Cloud Computing Simply Isn’t That Scary Anymore: Survey
Cloud computing just isn’t as scary as it once was to companies and their CIOs. A new survey of 785 companies finds a meager 3% considering it to be too risky — down from 11% last year. Only 12% say the cloud platform is too immature, and that’s down from 26% a year ago. Furthermore, 50% of the survey respondents now say they have “complete confidence” in the cloud — up from 13% a year ago.
Of course, looking at it another way, that means 50% aren’t quite comfortable. But still, cloud is finding its way into day-to-day business.
These are the findings of a new survey conducted by North Bridge Venture Partners. The survey had a lot of industry support behind it, sponsored by 39 companies, including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and Glasshouse…
ComputeNext Multi-Cloud Marketplace Launches as Structure Launchpad Participant
As a cloud service brokerage, or CSB, ComputeNext is a helping define a market segment projected to yield $5 billion in sales by 2014, according to Gartner’s projections this is the fastest growing area of cloud computing.
This LaunchPad event is held live on June 20th at 5PM PDT in Silicon Valley where the cloud computing, big data, and mobile mindshare come to feel the pulse of IT and disruptive technology. Video streams and recorded captures can be found at: www.livestream.com/gigaomstructure
ComputeNext has been called an "uber-aggregator" of cloud services, and has been gaining traction amongst public cloud providers, bringing choice and interoperability to cloud consumers through a marketplace portal which they deem to be the equivalent of Expedia for cloud computing…
Cores in the cloud: Does brawny or wimpy win?
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Kevin C. Tofel.
As the cloud of web services expands, more servers are needed. But should those servers be brawny cores filled with raw power or lightweight wimpy cores in greater numbers? Since we can’t have the two arm wrestle for the win, Jason Waxman, VP and GM, Cloud Infrastructure Group, Intel Corporation offered perspective on Wednesday at GigaOM Structure 2012in San Francisco.
There are pros and cons to each, says Waxman, whose company makes both types of chips in the high-end Xeon and low-power Atom lines to name a few. How then should a company plan their infrastructure? “It doesn’t matter,” Waxman notes. Instead of planning for one scenario or the other, dynamic technology with a range of options is the best approach…
Fat databases, small pipes: The problem of data inertia
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Kevin Fitchard.
As datasets get fatter and cumbersome, it’s becoming increasingly harder to move them around. Even the fattest multi-gigabit pipes look like cocktail straws when you’re talking about petabyte databases. At a panel discussion at GigaOM’s Structure conference, cloud computing executives pointed out that it’s going to become more and more difficult to move these massive troves of data to the applications that use them – or vice versa.
One option is to simply move the application closer to the data. NYSE Euronext has built out its own data centers in New Jersey and London in order to be close to its principal exchanges and customers, said Ken Barnes, SVP and global head of platforms of NYSE Technologies. At first, that proximity was necessary for latency reasons – in the securities trading business, milliseconds count – but NYSE finds that the issue of bandwidth is now becoming its bigger concern as its customers move massive amounts information in and out of its data centers…
Rackspace exec warns of Amazon lock-in
Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.
Customers of Amazon Web Services may be unknowingly locking their data and computational logic in with the popular cloud service, making it difficult to move or significantly modify those resources, the president of a competing cloud provider asserted Wednesday.
As cloud computing matures, "people will want to invent and build new features, ones that they then can run anywhere. I think if we just wait around for Amazon to build things, we will have a hard time as an industry," said Lew Moorman, president of hosted service provider Rackspace. "It’s not even a criticism of Amazon. What I’m asking for is an open alternative."
Moorman addressed the topic at the GigaOm Structure conference in San Francisco and spoke with IDG News Service after his talk…
2012 Future of Cloud Computing Survey Exposes Hottest Trends in Cloud Adoption
North Bridge Venture Partners today announced the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. Supported by 39 industry collaborators spanning established leaders, emerging, fast-growth companies, and startups — the 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing. This year’s collaborators include companies such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and Glasshouse. A total of 785 respondents spanning industry experts, users and vendors participated in the survey.
Respondents were asked about a wide range of key issues impacting cloud computing, including drivers for cloud computing, inhibitors, best practices, sourcing, total cost of ownership (TCO), cloud’s impact on multiple business sectors, and emerging cloud technologies. The survey provides many insights into the adoption of cloud computing, including the cloud configurations and applications that are forming around specific business needs including Big Data, business continuity, collaboration and storage…
Vision Net Brings Cutting-edge Cloud Technology to Northwest Region
Vision Net, a Montana-based communications technology solutions provider, announced today that it will begin offering customers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) based on Cisco’s CloudVerse cloud delivery framework. The move places Vision Net at the forefront of cloud computing service providers in the Northwest region.
Vision Net CEO Rob Ferris says there is significant demand for the technology. “As more companies seek out cloud computing to meet their data storage and other needs, we’re seeing an increased demand for faster, more user-friendly programs,” he says. “With IaaS businesses can go online and in a matter of minutes build the cloud experience that best meets their needs, while still having the full support and service of the Vision Net team and the testing of Cisco CloudVerse behind them.”
Convergence Taking Over the Data Center
Enterprises may have embraced cloud computing as a means to handle increasing data loads, but closer to home the name of the game continues to be streamlined, converged infrastructure.
How far this movement will go and how radically it will remake the data center remains to be seen. Convergence can take place on many levels, ranging from simple network or server consolidation to integrated compute clusters or even prefabbed, containerized data centers. One thing is certain, the days of discrete islands of hardware are quickly coming to an end.
Dell is the latest to broach the converged infrastructure movement. Earlier this month the company unveiled a new compute cluster built around its PowerEdge server and Force10 40 Gbps switch, as well as a new version of the EqualLogic storage blade. The entire kit is housed in a single blade chassis and is controlled by a single management software stack, making it easy for enterprises to deploy and configure in accordance with the rapid scalability needs of virtual and cloud environments…
The Role of Cloud Automation and IT-as-a-Service
Grazed from Wired. Author: Jason Liu.
As a software company CEO, I have the opportunity to meet regularly with IT leaders from some of the world’s largest brands and leading IT organization innovators. Based on these conversations, it has become clear that IT organizations continue to struggle with the centralization of company-wide computing needs in the journey toward providing IT-as-a-Service. It’s also clear that cloud is both part of the solution and part of the problem.
For the past 18 months or so, one of the recurring anecdotes that I’ve heard has been around line of business staff engaging the public cloud to run projects without first engaging IT…
Cloud Computing: Has Dell Lost Quest?
Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.
Quest Software says it’s going with a sweetened offer from Insight Venture Partners, which brought along Vector Capital, another private equity outfit, to get the $2.17 billion deal done.
They’ve offered $25.75 a share, 50 cents more than the mystery bidder believed to be Dell offered last week and 12% better than the $23 Insight offered in March.
For insurance the deal calls for a $25 million termination fee, four times more than the original fee. The cap on the bidders’ reimbursable expenses has also been raised from $7 million to $12 million…