Category: News

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Lincoln Spector.

The cloud is the Internet, when used for chores that are traditionally handled by local hardware and software. For instance, if you back up your files to an external hard drive, that’s local. But if you use an online service such as Mozy or Carbonite, you’re using cloud-based backup.

Another example: If you use the installed Outlook program to read email, you’re using the Internet, but not the cloud. But if you read your email on the Outlook.com webpage, you’re reading it in the cloud. Other cloud-based applications include storage/sync services such as Dropbox, and web-based office alternatives like Google Docs…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Recently, I was pitched SAP HANA as a cloud solution. I checked out SAP’s site, and sure enough, there was a mutitenanted cloud version of SAP HANA — a free one for developers, that is. For any serious work, you needed a "dedicated instance" at $539 per month for the Starter edition. The Standard edition costs $3,932 per month.

Oracle, which you’ve heard a million times by now is all-in with the cloud, provides another example. To get Oracle Database as a Service, the price per OCPU (Oracle Compute Unit) per month starts at $600 for the Standard Edition and climbs all the way to $5,000 for the Extreme Performance Enterprise Edition. Click the Buy Now button and up pops an 800 sales number for you to call…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: David Deans.

The early-adopters of cloud services already know what they want to achieve from each new deployment, and are somewhat confident that they’re able to plan, implement and manage their own projects. In contrast, the typical CIO or IT manager in the majority of enterprises still need the help and wisdom of experienced practitioners — people who have been there, done that.

That’s why business decision makers are seeking cloud professional services guidance at twice the rate of private and public cloud vendors, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). Today, these consulting engagements are a pivotal point of the mainstream buyer’s journey, as more executives make the decision to migrate to a cloud services model and consultants provide advice and education to prospective cloud customers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/growing-demand-cloud-professional-services-01089474#HZklUp0QQKuTBw2y.99

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

Sky has gone to a cloud-based data storage system to make its files more accessible as its data lake grows. The company is using Cleversafe’s object-based storage solution in the UK for its private cloud platform to host large amounts of unstructured data – including video, audio, documents, backups and more.

Sky manages multiple petabytes of data. As its unstructured data began to expand, the company sought a solution that could grow with it. Sky selected Cleversafe’s storage platform to build what it says is a highly scalable and cost efficient storage system. Will Westwick, head of enterprise technology at Sky, said: “As a leading media and communications company, we manage an enormous amount of unstructured data, and every bit of that data needs to be readily accessible…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud-computing/3590094/sky-makes-data-more-accessible-in-the-cloud/

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

While you can implement cloud computing without a second thought to service oriented architecture, any good enterprise cloud infrastructure really should have a solid architectural foundation. Without such a foundation, there is uneven governance, haphazard security, and uncertain scalability. In other words, one may end up operating in the dark, meshed within a tangle of ungoverned — and likely duplicated — cloud services snarling their way through organizations.

Dare I say it? The only architecture that evolves out of all this chaos is a JBOCS architecture — Just a Bunch of Cloud Services. It gets very costly. SOA has taken its knocks in recent years as being too much about IT and not enough about delivering business value. But cloud computing is where the promises of SOA begin to see the light of day…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Executives of all stripes are bullish on hybrid cloud, a new study shows. Hybrid — which combines public cloud services with those of on-site systems — is seen as the best path forward between too much dependence on outside providers with unknown security risks, and on-site data centers with their associated costs and maintenance requirements.  Within three years, executives expect to see most if their applications and services running within hybrid clouds.

The costs and headaches associated with running one’s own data centers are well documented, but going too far in the other direction into public cloud carries potential headaches as well. ComputerWorld’s Charles King even suggests that purely public clouds are the new “legacy” systems,  over which enterprises may not have a great deal of control…

Grazed from TelecomLead.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Significant growth in mobility, server virtualization and cloud computing applications are creating fresh demands on the mobile network, causing more investment in networking architectures including mobile backhaul.  Ryan Perera, country head of Ciena India, said the focus on 4G / LTE networks is causing a major shift in the architecture of mobile networks and will have a significant impact on the development of new data intensive applications like the connected car.

Customers today are demanding speed and simplicity in adding backhaul capacity that provides the necessary flexibility to handle multiple outside plant environments. As apps continue to create more data that must be managed and transported, customers need an intelligent network that is agile enough to respond to traffic demands, utilizing network resources in a way that maximizes outputs…

Grazed from ChinaTimes.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The first batch of the US$222 million investment in the 21Vianet Group, a leading carrier-neutral internet data center services provider in China, has signaled the intention of Lei Jun, founder and CEO of handset maker Xiaomi, to make major inroads into the cloud computing sector, according to the Beijing-based Caixin Online.

On Dec. 1, 21Vianet announced an investment of US$296 million to buy 69.9 million Class A and 128.8 million Class B ordinary shares in Kingsoft Corporation, Xiaomi and Temasek, a Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund…

Grazed from Cisco.  Author: Editorial Staff.

For many in the Oil and Gas industry cloud computing might seem like a confusing IT buzzword with very little substance. Trying to wade through the complexities of all its offshoots (public, private, on-premise cloud) without understanding the base concept probably just makes things worse. So is this just technology for technology’s sake or are there some real benefits to cloud computing for Oil and Gas?  The answer is unequivocally yes. Cloud computing will significantly change the way the Oil and Gas industry will use IT, and, in fact, the change is already underway.

Not so new after all

The term cloud computing can be a bit vague but if you instead think of it in terms of the function it actually performs, it becomes straightforward. If cloud computing was called “Hosted Application Services” it might not be so confusing!…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Trevor Jones.

A move from the data center to the cloud can be costly and labor-intensive, but a number of vendors offer specialized tools and services to help IT pros cloudify their applications.  Large companies like Accenture to boutique firms like Cloud Technology Partners Inc. give IT shops a simpler path to cloud, and as more enterprises move to the cloud, these types of services will gain popularity.

Migration vendors say the key is to review customers’ entire portfolio, including product lifecycles, to determine a roadmap for moving to cloud. Some older applications with high dependencies will likely have to remain on-premises, while virtualized applications will be the easiest to transition…