to use public cloud infrastructure for key jobs because of what they see as restrictive data sovereignty regulations.
These laws, which are proliferating in countries around the world, according to attendees of this week’s Forecast 2012 event in New York, mandate that a company keep a customer’s data in that customer’s home country. One oft-cited reason is to prevent that data from being subpoenaed by a foreign power (read: the U.S.)
And that factor is the biggest difference between an enterprise’s virtualized data center and a public infrastructure as a service, said Matt Louth, principal security architect for the National Australia Bank…
Secure-24 to Showcase at Red Hat Summit 2012
Secure-24 Inc. – a leading provider of managed IT operations, application outsourcing and enterprise cloud computing – announced today that it will showcase its capabilities at the Red Hat Summit, being held June 26-29, 2012, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Secure-24 will be in booth 2833 to answer questions about the company’s capabilities and to meet other highly experienced IT professionals who are interested in cloud computing, critical application management and IT outsourcing. The company is also recruiting additional team members for various technical openings. Interested parties can stop by the booth or visit the website to learn more about the current job listings…
Microsoft Ushers In An Era Of Cloud OS
At the 20th annual TechEd North America conference, Microsoft Server and Tools Business President Satya Nadella described how the cloud OS drives both the modern datacenter and enables the development and management of modern applications, demonstrating how customers can benefit from this transformation with agility, focus and lower costs. He also announced updates to the company’s developer tools and availability of the next release of Windows Intune, the company’s cloud-based solution for PC and mobile device management and security.
Built on decades of experience gleaned from running massive datacenters at scale, Windows Server 2012 is the cloud-optimised server OS for customers of all sizes, and Windows Azure, updated with new services and features, delivers both infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service capabilities. Built to complement each other with consistent development, management and identity, they make it easier to create, migrate, deploy and manage applications across public, private and hybrid clouds…
Increasingly, Clouds Are Built the Open Source Way
Today’s cloud computing landscape has no clear leading vendor; but rather is a mosaic of services. While the commercial opportunities are enormous, open source clouds are beginning to dominate the private cloud side of the market.
These are the findings of a new survey of 651 companies, conducted by RightScale, Inc. Among the 64% of respondents who plan to include a private cloud option as part of their cloud portfolio, open source private cloud solutions are taking the lead. The largest share of cloud adopters, 41%, plan to use only open source-based private cloud options (CloudStack, OpenStack or Eucalyptus), while another 29% plan to use a combination of open source and VMware options. Another 30% of those respondents plan to use VMware-only based private cloud options…