Building Your Cloud? Remember Your Workers
My post last week discussed the importance of long-term benefits related to productivity and cost when implementing cloud computing technologies. CFOs and their IT directors must understand the importance of hard costs, but they should not forget their employees who will ultimately be impacted by these changes.
"The role of IT is changing, and businesses must recognize how this change will impact their employees", HCL Technologies’ Global Vice President, Cloud Computing Sadagopan “Sada” Singam emphasizes. "IT is becoming more cross-functional, and companies must understand how their IT departments will impact business operations."…
New encryption will bring security to cloud computing
It sounds like something out of a spy novel — using the mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to create super-secret information that can’t be decoded by cloud computing systems.
But thanks to the work of a team of international scientists, including the Institute for Quantum Computing’s Anne Broadbent, it’s closer to reality than you think.
The breakthrough, published this week in the journal Science, is a crucial step toward perfectly secure cloud computing, a growing industry providing computer processing and data storage over the internet and other networks…
The Coming Convergence of IT Management in the Cloud
The increased complexity of managing IT environments, thanks to the rise of virtualization and cloud computing, is pushing a lot more IT organizations to rethink IT management as a whole. Instead of incurring the ongoing expense of setting up their own IT infrastructure to run custom management applications, many of them are thinking more about invoking IT management services that are delivered via the cloud.
That approach not only reduces capital costs, it also provides an approach to managing IT that scales better as the overall IT environment continues to dynamically change. What’s interesting about the approach is that it sets up an opportunity to converge a lot of disparate IT management practices. For instance, systems, network and applications management have all been treated as separate, but related, disciplines. As more of those activities shift to the cloud, IT organizations should expect to see a lot more convergence of these management activities…
Virtually Clearing Cloud Initiatives Through WAN Optimization
There is a storm rising in the midst of enterprise networks today. It builds quickly and overtakes unsuspecting companies as the popularity of virtual initiatives causes data volumes on their networks to swell to proportions too large to access efficiently over existing bandwidth. The challenge then becomes one of optimizing underlying network infrastructure in order to support the increased flow of traffic caused by the data surge.
Application virtualization, cloud computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) deliver enormous management and costs savings, but these benefits are offset when application performance hampers end user productivity. This often happens when virtual applications and desktops are delivered across a Wide Area Network (WAN). Optimizing the WAN and improving network stability is therefore paramount to ensuring companies meet their business objectives and take full advantage of the technology in which they have invested large amounts of money…
Cloud Turbulence
Solution providers aren’t the only ones seeking to capitalize on cloud computing. Distributors are making their mark in the cloud as well, investing heavily in their own cloud programs and tools with one goal in mind: staying relevant to solution providers as the technology landscape shifts underneath them yet again.
As more businesses adopt cloud technology, some channel observers feel distributors run the risk of disintermediation as sales of on-premise hardware and software lose share to off-premise solutions. Solution providers are forging relationships directly with cloud vendors, and the need for the so-called middleman will become obsolete. Or so the theory goes.
It’s a battle distributors have faced before. In the past few decades, distributors have seen obstacles posed by the Internet, the direct model, ever-shrinking product margins, and the commoditization of technology itself. Each time, distributors met the challenge. They automated processes, slashed their own costs and built or bought resources when necessary. And they’ve remained relevant. Case in point: The world’s largest distributor, Ingram Micro, expects to close fiscal 2011 with more than $35 billion in revenue, its biggest year ever…
Cloud Computing: HP Gets New Chief Strategist
HP has named Bill Veghte its chief strategy officer, replacing CTO Shane Robison who was ousted three months ago.
Veghte, who used to run the $15 billion Windows unit at Microsoft, joined HP in 2010 as head of software, a job he will keep. He is also supposed to head HP’s cloud and webOS open source initiatives.
HP said that as chief strategy officer, Veghte’s supposed to "help define the IT industry’s future and make certain HP continues to lead the way," adding that his "new role reaffirms HP’s commitment to providing customers with the latest platforms, products and services needed for success in a rapidly changing world."…
Cloud Computing Has Become a Dominant Force in Financial Services
In the span of a few short years, cloud computing has gone from being an enigmatic and somewhat exotic technology management model to a dominant force that is changing how business heads relate to and value the underlying technology that supports business growth. In the financial markets in particular, the implications of cloud computing on the business, however, have been neither clearly defined by the service provider nor clearly understood by the average consumer.
Admittedly, early descriptions and definitions of cloud computing often relied on metaphors and analogies rather than concrete terms and value propositions. (By far my favorite analogy was the comparison to a "Mashup DJ" who blends multiple songs across various music genres into a continuous, uniform audio mix.)…
Calls for cloud security transparency getting louder
Cloud security transparency today equates to a non-disclosure-agreement discussion between an enterprise and service provider over the provider’s controls. The end result may satisfy the customer and lead to business for the provider, but the process isn’t efficient for either side.
A lot of CIOs are fearful they don’t believe they know enough about the cloud.Chris Richter, vice president of managed security services, Savvis.
Despite several standards-based efforts, providers don’t have a repeatable mechanism for these types of interactions, and customers often don’t get an apples-to-apples comparison of providers…
Microsoft’s New Cloudware Could Cast a Shadow over VMware
Microsoft staged a Private Cloud Day Tuesday to herald the coming of System Center 2012 sometime between now and the end of June.
System Center 2012 will put Microsoft squarely in the private cloud business and put VMware’s teeth on edge because it’s cheaper and reportedly has the same bells and whistles as VMware’s widgetry.
According to IDC VMware will have to start competing on price.
Once Microsoft’s private cloudware is out there it’ll have the makings of a hybrid model – which is what most people say they want – governed by the same management tools and offering a consistent view of application performance and data in both environments…
Quantum leap in the works for super-secure cloud computing
If the future is heading toward "cloud computing," where most of your data lives on someone else’s server, can you trust the cloud to keep a secret? Researchers say they’ve found a way to guarantee that your information will be secure in the cloud, using quantum entanglement.
The technique is called blind quantum computing, and it adds one more piece to a puzzle that could eventually be assembled into an entirely new infrastructure for data processing. Theoretically, quantum computers could outdo classical computers when it comes to making weather predictions, simulating biological processes, analyzing chemical reactions and, not incidentally, deciphering secret codes. Data security could become an even bigger issue than it is today…