Can The US Government Assuage Cloud Privacy Concerns?
Even as the world tries to find a balance between individual privacy and the eternal vigilance of a nanny state, cloud computing is a casualty of the heightened security concerns in post-911 America. This is something that I had explored in earlier articles, from the ramifications of the PATRIOT Act (See: Is Cloud Computing a Threat to Consumer Rights?), to how rivals of American cloud vendors are actually touting the latter’s vulnerabilities to government investigation as a key business differentiator (See: Your Data in Australia is subject to the US Patriot Act).
More recently, I had written about how concerns have actually translated into business decisions to the detriment of American companies (See: European Firm Refuses To Go On the Microsoft Cloud Due to PATRIOT Act Concerns). Even the European Union had waded into the argument, stating that US laws may be contrary to the interests of the Union’s citizens. In an effort to address these concerns, the US government has decided on confidence building measures…
Cloud Computing Can Drive Business Innovation
Cloud computing is assumed to be an IT staff initiative at most businesses. But business strategists at IBM have concluded that it needs to be a top management priority.
Too many companies are experimenting lightly with cloud computing. They’re using it to tweak existing operations, as opposed to thinking about how it could revise or re-invent the fundamental way they sell their goods and services, said Saul Berman, global strategy consulting leader in IBM’s global technology services.
Berman based his remarks on a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence research unit of the Economist magazine in the fourth quarter of 2011, based on interviews with 572 business and IT managers. IBM sponsored the survey, which will be released later this week, titled The Power Of Cloud: Driving Business Model Innovation. InformationWeek was given an advance look at its contents…
Introducing AT&T’s “Virtual Private Cloud”
Business cloud computing users will take note: the power of AT&T’s "virtual private cloud" has arrived.
AT&T* today announced AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service(SM) with VMware vCloud® Datacenter Service.
The new enterprise-class cloud service combines technologies from virtual private networking (VPN) industry leader AT&T(1) and cloud infrastructure software industry leader VMware.
Like AT&T’s other cloud offers, this new cloud capability is embedded directly into its network. This means compute and storage services can be scaled, managed, routed and delivered to business customers, down to virtually any fixed or mobile device, quickly and flexibly, on demand, with enterprise-grade security and performance…
6fusion Introduces Free Cloud Resource Meter for VMware(R) vSphere
6fusion, a provider of utility-metered public, private and hybrid cloud infrastructure management software and services, today announced it will be previewing its free 6fusion Cloud Resource Meter for VMware(R) vSphere at the VMware Partner Exchange (booth #504) and Santa Clara Cloud Connect (booth #910).
Understanding how many computing resources are being used (and by whom) is essential in infrastructure planning, upgrade planning and cost allocation or chargeback. 6fusion’s patent pending metering algorithm, the Workload Allocation Cube (WAC), normalizes the way cloud infrastructure is metered both for suppliers and consumers. The UC6 web based console federates private data center and third party cloud operators, providing a single console to allow IT organizations of all types to access, meter, manage and optimize hybrid cloud infrastructures…
Brocade to Showcase Fabric-Based Networking Solutions at Cloud Connect Santa Clara 2012
Brocade, the leader in fabric-based data center networking solutions, today announced the company will be exhibiting and attending Cloud Connect Santa Clara 2012, the premier technology event for cloud computing. Scheduled for Feb. 13 – 16 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, this year’s event will feature the latest technologies, platforms, strategies and innovations within cloud computing. Brocade (booth #204) will be discussing its vision and strategy for helping organizations transition smoothly to a world where information and applications reside and can be accessed anywhere, whether the objective is a private, public or hybrid cloud.
The Brocade vision for organizations that are considering cloud deployments is simple: Networks must be cloud-optimized at every critical point because they will define the application performance and the end-user experience within the cloud. With a strong heritage in both data and storage networking, Brocade uniquely delivers solutions that are capable of providing data center-class capabilities across the entire network…
Best practices for scaling up SaaS
Guardian Life Insurance isn’t about to take big risks when making IT investments, and CIO Frank Wander will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t have a cloud computing strategy, per se.
But over the past five years, the $10 billion financial services company has moved 18 applications into the cloud. It shut down a compute grid and moved its actuarial modeling application into an Amazon EC2 cloud. And it’s now in the process of broadly deploying two major software-as-a-service suites.
One of the two is Workday’s human resource management suite. Guardian wasn’t ready to reveal the other, but at the Atmosphere conference last fall, Google announced that it had signed Guardian as a Google Apps customer…
PaaS on a Continued Strategic Growth
Platform as a service (PaaS) remains to be the core element of cloud computing in any personal or business solutions. Any changes, therefore, to its make up will definitely affect cloud vendors and users according to the research analyst Gartner.
Vice president and Gartner analyst, Yefim Natis said, “With large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing. Users and vendors of enterprise IT software solutions that are not yet engaged with PaaS must begin building expertise in PaaS or face tough challenges from competitors in the coming years.”
UptimeCloud shows real-time AWS costs
Uptime Software is the latest company aiming to help eliminate bill shock for cloud users.
UptimeCloud is a new hosted cloud cost-monitoring service for Amazon Web Services users. The service is meant to help users predict and manage spending on AWS.
The service should be useful to both new and veteran cloud users because most cloud users struggle to predict and control costs, said Nick Johnson, director of marketing for Uptime. One UptimeCloud beta customer aptly described the process of spinning up cloud services as "deploy, pray and pay," he said…
TechNet Radio: Virtually Speaking with Yung Chou –“What is Cloud?”
In today’s episode, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist, Yung Chou kicks off his new “Virtually Speaking” series as he sets a baseline understanding of what cloud computing is at its core, how it has evolved over several decades and what its true value is to IT Professionals, consumers and the technology industry as a whole.
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More Proof That Cloud Computing Is A Red-Hot Startup Space
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is mulling over starting an investment fund that will specialize exclusively on cloud computing startups, Bloomberg reports.
The venture capital firm, which has invested in the likes of Groupon and Zynga, could invest $100 million in cloud computing-focused companies this year, according to the report.
Cloud computing is a process where all the difficult calculations and all data is stored on a remote server, but accessed through a less powerful computer via the Internet. The result is basically a supercomputer packed into a MacBook Air.