Cloud Computing

• Most Topular Stories

• CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special

  CloudAve

  Paul Miller

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm

  Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break. LEF‘s Simon Wardley kicked proceedings off as usual, once again managing to pepper an on-topic canter through the topic with a seemingly never-ending stream of Flickr images of cats… and analogies to electricity. You possibly had to be there? His…

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 27, 2012

  Cloud Feed

  daily

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. Cloud And SaaS Benefits Bolster Business Intelligence Market TechWeekEurope UKNearly one-third of organisations either already use or plan to use cloudor software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to augment their core businessintelligence (BI) functions, according to a report from IT research firmGartner.(more) NIST Gives Agencies Cloud Computing Guidance ExecutiveGovThe National Institute of Standards and Technologies is calling on agenciesto take the lead in addressing…

• The Cloud and the Great Data Center Race

  ARCHIMEDIUS

  gregness

  28 Dec 2011 | 2:23 pm

  In the same way that the rise of the Internet led to the enterprise web (web-enabled enterprise applications) the public and private cloud is driving IT to new modes of operation, most of which demand more agility, more capacity and an even keener  focus on operating and capital expenses.  This profound tension -between a substantial [...]

• Could cloud computing drive vendor lock-in?

  Sustainable Global Clouds

  Tarry Singh

  15 Jan 2012 | 10:44 am

  “However, if you’re looking at private cloud solutions that are based on technology that locks you into a specific storage vendor or a specific network vendor, it is creating a situation where the trend ticks back a little bit,” he [...]

• New Tagging for Auto Scaling Groups

  Amazon Web Services Blog

  AWS Evangelist

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:29 pm

  You can now add up to 10 tags to any of your Auto Scaling Groups. You can also, if you'd like, propagate the tags to the EC2 instances launched from your groups. Adding tags to your Auto Scaling groups will make it easier for you to identify and distinguish them. Each tag has a name, a value, and an optional propagation flag. If the flag is set, then the corresponding tag will be applied to EC2 instances launched from the group. You can use this feature to label or distinguish instances created by distinct Auto Scaling groups. You might be using multiple groups to support multiple scalable…

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  Sustainable Global Clouds

• Obama’s in-sourcing is just a political rhetoric

  Tarry Singh

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:06 am

  “You’ve heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing,” the president said. “That’s exactly the kind of commitment to country that we need–especially right now, when we’re in a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those aspiring to get [...]

• Could cloud computing drive vendor lock-in?

  Tarry Singh

  15 Jan 2012 | 10:44 am

  “However, if you’re looking at private cloud solutions that are based on technology that locks you into a specific storage vendor or a specific network vendor, it is creating a situation where the trend ticks back a little bit,” he [...]

• The Aldridge Company Signs MOU to Move Chinese Companies to the Cloud

  Tarry Singh

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:08 am

  The Aldridge Company, a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions for SMBs, today announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co., Ltd. (SLED) to [...]

• Acer, Lenovo to launch Cloud sync services

  Tarry Singh

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:50 am

  When Apple launched iCloud last year, many solution providers asked Channelnomics how it would affect cloud computing. The answer is coming this year at the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas, where Lenovo and Acer are launching their own [...]

• Hyderabad-based DeskStream acquires Northern Irish cloud start-up WorldDesk

  Tarry Singh

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:39 am

  LAS VEGAS – DeskStream Inc., a leading provider of desktop virtualisation software, has today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire a prominent Northern Irish start-up in the cloud computing and virtualisation software space. DeskStream, with development centres in California, U.S.A., and [...]

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  Cloud Feed

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 27, 2012

  daily

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. Cloud And SaaS Benefits Bolster Business Intelligence Market TechWeekEurope UKNearly one-third of organisations either already use or plan to use cloudor software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to augment their core businessintelligence (BI) functions, according to a report from IT research firmGartner.(more) NIST Gives Agencies Cloud Computing Guidance ExecutiveGovThe National Institute of Standards and Technologies is calling on agenciesto take the lead in addressing…

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 26, 2012

  daily

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. Piston Delivers First OpenStackBased Cloud OS | Cloud Computing … The first OpenStackbased cloud operating system came out Wednesday …cloud environments It uses Diablo the latest cut of OpenStack It’s onlygood inside a …(more) Arkadin Enters Next Era in Global Conferencing Capabilities With New Cloud …MarketWatch (press release)PARIS, Jan 25, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Arkadin, a leading providerof collaboration-as-a-service…

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 25, 2012

  daily

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. FieldOne Systems Launches SaaS Version: “FieldOne Sky” Einnews PortugalFieldOne Systems (http://www.fieldone.com) is a leading provider of SaaSand software solutions for field service companies, enabling them to spendless time entering and managing data, freeing up valuable time for workthat generates revenue.(more) Codenomicon Launches Fuzz-o-Matic Software Security Testing-as-a-Service PlatformBusiness Wire (press release)(BUSINESS…

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 24, 2012

  daily

  24 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. Optus to use SingTel’s cloud infrastructure TelecompaperLast October, Optus’ and SingTel’s enter prise cloud services werecertified under VMware’s single cloud platfrom called vCloud DatacentreServices.(more) VMware Shouts Cloud Computing In Q4 Results TalkinCloud (blog)by Joe Panettieri on When VMware announced strong Q4 results earlier today,the terms cloud computing, cloud infrastructure and cloud era weresprinkled all over VMware’s…

• Daily Cloud Feed - Jan 23, 2012

  daily

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pm

  This post is a daily aggregation of all news links from @onsaas. This post is automatically generated everyday at 11:45PM UTC. Secure Multi Tenancy How IO Isolation Enables the Private Cloud … Secure multi tenancy is a requirement for private cloud architectures.Learn how I/O isolation delivers secure multi tenancy to make sharedresources …(more) 5 Myths of Cloud Computing InfoWorldThis white paper separates fact from fiction, reality from myth, and, indoing so, will aid senior IT executives as they make decisions around cloudcomputing. more In recent years, cloud computing has…

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  CloudAve

• StartupCamp5

  Dave Michels

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:23 am

  StartupCamp5 will be taking place at ITExpo Feb 1-3 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. I’ve attended the past four ITExpo’s and StartupCamps, but won’t be at this one. Feeling a bit wistful as so many people I know are heading that way. ITExpo is a good show – particularly strong for hosted service providers and VoIP heads. Lots of really technical people roaming the halls too. But every year, the most excitement at ITExpo is around Startup Camp. Embrase puts on this event every year -and unlike all the other co-located events that take place there – StartupCamp doesn’t compete…

• IBM’s Social Agenda

  Krishnan Subramanian

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:31 pm

  Last week IBM hosted the annual Lotusphere event at Orlando. Last year, they made a strategic shift and started pushing heavily on the idea of Social Business and followed it up this year by not only brining last year’s announcements into fruition but also moved out of the Lotus brand to remove any legacy tag the name might bring in. Overall it was an impressive show put up by IBM and I will dig in a bit more on what I heard during the show. First a brief look at the announcements IBM is moving IBM LotusLive, business collaboration tools that enabled collaboration, into the IBM…

• Contempt for Customers

  Dave Michels

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:17 am

  Thinly disguised contempt for the customer is an easy trap to fall into, after-all, without customers our jobs would be a lot easier. There is just one problem with this line of thinking… The first time I heard the term Thinly Disguised Contempt for the Customer was from the book In Search of Excellence. The example provided was overhearing a flight attendant refering to boarding passengers as “Here comes the Animal.”  Thinly disguised contempt, in unchecked, grows – and can destroy any lingering notion of quality customer service. Unfortunately, telecommunications and airlines are…

• tibbr 3.5 turns the world into interactive post-its

  Martijn Linssen

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:31 pm

  Tibbr released version 3.5 to the public today in Palo Alto California, 9 AM Pacific time. I got a solo preview yesterday and I was impressed by it – as usual I’d say. “In twelve months since launch, tibbr has been deployed to hundreds of thousands of employees across global enterprises, who can now use tibbr to unify people, data and businesses processes to get work done” A clear message: …to get work done. In my opinion, tibbr dramatically reduces unnecessary human intervention in the workplace, thereby making work less unpleasant while freeing up resources…

• CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special

  Paul Miller

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm

  Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break. LEF‘s Simon Wardley kicked proceedings off as usual, once again managing to pepper an on-topic canter through the topic with a seemingly never-ending stream of Flickr images of cats… and analogies to electricity. You possibly had to be there? His…

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  Software as Services Blog RSS | ZDNet

• Why you can't afford to resist the cloud

  Phil Wainewright

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:48 pm

  While many are still digging in their heels against moving to the cloud, they’re finding it harder and harder to do so. Not only because the business case becomes stronger every day, but also because cloud platform providers are acting to address the objections that used to slow or stymie adoption. This week saw Amazon provide another hook between its AWS cloud and enterprise data centers with the launch of its Storage Gateway appliance, which makes S3 storage look like just another iSCSI interface in the data center. Yesterday VMWare announced multi-cloud capability for its Cloud…

• Opening enterprise collaboration to the world

  Phil Wainewright

  24 Jan 2012 | 5:06 pm

  Cloud collaboration platform Huddle is seeking to cement its enterprise appeal with the launch today of a new unlimited user edition and a 99.9% total uptime guarantee. The UK-headquartered, venture-backed start-up is less well known than US rivals such as Box, Dropbox, Jive and Yammer but it believes it has a unique market opportunity because of its focus on external enterprise collaboration.“Traditional collaboration was very inward-looking,” CEO Alastair Mitchell told me when we met last week in Huddle’s offices overlooking London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout‘…

• The cloud is forked

  Phil Wainewright

  22 Jan 2012 | 3:44 pm

  There’s a huge variety of different definitions of cloud floating around. Some are just plain wrong, while others are only valid in specific circumstances — cloud strategies that are right for certain organisations at certain times aren’t necessarily right for others (or even for the same organisation later on in its evolution). It’s tough for any enterprise decision-maker to figure out the right path.While pondering this conundrum, I recently found some insightful perspectives in a blog post by Randy Bias. Despite our previous disagreements over…

• Shock as tech news site researches own story

  Phil Wainewright

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:46 am

  Kudos to InfoWorld for researching and breaking its story about the sudden-death vulnerability built into every Oracle database. This is a classic piece of technology journalism, researched over a two-month period during which the editorial team “conducted our own tests, verified information with sources we believe to be reliable, and consulted extensively with Oracle itself.”Such in-depth and professional journalistic research is so rare in today’s instant-gratification world of Techmeme-fueled technology reporting that Business Insider found it hard to grok exactly what…

• 2011: the cloud has landed

  Phil Wainewright

  27 Dec 2011 | 12:54 pm

  Looking back on 2011, what stands out most of all is that the cloud became mainstream. Cloud computing even got its own Gartner hype cycle, and while some aspects of the technology are still deemed to be in the early wave of the cycle, others are far beyond any hype. Indeed, SaaS is so well established today that Gartner positions it firmly on the ’slope of enlightment’, well on the way to achieving productive enterprise adoption. No wonder Oracle rushed to purchase RightNow as the year drew to a close, swiftly followed by SAP’s acquisition of Successfactors.It’s…

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  Mosso

• Nuovi frutti

  9 Jan 2012 | 5:53 am

  I mossoni si addentrano nella foresta alla ricerca di nuovi frutti. Buon 2012. illustrazione di Chiara Dattola

• Una famiglia in nero

  9 Nov 2011 | 8:24 am

  di Paolo Interdonato Interno di un castello o, forse, di una villa vittoriana. Nella penombra si riconosce l'intero armamentario della casa spettrale: muri fatiscenti, scale male in arnese, quadri storti, ragnatele,  orologi a pendolo, strane figure nascoste dietro il corrimano… Da una porta spalancata, un cono di luce proietta l'ombra di una massa informe e gelatinosa che si avvicina. Alla vista di questo "coso", la classica famiglia americana si schiaccia contro il muro, imprigionata da un terrore a cui è impossibile fuggire. Padre e madre tremano appiattiti contro la parete:…

• In famiglia

  26 Oct 2011 | 11:45 am

  Sì, per il prossimo numero stiamo pensando a qualcosa di familiare.

• Mosso è sul Corriere

  25 Oct 2011 | 11:24 am

  Il Corriere di Milano del 25 ottobre 2011 Oggi le pagine culturali milanesi del Corriere della Sera si aprono con una sorpresa. Lorenzo Viganò ha riservato quattro belle colonne al quinto numero di MOSSO, quello dedicato a Dino Buzzati (che puoi scaricare da qui). A questo punto voi direte: "Se vi hanno intervistato per l'articolo, vuol dire che già sapevate tutto. Come fa ad essere una sorpresa?". Be', il fatto è che non avevamo idea che Almerina Buzzati, vedova di Dino, avesse apprezzato così tanto il nostro regalo al suo illustre marito. Insomma, non sono cose che capitano tutti i…

• Nera a Milano

  16 Oct 2011 | 7:37 am

  "Ciascuno di noi forse porta scritta in una recondita particella del corpo, la propria finale condanna. Ma perché andare determinatamente a disseppellirla?" Già. Perché mai dovremmo stuzzicare la nostra recondita voglia di crepare? Strano che a chiederselo sia proprio Dino Buzzati, lo scrittore italiano che ha raccontato il nostro desiderio più spaventoso: l'impulso a incamminarci sul filo della vita, sempre amoreggiando con il vuoto sul quale avanziamo sospesi. Le sue storie guardano quel vuoto dritto negli occhi e insegnano, come solo i virtuosi del trapezio sanno fare, a convivere con…

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  Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog

• Power to the data!

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:21 pm

  Seth Finkelstein, a long-time crusader against online censorship, made what seemed like a jaundiced comment on my recent post Piracy and Privacy. I had raised the possibility that online activists, fresh from their SOPA fight, might now come to the support of efforts to give people more control over the personal information that companies collect and trade online. Will the activists rise up again? I wondered. To which Finkelstein replied: No. Or maybe, they will rise up AGAINST privacy, because they will be fed a line that this is going to Censor The Net. Turns out Finkelstein wasn't being…

• Pieces of mind

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:12 pm

  In an intriguing article at The Millions, Guy Patrick Cunningham wonders whether fragmentary writing may prove a cure for fragmentary reading: [David Shields's] Reality Hunger and [Masha Tupitsyn’s] Laconia are very different books, but they share this desire to use fragmentary writing to dramatize the act of thinking through culture (in Shields’ case mostly books, in Tupitsyn’s mostly films). Even this desire has its roots in the digital world, where culture is constantly being repackaged and analyzed. If neither work achieves the majesty of Beckett’s Texts — to be fair, an…

• Words are numbers too

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:08 pm

  Stanley Fish discusses the coming of the digital humanities, and what it portends, in two nicely circuitous longforms: Longform #1 and Longform #2....

• Piracy and privacy

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:07 pm

  Internet activists flexed some impressive muscle over the last couple of weeks in working to block Congress from enacting the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), which would have put legal restraints and restrictions on search engines, advertising networks, internet service providers, and other online sites and services as a means of stemming the unauthorized trade of copyrighted works and other forms of intellectual property. The activists were joined in the cause by many large internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The motivations of the corporations and the activists…

• The Summers' Tale

  22 Jan 2012 | 10:53 am

  "Before the printing press," writes Lawrence Summers in the Times's Education Life section today, "scholars had to memorize 'The Canterbury Tales' to have continuing access to them." That has to be one of the most dunderheaded sentences ever written by a former Harvard president and former Treasury secretary. The bound book was invented more than a thousand years before the printing press came along, and people were writing stuff down - on scrolls, tablets, blocks of wood - long before the book was created. In the 100 or so years between the writing of Chaucer's masterpiece and the…

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  TechCrunch » Enterprise

• EU’s Proposed Data Laws Can Only Produce One Thing: Outsourcing User Data

  Devin Coldewey

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:24 pm

  In 2011, Sony had several major security breaches: Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Playstation Network all were attacked and private data was successfully stolen. Their handling of the attacks, particularly the larger PSN one, was widely criticized. Many users are either unaware or acutely aware of how many sites and services have financially or personally sensitive information on record. Events like the Sony hacks do not reassure them, and actions like Google’s yesterday (though arguably innocuous) may alarm them. Users want more control and more security. And the EU is…

• Guidewire Hits The Public Market Running; Shares Jump 30% In Early Trading

  Rip Empson

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:30 pm

  While there were some big IPOs in 2011, Zynga and Groupon among them, overall it was a disappointing year for IPOs. Will 2012 be any different? As the first tech IPO of the new year, Guidewire Software certainly hopes so. Back in September, the insurance software company joined MobiTV, Angie’s List, Brightcove, and Jive, filing its S-1, announcing plans to raise up to $100 million and to sell approximately 7.5 million shares at $10 to $12 per share, in advance of its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Guideware ended up exceeding its initial targets, pricing its IPO yesterday above its…

• TIBCO Updates Social Enterprise App Tibbr With Geo-Location Features

  Leena Rao

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Enterprise software company TIBCO is debuting a new version of its Yammer-clone Tibbr today. The newest version of the company’s social communications app includes geo-location capabilities called Tibbr GEO, which integrates the ‘check-in’ model in the enterprise. By incorporating location into Tibbr, the service wants to physical places into data hubs that can immediately stream important insights relevant to that specific place. Tibbr GEO gives companies the ability to tag important places, whether in the enterprise or as part of the extended enterprise. As Tibbr users approach…

• Big VCs Invest In Big Data Startup Continuuity

  Robin Wauters

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:21 am

  Venture capital firm Battery Ventures this morning announced that it has made an investment in Continuuity, a stealth ‘big data’ startup founded by Battery entrepreneur-in-residence Todd Papaioannou (formerly VP and Chief Cloud Architect for Yahoo). Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and a group of angel investors including Bob Pasker, Paul Ambrose, Matt Ocko and The Data Collective also participated in the round. It’s unclear what Continuuity is building, and the press release makes us none the wiser: Continuuity’s goal is to enable the development of the next…

• Android May Have Consumer Market Share, But iOS Is Tops In Enterprise

  Sarah Perez

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  According to a new report from managed enterprise mobility provider Good Technology, iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) hold the top three spots in the list of the top 10 enterprise activations by device type. The report includes data gathered by Good for Q4 2011 and includes half of the Fortune 100, providing insight into enterprise activation trends among some of the world’s biggest businesses. The company found that despite Android’s overall market share growth and steady absolute growth among Good’s customers, only 35% of all smartphone activations were on Android, compared…

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  All Things Distributed

• Expanding the Cloud - The AWS Storage Gateway

  Werner Vogels

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:01 am

  Today Amazon Web Services has launched the AWS Storage Gateway, making the power of secure and reliable cloud storage accessible from customers’ on-premises applications. We have been working closely with our customers on their requests to bring the power of the Amazon Web Services cloud closer to their existing on-premises compute infrastructures. The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud extends on-premises compute with all the power of AWS, making it elastic, scalable and highly reliable. AWS Identity and Access Management brings together on-premises and cloud identity management. VM Import…

• Amazon DynamoDB – a Fast and Scalable NoSQL Database Service Designed for Internet Scale Applications

  Werner Vogels

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Today is a very exciting day as we release Amazon DynamoDB, a fast, highly reliable and cost-effective NoSQL database service designed for internet scale applications. DynamoDB is the result of 15 years of learning in the areas of large scale non-relational databases and cloud services. Several years ago we published a paper on the details of Amazon’s Dynamo technology, which was one of the first non-relational databases developed at Amazon. The original Dynamo design was based on a core set of strong distributed systems principles resulting in an ultra-scalable and highly reliable database…

• Countdown to What is Next in AWS

  Werner Vogels

  13 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Join me at 9AM PST on Wednesday January 18, 2012 to find out what is next in the AWS Cloud. Registration required.

