Meanwhile, China continues to transform itself. In recent years, the country has gained enough self-confidence to bring in (and pay for) world-class assistance, whether hiring famed Chicago architect Adrian Smith (of Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill at the time) to design its showcase Jin ...Sep. 7, 2010 09:07 AM EDT Reads: 445
So Cloud Computing it is. And now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their enteprise, with a Cloud-Computing strategy that will enable them to maintain competitive advantage through seamless end-to-end interoperability while keeping their most important assets...
There’s a wonderful song named “Clay Pigeons,” written by the late Blaze Foley. In it, he expresses the need to “get along with it all…get back in the game, and start playing again.”
It’s been a few months since I’ve written about Cloud Computing, and I guess I can take some inspira...
Predicting the future is a lot more fun than analyzing the past. And there have been plenty of predictions recently, but as Mel Brooks might say “A funny thing happened on the way to the future; it changed from what we expected.” 
IT must innovate - it's the new clarion call in this looming recession.
Given the cost pressures required just to keep the lights on, how would IT be able to convince business to let IT innovate beyond a datacenter clean-up focus?
The answer lies in the basic principle for any IT...
The past few weeks we have been discussing some of the mistakes made in early cloud deployments. This week we are discussing a key mistake that occurs fairly often; one that only manifests long after the solution is operational…blindly assuming that Cloud equals costs savings. Blasphem...
These days when cloud security is mentioned, most of us now have come to expect that the topic of data center virtualization, one near and dear to Altor’s heart, is not far behind. Especially since it is – after all near de-facto architecture – for most private clouds and some public ...
It seems like every week another sizing of the cloud market is published, and – maybe as to be expected - none of them seem to agree. Let’s have a look at who is saying what, and whether we are comparing apples to apples, or apples and oranges.
Cloud Computing is growing in popularity within enterprises. Software licensing is a challenge under normal circumstances – but what happens when you move a part or all of your databases and applications to the cloud? Many software vendors’ product licensing rules do not neatly fit wit...
Gee, and it seems like it was just the other day that Salesforce.com was calling Microsoft names like “patent troll” and “alley thug” after Microsoft, in a rare move, sued Salesforce in May for infringing nine of its patents.
Despite hiring Microsoft nemesis David Boies, the lawyer...
In the battle for marketing superiority virtual private servers and cloud servers are matched against each other in a battle to the death. But in reality this battle is only perceived because of the lack of definition in the marketplace. VPS and Cloud Servers may just as well be one i...
Few would disagree that the Cloud computing frenzy of the last year has put more, not less, pressure on the IT organization. Much of this focus has been on the Public vs. Private Cloud debate, but what we are really witnessing here is the dawn of a new era in IT management.
For th...
Microsoft has announced and released a new version of its Windows Azure platform which will operate as an appliance. This platform, which is supported by a strong partner community (including Dell, Fujitsu and HP), provides enhanced means for enterprises to run cloud services, either ...
It’s real easy for pundits to step up and present a vision for Cloud Computing as a configurable resource that’s capable of meeting all needs, but I really believe that is a misnomer. In fact, more than ever I believe that we need to specialize Clouds to support a specific purpose. F...
In 1943 former IBM president Thomas J. Watson allegedly said: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers". Will cloud computing prove Watson to be right after all?
Interesting post by Ellen Rubin of CloudSwitch asking if Amazon is the Official Cloud Standard? Her post was inspired by a claim that Amazon’s API should be the basis for an industry standard. Something I've long been against for the simple reason that choice / innovation is good for b...
In my mind, the cloud computing ‘sell’ is pretty straight forward. Fundamentally, cloud computing is a proposition of improving the time to value ratio for end users. Cloud solutions enable users address their needs faster (and in some cases cheaper) than traditional approaches to the ...
In spite of the security and reliability concerns, some organizations are adopting cloud technologies? The reasons are many. The organizations types are different.
Here are 5 examples where organizations have leveraged cloud technologies. What is interesting is that each of the exa...
What enterprises WANT, and their first choice when thinking about the benefits of cloud, is PaaS and SaaS. Just like what you WANT to be warm in front of the TV is a crackling fire and a thick down blanket. Since nobody has the time to make and tend a fire and a blanket requires you to...
