Grazed from WSJ.  Author: Irving Wladawsky-Berger.

In June of 2008 I participated in a conference on cloud computing. After a full day of talks and discussions, the sense of the meeting was that cloud computing has the promise to bring a real paradigm shift to the IT world, although, as the conference organizer succinctly put it in his closing remarks: “There is a clear consensus that there is no real consensus on what cloud computing is.” In other words, something big and profound seems to be going on, although we are not totally sure what it is yet.

Where are we now, almost four years later?  Just about everyone agrees that cloud computing is one of the major trends in IT, with important implications not only to IT but to business and society in general.  Many books and articles have been written on the subject.  A number of companies have cloud-based offerings in the marketplace, with more to come.  But, while many of us feel that cloud is even bigger and more profound than we thought back in 2008, lots of questions remain on its intrinsic nature and its value to the business…

Grazed from CivSource.  Author: Bailey McCann.

The Open Data Center Alliance a group of public companies focused on standardizing the IT requirements for cloud projects has released five new models for data usage. According to the Alliance, the usage models are based on user driven feedback about cloud computing as well as the original vision set out by the organization last year to define IT requirements for open and interoperable cloud solutions. The announcement comes at the same time as a federal big data initiative and cloud first strategy as well as NASA’s release of its Open Government Plan, which includes a flagship initiative to build a new web architecture and a renewed focus on open data sharing, open source development and a variety of technology acceleration efforts.

Taken together these plans signal big moves in both public and private sector to modernize and streamline technology infrastructure through cloud services. The shift to cloud is also making it easier for public and private organizations to manage and release big data thus increasing transparency and accelerating new information discovery…

Grazed from HPCWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Nimbis Services Inc. conducted a live demonstration at GOMACTech ’12 of a semiconductor design-to-release-manufacturing cloud computing WorkFlow-as-a-Service (WFaaS) portal, the Trusted Silicon Stratus Demonstration Cloud (TSS-DC). Nimbis Services under contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) implemented the TSS-DC as the first virtualized computing cloud for chip design using the open source OpenStack cloud computing middleware and Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System (UCS).

A primary design objective of the TSS-DC was to demonstrate how a private cloud computing architecture could be used to address the High Performance Computing (HPC) demands of semiconductor integrated circuit design for key Department of Defense (DoD) research and development labs. According to Robert Graybill, Nimbis’ CEO, “…an operational TSS Demonstration Cloud represents a critical milestone in the execution of the Nimbis’ AFRL contract.”…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Mary Shacklett.

Cloud and SaaS services are rapidly gaining traction with enterprises and SMBs — yet IT, which is usually responsible for negotiating contracts with these service providers, may fall short in critical areas of contract negotiation and legal skills. The stakes are high. In a worst case scenario, you can simply realize that you made a mistake, and that you must get out of a contract. In less dire cases, you can find yourself relying on a vendor that doesn’t execute to your business SLAs as your internal staff would. The best way to set expectations is by laying them out clearly in the contract that you sign with your vendor. This provides a platform for ongoing discussions about service levels…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (tase:MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, and Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology innovation and green computing, today announced that a major Asian cloud provider selected Supermicro servers and Mellanox’s Virtual Protocol Interconnect® (VPI) solution to form one of the world’s largest cloud solutions. Mellanox’s 40GbE NICs and switches, and FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand adapter and switches connect the 5,000-node based cloud, delivering the highest cloud performance, flexibility and simplicity…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Dan Kusnetzsky.

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Everywhere you turn the “cloud” is the latest big thing when it comes to storing data and reducing costs for companies worldwide. Many assume that because their data is being stored offsite it is securely preserved and they no longer have to worry about risk.

“Au contraire. Risk cannot be outsourced,” says professional ethical hacker, Dave Chronister of Parameter Security (St. Louis, MO). Mr. Chronister went onto say, “It’s because of this mindset that hackers are preying upon the cloud and are gaining control of huge stores of information through a single attack” – which is exactly what Mr. Chronister recently did.

Mr. Chronister went onto say, “During a recent cloud security audit, I was able to identify a zero day exploit and within minutes gained access to the cloud sphere and every system that was on that cloud—giving me complete control. Needless to say, the client was shocked because they were touting their cloud offering as 100% secure.”…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Paul Venezia.

I find it puzzling whenever I come across any reasonably sized IT infrastructure that has little or no virtualization in place, and my puzzlement turns to amazement if there’s no plan to embrace virtualization in the near future. Whether it’s due to the "get off my lawn" attitude that eventually killed off many AS/400 admins or simply a budget issue, clinging to a traditional physical infrastructure [1] today is madness.

For one thing, what are these companies buying for servers? If they’re replacing old single- and dual-core servers with new quad-core boxes (at minimum) and simply moving the services over, then they’ve got a whole lot more hardware than they need. Each of their server workloads is running on hardware that could easily handle a half-dozen virtual servers, even with free hypervisors. Are these companies only going to embrace server virtualization [2] when the rest of us have already moved past it?…

Grazed from Washington Post.  Author: Marjorie Censer.

Move over cloud computing. The term with the most buzz these days for information technology contractors is “big data,” or large chunks of information too huge to be easily managed by typical computer programs.

The Obama administration announced late last month a new big data initiative meant to help the government better analyze large collections of information. The government’s big data can range from the claims filed by Medicare and Medicaid users to video footage collected by unmanned vehicles on the battlefield.

The initiative kicked off with more than $200 million in projects at six agencies in an effort to advance the technologies needed to collect, store and share the troves of data and expand the needed workforce…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Alexander Haislip.

We’re at a technological inflection point, a major branch of computing is splitting off and everyone from the sysadmin to the CEO is wondering what it will mean.

The usual cabal of vocal technologists isn’t helping the situation. The chatterboxes maintain a constant chant of change: “Cloud, Cloud, Cloud!” Yet they fail to contextualize it in the overall IT architecture. They imagine a bright future where all servers will hum along in ultra-efficient datacenters (preferably solar powered) diligently tended to by the infrastructure-as-a-service providers. Why would you ever host your own server?…