Category: News

August 27, 2012 Off

In cloud computing, all applications aren’t created equal

By David

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is a disruptive market force to traditional IT business operations, with its pay-as-you-go consumption model and asset-light delivery of key business applications and services.

As with many new, disruptive technologies, the question now arises as to how organisations embrace – or reject – cloud computing as vital to their business. Companies must decide whether they will adjust their focus in the name of future relevance, or cling to old models that were successful in the past. How have organisations entrenched in legacy technologies balanced the disruptive innovation represented by the cloud? What can be learned from those that are getting it right?

Bradley Bunch, General Manager: Microsoft Solutions at Dimension Data Middle East and Africa, believes vendors making the most successful transition to the cloud are those that realised years ago that cloud was set to become a revolutionary force in the industry, rather than a minor innovation…

August 27, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing in Science Fiction – What Is Real?

By David

Grazed from TechGoblin. Author: Daniel Moeller.

Science fiction is a popular source of entertainment, with its descriptions of futuristic societies and their use of technology. Most of it seems closer to magical premonitions than to reliable predictions, but other stories are eerily realistic, based on existing technology and the extrapolation of new developments. In some cases, this means that authors have actually predicted systems that seemed like magic back then, but are widely used now.

For example, not many people know that Mark Twain, famous for his novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, predicted the internet in his short story “From the London Times of 1904” no later than 1898. In this story, he describes a network of information and communication formed by a system of telephones…

August 27, 2012 Off

A Cloud Storm Ahead

By David

Grazed from CRN. Author: Steven Burke.

There is a twister that is about to wreak havoc on the channel landscape, and it’s going to hit those solution providers that are coming up short in terms of making investments to sell cloud computing services. Make no mistake about it. There are far too many legacy solution providers moving too slowly to make the treacherous transition to the cloud computing services model. One reason for the growing gap between the cloud computing solution provider haves and have-nots is the heavy investment in both technology and thought leadership that is necessary to cross the cloud computing chasm.

It’s one of the reasons, by the way, that we here at UBM Channel, with prodding from solution providers, put together the BoB (Best of Breed) conference, which is celebrating its second anniversary Oct. 15-17 at the Grand Hyatt in Tampa, Fla…

August 26, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: The CIO as the IT supply chain manager

By David
Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Ken Oestreich.

The role that IT plays is transforming. Thus, the skills, roles, and tools for CIOs have to transform too. Why? If the trend toward cloud-based services continues, then the role of the CIO will shift from being a builder/technologist to becoming an integrator/vendor-manager.

In the recent past, the CIO and staff earned their name as technologists. They built IT infrastructure by hand from the ground-up. Unique server, storage and networking piece-parts were purchased, integrated and optimized to support specific applications. IT recruited and developed staff who performed the technical back-flips that made each system work. This approach (and mentality) largely continues today, even into implementing basic server virtualization…

August 26, 2012 Off

Cloud strategy: Choose wisely

By David

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Dave Roberts.

As executives contemplate the emergence of cloud computing, it’s important that they understand the questions they need to ask about why they’d adopt the new IT paradigm. Those deciding should consider the history and decisions made by Borders, the bookstore chain. Its execs chose poorly.

Choices matter. Just ask Indiana Jones. In The Last Crusade, he was forced to pick the Holy Grail out of a lineup of cups that spanned everything from a crude wooden model to a high-end chalice apparently designed by Fabergé. The stakes were high. His adversaries chose poorly; Indy chose wisely, and won the day. Cloud computing strategies are a lot like that…

August 26, 2012 Off

Free clouds! Piston latest to jump on ‘freemium’ bandwagon

By David
Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Brandon Butler.

Piston Cloud Computing — which bills itself as the OpenStack enterprise company — is the latest cloud vendor to offer a free or low-cost version of its software for customer trials and proofs of concepts.

And it begs the question: Why are cloud providers going cheap?

"We’ve spent a lot of time talking to analysts, customers, and most folks are in the ‘we want to try before we buy phase,’" says Piston CEO Joshua McKenty, who is also one of the co-founders of the OpenStack movement…

August 26, 2012 Off

5 Signs Your Cloud Service Provider Can’t Handle Tier 1 Apps

By David
Grazed from CIO.  Author: Thor Olavsrud.

Migrating mission-critical applications to the cloud is fundamentally different from migrating less critical applications and processes to the cloud. Picking the right cloud hosting provider is among the most important decisions you’ll make when planning the migration of your Tier 1 applications. After all, cloud providers that typically focus on developer services can quickly find themselves out of their depth when dealing with production applications.

"The requirements and capabilities that an organization needs when running a production application are very different than one that’s catering to developers," says Craig McLellan, cloud architecture author and chief technology officer of Hosting.com.

Tier 1 applications often stand to benefit the most from the efficiency and scalability offered by a cloud environment:

  1. Consolidation and infrastructure efficiency
  2. Faster provisioning of applications and better configuration management
  3. Universal high-availability services
  4. Automated resource optimization, and dynamic scaling of applications…

August 26, 2012 Off

Piston Cloud Releases OpenStack Distribution

By David
Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Chris Talbot.

There’s another OpenStack distribution entering the market, following hot on the heels of the release of Red Hat’s OpenStack distribution. Piston Cloud will be releasing at VMworld 2012 Airframe, a slimmed-down version of its Piston Enterprise OpenStack distribution.

Airframe is being distributed freely and is designed as a bare-metal cloud management platform for private clouds that, according to the company, installs in less than 10 minutes and delivers OpenStack services including compute, storage, networking and cloud management. The release of the new OpenStack distribution is meant to give businesses a free way to give OpenStack a try…

August 25, 2012 Off

Dell Cloud Dedicated: Will Partners Embrace Private IaaS?

By David
Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Joe Panettieri.

Dell Cloud Dedicated, a private IaaS service, is the latest addition to the PC giant’s cloud services strategy. Also this week, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) introduced online ordering for public and hybird cloud services, and the company also expanded its VMware-oriented vCloud Datacenter Services to more countries.

That’s a lengthy list of moves. But can Dell PartnerDirect companies — VARs and MSPs — cash in on the initiatives?

Let’s take a look at each move. Dell indicated:

August 25, 2012 Off

The great challenge—and opportunity—of cloud: interoperability

By David
Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: James Urquhart.

Cloud computing and distributed applications are part of a greater shift to building out an ecosystem with inter-dependent parts. This may seem obvious, but what is less obvious is how the industry will interoperate and develop systems that let information flow through the ecosystem.

Interoperability, and the challenge of maintaining control of operations in the face of it, is a central issue for those that operate distributed applications on the internet — or “in the cloud.”

In this case, however, I’m not talking simply about creating and controlling interoperability from the developer level. Tools and services like Dell’s Boomi or IBM’s CastIron have existed for years, and have some success in delivering more flexibility to integration between applications and services. However, these services are focused on solving the developer’s key issues with integration –how to make sure messages move between components based on a process definition and one or more translations, if needed…