Author: David

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jon Gold.

The popularization of cloud computing and ubiquitous access to high-speed Internet connectivity mean that the days of the specialized branch office IT appliance are numbered, according to industry sources. Instead of providing apps and services directly to branch offices using dedicated hardware at both ends of the connection, virtualized networks can emulate that functionality across the public Internet.

Before he became F5 Networks’ director of enterprise marketing architectures, Alan Murphy worked for a small startup in Seattle. The company’s branch office, in Austin, Texas, was directly connected across the 2,000+ miles between the two cities by a dedicated link. “100% of that traffic from Austin came back to Seattle before it ever went on the Internet,” he says…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Neil Cavanaugh.

Is moving to the cloud as simple as they say? Probably not. Organizations that host large, integrated systems in their own data centres will no doubt be approached by their application vendors for migration to the silver lining of the cloud. I was recently involved with appraising the feasibility of moving one of the largest Oracle eBusiness suite installations in the UK to “on-demand.” This experience gave me some insights into the complexities behind such a move.

Existing investment
In order to run very large applications with thousands of users, a substantial investment would have been made in existing infrastructure. This includes resilient server infrastructure, disk space, and software licenses.
You’ll need to spend some time considering what happens to this equipment if you migrate an application into the cloud, particularly as there may be other applications sharing processing power, shared disk resources and expensive database licenses…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Keving McLaughlin.

VMware has sold its Zimbra suite of open source SaaS productivity apps to Telligent, a Dallas-based enterprise social software vendor. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Telligent is getting Zimbra’s core team of employees, as well as its product IP and customer and partner relationships. After the deal closes, Telligent will rebrand itself as Zimbra.

VMware is focusing on software-defined data center, hybrid cloud and end-user computing, and Zimbra is its latest move to sell off a unit that doesn’t fit with its strategy. However, VMware is painting the Zimbra sale as something other than a move to shed assets…

Grazed from Jaxenter. Author: Mike Soby.

Recently, James Urquhart brought up a fascinating debate about contextual versus composable PaaS, which has created an equally interesting, broader debate for application deployment in general. Contextual PaaS provides an integrated deployment framework with no ability to add custom components and requires applications to be written to that platform. Composable PaaS on the other hand allows for greater flexibility, as components can be plugged in to support diverse applications.

While we believe composable PaaS delivers value and caters to a wide variety of applications, cloud services provide almost infinite flexibility for application development, which begs the question: are composable PaaS or modular cloud services a better way to develop applications?…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Adam Bender.

The Australian Computer Society released a draft discussion paper this week that asks cloud vendors and users how they can help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and not for profits (NFPs) become more confident in using the cloud.

“Despite the clear and compelling value of the cloud, SMEs and NFPs in particular appear reticent to integrate the cloud into their businesses and operations,” the ACS said in the paper. “The evidence suggests that this is due to a combination of a lack of understanding of what the cloud actually is, and secondly a lack of confidence in using cloud services due to concerns around issues such as privacy and security.”…

Grazed from WebProNews. Author: Mike Tuttle.

Cloud computing is a disruptive force in the business of gaming. Not only is it revolutionizing how gamers purchase and play games, but redefining how developers and publishers run their businesses. The gaming community disagrees over what cloud can mean for the future of their industry, but nearly all agree it is becoming increasingly important.

In a newly published whitepaper by Video Games Intelligence, Chris Petrovic, former head of Gamestop, says, “One of the challenges facing our industry is to settle on a definition of ‘cloud’– and then what it means for particular businesses.”…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is used in many different ways these days, but not everyone is completely on board the cloud train quite yet. For those holdouts who just aren’t sure whether or not they’re really benefiting from the cloud, a close look at the technology shows that you can improve almost any IT department with a bit of cloud computing. You don’t have to go as far as setting up a platform or complete infrastructure on the cloud, as even a small amount of cloud applications could provide you with cost and time saving features.

Flexibility

The main advantage of the cloud computing world is its flexibility but initially this can seem confusing as you can have private clouds, public clouds, or a mix of both. A private cloud is your own virtualized environment, while a public cloud is one that another company provides for you. Companies may opt to do a mix of both, with their own proprietary applications in their private cloud, and additional applications in the public cloud. This allows the business to use their own developed software in a cloud that they personally handle the security of, while getting the cost saving benefits of the public cloud by avoiding upfront equipment costs and other overhead…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of UNSW has published, with sponsorship from data centre operator NEXTDC, global insurance broker AON and law firm Baker & McKenzie, a guide for company boards and executives into the technical, legal and risk governance issues surrounding data hosting and the jurisdiction of overseas law authorities over hosted data.

NEXTDC CEO, Craig Scroggie, said the report would fill an important information gap for customers of cloud computing services. “Most customers in our data centres have an interest in the issues relating to their obligations and concerns regarding data sovereignty, yet there wasn’t a comprehensive piece of work available to advise them on the topic. We supported this project to ensure they have access to the important need-to-know facts,” he said…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Irmee Layo.

The first half of 2013 had various push and pull situations as cloud computing performances showed wide fluctuations in the global market. Out of the 20 major cloud companies, 10 showed steady revenue in the first half of 2013 alone. NetSuite led the Cloud Computing Stock Index (CCSI) figures with 37.30% share revenue from the $10,000 in January to $13,730.

The Cloud Computing Stock Index also revealed the other best performing companies in terms of revenues created from their cloud-based business solutions, applications, services and infrastructure. NetSuite on top is followed by Keynote Systems, Inc. with 36.18% share gain, then CA, Inc. with 26.67%, Workday, Inc. recorded 23.81% revenue and Cisco Systems, Inc. made it at number 5 with 22.60% stocks gain…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

Do you have your hybrid cloud yet? Are you planning to get one? If not, you may already be behind the curve, but that might not be a bad thing considering the immaturity of the technology and the still looming possibility that it might not do everything that it is expected to do.

To give credit where credit is due, even those who stand to gain financially from selling hybrid cloud services are working hard to prevent wishful thinking from getting ahead of reality. Rackspace, for one, is not shy in claiming that the hybrid cloud is the wave of the future, but cautions that it is not the ideal solution for all applications. Hybrids will most certainly cost less than traditional infrastructure, but security is more complicated–not less effective, just harder to implement–and the ability to offload key applications can be hampered if the public provider does not offer the correct APIs…