June 5, 2012 Off

Qualcomm Atheros Wake-on-Wireless Cloud Solution Powers Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabooks

By David

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Qualcomm Atheros Inc., the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated QCOM +0.56% , today introduced its Wake-on-Wireless(TM) (WoW) Cloud solution for computing platforms, debuting in the new Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook at COMPUTEX TAIPEI in Taiwan. WoW Cloud-enabled Acer Ultrabooks are equipped to wake up remotely, connect to the AcerCloud while the system is in idle or sleep mode, transfer content remotely, and go back to sleep, to deliver instant-on and always-connected capability. Qualcomm Atheros’ WoW Cloud-enabled AR9462 chip is the market’s first solution capable of both PCIe offload and remote cloud connectivity on a WLAN product.

These features will enable the Acer S5 Ultrabook and future WoW Cloud-enabled devices to keep content and applications constantly up to date and extend battery life. A new feature supported in Qualcomm Atheros’ dual-band (2.4/5 GHz), 2-stream 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0 single-chip combo solution, WoW Cloud offers remote wake-up capability for cloud-connected Ultrabooks. This new capability enables Qualcomm Atheros to help usher in a new era of cloud-connected computing platforms…

June 5, 2012 Off

U.S. agency turns to cloud computing to increase availability of applications

By David

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mary K. Pratt.

The National Resource Conservation Service was faced with some staggering figures: more than 100 scientific modeling tools deployed to each and every one of its 12,500 planners, who were spread out in more than 2,000 offices.

Each NRCS employee needs access to those applications as they travel into the field to help farmers and ranchers determine how best to handle the critical issues that affect their businesses and livelihoods.

But the NRCS, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, realized it had an increasingly costly and ineffective system on its hands…

June 5, 2012 Off

Advantest to Launch CloudTesting Service in Fall 2012 Cutting-Edge Test Technology on Demand

By David

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Advantest Corporation ATE +4.90% today announced that it will launch a new test solution, dubbed CloudTesting(TM) Service (CTS), which utilizes cloud computing technology to offer cutting-edge test technology for semiconductor device R&D and design applications. CTS will be a membership service. Scheduled for roll-out in fall 2012, it will be unveiled at Advantest’s corporate exhibition, ADVANTEST EXPO 2012, to be held on June 6th – 7th in Tokyo.

Over half a century of dynamic growth in the semiconductor industry, Advantest has played a key role in supporting the industry’s rapid technological progress with cutting-edge test solutions. The speed of technological advance shows no signs of slackening, while device manufacturers continue to hone the efficiency of their R&D operations. Advantest’s new CTS is a revolutionary new concept in test, targeted precisely to these customer needs…

June 5, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Asus Announces 802.11ac Router

By David

Grazed from PC Week. Author: Matthew Murray.

Tech giant Asus has already made a lot of announcements at Computex 2012 here, most of them centered on its Open Cloud Computing initiative that it claims makes "one seamless platform" of all the devices in your life.

But despite the tablets, laptops, all-in-ones, and various combinations thereof, Asus hasn’t left out the one most important piece: how you connect to the cloud in the first place. It’s providing that as well with its new RT-AC66U router…

June 5, 2012 Off

Supermicro® Exhibits its Latest X9 Server and Storage Innovations at Computex, Taiwan

By David

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. SMCI +1.43% , a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, displays its full range of computing solutions optimized for large scale IT deployments at Computex, Taiwan June 5-9. Exhibits will include a vast selection of X9 Server Solutions, Serverboards, SuperBlade®, SuperWorkstations and SuperStorage systems with the latest Intel® Xeon® E5-2600/4600/2400 and E3-1200 v2 series processors optimized for a wide range of applications across Data Center, Cloud Computing, HPC and Embedded environments. Rounding out their exhibit, Supermicro will demo complete integrated solutions in a SuperRack® with their 10GbE top-of-rack network switch and their Server Management Software optimizing the power and performance of the interconnected systems…

