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 room in Ipswich that housed switches and servers, back up facilities, racks and air conditioning units to stop everything overheating. The cost of installation was in the tens of thousands and the cost of maintaining […]
Brian
607 posts
Given the ever-increasing reliance on cloud computing, it is inevitable that disputes and litigation will increase between corporations and cloud service providers. The most obvious point of contention will occur if data in the cloud is lost, damaged, stolen or is otherwise rendered inaccessible for a period of time. In such circumstances, the corporation may be facing enormous liability and will seek to hold the cloud provider responsible, while the cloud provider will undoubtedly look […]
Virtualization and the server consolidation that it delivers will be the top priority for chief information officers in 2012, according to a survey by the research firm IDC. Savings from server consolidation will be invested in new IT initiatives such as cloud computing, mobility, data analytics, and use of social media for business purposes. When CIOs were asked by IDC to name their top three IT priorities for this year, nearly 40 percent of them […]
Industry experts and cloud service providers are hopeful about the prospects of a new federal program that sets cloud computing security standards, but they also note some potential pitfalls. For one security expert, the program represents a lost chance to improve cybersecurity. The Obama Administration last month launched the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which sets a standard approach for assessing the security of cloud services and products against a baseline of controls. […]
CIOs will have the opportunity to move away from the traditional scenario of spending 80% of their budget on maintenance and 20% on innovation if they harness cloud computing technologies. This in turn will raise the expectations put on CIOs from the boardroom, who will expect IT to drive business innovations. Cloud computing is shaking-up competitive landscapes as companies of all sizes can access the same resources and reach similar markets as a result. But […]
The term “cloud” has been turned into a marketing platform by many suppliers and this has obscured what it really is – a way to procure and deliver IT services. The cloud covers a wide spectrum of services and delivery models. The common security concerns are ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the services and data delivered through a cloud environment. Cloud computing makes people uneasy. The perceived lack of ownership and control has […]
As end users bring their own devices to work, download apps and sign up for cloud services, it’s getting harder for IT to maintain application visibility and control performance. In addition to introducing IT management blind spots, trends such as consumerization, mobility and cloud computing are also increasing business risk, according to a survey of CIOs from around the world. “The age-old disconnect between business and IT is at risk of widening,” said Steve Tack, […]
Video showing AutoCad 2011, VDI using XenDesktop over Internet connection. Back-end uses a FX1800 and the drawing is what the GPU can handle.
Visiongain’s latest management research “Mobile Cloud Computing Industry Outlook Report: 2011-2016” examines the market and how the ecosystem players are leveraging mobile cloud solutions to enable their strategies and business models. The mobile cloud computing market is just beginning to evolve in 2011; by 2016, the market will enter into a rapid growth stage. Interested market players need to formulate emergent strategies now to enjoy the early movers’ advantage. The company’s research projects the total […]
VoIP-over-VPN technology protects the privacy of corporate voice communications in industrial networks, while delivering the cost-saving and technology benefits of Voice-over-IP. By reducing or eliminating phone charges, consolidating infrastructure, and streamlining network operations and maintenance, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers tremendous cost-savings for oil and gas companies and other industrial sectors. As with any new technology, however, there can be a down-side. Most VoIP gateways compromise communication security by transporting VoIP and data traffic […]
Once viewed as the formula for desktop PC provisioning and management roles, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology is moving into the mainstream via a new path, as a solution for business services. Most enterprise administrators have viewed Virtual Desktop Infrastructure as a way to deliver enterprise desktops to users more efficiently. However, VDI can deliver more than just a typical business desktop; the technology can also be used to deliver specialized business services. A case […]
Misinformation and a lack of understanding have delayed some companies from obtaining the advantages of cloud computing. With the explosion of information regarding cloud computing, a lot of people think that everybody knows more than they want to about the technology. Yet according to many IT solution providers who are working with customers to help them transition to the cloud, the biggest issue holding them back is a lack of understanding about what exactly is […]
There’s been so much talk about it. And it seems everyone is doing it. “The cloud” has become many businesses’ preferred method of information management and storage. Cloud computing simply means that information is hosted and stored on the Web. But there one’s industry that’s not quite so sure about it, or the security of it. While 71 percent of healthcare organizations are either using or looking at the implementation of cloud computing or storage […]
Desktop virtualization is the use of several virtualization technologies, either together or separately. Let’s look at each of these cases in turn: When “desktop virtualization” is used to describe making it possible for people to access a physical or virtual system remotely, access virtualization technology is used to capture the user interface portion of an application. It is then converted to a neutral format and projected across the network to a device that can display […]
When you talk to a bona fide Cloud supplier they talk in the straight-forward, clear and non-technical way about the business benefits of Cloud computing. However, in the same way that two hundred jumbo jets landing safely at Heathrow is not news but one jumbo jet crashing is news, Cloud makes the headlines when it fails and for those who over-complicate it. Cloud computing provides organisations with an alternative way of obtaining IT services and […]
