2012: The Year of Cloud Consumption?
Many years ago, Sun Microsystems coined the phrase “the network is the computer.” Sun was way ahead of its time in making this call, and despite being right in its vision didn’t survive to be a part of what we now know as cloud computing. Increasingly, it appears that we’re transitioning to a world where, to use a somewhat clumsy analogy, the network is the consumer.
A couple of pieces served as inspiration for this. First, Leigh Drogen had a post a year ago titled Social Capital and Collaborative Consumption with which I generally agree. But it was this New Year’s resolution from Leah Culver to “live in the cloud” that made the connection for me. Because while cloud computing companies like Salesforce.com (CRM), VMware (VMW), and Citrix Systems (CTXS) are changing the lives of IT professionals and systems administrators everywhere, cloud consumption has the potential to change the lives of everyone…
10 Things to Remember When Reaching for the Cloud
Cloud computing represents a powerful shift in how your company deploys applications, stores data, implements security and adheres to industry regulations. Cloud architectures can give your company the flexibility to scale resources as the business requires. And you can do so without incurring unnecessary capital expenses.
Whether your organization is actively looking at cloud computing options or just thinking about it, there are some important business, legal and security issues to consider about cloud computing before taking the plunge. Weighing these issues at the onset will help you avoid potential problems once you select a vendor and begin deployment.
You should also bring some key stakeholders into the conversion to ensure you’re looking at the benefits and potential risks from every possible angle…
Survey Finds That Cloud Computing Buyers Demand More
Use of cloud computing services continues to creep upward among those responding to the second InformationWeek Reports State of Cloud Computing Survey. But in the data we can see what will be the dominating cloud trend in 2012: IT teams looking to run more sophisticated services on top of basic x86 infrastructure.
One data point to look at is projected new uses of the different types of cloud computing. We see fewer new adopters of infrastructure as a service over the next 12 months. However, new users of platform as a service, software as a service, and the cloud computing services provided by virtualization vendors all show continued high or increasing percentages…
Mobility, cloud, analytics to reshape IT in 2012
Despite some hopeful fits and starts, the U.S. economy didn’t escape the doldrums in 2011. Unemployment remained stubbornly high, the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis and budget scuffles spurred more economic uncertainty, and Europe’s ongoing financial problems threatened global markets. If there’s an upside, at least it’s familiar territory.
"Back in 2008, nobody knew what was going to happen as a result of the global financial crisis and IT spending almost stopped overnight," says Richard Gordon, a research vice president at Gartner. "We’re not in that kind of situation now. The solutions to the problems [in the U.S. and Europe] are understood and known. The question is now, is there a political way to execute and make them happen?"…
Cloud Computing And Social Media Wish List For 2012
Is that’s time of year for making seasonal wish lists, new year’s resolutions so I thought I’d chip in with a few of my own personal choices.
In the two or so years that I’ve been blogging about cloud computing I have seen a plethora of services that have been great, average or downright bloody awful. Wading through all of these I have got a rough idea of my perfect cloud and social media mix so here is my slightly tongue in cheek breakdown.
Wish List #1
Please, please, please will Box open up desktop syncing to non enterprise users. This is holding back what is a great service and could be truly phenomenal. Looking back through the Box forums it seems that us pond life users have been promised this for more than a year so quite why the delay I have no idea. I really don’t want to have to give up on Box but manual synchronisation is so last century…
Can cloud computing help develop the business skills of the future?
Grazed from Cloud Pro. Author: Julian Box.
As IT takes ever bigger strides towards a software centric world whether application or infrastructure based, I couldn’t help but notice the ever increasing lack of young people within the software arena of IT, both here where I live in Jersey and the UK generally.
I decided to dig deeper into the Channel Islands and UK education systems to see what, if anything, cloud computing could do to help encourage young people into the world of IT and, specifically, software development.
As we move ever closer to a true on-demand computing environment, delivering both consumer and business based technology services through the cloud, I realised that education establishments were not changing accordingly and the education sysem was still stuck in the past. It strikes me as ironic that the very place where we need to encourage and nurture innovation, currently offers its students little and, in most cases, no access to the very technology used to deliver these services. Therefore, they have a very poor understanding of its potential, which is very disappointing…
OW2 to Showcase Open Source Cloud Broker and Cloud PaaS Collaborative Projects at Cloud Expo 2012 in London
OW2, the global open source community for open source middleware and generic applications today announces its presence at the Cloud Expo Europe in London, January 25-26. OW2 and the Open Source Cloudware Initiative (OSCi) will introduce two major cloud computing projects: CompatibleOne, a cloud interoperability platform based on a cloud broker, and CloudForce, a project dedicated to developing a cloud application life-cycle management environment.
Attendees at Cloud Expo are welcome to visit the OW2 booth and attend presentations illustrating the organization’s involvement in leading open source cloud computing collaborative projects…
Cloud Identity and VDC services
Cloud Computing is now a maturing field with a number of sub-topics that make up its structure, and smart Cloud Providers can use these as building blocks for their service offerings, combining them through consultative selling techniques to deliver the ideal client solutions.
For example the core building blocks include ‘Cloud Identity’ as well as virtualization, and an excellent description of how they can be combined is this case study from BT of Norfolk County Council…
Up in the Cloud
Cloud computing is the new buzz and everyone is talking about it. Is this for real or just another technology fad that will soon fade away? Well cloud computing is for real, it has been around for a while and is here to stay. We’ve been using cloud computing since the early days of the Internet, however now it has been given a formal name. What’s changing rapidly now is that more and more applications, softwares and services are being made available on the cloud.
Cloud computing simply means the applications that you use are now stored in and served from the cloud; that means,instead of them running on your computer they are running on a computer (or server) on the Internet. You access these applications using your browser. Simple examples of this are Web based email, online office such as Google Docs and cloud storage services such as Ubuntu One…
Is Microsoft Reaching Out to Linux with Windows Azure?
As Linux becomes more firmly entrenched in businesses, and as cloud computing advances in general, Linux and the cloud are set to converge faster than ever. In fact, some are looking at 2012 as the year that Linux begins to dominate in the cloud. That’s why a new post out from Mary Jo Foley is significant. Foley reports (based on input from contacts who ask not to be identified) that "Microsoft is preparing to launch a new persistent virtual machine feature on its Azure cloud platform, enabling customers to host Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server there."…