• Expanding the Cloud – Introducing the AWS South America (Sao Paulo) Region

  Werner Vogels

  14 Dec 2011 | 9:00 pm

  Today, Amazon Web Services is expanding its worldwide coverage with the launch of a new AWS Region in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This new Region has been highly requested by companies worldwide, and it provides low-latency access to AWS services for those who target customers in South America. South America is one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. In particular, South American IT-oriented companies are seeing very rapid growth. Case in point: over the past 10 years IT has risen to become 7% of the GDP in Brazil. With the launch of the South America (Sao Paolo) Region, AWS now…

• Expanding the Cloud - Introducing Amazon ElastiCache

  Werner Vogels

  22 Aug 2011 | 9:40 pm

  Today AWS has launched Amazon ElastiCache, a new service that makes it easy to add distributed in-memory caching to any application. Amazon ElastiCache handles the complexity of creating, scaling and managing an in-memory cache to free up brainpower for more differentiating activities. There are many success stories about the effectiveness of caching in many different scenarios; next to helping applications achieving fast and predictable performance, it often protects databases from requests bursts and brownouts under overload conditions. Systems that make extensive use of caching almost all…

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  Cloud Musings by Kevin L. Jackson

• NJVC® and Virtual Global Announce Release of PaaS White Paper: Paper Clarifies the Confusion Surrounding PaaS for Federal IT Buyers—Why It Is Important and How It Can Cut Development Costs by 50 Percent

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:51 pm

  VIENNA, Va., Jan. 23, 2012 —NJVC, one of the largest information technology solutions providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, and Virtual Global, a premier provider of software and cloud computing platform solutions for a variety of industry and federal customers, announce the release of a joint white paper, “Platform as a Service (Paas): What Is It? Why Is It So Important?.”   The paper clarifies the confusion surrounding PaaS for IT decision makers in the federal government. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests PaaS as a…

• December 2011: GovCloud Moves From Policy to Law

  27 Dec 2011 | 10:32 am

  Over the past years, government cloud computing has steadily moved forward from it's early beginnings as an interesting curiosity: December 23, 2008 - Now really. Should the Obama administration use cloud computing? Since Sunday's broadcast, I've been asked numerous times about my real answer to the question "Will 'Cloud Computing' Work In White House". Although I would never assume to be in a position to advise the President-elect, I'm more than happy, however, to add my voice to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the distinguished list of contributors that…

• CloudMASTER & CloudGURU Certification Comes To Washington, DC

  4 Dec 2011 | 3:31 pm

  The National Cloud Technologist Association is bringing the CloudMASTER & CloudGURU certification classes to the Washington Metropolitan Area in 2012. First introduced in November at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, this continuing education program provides a solid technical background in modern web services deployment and administration. Students will learn concepts, principles, techniques, and practices needed to administer and secure a modern cloud-enabled business environment. CloudMASTER is comprised of three levels. The foundation program includes…

• GovCloud.com !! The New Hub for Government Cloud Computing

  16 Nov 2011 | 9:49 pm

  It gives me great pleasure to announce the relaunch of GovCloud.com! GovCloud is the “go to” place for everything related to federal cloud computing. Our mission is to help federal organizations learn about, try and securely adopt cloud computing technologies. In full alignment with The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, the Federal CIO’s 25-Point Federal IT Reform Plan and NIST’s Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, this site will provide a community hub for information dissemination and GovCloud best practices. A great deal of personal thanks goes out to the…

• Backupify Names Top 10 Cloud Computing Experts to Follow on Twitter

  14 Nov 2011 | 9:15 pm

  THANK YOU BACKUPIFY!!!! Thank you for the honor of being on your Top 10 List! Backupify is the leading backup provider for cloud based data, offering an all-in-one archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter and more. With one account you get centralized access to all of your information, stored securely, easily searchable, and ready for restoration or transfer at a moment's notice. Other honorees include: . 1. Adria Richards 2. Susan Cline 3. Steven Peltzman 4. Ben Kepes 5. David Linthicum 6. Krishnan Subramanian 7. Matt…

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  ARCHIMEDIUS

• Nemertes Predicts Colocation Crunch

  gregness

  20 Jan 2012 | 6:56 pm

  For a fresh perspective on data center obsolescence check out The Coming Colocation Crunch by Nemertes Principal Analyst Ted Ritter writing for Data Center Knowledge this week (Jan 18, 2012): “Nemertes Research predicts a shortage of colocation space in the U.S. beginning this year, growing to a $1.9 billion facilities gap by 2015.” Colocation comes [...]

• The Cloud and the Great Data Center Race

  gregness

  28 Dec 2011 | 2:23 pm

  In the same way that the rise of the Internet led to the enterprise web (web-enabled enterprise applications) the public and private cloud is driving IT to new modes of operation, most of which demand more agility, more capacity and an even keener  focus on operating and capital expenses.  This profound tension -between a substantial [...]

• Getting a Mindful from Gartner Summit: Virtualization, Networks and Data Centers

  gregness

  19 Dec 2011 | 6:16 pm

  Earlier this month I attended the Gartner Data Center Summit, and sat in on several presentations, including David Cappuccio’s intro keynote on data center trends and Neal MacDonald’s session on virtualization security.  I apologize in advance for the breadth of my rambling and speculation, but I think the IT revolution playing itself out will mark [...]

• Smaller Companies and Larger Data Centers

  gregness

  19 Nov 2011 | 3:24 pm

  For months I’ve been preoccupied with Lew’s Law, or the theory that IT expenses over time will track to the cost of electricity (versus hardware, peoplepower, etc.) authored by Cisco Cloud CTO Lew Tucker and shared in early 2010 with the then-billowing Infrastructure 2.0 Working Group. After watching an SAP webcast shared by Reese Jones [...]

• Crunch Time in the Clouds

  gregness

  28 Oct 2011 | 5:25 pm

  Two key industries industries face massive disruption in the coming years as IT becomes ever more strategic to enterprise operating advantage, and IT infrastructure scales to new levels of complexity and dynamism.  The future of IT will likely be created by those who accelerate the pace of automation and who build more energy-efficient, scalable data [...]

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  Fountainhead

• It Will Be a Data-Centric (Cloudy) World

  Ken Oestreich

  19 Jan 2012 | 6:45 pm

  (Or, Where Tomorrow's Clouds Will Form)Move Mohammed to the mountain, or the mountain to Mohammed?  In the context of data, applications and cloud computing, this question takes on a new perspective - and the role of Mohammed and the Mountain may soon reverse.In the traditional application-centric (and static infrastructure) world, the Application is the the immovable "mountain". Like a magnet, the app is permanently-located, attracting to it local data stores and peripheral support apps.  Administrators dote around it like worker bees around the queen.But for some uses and…

• My Cloudy Nerdy Playlist for 2012

  Ken Oestreich

  2 Jan 2012 | 12:38 pm

  Political movements have their anthems. Starbucks has its background music brand. But I thought it might be fun to collate a playlist that specifically appeals to the techie/cloudy group.So here goes. Some of these are pretty funny... others leave a bit to be desired.  And if you know of more (or have favorites of your own) send them my way and I'll add them...Songs about CloudsGet Off Of My Cloud - The Rolling Stones Clouds - The Jayhawks Clouds - Django Reinhardt (awesome rendition w/a Spanish guitar)Clouds - The Go-Betweens Clouds - The Submarines In The Clouds - The Cult Death…

• Steve Jobs in 1980... and Cloud + Big Data Today

  Ken Oestreich

  19 Dec 2011 | 3:29 pm

  In 1980, Steve Jobs gave a talk (YouTube) about the early days of Apple.It's fascinating because it describes events that lead up to the first commercially-available Apple computer, and presaged the movement toward "canned" programs (commercial software) rather than everyone writing programs themselves.However, around the 12:00 mark, Steve made a really incredible observation regarding the true goal of Apple (at the time) and about how to use the new level of computing power available to Apple computer users:"As we move into the '80's, the amount of computational power - the amount of raw…

• Predictions: What You WON'T See in IT For 2012

  Ken Oestreich

  15 Dec 2011 | 3:50 pm

  While everyone is jumping in with 2012 predictions ('Tis the season) I want to impress on everyone that a dose of sobriety is in order.IT vendors - and even analysts - are understandably eager to see new technologies and operating models (cloud) adopted quickly. But let's acknowledge the High Tech adage: Not very much happens in 2-3 years, although massive changes occur over a decade.At any rate, I wanted to highlight things I believe we won't see happen in 2012. Perhaps because we're just being a bit over-eager, or perhaps other enablers have to precede them. Here goes:An Instant…

• Celebrating Innovation at EMC

  Ken Oestreich

  4 Dec 2011 | 11:06 am

  Can innovation be fostered or facilitated? Can it be measured? Is it a formal or informal process? Can you have an innovation competition? Is it limited to Engineering?  These were not the topics I was expecting at last week's EMC Innovation Conference. Rather, I thought it was going to be a geek fest with lots of greasy-haired, propeller-hat-wearing attendees drinking diet-Coke and speaking mostly PERL, C++ or Greek.Instead, the event was attended by a few hundred local Silicon-valley EMC-ers, with hundreds more globally watching simulcast. It was business-casual with execs and…

• 

  SmoothSpan Blog

• Machine Art Mouse and PC Case, Anyone?

  Bob Warfield

  21 Jan 2012 | 12:28 pm

  This article originally appeared on my CNCCookbook blog, but it was so cool I thought I’d share it here too… Industrial Design always fascinates me. My Apple laptop is machined out of a chunk of aluminum and the work is beautiful. There is an indicator on the front that is a bar-shaped LED that peeks through the aluminum via holes that are so small the openings are invisible unless the LED is lit. My guess is they’re created by a laser as it is hard to imagine doing the volume Apple needs with twist drills. I was pleased to come across this pair of cool PC-related projects…

• Google Ships Bad UI For Profit. Again.

  Bob Warfield

  6 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  Opened my gmail this morning and went about dealing with messages, got to one asking for a meeting so I took the cursor to top of screen where the Calendar menu lives and… Wait.  There is no calendar menu there.  Instead I am greeted by a message “welcoming me to the new way to navigate in Google.” Oh joy.  I am so excited after having enjoyed Google’s other UI changes recently.  The one where they destroyed the contrast in gmail, making it way less usable.  Or the one where they took out the ability to share in Google Reader to anywhere except Google+. With this…

• Why Microsoft Needs a Fighter Pilot Instead of a Moist N’ Easy Snack Cake Salesman

  Bob Warfield

  29 Dec 2011 | 4:29 pm

  Wondering where that crazy title and the photo came from? First, check out Steve Ballmer’s early pre-Microsoft career.  He was the Product Manager for Proctor & Gamble’s Moist N’ Easy Snack Cakes.  No harm in that, in fact he apparently sat near Jeffrey Immelt, who would eventually rise to become one of GE’s celebrated CEO’s.  Okay, what about the fighter pilot thing?  That would be a reference to fighter pilot John Boyd (he looks sorta like Jimmy Wales dad if the right photo comes up on the Wikipedia ad), whose “OODA” strategy is what…

• The Golden Era of Tech Blogging is Over? Hogwash!

  Bob Warfield

  28 Dec 2011 | 4:31 pm

  If you wait long enough, some topic will come along to reignite your muse and you’ll find you just have to write a blog post.   It’s been a little while since I wrote about my Kindle Fire ups and downs.  I’m still very happy with the little Fire, and was recently surprised to discover that overall, video quality on the Fire seems better than it is on my iPad with Netflix.  This seems to be an artifact of how much compression gets used by Netflix, since I can see the video I’m watching go in and out of fine detail focus.  But that is not why we are here! Jeremiah…

• Kindle Fire: WiFi Problems Fixed, Cool Device!

  Bob Warfield

  2 Dec 2011 | 10:28 am

  I wanted to follow up on my unhappy post about Kindle Fire.  When I first got the device, I couldn’t do anything with it because I couldn’t connect to WiFi. As a quick aside, having had side-by-side 3G and WiFi on my iPad, I really like having the 3G and frequently turn WiFi off.  I have found it is a real hassle connecting to Hot Spots compared to the ease of 3G. The good news is I was able to get my Kindle Fire to connect.  I did a ton of research on the web, tried to get help from Amazon Tech Support, but basically got nowhere.  Despite hearing many accounts of people with…

• 

  CLOUD COMPUTING NEWS - Google News

• 5 ways cloud 'supercharges' enterprise initiatives - ZDNet (blog)

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:50 pm

  5 ways cloud 'supercharges' enterprise initiativesZDNet (blog)By Joe McKendrick | January 27, 2012, 9:46pm PST Summary: Among other things, cloud computing's support for rapid development and utility-style billing can counter fears about most IT shadow projects. Cloud in and of itself may or may not add value to and more »

• Aryaka Wins TMC Cloud Computing Excellence Award as the World's First ... - MarketWatch (press release)

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:05 pm

  Aryaka Wins TMC Cloud Computing Excellence Award as the World's First MarketWatch (press release)MILPITAS, CA, Jan 27, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Aryaka, provider of the world's first cloud-based WAN optimization and application acceleration solution, today announced TMC has named Aryaka a winner of the Cloud Computing Excellence Award as one and more »

• Geography Matters: The Proximity Paradox of the Cloud - The Complete Managed Services Resource

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:57 pm

  SYS-CON Media (press release)Geography Matters: The Proximity Paradox of the CloudThe Complete Managed Services ResourceHe shared his insights on the impact geography has on the cloud computing movement, and talks about whether cloud-based communications will expedite the end of the premises-based PBX (News - Alert) market. Their full exchange follows below.Cloud Expo New York: Big Data, Colocation and the CloudSYS-CON Media (press release)all 2 news articles »

• Cloud Computing: Facebook to File for Massive IPO: WSJ - SYS-CON Media (press release)

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:10 pm

  SYS-CON Media (press release)Cloud Computing: Facebook to File for Massive IPO: WSJSYS-CON Media (press release)Facebook will put in its papers to IPO next week, according to the Wall Street Journal Friday, maybe by Wednesday February 1. Apparently the timing is still a bit up in the air but it's in the works. The offering, looking top raise $10 billion, and more »

• Fujitsu, ServiceMesh Expand Cloud Offerings - eWeek

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:20 pm

  Fujitsu, ServiceMesh Expand Cloud OfferingseWeekCloud platform vendor ServiceMesh has forged a relationship with Fujitsu, giving ServiceMesh customers access to Fujitsu's global, on-demand cloud computing footprint. ServiceMesh's customers will now be able to build hybrid cloud instances, ServiceMesh Extends Agility Platform with Fujitsu Global Cloud SupportServer WatchServiceMesh enhances enterprise hybrid clouds with FujitsuCTRall 4 news articles »

• 

  Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal

• Cloud Computing Procurement

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:32 pm

  When it comes to procurement, any technology or service should be evaluated with a good set of criteria. Executive decisions should not be weighted solely on a single selection criterion such as price. This applies to any cloud computing service as well. The twelve criteria listed below (see Chart 1) forces executives to take a broader review of the many elements of the total cloud computing service, and not just price. Each criteria starts with an R, F, or P which makes it easy to remember the total framework for the Yardstick for Technology Procurement (RFP).read more

• ICOS and Joyent Partner Up

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:58 pm

  Joyent’s SmartDataCenter IaaS platform is going to be sold to Italian VARs and service providers by ICOS, an Italian value-added distributor, for private cloud infrastructure or value-added private cloud services. SmartDataCenter’s local storage is supposed to reduce the TCO of cloud data centers. It’s designed to manage tens of thousands of virtual machines, a k a SmartMachines, and supports a multi-tenant PaaS. ICOS means to develop its own cloud infrastructure for channel partners too so they don’t have to build their own cloud data center. JoyentCloud.com delivers public cloud…

• High Impact Cloud Marketing - A Formula for Success

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:45 am

  Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing. While they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing. And while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there. With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science. Hidden behind the…

• CodeFutures Corporation to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2012 New York

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:38 am

  SYS-CON Events announced today that CodeFutures Corporation, the company behind dbShards, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. CodeFutures Corporation, the company behind dbShards, is a leading supplier of database performance and reliability tools that reduce the time and effort required to dramatically increase database scalability and performance. With dbShards, production environments gain scalability, high-availability and easy management of multi-terabyte databases through…

• Cloud Expo New York: Big Data, Colocation and the Cloud

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:28 am

  As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It would allow organizations to have a cloud at various data centers instead of one cloud at one…

• 

  CLOUD COMPUTING blogs - Google News

• Cloud Computing for SMB: 2012 Update - SYS-CON Media (press release) (blog)

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:19 pm

  SYS-CON Media (press release) (blog)Cloud Computing for SMB: 2012 UpdateSYS-CON Media (press release) (blog)Unlike the days of past, cloud computing offers leverage previously only available to enterprise class companies. In essence, cloud computing levels the playing field for SMBs. I wrote about this back in June [...] Syndicated stories and blog feeds, and more »

• Cloud Computing: Apple Quietly Appeals ITC's HTC Decision - SYS-CON Media (press release)

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:11 am

  SYS-CON Media (press release)Cloud Computing: Apple Quietly Appeals ITC's HTC DecisionSYS-CON Media (press release)The patent-watching Foss Patents blog says Apple quietly lodged the appeal on December 29. The blog learned from an Apple filing with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in a case against Motorola Mobility that the and more »

• Will 2012 be the year of the cloud? - ZDNet UK (blog)

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:06 am

  CloudTweaks NewsWill 2012 be the year of the cloud?ZDNet UK (blog)As someone who is very much involved in such programmes, either directly or in an advisory capacity, I'm privileged to be at the heart of these advances in cloud computing. I'm therefore blogging about how I see the cloud phenomenon progressing, HP 'Master The Cloud' Event (Montreal) – Part 3CloudTweaks Newsall 6 news articles »

