For anyone who has an internet connection, paying attention to your network security should be one of the most important things you can do. With a well maintained and managed network, you won’t need to worry about viruses or compromising sensitive data and access. Here are some simple steps you can take to make sure that you are protected: 1. Install and use a credible Anti-spyware, Anti-virus software package Spyware can present a major problem, […]
Brian
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded $4.9M to Galois, Inc., as research integrator for the PROCEED program (Programming Computation on Encrypted Data) whose goal is to make it feasible to execute programs on encrypted data without having to decrypt the data first. “If we are successful with PROCEED, it fundamentally changes the calculus for computations in untrusted environments… on computer systems of unknown provenance. The potential implications for the cybersecurity of cloud […]
According to reports issued over the weekend, the US federal government has chosen 100 data centers to close over the course of this year, part of a larger overall government plan to reduce IT spending, in large part through outsourcing operations to hosting service providers. The government’s plan involves moving resources to “cloud computing” environments, which in a lot of old school IT organizations (and as US organization go, the federal government is pretty old-school) […]
As the cloud paradigm matures it is becoming increasingly well understood that companies and organisations of all sizes – from the smallest SME to the largest enterprise or public agency – can realise highly compelling economic benefits by adopting cloud computing solutions. In fact few could now credibly argue that emergence of the cloud model is not profoundly and fundamentally changing the economics of IT. At a macroeconomic level the Centre for Economics and Business […]
As with any new exciting technology, companies commonly look towards creating a “strategy” around the movement in order to ensure their investments achieve the greatest ROI. In the 1990s, it was all about how companies needed a “Linux” strategy; the last decade has been dominated with companies needing a “virtualization” strategy; and the trend I’m seeing today is everyone talking about needing a “cloud computing” strategy. While this new saying is good news for large […]
In a troubled economy, cloud computing seems like a great cost saving alternative and it is. Whether in good times or bad, any pragmatic cost saving measure is a ‘good’ measure. Google, Microsoft, IBM and all other known and unknown cloud providers offer today’s CIO an array of major cost saving alternatives to the traditional data center and IT department. The temptation to put things on/in the cloud and sit back can be extremely compelling. […]
The big spenders on technology are businesses and government agencies. They buy about 75 percent of the computing goods and services sold worldwide. Yet it is increasingly evident they are not driving the new ideas, excitement and powerhouse technology companies in ascent these days. “The cutting edge of innovation is on the consumer side — digital technologies for consumption activity, play, entertainment and social-networked communication — and not in corporations anymore,” observed Timothy F. Bresnahan, […]
US ambassador to the EU calls for solidarity. The EU and the US must work together to offer a credible response to the emergence of cloud computing, the US ambassador to the EU told a conference this week. William Kennard, a former head of the Federal Communications Commission, said that there was a “new sense of urgency” to debates about privacy, intellectual property rights (IPR) and data protection, because of the increasingly rapid move towards […]
Software as a service (SaaS) is the oldest and most mature of all the cloud computing options and its adoption is continuing apace – in some areas of the business at least. According to analyst firm Gartner, the global SaaS sector grew by 14.1 per cent last year to $8.5bn. This higher than average growth rate in an otherwise difficult market meant penetration levels rose to a total of 10 per cent across all enterprise […]
An electronic, cloud-based approach to sharing radiology files with other medical institutions is expediting the care of UC San Diego Health System trauma patients. The method is currently being used to speed the diagnosis and treatment of patients sent to UC San Diego Medical Center-Hillcrest from remote area hospitals. “The efficiency and reliability of cloud computing is excellent,” said Dr. Jeanne Lee, trauma surgeon at UC San Diego Health System. “It is an advance in […]
As companies glom onto cloud computing, stateless computing is likely to emerge as a core tenant within the cloud and one that can deliver cost savings, predicted the chief technology architect for Merrill Lynch. LinuxWorld But to get to the state of stateless computing, companies will need to change the way they view their hardware needs and how they store and access the information, said Jeffrey Birnbaum of Merrill Lynch, who served as a keynote […]
The expansion of cloud computing has led to significant growth in the virtualisation market, according to a report by IDC. In the latest Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualisation Tracker, IDC discovered that 19.4 per cent of all new servers shipped in the last quarter of 2010 were virtualised, up from 18.4 per cent for the same quarter a year ago. Some 398,617 virtualised servers were shipped in the final three months of 2010, with much of […]
If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Helps a Business Grow”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. I am not […]
The telephone switchboard and landline desk phone may not be dead, but they are becoming relics of the past along with office ashtrays and typewriters. Businesses are increasingly turning away from PBX (private branch exchange) phone systems and toward VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, which enables conversations to travel as data across the Internet. By 2013 more than 80 percent of businesses will use VoIP, according to research by In-Stat. Is VoIP Right for […]
Small businesses looking to ditch old PBX landline phones can save big and increase staff productivity by migrating to Internet-based phone systems. The telephone switchboard and landline desk phone may not be dead, but they are becoming relics of the past along with office ashtrays and typewriters. Businesses are increasingly turning away from PBX (private branch exchange) phone systems and toward VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, which enables conversations to travel as data across […]
