Cloud Computing: Apple’s war with Google heats up
When Apple Inc kicks off its annual conference for software developers on Monday, all the power players in the Apple universe will be on hand, save the one that is in many ways driving the agenda: Google Inc.
More than ever, the consumer electronics juggernaut finds itself in a pitched battle with the online search giant – in smartphones, cloud computing and the never-ending competition for the hearts and minds of the best software developers.
Apple on Monday is expected to announce its own mapping application, challenging the position of Google Maps as one of the most-valued features on the iPhone. It will unveil closer integration of its iPhone apps and iCloud storage service with all its devices, the latest riposte in its battle with Google’s Android smartphone software…
Chrome OS offline: Can you really use a Chromebook without the cloud?
Google’s Chrome OS Chromebooks are great for cloud-based computing — but what happens when you have a Chromebook with no cloud? Can Chromebooks actually work offline, or do they turn into pretty paperweights when the Internet goes off?
These are important questions to consider. Chrome OS, after all, is a platform built around the Web. But whether it’s on a plane or while visiting Uncle Jed’s country cottage, we all encounter times when Internet access isn’t available.
I haven’t seen Uncle Jed lately, but as part of my two-week Chrome OS experiment, I wanted to see how Google’s newly refreshed cloud platform really performed offline. So I took a deep breath, hyperventilated a little, and shut off the Wi-Fi and 3G on my Chromebook for a few hours…
Red Hat Unveils Its CloudForms IaaS Platform
Red Hat, Inc., the global provider of open source solutions, has announced the next step in its delivery of open hybrid cloud solutions to enterprises with the general availability of Red Hat CloudForms. CloudForms is an open hybrid cloud management platform built to enable enterprises to create and manage Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) hybrid clouds with the ability to make self-service computing resources available to users in a managed, governed and secure way.
“The role of enterprise IT is evolving. There’s no doubt that end users want to help themselves to cloud-like compute resources, but the IT department still needs to centralise deployment, management and integration,” said Rachel Chalmers, Vice President, Research, Infrastructure Management at 451 Research, a division of leading global analyst and data company The 451 Group. “A platform like CloudForms makes it possible for organisations to build clouds that span their in-place infrastructure and expose it to a new generation of developers and end users, all without relinquishing control.”…
Blytheco Pairs With NetSuite to Launch New Cloud Computing Solution
When it comes to finding a cloud computing service, everyone has heard of NetSuite, but now cloud computing enthusiasts will hear a new name in the cloud industry–Blytheco. Blytheco, a leading provider in business management software for mid-market businesses has announced their partnership with NetSuite to provide customers with cloud ERP services, according to a recent MarketWatch report.
The Blytheco-NetSuite team will bring scalability and reliability to midsize businesses utilizing Blytheco’s proven delivery platform with NetSuite’s dependable cloud computing solution. Blytheco CEO Stephen Blythe notes that the convenience of a fully-integrated business application suite paired with a cloud computing service is a step forward in simplifying the daily tasks of maintenance and troubleshooting that consume such a large number of IT hours. IT payroll expenses can be dramatically reduced through cloud computing, as Blytheco will take responsibility for data storage and protection…
Cloud Computing Risks: What to Watch Out For
Cloud computing is now the concept of choice for start-ups and midsize businesses that want to overhaul and streamline the performance of their IT infrastructure. Despite the apparent benefits, cloud computing risks are now becoming clearer.
The increased rate of uptake of the cloud is confirmed by the high revenue generated from cloud computing, which is reported to have increased by 15 percent in the last quarter of 2011, compared to 2010. A summary of the key figures from the 2011 research study were published in a news report by Codestone Cloud…
Bayan jumps on cloud computing services bandwagon
Local telco company Bayan Telecommunications (Bayan) has officially entered the cloud computing market announcing its partnership with DataOne Asia (Philippines), an enterprise technology services firm.
Bayan’s chief-operating-officer Rafael Aguado described their company’s tie up with DataOne as another bold step by Bayan to provide its customers with effective, relevant and affordable business solutions.
"We have chosen to partner with DataOne for the roll out of our cloud services because of our shared mission to deliver to our customers and clients the best enterprise cloud services solution there is today," Aguado said…
New Cloud Offering from HP
Cloud computing has emerged as a key focus area for all the information technology companies across the globe, and Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ – Analyst Report) is no exception. The company has recently announced a new cloud computing solution in a bid to revamp its business.
The new cloud-based service enables clients to deploy private, public and managed clouds in a traditional information technology atmosphere, helps address the business needs of several existing and prospective clients and is compatible with all the latest technologies used by various companies.
The new offering from the technology major is expected to help the airline industry to develop an integrated platform for airline reservations and travel. Moreover, the “Cloud bursting” capabilities help external clients to access the blocks of external cloud capacity through the HP Cloud System, Amazon Web Services and Savvis. It is also expected to help in arranging new tools to manage technology across various cloud environments. The new offering includes a printing system that enables driverless printing from mobile devices…
IT and Cloud security provider Qualys files for $100 million IPO
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loud security provider Qualys Inc filed with U.S. regulators to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its common stock.
The company, which provides a cloud computing based platform for companies to secure their IT infrastructure, said it plans to list under the symbol "QLYS", but did not say on which exchange.
Qualys is backed by chief executive Philippe Courtot, who owns about 40 percent of the company, and venture capital firm Trident Capital, which has a 27.4 percent stake…
AWS: Can anyone catch Amazon’s cloud?
One of Amazon’s secret weapons is its attitude to profit margins, where it is happy to undercut its cloud computing competitors.
This combines with its economies of scale to make life very difficult for any of its potential competitors, be they small and nimble or large and rich.
When Amazon adds capacity, it has to buy hard drives by the shipping crate and servers by the rackload, according to Carl Brooks, an infrastructure and cloud computing analyst at Tier 1 research. And the low prices that Amazon can command for its equipment due to its size could make it difficult for competitors unless they are well funded and content with entering into a price war.
"[Amazon’s] margins for selling compute and storage are absurd," Brooks says. He notes that a basic EC2 unit — the workhorse of the AWS cloud — is around one half of one modern CPU (a single EC2 unit is roughly equivalent to a 1.0-1.2GHz AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processor from 2007, according to Amazon)…
Researcher: Interdependencies Could Lead to Cloud ‘meltdowns’
As the use of cloud computing becomes more and more mainstream, serious operational "meltdowns" could arise as end-users and vendors mix, match and bundle services for various means, a researcher argues in a new paper set for discussion next week at the USENIX HotCloud ’12 conference in Boston.
"As diverse, independently developed cloud services share ever more fluidly and aggressively multiplexed hardware resource pools, unpredictable interactions between load-balancing and other reactive mechanisms could lead to dynamic instabilities or ‘meltdowns,’" Yale University researcher and assistant computer science professor Bryan Ford wrote in the paper.
Ford compared this scenario to the intertwining, complex relationships and structures that helped contribute to the global financial crisis…