• 2012 Is The Year Cloud Computing Hits Mainstream Business - BCW

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:15 am

  BCW2012 Is The Year Cloud Computing Hits Mainstream BusinessBCWHis blog is a resource for SMEs who want to use cloud computing and Web 2.0 technologies. ...less info Putting global conflicts and the economy aside I have a feeling that 2012 will be the year when we see cloud computing hits its stride and enter

• Open Applications Group (OAGi) Announces Mobile Business Initiative - San Francisco Chronicle (press release)

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:05 am

  Open Applications Group (OAGi) Announces Mobile Business InitiativeSan Francisco Chronicle (press release)Recently, David Linthicum warned in his Cloud Computing Blog that without standards, organizations are in danger of recreating the old silos that were built up inside the enterprise. The concept of the "Canonical Model" in the enterprise has become a and more »

• 

  GoGrid Blog

• GoGrid Says Hello to Europe with New HQ Opening & Presence at Cloud Expo Europe 2012

  Jeff Samuels

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  It’s exciting times at GoGrid this week as we announce another milestone in our company’s history—the opening of our European Headquarters. GoGrid AMS BV is located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and will provide our customers with fully integrated, on-demand, global cloud infrastructure services through any of GoGrid’s data centers, including our new Amsterdam location as well as San Francisco, CA, and Ashburn, VA. Why now? Why Amsterdam? The appetite for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is rapidly growing worldwide. With Gartner predicting that the IaaS market will soon account…

• 2012 Cloud Computing Predictions from GoGrid Executives, Customers & Partners (Part 2)

  Michael Sheehan

  19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am

  A few days ago, I published some 2012 Cloud Computing predictions from Warren Heffelfinger (CEO – GoGrid), James Urquhart (Cloud Writer for GigaOm & VP of Product Strategies at enStratus) and Larry Warnock (CEO of Gazzang). The beginning of any year is critical to not only reflect back on what transpired, but also to gaze into the future to see what is to come. With Cloud Computing, to quote an over-used phrase, “the sky’s the limit” and while there are some similarity within these and the previous predictions, there are also some distinct opinions as to where we are all headed in…

• 2012 Cloud Computing Predictions from GoGrid Executives, Customers & Partners (Part 1)

  Michael Sheehan

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:58 am

  As is customary with the passing of an old year and the exciting entrance into a new one, people try to make their best predictions as to what the future holds within their area of expertise. For GoGrid, this is obviously around Cloud Computing. This year, instead of making my own prediction list (as I have done in the past), I thought it would be important to get some other expert voices from the GoGrid and cloud community to do this task. The important thing to always remember here, especially when dealing with the cloud, is that it changes quickly. It’s similar to buying the latest…

• GoGrid Gives Back Through Its Season of Giving Program

  Jeryn Carlise

  12 Jan 2012 | 2:57 pm

  Here at GoGrid, we believe in giving back to our local community. That’s why for the last 5 years, we’ve been hosting GoGrid’s Season of Giving, partnering with local organizations, such as the San Francisco Food Bank and Family Giving Tree, to host an annual food and toy drive. Every year, we ask our employees to donate one bin full of food. To make this drive more successful and fun, we hosted a competition (thanks to our VP of Marketing for the great idea!) – the winning team got bragging rights and an ice cream social hosted by San Francisco’s own, Frozen…

• Peering Back at the Clouds – 7 Cloud Predictions from 2011

  Michael Sheehan

  22 Dec 2011 | 2:31 pm

  As is my annual custom, at the beginning of each year or as we are entering into a new year, I try to make some educated guesses as to the direction that Cloud Computing will take us. In December, 2010, I published “Peering Out at the Horizon – 7 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2011” and now is the time that I reflect back to see how well these predictions actually did. Just as a reminder, the predictions that I made were my own personal opinion and may not reflect others at GoGrid. Here is a quick recap of the 2011 Cloud Computing predictions I made and I have also mentioned…

• 

  Perspectives

• Socrata Chief Technical Officer

  James Hamilton

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:13 pm

  Ordinarily I focus this blog on areas of computing where I spend most of my time from high performance computing to database internals and cloud computing. An area that interests me greatly  but I’ve seldom written about is entrepreneurship and startups.   One of the Seattle areas startups with which I stay in touch is Socrata. They are focused on enabling federal, state, and local governments to improve the reach, usability and social utility of their public information assets.  Essentially making public information available and useful to their constituents. They…

• Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL in the Cloud

  James Hamilton

  18 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pm

  Finally! I’ve been dying to talk about DynamoDB since work began on this scalable, low-latency, high-performance NoSQL service at AWS. This morning, AWS announced availability of DynamoDB: Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon DynamoDB – A New NoSQL Database Service Designed for the Scale of the Internet.   In a past blog entry, One Size Does Not Fit All, I offered a taxonomy of 4 different types of structured storage system, argued that Relational Database Management Systems are not sufficient, and walked through some of the reasons why NoSQL databases have emerged and continue to…

• Innovative Datacenter Design: Ishikari Datacenter

  James Hamilton

  16 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Occasionally I come across a noteworthy datacenter design that is worth covering. Late last year a very interesting Japanese facility was brought to my attention by Mikio Uzawa an IT consultant who authors the Agile Cat blog. I know Mikio because he occasionally translates Perspectives articles for publication in Japan.   Mikio pointed me to the Ishikari Datacenter in Ishikari City, Hokkaido Japan. Phase I of this facility was just completed in November 2011. This facility is interesting for a variety of reasons but the design features I found most interesting are: 1) High voltage direct…

• ARM V8 Architecture

  James Hamilton

  2 Jan 2012 | 11:21 am

  Years ago, Dave Patterson remarked that most server innovations were coming from the mobile device world. He’s right. Commodity system innovation is driven by volume and nowhere is there more volume than in the mobile device world.  The power management techniques applied fairly successfully over the last 5 years had their genesis in the mobile world.  And, as processor power efficiency improves, memory is on track to become the biggest power consumer in the data center. I expect the ideas to rein in memory power consumption will again come from the mobile device world. Just as…

• Hyder: Transactional Indexed Record Manager for Shared Flash Storage

  James Hamilton

  14 Dec 2011 | 11:43 am

  If you work in the database world, you already know Phil Bernstein. He’s the author of Principles of Transaction Processing and has a long track record as a successful and prolific database researcher.  Past readers of this blog may remember Phil’s guest blog posting on Google Megastore. Over the past few years, Phil has been working on an innovative NoSQL system based upon flash storage. I like the work because it pushes the limit of what can be done on a single server with transaction rates approaching 400,000, leverages the characteristics of flash storage in a thought provoking…

• 

  Virtualization.com

• Nick Lowe Joins AppSense As VP of Sales for EMEA

  Robin Wauters

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:52 am

  AppSense, provider of user virtualization technology, has announced the appointment of Nick Lowe as vice president of sales in the Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) markets. Lowe’s responsibilities will include overseeing all sales, services and strategic alliances within the ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Alex Pinchev Joins Acronis As President And CEO

  Robin Wauters

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:35 am

  Alex Pinchev, former President, Global Sales, Services and Field Marketing at Red Hat, yesterday began his tenure as President and Chief Executive Officer at Acronis, a provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Nebula Appoints Dell Exec Dave Withers As SVP Of Global Field Operations

  Robin Wauters

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:01 am

  Nebula, developer of a hardware appliance that enables enterprises to deploy large scale private cloud computing infrastructures at low cost, has announced that former Dell executive Dave Withers has joined the company’s executive team as Senior Vice President of Global ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Former Cisco Exec Simon Aspinall Joins Virtustream As CMO

  Robin Wauters

  19 Jan 2012 | 6:55 am

  Virtustream has announced that Simon Aspinall has joined its executive team as chief marketing officer. Aspinall spent more than a decade at Cisco Systems and, at Virtustream, will drive strategic marketing initiatives as the company expands its xStream cloud solution ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• VMTurbo Raises $10 Million

  Robin Wauters

  29 Nov 2011 | 10:57 am

  VMTurbo, a provider of intelligent workload management software in virtualized environments, today announced that it has closed a $10 million Series B round of funding, financed by returning investors Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. VMTurbo will use the ... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  Data Center Knowledge

• Report: Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra Departing

  Rich Miller

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:31 am

  It looks like there’s another departure for a high-profile technology leader in the federal government. U.S. Chief Technology Office Aneesh Chopra has decided to step down, with a formal announcement expected later today. Chopra was appointed in April 2009 after serving as secretary of technology for the state of Virginia. It’s not yet known where Chopra is headed, or who will succeed him as the government’s CTO. Chopra’s departure follows the exit of federal CIO Vivek Kundra last June. Kundra initially took a fellowship at Harvard, but was recetnly appointed executive…

• Data Center World: Early Registration Ends Today

  Colleen Miller

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  The early-bird rate for registration closes today for the spring AFCOM Data Center World conference, planned for March 18-22 at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. AFCOM, a leading data center professional association, recently announced it is the newest special interest community in the iNET Interactive media portfolio. There is growing interest in the Data Center World conference this spring, since the keynote speaker is Vivek Kundra, who formerly served as the U.S. Chief Information Officer. Kundra was recently hired by Salesforce.com to serve as Executive Vice President of Emerging…

• Friday Funny: Vote for the Best Caption

  Colleen Miller

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:59 am

  It’s Friday and time for a little levity here at Data Center Knowledge. Thanks for all the submissions of funny captions for the “New Year’s Resolutions” cartoon from last week. We have included the cartoon below. The cartoon is drawn by Diane Alber, our resident data center cartoonist. For more of Diane’s work, visit KipandGary.com Please vote on the finalists’ captions below. Thanks for participating and may the best caption win! Take Our Poll

• RagingWire Gains Certifications for Data Centers

  Michael Potts

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:46 am

  Data center provider RagingWire has announced four certifications awarded to its California data centers: Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which require merchants and service providers that store, process, or transmit custom payment card data to adhere to strict information security controls and processes created by the founding brands of the PCI Security Standards Council –American Express, Discover Financial, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc. Completed its latest Statement on Standards and Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE…

• CoSentry To Add Second Kansas City Data Center

  John Rath

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:11 am

  CoSentry announced that it will build a new $31.6 million data center in Lenexa, Kansas, a northern part of the greater Kansas City area. Located at 14500 W. 105th Street in Lenexa, the new 57,517 square foot facility will be a little over 30 miles north of its first Kansas City data center located in the southern portion of the city. Construction is expected to begin next month and the project will create more than 60 jobs.  The Kansas City Area Development Council, the Kansas Department of Commerce and the Lenexa Chamber and Economic Development Council worked together to bring CoSentry…

• 

  Nati Shalom's Blog

• GigaSpaces Cloudify & VMware CloudFoundary the new PaaS Jailbreaker

  Nati Shalom

  16 Jan 2012 | 6:47 am

  I was reading Krishnan Subramanian's post, Two Events That “Clouded” Our Thinking In 2011. The thing that caught my attention was Krishnan's comments on why PaaS is a superior alternative to DevOps:  The shift in the thinking about the enterprise cloud consumption also poured water into the “DevOps” concept advocated by vendors and pundits with their foot in the IaaS world. When organizations embrace PaaS instead of infrastructure services, we don’t need the DevOps marriage and the associated cultural change (believe me, this cultural change is giving sleepless nights to many…

• Realtime Analytics for Big Data: A Facebook Case Study

  Nati Shalom

  9 Jan 2012 | 3:04 pm

  via www.youtube.com

• 2012 Cloud, PaaS, NoSQL Predictions

  Nati Shalom

  13 Dec 2011 | 1:47 am

  2011 is coming to its end and now is a good time to start planning for 2012. I thought that a good start would be too look at my 2011 predictions and if my previous (and first) attempt to predict someting in that turbulent environment held any water...so, here is a quick recap of 2011. Recap of 2011 Private vs. Public Cloud - As I noted in my recent post Public vs. Private Clouds I felt that during 2011 the debate around public vs. public cloud would become less interesting, as most of the industry has started to accept the fact that there is a need for both environments, and the important…

• Making Cloud Portability a Practical Reality

  Nati Shalom

  8 Dec 2011 | 2:49 pm

  In one of my previous posts Five Misconceptions On Cloud Portability I argued that: The term "cloud portability" is often considered a synonym for "Cloud API portability," which implies a series of misconceptions. If we break away from dogma, we can find that what we really looking for in cloud portability is Application portability between clouds which can be a vastly simpler requirement, as we can achieve application portability without settling on a common Cloud API. .. The following presentation shows how I could use the ideas from this post and provide a practical cloud portability…

• Public vs Private clouds (Again!)- it's not about the cost

  Nati Shalom

  22 Nov 2011 | 11:50 am

  I was reading Geva Perry's post, 10 Predictions about Cloud Computing  .. As always I enjoyed reading Geva's throughts and for the most part comletely agree with him. The thing that caught my attention is Geva's point on private vs. public cloud. Geva re-iterated why the economical benefit of public cloud would turn private cloud into a small niche. Quoting Geva: "Internal clouds will be niche. In the long-run, Internal Clouds (clouds operated in a company's own data centers, aka "private clouds") don't make sense. The economies of scale, specialization (an aspect of economies of scale,…

• 

  Joyeur

• The Business Justification for Using Node.js

  Ginger Tulley

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:15 pm

  Joyent customers are so smart and articulate. That’s why we invited them to speak on the Joyent sponsor panel at Node Summit on Tuesday. Why listen to us when our customers can tell the story of using Node.js better than we can? We taped the panel, so here’s their conversation about why they decided to use Node in their businesses. (Not a great view but the sound’s good! [MP3]) The session was moderated by John Rymer, Forrester Research analyst and expert on enterprise middleware. John had some good questions. Customers Colin Rand, Associate Director of Technology at AKQA,…

• What is Node? Answers from Node Summit

  Jackson West

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:32 am

  While talking to fellow Node.js enthusiasts in San Francisco for Node Summit this week, we asked what seems like a simple question: “What is Node?” We got answers ranging from the basic but technical to the detailed but metaphorical, and provided by a wide range of experts from companies of all sizes working in a number of different fields. Going to show that through the power of simplicity, Node.js promises a wealth of opportunity. Here are some of the people who answered the question: Eric Meijjer, Iconoclast, Microsoft Isaac Schlueter, npm creator and engineer, Joyent Rik…

• Joyent and Sprint Partner to Bring Node.js to Developers on SmartDataCenter

  Ginger Tulley

  24 Jan 2012 | 12:35 pm

  The first day of Node Summit in San Francisco kicked off this morning with leading technologists and industry experts sharing their perspective and insights on the business, technology and future of Node. On the mobile panel, Jason Delker, Director of Product Development at Sprint will speak about Sprint’s plans for fostering their growing developer community as well as Sprint’s future plans for supporting and integrating ground-breaking open technologies like Node.js into their suite of mobile development tools. “Mobile phones are really micro-computers with always-on data…

• Events: Joyent Node Summit Meetup Tonight!

  Jackson West

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:00 pm

  We here at Joyent have been looking forward to Node Summit for months now, and wanted to send one last reminder that you can join us tonight for some pre-summitting at the ThirstyBear Brewing Company from 6:00pm to 9:00pm — and since we just got a new round of funding, we’ll be picking up the tab. Just let us know you’re coming. Of course, you can also find us at the Mission Bay Conference Center for Node Summit proper tomorrow and Wednesday. And there are still a few badges left if you haven’t registered yet for the conference!

• Cloud9′s Plans for Node.js Community

  Ginger Tulley

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:20 pm

  Ruben Daniels, CEO of Cloud9, the online environment for the development of JavaScript and HTML5 applications, has a great post over on the Cloud9 blog about all of the initiatives the company is undertaking to nurture and support the Node.js community. Take a look a the new community blog Nodebits.org, the official Node manual site Nodemanual.org, and the place for Cloud9 IDE and Node.js training. You can catch Ruben at Node Summit on Wednesday, participating in a panel titled PaaS Services and Tools. Congratulations on your valuable initiatives, Cloud9 team.

• 

  Delicious/awsbuzz

• Sports Marketing Entertainment - JAY LENO booking - Comedians - Corporate Entertainment - Booking - Keynote speakers - celebrity speakers - theatrical entertainment and headline entertainment

  awsbuzz

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:01 am

• Storing User Preference in Amazon DynamoDB using the Mobile SDKs : Articles & Tutorials : Amazon Web Services

  awsbuzz

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:19 pm

  "The sample mobile application described here demonstrates how to store user preferences in Amazon DynamoDB. Because more and more people are using multiple mobile devices, connecting these devices to the cloud and storing user preferences in the cloud enables developers to provide a more uniform cross-device experience for their users."

• Developmentables - Migrating Inventables to Amazon RDS

  awsbuzz

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:30 am

  "The process of moving from a local MySQL database to RDS was quite painless and only took a few hours. We now have a much more robust architecture that will allow us to more easily respond to the growth of our website."

• Automatically populating .ssh/known_hosts

  awsbuzz

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:17 am

  "One of the more irritating things about working with virtual machines is SSH host keys. Launch a new virtual machine. Get a new host key generated. Try to SSH in. Get a pesky warning message telling you that the authenticity of the host can't be established."

