Category: News

Grazed from ScientificComputing. Author: Rob Farber.

A complicated decision: To purchase infrastructure or run remotely in the cloud? Bandwidth and data security issues provide the easiest gating factors to evaluate, because an inability to access data kills any chance of using remote infrastructure, be it the public cloud or at a remote HPC center. If running remotely is an option, then the challenge lies in determining the return on investment (ROI) for the remote and local options including:

1. using a hybrid local and remote solution
2. running entirely in a remote cloud
3. pursuing a traditional infrastructure procurement…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Jeramiah Dooley.

It’s hard to imagine a conversation that happens between C-Level enterprise executives without ‘the cloud’ coming up. While cloud computing is obviously nothing new, breaking through the noise and determining the best strategy is still a very real and difficult issue for CIOs. Everyone seems to be sharing a different opinion on the changing landscape of the cloud.

At the centre of the cloud debate we often have legacy hardware vendors trying to push their own agendas. They’re doing everything they can to protect their market share by delaying the innovation of their customers. We know they’re doing this because there are certain things surrounding cloud that are not being discussed…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Federal agencies looking to buy cloud services, just like the private sector, need to develop a common method for evaluating cloud providers, the services they offer, and the prices they charge. That’s the advice from TechAmerica Foundation, a nonprofit formed to advise government on cloud computing in its newly updated guide on how government agencies can adopt the cloud.

TechAmerica Foundation’s cloud computing initiative was formed three years ago to convey best practices in adopting the cloud to the federal and state governments. The new guide makes such common sense recommendations as mapping agency priorities, then finding a business case that fits them. The business case must define requirements, set performance objectives, and estimate costs, it said…

Grazed from SmallBusinessComputing. Author: Pam Barker.

It’s hard to imagine a small business owner today who hasn’t heard how moving business processes to the cloud saves money and lets you access data from anywhere. And that you’d be a fool not to jump on board the cloud computing bandwagon. To hear cloud services vendors tell it, moving everything to the cloud is a no-brainer, and it’s so easy-peasey that you’re crazy to keep buying, installing and maintaining your own software and servers. You might have even heard that cloud integration—getting all of your various cloud services to play well together—is also a simple thing.

Conversations with some cloud vendors can sometimes sound like this: save money, they said. An application programming interface (API) makes cloud integration a snap, they said. You can lay off your IT people because you won’t need them with the cloud, they said. Those things can be true but they aren’t always. That kind of buzz is only a half-truth…

Grazed from CloudComputingPath. Author: Pravin Anchan.

Apple’s iCloud Drive takes Dropbox head on. Launched at WWDC 2014, iCloud Drive resembles Dropbox with a similar file system to store files related to each app separately in the cloud. Such files can be synchronized with Windows, iOS and OSX even if you do not install any iCloud apps. Windows users can access iCloud Drive but Apple is yet to open up APIs for the Windows Phone and Android platform.

However, it is easy to access files using Mac but on other iOS devices you have to fiddle a bit. Apple has not yet created an iCloud Drive app for iOS. This means users must launch an iCloud Drive storage app to access files independently of related applications. iCloud Drive does come as a boon for Apple device users but it may not convert other cloud drive users that offer similar or even more reliable services despite competitively priced offerings of $ 0.99 per month for 20 GB and $ 3.09 per month for 200 GB…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Chris Patterson.

NaviSite works with many businesses getting started with cloud technology and one question we often hear is, “Where do I start? Which part of my infrastructure should I move into the cloud first?” IT leaders must pick a starting point for cloud adoption, and the decision becomes easier when they understand that leveraging cloud technology can take place incrementally, one task at a time. We call this approach “out-tasking,” which often begins by migrating small, low risk applications onto the cloud, where they can be easily tested, debugged and improved through an iterative approach.

The out-tasking framework helps IT leaders overcome the common misconception that moving onto the cloud means transferring their entire infrastructure in one fell swoop. In reality, we’ve found that businesses experience vastly better results when they don’t use cloud as a replacement, but instead begin to augment and modernize their existing compute environment…

Grazed from FCW. Author: Adam Mazmanian.

The Department of Veterans Affairs canceled a $36 million cloud computing deal with HP in May 2013 after a dispute between the CIO’s office and the agency’s inspector general over how long emails should be retained and concerns over system security, FCW has learned.

When the deal was announced in November 2012, it was one of the most ambitious cloud migrations of any federal agency, covering the VA’s entire 600,000-strong workforce. HP Enterprise Services was selected as the integrator to deploy the system, which was set to go live with a March 2013 pilot for 15,000 users, involving calendar and email apps…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Mark Smith.

At the Informatica World 2014 conference, the company known for its data integration software unveiled the Intelligent Data Platform. In the last three years Informatica has expanded beyond data integration and now has a broad software portfolio that facilitates information management within the enterprise and through cloud computing. The Intelligent Data Platform forms a framework for its portfolio.

This expression of broad potential is important for Informatica, which has been slow to position its products as capable of more than data integration. A large part of the value it provides lies in what its products can do to help organizations strengthen their enterprise architectures for managing applications and data. We see Informatica’s sweet spot in facilitating efficient use of data for business and IT purposes; we call this information optimization…

Grazed from Amazon. Author: Editorial Staff.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I sometimes talk about the number of options and choices that you have at your fingertips when you use AWS. You can choose from a broad array of cloud services, run your code on a wide variety of Linux distributions and Windows versions on the instance type that best fits your needs.

In keeping with our tradition, I am happy to announce that we are now making a set of Windows Server 2012 R2 AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) available for use on EC2. These AMIs are available in 19 languages and include a set of PV (paravirtualized) drivers that have been certified by Microsoft for Windows Server 2012 R2…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Steve Prentice.

What does the future look like for ERP in the cloud? It’s a question that everyone involved in this business asks, given that the general changeover from on-premise systems to cloud computing is currently happening more slowly than many had anticipated. But according to some industry watchers, the pace will continue to pick up, and the expectation is that over the next few years investment in public IT cloud computing services will approach $100 billion, with an annual growth rate of approximately 25 percent. Most of that is due to companies choosing to shift more and more of their core operations to the cloud.

The future of cloud-based ERP resides in a combination of forces: a recognition of the true safety and security of the cloud; the economic and functional practicalities of replacing licensed software such as Microsoft Excel with externally managed and maintained SaaS applications; the appeal of both two-tier and multi-tenancy ERP setups; and the general bandwagon effect…