Depending on the user or entity, there are likely to be any number of reasons for them to choose a particular PaaS platform. They will make their choices based on things like programming language support, quality of service offerings, and pricing to name but a few. While all of those h...
Is imitation the best form of flattery, even in business? This question sprang to mind last week when VMware's private-cloud initative, known as "Project Redwood" internally, accidentally made it into the limelight when by mistake details of vCloud Service Director, which is what VMwar...
Platform as a Service (PaaS) requires a robust tool-set that has to go through a stringent selection process before someone picks it as their platform to build strong solutions on. The folks selecting it usually know the risks associated with picking a wrong platform. That is why I pi...
F5 recently announced a holistic approach to enable a common cloud architectural model - regardless of where IT resources actually reside. Unifying Application Delivery, Access Control and Optimization to the cloud along with ongoing collaboration with technology partners like Microsof...
It's been fairly quiet on the blog front lately mostly because of my ridiculous travel schedule as well as an endless series of meetings both with new customers & partners. A recurring question I've been asked lately has revolved around one of the more difficult questions to answer...
There are data quality objectives for everyone. Google indicates that the term "data quality" is used in 135,000 global searches every month. It's not Taylor Swift with 55 million or Microsoft with 101 million. But it represents a fairly decent amount of interest for a rather mundane t...
Cloud certifications are good when they come from companies but there should be an independent body to do it. Recently a number of companies have been talking about cloud certifications. The topics cover security, resilience and HIPAA among other certifications. The federal leadership...
The major management objectives for this critical area of applications implementation include improving service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption, increasing Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) efficiency, improving cost management, and reducing ineffective spending. The fundamen...
Cloud Expo General Session Speaker Marty Gauvin believes that 3G-SaaS – the combined effect of Cloud Computing and outsourcing with application management – will drive the use of IT for a significant period of time. By leveraging existing Cloud service providers, the pay-as-you-go mode...
A recent commentary confirms how far ahead Cloud management innovator Abiquo is of the rest of the pack. Announcing how the Enterprise Edition of Eucalyptus was this week joining forces with GroundWork, a news and analysis site acknowledged that the Eucalyptus/GroundWork alliance was a...
“In planning for and running all of its operations and facilities, Microsoft takes into account its environmental impact, including energy use and carbon footprint as well as land and water usage. We, like every organization and citizen, rely on the available resources and infrastructu...
Then there were the numbers in this report, which themselves came from a study called Smart 2020. The study's were The Climate Group and The Global eSustainability Initiative, both Europe-based organizations. The problem with reports like this is they have an agenda going in. It doesn'...
Abiquo, a four-year-old Spanish open source cloud start-up bent on becoming a global player, should break out of stealth mode today bragging that it can end virtualization vendor lock-in and make public and private clouds interoperate.
It says it means to change the way IT organizat...
Security is always mentioned as a key factor limiting cloud adoption, but what does “security” really mean in the cloud? To understand the potential risks of cloud computing—and how to address them—we need to be more specific. Once we’ve accurately defined...
Data is growing exponentially everywhere - in business, web, finance, government, science, and in the world of sensors and smart grids.
Speaking earlier this week at OSBC, Tim O'Reilly said "The future will be all about who has most data, and who is able to extract meaning from it ...
But, as much as I like developing nations and the potential of cloud for them, the Big Kahuna is still found in the Big Apple, with Cloud Expo, opening April 19 at the Javits Center in New York. This is not an event with a single track, or a few tracks. There are, in fact, eight of the...
“We need to understand the processing consumption, in terms of the application, that these machines are offering,” Louth said. When companies are developing applications, they need to know what these applications’ IT consumption costs are going to be.
“What are the activities and wh...
OK; I’m not skipping or anything, but I am happy. CA Inc., obviously on the path to acquire more and more cloud technology providers in order to build up its own capabilities for cloud computing, is joining the ever-louder chorus of those in our industry recognizing that enterprises wa...
Cloud Computing is marching through the hype cycle at double speed. The mainstream media has ahold of it before it's been thoroughly geeked through. So far, I haven't seen a crime attributed to Cloud Computing (in the way crimes are attributed to the Internet and Craig's List), but the...