• Technical Evangelist, Senior Job Jobs - Heads-Up, Job Board

  awsbuzz

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pm

• 

  Amazon Web Services Blog

• New Tagging for Auto Scaling Groups

  AWS Evangelist

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:29 pm

  You can now add up to 10 tags to any of your Auto Scaling Groups. You can also, if you'd like, propagate the tags to the EC2 instances launched from your groups. Adding tags to your Auto Scaling groups will make it easier for you to identify and distinguish them. Each tag has a name, a value, and an optional propagation flag. If the flag is set, then the corresponding tag will be applied to EC2 instances launched from the group. You can use this feature to label or distinguish instances created by distinct Auto Scaling groups. You might be using multiple groups to support multiple scalable…

• AWS HowTo: Using Amazon Elastic MapReduce with DynamoDB (Guest Post)

  AWS Evangelist

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:42 pm

  Today's guest blogger is Adam Gray. Adam is a Product Manager on the Elastic MapReduce Team. -- Jeff; Apache Hadoop and NoSQL databases are complementary technologies that together provide a powerful toolbox for managing, analyzing, and monetizing Big Data. That’s why we were so excited to provide out-of-the-box Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) integration with Amazon DynamoDB, providing customers an integrated solution that eliminates the often prohibitive costs of administration, maintenance, and upfront hardware. Customers can now move vast amounts of data into and out of…

• The AWS Storage Gateway - Integrate Your Existing On-Premises Applications with AWS Cloud Storage

  AWS Evangelist

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:56 am

  Warning: If you don't have a data center, or if all of your IT infrastructure is already in the cloud, you may not need to read this post! But feel free to pass it along to your friends and colleagues. The Storage GatewayOur new AWS Storage Gateway service connects an on-premise software appliance with cloud-based storage to integrate your existing on-premises applications with the AWS storage infrastructure in a seamless, secure, and transparent fashion. Watch this video for an introduction: Data stored in your current data center can be backed up to Amazon S3, where it is stored as…

• Launch Relational Database Service Instances in the Virtual Private Cloud

  AWS Evangelist

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:34 pm

  You can now launch Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) DB instances inside of a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Some BackgroundThe Relational Database Service takes care of all of the messiness associated with running a relational database. You don't have to worry about finding and configuring hardware, installing an operating system or a database engine, setting up backups, arranging for fault detection and failover, or scaling compute or storage as your needs change. The Virtual Private Cloud lets you create a private, isolated section of the AWS Cloud. You have complete control over IP…

• AWS Toolkits for Eclipse and Visual Studio Now Support DynamoDB

  AWS Evangelist

  20 Jan 2012 | 2:12 pm

  The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse and and the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio now support Amazon DynamoDB.You can create tables, insert and edit data, initiate table scans, and more. Here are some screen shots from the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio. Create a table: Edit a multi-valued attribute: Set up a table scan: The AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio also contains the latest and greatest version of the AWS SDK for .NET. This version of the SDK includes support for Amazon DynamoDB, in the form of the Amazon.DynamoDB.DocumentModel and Amazon.DynamoDB.TableModel classes and namespaces. More information…

• 

  Bluelock

• Bluelock Portfolio gives you the vCloud Forecast

  Jake Robinson

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:03 am

  Portfolio, Bluelock's vCloud portal and decision support tool just learned a new skill: Cost Projection! Bluelock already excels in providing predictable costs in the cloud, but what about those months you need to burst by adding additional resources to your capacity? Portfolio is now outfitted with helpful run rate calculations, allowing you to see early on what your costs will be at the end of the month. By knowing your cost projection well in advance, you'll be able to dial back the resources in use, or for example, see what adding 100 new users worth of resources to your application will…

• Cloud Wars: Friendly Fire - Part 3

  Pat O'Day

  28 Dec 2011 | 8:34 am

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of Cloud Wars: Friendly Fire, we covered some of the challenges cloud advocates and early adopters are experiencing within their own organization as well as some of the reasons that they may be receiving pushback. In this the third and final segement of the series, we'll cover some additional challenges and offer some potential strategies to work around or work with your IT department that might help you move ahead in your adoption of cloud computing."Can you wait six months? We're building a private cloud."More and more frequently we are hearing from our…

• Top 5 Questions to Ask When Buying Public Cloud IaaS

  Jon Corwin

  20 Dec 2011 | 10:01 am

  Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is transforming the hosting industry. Traditional hosting companies and fresh service provider faces both play an active role in this emerging market. IaaS offerings taut agility for early adopters, while slower moving enterprises—still managing their own cloud—watch from the sidelines. Ever expanding datacenters, operational responsibilities and security requirements, amidst shrinking IT budgets, means traditional infrastructure often only makes sense for the largest of organizations. Despite Public Cloud IaaS still solidifying a…

• Cloud Wars: Friendly Fire - Part 2

  Pat O'Day

  19 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  It's important to know that while the challenges I listed in Cloud Wars: Friendly Fire - Part 1 are very real, the core IT department is behaving that way for some very good reasons. They are struggling with not only the transition to cloud, mobile devices, big data, SaaS and social media but also with trying to do so while under a lot of duress due to economy-driven budget and headcount cuts. Being the sole caretakers of so many diverse mission critical technologies, applications and data in the company is not an easy task. In fact, some groups within core IT are running into challenges in…

• Bluelock Clients Offer Candid Cloud Stories

  Jon Corwin

  8 Nov 2011 | 8:37 am

  VMware recently released their first installment of ‘Public Cloud Diaries.’ We’re proud to announce that Bluelock offered up nine of the sixteen cloud entries. This project documents business situations and challenges that companies experience when moving to the public cloud. Entries capture the clients' key requirements for selecting a cloud vendor and the business benefits they experienced with a public cloud solution.Learn how real companies are solving real problems with enterprise public clouds. Use case overviews are divided into seven business verticals; business…

• 

  Cisco Blog » Data Center and Cloud

• Free Free Free Cisco UCS Development Free Free Free

  John McDonough

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:09 pm

  The other day I was “making” breakfast for my daughter, as I poured the cereal from the box I noticed [...]

• The Cisco SAP Business Warehouse Appliance is Here

  Rick Speyer

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:05 pm

  Cisco IASBU has recently launched an update to their  In-Memory appliance offerings.  Cisco IASBU has certified  additional Cisco UCS based [...]

• Importance of the Network in Cloud Computing

  Arup Chakravarty

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:31 pm

  On several recent occasions, in discussions with my customers, colleagues and industry peers, the importance of the network, as it [...]

• They want a cloud real fast, just not sure what exactly it should look like or how it should function…..

  Wayne Greene

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:42 pm

  I have talked to many enterprises that want a private cloud; also service providers that want to build a public [...]

• UCS: Over 10,000 Served

  Todd Brannon

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:46 pm

  This month we’re marking a special milestone… there are now 10,000 UCS customers worldwide. The natural question becomes: what’s driving [...]

• 

  Janakiram MSV

• A Peek into Amazon DynamoDB

  Jani

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Last week Amazon Web Services added another feather in the cap in the form of a brand new NoSQL service called DynamoDB. Though it looks like yet another announcement from the Amazon stable, this is huge. It has a strong impact not just on AWS but the industry. In the last couple of years, there has been massive rush in the NoSQL database market. Many companies sprung up offering a variety of schema-less, scale out databases. Major Cloud platform providers have their own offerings in the form of Amazon SimpleDB, Google BigTable and Windows Azure Table storage. Recent entrants in the PaaS…

• Q & A Session with the Red Hat CEO

  Jani

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:36 pm

  Last week I had the privilege of being on stage with the CEO of Red Hat Mr. Jim WhiteHurst and the GM of Red Hat India, Mr. Anuj Kumar. I was invited to be a part of the OpenEdge event that Red Hat has hosted for their enterprise customers in India. Red Hat has a compelling Cloud strategy for its customers. On the IaaS front, they have CloudForms that enables enterprises and service providers build Private and Public Clouds. Red Hat OpenShift is the PaaS offering based on Makara that Red Hat has acquired last year. Other products like Red Hat MRG and the recent acquisition of Gluster make…

• Developers Are The New Super Heroes Of The Cloud

  Jani

  11 Jan 2012 | 12:06 am

  I always believe that the developers are the most powerful resources in the IT ecosystem. Entrepreneurs may dream, VCs may invest and architects may design highly scalable applications. But it is the developer who will turn all of this into reality. He breaths life into an idea that otherwise will just be yet another idea confined to a set of slides and documents. If you compare software project with a commercial movie, a developer is like the cameraman. The director may have a great plot and an enthralling storyline, but it is the cameraman who let’s the world sees through his lens. So,…

• What’s in Store for the Cloud in 2012?

  Jani

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:11 pm

  Many industry experts analyzed and predicted the Cloud Computing trends for 2012. Here is a list of what I think is in store for the Cloud this New Year. SSD based Cloud Storage – I was hoping to see the Cloud storage vendors offering SSD based storage options in 2011. But, for some reason that did not happen. 2012 will see a surge in the SSD based Cloud storage offerings. This will also alleviate the concerns of running high I/O tasks on the Cloud. EBS on AWS and Azure Drive suffer from the same throughput issues. SSD will be a big boost for moving I/O intensive workloads to the Cloud.

• How the Platform War Has Shifted to the Cloud

  Jani

  2 Jan 2012 | 9:46 pm

  Platform wars are not new to us. I have personally survived a few in the last two decades and I think I am all set to witness the biggest platform battle in the next couple of years. But this time the battleground is different. It has moved from the desktops to the servers to the web and now to the Clouds. In the mid 90s, the platform war was fought to gain supremacy in the client-server environments. While mainframes and mid-ranges reined the enterprise computing, the departmental applications started to surface within the enterprises. The contenders back then were Oracle with their Oracle 7…

• 

  A web<developer's>blog

• Diving Deep: ASP.NET Membership and the new Universal Providers

  Harish Ranganathan

  16 Jan 2012 | 4:53 am

  </object> <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("<script type='text/javascript' src='" + (window.location.protocol) + "//c.microsoft.com/ms.js'" + "><\/script>");</script> </div></body>

• 'Microsoft.ServiceBus.TransportClientCredentialType' is obsolete

  Harish Ranganathan

  10 Jan 2012 | 11:21 am

  Once you upgrade to the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 you also get the updated Microsoft Service Bus assemblies (version 1.6.0.0) that you can use for working with Windows Azure Service Bus (yeah, no longer AppFabric Service Bus) One of the standard implementations of Service Bus is  to use the CredentialType, Credentials (the service bus namespace and the issuer key and issuer name) to create the service bus namespace URI. Once you upgrade to Windows Azure Service Bus (Microsoft.ServiceBus) version 1.6.0.0, the following are the errors you might encounter.  These are rather warnings.

• Windows Azure Service Bus November 2011 Release

  Harish Ranganathan

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  I have been working on Windows Azure Service Bus for the recently concluded Azure Camps  Yes, it is no longer referred as “Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus”.  All the 3 components i.e. Service Bus, Access Control and Caching are hereinafter referred to as simply Windows Azure Service Bus, Caching & Access Control Service, to minimize the complexity in referring to them. Also, Service Bus and the related releases usually come as an out of bound release and are usually behind in terms of the Windows Azure SDK releases.  The Windows Azure SDK latest release is the 1.6 version and…

• A day in the life of a Developer Evangelist!

  Harish Ranganathan

  20 Dec 2011 | 1:43 pm

  The opinions mentioned herein are solely main and do not reflect those of my employer in any way...

• "Why WindowsPhone?" in conversation with Girish C Joshi

  Harish Ranganathan

  19 Dec 2011 | 10:42 am

  </object> <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("<script type='text/javascript' src='" + (window.location.protocol) + "//c.microsoft.com/ms.js'" + "><\/script>");</script> </div></body></html>

• 

  Perspectives on Cloud Computing from Learning Tree International

• Demystifying Private Cloud Computing

  cczarneckiltre

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:13 pm

  Last week I was on a consulting assignment for a client that is interested in cloud computing but concerned about the security of the cloud. A private cloud is something that could clearly benefit this organisation but then the question arose about how they would provision and deploy a solution and what would the skill requirements be for their staff. Further discussions then lead to considerations such as how big should the private cloud be so that it could cater for peaks in demand as well as future growth. What was clear was that this organisation was considering hosting the private cloud…

• Is Cloud Computing Too Costly for Small Business ?

  cczarneckiltre

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:13 pm

  An article posted today on forbes.com headlined that the price of cloud computing is out of reach for small business. The author Gene Marks reported that he had been asked about cloud computing by more than thirty small business clients over the past six months but on analysis non had adopted cloud services based on costs. As examples in his article. Gene considered Software as a Service (SaaS) rather than any infrastructure or platforms. As a start Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions were considered from companies such as Salesforce.com, MicrosoftDynamics and ZohoCRM.

• Bank Chooses to Use Google Cloud Services

  cczarneckiltre

  20 Jan 2012 | 11:47 am

  This week Google has announced what could be considered as a breakthrough agreement for its cloud computing services. Spanish bank BBVA has signed an agreement to use Google cloud services internally for its 110,000 staff. This is the biggest single company deal Google has signed. The deal can be considered as a breakthrough because of the high security and regulatory requirements. it is interesting to consider the details of this deal. The headlines of a bank making use of cloud computing are attention grabbing for sure, but closer examination of the details are required. What services are…

• Amazon DynamoDB Ups the Ante for NoSQL Database Service

  Kevin

  19 Jan 2012 | 9:40 pm

  This past week I watched with great interest as Amazon CTO Werner Vogels announced the launch of Amazon’s DynamoDB service. I feel that rather than trying to say something pithy I will just recommend that you check it out for yourselves. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service that is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above what Amazon previously offered with SimpleDB. DynamoDB removes almost all of the administrative burden associated with provisioning a database for an application. Developers can simply create a database and assume it will be available to store and retrieve any amount…

• Get a New File Server in 15 Minutes

  Doug

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:32 pm

  Last week, a customer sent me an email that included the following. “The file server is full and slowing everyone down, and I’m tired of having to clean files off of it. Maybe we should get a new one.” So, I went to Dell’s Web site and found the cheapest file server they had. It cost $1395, which doesn’t include the charge for installing it. I quoted her the price, and then showed her my file server in the cloud. I demonstrated how to create drives and folders. I explained how we could map cloud drives as drives in Windows Explorer. I showed her what software had…

• 

  Cloud Business Review

• Cloud Computing and the Social Media Marketing Opportunity – How It Started and the Way Forward

  Mariam Noronha

  28 Jan 2012 | 1:15 am

  Social media and social networking have become an integral part of modern day life. With the number of people networking, sharing and buying online growing social media platforms are now “the place” where businesses and consumers meet and interact. Cloud computing has had a significant impact on social networking. It has produced a large, rapidly growing, and competitive social media market. Here is a look at how it all began and where it is headed… In the Beginning…MySpace MySpace, … Click here to read more

• Dolly Drive will Launch All-in-one Cloud Solution for Mac

  Ivan

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:30 am

  What a fun brand name with powerful solutions can do for your business? The answer is jolly-good time in the cloud – and a secured one, too… Dolly Drive, a “time machine in the cloud” offering online file sharing and backup services for Mac users, will unveil an all-new cloud solution for both personal and business that will simplify how Mac users use the cloud on Macworld Live stage, San Francisco this Friday, January 27, 2012. According to … Click here to read more

• Cloud Computing and its impact on Local TV

  CBR Team

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:39 am

  Since the beginning of the TV age, manufacturers have been looking on improving how their customers can watch TV. It started with colored pictures, moved onto being able to record shows onto tapes, then to TIVO, and onwards to DVR. Now the question is this: “How can we watch TV, without being in front of the TV?” The fad for many households is having the ability to be anywhere in the house, and still be able to keep up with … Click here to read more

• Cloud Computing: A Threat to Business Continuity?

  Ivan

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:55 am

  Cloud computing plays an important role in business continuity. In natural disaster events, for example, businesses adopting the cloud have their important data and applications secured off-premise in the cloud, avoiding further loss of business assets. However, the recent developments in tech world indicate that, once again, cloud computing poses threats to businesses, especially when it comes to business continuity; indeed, it seems contradicting that while the cloud helps businesses in disaster recovery and such, it can also backfire … Click here to read more

• The Cloud Is Still Too Expensive For Small Businesses!

  Ivan

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:35 am

  Small business owners – did you know what the “textbook benefits” of cloud computing buzzed around in the past 3 years or so? That’s right – cloud computing is said to cut costs and increase productivity. While those are the case of some businesses, to some others, those are not entirely true. Indeed, the cloud can help your small business to be more productive, as having your business functions in the cloud means that you and your team can … Click here to read more

• 

  CloudTimes

• Consumerization Trend in 2012

  Irmee Layo

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:48 am

  Businesses are nearly reaching IT tipping point as businesses and enterprises become dependent with workers and staff from the cloud and mobile platforms. The cloud and mobile business solutions are clearly making great waves that are way beyond expectations and what business owners have expected. The bigger question to ask is where traditional IT will fit as cloud-based-software, data management and consumerization becomes the trend in the global market? The traditional way of planning, setting up architecture and IT management and control will never be the same again. The reality of IT…

• New Unified Cloud Communications Service from AT&T

  Irmee Layo

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:47 am

  AT&T recently announced its new cloud computing solutions that will help enterprises to unify their communications systems. This is done through an entirely cloud-based platform, meaning there will be no need for an in-house software or hardware to do the task. AT&T’s unified communications (UC) will leverage any business in terms of productivity, ease of access and cost effectiveness. Although, the UC continues to pose challenges on finances and technology, the consumer’s clamor has challenged AT&T to come up with this product. AT&T hopes to maximize the cloud platform on…

• Fujitsu Launched Stored Value Card Cloud Management

  CloudTimes

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:02 am

  Fujitsu currently launched its ValueCENTER(TM) gift card cloud management technology. The release of this ValueCENTER card will provide cloud solutions to gift cards and other stored value cards, plus this software will seamlessly integrate with on-premise and hosted enterprise systems through Fujitsu Hybrid Cloud Services for Windows Azure. This move will benefit consumers for it will cut both hardware and software costs for them. It will also leverage other global cloud services like data storage and cloud security. Fujitsu Vice President of Retail Operations, Marc Janssens said, “Our…

• Vivek Kundra Joins Salesforce.com as Executive Vice President

  Irmee Layo

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:59 am

  Salesforce.com announced recently that the former US Federal Government author and CIO of the Cloud-First policy, Vivek Kundra has joined the company as Executive Vice President to leverage their cloud social enterprise. Kundra is a popular figure in the IT technology and has been coined as an enterprise innovator. Kundra’s track record as CIO of the United States government included the management of more than $80 billion investments from the world’s largest IT organizations. He was one of the first cloud advocates who enumerated the advantages of cloud computing for both the private and…

• CloudTimes Joins GigaOM Structure:Data in New York as Media Sponsor

  Martin Tantow

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:19 pm

  CloudTimes is proud to announce the sponsorship of the upcoming GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York in March 2012. Making Big Data Work For You Are you sitting on unmined gold? As the volume of enterprise data created has moved past terabytes and into the petabyte scale, companies need to determine the best way to store, manage and analyze all that information. Attend Structure:Data and learn how. Structure:Data will bring together forward thinking business leaders, technologists and practitioners to examine the new business opportunities created by the staggering growth of big…

• 

  The Riverbed Blog

• 3 Non-Technical Reasons Why Riverbed Steelhead Trumps Cisco WAAS

  Sabrina Poppe

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  I can give you a laundry list of reasons why Riverbed's Steelhead WAN optimization product family is technologically superior to Cisco WAAS. And I'm sure Cisco can also come up with a list of reasons why they claim to be better than Riverbed. Our marketing departments can duke it out till the end of time but, at the end of the day, how do you know what to believe? As the wary consumer it's natural to be somewhat skeptical of any company's marketing propoganda. That is why I am going to give you three non-technical reasons for why Riverbed Steelhead is a better choice than…

• Stingray Traffic Manager Version 8.1 released

  Paul Wallace

  24 Jan 2012 | 12:04 am

  Stingray Traffic Manager was released on Monday January 23, 2012 via customers’ download pages and is available for evaluation. Stingray Traffic Manager 8.1 is an important revision of the Stingray product family, containing a number of performance and functionality enhancements and bug fixes. Customers are recommended to upgrade to this version to take advantage of the changes. For more details of the changes, take a look at the Release Notes  Major Features in 8.1 SNMPv2c Support for SNMPv2c bulk requests and 64-bit counters has been added. The SNMPv1 solution of splitting 64-bit…

• MEETING HIPAA COMPLIANCE WITH TRAFFIC SCRIPT

  Raja Srinivasan

  19 Jan 2012 | 12:52 pm

  In today’s world more and more applications and associated data are being migrated to the Cloud. For instance, in Canada, the Canadian government has announced plans to consolidate hundreds of data centers into a government run cloud. (http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?nid=614499).  One of the major questions, consumers ask is how private is their data?  Most data centers have several layers of physical as well as logical security built into them. Data that is stored can even be encrypted. But how do you prevent an individual’s privacy when doing research? This questions keeps coming…

• The old ideas are still the best

  Philip O'Toole

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  It often seems that there are few really new ideas in computers. There are many, many interesting technologies, novel approaches, and effective products -- but when examined closer, most are old ideas in a few form. Take CPU architecture. The very first CPUs were RISC-type machines, but were severely-limited by the technology available. Limited RAM, and slow access times, meant it was advantageous to perform as much work as possible without accessing RAM. So we got CISC architecture. But as hardware improved, RISC architectures came to the fore again. It seemed new to many engineers, but was…

• Join Riverbed at AFCEA West 2012

  Ed Tan

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  We're making a presence at the first Federal show of the year, the West 2012 conference, which will take place January 24-26 at the San Diego Conference Center in San Diego, California. Visit the Riverbed booth (#1910) to learn about our IT performance solutions, which help defense organizations meet government mandates – to consolidate data centers, reduce costs for IT, and execute on the cloud first policy – without compromising performance. West 2012 is co-sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute, and is the largest defense technology event on the U.S. west…

• 

  Business Cloud News

• New survey says Consumerisation of IT ‘over-hyped’

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  27th January 2012 Research released today by enterprise ICT solutions provider, Damovo UK has revealed that over three quarters (76%) of IT directors believe the consumerisation of IT is ‘overhyped’. The results, taken from a survey of over 100 IT Directors in the UK, goes against the grain of what many believe is a key change for many workplaces, moving into 2012.

