Microsoft’s Strategy In The Private-Cloud Computing World
The private-cloud computing world has been bombarded with a barrage of service providers. In the thick of this barrage, Microsoft has emerged with innovative and accessible ideas. To start off, Microsoft’s private-cloud platform includes the general purpose windows server and the system center, which is optimized for top management.
The thing which makes Microsoft different from other private-cloud service providers is that they have come up with a fourfold strategy that easily surpasses any other competitor in the market. The first fundamental of their strategy revolves around the notion that all the infrastructure that a company deploys will be impactful only if the business is productively able to run applications on top of it. Bound to simplify the entire application life cycle, Microsoft gives visibility to the internals of the application and simultaneously gives rich diagnostics to the operator…
Top Financial Risks of Doing Business in the Cloud
Cloud computing definitely has upside as adopters can speed delivery of analytics, gain flexibility in deployments and costs, and transfer IT headaches to another company. However, with all the advantages of cloud, it’s important to keep in mind there are financial risks to cloud computing including potential costs from lawsuits and reputational damage from cloud provider security/privacy data breaches, and possible revenue losses from cloud provider downtime/outages.
For any type of business decision, there are various risks that should be considered– strategic, operational, financial, compliance and reputational (brand). These risks should also be criteria for any decision to move workloads to cloud computing. However, for sake of discussion, let’s focus on financial risk…
Amazon pitches MySQL in the cloud for $19 a month
Amazon Web Services has introduced a micro version of its cloud-based database service RDS running MySQL and priced from $19 a month, the company said on Monday.
Just like Amazon’s other cloud services, RDS (Relational Database Service) takes care of set-up, operations and scaling. For example, the service automatically patches the database software and backs up data.
Code, applications, and tools that IT staff already use with their existing on-premise databases can also be used with RDS, according to Amazon…
Open Cloud Consortium Offers Clouds for Science
The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) has been providing cloud infrastructure for researchers with big data needs since 2009. The OCC is pleased to announce that it is introducing a new resource: its OCC-Y Cluster. The OCC-Y Cluster is a 4 rack 928 core cluster running Apache Hadoop with 1 PB of storage available.
The OCC-Y Cluster was donated by Yahoo!
The OCC manages and operates the Open Science Data Cloud, which is a multi-petabyte distributed cloud-based infrastructure for managing, analyzing, integrating and sharing scientific data. The OCC also operates and manages Project Matsu, which is a cloud-based environment for analyzing data from NASA’s EO-1 satellite…
VMware aims for Hadoop on VMs with ‘Serengeti’ project
VMware is launching a new open-source project, called “Serengeti,” that aims to let the Hadoop data-processing platform run on the virtualization leader’s vSphere hypervisor. The company apparently smells a lucrative opportunity with growing enterprise interest in the Hadoop data-processing platform, and is not about to miss out on it. Serengeti is just one of several moves VMware has made lately to make big data and virtualization software play nice together.
The company explained the thinking behind Serengeti in a press release:
By decoupling Apache Hadoop nodes from the underlying physical infrastructure, VMware can bring the benefits of cloud infrastructure – rapid deployment, high-availability, optimal resource utilization, elasticity, and secure multi-tenancy – to Hadoop…
That sounds great — and all those features represent current shortcomings for most Hadoop distributions — but there are some significant limitations to running Hadoop on virtual resources (this tutorial from Apache’s Hadoop Wiki lays out the pros and cons as they currently stand)…
Cloud Computing vs. Hurricanes: Disaster Recovery Done Right
These days, more and more of your customers are switching from cumbersome, slow and expensive tape backup to a disk-to-disk solution. For the most part, disk backup is perfect for smaller businesses or remote outposts of larger businesses. It’s fast and affordable, and as technology improves, it’s become even safer than tape backup. And of course, disk backup happens onsite, which can be an incredible advantage when it comes to recovering data quickly. However, in the event of a natural disaster, onsite backup can be an incredible disadvantage. Here’s why.
If a company suffers damage in a storm, hurricane, fire, tornado, etc., the stored data is likely damaged as well. That said, June 1 marked the official beginning of hurricane season, and if you’re not offering your customers a disaster recovery (DR) plan with an offsite element, you’re doing them a disservice, and missing a great sales opportunity for yourself. While many customers are still leaning on physical recovery centers, you’ll be doing them a favor if you persuade them to move to the cloud. Selling Cloud DR services will increase your trusted advisor status, plus increase your monthly recurring revenue streams…
Cloud Computing vs. Real Cloud Computing
Many so-called cloud vendors have adopted the safe and sure approach of separate spindles and virtual servers to define something that by rights ought to be collective and multitenant. In Oracle’s case, it is even more amazing that the company that builds the database on which so much of true cloud computing rests, chooses to go a different way when it comes to its enterprise customers.
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) re-introduced its new cloud/social constellation of stuff last week that it had announced back at OpenWorld. If I count the analyst briefing I got in Redwood Shores in April, it was a re-re-introduction. Oracle is not the only company to follow this strategy. For example, Salesforce follows a conventional triple-tell approach too — tell them what you’re going to say, say it, tell them what you said. But each time Salesforce repeats itself, the messaging gets clearer. When Oracle does it, the message only gets louder…
Cloud Computing: HP lights up $200m data centre
HEWLETT-PACKARD has launched its bid for the regional cloud computing market with the opening of a $200 million data centre in Western Sydney today.
Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy opened the HP facility named Aurora at Eastern Creek, 18 months after the company was granted construction approval at the site.
Senator Conroy wasted no time in linking the $200m investment to the federal government’s $36 billion National Broadband Network investment.
“The economy cannot gain the maximum benefits from cloud computing
without super-fast internet connections, fast download connections and critically upload speeds to revolutionise access to the cloud…
What can software application developers expect from Cloud Computing World Forum?
Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Adrian Bridgwater.
There’s a cloud computing industry exhibition/conference/symposium/jamboree (pick any one you like) on this week in London!
You don’t say?
Hang on — these things get staged all the time now and they are just a hotchpotch of industry vendors with enough money to spend on stand space, booth babes, give away promotional packs of jellybeans right?…
Cloud management beyond the API
Most experienced cloud consumers have some familiarity with cloud management APIs. Cloud computing newbies or those with cloud applications that are limited to single-server pilot projects or test and development may think management APIs are the key to controlling the cloud. In fact, APIs are only a stepping stone to a growing list of cloud management features.
Companies using cloud services are looking to third-party hybrid and private cloud management tools to supplement what’s lacking in the public cloud. This combination of native tools, plus additional third-party management tools, is reshaping the vision of how cloud services are managed — from APIs and user interfaces to cloud management orchestration.
Public cloud providers are bolstering services with the addition of native management services; Amazon Web Services offers elastic, auto-scaling and elastic load-balancing features, which distribute traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances and allow provisioning of additional instances during peak times as usage increases. IT administrators could accomplish something similar using per-instance configuration and application tools or network appliances, but it’s much easier to use Amazon’s native tools…