Effective data management is key to cloud success
Despite several barriers to entry and risks involved, cloud computing is gaining traction, as it offers numerous potential benefits to organisations of all sizes. However, while the benefits of cloud computing may outweigh the risks, this does not mean that the risks can simply be ignored. In order to leverage the benefits of the cloud without falling foul of regulations and compliance legislation, it is vital to firstly implement sound data governance and effective data management processes.
One of the most attractive benefits of the cloud model is its ability to lower initial implementation costs. Accessing new technologies therefore becomes an operational expense as opposed to a large capital expense, and internal IT costs can be dramatically lowered. The cloud also offers greater scalability and flexibility, reduced time to deploy new applications and services, and can help organisations to standardise services and technologies…
How to Plan Your Cloud Migration
Many enterprises are struggling both with deciding which applications should be moved to the cloud and which combination of vendors to use. In the fourth article in the Open Cloud Visionaries series, we interviewed Sadagopan (Sada) Singam, Global Vice President, Cloud Computing, at HCL Technologies Ltd., a pre-eminent technology services company in India. Singam offers battle tested advice for CIOs and CTOs who are trying to map out a coherent cloud migration strategy.
Getting Ready
Typically, IT infrastructure is split into three areas: on-premise, the private cloud, and the public cloud. As enterprises come to better understand the nature of their on-premise environments, they can find better ways to take advantage of the cloud, reaping both cost savings and business benefits. With this aspiration, however, comes the sobering recognition that they often don’t understand their existing assets all that well…
SailPoint Helps Companies Proactively Mitigate Risk While Adopting Enterprise Cloud
As enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud computing, they must cope with the challenges of managing a hybrid IT environment where some applications reside on-premises and some reside in the cloud. Adding to the complexity of this evolution, business units are gaining more autonomy to buy and deploy applications — which can often house sensitive, corporate data — without consulting or involving the IT organization. Based on a recent survey, Gartner predicted that 35 percent of all application spend will originate outside of IT by 2015, and that 50 percent of companies will have mission-critical data in the cloud by 2016. While more and more companies are now reaping the benefits of cloud computing, they are increasingly struggling to ensure that proper IT controls are in place to address the potential risks.
"Cloud applications give business users the freedom and autonomy to procure and use software, but they make identity management more complex and difficult for the IT organization," said Jackie Gilbert, VP and GM of SailPoint’s Cloud Business Unit. "As we worked with customers to address cloud identity management requirements, we realized that one of the biggest challenges with delivering governance and control for cloud applications is doing so in a way that does not impede the business. The right identity management strategy allows organizations to mitigate risk and meet compliance requirements while also providing valuable services to the business. This helps IT align with the cloud’s core value propositions of convenience and simplicity for the business."…
Cloudy With a Chance of Chromebooks
Business customers have been hesitant to buy Google Chromebooks, computers designed to run software delivered via a web browser. But Edward Hanapole, CIO for diversified education services company Kaplan, is taking a more aggressive approach to the computers–which boot up faster and cost less than traditional laptops. He’s testing dozens of new Chromebook notebooks and Chromebox desktop machines in Kaplan’s call centers.
“[Chromebooks] can be hugely disruptive for the enterprise, as well as in many of our facilities,” Hanapole told CIO Journal during a meeting in Google’s New York City office May 31. Hanapole, who was in town to participate on a panel at Google’s cloud computing event May 31, said the Chromebook initiative is one of several efforts to move the company’s 30,000 worldwide employees into the cloud. This is part of a broader process the company embarked on a few years ago to simplify IT operations amid declining financial performance…
NTT Com to Launch New Enterprise Cloud
NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) announced on June 11 the world’s first globally seamless enterprise cloud service to incorporate OpenFlow network virtualization technology for networks built within and between data centers, which will launch on June 29. The service is initially provided via NTT Com data centers in Japan and Hong Kong, followed by data centers in the United States (two locations), the United Kingdom and Singapore in December and in Australia, Malaysia and Thailand in March 2013.
NTT Com’s new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering, Enterprise Cloud, provides global cloud resources that enterprise customers can easily control and manage to optimize their ICT costs and support the global expansion of corporate operations.
Many multinational enterprises with growing global operations are struggling with long lead times to expand and modify their ICT systems, which can delay their response to rapid changes in the market. NTT Com helps enterprises overcome this problem by providing them with flexible cloud services via which system changes can be performed automatically using virtualized servers and networks, and a convenient customer portal.
Infinitely Virtual Adds McAfee SaaS Total Protection Suite to its Cloud Hosting Platform
Placing threat protection under one roof, Infinitely Virtual, a leading provider of virtual server cloud computing services for businesses, today announced that it has teamed with McAfee to offer its SaaS Total Protection, a comprehensive hosted solution offering endpoint, email, Internet and network protection.
"Our clients asked for an all-in-one solution and we’ve responded by partnering with an industry leader in the security space," said Adam Stern, founder and CEO, Infinitely Virtual. "With McAfee, we’re delivering end-to-end protection, enabling customers to receive immediate, up-to-the-minute threat protection to ensure that data, systems, and networks are instantly and consistently secure. McAfee nicely complements our intrusion detection and prevention system, which goes beyond the firewall to stop malware, phishing, SQL injection and other aggressive threats."
Transcend Computing Announces Amazon Compatible PaaS Solution
Transcend Computing, an innovator in Amazon Compatible Environments (ACE) for public, private and hybrid cloud computing, today announced that it is releasing TopStack Web Edition, a set of platform services (PaaS) that emulate the Amazon Web Services (AWS) APIs. Transcend Computing was formed to help developers, enterprises and managed service providers to capitalize on the momentum of AWS.
TopStack Web Edition provides a set of as-a-service offerings that are interoperable with Amazon Web Services (AWS) PaaS and can be deployed in your data center. This interoperability enables organizations to more easily migrate applications between private and public clouds. The offering includes:
Managing virtualized and cloud-based environments
People have all heard of virtualization and how it can serve up a multitude of benefits. These benefits include lower TCO, simplified physical infrastructure, scalability, resilience and reliability, and faster service delivery.
Virtualization also improves readiness for cloud computing, which brings with it its own set of benefits while enhancing those from virtualization.
But while virtualized and cloud-based data centers do deliver significant and demonstrable benefits, they can be rather complex to manage. This is especially so if they were evolved using multi-vendor assets and legacy applications and systems…
Cloud Computing: The Death of Physical Storage
It wasn’t long ago that we stored files on floppy disks and CDs. After that came USB flash drives and portable hard drives.
The next wave of computer storage and file backup is the cloud – and it will mean the death of physical storage, including our cherished DVD collection.
The Cloud
The cloud – or cloud computing – is really just a metaphor for the Internet and personal storage on a network. So it’s not exactly new. But increased bandwidth has made cloud storage more practical for both personal and business applications…
Bright CEO Matthijs van Leeuwen to Present “Extending HPC Clusters into Amazon EC2” at HP-CAST
Bright Computing, a Registered AWS ISC Solution Provider, has built a comprehensive yet intuitive capability to extend HPC clusters into Amazon EC2. With a few mouse clicks, Bright Cluster Manager provisions, schedules, monitors and manages these EC2 resources as part of the local cluster. Every on-site HPC cluster running Bright is automatically cloud-ready, at no additional cost and without the need for expertise in cloud computing.
Alternatively, Bright users can create an entirely new cluster in Amazon EC2, and manage these resources using Bright…