• Digital Commissioner announces ‘G-Cloud’ for Europe

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:10 am

  27th January 2012 The Digital Agenda Commissioner for Europe, Neelie Kroes, has announced that the European Commission will give €10m towards a new Cloud Computing Partnership, to try and help aid “flagging economies” on the continent.

• Proact rebrands B2net in UK launch

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:58 am

   26th January 2012 B2net has been re-launched in the UK as Proact, in a rebranding exercise for the UK-based storage supplier. The move follows the acquisition of the company by Proact in April 2011, and signals an upsurge in future commercial activity as cloud computing provision becomes a focus.

• Guest post: Why you should safe harbour your data for cloud

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:37 am

  24th January 2012 The subject of data protection and the Patriot Act have been under the spotlight once again in the last seven days, with location of data and cloud computing all the more topical. But what are the key basic principles organisations should adhere to when looking to move data to the cloud? News International’s Head of Infrastructure, Ian McDonald, discusses.

• UK tech leaders merge to form CloudXL

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:55 am

  24th January 2012 Top UK-based unified communications (UC) specialist, Actimax and IT solutions provider, Network Resource Group (NRG) have announced a merger, to form CloudXL. The reform is designed to make the benefits of cloud computing “more accessible to a larger number of UK organisations”.

• 

  BitNami Blog

• Get started with Symfony in Amazon Cloud

  Beltrán

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:16 am

  We recently released BitNami LAMP WAMP and MAMP Stacks with Symfony 2.0.9, a popular development framework (the *AMP Stacks also bundle other frameworks like ZendFramework, CodeIgniter and CakePHP). In this post, we will walk you step by step through how to start a project with Symfony in the Amazon Cloud using a BitNami LAMP Stack AMI. First, you will need an Amazon acount to access the AWS Console. You can find how to create your account here (note that they have a free tier which provides you with a free micro instance for a year). Once you login to the AWS Console, go to the EC2 tab and…

• New RubyStack upgraded to Rails 3.2.0

  Beltrán

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:28 am

  We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami RubyStack that includes the latest version of Rails, 3.2.0. BitNami RubyStack simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications for development, testing and production. It can be deployed using a native installer, as a virtual machine or in the Amazon cloud. This Stack ships, among others, the following components, providing a complete Rails environment out of the box: Ruby 1.9.3-p0 Rails 3.2.0 SQLite 3.7.3 Apache 2.2.21 PHP 5.3.9 MySQL 5.5.16 for Linux and OS X phpMyAdmin 3.4.9 NGinx 1.0.10 Git 1.7.8 Subversion…

• New BitNami Joomla! 2.5.0 released

  Beltrán

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:01 am

  We are happy to announce the recently released Joomla! 2.5.0 version is now available as a BitNami stack. This Joomla! version is a security and long-term-support (LTS) release that will be supported for at least 18 months. You can download a native installer, a virtual machine or deploy it directly to the Amazon cloud. BitNami stacks simplify the deployment and testing of open source web apps and are an ideal method to test the latest releases of your favorite projects, including Joomla! There are a lot of improvements in this release. Some highlights include: Support for…

• BitNami Cloud Tools now supports DynamoDB

  Beltrán

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:19 am

  Last week, Amazon AWS release DynamoDB. This is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability. Like a lot of other developers, we were quite excited about this piece of news. We are happy to announce a new version of BitNami Cloud Tools with the latest version of the AWS SDKs that support the DynamoDB service. This installer is a collection of the most popular command line tools for the Amazon API: EC2, Beanstalk, ELB, RDS, SES and so on. The installer ships all of the required dependencies to provide you with a fully…

• New BitNami RubyStack with Rails 3.1.3 released

  Beltrán

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:34 am

  We are happy to announce two new releases of BitNami RubyStack.The new releases contain different versions of Ruby and Rails, so you can choose the BitNami Stack that best meets your development needs. Both BitNami RubyStack versions allow you to setup instant Ruby On Rails development and testing environments locally in your desktop/laptop for Windows, Linux, OS X or in the Cloud. Both versions ship the latest versions of the most popular components: Apache 2.2.21, MySQL 5.5.16, NGinx 1.0.10, Subversion 1.7.1, Git 1.7.8, PHP 5.3.8 among other components. The primary difference between…

• 

  Zoho Blogs

• New in Zoho Sheet: Format Painter, Vertical Merge and Goal Seek

  Ramesh

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  We are glad to introduce the following new features in Zoho Sheet and we believe you will find these really useful. Format Painter: Copy formats and styles of one or more cells and apply them to other cells. This helps you …

• Get your bugs off other bug trackers and into Zoho

  Celina

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:57 am

  Here’s a piece of exciting news! Get your bugs off other bug trackers and into Zoho with the brand new Import Bugs option. We’d work hard to make your migration from other bug tracking services quick and hassle free into …

• ​Record advance or multiple invoice payments at one go!

  Reshma

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:10 am

  As the new year unfolds, Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books brings glad news to one and all especially those weary folks troubled by monotonous work. Our developers had been elbow deep in some amazing coding this past few weeks and now …

• You asked, We listened. More control over your CRM

  Sharanya R

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:11 am

  @headhunter: @zoho ROCKS … new CRM GUI is just simply STUNNING….Would  have to be one of the best web apps I have EVER seen – EVER – Usability PLUS! This was one of the responses to the public launch …

• Zoho Invoice simplifies a law firm’s billing process

  Naren

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  We are aware of the fact that Zoho Invoice has helped a lot of small businesses, freelancers and service providers to streamline their invoicing process. Here is an example of a full service law firm, HMLC that is based in Dubai, …

• 

  Networking Exchange Blog » Topics » Cloud Computing

• UC and Voice: Now in The Cloud

  Cara Knight

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:39 am

  Money loves speed.  In business today, getting access to and utilizing important business information faster than the competition can make the difference between success and failure.  It is vital for successful businesses today to locate people and information without logging into and out of multiple systems.  The business which can get the information faster, through one unified dashboard and through wired or wireless devices, can have a significant advantage. A new AT&T solution is now in place to help businesses.  It utilizes a Unified Communications (UC) and IP (Internet Protocol)…

• Is Your Car Telling On You?

  Chris Norton

  20 Jan 2012 | 4:12 am

  We all know that information technology is giving away a lot of information about us every day. Whenever you use a Google GPS app, you are telling Google where you are and where you are going. When you use a scanning app to get the best price you are telling lots of folks where you are and what you want to buy. I’m sure you can think of more but a recent one caught my attention. In the Nov 2011 issue of IEEE Computer, there is an article by David Alan Grier (the computer science professor, not the guy from ‘In Living Color’) titled “The Honest Give-and-Take” that discusses the scale…

• Give Me the Cloud, but I Want More Than That

  Joey Widener

  10 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  As you know by now I spend a lot of time talking about the Cloud with customers and at various industry events. In the last few months a trend has started to emerge. More and more customers are looking to find ways to leverage the cloud in various ways in their enterprise, but when talking with CxO’s, IT leaders, etc, it’s becoming clear, you don’t just want the cloud, you want a ‘managed’ cloud. What does that mean, ‘managed’ Cloud? I am sure there will be a different definition for different people, but this is what I am hearing from my conversations. You want the flexibility…

• Look, it’s a Bunny! No Maybe an Angel?

  Monica Liming-Hu

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:03 am

  Clouds…aren’t they wonderful to marvel at? As a child, I recall lying in the summer grass looking up at them and trying to figure out images from their puffy white glory. On occasion, it was a fluffy bunny perhaps, or my favorite image to find, an angel. While I enjoy the puffy, white images in the sky, it’s sad to say that I also see images of dark, ominous clouds. These scary clouds are all over the place, not only through the trials of weather, but also in the form of those single or small groups of servers out there in secluded, back rooms. Many times they are only serving a dust…

• Editorial Review of 2011 – Cloud Computing

  Terry L. Brock

  27 Dec 2011 | 4:27 am

  Welcome to this year-end wrap-up and evaluation of the Networking Exchange Blog. As your Editor, I get the opportunity to review, analyze and study the great posts that you read about. My job is to do what editors do — spell-checking, grammar checking, revising, adding links and more to make your reading experience with us enjoyable and educational. You might have seen me with the video interviews I did with Maribel Lopez. In my role, I have the wonderful opportunity to connect with the delightful people who are your authors. These people are the geniuses. You and I get to benefit from…

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  meshIP Blog

• US Spy Agencies Look To Cloud Computing

  Brian

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:30 pm

  This is a post from the meshIP Blog -US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said cloud computing will play a major role as the nation’s spy agencies work to integrate computer and information systems to share more data securely. Cloud computing has “huge potential for achieving savings … Continue reading →- We offer Cloud Computing services - Brian Related posts: US Intelligence Community Is Moving To The Cloud Feds To Speed Cloud Adoption With New Roadmap White House Issues Federal Cloud Strategy

• Post-Virtualization Security

  Brian

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:11 am

  This is a post from the meshIP Blog -As the second law of thermodynamics tells us, all things trend toward chaos and this is no less true with a virtual environment. Sprawl can have a real security impact, and it takes discipline and planning to control sprawl — … Continue reading →- We offer Cloud Computing services - Brian Related posts: Cloud, Virtualization Will Dramatically Change Security Desktop Virtualization Improves Security Virtualization: A Solution For The Tablet Security Conundrum

• Cloud Computing In The Contact Center

  Brian

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:03 am

  This is a post from the meshIP Blog -Companies are looking for cloud solutions that satisfy the requirements of the IT manager in terms of reliability, security and rapid access to data, while still receiving everything they need such as service, flexibility and user-friendliness. By consolidating resources into … Continue reading →- We offer Cloud Computing services - Brian Related posts: Move to Cloud Computing Drives Virtual Call Center Trend Rare Video Tour Of A Cloud Computing Data Center Cloud Computing and Accountants

• Cloud Computing Adoption To Explode In 2012

  Brian

  19 Jan 2012 | 11:48 am

  This is a post from the meshIP Blog -In testing cloud computing services and observing the growth of cloud activities, we’ve noticed that there are distinct phases that organisations go through in adopting cloud. First, application developers fall in love with cloud-based disposable infrastructure and/or ready-built app development … Continue reading →- We offer Cloud Computing services - Brian Related posts: Obstacles to Cloud Computing Adoption Information Technology Managers Predict Widespread Private and Public Cloud Adoption Feds To Speed Cloud Adoption With New Roadmap

• Cloud Computing Can Save Firms Money

  Brian

  17 Jan 2012 | 12:17 pm

  This is a post from the meshIP Blog -Less than a decade ago I owned an advertising agency with 30 staff across three locations. As a digital agency our work was primarily email, internet access, document writing and sharing. To achieve and support that we had a dedicated … Continue reading →- We offer Cloud Computing services - Brian Related posts: Can Cloud Computing Save The American Economy? Ten Core Benefits of Cloud Computing How Big is The Opportunity for Cloud Computing?

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  IT channel & Managed Services blog for IT Resellers and Managed Service Providers

• Joyent Partners With ICOS To Provide SmartDataCenter

  IT Channel Insight

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  Joyent, the global cloud computing software and service provider, and ICOS, the leading Italian distributor of IT enterprise infrastructure solutions, have announced an agreement to provide SmartDataCenter software to local channel providers and service partners. SmartDataCenter, a cloud infrastructure software program developed by Joyent, requires lower infrastructure investment owing to higher hardware utilization rates, faster

• Axcient Joins Ingram Micro Cloud Vendor Portfolio

  IT Channel Insight

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:24 pm

  The Services Division of Ingram Micro Inc. has announced that the Ingram Micro Cloud portfolio, which currently features more than 50 services and 24 vendors, has added Axcient to its growing list of offerings. Axcient, which provides a unified platform for backup, business continuity and disaster recovery, will now be available to Ingram Micro channel

• The Good News about Best Buy

  Todd Nielsen

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:28 pm

  Best Buy has for many years been the joke of IT solution providers. We used to tell clients, “We love Best Buy and the Geek Squad… they give us lots of business.” The implication being that because of the poor service of the Geek Squad; potential clients would use them, then repent and come to

• Does The Look of Your IT or Telecom Services Proposal Really Matter?

  Todd Nielsen

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:46 pm

  Working in both the IT and Telecommunications industries for over 15 years has given me a chance to view quite a few proposals for projects, services, managed services, and cloud computing. I truly believe that how a proposal is organized and presented is important to the success of a sale. A good looking proposal will

• ManageEngine Adds Industry-First Feature to DeviceExpert

  IT Channel Insight

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:18 pm

  ManageEngine, a leading provider of cost-effective enterprise IT management software, has announced the inclusion of automated device end-of-life (EOL) management services in DeviceExpert, the company’s network configuration and change management (NCCM) solution. Entirely new to the industry, automated EOL management assists network administrators in improving device lifestyle management and ensures that network devices comply with

• 

  News

• Quick & Easy Salesforce Validation Rules

  Roger Mitchell

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:55 pm

  Validation rules: the gatekeepers to data integrity. We use this Salesforce feature to ensure that our data meets business requirements or common sense. The best and simplest of which that I have encountered is ensuring that a field that tracks the temperature of a room exists between the coldest and warmest temperatures experienced on Earth. This is quite simple and looks like the following. IF( OR( Temperature__c < -130, Temperature__c > 130), true, false) Now, this is a simple example that will trigger an error only when the temperature is colder than Antarctica or hotter than a…

• Feature Graveyard - Episode #76 of CloudFocus Weekly

  Jason Atwood

  20 Jan 2012 | 6:29 am

  Direct Download (Time: 51:35 - 19.1MB) CloudFocus RSS Feed Subscribe via iTunes CloudFocus App Pick of the Week KloutScore by Inphoenixity from Justin IFTTT by IFTTT from Jason Follow Us twitter.com/ArkusInc facebook.com/ArkusInc

• The Rise of Cloud Depreciation in Spring 12

  Jason Atwood

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:57 pm

  One of the many benefits to Cloud Computing is the constant upgrading that brings new features and functions to the subscribers with each release. Salesforce.com has a track record of producing three feature-rich releases a year for almost a decade now. While we always tend to focus on the new features, buried in those glorious release notes are sometimes the dark clouds representing the death of popular features. Presentation Builder (Page 38 - Winter 12) With the release of Salesforce.com Content years ago came the impressive demo of real-time editing, building and distribution of…

• Spring 12 is Upon Us - Episode #75 of CloudFocus Weekly

  Jason Atwood

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:44 am

  Direct Download (Time: 59:36 - 29.4MB) CloudFocus RSS Feed Subscribe via iTunes CloudFocus App Pick of the Week PayPal Mobile for iOS by PayPal from Justin ForceMob for iPad by BlueCloud Systems from Jason Follow Us twitter.com/ArkusInc facebook.com/ArkusInc

• Spring 12 Release Notes Rapid Reaction

  Justin Edelstein

  10 Jan 2012 | 1:25 pm

  Salesforce Spring 12 release is filled with lots of pilot features and beta features included in these release notes. I think these are listed this way due to some backlash Salesforce has received over the last few releases where features were listed but were not actually available at the time of the release. This is a good practice from Salesforce to make it more transparent to us which features we can expect on day 1 and which ones we know we will have to either wait for or contact Salesforce to turn on for us. Now on to some of my favorites (purely based on reading the release notes and…

• 

  The CA Cloud Storm Chasers

• Cloud as "Icon": The evolution of a puffy little orb

  Jeffrey Abbott

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:02 am

  Circa 1993, when only the senior executives were lucky enough to have 17-inch monitors, businesses would buy floppy disks full of imagery called clip art. One of those images was a bubbly cloud. Originally, this represented the telephone network. Then it came to represent the Internet, and now the cloud represents a cloud - well, not really. Let's take a look at what's happened to this...  

• Virtual business service optimisation is the holy grail of the cloud

  Chris Rae

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:56 pm

  The adoption of cloud computing in whatever form has long promised to bring small, medium and large businesses benefits beyond their wildest dreams: lower costs, increased agility, capacity, etc. Those of us who've been in the industry for any length of time, knew enough to understand that this wouldn't be an overnight miracle and that cloud itself, just like many other ‘saviour'...  

• Cloud Luminaries: Strategies for reigning in rogue IT from Qualcomm

  Katherine Demacopoulos

  20 Jan 2012 | 8:20 am

  Much has been written about how cloud computing enables business units to bypass the IT organization and work directly with cloud service providers to meet their short-term needs... (never mind the potential security risks, inefficiencies and unpredictable costs this type of behavior can expose the company to). What I found most interesting about my Cloud Luminaries interview with Matt Clark,...  