At the most fundamental level, virtualization is the separation of the physical from the logical, so desktop virtualization is the separation of the physical client device from the management of the OS. When most people hear the term desktop virtualization, they immediately think “VDI!” Note that virtual desktop infrastructure is just one type of desktop virtualization. In fact, the technology can be any of the following: VDI. Despite the term’s literal meaning, IT today uses […]
There’s a reason few companies generate their own electricity. It makes a lot more sense to let a utility build the infrastructure and then share it across many customers. By using a common facility, we all benefit from greater reliability and flexibility at lower cost. The same reasoning applies to cloud computing. But can the suppliers deliver on the model? Here’s the current state of cloud supply: • The technology is pretty mature. Virtualisation has […]
Say what you will about about the constant appearance of cloud computing as the buzz phrase of the moment in tech circles. For all its vaunted simplification of corporate computing environments that lead to billions in cost savings, here’s a metric that trumps them all: Saving five lives. I learned today about a complicated five-way kidney transplant operation that took place on Friday at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center involving five surgeons, four anesthesiologists, […]
In organizations’ mad rush to virtualize their IT infrastructure, some are running into unforeseen obstacles that cause them to put the brakes on virtualization deployments, sometimes indefinitely. This phenomenon, known as “virtualization stall,” has more to do with psychology than technology, but it could potentially erode confidence in virtualization and slow growth of cloud computing. According to solution providers, virtualization stall has several root causes: Some companies are unwilling or afraid to virtualize their tier […]
Ultimately, companies are unlikely to fund a desktop virtualisation project until the numbers look good. How can you build a good return on investment case for virtualising your desktop infrastructure? One of the problems with building an economic case for desktop virtualisation is the initial capital expenditure involved, explains Rajendra Deshpande, chief technology officer at Intelenet, a business process outsourcing provider. “Typically, the initial investment will be higher, which means that the justification for that […]
At this point in the evolution of cloud computing, the public cloud is probably not IT’s first choice when it comes to core enterprise workloads. But there’s still a place for public cloud services, and it’s up to IT to determine what that is. Standing pat or ignoring the cloud isn’t going to cut it, especially when application developers and groups running specific business apps are moving to the cloud, with or without IT knowledge […]
Cloud computing can offer small and midsize companies wonderful potential benefits — in cost savings, time efficiency and simplifying business processes. However, solution providers must be able to distill the hype from the benefits of cloud computing to provide a solid foundation for any solution. Following are eight typical customer concerns you’ll need to address when selling a cloud solution. 1. Will I save money by going to the cloud? SMB customers are acutely aware […]
The military’s interest in virtualization tools for health care personnel originated well before the Defense Department began to lay the foundation for the Chicago and Washington Capitol super hospitals. An early example was at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va. In 2006, Acelera, a firm specializing in virtualization tools, was contracted by the hospital to solve problems that in-house doctors and shipboard clinicians had when trying to access AHLTA, DOD’s electronic health records system. […]
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are beginning to use hosted Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions as an inexpensive substitute to in-house applications, a technical services provider believes. This is because hosted VoIP solutions remove hardware and in-house maintenance costs, a representative from PlanetMagpie has said. As a result, businesses are able to instead spend their money on other areas of their operations, which could be particularly important in the current economic climate. VoIP can enable […]
IT decision makers from a range of public and private sector organisations ranked loss of control of data and where data is held as the top security concern. Despite economic pressure for business to cut costs and fervent assurances from cloud computing technology suppliers, security remains a top barrier to cloud adoption, research by the UK’s National Computing Centre (NCC) has revealed. Interest in cloud computing is high and many organisations say they are planning […]
Traditional systems management has been obscured in large part by the advent of cloud, where, after all, the promise is cheap, automated infrastructure you don’t have to manage, just use. But as the public cloud paradigm has proven out, more and more businesses, both small and large, want to replicate that success in their own operations. For some small businesses, the case for cloud is pretty obvious. Chuck Spalding, a hydrogeologist with McDonald Morrissey Associates, […]
A quarter of enterprise are using or planning to use tablet computers, according to a report from Forrester which surveyed over 2,000 executives across Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US. However, devices brought into the enterprise by staff are unlikely to be well catered for, as Forrester found that just two per cent support random or rogue devices, while 17 per cent are already trialling their own choice of model. This is likely […]
Cloud computing is a priority for enterprises seeking greater agility, operational efficiency and overall cost reduction, but security concerns continue to inhibit its use. Half of all companies not adopting cloud computing cite security as the reason, according to a Forrester Research October 2010 study, “Security and the Cloud.” Whether considering a private cloud or public cloud, IT professionals face new security and compliance challenges. As data moves to the cloud, it can migrate internally […]
Cloud computing has been a key enabling factor in the latest generation of web startups, letting them start with small amounts of capital and scale quickly in response to demand. Startups don’t care about a lot of the factors that slow adoption of cloud computing. New startups don’t own anything yet, so they don’t have a legacy investment in physical infrastructure. They also don’t have IT departments, who often have a stake in the old […]
This cloud computing video discusses hosted desktops and virtualization. meshIP uses Quest vWorkspace as part of its public cloud service offering: