Category: News

Grazed from PC Advisor.  Author: Stephanie Overby.

Global IT services spending should reach more than $251 billion dollars this year, up 2.1 percent from 2011, according to Gartner’s latest IT outsourcing forecast. Adjusting for currency changes, that’s actually around a 4.1 percent increase in spending–about the same level of growth as the year prior, according to Gartner research director Brian Britz.

But the fastest growing segment of outsourcing–cloud computing services–is expected to nearly double from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $5 billion this year. Even more notable–infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will contribute 38 percent of the increment outsourcing growth in 2012, compared to 8 percent in 2011. "This is reflective of how difficult the current market is for established IT outsourcing services–like data center outsourcing–and the providers of those services," Britz says. "There is definitely some displacement or substitution of cloud for what might have otherwise been delivered through more traditional outsourcing models taking place."…

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Florence de Borja.

According to the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, the return on investment of cloud computing may not be able to meet expectations due to hidden costs.

In its white paper “Calculating Cloud ROI: From the Customer Perspective”, there are 5 hidden costs which everyone must be aware of before they move to the clouds:

1. There is a cost involved when an enterprise decides to house their IT services back to its premises because it will be faced with regulatory changes.
2. There is also a cost involved in mitigating cloud computing risks.
3. Some expenses may be incurred unexpectedly when systems are migrated to the clouds.
4. Due to the shift to cloud computing, there’s going to be a loss of IT knowledge which provides competitive differentiation.
5. There’s also a lock-in provision with a proprietary service or particular cloud service provider which is expected to slow down any future plans for adopting open standards-based services…

Grazed from Government Security News.  Author:   Ashish Patel.

With every day that dawns, the global technology skies are becoming more and more cloudy. However, I’m not predicting dark, stormy days ahead — far from it.

These are the cumulus clouds of computing opportunity. From the federal government to banking to healthcare, organizations and industries across the spectrum are realizing that moving their premises-based technology infrastructure to off-site, cloud-based solutions can offer real benefits.

While discussion about cloud computing has been going on in the public safety community for a few years, the idea of broad implementation has not been widely accepted. Early commercial cloud solutions were nebulous and untested, which rendered them incompatible with public safety…

Grazed from Amerisurv.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The revolution and evolution of cloud computing and other emerging new technologies impacting the practice of geospatial professionals will be presented at the 2012 MAPPS/ASPRS Joint Specialty Conference to be held October 29 through November 1 in Tampa, Florida.

Technical sessions during the conference will address the most pressing technologies and their applications including 3D, mobile mapping, cloud data management, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), lidar and the role of cloud computing with these technologies…

Grazed from CMSWire.  Author: David Roe.

In all the talk of emerging technologies, there is often the suspicion that much of it is just hype. Gartner has been observing these technologies and since 1995 measuring the level of hype against the reality of those technologies. Among the fast moving technologies in this year’s studies are cloud computing, Big Data and media tablets.

Technology Cycles

To avoid indulging in the hype that Gartner has set out to identify in its Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2012 report, it needs to be clear what Gartner is actually measuring. According to Gartner researchers Jackie Fenn and Hung LeHong, what they are doing is measuring the ‘hype’ around technologies and comparing that with what has actually been delivered…