• 6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Services

  Andi Mann

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:10 am

  There is a persistent (mainly vendor-driven) meme going around the world of IT that building and running a responsible, secure, available, enterprise-quality cloud is simple. The theory seems to be that it just needs some server virtualization, adding automation, maybe dropping in some change control, and calling it done. Or that all you need to do is to logon to a public cloud provider, give...  

• Cloud Luminaries: An inside peek at an ultra-secure data center in the Swiss Alps

  Katherine Demacopoulos

  13 Jan 2012 | 8:22 am

  I had the opportunity to visit Radix Technologies' ultra-secure data center in the Swiss Alps several months ago and, let me tell you, it was quite impressive. The facility was initially an underground military bunker that the Swiss resistance force used to hide from the Nazis. Its location is so top-secret that it doesn't appear on any maps -- which made it more than a little difficult...  

• 

  I Am OnDemand

• Cloud Management: What is "Cloud Management" and what areas does it cover?

  13 Jan 2012 | 3:23 am

  Cloud Management: What is “Cloud Management” and what areas does it cover? 6 answers on QuoraWhat is “Cloud Management” and what areas does it cover?

• Let's Welcome 2012

  1 Jan 2012 | 8:31 am

  The cloud debate vanished. I will rememeber 2011 as the cloud POC year. We all “ran” this proof of concept and most of us agree that cloud computing just makes sense. While cloud adoption is the first priority for all IT organizations, the service vendors will need to prove infrastructure improvement and strength. 2012 will be the year where cloud issues will be solved. Cloud technologies’ infrastructures will become better and the whole cloud environment will become more robust. Check the presentation below. It includes some screen-shots of the most famous outages (Amazon AWS, MS…

• 2011 Cloudiness

  1 Jan 2012 | 8:15 am

• The Rabbit and the Mole: the Web Developer and the Data Scientist

  18 Dec 2011 | 11:11 am

  Six years ago I led Zarathustra as the company and product manager. We started this new company to help SMB companies to manage their sales, operations and accounting in one system. I was young and handsome but with not a lot of experience in regards to recruiting and employing web software developers. It was obvious to us that we didn’t have enough capital to hire experienced developers and while searching for guys to help us with the R&D we realized that we could find great talented young geeks. These guys accumulated their experience by establishment of websites for their own purposes…

• And again: Is Cloud a Revolution or just an Evolution?

  30 Nov 2011 | 10:33 am

  I initiated this discussion in two separate Linkedin groups in different times. The first one was on May this year and the current one is still rolling as we speak. Amazing to see the differences between the winds that blows in each one of the discussions. Reading the comments submitted in the first discussion, you will find that most of the people vote for Evolution. The current discussion seems to have winds of Revolution. This can be because the time that passed and proved everyone that cloud is a revolution, the crowd type, the people roles or it can be just a coincidence.  In any…

• 

  KnowledgeTree blogs

• Getting Buy-In For Document Management

  Peter Mollins

  25 Jan 2012 | 1:21 pm

  It’s no secret that today’s businesses generate a massive amount of documents in a variety of formats. Small and medium-sized businesses and corporate departments deal with an unprecedented quantity of documents that must be stored, retrieved, and shared across teams or across the enterprise. Anyone who has ever worked in an office knows the frustration of managing and organizing documents with colleagues. Without a centralized repository, documents are usually stored on individual computers and emailed around on request. Worse, when an individual leaves the company, his or her store of…

• Document Management for Compliance

  Peter Mollins

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:24 pm

  Let’s take a look at how CanPrev, a Canadian company that specializes in natural health products, gets a produtvity boost from KnowledgeTree. The company, founded in 2005 by Tanya Salituo, a 3-time cancer survivor, performs rigorous tests to ensure the safety of their products. Boosting Productivity and Compliance with Document Management Each test and production plan must be carefully catalogued, stored, and ready for retrieval instantly. Doing so ensures that should government regulators require additional information, they can provide it without delay. As a result, it is imperative that…

• Document Management for Sales and Marketing Teams

  Peter Mollins

  17 Jan 2012 | 11:03 am

  Following up on last week's announcement of a special offer to SugarCRM customers, I thought I'd include some notes on how document management helps support sales and marketing organizations. Some Document Management Background Sales and marketing professionals rely on documents like proposals and collateral to generate leads and close business. It is essential that these documents are appropriately reviewed by the right team members, and that the documents are easily accessible by colleagues across the go-to-market organization. But reviewing and accessing these documents is not so simple.

• Document Management for SugarCRM Customers -- for Free

  Peter Mollins

  13 Jan 2012 | 11:47 am

  Sales, marketing, services, and other customer facing teams deal with a lot of documents. Management of these documents is often a challenge. Where is that version of the proposal I need? Has the contract been approved? Do I have all of the supporting documents for the proof of concept? Now, we’ve teamed up with SugarCRM to make document management easy for customer facing teams. If you are an existing SugarCRM commercial customer, you’re entitled to a free 10-user, 12-month online document management account with KnowledgeTree. You can sign-up here, and launch your account immediately.

• How Document Management Helps HR Teams

  Peter Mollins

  10 Jan 2012 | 12:01 pm

  HR teams deal with a steady flow of documents that must be controlled. Huge volumes of employee agreements, tax forms, payroll, and other documents are created and processed by HR each day. Mismanaged documents are not acceptable – they can have serious impacts on the productivity of your organization. The challenge is to give HR teams control over their documents and keep related business processes moving. A best practice approach is to deploy cloud-based document management tools. KnowledgeTree’s Smart Tools let teams manage documents and related business processes from anywhere. For HR…

• 

  insideHPC

• Travel Feature looks at HPCC Conference – Destination Newport March 26-28

  Robert Murphy

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:14 pm

  By Robert Murphy The National High Performance Computing and Communications conference, scheduled this year for March 26-28 in Newport, Rhode Island, will bring together an elite gathering of industry insiders for its 26th annual conference. New this year is the focus on a global perspective of supercomputing along with emphasis on manufacturing and competitiveness. With these changes, we can expect to see a number of new faces traveling to Newport for the first time. For those first time visitors, and for those of you who have frequently dropped in for a conference and had to leave before…

• Mexico Powers up “Fire Serpent” Xiuhcoatl Supercomputer

  Ralph

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:47 am

  Mexico’s Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV) has powered up Xiuhcoatl, a the country’s most powerful supercomputer at 25 Teraflops. Joining a three-way grid knows as Lancad, the system will be used to research such areas as Alzheimer’s, the Earth’s climate, tsunamis, and the formation of stars. According to Cinvestav chief Rene Asomoza, the Xiuhcoatl (fire serpent in Nahuatl) supercomputer has 3840 cores. As part of the Lancad project, it will generate physical infrastructure that will improve Mexico’s competitive position in the world. Read the…

• New Whitepaper: Boost RAM Bandwidth by 20% with a Single Command

  Rich Brueckner

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:15 am

  Colfax International has published a new whitepaper by Stanford’s Andrey Vladimirov entitled: Terabyte RAM Servers: Memory Bandwidth Benchmark and How to Boost RAM Bandwidth by 20% with a Single Command. Colfax International produces servers capable of supporting up to 1 TB of RAM and up to 4 Intel Xeon CPUs. This paper reports the memory bandwidth benchmark of these servers obtained using the STREAM code. Our benchmark includes comprehensive statistical data: the mean, standard deviation, extrema and the distribution of bandwidth measurements. The distribution of measurements reveals…

• Interview: Nvidia Updates Cuda Platform to 4.1

  Rich Brueckner

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  This week Nvidia announced the latest update to their Cuda platform for parallel computing. To learn more, I caught up with Will Ramey, Nvidia’s Sr. Product Manager for GPU Computing. insideHPC: When we talk about a new Cuda platform, are we talking about the Cuda Toolkit plus SDK? Does this new update have a version number? Will Ramey: Yes, this release is a new version of the CUDA Toolkit and SDK code samples, as well as updated drivers.  The version number for this release is 4.1 insideHPC: Specifically, what components comprise the platform? Will Ramey: There are 3 key components…

• Agenda Published for Israel Supercomputing Conference

  Rich Brueckner

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:22 pm

  Clipped from: hpcadvisorycouncil.com (share this clip) The HPC Advisory Council has published the agenda for the Israel Supercomputing Conference coming up on February 7 in Tel Aviv. Featuring speakers from AMD, Intel, IBM, NetOptics, Mellanox, ORNL, ScaleMP, and Tel Aviv University, the one-day event will cover advanced HPC topics from around the world. I’m looking forward to attending this event. The HPC Advisory Council recently reached a milestone of over 300 institutional members. Thanks to its long history of high-tech breakthroughs by innovative small companies, Israel is often…

• 

  UCILIA®: Cloud Telephony Blog

• North Korean government labels cell phone users as war criminals

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:18 am

  In North Korea, using a cell phone could come with the accusation and punishment of being a war criminal. According to The Telegraph, anyone caught using a mobile phone or attempting to flee to China during the 100-day mourning period for late leader Kim Jong-il will be considered a war criminal and "punished accordingly."

• How Wi-Fi could squeeze wireless carriers

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:10 am

  AT&T, Verizon and Sprint—as well as every other wireless player on the planet—are betting they can squeeze more revenue out of customers due to booming demand for mobile data. The fly in the revenue growth ointment may just be Wi-Fi.In a research note earlier this week, a team of Jefferies analysts made the case that Wi-Fi will squeeze the pricing power for mobile data.

• Ericsson is buying BelAir, betting on Wi-Fi

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:32 am

  In a sure sign that the cellular industry is getting serious about Wi-Fi, telecom networking giant Ericsson is buying BelAir Networks, adding its high-performance outdoor hotspot technology to its portfolio. The deal could signal a big shift in the mindset of the big wireless vendors, which have always favored their own specialized and expensive cellular technologies to meet growing mobile data demand rather than more generic but much cheaper Wi-Fi tech.

• States allow voting via cloud for citizens overseas

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:47 am

  Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft's cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections.LiveBallot, based on Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, has already allowed more than 1,200 voters from Florida living in 40 countries around the world to access their ballots for a Jan. 31 election, according to Microsoft.

• Securely upload data to the AWS cloud

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:31 am

  Amazon announced AWS Storage Gateway, a service that provides a new option to securely upload data to the AWS cloud.The AWS Storage Gateway connects an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage for seamless integration between on-premises IT environments and AWS storage.

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  Managed Data Center News, Trends, and Commentary

• Mobile Security: Are Most Apps Safe?

  Aaron Riddle

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pm

  With smartphones and social media platforms becoming a major means of communication between friends, family and co-workers, we have come to appreciate the evolution of mobile applications. With over 500,000 apps on iPhone, 350,000 on Android and thousands more on other operating systems, there are many different apps out there that offer many different services and solutions to its users. In order for these apps to work, they require permissions to use certain features of your phone in order to function. Sometimes, these apps require permissions that ultimately the app doesn’t need. Pandora…

• Disaster Recovery for HIPAA Applications – It’s All About Availability of PHI

  Mike Klein

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:16 pm

  HIPAA – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act focuses on three key criteria for handling Protected Health Information (PHI):  availability, confidentiality and integrity. This blog post focuses on availability as it applies to HIPAA applications and HIPAA data. Availability means that PHI is always available, accessible and never lost.  When a patient arrives at the emergency room at three o’clock in the morning, the electronic health records need to be available so the physician can address the emergency with all of the patient’s records at her fingertips.  Patient…

• Update from Online Tech: Major Initiatives & Investments

  Mike Klein

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  To Our Valued Clients: Each quarter I like to share with our clients the major initiatives we’re undertaking at Online Tech, and a look at what is in store for the near future. Last year, we grew over 26%, added a new data center, and invested in a number of improvements to our data centers and service offerings.  Some of our 2011 initiatives included: A $1M investment in our Mid-Michigan data center, including the complete replacement of the Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).  The in-line UPS retrofit was achieved with no downtime and increased the capacity to a full 1 MW at the data…

• Tactical Mobile Device Security Measures to Meet HIPAA Compliance

  Thu Pham

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:48 am

  Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous in the healthcare industry – from quickly filing e-prescriptions to collecting and sending patient health information (PHI) directly to an EHR/EMR (electronic health or medical record) system, the use of smartphones, tablets and other portable devices is changing the quality of patient care for the better across the nation. But when it comes to securing your mobile devices and meeting strict HIPAA compliance standards, physicians and other healthcare professionals may not realize the security precautions they need to take to prevent a data breach and…

• Five Questions to Ask Your Business Associates: #1 Breach Notification

  April Sage

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:54 am

  How does your BAA (Business Associate Agreement) address breach notification to your clients? We’re asking ourselves tough questions about HIPAA compliance, and our responsibilities as a trusted Business Associate and hosting partner. #1 What timeframe does your BAA promise clients for PHI breach notification? As a data center hosting partner to hospitals, physician groups, and health IT companies, we want to be a trusted Business Associate. We consulted experienced health care attorneys and HIPAA auditors to fully understand our responsibilities. Together we created a Business…

• 

  Online Database Application Platform Blog

• WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Jan 27, 2012

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:16 am

  Gartner has identified the drivers for the adoption of SaaS and cloud offerings for BI, analytics and performance management. Nearly one-third of organisations either already use or plan to use cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to augment their core business intelligence (BI) functions, according to a report from IT research firm Gartner. According to a survey of 1,364 IT managers and business users of BI platforms in the fourth quarter of 2011, only 17 percent of organisations have replaced or plan to replace parts of their core BI functions with cloud or SaaS offerings.

• WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Jan 20, 2012

  20 Jan 2012 | 7:46 am

  Recent research on cloud computing in healthcare suggests that many IT managers are reluctant to store critical patient-related data in a cloud-computing environment. With this in mind, one healthcare executive from information management firm Iron Mountain is prodding health CIOs to take a second look at the technology. Ken Rubin, senior vice president and general manager for Iron Mountain's healthcare division, understands that CIOs have many concerns as they develop a robust IT infrastructure that lets clinicians access data quickly, while ensuring that the system helps the organization…

• WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Jan 13, 2012

  13 Jan 2012 | 7:32 am

  It’s no surprise that many cloud experts predict that mobile cloud computing will become increasingly important in 2012. Given the numbers of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices shipped every day, more and more users are relying on the cloud as the main driver for satisfying their computing needs, whether it is data storage, applications or infrastructure. These factors contribute heavily to the increasing mobile cloud emphasis. It is however not due only to increasing availability of smartphones and tablets, but also standards and cloud services that support remote data access,…

• WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Jan 06, 2012

  6 Jan 2012 | 7:12 am

  The Cloud has evolved a lot in the past 1 year. Only a few years ago cloud didn’t even exist and now in 2012 the Cloud phenomenon is going to reach new heights. The top trends of Cloud Computing in 2012 are: The move to platforms The move out to public clouds The advent of big data Spikiness Consumer expectations come back to roost Here comes one really messy leak Disaster recovery and scaling are the new drivers An SLA detente The rise of real brokerages Inception, the brain in the vat, and hardware What can't I put in the cloud? Infrastructure, code, and data are intertwined Read more to…

• WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Dec 30, 2011

  30 Dec 2011 | 7:30 am

  With 2011 dawning on us, we bring you our last weekly Cloud sum-up for this year. Looking back on 2011, what stands out most of all is that the cloud became mainstream. Cloud computing even got its own Gartner hype cycle, and while some aspects of the technology are still deemed to be in the early wave of the cycle, others are far beyond any hype. Indeed, SaaS is so well established today that Gartner positions it firmly on the ’slope of enlightment’, well on the way to achieving productive enterprise adoption.    Read More to find out how Cloud has been in 2011 and a short…

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  CIO's Guide to Cloud Computing and On-Demand | Appirio

• 10 Ways to Drive Cloud Adoption: Focus on the User (Part 2)

  Appirio

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:54 pm

  Beth Chmielowski My last post described five steps you can take during the strategy and planning phase of a cloud implementation to inform and simplify user adoption. Today’s post is all about the user and the top five ways to prepare and enable them for success. Show Them: People who purchase and/or configure the tool are usually a very small subset of those that will use it. These people invest so much time getting the system ready for go live, that they sometimes forget that the majority of the company doesn’t know what is coming. They may not even know anything is coming, or if they…

• 10 Ways to Drive Cloud Adoption: It’s Not Just Training (Part 1)

  Appirio

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:27 pm

  Beth Chmielowski Cloud technologies can simplify your life - from infrastructure set up to overall maintenance. In fact, SaaS applications can be so easy to implement and use, it’s easy to underestimate what it takes to get the breadth and depth of user adoption that defines a successful implementation. As cloud technologies mature and take greater hold throughout organizations, our cloud experts get a lot of questions from customers and prospects on how to make their investments take hold. To help answer this, we put together a list of 10 things you can do to drive user adoption of cloud…

• Can Do Canines wins Extreme Cloud Makeover -- Nonprofit Edition

  Appirio

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  By Mark Koenig Last year we challenged nonprofits to submit for the “Extreme Cloud Makeover-- Nonprofit Edition.” The idea was to provide the staff of one deserving nonprofit with a flexible, effective, cloud-based system that users love. We offered to extend an existing salesforce.com implementation, “extreme makeover” style, using the muscle of multiple Appirians and the power of technology we have developed through hundreds of customer engagements and the CloudSpokes community. We received more than two dozen heart-felt entries and narrowed them down to three finalists.  Then…

• Three Ingredients for Improving Open Innovation

  Appirio

  5 Jan 2012 | 7:10 pm

  By Dave Messinger Last week, Saugatuck Research published an interesting report, “Mapping, Planning, and Benefiting from Global IT Innovation", recommending that enterprise R&D groups "broaden their 'innovation portfolios' by establishing or expanding innovation investment in areas and locations where innovation is growing - and being rewarded". Looking outside your own company walls might not sound like a new idea, but the following prediction from Saugatuck’s report provides some urgency to take action on the idea. “By YE2016, the shift by enterprises toward new IT being acquired…

• Announcing our newest Cloud Pioneer - A Q&A with Vala Afshar & Dan Petlon, Enterasys

  Appirio

  19 Dec 2011 | 11:15 am

  By Sara Campbell Congrats to our friends at Enterasys! Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer and Dan Petlon, Chief Information Officer, are the latest Appirio customers to receive our Cloud Pioneer award. Vala and Dan are quite the dynamic duo and together are paving new roads with their cloud first philosophy and innovative business transformation. Both agreed that receiving the Cloud Pioneer award validates their success and innovation, motivating them to continue to raise the bar. Enterasys, a Siemens Enterprise Communications Company, is a premier global provider of wired and wireless…

• 

  blog.opennebula.org

• OpenNebula Public Cloud Updated to 3.2

  dmolina

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:50 am

  The OpenNebula Cloud offers a virtual computing environment accessible through two different remote cloud interfaces, OCCI and EC2, and  two different web interfaces,  Sunstone for cloud administrators and the new SelfService for cloud consumers. These mechanisms access the same infrastructure, i.e. resources created by any of the mentioned methods will be instantly available on the others. For instance, you can create a VM with the OCCI interface, monitor it with the EC2 interface, and shut it down using the OpenNebula Sunstone web interface. This Cloud has been migrated to the last…

• OpenNebula 3 Virtual Data Centers Screencast

  Jaime Melis

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:30 am

  A new episode of the screencast series is now available at the OpenNebula YouTube Channel. This screencast, second part of the oZones screencast, shows how to manage and use Virtual Data Centers, both with the oZones CLI and with the oZones web-based interface, to isolate virtual infrastructure environments within an OpenNebula zone. It shows how to create a VDC by assigning a group of users to a group of physical resources and by granting one of the users, the VDC administrator, with privileges to manage all virtual resources in the VDC. The users in the VDC, including the VDC…

• OpenNebula 3.2 Red Spider is out!

