Author: David

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Nicholas D. Evans.

Cloud computing. Mobile technology. Big data. Social networks. With so many disruptive technologies on the horizon, timing your move into each can make the difference between getting ahead of the competition and falling irreparably behind. One thing that can help you gauge when to take up an emerging technology is the technology adoption life cycle. This sociological model, invented by researchers at the University of Iowa who were studying the adoption of hybrid seed corn by farmers, illustrates that adoption typically follows a bell curve, with the first adopters being the innovators, followed by the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and finally the laggards.

It can certainly be argued that, over the course of the 20th century, technologies were adopted at a faster and faster pace. For example, the telephone took 25 years to reach 10% penetration of U.S. households, and another 39 years to reach 40%. Midcentury, |color television took 18 years (between 1954 and 1972) to reach 50% adoption by U.S. households. More recently, the smartphone needed just 10 years to reach 40% adoption by U.S. consumers, and the tablet has reached 10% penetration in less than three years…

Grazed from Blue MauMau. Author: Andy Roberts.

Advances in virtualization and distributed computing have allowed corporate network and data centre administrators to effectively become service providers that meet the needs of their "customers" within the corporation. Marketing media that uses the words "private cloud" is designed to appeal to an organization that needs or wants more control over their data than they can get by using a third-party hosted service such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud or Simple Storage Service. Private cloud computing, offers a number of significant advantages, which includes lower costs, faster server deployments and higher levels of resiliency. What is often over looked is how the Private Cloud can dramatically changes the game for IT disaster recovery in terms of significantly lower costs, faster recovery times, and enhanced testability.

Before we talk about the private cloud, let’s explore the challenges of IT disaster recovery for traditional server systems. Most legacy IT systems are comprised of a heterogeneous set of hardware platforms – added to the system over time – with different processors, memory, drives, BIOS, and I/O systems. In a production environment, these heterogeneous systems work as designed, and the applications are loaded onto the servers and maintained and patched over time. Offsite backups of these heterogeneous systems can be performed and safely stored at an offsite location. There are really 2 options for backing up and restoring the systems:…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Richa Pokhriyal.

Cloud computing services and related developments are definitely changing the way we network, collaborate, consume information and deploy applications. Businesses are now demanding more from service providers and cloud computing is more prominent across various industries. So being on cutting edge is rewarding but at the same time it has some side-effects too. Cloud is popular, it is one of the hottest topics discussed today and hence there are some myths associated with it too.

Blame it to over marketing, unawareness of users or something else, recent surveys and customer feedbacks are sufficient enough to prove that there are still some myths around the usage and effects of adopting cloud. Let’s discuss these myths and how we should perceive these for our own business…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

Cloud computing is here to stay. It enables businesses streamline their goals, functions, costs and operation models. Although cloud computing has been around since the internet inception, not enough information about it is available in the public domain. Businesses, individuals and non-profits still do not understand what the cloud can, or cannot do for them. Some imagine cloud computing can replace all their functions.

Others imagine they can do without aspects of their businesses when they buy into it. The truth is, cloud computing can’t do all things for you. Here are some of the most prominent functions cloud computing cannot do for your business…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM today unveiled new technologies designed to help organizations with today’s greatest challenges, including the need for improved security, the ability to take advantage of cloud computing, and the requirement to manage and analyze vast amounts of data. The new offerings include the most powerful enterprise Power Systems to date, a new high-end disk storage system and key software updates for IBM’s newest mainframe computer.

The announcement is part of IBM’s continued focus on Smarter Computing systems aimed at solving the varied and intensifying challenges organizations are facing, from security vulnerabilities to managing ballooning data volumes that are expanding through social and mobile technologies…

Grazed from Information Management. Author: Jim Ericson.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci led off the second full day of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 with a keynote address about his company’s aggressive approach to infrastructure and cloud computing.

Tucci said the Oracle audience was fortunate to be at the nexus of opportunities presented by cloud computing, which he called a huge focus for both Oracle and EMC. He traced the history of mainframe and client-server computing leading to the buildup – and now the build out – of computing architecture based on growing stores of data and commodity computing resources. He said relational database models will continue to thrive and that they are now augmented by developments such as NoSQL and Hadoop along with new programming languages.

The sum of this is that new opportunities will arise for companies with the strategy and skill sets to leverage all kinds of structured and unstructured data into better decisions. “Real time predictive analytics will be the killer app for this cloud era,” Tucci said…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Bill Claybrook.

When developers build mobile apps, they have the choice of building either apps that are installed and run natively on remote devices (native apps), or those that run in mobile cloud environments (mobile cloud apps). Native apps and mobile cloud apps each have their inherent advantages and disadvantages.

Native apps run on remote devices such as smartphones and tablets and are built specifically for a device and its operating system. Native apps have the ability to leverage device-specific hardware and software, meaning that they can take advantage of the latest technology available on mobile devices, such as GPS, camera, location and locomotion. This can be construed as an advantage for native apps over mobile cloud apps…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lindsey Nelson.

Has your organization embraced cloud computing? If so, you’ll likely be looking toward a hybrid cloud solution in your near future. Why is this? With a hybrid cloud, you get the strategic benefits of both the private and public cloud model, which once brought together, meets the individual needs of your organization.

If you’re investing in cloud computing or already have it in the works, it doesn’t hurt to have some guidance on pursuing a hybrid cloud. The Blending Clouds: A Blueprint for Your Hybrid Future white paper by Eucalyptus helps you understand the basic motivations for hybrid cloud, how to design it, the components to use, and the principles to consider when designing it. Put these together, and you have the recipe for a successful hybrid cloud. Here’s an overview of these elements from the white paper…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

GoDaddy has decided to close its Cloud Servers cloud computing product. The offering had been around for less than a year, although the company is attempting to integrate some of the technology into the next generation of its flagship hosting service.

Perhaps web-hosting giant GoDaddy wasn’t cut out to be a cloud computing provider after all. According to an internal email shared with me by an anonymous ex-employee, the company has decided to shutter its Cloud Servers product offering after less than a year…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanakarus.

Oracle has finally answered a big question hovering over its emerging family of cloud services: What do they cost? While not giving a public price for every one of its cloud products, Oracle’s website now has pricing for its on-demand database and Java development service, as well as for some applications.

Pricing for the database service, which uses version 11g R2, starts at $175 per month for one schema, 5GB of disk storage and 30GB of data transfer. A midtier option costs $900 per month with one schema, 20GB of storage and 120GB of data transfer. For $2,000 per month, developers get 50GB of storage and 300GB of data transfer, but still only one schema…