Consider Cloud Computing Services Before Your Users Do

The longer you put off providing features and services offered in the cloud, the worse off you’ll be, according to an article in Network Computing.

The post by Define the Cloud’s Joe Onisick offers a stark take on falling behind cloud adoption:

"Every day that goes by that IT isn’t meeting the features and services offered in the cloud, users are moving there on their own. No office collaboration environment? They’re on Google Docs. No file-sharing option? They’re using Dropbox. No solid backup or recovery options for their laptops? Carbonite is handling it. Now your data is outside your corporate walls, outside your control and outside of compliance."…


Every day that users turn to an unsanctioned IT service, it becomes harder to get them back. You can’t close Pandora’s box once it’s opened, Onisick said. His advice on getting a handle on the situation: Don’t stall on new services and the benefits of the cloud. Build the services in-house, and standardize on public cloud offerings.

Cloud computing has made innovation something anyone can do, saidGigaOM’s Derrick Harris.

"Somewhere in between Pinterest and biotech, startups are using the cloud to make enterprise software available as a service and disrupt the business models of the very companies that helped build Silicon Valley," Harris writes.

Even though social media companies may dominate the startup landscape, they’re part of a fundamental change in the way people communicate with each other thanks to cloud-based computing resources and the ubiquity of powerful mobile devices.

GigaOM plans to talk more on this subject at the upcoming Structure conference.

Open Source Finds Its Way into Mobile, Cloud, Big Data
About 40 percent of the new open source projects started in 2011 were related to cloud computing. Nineteen percent were for creating mobile applications and 15 percent were mobile-enterprise related, according to a survey of open-source vendors and non-vendors released on the first day of the Open Source Business Conference, taking place in San Francisco.

Presentations at the OSBC will delve into open-source mobile applications, big data analytics projects, and open-source’s role in cloud computing, according to eWEEK.

The survey also showed that employers look for open-source experience in new hires for software development positions. Thirty-five percent look for experience with a variety of open-source projects and 28 percent look for experience contributing code to a project in evaluating potential new hires.

And young people entering the workforce readily embrace open-source software, the survey shows.