Author: David

Grazed from MSPMentor.  Author: Renee Bergeron.

I know what you’re thinking: Consumerism? Have you lost your mind? No, but I do want you to consider the positive impact consumerism can have on your business when it comes to cloud adoption.

For beginners, as consumers, we use cloud computing in our everyday life — and have been for some time. We use iTunes for our music, stream Netflix to our TV when we want to watch movies, and check our Gmail and even our finances from our laptops, our smartphones — even our cars.

We never think twice about using our iPad or our BlackBerry to conduct personal business — while we are in airports, waiting for oil changes, or sitting in the drive-through at the local McDonalds. We’ve learned — as consumers — that cloud makes us more productive, more connected, and more accessible to everyone from our boss to our kids. In fact, we’ve learned that lesson so well that studies show the adoption of cloud services on the consumer side could be as high as 90%…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Howard M. Cohen.

Consumers who have been using online services for more than a decade may have become confused when popular software providers such as Microsoft started declaring “to the cloud” in reference to just about every imaginable online service. The typical consumer computer user didn’t realize they were using what is now called cloud services.

An August report from The NPD Group found that while only 22 percent of U.S. consumers claimed familiarity with the term “cloud computing,” more than three-quarters were using services that could be characterized as cloud-computing services. 

Primary among these consumer cloud activities were email, tax preparation, online gaming and photo and video sharing…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Maybe Android won’t be vaporized in the thermonuclear war that Steve Jobs promised to fund before he died; maybe it’s doomed to suffer a thousand cuts.

After the International Trade Commission decided Monday that HTC’s Android phones definitely infringe an Apple patent, it said Tuesday that Motorola’s Android widgets infringe a Microsoft patent and that US sales could be blocked.

Like HTC, Motorola is playing the verdict as a victory since it’s not as bad as it might have been. It’s a preliminary decision by an administrative law judge that the ITC’s commissioners could overturn by April 20 and Microsoft originally went after MMI with nine patents but only wound up nailing MMI on four claims of one patent called ActiveSync that lets users schedule group meetings across mobile devices. Microsoft dropped two patents and the judge threw out six…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge.  Author: John Rath.

After almost two years into the Federal Government data center consolidation project an interesting roadblock may have emerged to redirect cloud computing efforts. Plans to favor the DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) cloud for military departments and agencies may be set aside in favor of private sector clouds.

Migration to private sector

Nexgov reports that a part of the 2012 Defense Authorization Act passed last week has lawmakers directing Defense CIO Teri Takai to develop a plan to use commercial cloud computing services instead of DISA’s. Within the act, Takai is directed to submit a plan by April 1, 2012, for “migration of Defense data and government-provided services from department owned and operated data centers to cloud computing services generally available within the private sector.”  This comes less than a month after a Pentagon report stating that as much as $680 million a year, starting in 2015, could be saved if the Defense Department consolidated data centers. The authorization act also zeroed out the Army budget to consolidate its enterprise email with DISA until the service examines alternatives…

Grazed from CRN.  Author:  Editorial Staff.

HP has introduced new cloud solutions to advance deployment of private, public and hybrid clouds. The company has integrated its HP CloudSystem with Alcatel-Lucent to enable communication service providers for networking.

HP has also introduced HP CloudAgile Service Provider program, HP CloudSystem Matrix 7.0, HP Cloud Protection program, HP Enterprise Cloud Services–Compute, and training programs to transform legacy data centers for cloud computing.

“Clients want to understand, plan, build and source for cloud computing in a way that allows them to gain agility, reduce risk, maintain control and ensure security,” said Santanu Ghose, Country Head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India…

Grazed from Virtualization Review.  Author: David Davis.

I’ve been working on a project for a company that uses infrastructure-as-a-service to dynamically bring up virtual machines in the public cloud for temporarily use. I am excited and bullish on cloud computing and, prior to this project, I didn’t see a lot of negatives to "the cloud" (as long as you understood today’s technology limitations). However, through this project I have come to believe that the greatest limitation to using IaaS in today’s public cloud may be the utter chaos when it comes to pricing.

Lack of Public Cloud Pricing
In trying to get pricing to compare one cloud service offering to another, I went to each company’s Web site and tried to obtain their list price. This doesn’t work. Most companies don’t publish their prices publicly and they say "contact us to have a sales person contact you."…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective.  Author: Mark Smith.

I attended the annual SAP Influencer Summit (Twitter #SAPSummit), at which executives from SAP meet with analysts and customers from around the world to discuss the company’s direction. Pointing out that in 2012 SAP will reach its 40th anniversary of operations, chief communications officer Hubertus Kulpus and chief marketing officer Jonathan Becher kicked off the summit, then passed the microphones to co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe and CTO Vishal Sikka for overviews of the business and technology strategies. They presented a well-rehearsed dialogue on SAP’s definition of its software business as being in two areas, the “system of record” and “system of engagement”; the first term describes its transactional applications and the second its portfolio of business analytics…

Grazed from Windows IT Pro.  Author: Michael Otey.

Grazed from Vanguard.  Author: Prince Osuagwu.

Frontline computer and back end company, International Business Machines, IBM, believes that organizations that embrace the concept of smarter computing and are approaching computing in a different way, are likely to build and enhance easily, the infrastructure they already have.

This is because they would  have harnessed data and integrated information to unlock insights and make better decisions, quicker.

Smarter computing helps companies optimized their systems for specific tasks to deliver the efficiency and performance required in an ever more competitive and challenging world as is seen today. Moreover, cloud computing aids rapid delivery of new services that can benefit local communities and businesses alike, just like it helps position IT leaders and their teams to drive innovation for their businesses, rather than just being the implementers…

Grazed from BusinessWeek.  Author:   Chris Strohm.

Congress ordered the Defense Department to develop a plan to use more cloud-computing services, a move that may lead to U.S. contracts for suppliers including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

The fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, approved by Congress on Dec. 15, requires the Pentagon to develop a strategy by April 1 to migrate its data to cloud-computing services to consolidate resources, according to the legislation. The cloud is a Web-based pool of shared computing resources such as software and data storage.

The White House is trying to get agencies across the government, including the Pentagon, to embrace cloud computing to reduce $80 billion in annual U.S. spending. Moving Pentagon data to cloud services raises security concerns that call for service contract requirements, said James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington…