Author: David

Grazed from The HuffingtonPost. Author: Daniel Burrus.

Thanks to exponential advances in processing power, bandwidth, and storage (what I call the three change accelerators), the business environment is undergoing a major transformation. I have been tracking the trajectory of these three change accelerators for the past thirty years and they have now entered a predictable new phase–one that will transform every business process.

In fact, based on the technology-enabled hard trends that are already in place, including advances in cloud computing and virtualization, over the next five years we will transform how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, and educate. In order to fully understand how cloud computing and virtualization will work together in new ways to transform the business world, let’s take a quick look at the evolution of each…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Russell Poole.

It is over five years since the term ‘cloud’ was first adopted into the mainstream to describe a fundamental change in how – and where – information technology is deployed. Cloud’s building blocks had been developing for several years prior: the rise of the Internet as a backbone for service delivery; hardware platforms so powerful that they could run multiple web scale workloads; and the opening of standards for application and infrastructure architecture; all contributed to the cloud phenomenon, which went beyond simple hosting or application service provision.

The ability for providers to create massively scalable, homogeneous computing platforms enabled new delivery models which, it was clear, would reach beyond what had previously been possible in terms of processing capability, at the same time as making costs more affordable. No wonder, then, that industry players were so excited…

Grazed from CloudComputing. Author: James Bourne.

Open cloud provider Rackspace has rolled out a complete revamp of its public cloud with Performance Cloud Servers – and according to Nigel Beighton, international VP technology and product, it represents a serious shift in how companies use their servers. The architectural redesign of the Rackspace Performance Cloud Server comes with four times the total RAM, double the CPU performance and 132 times the I/O of its competitors, according to benchmark tests.

But Beighton argues that simply drooling over the figures is the short-sighted approach. “The more interesting sub-context here is that this is responding to the changing nature of applications on cloud,” Beighton told CloudTech. “When I look back over six months worth of data, we’ve had an increase of 200% over that six months of people taking what we call ‘fat slices’, which fundamentally takes the whole machine…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

I recently wrote a story about what some folks in the cloud industry see as the biggest issues holding back adoption of cloud computing. Topics like process, security and data integration all came up. But all those people are from the vendor side of the house.

Recently, I had a chance to go to a customer event hosted by SunGard Availability Services in Austin, Texas where a couple dozen CIOs shared their thoughts about where the cloud industry is and what they would like to see from it. Many of these CIOs are open to using the cloud, but they have some concerns. Here are some of the top apprehensions about the cloud in general that I heard:…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Virtustream, the leading enterprise class cloud software and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, today announced that it has partnered with Cognilytics, a global provider of decision sciences and advanced analytics consulting. Through the partnership, Cognilytics will be able to deliver high-performance and cost-efficient solutions for big data running on Virtustream’s xStream cloud management platform.

“Virtustream excels in delivering enterprise-grade cloud technology that provides the ideal platform to improve the speed to value and analytical performance for big data solutions,” said Gary Gauba, CEO at Cognilytics. “By adding xStream to our portfolio, and with access to Virtustream’s HANA Managed Service and HANA-Hadoop Managed Service, customers will have access to an on-demand enterprise cloud to deploy their advanced analytics solutions, without forfeiting security and compliance.” …

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Jan Stafford.

In the early days of cloud computing projects, platform as a service (PaaS) was perceived as a way for dedicated providers to offer functionality on demand. Now, major enterprises look at using PaaS concepts to expand their core competencies, improve engagement with existing customers and provide new revenue streams. At the recent WSO2 Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, enterprise architects from the Boeing Co. and Trimble Navigation Ltd. elaborated on this vision. Boeing, for example, is using service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles behind a new PaaS platform. Called The Boeing Edge, the system promises to reshape the way Boeing connects with its customers in the airline business, said Jim Crabbe, senior product manager at Boeing.

PaaS enables a paradigm change, bringing continuous improvement in products and services that solve problems for its staff and customers, Crabbe said. "Just forklifting something into the cloud does not give you the most value. You need to architect your application for the cloud," he explained…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Sean Michael Kerner.

As is the case with companies all around the world, organizations in China are considering the cloud as a vehicle to serve their computing needs. In a number of sessions at the OpenStack Summit here, new statistics emerged that detail the state and direction of cloud computing, particularly OpenStack cloud computing in China. Forrester analysts James Staten and Charlie Kun Dai provided their views during a session in which the pair provided survey results on what is actually going on in China. In a survey of 150 cloud and virtualization practitioners in China, 33 percent said that they are considering using OpenStack to build private or public cloud solutions—or both—to deliver OpenStack services.

While 28 percent of those polled said that they currently have no plans for deployment and are currently just learning about the architecture and the technology, 26 percent of respondents said that they are considering using OpenStack to build a private cloud system for their own companies’ needs. Of the respondents who are already engaged in some form of OpenStack initiative, 51 percent indicated that that are at the beginning of the process, while 26 percent said that they have already begun internal testing. Additionally, 16 percent indicated that they are already in active development, and only 7 percent said that they have actually begun online operations…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Sue Poremba.

Midsize businesses are turning to data centers-centric cloud computing for Web hosting, for easier collaboration and for storage of critical business applications. However, according to a new survey by AlgoSec featured on Softpedia, as organizations migrate applications to the cloud, most will face a connectivity disruption.

"Critical business applications fuel today’s data centers, but security teams lack visibility on how security activities impact the business," according to Nimmy Reichenberg, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at AlgoSec, quoted in an October 29 Total Telecom article. "As a result, provisioning connectivity for data center applications is time-consuming." This, in turn, affects business agility while increasing the risk of breaches, particularly security breaches due to errors in the firewall configuration…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The International Association of Cloud & Managed Service Providers (MSPAlliance®) http://www.mspalliance.com today announced that it would be having discussions regarding cloud, security and data specific initiatives, with key industry leaders across the globe at executive networking dinners in Munich, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Sydney, Australia.

MSPAlliance Executive Networking Dinner events bring together industry professionals from the cloud and managed services industry to network and discuss business strategies and share best practices. The latest dinner series will address topics related to data security and privacy in the cloud and address country specific cloud initiatives.

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Nancy Gohring.

The OpenStack PaaS market is heating up, with Ubuntu teaming up with Pivotal on a version of Cloud Foundry for OpenStack. Canonical’s founder Mark Shuttleworth made the announcement today in Hong Kong at the OpenStack Summit. You can watch a replay of his keynote online. “I’m really pleased to announce that Pivotal and Canonical will worth together to make the experience of Cloud Foundry on OpenStack absolutely fantastic,” he said.

But here’s where things get interesting. Canonical says it won’t only work on creating Cloud Foundry PaaS for Ubuntu clouds. “If there are vendors in the room who have OpenStack implementations, we’d like to certify and test on yours as well. This is not just for Ubuntu,” he said…