Author: David

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon announced today DynamoDB, a fully managed cloud-based NoSQL database service that builds on the company’s SimpleDB service by delivering faster, more consistent database performance to keep pace with the demands of ever-scaling cloud apps.

The secret sauce here is Amazon’s homegrown Dynamo non-relational database architecture, which the company built to suit the demands of its complex, service-oriented e-commerce architecture. Designed to be a highly reliable, ultra-scalable key/value database, Dynamo has  inspired such offerings as Red Hat’s Infinispan data grid technology [1] and Apache Cassandra [2]…

Grazed from Talkin Clouds.  Author:  Joe Panettieri.

JetBlue is the latest company to embrace Microsoft Office 365, the cloud computing platform that runs Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and other cloud services. JetBlue is certainly a big win for Microsoft’s cloud strategy — but it’s still difficult to measure exactly how well Office 365 is doing in the market, especially among channel partners.

According to a Microsoft blog, JetBlue, Patagonia and the American Heart Association are among the most recent Office 365 converts. The blog also says:

• Office 365 is on track to be one of the fastest-growing offers in Microsoft’s history.
• More than 90 percent of Office 365 customers have less than 50 employees, suggesting the cloud suite is a hot seller for small businesses…

Grazed from Washington Today.  Author:  David Hubler.

Expect disruptive technologies – cloud computing, mobility, social computing, big data and smart analytics, IT appliances, and cybersecurity – to become more tightly woven into mission-critical systems and processes in 2012 as government and private organizations look for ways to innovate and also operate more cost efficiently.

That’s one of Unisys’ predictions for 2012 based on its work with clients around the world.

The findings were released on Jan. 18.

Among the company’s predictions: Cloud computing will continue to be the top IT investment priority in 2012…

Grazed from CIO Update.  Author: Paul Carmody.

The cloud is an increasingly viable infrastructure deployment option for enterprises, but is it the right choice for all of your applications?  Before you take the plunge, you need to realize there are fundamental differences between available cloud offerings, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

To determine which model is right for you, you’ll need to evaluate your needs carefully. As you go through this process, consider the top five mistakes today’s organizations are making in cloud adoption, and how to avoid them:

Mistake No. 1: Leaping before you look – CIOs are under pressure from business to speed time-to-market of business critical applications, while simultaneously being squeezed to accomplish this with smaller staffs and shrinking budgets. The lure of the cloud is tempting, but rather than rush in, it is in your best interest to begin with a thorough audit of your IT needs to determine whether a cloud solution will truly help you meet your business goals…

Remember, the cloud is a means to an end, not the end in itself. You don’t want to throw an application into the cloud and not get the performance and cost improvement you are looking for. Moreover, not all clouds are created equal: Public clouds solve different problems than private clouds. Clouds based on open-source hypervisors may have fewer/different features than their VMware-based cousins.

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author:  John Foley.

Cloud services are proven for many business and consumer applications, but what if the problem to be solved is measuring the expansion of the universe? The U.S. Department of Energy has determined the cloud can help there too, but it won’t be cheap or easy.

The Energy Department set out two years ago to determine the feasibility of cloud computing for the kinds of CPU-intensive processing jobs done by its national laboratories, and the results of that assessment are now in. Researchers at the Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national labs determined that cloud computing offers "many advantages," but with caveats. In a recently released report on the project, called Magellan, they point to a steep learning curve, performance and scalability shortcomings, and missing pieces in the cloud software stack, among other challenges…

Grazed from Cloud Tweaks.  Author: Sourya Biswas.

There may not be any love lost between Microsoft and Google in the cloud computing space (and elsewhere) (See: Google vs Microsoft: US Government Agrees to End Microsoft Bias  and Microsoft And Google Are At It Again); however, it would seem that Microsoft is not averse to the occasional tie-up with an IT biggie, especially one who poses no direct threat to its software supremacy.

Microsoft recently announced a global, four-year deal with HP to deliver its communications and collaboration applications via HP’s cloud services. As per the press release, the deal would include:…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Nimbula, the Cloud Operating System Company, today announced the launch of its first hands-on Cloud Computing training course, "Building and Using a Cloud with Nimbula Director". This course will teach students how to build and administer private and hybrid cloud solutions.

Nimbula Director is powerful cloud software that works out of the box and can be used to implement a number of business enabling cloud use cases, such as deploying a private cloud in minutes instead of weeks or months.

To help customers achieve immediate benefits such as reducing the time and cost to build new application or infrastructure services without sacrificing security and control, Nimbula has built an industry-first Cloud Computing training course that educates and empowers organizations to implement real world cloud computing use cases such as: how to build a scalable platform to support web or SaaS applications, how to build a zero-touch data center, how to blend Amazon EC2-like scale, agility and efficiency with customization and control, and how to give traditional IT the same capabilities as public clouds…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

IO, the leading provider of next-generation modular data center technology and services, announced today a record year for IO. Anywhere® customer deployments. The rapid growth of mobile and cloud computing combined with the unique ability to deliver an operational data center in as little as 90 days positions IO for significant growth in 2012.

IO. Anywhere deployments in 2011 spanned a broad range of industries and companies including: Allianz, Avnet, Logicalis, Photobucket, Red Cloud and Suntron. Today, IO owns and operates the largest modular data centers in the world in Edison, New Jersey and Phoenix, Arizona.

"Today’s data center is obsolete when taking modularity and the fast maturation of this market into consideration," said Jason Schafer, research manager, Tier1 Research. "If data center owners and operators are not at least exploring and considering modular components as a means for data center expansions and new builds, they are putting themselves at a significant disadvantage from a scalability, cost and possibly maintenance standpoint."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Jeff Norman.

Surmounting the economic challenges of 2011, cloud computing emerged as a new technological force to be reckoned with. The New Year has already announced additional strength for the cloud, particularly in the mobile phone sector.

Several major tech junkets predicted cloud computing’s push into society’s cell phones and mobile devices — predictions that I did not wholeheartedly believe.

The cloud’s flagship asset of storing and updating important data in multiple locations simultaneously is simple enough to grasp. However, most major companies have failed to communicate just how simple and useful cloud computing can actually prove to be for consumers…

Grazed from Information Week.  Author: Nicole Lewis.

Recent research on cloud computing in healthcare suggests that many IT managers are reluctant to store critical patient-related data in a cloud-computing environment. With this in mind, one healthcare executive from information management firm Iron Mountain is prodding health CIOs to take a second look at the technology.

Ken Rubin, senior vice president and general manager for Iron Mountain’s healthcare division, understands that CIOs have many concerns as they develop a robust IT infrastructure that lets clinicians access data quickly, while ensuring that the system helps the organization meet its obligations under the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPPA) privacy and security rules.

Although the findings of a recent study from KLAS found that the healthcare market has seen little adoption of cloud technology for critical data such as electronic health records (EHRs), patient accounting, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, Rubin believes health IT managers can learn to appreciate the benefits of cloud computing once they begin using the technology…