Less and less of today’s computing is done on desktop computers; cloud computing, in which operations are carried out on a network of shared, remote servers, is expected to rise as the demand for computing power increases. This raises some crucial questions about security: Can we, for instance, perform computations on data stored in “the cloud” without letting anyone else see our information? Research carried out at the Weizmann Institute and MIT is moving us […]
The cloud computing model represents an important change in how information technology works. Just as the major changes that happened first with the client-server application model and then with the Internet, the drivers of this new revolution are accessibility and cost – how can computing infrastructure, platforms and applications have more widespread usage and how can they be made cheaper. In fact, price and accessibility go hand-in-hand: the cheaper technology becomes, the more people will […]
We can shop on our phones and read magazines on our tablets. But playing high-end video games on a mobile device has been out of the question. That might be about to change. OnLive, a Silicon Valley start-up, on Thursday plans to release software that will let people play the richest, most graphically intense games on Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as on Amazon’s Kindle Fire and other devices based on Google’s Android software. […]
One of the main reasons for deploying desktop virtualization is the security advantages it can provide, such as keeping sensitive data off the endpoint, according to Citrix. And Citrix is practicing what it preaches at its Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., headquarters where employees, for example, use the Citrix virtualization product Citrix Receiver for smartphones and tablets. Citrix Receiver brings full-fledged desktop apps to smartphones and tablets “It’s required to access some systems such as SAP,” says […]
There’s evidence in the channel that organizations are growing increasingly gun-shy about following through on desktop virtualization pilots and deployments. Their uneasiness, according to virtualization experts, stems from higher than expected infrastructure costs, technical complexity and a return on investment that’s typically slower to materialize compared to server virtualization. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Desktop virtualization goes hand-in-hand with mobility, and the arrival of Windows 7 and Apple’s iPad were expected to be […]
With all the talk about cloud computing and its impact on business it’s important to understand what the cloud is — and what it isn’t. James Staten, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, provided his company’s take on the subject this week at the Autodesk University, where cloud computing was Topic A for the annual users conference that drew more than 8,000 people. The main advantages cloud computing provides — connectivity, mobility, flexibility […]
Cloud computing is changing the world for sophisticated institutional investors – even those who have never used Internet-based servers to execute a trade or stress-tested a high-frequency trading strategy. The result, according to experts, will be a lower cost structure for performing high-end trades and more widespread access to the computing power needed to develop and execute complex algorithmic trading strategies. Cloud computing – on-demand self-service Internet infrastructure where you pay-as-you-go and use only what […]
We’ve all heard about it, but what is exactly is cloud computing and how can it benefit us as a home and business user? One of the most important applications for the cloud is backing up data an issue which was brought to the fore following the fire which broke out at HWP earlier this year destroying all of the company’s records. The term cloud refers to data storage and software applications delivered over the […]
How does security apply to Cloud Computing? In this article, we address this question by listing the five top security challenges for Cloud Computing, and examine some of the solutions to ensure secure Cloud Computing. Organizations and enterprises are increasingly considering Cloud Computing to save money and to increase efficiency. However, while the benefits of Cloud Computing are clear, most organizations continue to be concerned about the associated security implications. Due to the shared nature […]
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter encourage sharing of personal information. How does this change the nature of personal privacy? Trust is fundamental since it forms the basis upon which personal and commercial transactions take place. However trust and privacy are in conflict since knowing who you are dealing with is essential to trust. So how can identity, privacy and trust in the Cloud be reconciled? Privacy The internet and social networking sites like […]
So tell me, what’s a Hadoop when it’s at home? Some kind of dance? Not so much. Think of it as a file system for distributed computing and storage. Because that’s what it is. What’s a file system for distributed computing and storage when it’s at home? Let me take you back to big data. What’s big data? You know all that stuff you’ve got that fits in nice relational databases? Yes. Well, it’s that […]
Using the OSI network layer model as a basis, here’s how to derive a simplified three-layer model for SIP-based VoIP and corresponding threats and defenses. The resurgence of interest in VoIP to provide telephone services worldwide is often credited to the use of session initiation protocol (SIP) for signaling. Both residential and enterprise VoIP services are widely deployed. IP telephony may be used either to replace the primary telephone service or to provide additional telephone […]
One out of four healthcare providers are now using tablets in their practice, with another 21% expecting to do so in the next 12 months, and more than half are using a smartphone at work. These findings are part of CompTIA’s 3rd Annual Healthcare IT Insights and Opportunities Study, which relied on separate online surveys with 350 doctors, dentists, and other healthcare providers or administrators and 400 IT firms with healthcare IT practices. CompTIA conducted […]
Since Cloud computing is a new way of doing business you have to be clear about what you are letting yourself in for. For some, the business benefits of Cloud are many – for others it will be the simple fact that Cloud allows a small business to stop worrying about its IT – something that distracts from its core function of running the business. Cloud computing differs from conventional outsourcing in that the latter […]