June 5, 2012 Off

Cloud On-Boarding – The True Story

By David

Contributed Article. Author: Dotan Horovits, Senior Solutions Architect at GigaSpaces

Cloud On-Boarding – The True Story

Everyone wants to be in the cloud. Organizations have internalized the notion and have plans in place to migrate their applications to the cloud in the immediate future. According to Cisco’s recent global cloud survey:

Presently, only 5 percent of IT decision makers have been able to migrate at least half of their total applications to the cloud. By the end of 2012, that number is expected to significantly rise, as one in five (20 percent) will have deployed over half of their total applications to the cloud.

But that survey also reveals the fact that on-boarding your application to the cloud “is harder, and it takes longer than many thought”, as David Linthicum said in his excellent blog post summarizing the above Cisco survey. Taking standard enterprise applications that were designed to run in the data center and on-boarding them to the cloud is in essence a reincarnation of the well-known challenge of platform-migration, which is never easy. But why is there a sense of extra difficulty in on-boarding to the cloud? The first reason David identifies for the extra difficulty is the misconception that cloud is a “silver bullet”. Such “silver bullet” misconception can lead to lack of proper design of the system, which may result in application outage, as I outlined in my previous blogs. Another reason David states for the extra difficulty is the lack of well-defined process and best practices for on-boarding applications to the cloud:

June 4, 2012 Off

Is All Virtualization Destined for the Cloud?

By David

Contributed Article. Author: Mike Thompson, SolarWinds’ director of business strategy for virtualization and storage

Is All Virtualization Destined for the Cloud?

It seems that the message to the millions of virtualization users is that if you are not either working in a cloud environment or moving to a cloud environment, you are behind or you have yet to be enlightened.

Vendors, press and analysts publish maturity curves that often show the progression through which IT professionals should be moving to achieve cloud enlightenment. Often, the typical virtualization user would be in the “immature” portion of these maturity curves with a long road ahead of them before they get to cloud “nirvana”.

June 4, 2012 Off

Healthcare to Benefit Most from Cloud Computing

By David

Grazed from Cloud Times. Author: Xath Cruz.

John Sculley, former Apple CEO, believes that cloud computing is powerful enough to completely revolutionize healthcare systems worldwide. Sculley told The Guardian that he was quite confident that cloud computing would ring in the changes when it comes to the way we approach healthcare in the next couple of decades and that large data analytics would be central to the change.

A keynote speaker at the Cloud Computing Forum and Managing Partner of InflexionPoint, Sculley went on to explain why cloud especially was a central point of interest.

With the overall movement to cloud, the curve is accelerating upwards at such an advanced level that basically means that the market is seeing new technologies that allow people to do things no one even thought were possible two or three years ago…

June 4, 2012 Off

How to keep cloud projects agile, simple

By David

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: David Taber.

Now it’s time to work on an issue that underlies all of those problematic behaviors: saying "Yes" too often.

Saying "No" will keep a project on track and your credibility intact. (Image courtesy of Zazzle.com.

Of course this is heresy. User-centered design is at the core of good UI. It would be political suicide for IT to say "No" to powerful users. IT engineering exists to serve the business, not order it around.

All those statements are true. But so is this: Saying "Yes" when the answer really needs to be "No" is an invitation to a project failure. Improper expectations don’t just hurt budgets and schedules. They damage credibility-and, in the end, they force you to expend resources when you shouldn’t have to…

June 4, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Network Janitors

By David

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: James Carlini.

If Cloud Computing is going to be part of the critical network infrastructure of an enterprise, senior executives better realize that no technology runs by itself. You need people that are very skilled in all aspects of planning, designing, implementing and managing these systems. There are dynamic people and there are also caretakers that can only do minimum maintenance on systems.

The idea that you can run Cloud Computing applications with a bare minimum of skilled people is a nice sales pitch, but in reality organizations better make sure they have skills on staff or skills readily available in times of emergencies as well as day-to-day operations…