Clouds: Advantages, Types & Services Delivered
The increased use of cloud-based services is undeniable. Analyst firm Forrester forecasts that the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. The advantages of using “the cloud” include the ability to:
- Quickly implement and use enterprise-grade technology systems and applications without employing a dedicated IT team;
- Outsource management and maintenance of technology to third-party experts responsible for ensuring continuous availability and high performance levels;
- Transition technology spending from capital expenditures to operating expenditures; and
- Easily scale technology environments to match business needs – eliminating the need to over or under buy when forecasting business growth.
When weighing adoption of cloud-services, it is important to understand the difference between cloud deployment models, namely public and private clouds…
Is Cloud the Answer for the European Economy?
Grazed from Forbes. Author: Jacqueline Vanacek.
My last blog, Cloud is The World’s Economic Opportunity, profiled the plans of key governments around the world who are investing heavily in cloud computing to enhance economic opportunity and quality of life for their citizens.
Europe is taking an aggressive stance on building a cloud economy, per the scale of the revenue opportunity that can be achieved from the disruptive nature of cloud to the entire industry landscape.
It is estimated that European companies could save 20-50% of their total Information and Communication Technology (ICT) costs, to reinvest in new business models that generate revenue. Cloud computing alone is expected to contribute about 0.1-0.2% growth in GDP, and a cloud economy would significantly stimulate Europe’s labor market across all industries, with potentially significant job growth (Survival of the Fittest – RolandBerger Strategy Consultants and SAP, 11/2011)…
“Server huggers” are an obstacle to cloud adoption
Chipita America may be as close to a server-less company as one can find. Its ERP systems, EDI, BI, Office, Exchange and file servers are all hosted in a service provider’s cloud.
About six years ago, when many IT managers were debating Nicholas Carr’s book " Does IT Matter ," Chipita CIO Scott Martin was moving the Tulsa, Okla.-based snack food maker’s email to a third party’s cloud hosted platform. Since then Chipita has moved the rest its core systems to the cloud.
Martin said he didn’t see a competitive advantage in managing internal systems, believing that his time could be best spent focusing on business needs…
Cisco Beefs Up Cloud Computing Push
Cisco Systems on Tuesday unveiled what it’s calling a “framework” for building big data centers, letting potential customers know how they can use various Cisco products together–and hopefully leading to more sales of its equipment.
The products in the announcement are largely things that Cisco already sells. But now Cisco is laying out a vision for using them to better manage information across data centers.
“For a long time we’ve provided individual components,” said Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology officer, who issued a blog post on the announcement. “What we are doing now is bringing these sets of products together.”…
Cloud Player Drops IPO Plans
Spooked by the "volatile economic climate" and "current market conditions," GlassHouse Technologies, which provides cloud, virtualization, security and next-generation data center consulting and managed services, has dropped its plans to IPO.
It said it would withdraw the registration statement that it filed with the SEC last year thinking it could raise $75 million.
It’ll be the second time GlassHouse has scrubbed an IPO. It wanted to raise $100 million in 2007 but pulled those papers two years later because of market conditions too.
The 10-year-old Pennsylvania company has raised close to $87 million over five rounds from VCs, according to CrunchBase, including not insignificant contributions from Cisco and Citrix…
Lenovo Unveils Social Media And Cloud Computing Strategies In China
Chinese technology giant Lenovo Group held a launch ceremony in Beijing to announce a new cloud computing strategy, a new smartphone, a tablet computer, a new personal computer, and TV products.
Its new personal cloud product can realize three types of services, including personal information management, interconnectivity, and social networking. Lenovo will also reportedly provide users with a whopping 200 gigabytes of storage space for all their connected devices.
A new automatic synchronization function can now update data among various Lenovo terminals and devices. For its social networking focus, Lenovo will provide a one-click publishing function within many of its devices. With a single click, users will be able to publish texts, photos, and videos on Chinese social media and social networking websites…
Intacct Unveils Game Changing Cloud Capabilities in Intacct Fall 2011
Intacct today introduced Intacct Fall 2011, the latest release of the cloud computing-based Intacct Financial Management and Accounting System. Intacct Fall 2011 features the introduction of Intacct Services Resource Planning, a complete cloud-based ERP system for project and service-based businesses. Intacct Fall 2011 also includes a completely re-imagined, "consumerized" user interface, plus new support for tablet and mobile devices. The introduction of a new marketplace for partner applications, major enhancements to Intacct Project Accounting, Intacct Revenue Management and Intacct’s global business management capabilities, along with more than 225 additional new features round out Intacct Fall 2011.
New Intacct Services Resource Planning Intacct Services Resource Planning is a complete, cloud-based ERP system for project and service-based businesses. It is comprised of an integrated, best in class combination of salesforce.com for customer relationship management, Intacct for financial management and project accounting, and Clarizen for project management and planning. Intacct has also developed new, three-way synchronization between these three applications plus extensive workflow and automation for the key tasks that drive productivity for project and service-based organizations. Intacct Services Resource Planning is modern, cloud-native, and features real-time visibility across the project delivery lifecycle…
Monitoring cloud workload activities
Cloud managers work within a distributed WAN computing infrastructure; one of the biggest shifts from the traditional data center is that all data is stored, managed and administered in a private cloud. Effective cloud-based workload monitoring can capture performance issues before they happen. Knowing how your cloud is behaving allows you to deliver a more powerful cloud computing experience.
Gathering cloud performance metrics
IT admins must actively gather and log cloud-facing server performance metrics and data, especially since most servers that host cloud workloads are virtual machines (VMs) that require dedicated resources. Over-allocating or under-allocating resources to cloud servers can be a costly mistake…
Cloud Computing Association Promotes Cloud Industry, Technologies
A new business-to-business membership organization — the Cloud Computing Association (CCA) — has been formed to promote the adoption and use of cloud-based technologies by large-cap and small- and middle-market enterprises (SMEs) across all industry sectors. The CCA’s website is at: http://www.cloudcomputingassn.org .
"We are building a community of corporate end-users, application developers, and service providers of cloud-based solutions and products. The CLOUD is rapidly becoming the fuel that is powering business efficiency and growth, and we are providing our individual and corporate members with opportunities to exchange information and promote knowledge of how cloud-based technologies can streamline business processes, help businesses to expand more quickly into new markets, and save costs," said Don Buford, Executive Director of the CCA…
Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud among top storage services
Cloud computing is gaining in large popularity. It seems to be the next major evolution in mobile and computer technology. Recently we have heard of many cloud services for example Apple iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive along with fresh products from the companies like Apple iPhone 4S and Amazon Kindle Fire.
We have many more similar cloud services that will help us upload contents to cloud servers from our handheld devices like smartphones, tablets and PMPs. Actually, most of cloud services for personal computers today have versions for various handheld devices thanks to the spread of high-speed internet to the portable gadgets. Here we list five best cloud services that are up for mobile devices…