Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: James Carlini.

If Cloud Computing is going to be part of the critical network infrastructure of an enterprise, senior executives better realize that no technology runs by itself. You need people that are very skilled in all aspects of planning, designing, implementing and managing these systems. There are dynamic people and there are also caretakers that can only do minimum maintenance on systems.

The idea that you can run Cloud Computing applications with a bare minimum of skilled people is a nice sales pitch, but in reality organizations better make sure they have skills on staff or skills readily available in times of emergencies as well as day-to-day operations…

Let’s face it, a service provider isn’t usually inclined to provide a seamless process for sending business to competitors.  But what customers may not realize is that less-scrupulous service providers can — and actively do — build in roadblocks with the specific intent of locking in customers.   Meaning, they make the process of transitioning more difficult by design to help increase customer retention (i.e., “stickiness”)…

Under the vehicle, CGI will deliver a range of technology services and solutions to federal health organizations, federal civilian agencies, and the Department of Defense across 10 task areas. Services include, but are not limited to: CIO support, outsourcing, systems integration, software development, data center consolidation, health IT, cloud computing, mobile solutions, and cybersecurity…

According to Adam Stern of Infinitely Virtual, a leading provider of virtual server cloud computing services for growing companies, the rationale for migrating to the cloud is sound, the questions are valid, and the answers are becoming ever more straightforward…

Venner, who has worked with organizations such as NASA, Dell, and Cisco on a variety of OpenStack system integration projects, will share his experience and approach by discussing DevOps for Application Infrastructure. The talk will focus on continuous deployment at the infrastructure layer as it relates to OpenStack Cloud.

OpenStack is one of the most popular open source platform for building private and public clouds. The number of code commits and the engineering velocity of this project is matched by no other technology adoption in history. While OpenStack is merely two years old, there have been six production releases of it. Those who opted to deploy an OpenStack-based cloud a year ago are now likely running production workloads on a version of OpenStack that is three releases behind…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Appcara, maker of cloud application lifecycle solutions, announced a major new version of its AppStack(R) application and portability platform that helps enterprises and service providers accelerate complex applications into the cloud and deliver new application-based revenue sources. Incorporating a real time Dynamic Application Environment layer that eliminates the need for server templates or scripting, AppStack Release 2 changes the rules of cloud computing. With AppStack 2, enterprises and service providers gain exceptionally fast time-to-market for key business applications — maximizing time, knowledge and profitability.

While cloud deployments are common for simple web apps, the $385 billion enterprise application market remains the province of on-premises data centers, in large part because IT staffs lack the tools required to truly govern VMware, Citrix, or other private and hybrid applications running on Amazon Web Services, Citrix CloudStack or VMware vCloud. While cloud app management solutions exist, they require deep technical knowledge of application stacks, and a lot of manual, error-prone effort to use…

Yet, much of China’s data center infrastructure is underutilized due to a lack of killer cloud applications, and local software development expertise is not easy to find. And this classic technology chicken-and-egg scenario is preventing the Chinese cloud-computing market from taking off.

Technology Integration Group, San Diego, Calif., has a plan for stimulating cloud application development. If it works, it just might jump-start China’s long awaited cloud revolution…

Comments on the News

"Salesforce.com now has the number one players in social listening and marketing – Radian6 and Buddy Media," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "With CMOs surpassing CIOs in spend on technology within the next five years, our Marketing Cloud leadership will allow us to capitalize on this massive opportunity."…

Grazed from Information Week.  Author: Beth Stackpole.

There’s no magic potion for stamping out cloud computing’s copious hidden costs. Rather, the answer lies with getting serious about tried-and-true best practices to deliver enough real-time visibility so there are no surprises when the bill arrives.

"Transparency is really the challenge, especially when you’re looking at costs across various public clouds," notes Dave Zabrowski, founder and CEO of CloudCruiser, a cloud cost-management platform. "There are very tangible hidden costs that can be eliminated just with transparency of knowledge."

For example, consider the simple problem of over-allocation. Companies typically sign up for public cloud computing power or storage capacity with the assumption that their workloads command a specific instance–therefore, they err on the side of over-provisioning and lock in at a higher price just to make sure they are covered. "But what happens is a lot is the workloads in real life aren’t as demanding as people think," Zabrowski explains. "By having transparency into usage vs. allocation, for example, companies within hours can downgrade to a cheaper instance."…