IT contractors look for ‘big data’ opportunities
Move over cloud computing. The term with the most buzz these days for information technology contractors is “big data,” or large chunks of information too huge to be easily managed by typical computer programs.
The Obama administration announced late last month a new big data initiative meant to help the government better analyze large collections of information. The government’s big data can range from the claims filed by Medicare and Medicaid users to video footage collected by unmanned vehicles on the battlefield.
The initiative kicked off with more than $200 million in projects at six agencies in an effort to advance the technologies needed to collect, store and share the troves of data and expand the needed workforce…
What The Cloud Doesn’t Do
We’re at a technological inflection point, a major branch of computing is splitting off and everyone from the sysadmin to the CEO is wondering what it will mean.
The usual cabal of vocal technologists isn’t helping the situation. The chatterboxes maintain a constant chant of change: “Cloud, Cloud, Cloud!” Yet they fail to contextualize it in the overall IT architecture. They imagine a bright future where all servers will hum along in ultra-efficient datacenters (preferably solar powered) diligently tended to by the infrastructure-as-a-service providers. Why would you ever host your own server?…
How the Tax Man Followed Amazon and Apple to the Cloud Computing Party
Dan Dixon is certain that state revenue authorities will soon start up more ambitious efforts to tax online commerce.
How does he know this? Well, for starters he is a state tax attorney at Reed Smith LLP and hears about back room deliberations in various state government offices. Then there this this, he says: his mother has recently become aware that Apple offers cloud services. She saw it on TV. “When companies like Apple start promoting the cloud to every day consumers on television, that tends to get the attention of state tax officials.”
In short, whether they have said so publicly or not, collecting sales and use taxes from cloud computing customers via their providers has become a topic of interest for state tax officials. Many states have been studying the issue for at least a year and it won’t be long before they start to collect…
Should Amazon Define Cloud Standards?
Since Citrix gave Cloudstack to the Apache Software Foundation, there has been a lot of blogging, tweeting, and arguing about whether cloud computing software vendors should simply let Amazon AWS drive cloud computing standards. My answer is no. First, I don’t think Amazon even wants to be the standard and second, standards should be developed independently of any single vendor. It’s time for the stakeholders–enterprises, vendors, open source projects, and anyone else interested to start scoping, developing, and implementing standards that everyone can use. If that doens’t happen, the cloud landscape will continue to be fragmented to everyone’s detriment…
Cloud Computing: Amazon S3 Showing Signs of Slowing as It Approaches 1 Trillion Objects
If you’ve any doubt that cloud storage is a huge market, Amazon’s numbers ought to be very persuasive. The latest figures from Amazon indicate the company has added about 143 billion objects to S3 in one quarter. But it also looks like Amazon’s growth may be slowing – somewhat.
Amazon reported tripling the number of objects stored in 2011. By Amazon’s figures, the company added about 500 billion objects to S3. That’s roughly 125 billion per quarter, though it’s unlikely it’s an even split per quarter.
If the pace remains the same, Amazon would be on track to add another 429 billion through 2012 – or a total of 572 billion for the full year. That would leave Amazon with 1.3 trillion objects and change hosted in S3…
Top10CloudStorage.com Releases Comprehensive Cloud Hosting List
Top10CloudStorage.com has released an important resource page for those looking for the top cloud servers and cloud web hosting. This new addition to the already popular website breaks down the pros and cons of the best cloud hosting and best cloud servers on the market each week.
The format of this new resource page quickly informs the consumer about the pricing, performance and ranking of cloud hosting and cloud servers companies while also offering an in-depth look at each with cloud web hosting reviews and cloud hosting reviews. Furthermore, Top10CloudStorage.com also provides an informative look at the cloud server options that are available and dissects each with helpful cloud server reviews…
Cloudability gives Rackspace users free cost monitoring
As business use of cloud computing rises, those businesses need to keep tabs what they’re using. Now, roughly 175,000 Rackspace cloud accounts can use Cloudability services for free to monitor how much they’re spending on their cloud services.
Cloudability, which launched at our Structure event last June, generates daily, weekly and monthly emails detailing a company’s cloud spending and provides a graphical dashboard of that spending. The goal is to make cloud IT spending as efficient as possible. Normally, it’s is free for companies spending less than $2,500 per month in the cloud, and the price after that is based on overall spending…
Automating data encryption for new cloud architectures
Cloud computing is the ideal environment for processing big data. For databases that scale horizontally, sometimes with a million or more fields and reaching multiple petabytes in size, it’s possible to chunk up the data and spread it across hundreds or thousands of servers for parallel processing and analytics. It’s an efficient and effective use of cloud technology.
Of course, if you put data in the cloud, you will want to protect it with encryption, especially if the data includes any sensitive customer or financial information. However, the very thought of generating and managing all the encryption keys for hundreds of separate data files can be a problem. And, if your data is in a public cloud, you wouldn’t want to give access to the keys to the root user, who is often an administrator for the cloud provider…
New OpenStack ‘Essex’ Release Provides Pluggable Cloud OS
OpenStack has announced “Essex,” the fifth version of its community-driven, open-source cloud operating system, with a focus on quality, usability and extensibility across enterprise, service provider and high-performance computing (HPC) deployments.
The OpenStack Essex news comes just days after Citrix announced its plans for the next version of its CloudStack cloud platform, which the company submitted to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and itself became a sponsor of ASF.
Speaking of sponsorships, GigaOm reported that IBM and Red Hat are poised to lend their substantial might behind the OpenStack open-source cloud project at the upcoming OpenStack Spring 2012 conference…
More Telecoms Look to the Cloud
Telecoms like Verizon and CenturyLink have joined Time Warner Cable in what’s turning out to be a highly competitive cloud computing market. These popular domestic telecommunications services have snapped up cloud service and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers like NaviSite, Qwest, and Terremark in hopes of competing with companies like Amazon, Microsoft Azure, HP, and Google to name a few and to make up for their flagging revenue from traditional services.
The Advantages
Why would an enterprise that’s already satisfied with their cloud service provider chose to switch over to a carrier provider? The answer is infrastructure, security, and the potential for a unified communication platform. ComputerWorld consulted with independent analyst Bob Rosenberg, who predicts that telecoms have an edge over other cloud service providers because they have trusted wired networks. Enterprises have depended on many of these companies for decades to provide telephone and internet services with good results. Their proven dependability and security is a key component in attracting customers looking for a "low-latency connections for large amounts of data transfer." Having a trusted name can do a lot for enterprises or consumers that are nervous about the security aspect of cloud computing…