Category: News

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Xath Cruz.

Nowadays, more and more businesses are moving their operations to the cloud as the industry starts to realize the benefits that the cloud brings, whether it’s cost-efficiency, improved flexibility and agility, or any of the myriad advantages that comes from cloud computing. However, before you start migrating all of your data to the cloud, there are some considerations that you need to think about first, such as:

Bigger is Not Necessarily Better

Due to the popularity of cloud computing, you’ll see a lot of large companies from other IT related sectors now staking their claim on the rapidly growing cloud market, but don’t always assume that you’ll be better off with a certain provider just because they are a large, popular company – as they could have earned their reputation in another field and are still not used to the cloud business. It would be wise to do your research first and focus on the provider’s reputation regarding cloud services before signing up with one…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author: Davey Winder.

There’s a lot to be scared about at this time of the year, not least the shameful lack of creativity displayed by your average ‘trick or treat’ teenager when it comes to outfit choice. Just repeating ‘I want your candy’ over and over while wearing a monster mask is not enough to scare me.  However, it would appear that many enterprises are scared enough of the looming threat of someone in an Uncle Sam mask demanding ‘I want your data’ to either avoid cloud storage altogether or rule out what might otherwise prove to be more economical provider choices. Yes, I’m talking about the Patriot Act, as is a newly published International Data Corporation study. 

In a nutshell, what IDC is saying is that European business fears about the Patriot Act and access it provides to data stored within the cloud are largely misguided. The ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001‘ is thankfully more commonly known as the Patriot Act, and simply put it allows data that is stored by a US company to be susceptible to potential seizure or unwarranted search by US Government agencies…

Grazed from SiliconRepublic. Author: John Kennedy.

Instead of resisting change and viewing cloud computing trends as a threat, CIOs need to start building services for their organisations and focus on protecting their organisations’ data, Christian Verstraete, the CTO of Hewlett-Packard’s Cloud Strategy Team Worldwide, told Siliconrepublc.com.

Verstraete is responsible for the definition of HP’s cloud functional and reference architectures, as well as the co-ordination of cloud activities across HP. He is effectively the link between the CTO community inside HP, as well as the tech giant’s customers and partners…

Grazed from FCW. Author: Alan Joch.

Implementing a disaster recovery plan can be like eating vegetables, getting enough fiber and sleeping at least eight hours a night. Most people understand why these things are important, but few do them religiously. The problem is that traditional disaster recovery methods call for re-creating the full IT environment at a separate off-site facility to keep agencies safe from unplanned IT outages. The investment in redundant resources pays off if a server gets fried, some stealthy malware takes down a storage system, or a hurricane forces a data center evacuation.

But on most days, when disasters don’t strike, all that duplicate hardware and software are running in standby mode and not contributing meaningfully to the agency’s daily operations. That is a tough expense to justify, particularly in times of tight IT budgets…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

When companies such as Google and Facebook design their own servers, switches and data centers, it’s more a business decision than it is a test of their hardware-hacking skills. Custom gear means lower power bills, better performance and the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen situations.

One of the best things about cloud computing — as both a business model and an architectural principle — is that hardware really doesn’t matter. By and large, as long as applications and systems management software are intelligent enough to run the show, servers, switches and hard drives just need to show up with minimal competency and stay out of the way. If you don’t believe me, just ask Backblaze … or VMware … or Facebook…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: John Foley.

The coolest cloud computing application in the world — and in our solar system — comes from NASA. The space agency is using commercial cloud services to process the digital images being transmitted to Earth from the Curiosity rover as it searches for signs of life on Mars.

Those images, taken by 17 cameras mounted to the six-wheel, SUV-like rover, are an incredible scientific trove, stored and managed by Amazon Web Services. The most recent images show the rover’s robotic arm taking the first scoops of Martian soil for analysis…

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

Microsoft Thursday launched the biggest, most dramatic makeover of its operating system since Windows went graphical, perfuming the effort with a billion-dollar marketing budget. Windows 8 will be on the street Friday, October 26. It has to best the competition from the smartphones and iPads that have helped Apple and Google suck up a lot of Microsoft’s business.

If the new un-Microsoft-like operating system doesn’t catch on – it has no familiar Start button or menu – it could be curtains for CEO Steve Ballmer and maybe even the company. Microsoft has been late to the Internet, search and mobile and looks to be an old relic, whose stock barely moves anymore, compared to Apple, Google and Amazon…