  Ruben S. Montero

  16 Jan 2012 | 11:47 am

  January 17th, 2012. The OpenNebula project is happy to announce the availability of the stable release of OpenNebula 3.2. This release of OpenNebula features important improvements in security, networking and user management. It also fully integrates C12G addons, previously only available for OpenNebulaPro customers. As main new features, OpenNebula 3.2 incorporates an easily-customizable self-service portal for end-users that greatly simplifies VM provisioning in the data center. This new update of OpenNebula also brings the highest levels of flexibility, stability, scalability and…

• Using HybridFox and EC2 Interfaces on VMware-based OpenNebula Clouds

  bagai_bharat

  16 Jan 2012 | 12:26 am

  Work done by Debasis Roy Choudhuri, Bharat Bagai, Joydipto Banerjee, Udaya Keshavadasu, Rajeev D Samuel, Mitesh Chunara & Krishna Singh at the Business Application Modernization (BAM) Department of IBM India. In our previous post, we had shown how to implement Cloud management with OpenNebula in a nested VMware environment. That is mostly a Cloud administration work. In this blog, we will focus more from the end users’ point of view. This exercise was also done at the Business Application Modernization (BAM) department of IBM India. Scope The goal was to setup a self-service portal…

• OpenNebula with Nested ESX VMware

  bagai_bharat

  11 Jan 2012 | 12:52 am

  Work done by Debasis Roy Choudhuri, Bharat Bagai, Joydipto Banerjee, Udaya Keshavadasu, Rajeev D Samuel, Mitesh Chunara & Krishna Singh at the Business Application Modernization (BAM) Department of IBM India. In this blog we try to highlight some of the key elements involved in building a private Cloud environment using OpenNebula. Scope The goal was to setup a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) sandbox environment, where our practitioners can get a hands-on practice on various open Source based tools and technologies. We were successful in creating an On-Demand model where Linux based images…

• 

  Jitscale

• The 2012 Olympics: inspiring businesses to become more competitive

  Kenneth Bradfield

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:05 am

  New year offers a perfect opportunity for us all as individuals, and as businesses, to reflect on the past 12 months as well as the year ahead of us. With the Olympics acting as a showcase for human excellence, this year in particular has the added motivation to drive us all to reach new heights. We can all draw on the dedication, motivation and of course application of each of these athletes to inspire our own companies and to realize the goals we have set for 2012. Like every good athlete, a successful business is a result of a number of factors: having clearly defined goals, setting…

• Sales Representative for the US Market m/f

  Niek Waarbroek

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:39 am

  You will be responsible for the development and performance of all sales activities in the US market. When reaching your targets you will expand, train and lead a local sales team.Besides taking the lead in sales activities you are providing leadership towards the achievement of maximum profitability and growth in line with the company visions and values. Job Title Sales Representative for the US Market Department Sales Division, Orlando Reports to Chief Commerce Officer in The Netherlands Salary +/- $ 100.000,– Responsibilities Generate new business opportunities to fuel the sales…

• The knowledge of 2012

  Marijke Kasius

  11 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  At the end of the year, lists pop up everywhere: ‘Most important news items of 2011’, ‘Greatest hits’, ‘Funniest television moments’ and ‘Sportsman or politician of the year’. In the IT world a lot has been blogged and written about the developments of the previous year and especially about our expectations for the coming year. It seems that people always want to predict and ‘know’ things. We have an urge to increase our knowledge. Not so surprising, for knowledge means power and power creates advantages. Knowledge is more than just information. It is a combination of…

• Making the invisible visible

  Quintijn Knepper

  5 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  When your car is not running, you realize how nice it is when it does work. When you hurt a muscle at sports, you notice just how many activities or movements require that muscle. When your washing machine breaks you find out how crucial it is, and when your shower blocks you know you have a big problem. The strange thing is: when your car is running, your muscles are doing what they’ve been designed for, your washing machine does works and your can take a shower every day you will stop experiencing it as something that is still special, it simply becomes a commodity. These things need…

• Jitscale customer Achmea fills top 3 online survey health insurers

  admin

  9 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  According to the web performance scan carried out by online competitor analysis specialist WUA!in November, Zilveren Kruis is the favourite when it comes to applying for health insurance online. FBTO and Agis moved up to second and third place respectively, making it an all Achmea top 3. Jitscale has been facilitating and managing part of the award winning website of Zilveren Kruis for several years. Jitscale also provides IT support for other Achmea brands. Just like six months before, Zilveren Kruis has the most visited website in the industry. No less than 56% of the respondents visited…

• 

  Rackspace Cloud Computing & Hosting

• Rackspace Startup Program Spotlight on Profitably

  Jeff Lamboy

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:33 am

  Many times we know a small business in need of recommendations and business help. Business owners almost always ask, “Am I the most efficient and profitable company I can be?” Perhaps they are a one or two employee shop and often wonder, “What tools  can I use to help determine these cost-saving opportunities?” As businesses grow and mature, these are often questions we see in the Rackspace Startup Program and we love sharing how one startup can truly help another. If you own a small business and are looking to grow, Profitably may be the startup with just the solution for…

• Metrics: A Time Series Data Platform

  Bob Bardwell

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:02 am

  This is a guest post written and contributed by Fred van den Bosch at LibratoInc., a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Librato is the creator of Metrics, a time series data platform that provides uniform monitoring and alerting for your operation. Would you consider building your own Database Management System? Probably not. While talking with our Silverline customers, the majority of which are SaaS or PaaS providers, we concluded that the same should apply for the management of time-series data. This is what we heard over and over: ● They want to “measure everything” in their operation…

• It’s Game On for CPBN with Rackspace

  Lizetta Staplefoote

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  You’re watching the big game; your favorite player shoots the ball, and…nothing. That’s what happened to University of Connecticut women’s basketball fans last year when Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network’s (CPBN) servers buckled under unexpectedly heavy traffic while broadcasting an intense, live game online. Because alumni and fans depend on the feed to watch games from all over the world, CPBN quickly contacted Rackspace to put technology in place to prevent a repeat of that experience. Rackspace combined Cloud Servers and Cloud Load Balancers with…

• Cloud Avengers Think Small for Data Storage

  Lizetta Staplefoote

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:54 pm

  The increase in user-generated content, regulatory requirements, digital entertainment, social media, and mobile usage demands more storage resources to manage growing volumes of data. The hardware and systems needed to stay ahead of that growth can be confusing and costly. Taking advantage of the elastic nature and utility pricing model of cloud computing helps businesses drive down storage costs and avoid huge investments. Today, Cloud Avengers save a business drowning under a deluge of data by utilizing cloud storage. Click image below for larger version. Next time, Cloud Avengers take on…

• Code to Scale in the Cloud

  Joseph Palumbo

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:33 am

  The coming year will likely see unprecedented growth in cloud computing, especially as people become more comfortable with the interaction of the interfaces and security becomes more stable. One of the things that drive people to the cloud is scalability. The ability to scale up or down at a moment’s notice is one of the cloud’s greatest benefits. Scaling is vital for anyone who expects usage to increase – say a major product launch that will bring thousands of new visitors to a site. Scalability in the cloud allows users to expand or contract when they need to. Vertical Scaling…

• 

  CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community

• The Hybrid Cloud: A Major Focus In 2012

  Rick

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:10 am

  The Hybrid Cloud: A Major Focus In 2012 A while ago I have written an article about the types of cloud computing an organization has the choice to adopt, About Private or Shared Cloud and Everything in Between. For medium sized and small companies and private individuals, the public cloud is the most obvious choice. [...]

• HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 3

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:15 am

  HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 3 Continued from: Part 1 , Part 2 It had been a whirlwind day, folks. I’d like to thank Laura Mackey (@HPsoftware) for hosting us bloggers, and Rebecca Pallister (@HPenterpriseCA) for putting it all together. You two deserve a round of applause all your own. It takes [...]

• Infographic: The Benefits of Virtualizing Applications

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:52 am

  Infographic: The Benefits of Virtualizing Applications Many misconceptions are associated with virtualizing applications—from added expense to negative impact on performance. Application virtualization, however, has been proven to drastically reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase quality of service. Source: EMC Tags: Application virtualization, CloudTweaks, cost of ownership, emc, Infograph, Infographic, performance application

• Cloud Computing: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:56 am

  Cloud Computing: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility The cloud delivery model gives vendors a great amount of power. It is easier to create, deploy, maintain and enhance a service than it has been at any other point in computing history. Just look at Facebook, which grew to 500 million members in a very short [...]

• HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 2

  cloudtweaks

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:48 pm

  HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 2 HP Breakout Session How to accelerate the journey to private or hybrid cloud   With Chris Christianopoulos CloudStrike and CloudSystem Lead, HP Canada “You recognize the power of the cloud. Deploy new applications and services in hours instead of months. Match IT resources to demand with unprecedented efficiency. [...]

• 

  Cloud Computing

• “Build Innovative Voice Apps/Services on KooKoo, Cloud PaaS” - Ozonetel Founder-CEO Mr. Chintalapati

  Basant Narayan Singh

  20 Jan 2012 | 1:58 am

  Mr. Murthy Chintalapati is the Founder and CEO of Hyderabad based Ozonetel Systems - a pioneer of Cloud Telephony technology in India. Murthy Chintalapati, a serial technology entrepreneur is recognized by many Silicon Valley technopreneurs as someone who identifies industry pain points and builds successful business ventures that address the market need. Murthy started his first venture Intoto, in 1997 in SanJose, California. With talk of double-dip recession looming ahead for major global economies, how relevant is the talk of Cloud Computing implementation in India specifically for…

• Cloud Cartoons, Humor - The State of Cloud Computing in 2011

  Basant Narayan Singh

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:54 am

  A picture isworth a thousand words – cartoons worth even more :-) Here’s my first attempt at creating Cloud Computing Cartoons - the year that went by...The common man wasstill searching – may be confused due to information overload.Top Global IT playerswere racing ahead with their Cloud Services. There was an exception too – cloudstrategy went in wrong direction. The competition claimed: The cloud is not a box.Training Institutes jumped to cash in on the cloud buzz – promisingalmost anything to anyone. Cloud Data Privacy and Security issues. Govt. around theworld…

• Cloud Based SaaS Help Desk – Freshdesk Founder and CEO Girish Speaks

  Basant Narayan Singh

  6 Jan 2012 | 11:13 am

  Mr. Girish Mathrubootham is the Founder and CEO of Freshdesk, a Cloud based SaaS Help Desk company based in Chennai, India. Prior to Freshdesk, Girish was Vice-President of Product Management at ZOHO Corporation. Very passionate about customer service, usability and making products that give the biggest bang for the buck, Girish has easily been the Product Manager with the happiest set of customers. With talk of double-dip recession looming ahead for major global economies, how relevant is the talk of Cloud Computing implementation in India specifically for SMBs/SMEs? If you look at the US…

• The State of Cloud Computing – A Message to the Government of India

  Basant Narayan Singh

  3 Nov 2011 | 5:48 am

  Despite a forward looking IT policy, unlike the US (and to some extent the UK and Australia), India is still in a wait-and-see mode when it comes to cloud computing based IT strategies. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) represents the government of India striving to reach the common man through Information Technology (IT). Under NeGP, the State Data Center (SDC) envisions a countrywide infrastructure reaching every state. But when and how will this vision be implemented? Of late, we have heard of a few tactical moves from the government, for instance: Government of India to provide…

• Cloud Deployment Models – Private, Community, Public, Hybrid with Examples

  Basant Narayan Singh

  1 Oct 2011 | 9:52 am

  How are Cloud Computing Solutions deployed? What are the general implications for different deployment options? A couple of months back I wrote about Cloud Service Models – Which one is for you? This post will cover another basic of Cloud Computing, popularly known as Cloud Deployment Models. The content of this post is based on the recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - Special Publication 800-146. The credit for the images used in this article goes to NIST - Special Publication 800-146. Please check references for details. This document is not…

• 

  Journey to the Cloud

• To the Cloud: The Change in Exchange

  Chris Chesley

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:06 am

  Every year technology gets better and faster, existing software gets better, and new software is released.  The only constant is change. A business that does not change is behind the times.  I have been involved with many interesting projects since I have been at GreenPages, and many of them have been related to Exchange in some way.  Most of these are projects involve upgrading Exchange from 2003 or 2007 to 2010.  Recently, I have noticed a new trend regarding Exchange.   Many of our clients are looking to move Exchange to the cloud to get all the benefits and none of the headaches…

• Mobile Devices in a Cloud World

  Ken Smith

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:47 am

  Someone recently said to me, “With everything moving to the cloud, mobile device security really isn’t going to matter anymore. Sensitive data will never be stored on the device.” The thinking is that sensitive corporate data will be centrally stored and not held on mobile devices.  And with the proliferation of 3G and 4G networking, access should be available from almost anywhere. However, this doesn’t mean that we no longer need to worry about security of the endpoint device.   When more and more applications became web-based, did we suddenly no longer have to…

• The Good and the Bad of BYOD

  Geoff Smith

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:01 am

  The concept of “Bring Your Own Computer” to work is gaining momentum in the industry, with more organizations allowing employees to determine what end node device they want to use to perform their duties.  The potential benefits include: Better matching of user requirements and skill to device features/functions Lower cost of employee onboarding – providing a per diem approach rather than executing on a traditional provision – image –deploy –  train regiment Ability to attract more tech-savvy hires by offering more flexibility in device choice and usage Higher end user…

• How a Cloud Infrastructure Can Save or Make You Money

  Trevor Williamson

  11 Jan 2012 | 8:16 am

    Before you left click that mouse to go to that other “work related” page, wait a few seconds while I explain what I’m talking about.  While there is a ton of hyped up, blown out and super hyperventilated information out there about how the cloud makes your life better, reduces your workload and ultimately makes your coffee and butters your toast, not much is said about how the cloud can help your company save or make money. Real money…not that kinda-sorta-maybe-coulda money, but real put-it-in-the-bank money. Before I start my explanation, first let me say that there is no…

• 4 Tips for a Successful Cloud Migration

  Admin

  9 Jan 2012 | 9:32 am

  Guest Post By Rick Blaisdell, CTO ConnectEDU   Perhaps to recap some of the things that I have written about during the year, I would now like to propose a set of best practices for a cloud computing implementation, the ones that I believe are crucial. Here are the 4 most important aspects to determining the success of such an IT project: Security: I will start with this, since it still seems to be the most debated about topic when it comes to cloud computing implementation. Keep in mind that the managed enterprise provider you choose has specialists dedicated to the security of your…

• 

  The Cloud Management Blog

• Legacy CA/Nimsoft Proves Our Point: Zenoss is the Cisco UCS Monitoring Champ!

  Floyd Strimling

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:26 pm

  It simply amazes me how legacy companies like CA/Nimsoft, would rather reinvent themselves via marketing instead of innovative products.  When CA purchased Nimsoft, I wrote, “CA Hits a Homerun and Acquires Nimsoft.”  As a funny aside, that blog post almost stopped me from obtaining my current position with Zenoss. However, over time the reality is CA has simply put Nimsoft in a box while they continue to collect lucrative maintenance revenue from their customers.  We have seen Gary Reed exit to another monitoring company, Boundary.com, Nimsoft “acquired” a small/minor hosted ITSM…

• Zenny’s Cloud Links #43 – DevOps, Agile, SOPA, PaaS

  Travis Balinas

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:56 am

  Every Friday we like to highlight some of our favorite posts on Cloud Computing, service orientated infrastructure, DevOps, Big Data, and anything else that grabbed our attention over the week. Here are some great articles from the week of January 23rd that are worth taking a look at. Enjoy and have a fantastic weekend! Cloud Computing Both More Agile and Less Expensive by Bernard Golden Are cloud services attractive because they are less expensive than traditional offerings or are IT professionals drawn by greater agility? Bernard Golden writes that it’s not an either-or debate. Much…

• Configuration Management Experiences with ZenPacks

  Chet Luther

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:52 am

  Originally Posted on the Zenoss Google+ Page. Please Circle Us to Join the Discussion. In my last blog I talked about building out an OpenStack cluster and briefly mentioned that one way we’re using it is a continuous integration system to build and test ZenPacks. In this post I’ll elaborate on some of what went into building this system. There are a lot of choices in server deployment and configuration tools, and I didn’t set out to test them all, but I did learn quite a bit in the process. For the unfamiliar, ZenPacks are basically plugins for Zenoss. They are most commonly used to…

• The Platen Report, Episode 2: Why Cloud Can’t Work without Proper Instrumentation

  Travis Balinas

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:46 pm

  This week in the Platen Report, Floyd discusses why the cloud can’t work without proper instrumentation. There’s a lot of about the cloud these days, but the two topics that are stealing the spotlight right now are provisioning and instrumentation. Join Floyd as he dives into why legacy companies are no longer relevant in this day and age. Want to continue the conversation? Got idea for our next Podcast? Circle us on Google+, Follow us on Twitter, or hit us up on the Zenoss blog. We’re listening! The Platen Report is a weekly Podcast by Zenoss hosted by Floyd Strimling. Each…

• How WordPress Mirrors DevOps

  Robyn Weisman

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  When WordPress was first released back in 2003, it was considered blogging software, something you ditch Blogger for so that you can design your own header graphic or self-host a blog on your own domain name without having to be a code whiz. At least that’s why I first started using it back in 2004. But code whizzes and others apparently liked its solid, flexible underpinnings because pretty soon news agencies like The New York Times and CNN started hosting their blogs on WordPress (full list here). Meanwhile, companies like Spotify and celebrities like Kobe…

• 

  Qcadoo tech blog

• 3 open source conferences in one month

  Adam Walczak

  3 Jan 2012 | 6:49 am

  As always we ware near you as we attended three open source conferences at the end of the year 2011: Open Radar, P.I.W.O and the second conference of the  FWiOO foundations spinacz.edu.pl project. First at the beginning of the month we ware in Szczecin on the Open Radar conference organised by ITC Promorze Zachodznie and Szluug.org. I (Adam Walczak) gave two lectures there: one about my book on organisational structures and business models found in open source projects and the second one about the qcadoo project. Both ware in english and are available on our youtube channel.

