The cloud shift
Most IT leaders with an interest in cloud computing will have tried the technology out in some capacity by now, and many are beginning to use the cloud in production environments.
The debate is therefore moving from defining and describing the cloud to discussing how to get the most out of the service delivery model.
Information Age’s most recent roundtable debate, which took place in January in Birmingham, invited IT practitioners to share their experiences of cloud computing in terms of how it has affected their IT operations.
One IT manager in attendance reported that adopting an infrastructure-as-a-service offering has liberated his staff from the more menial IT management tasks. "To think of all the jobs we had to do when we owned all our own kit," he said. "Now, with 90% of it in the cloud, you never even need to pick up a screwdriver."…
Cloud Computing: Red Hat Puts Gluster Appliance on Amazon
Red Hat is putting its bought-in Gluster scale-out NAS storage technology, acquired in October, on the Amazon cloud.
It’s styled Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services and other clouds are supposed to follow in short order.
It’ll let companies burst their unstructured data center storage to the cloud and aggregate both Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances for a highly available petabyte-size virtualized storage pool…
3 secrets to creating a business case for cloud computing
We’ve all seen the PowerPoint presentations that show the business advantages of cloud computing: the ability to avoid hardware and software purchases (opex vs. capex), speed to deployment, elasticity, and so on. However, unless you’re prepared to provide real numbers that define real value, that’s so much fluff to those in the executive suite.
As I develop these business cases for enterprises, I’ve found some commonality or emerging patterns to consider. Here are my top three secrets to developing your cloud computing business case and getting it accepted…
A Look at CumuLogic’s Java PaaS for Clouds
CumuLogic is a cloud computing company founded by Sun Microsystems’ alumni. The company has developed a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software that makes it easier and faster to develop and deploy Java applications (apps) in the cloud. By automating the management of the runtime environments for developing and deploying Java apps in the cloud, including automated scaling, CumuLogic’s Java PaaS can reduce the current time these steps take from upwards of multiple weeks to under a day. Cloud computing is not just about Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). The cloud is about the applications, and getting them to your customers in a timely and effective way.
CumuLogic’s Java PaaS is now in beta with general availability coming soon. Their offering provides a no-lock in PaaS solution for Java apps that works on either public or private clouds. An enterprise can easily move apps between their own private cloud and a public cloud if needed. CumuLogic PaaS supports Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, Citrix/Cloud.com CloudStack, OpenStack, and VMware private clouds…
Are you taking the right approach to cloud?
Today’s SMB operates in a highly competitive and increasingly technology driven market. Operational efficiency is naturally a high priority for small and medium businesses to stay ahead and emerging technologies like cloud and virtualization have a crucial role in determining the same.
Cloud computing in particular, offers many advantages in terms of flexibility, agility and on-demand resources that can give organizations a real competitive edge. Cloud as a cost effective technology also fits in comfortably within the strained IT budgets of the SMBs.
The interest levels around cloud adoption are rising, amongst SMBs. Factors such as increased agility and fewer burdens on IT teams are making this a profitable option. The first step towards cloud adoption is server virtualization and SMBs are increasingly considering the adoption of this technology…
Cloud Computing Rises on Wall Street
Lower trading volumes and less than stellar profits mean that Wall Street firms are looking to cut costs, so the adoption of third-party cloud-based applications and services is expected to accelerate this year.
Scivantage runs a retail online-trading portal and professional trading and tax applications in a private cloud. Joe Stensland, SVP and managing director of Scivantage, told Wall Street Technology that, “We deliver the application with a private cloud and allocate the resources needed for each client deployment so they don’t have to bring in resources and infrastructure.
While the interest in cloud services is moving up the list of priorities at large firms that have become cost-conscious, according to Stensland, “Midrange firms have become even more interested in the cloud’s pay-for-what-you-eat philosophy.”…
Cloud Computing: Microsoft CRM Embraces iPhone, iPad, Android
Microsoft announced Monday that it will embrace rival mobile platforms and browsers with a planned second-quarter service update of its Microsoft Dynamics CRM application.
"In today’s hyperconnected world, customers need to be able to access their business-critical data on the device of their choice," said Dennis Michalis, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a statement.
That’s not exactly new news to customers, but cross-platform support is something Microsoft has only slowly–and fairly recently–embraced as it has moved into broad cloud computing services such as Azure and Microsoft Office 365…
Cloud Computing: Easing Some Of Virtual Security’s Complexities
While virtualization and cloud computing pretty much dominate the IT world, security and compliance with IT standards are neither trivial concerns, nor going away anytime soon. But in some ways, security is easier to accomplish in virtual systems than in physical
Take the task of tracking an inventory of IT assets in a data center, for instance. Catbird, a security and compliance technology vendor, has just introduced version 5.0 of its vSecurity suite of tools for securing virtual, cloud and physical networks. One feature of the product is Automated Asset Inventory: every time a new device is attached to the network — a server, a router or a printer — the inventory feature sees it and applies the appropriate security rules to it…
Is platform-as-a-service ready to leave the station?
To date, cloud computing has been dominated by big e-mail and infrastructure providers selling commodity services. As a result, infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service have gotten most of the attention.
Platform-as-a-service could be next. Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel has identified PaaS as “the next major value set for federal cloud computing, and it also aligns closely with his Shared Services initiative to knock down stovepipe software and save money,” said Kevin Jackson, general manager of NJVC cloud services and a co-author of the white paper "Platform as a Service (PaaS). What Is It? Why Is It So Important?"
The paper attempts to clarify some of the confusion around PaaS for federal IT buyers…
The Cloud Software Companies You Need to Know About
The cloud computing industry can be a little daunting. Every week there’s a new start-up promising to be a Netflix for YouTube, or claiming to leverage the cloud for customer relationship algorithmic optimization. You know, marketing gibberish. What does it all mean? There may be a ton of companies in the cloud, but many may not survive, and a number of them are just full of hot air. Let’s take a look at a few of the most promising stocks in the sector, and try to figure out why they’ve gotten this far.
Cloudy bona fides
A company doesn’t merit being part of the cloud just because it’s got something running on the Internet. But software as a service is easy enough to define. Whenever you have to access your application through a central location, and pay ongoing license fees to the developer, that’s generally software as a service. Microsoft‘s Office suite is plain old software. Its Office 365, available through subscriptions, is software as a service. Got it? Cool. Let’s check out some other top cloud software companies, and try to figure out if they’re worth your money…