ISACA Issues Six Principles for Effective Cloud Computing
The growing shift to cloud computing can deliver significant value—but most enterprises have little knowledge of the perils of transferring IT decision making away from technology specialists to business unit leaders. Eliminating oversight and governance from cloud computing decisions can create significant risk to organizations, effectively undermining any benefits of moving to the cloud and, at the same time, potentially creating serious issues for organizations.
“Cloud computing presents a unique opportunity for enterprises—and is particularly a game-changer for small and medium enterprises because its availability means that technology infrastructure is not the market differentiator it has been in the past”
Onit Joins Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA)
Onit, a leading provider of business productivity and process management apps, today announced it has joined the Legal Cloud Computing Association (LCCA), a consortium of leading cloud computing providers.
The LCCA was created to facilitate the adoption of cloud computing among legal professionals and provide a unified and consistent voice for vendors in the legal cloud computing market. Additionally, the organization is responsible for collaborating and cooperating with Bar Associations and other policy-forming bodies in efforts to form policies and guidelines relating to the use of cloud computing in law practices; defining standards and best practices; and providing educational resources to attorneys and the broader legal community on cloud computing…
Metaswitch Puts Perimeta Session Border Control in the Cloud
Furthering its commitment to running high performance session border control (SBC) on commercial off-the-shelf platforms, Metaswitch Networks today announced that its industry-leading Perimeta SBC software is being made available for deployment on generic enterprise servers as well as virtual machine environments to support elastic cloud computing networks.
Introduced in September 2011 and already selected by more than 60 service providers worldwide, Perimeta’s flexible architecture supports independent scaling of an SBC’s signaling and media functions — allowing service providers to cost-effectively address the signaling-heavy, changing mix of network traffic. With Perimeta now available to run on various hypervisors, large operators can take advantage of private elastic cloud environments to scale SBC functions completely independently of dedicated hardware…
Canonical Continues to Push Ubuntu for the Cloud
The jury may still be out on what exactly cloud computing even means, but that isn’t stopping most IT movers and shakers from churning out incessant reminders of how important the cloud is. Canonical, which this week released a new publication highlighting the way Ubuntu fits into the cloud, is no exception. Here’s a look at this latest effort to market Ubuntu to a cloud audience, and what it says about Canonical’s strategy over the longer term.
As the results of Canonical’s survey of Ubuntu server users indicated last week, the cloud is an area where Ubuntu still has a lot of room to grow. And since that growth isn’t likely to happen all by itself, Canonical has been pushing the cloud hard to consumers. It has developed a cloud-computing portal for the Ubuntu community and is actively pursuing cloud-oriented technologies everywhere from the desktop (think Ubuntu One) to the server (home of the Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure)…
Amazon Broadens Its Computing Reach
Amazon Web Services, the company’s computing-for-hire division, announced new products on Tuesday that make it easier to run workflow-based applications, both on Amazon’s computers and on corporate machines that are connected to Amazon’s giant computing cloud. This is a cheap (and probably easy) way for in-house engineers to build and deploy software that does tasks like analytics and billing, or internal financial operations and decision-making. It can even aid in the design logic of multiplayer games, Amazon says…
SAP unveils SuccessFactors cloud computing roadmap as it squares up to Oracle
SAP has unveiled the roadmap for its human capital management (HCM) services that will integrate with the cloud-based tools it acquired with its $3.4bn purchase of SuccessFactors late last year.
Chief among these developments is SAP’s intention to offer all of its HCM products as cloud-based services, alongside its traditional on-premise offerings, to meet the growing demand for cloud services…
Cloud Council of 7, Non-profit Organization of Cloud Computing and IT Leaders, Launches
The Cloud Council of 7 (CCO7), a non-profit association of business users, policy makers, technology and service providers, and academics working with Cloud technology, today announced it has launched operations. The organization, formed to benefit users of Cloud technology, is open to IT executives, enterprise end-users, and technology and service providers of Cloud technologies, services and products.
"Many experts say Cloud computing is the number one priority for CIOs, yet few CIOs can link current definitions of Cloud computing’s with business value. To help eliminate this confusion, the Cloud Council of 7 was created," said Carole Gunst, Executive Director, Cloud Council of 7. "Our diverse community is collaborating to drive consensus to help enterprises make informed decisions when specifying and selecting Cloud technologies and services. All discoveries and recommendations are shared with the CCO7 community."…
6 Shining Examples of Cloud Computing in Action
There’s no question that most businesses have been trying out cloud computing in one form or another in recent times. A new report from The Economist Intelligence Unit and IBM fiinds that among 572 business leaders surveyed, almost three-fourths indicate their companies have piloted, adopted or substantially implemented cloud in their organizations – and 90% expect to have done so in three years. And the number of respondents whose companies have “substantially implemented” cloud is expected to grow from 13% today to 41% in three years.
However, most companies have not yet recognized cloud’s full potential. “Although cloud is widely recognized as a technology game changer, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped,” the report observes. “Interestingly, while our research clearly reveals organizations intend to rely on cloud to enhance their business capabilities, only 38% cite cloud as a leading priority for the entire company. Rather, cloud is still viewed by many as an IT solution, with 62% citing cloud as a leading priority for their IT organizations.”…
Siemens Healthcare Unveils Two Cloud-based Solutions to Optimize Image Management and Radiology Workflow
Today, Siemens Healthcare, has announced two new solutions for image management and radiology workflow that will be hosted from the Siemens Healthcare Cloud Computing Center (HCCC), in Malvern, Pa. In a first of its kind strategic alliance with Dell, Round Rock, Texas, Siemens will deliver a cloud-based vendor-agnostic Image Sharing & Archiving (ISA(1)) solution. The ISA offering will be primarily hosted out of Siemens HCCC, using Dell’s clinical data management software. Additionally, Siemens and Dell will securely federate their respective healthcare clouds, providing customers an additional form of redundancy for this key clinical content.
The solution will help healthcare providers reduce the ongoing capital expenditure of maintaining on-site image archives. Additionally, Siemens is announcing a new implementation approach for its proven syngo Workflow radiology information system (RIS), which can be completely hosted from Siemens HCCC.(2) These solutions will be presented in Siemens booth #2423 at the Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2012 Annual Conference and Exposition at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas, from February 20-24…
IEEE Identifies Continued Obstacles Toward the Global Adoption of Cloud Computing
Members of IEEE – the world’s largest technical professional association – are working around the globe to deliver on the promise of cloud computing by helping enterprises of all sizes address the barriers that can potentially reduce the adoption rates of this game-changing technology.
The prospective benefits of cloud-based systems are widely discussed and hard to ignore: significant cost reductions in the operations and maintenance of the IT infrastructure; extreme scalability and accessibility; fewer concerns about overloading servers or lack of storage space; and rapid deployment. Conversely, challenges and perceived risks prevail, with lingering concerns about cloud security and privacy, performance unpredictability, and if the ultimate return on investment makes cloud adoption a fit for a given enterprise…