Road Map Charts Course to Cloud Success
A recently released draft plan provides a road map for federal agencies and industry to navigate through the development of the cloud-computing model. In the January issue of SIGNAL Magazine, Technology Editor George I. Seffers explores the document in his article, “Hitting the Hard Spots on the Road to Cloud.”
In November 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released two draft volumes of what will eventually become a three-volume plan to foster cloud-computing efforts among the United States government and private sector. While federal agencies will not be mandated to follow the road map, people want and need guidance in this area, says Dawn Leaf, NIST senior executive for cloud computing. As with any new or evolving technology, many questions exist:…
Appirio Selects NetApp as Cloud Pioneer of the Year
Appirio announced today it has selected NetApp, Inc. as its Cloud Pioneer of the Year, an annual award given by Appirio to companies and individuals that demonstrate leadership in cloud computing initiatives. The award honors the team for the cloud-first approach they took to dramatically improve the Field Operation team’s ability to move fast and respond to the business’ evolving needs.
The NetApp team, led by its VP of worldwide sales ops, was selected from nearly a dozen other Appirio Cloud Pioneers representing companies such as BP, Brown-Forman, Glocap, Enterasys, Medtronic, Suntech and Yahoo!…
3 big screw-ups you can expect from cloud providers in 2012
Cloud computing is going strong, and I suspect it’ll peak this year or next. I know this because the hype is almost out of control and misinformation is plentiful — the classic signs of an impending peak. It’s a new technology, but the same old hype cycle.
Although much good is going on in the cloud, as both the technology and the underlying architectures mature, the hype means we’ll also see cloud providers pull some real blunders. Here are three you can expect this year…
Inkspot releases cloud computing platform for universities
Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Charlie Osborne.
Inkspot has released a portable web-based platform designed to assist universities in data analysis and providing secure cloud storage for researchers.
Co-founded by Professor Paul Watson of Newcastle University in 2008, Inkspot is also known as ‘e-Science central’ . The project has developed a platform based on investigation in to the improvement of scientific and research institutions. It provides services targeted at various cloud infrastructures such as Amazon EC2, Windows Azure and Eucalyptus.
Red Hat, a provider of global open source solutions, has collaborated on the project. The two organisations have tailored the Inkspot platform to adhere particularly to the needs of the academic scientific and research community…
Microsoft, the USA PATRIOT Act, and European cloud computing
Microsoft announced last month that its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Office 365, will better comply with European guidelines to ensure that customer data is adequately protected. This move is certainly welcome, but the long-armed spectre of the USA PATRIOT Act continues to hang over Microsoft and other US companies, regardless of customers’ nationality or the country within which Microsoft might physically host a particular customer’s data.
The PATRIOT Act’s acronymic name may evoke harmless images of bunting, parades, and national anthems, but the reality is rather different. A product of America’s post-9/11 entrenchment, the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 affords the Federal Government wide-ranging and far-reaching powers that show little — if any — respect for geographic boundaries or inconveniently contradictory local legislation. A US company (like Microsoft or Amazon) is subject to the Act’s powers all around the world. A US citizen’s data, stored in a US company’s data centre that is physically situated in the United States is subject to the Act, and everyone might be reasonably comfortable with that. But so is a German citizen’s data, stored in an Amazon data centre in Ireland; and German, Irish and European lawmakers appear almost powerless to intercede…
Cloud Computing Skills Demand Skyrocketing
The demand for cloud computing skills has exploded, with hiring for cloud computing expertise growing 61 percent year over year, according to a recent report from Wanted Analytics, a talent research firm.
According to the report, over the past 90 days employers and staffing firms have placed more than 10,000 job ads that included cloud computing skills and experience as requirements. Those ads came from more than 2,400 companies in that 90-day period, which ultimately pushed cloud hiring demand 61 percent year-over-year.
The need for cloud computing skills has been pushing the market for months. Solution providers are seeking cloud-ready employees to bring their businesses to the next level. Additionally, a host of major IT companies, including HP and others, have launched cloud-specific certifications to arm the market with cloud skills and competence. And solution providers like Bluewolf have begun offering training programs, which in some cases are free, to deepen the cloud computing talent pool…
VMware vCloud Powered Validation Secured by Logicalis’ Enterprise Cloud
Logicalis (News – Alert) is aleading global provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services. They recently made an announcement that their Logicalis Enterprise Cloud (LEC) public cloud service has secured the VMware vCloud Powered status. This is a clear indication to its clients that the organization’s cloud services are underpinned by VMware’s virtualization and cloud computing technology. This technology is called VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director. As part of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), the Logicalis Enterprise Cloud brings together VMware vCloud technology and gives it the ability to expand its security and workload isolation. In turn, this gives Logicalis the ability to make available highly scalable cloud services to its customer base…
GuardTime and NRI Secure Collaborate on Cloud Security
GuardTime ( http://www.guardtime.com ), creator of the Keyless Signature technology used to provide indisputable proof of time, origin, and integrity for electronic data, today signed an agreement with Tokyo-based NRI SecureTechnologies, Ltd., a one stop-solution provider for information security, to do business collaboration in the area of cloud computing security.
GuardTime developed and provides the solution code-named "DataConductor," which can detect changes and/or transfers of any data stored in the datacenter. By signing the data using GuardTime’s Keyless Signatures, ( http://www.guardtime.com ) DataConductor can automatically detect when and where the data was created or transferred, and if the datahas been tampered with or not. An alert is sent to the customer when an abnormal status is detected. DataConductor can assure the integrity of data and confirm the location where data exists, providing a full audit trail of data storage in the Cloud. DataConductor enables regulatory compliance for archiving with commodity cloud storage…
Amazon cloud double fluffs in 2011
Being the touchstone for cloud computing, online retailing giant Amazon wants to brag about its compute, storage, and other cloud services that are sold under the Amazon Web Services brand. For whatever reason – probably to obscure the costs and possibly the profits of the AWS subsidiary – Amazon has not broken out the business, and still lump it into the Other bucket.
But sometimes, Amazon just can’t resist itself. As the new year got rolling, Amazon did a little bit of chest beating about AWS.
First, the company said that with the opening of its AWS data center in São Paulo, Brazil in mid-December, the company has doubled its AWS data-center footprint…
Moving Application Testing to the Cloud
Application testing is one of those areas that many IT organizations give short shrift; only for it to invariably come back to haunt them in the form of some fix that usually needs to be accomplished quickly and at great cost.
It’s not that developers are fundamentally opposed to testing; it’s just that acquiring the equipment to set up the test is expensive and the amount of time needed to conduct the tests properly isn’t available. Worse yet, the applications are getting more complex than ever, which makes testing them an even more challenging task.
Because of these issues, IBM is betting via an acquisition of a company called Green Hat this week that application testing is going to become a lot more automated using the cloud. Green Hat allows customers to set up virtual instances of applications in a cloud computing environment that IT organizations can then run any number of synthetic tests against…