Author: David

July 8, 2012 Off

Why the days are numbered for Hadoop as we know it

By David
Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Mike Miller.

Hadoop is everywhere. For better or worse, it has become synonymous with big data. In just a few years it has gone from a fringe technology to the de facto standard. Want to be big bata or enterprise analytics or BI-compliant?  You better play well with Hadoop.

It’s therefore far from controversial to say that Hadoop is firmly planted in the enterprise as the big data standard and will likely remain firmly entrenched for at least another decade. But, building on some previous discussion, I’m going to go out on a limb and ask, “Is the enterprise buying into a technology whose best day has already passed?”

First, there were Google File System and Google MapReduce

To study this question we need to return to Hadoop’s inspiration – Google’s MapReduce. Confronted with a data explosion, Google engineers Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat architected (and published!) two seminal systems: the Google File System (GFS) and Google MapReduce (GMR). The former was a brilliantly pragmatic solution to exabyte-scale data management using commodity hardware. The latter was an equally brilliant implementation of a long-standing design pattern applied to massively parallel processing of said data on said commodity machines…

July 8, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: IT Chargeback/Trackback: Yes, You Need It

By David
Grazed from NetworkComputing.  Author: Joe Onisick.

You can’t fix, manage or justify what you don’t understand. IT chargeback/trackback not only helps end users understand their service utilization, but it also helps IT justify and prioritize spend. Measured service is a requirement of NIST’s cloud definition:

"Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service."…

July 8, 2012 Off

The problem with cloud computing: Clouds

By David
Grazed from The Chicago Herald.  Author:  Will Oremus.

Thanks to the cloud, websites and apps around the world can tap into vast, remote stores of data and computing power.

And thanks to the cloud, one good blow to one of those vast, remote storage centers can take down websites and apps around the world.

That’s what happened this past weekend. A ferocious lightning storm in Northern Virginia took down Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, Heroku and more — not because any of those companies are based in Northern Virginia, but because they all apparently rely heavily on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud facility there. Amazon said the storm, for reasons not immediately explained, took out both its main power supply and its backup generator…

July 8, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing Market Size – Facts And Trends

By David
Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Rick Blaisdell.

lthough estimates of the overall cloud market size vary considerably, the consensus is that cloud computing is growing rapidly. I came across interesting statistics while reading about this topic. Market Research Media, cited in the Bloomberg report, says the cloud market will reach $270 billion in 2020 while Forrester is not that optimistic, predicting last year that the market will hit $241 billion by that time and says the market will hit about $55 billion by 2014.

So, what are the trends in the cloud market?

  • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offers more growth opportunities than any other segment.   SaaS will retain its position as a leading segment in cloud computing. Gartner tracks ten different categories of SaaS applications in this latest forecast with CRM, ERP, and Web Conferencing, Teaming Platforms, and Social Software Suites being the three largest in terms of global revenue growth…
July 8, 2012 Off

EU watchdog says firms must protect cloud data

By David
Grazed from EUObserver.  Author: Benjamin Fox.

Companies using cloud computing services must "guarantee" compliance with EU data rules, according to the Article 29 Working group, the EU’s leading data protection watchdog.

In a 27-page legal opinion released this week (3rd July) on the safeguards businesses would be required put in place to protect private data, the Working Group stated that firms should be required to spell out data privacy policies in all contracts with individuals using cloud services.

Under this model, individuals putting data in a cloud would have guarantees about access and use of their data, the terms and time frame for data retention, and clear rules on the deletion of personal data…

July 8, 2012 Off

Terremark Provides Enterprise Cloud Services to NetApp

By David
Grazed fro MSPNews.  Author: Arvind Arora

Cloud computing has been taking all the market sectors by storm. Latest cloud based solutions are being introduced everyday, with an aim to address the ever changing customer needs and to keep pace with the market trends.

Terremark, a subsidiary of Verizon Company, has announced to offer its services to NetApp, a provider of advanced storage and data management solutions that help companies in enhancing the pre-sales and post-sales support.

Cutting edge infrastructure and managed service offerings by Terremark provide a flexible, secure and high performance environment to the enterprises and governments across the globe. The company deploys its extensive network of data centers and a wide range of secure solutions to enable enterprise and government executives in utilizing the maximum potential of cloud based technologies…

July 8, 2012 Off

Cloud Companies to Watch: Enterprise OpenStack Pioneer – Piston

By David
Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Xath Cruz.

If you are not familiar with the company called Piston Cloud Computing, chances are you’re going to be within a few years, since the startup is currently developing technology that will give way to the next generation of Internet cloud services. Basically, Piston Cloud Computing is going to pave the way for changes on the Internet on a level never before seen since the Internet itself was invented.

While there are already a lot of startups working on cloud computing, Piston is on an entirely new level for the following reasons:

Piston Cloud Computing’s cofounder. Joshua McKenty, was one of the lead developers of Openstack

Openstack is a new cloud technology that has prompted all the big enterprise players to start another battle for market dominance, with Red Hat, Citrix, and Vmware all developing their own tech…

July 6, 2012 Off

New Trends for Cloud Mobile Computing

By David

Grazed from AllAfrica. Author: Editorial Staff.

The recent AIGS Progress Africa Delight@Work conference, attended by software developers, business leaders and international delegates from the US and Europe, focused on key topics pertinent to the South African marketplace, such as leadership in the digital age, the cloud and the importance of context-aware technology.

During his keynote address, Dan Veitkus, the GM (EMEA) for Progress Software said that South African companies should not let current concerns, such as bandwidth capability, prevent them from innovating for the future.

"Instead of focusing on the reasons why technologies such as cloud or mobile computing won’t work, South Africans should focus on the benefits of shifting their business and applications into that space…because it is going to happen. We’re seeing a global change in application development. Technologists need to stop selling these incredible ideas to the heads of IT and start talking to the marketing and sales departments, who have the larger budgets and are able to sponsor innovation."…

July 6, 2012 Off

Power Outages a Sign of Cloud Computing’s Achilles Heel?

By David

Grazed from The Foundry. Author: David Inserra.

Last Friday, storms knocked out power for many in the D.C. metro area. Disruptions didn’t end there. Amazon Web Services, a cloud service provider, went down in the storm, taking several major companies’ websites and businesses offline.

Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest, among others, also lost access to e-mail, applications, data, and other business services. While the disruption was brief, bugs in the system caused Amazon servers to spread the problem, leading to delays and disabling of services beyond the affected region.

Cloud computing is the movement of IT capabilities away from individual computers and servers to centralized providers that manage IT resources for their users via the Internet. But if the cloud cannot survive a thunderstorm, can it survive a dedicated cyber or physical attack?…

July 6, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: the 4th IT Industrial Revolution!

By David

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Gery Menegaz.

In a recent article in Communications World Weekly, a leading Chinese technology news outlet, they noted that Cloud Computing was the fourth IT Industrial Revolution, after Mainframes, PCs, and the Internet. In a related article, KPMG, noted that China is projected to be on par with the U.S. as a future technology innovation leader. And according to the survey that KPMG conducted, the next big breakthrough is predicted to come from Cloud and Mobile.

Communications World Weekly reported accelerated growth patterns and predicts that despite a bumpy ride China’s public cloud computing sector will be a driving innovative force. “A research report shows that in 2012, the cloud computing of China will reach the scale of over 60 billion Yuan in the market and by the end of the ’12th Five-year Plan’ this industrial chain will come to the aggregate of 1 trillion Yuan. This broad market landscape and development space will usher in opportunities for many competitive partners, and also prompt the development of modern information services in China."…