Get Ready for the Next WikiLeaks
There’s a great deal of debate over both the WikiLeaks disclosure of classified Defense Department and State Department documents, and over the response of the US government and other governments to those leaks. I’m not going to add to it here. Instead, I want to focus on what the WikiLeaks case — and the state of social media in general — can teach us about the future of such information leaks, and (for a lack of a better term) "information warfare."
Cloud no longer vaporware but biz concerns remain
Asked if cloud has moved beyond the "vaporware" stage and evolved as a sustainable business model, Arun Chandrasekaran, research manager at Frost & Sullivan, cited findings from an end-user study that the research firm recently conducted in the region, where 23 percent of respondents in mid-market companies and large enterprises are using some form of cloud computing.
Cloud Services Let Gadgets Punch above their Weight
Smart phones and tablets have never been more popular, but they pack puny computing power compared to the average desktop computer. Two companies hope to change this by connecting modestly powered portable devices to powerful Internet servers that perform intensive tasks on their behalf. This week, both these companies—OnLive, based in Palo Alto, California, and GameString, in Vancouver, Canada—demonstrated handheld gadgets running high-end games and other complex software.
Renovating IT for a move to the cloud
How would you go about remodeling a home you just purchased? Would you do this all at once, or would it be done incrementally? Most people start with one area, such as the kitchen, and then do other upgrades in stages.
Similarly, if you are seeking to "remodel" your IT operation through a move to cloud computing, you don’t have to take an all-at-once approach. The key is in knowing where to begin.
The fundamental technologies that enable cloud computing–virtualization, automation, and user portals–have been around for many years. Moving to cloud computing involves leveraging these capabilities to create a highly dynamic and flexible infrastructure.
Improve the WAN, Improve the Cloud
It’s almost inevitable at this point that the enterprise industry will be wholly dependent upon cloud services in a few short years. If 2010 was the proof-of-concept phase, then 2011 will see the kind of broad rollout that will make the cloud a standard enterprise component by mid-decade.
But while most of the attention is going toward the increased scalability and flexibility that the cloud provides, there is one aspect of this evolving paradigm that has gone largely unnoticed: the increasing dependence on Wide Area Networking (WAN) to support general data center functions.
Salesforce.com launches Chatter Free application
Salesforce.com has announced the launch of Chatter Free, a new no-cost edition of its popular Chatter application.
The new service is available to all employees of current Salesforce.com customers who want to use the enterprise social-collaboration tool to communicate with their colleagues.
Chatter works on a similar principle to Facebook and Twitter, with profiles, status updates and real-time feeds, allowing users to follow people, along with business processes and application data.
Salesforce.com unveils cloud database platform
Salesforce.com is getting into the cloud database business with a new on-demand service, Database.com, set to be announced Tuesday at the Dreamforce conference.
Database.com is partly powered by Oracle’s flagship database, which has long been used by Salesforce.com. But the service contains dozens of other supporting technologies that constitute Salesforce.com’s cloud infrastructure, which now supports some 87,000 customers around the world, said Eric Stahl, senior director of product marketing.
Unisys offers hosted private cloud
Unisys has introduced a dedicated, hosted computing service that lets customers quickly add extra capacity for short-term use, a feature Unisys says is unique among what it calls "hosted private clouds".
Customers will sign up for the service by first establishing a minimum amount of capacity, for which they pay a set monthly fee. If they require more capacity, due to a spike in traffic for instance, they fill out an online request for additional resources. Unisys charges for the additional capacity on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The cloud, copyright, hosting and the law
When Mr Justice Floyd decided the other week that copyright infringement happens in the country the material in question is hosted in, it was tempting to think that he might have opened up a huge legal loophole.
After all, with Cloud computing allowing content to be hosted anywhere in the world, wouldn’t this give free rein to anyone who wanted to put bootleg movies online without fear of being sued?
Cloud services, mobile computing and social networking fusing into new platform
Cloud services, mobile computing, and social networking technologies are going to mature in 2011 and beyond, according to IDC.
The research firm predicts these technologies will coalesce into a new mainstream platform for both the IT industry and the industries it serves.
Critical transition
According to IDC, the platform transition will be fuelled by another solid year of recovery in IT spending. The research firm forecasts that next year, global IT spending will be US$1.6 trillion representing an increase of 5.7 per cent over 2010.