Category: News

Grazed from InfoBoom.  Author: Douglas Bonderud.

While many companies talk a good game about cloud computing, few are willing to put money on it. Software and service giant Oracle, meanwhile, has proven time and again that it is not only on board with cloud computing but ready to spend–even above market value–to acquire strategic investments. With the recent acquisition of Taleo, a provider of talent management software, Oracle earns the prize of the first big cloud acquisition of 2012. Though the buyout isn’t something midsize and enterprise business IT will feel right away, it speaks to a growing trend in the cloud–one of consolidation, rather than diversification…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Adrian Bridgwater.

The cloud computing model of services-based computing has changed the way we not only ‘architect,’ ‘structure’ and ‘plan’ software applications, it has also changed the way we, subsequently, need to ‘deploy,’ ‘test,’ ‘monitor’ and ‘manage’ cloud-based applications.

Now that’s a lot of nouns (actually they’re mostly verbs too) relating to the actions we take upon our applications, so what do we really mean by these terms?

The fact is that cloud computing has become enough of a tangible reality to warrant the development of testing procedures that reside and operate inside the cloud…

Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Andrew Lacroix

While cloud computing offers many opportunities for IT cost savings, its diverse and dynamic nature can make it difficult to reap the expected financial benefits. For example, how do you see all of your costs in a heterogeneous cloud environment? And how do you charge for the resources being used?

Though there are several chargeback options available, no two are the same. The more money you invest in the cloud, the greater cost rewards you can realize with the right chargeback solution. Consider the following guidelines and choose wisely…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Yung Chou.

Virtualization vs. private cloud has confused many IT pros. Are they the same? Or different? In what way and how? We have already virtualized most of my computing resources, is a private cloud still relevant to us? These are questions I have been frequently asked. Before getting the answers, in the first article of the two-part series listed below let’s go through a few concepts.

• Part 1: General concept (this article)
• Part 2: Private cloud specifics…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babcock.

Businesses and other organizations face tough challenges when trying to find the right way to build cloud applications and handle big data. Those issues, and in-depth discussions of advanced cloud use cases, will be features at the 2012 Cloud Connect conference and expo in Santa Clara, Calif., Feb. 13-16.

Phillip Easter, director of mobile applications at America Airlines, will be one of the featured speakers during the Wednesday 9-11 a.m. keynotes. He plans to address how legacy mainframe data can be integrated with real-time flight data in Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud, according to Steve Wylie, Cloud Connect general manager. Easter’s session is titled, "Azure Delivers On-Time Data: How American Airlines has Turbo Charged Flight Status in its Windows Phone App."…

"Up until this year, the show has tended to be about defining what the cloud is. This year’s event is about doing it," said Wylie.

Lew Tucker, CTO of Cloud Computing at Cisco Systems, will give one of Cloud Connect’s to the point, 15-minute keynotes during the Tuesday 9-11 a.m. keynote session. He will examine "Your Data Center In The Cloud" and explain what has to change in enterprise data centers to give business users access to virtual, multi-tenant data center services. Networking, for example, needs to be an individualized service for the user in the form of a virtual, isolated subnet on the main network, he said in an interview.

Among other things, he plans to ask, and provide Cisco’s answer to, the question: "What do we mean by virtual data centers? How can we provide the isolation needed for each tenant" in a multi-tenant setting?

Tucker will also examine the alternative world of open source code and explain how Cisco is trying to bring some of its virtual networking concepts to the OpenStack open source project for cloud software.

Chris Pick, chief marketing officer of Apptio, will address, "Understanding Cloud Economics: From Best Practices to Hidden Costs," in a session at 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Tuesday. Pick said that cloud users may believe that cloud computing is cheaper without really having the means to do a cost comparison. Whether it is less expensive than their existing infrastructure can only be determined once IT has established baseline costs for its own IT operations, a task Apptio assists with its IT Service Costing application and other IT expense modeling software.

"One reason we exist is cloud computing," he said in an interview. "We can draw up a bill of IT … the fully burdened cost to provide IT services to the business, including outside contractors and cloud services," he said.

With such a bill in hand, IT managers can confront the business users who view IT as non-competitive in meeting their needs. The business users may be right, and it is cheaper to go around IT into the cloud. On the other hand, they may not have understood the real costs of adding another application and support.

A company that’s grown through acquisition often ends up with multiple copies of CRM systems. That firm needs to assess how to rationalize its applications, establish the cost of a single, consolidated application, if that option is pursued, and compare it to adopting a Salesforce.com subscription for each user.

"We see a lot of people making decisions on how to build a virtual private cloud. They can go Vblocks (from VMware, EMC, and Cisco systems spin-off, Virtual Computer Environment) or they can go Eucalyptus (private cloud software), two extremely different choices," he said.

Other speakers include: Jan Jackman, VP of global cloud services for IBM’s Global Technology Services; Peter Magnusson, director of engineering at Google; Allan Leinwand, CTO of infrastructure at Zynga; Geva Perry, author of the popular cloud blog, "Thinking Out Cloud."

LinkedIn data scientists Mathieu Bastian and Sal Uryasev will discuss "LinkedIn Maps: Building A Large Scale Visualization Product In The Cloud" during the Tuesday 9-11 a.m. sequence of short keynotes.

HP, IBM, Nimbula, Uptime Software, and other cloud computing vendors will be making news announcements during the show Feb. 13-16 show.

Register here for Cloud Connect 2012.

Grazed from Dilbert.com.  Author: Scott Adams

On Friday, we like to step away from some of the news and headlines of the day, and instead hit the water coolers and have a bit of fun.

This one is an oldie, but a goodie.  Enjoy this Cloud Computing jab from Scott Adam’s Dilbert strip.

Grazed from Gov Info Security.  Author: Eric Chabrow.

Cloud computing gives the jitters to those charged with protecting their organization’s IT systems and data. After all, vital data flow through the Internet to servers that often are beyond the control of an enterprise’s IT security organization. And, to gauge that concern, Information Security Media Group, publisher of GovInfoSecurity, has just fielded Cloud Computing Security Survey 2012.

The survey will examine not only cloud security concerns, but how security leaders address these concerns through policy, technology and improved vendor management. Survey takers will be from all sectors and from around the globe and include IT, IT security and business managers and professionals involved in their organization’s cloud computing efforts…

Grazed from Information Management.  Author: Justin Kern.

Those were prime expectations for the near-term of cloud computing from discussion topics during an update on cloud standards held Thursday between U.S. and European standards organizations. The virtual summit was led by the Open Data Center Alliance and held in conjunction with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), standards consortium OMG, storage and networking standards group SNIA, and the European telecommunications and network standards group, ETSI. All of the organizations are doing their own work with end users and vendors to establish cloud standards, which are then discussed among the organizations in bi-weekly calls.

Although representatives from the five organizations stopped short of exact timelines and strict guidelines in the discussion, they each provided insight on the direction of standards in the coming year…