• Our seminar from Linux Autumn 2011

  Adam Walczak

  20 Oct 2011 | 7:54 am

  Seminars from Linux Autumn 2001 hit the net last week. We participated in this event along with other members of the polish open source community. The prime start of the conference was Wietse Venema the author of Postfix. We talked with people from the Allegro Group and Samsung on how they use and develop open software. There ware also many individuals active in the polish community like: Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak – OpenStreatMap  activist Kamil Porembiński – OSWorld.pl owner Robert Partyk – Creative Commons book publisher Qcadoo Limited sponsored 40 copies of my book on…

• Notes from the first Polish free and open software foundation conference

  Adam Walczak

  10 Oct 2011 | 8:36 am

  Two weeks ago (27.09.2011) you could find us on the first conference organized by the Polish free and open software conference foundation FWiOO. The topic of this conference was: The role of innovative open source projects in the Polish economy There are many photos and videos from it which you might find quite interesting. Two of the most interesting lectures ware given by our Polish Vice Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak and the CEO of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Karsten Gerloff Of course people from qcadoo could not miss such an event as we are one of the biggest open source business…

• Dozens of new plans on Blueprints wiki

  Adam Walczak

  5 Oct 2011 | 6:18 am

  If you didn’t follow our Blueprints wiki or twitter you might have not notices that it’s boiling with new ideas ! In this post will give you a short summary of the most important analysis and design efforts that are taking place there. We are always happy to hear your feedback so please feel free to comment and even edit those blueprints. Production scheduling on the level of operations, workstations and workers This is probably the most important new module we have scheduled in our roadmap. For now you can plan production orders in the Gantt chart and calculate how long will they…

• 3 interns hired in our open source project

  Adam Walczak

  14 Sep 2011 | 6:57 am

  As you may have noticed we have been running a long term student internship program to teach upcoming engineers how to create modules for qcadoo MES. We also wanted to show them the qcadoo Framework which they can use for their next killer apps. During this time many interesting young people worked with our battle-hardened old-school team Three of them (that seemed most talented to us) just got hired lately in Qcadoo Limited. Alina Brauer joined us about 3 month ago. First she helped us in with some research in another project and then started to develop new modules with the core team. At the…

• 

  Virtualization.net

• Supermicro Servers Offer Industry-First N+N+N Redundant UPS Module Technology

  Super Micro Computer,

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:21 am

  Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, today unveiled its new, innovative, patent pending redundant...

• Cisco Tops 10,000 Unified Computing System Customers

  Cisco

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:14 am

  Cisco announced that in just over two years its new Cisco Unified Computing System(TM), (Cisco UCS(TM)) which integrates compute, networking, management and virtualization, has captured the attention...

• Personal Cloud Desktop on Amazon Kindle Fire with AlwaysOnPC App Launch

  Xform Computing

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:54 am

  Xform Computing, Inc. announces its AlwaysOnPC mobile app for Android is available in the Amazon Apps Store, with editions for Kindle Fire and other Android Tablets. Xform Computing's AlwaysOnPC App...

• DataCore Storage Hypervisor Integrates with Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer

  DataCore

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:49 am

  DataCore Software, the industry’s premier provider of storage virtualization software today announced Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer from Hitachi Data Systems, now provides detailed monitoring of...

• Xyleme Announces Cloud Solution for Learning Content Delivery

  Xyleme

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:35 am

  Learning Technologies 2012: Xyleme, Inc. announced the release and immediate availability of their latest technological breakthrough, Bravais™. Bravais [pronounced brav-ey] is a cloud solution that...

• 

  CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community

• The Hybrid Cloud: A Major Focus In 2012

  Rick

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:10 am

  The Hybrid Cloud: A Major Focus In 2012 A while ago I have written an article about the types of cloud computing an organization has the choice to adopt, About Private or Shared Cloud and Everything in Between. For medium sized and small companies and private individuals, the public cloud is the most obvious choice. [...]

• HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 3

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:15 am

  HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 3 Continued from: Part 1 , Part 2 It had been a whirlwind day, folks. I’d like to thank Laura Mackey (@HPsoftware) for hosting us bloggers, and Rebecca Pallister (@HPenterpriseCA) for putting it all together. You two deserve a round of applause all your own. It takes [...]

• Infographic: The Benefits of Virtualizing Applications

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:52 am

  Infographic: The Benefits of Virtualizing Applications Many misconceptions are associated with virtualizing applications—from added expense to negative impact on performance. Application virtualization, however, has been proven to drastically reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase quality of service. Source: EMC Tags: Application virtualization, CloudTweaks, cost of ownership, emc, Infograph, Infographic, performance application

• Cloud Computing: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

  cloudtweaks

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:56 am

  Cloud Computing: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility The cloud delivery model gives vendors a great amount of power. It is easier to create, deploy, maintain and enhance a service than it has been at any other point in computing history. Just look at Facebook, which grew to 500 million members in a very short [...]

• HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 2

  cloudtweaks

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:48 pm

  HP ‘Master The Cloud’ Event (Montreal) – Part 2 HP Breakout Session How to accelerate the journey to private or hybrid cloud   With Chris Christianopoulos CloudStrike and CloudSystem Lead, HP Canada “You recognize the power of the cloud. Deploy new applications and services in hours instead of months. Match IT resources to demand with unprecedented efficiency. [...]

• 

  Data Centers Blog by ESDS

• Cloudnomics

  Pravin Ganore

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:08 am

  Often we discuss technology trends and the changes they cause. We debated the technological complexities involved and estimated its rate of market adoption. But most of the technical articles forget one key factor: the driving force behind the adoption of any technological change is the economic factor. When looking at the future of IT, we can learn something from the past and how organizations and society invested in these technologies. In the past, a few mainframe companies had access to computers (the computers were too expensive) and the expectation was that IT would enable them to…

• Internet And Cloud Security

  Pravin Ganore

  16 Jan 2012 | 6:53 am

  While in recent months, access to applications is offered in pay per use model,  being hosted on shared data centers (which is known as cloud computing), (arguments) continue flying over the issue of security as a recurring objection to the general expansion of the use of the cloud. Without wishing to deny the existence of risks, try to propose the following hypothesis: will have to set optimal levels of security that do not impede or complicate access and use of software applications and services. There is a maximum security level, which is credited with 100% confidence that there will be…

• IaaS: Self-Service Infrastructure

  Pravin Ganore

  13 Jan 2012 | 4:07 am

  To maintain the technology infrastructure at home is a decision being reconsidered by the companies, particularly small and medium-sized. Apparently, the computing power is no longer attached to a box, and has jumped into the clouds. The investment in solutions for the data center is high and pay per use is very attractive. This is an important lever in the model of public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This year, growth will be even greater. The average expansion year after year is 64%, which has hooked more users so far. In addition, 41% believe that infrastructure as a service…

• Questions That Must Be Answered Before Using Cloud

  Pravin Ganore

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:58 am

    The cloud computing is based on a delivery model technology in which the infrastructure is not the client, but on remote servers that offer large capacity processing and data storage resources that may be shared (in the case of smaller customers) or be of use only if the contractor needs. In theory, this ‘cloud‘ eliminates the need for companies to have to worry about the acquisition and maintenance of application specific hardware, or group of applications. Resources are acquired (hire as a service) as the need arises and paid as per use of resources. This business model…

• 2012: Cloud is a Reality

  Pravin Ganore

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:43 am

  The topic cloud computing, still demands a lot of debate and conflicting opinions, it is already becoming reality. Every day we see the ecosystem built around cloud computing and to consolidate, more and more success stories are published. I will not quote statistics and forecasts that always come from industry analysts, who provide these stats and estimates agree with each other in numbers. The three layers of cloud, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS can be viewed as a hierarchy, where the lower layer has IaaS, above it we have the top SaaS and PaaS. The upper layers are built upon the layers below. The…

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  Online Backup Deals

• Backblaze Offering USB Flash Drive Restores

  John Tucker

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:09 pm

  Backblaze is one of only a few companies that offer restores via an external medium like an external hard drive. They used to offer a DVD restore option for $99 but have just removed the DVD option and in its place are not offering a restore by a 28GB USB flash drive. The best part is you can get the new flash drive restore up to 28GB for the same price that the DVD restore was. The new USB flash drive restore holds the same as 7 DVD restores would have held and once you are done restoring your data you get to keep the USB flash drive. While it might cost more than downloading your data it…

• Mozy Stash vs. Dropbox

  John Tucker

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:03 pm

  I am still working on a new Mozy Stash review, but thought one of the questions everyone is going to wonder is how Mozy Stash compares to Dropbox. Operating System Support One of the great things about Dropbox is the ability to install it on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. It makes moving from computer to computer no matter what operating system they are running so. Stash currently only runs on Windows and Mac computers so there is the ability to move from Windows to Mac computers and have your files sync across those different computers. This is not a huge deal for many folks since they…

• Mozy Launches Stash

  John Tucker

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Mozy has opened up Stash into a public beta, so if you are a Mozy user you can now sign up for Stash and start syncing files between devices. You don’t even have to have the Mozy backup software installed on all the devices you want to sync files to. You can also access the your Stash files from your iPhone / iPad and Android powered devices making it handy to access your data from anywhere. Not only that but the Mozy app will automatically upload photos and videos from your smartphone or tablet to your Stash and sync it across all your linked computers. Storage space for your Stash is…

• Carbonite Home Earns Coveted “Parent Tested Parent Approved” (PTPA) Seal of Approval

  John Tucker

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:15 am

  As a parent you look for advice on many different products and services from other parents. Carbonite recently won the Parent Tested Parent Approved seal of approval for their Carbonite Home service. The complete news release is included below for your information. Want to know more about Carbonite online backup? Read our complete Carbonite Review for more information. Start Backing up with Carbonite Click here to sign up! Latest Posts / Deals about Carbonite Carbonite Home Earns Coveted "Parent Tested Parent Approved" (PTPA) Seal of Approval Carbonite Offers Tips to Keep Holiday Memories…

• CrashPlan Apps Updated to Support Highest Security Settings

  John Tucker

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:29 am

  CrashPlan users who choose to use private passwords or their own private encryption keys are going to be happy to hear that they now can access their CrashPlan backup files using the mobile apps. Prevously it was not possible for these users to access their backed up files with the mobile app unless they switched to the standard encryption keys. It is good to hear that CrashPlan now supports this extra layer of security in their mobile apps for those users that choose that extra layer of security with their backup. The complete news release is included below for your information. Want to know…

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  ylastic blog

• AWS Route53 Spending Analytics

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:35 pm

  You have all your domains nicely imported into Route53 using Ylastic. You have scheduled backups of your zones to the S3 bucket of your choice for DR using Ylastic. You do have those zones backed up, right? You can view an audit trail of all the changes/additions/updates being made to your zones in Ylastic. And now you can view the spending break-down for all of those zones in Ylastic Plus. View the spending for the current month, previous month, curent year or the last year.   Easily view the cost associated with each of the zones you are hosting in Route53. The chart also displays the…

• Migrating Amazon Linux AMI between EC2 regions

  21 Dec 2011 | 12:36 pm

  You can now migrate Amazon Linux based AMIs between regions of your choice in Ylastic. Select your AMI, the region you want to migrate to, and that's it. Get an email when the migration is completed. Launch an instance at your leisure from the new AMI and off you go. Enjoy and happy holidays!! Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• EC2 Auto Scaling Management

  26 Oct 2011 | 8:15 am

  Refreshed our auto scaling support to include all of the recent features released by AWS. Here is a quick run through of the various things that you can do with auto scaling on EC2.   Create auto scaling groups with a new easy to use wizard that also lets you set up policies and their associated alarms for scaling up/down your EC2 fleet.   View and manage all of your resources  associated with the scaling groups.    Suspend scaling processes to investigate any configuration issues with your app and resume scaling processes when you are done.   Create and…

• Amazon EBS Snapshots in the EU-West Region

  9 Aug 2011 | 7:32 am

  AWS has discovered a bug in their software that cleans up EBS snapshots in the EU West region. They are contacting customers that have snapshots affected by this bug. Here is the email that some of our customers are receiving:   Hello,We've discovered an error in the Amazon EBS software that cleans up unused snapshots.  This has affected at least one of your snapshots in the EU-West Region.During a recent run of this EBS software in the EU-West Region, one or more blocks in a number of EBS snapshots were incorrectly deleted. The root cause was a software error that caused the…

• Migrating EBS instances to an AMI in a different region

  11 Jul 2011 | 11:33 am

  You have an EBS instance running in US east region. But you want to migrate this instance to an AMI in EU, for disaster recovery, testing, whatever. And you say want to do this simply and without major contortions, preferably via a GUI. We hear you :-) Ylastic now has the ability to migrate an EBS linux instance to an AMI in a region of your choice. Pick a few options, and click a button. And receive an email when the migration is complete :-) Enjoy :-) Permalink | Leave a comment  »

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  Key Computers

• Haulage efficiency can be helped with service management tools

  Jonathan

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:56 am

  Haulage efficiency can be helped with service management toolsEfficient mobile workforce management could help fleets meet EU CO2 emissions targets, according to a recent report from Goodyear Dunlop, called 'The Road to 2012.' The tyre making company stated that 15 per cent of haulage firms are concerned they could be out to work within just eight years due to increased environmental regulations. The report, which was based on interviews with 400 haulage firms of various sizes, is intended to, “help fleets better understand, and therefore better prepare for, the needs of the…

• Survey finds server virtualisation is now commonplace

  Jonathan

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:27 am

  Survey finds server virtualisation is now commonplaceServer virtualisation is becoming increasingly commonplace, according to a new survey carried out by the Corporate IT Forum. The research found that the technology was being deployed by 60 per cent of the forum’s members, largely in order to cut costs and consolidate the space needed for the servers in data centres. Dani Briscoe, the Corporate IT Forum’s research services manager, said, “Virtualisation is established. It is a known thing. People are happy with it. The distinction between private cloud and virtualisation is…

• CIOs clearly see cloud computing benefits

  Andrew Isherwood

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:18 am

  CIOs clearly see cloud computing benefitsA recent study by BT Engage found that the vast majority of CIOs see cloud computing and technology such as virtual desktops, as having had major benefits to the business world. The study, carried out by independent researchers at Vanson Bourn, established that 70 per cent of the CIOs questioned agreed that “cloud computing and virtualization technology had the biggest positive impact on businesses in 2011." The percentage rose to 76 per cent among CIOs of smaller firms, according to the study, which suggests it’s not just major…

• Oil and gas engineering jobs to emerge in 2012

  Jonathan

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:28 am

  Oil and gas engineering jobs to emerge in 2012The re-emergence of projects that were put on hold during the recession could give way to more engineering jobs in the oil and gas sector, according to recruitment specialists NES Global Talent. “During the recession, lots of projects didn’t make it past the financial investment decision stage, but many were sanctioned in 2011 and as a result of this we can expect an increase in demand for construction and commissioning roles,” explained Simon Coton, NES’s Managing Director. However the industry may find a shortage in…

• Poor customer service still affecting homeowners

  Jonathan

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:03 am

  Poor customer service still affecting homeownersSome 67 per cent of homeowners claim that the customer service they receive from consumer-facing firms has either stayed the same or got worse over the last three years. The survey, which was carried out by YouGov, found that only 22 per cent said customer service had improved somewhat over the period, while only 3 per cent said they had noticed a significant improvement. The survey questioned some 1,400 people about their attitudes to the service they have received in their homes. The outlook looked rather bleak for those firms relying on their…

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  Cloud Services Analytics

• What’s your biggest concern with moving your applications to the cloud?

  Nataly

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:04 am

  During surfing the Internet I found one interesting pool which I want to share with you. This poll was conducted on Linked In. It asked, “What’s your biggest concern with moving your applications to the cloud?” Not very scientific granted, but with over 8400 responses, the results are pretty interesting: It is obvious that more than half of respondents has listed security as the biggest issue. Again this is a rather random survey, but it ended December 15, 2011, so is rather current. Even adding performance and reliability together, they don’t approach security. Click here –…

• The price comparison of Online Backup Services

  Nataly

  13 Jan 2012 | 8:43 am

  The following table compares the cost, available storage and other features of the some previously mentioned in my blog online backup services. Cost per month Storage Space Web Access to Backup Mozy Home $ 5.99 50 Gb YES Carbonite $ 59 per year Unlimited YES SugarSync $ 4.99 30 Gb YES iDrive $ 4.95 150 Gb YES Dropbox $ 9.99 50 Gb YES ZumoDrive $ 2.99 10 Gb YES Box.net $ 15 1000 Gb YES I have shown the minimum prices for plans, which includes online backup services. Of course, if you need more storage you could choose other plans that are more costly.

• Best online Backup services with free storage

  Nataly

  4 Jan 2012 | 7:42 am

  No one disputes it is easy to create a backup of your computer. But the physical media where you are storing the backups, like the DVDs or USB flash drives, may not be very reliable in the long term. The other disadvantage is that local backups don’t always happen in real-time. It is therefore many people switch to an online backup service – these are inexpensive and will automatically copy your computer’s data over the Internet to secure data center in real-time without human involvement. If you need only 2 GB on your computer that you want to store in the cloud, any of the following…

• Cloud Backup Service – Advantages and Disadvantages

  Nataly

  27 Dec 2011 | 3:09 am

  Backup is one of the oldest needs in computer life and one of the most important feature in cloud services not only for me, but for those people who has ever lost their data. Whether it was hard disk failure, computer theft, or just a wrong move, which removed important information. Advantages of Cloud Backup Service • Secured and safe way of backing up data on a remote data storage • Access to your data from anywhere • In the most of the plans backup is cheap • Inbuilt disaster recovery facility • Data backup can be automated • No need to worry about maintenance of hardware and…

• Backup

  Nataly

  22 Dec 2011 | 6:03 am

  The process of data backing up – is making copies of data, which may be used to restore the original copy after the event of loosing data. This process has now become a noun backup. The main purpose of backup is to recover data after its loss (whatever it was – disaster, corruption or deletion). In 21 century there are many different types of data storage devices and technologies. People still successfully use such devices as hard disks, CDs, DVDs and USB flash drives, but this method is not perfect and doesn’t protect your data completely. Therefore remote backup services now becoming…