In a sluggish economy, businesses, particularly small and mid-size companies, are doing all they can to trim costs. And one big cost savings many are making is to switch from costly landline phone service to the less expensive Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Although VoIP is ridiculously cheap, (think Vonage, Ooma, etc.), it comes with its own set of problems – particularly when it comes to security. The number of hacker attacks against VoIP systems […]
Cloud Computing
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I got a press release this morning from VMware that was touting the adoption of of vSphere as the virtualization technology of choice for the SMB user. Included in the press release, as usual, were a few brief customer stories and the expected quotes from VMware executives and their business partners. The purpose of the release, I’m sure, was to raise my awareness of the success of vSphere in the SMB space, but what it […]
Survey confirms companies are still trying to sort out cloud. A new survey asked companies about their average spend on cloud computing resources, and the results are surprising, in a low-spend way. That is, the average company spent just over $6,300 in 2010. This spending is expected to ramp up at least 10% during 2011. The survey of 100 IT executives, conducted by Osterman Research for Electric Cloud finds that among organizations that have implemented […]
For years, enterprise IT departments could be fuzzy about the costs of individual IT services and applications, but tight budgets and the relative clarity of cloud computing costs have forced CIOs into sharp focus. This need for specifics on IT costs has fueled a market for IT financial management software, which helps CIOs figure out how to budget for and assign dollar figures to services that span hardware, software and personnel. While the economy has […]
High-performance computing (HPC) is no longer exclusive to large companies and governments with substantial scientific budgets. Why? The economics of HPC cloud computing bring these capabilities within reach of nearly any business. However, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals must realise that the level of ROI varies based on application design, behaviour and use case. Cloud economics let companies pay for capacity when and only when it is utilised, without requiring any upfront investment – essentially […]
Investing in private clouds is a top priority for IT organizations in 2011, according to two recent online polls, Unisys said on Jan. 26. The two polls were conducted on the Unisys Web site. The first poll, in December 2010, asked visitors about their cloud computing implementation plans. The second poll, asking visitors to name their organization’s biggest investment priority in 2011, was conducted a month later and completed on Jan. 24. In the January […]
Cloud computing security is an incredibly broad (and deep) topic, so I can only scratch the surface in a short article. Even so, let’s try to get the basics under control. The first order of business is making sure we’re talking about the same thing. Some cloud vendors try to blur the lines between security, reliability, and disaster recovery/business continuity. While all these are important attributes, it just confuses the conversation. So let’s stick with […]
Internal departments buying their own IT may force the hand of the CIO into making an early move to the cloud. But that shift will alter the traditional role of the CIO forever, says Steven Salmon. Over the next few years, cloud computing is set to transform the way CIOs operate. More organisations will turn to cloud products such as software as a service (SaaS), which will continue to mature. Driving the increased uptake is […]
Ciaran Treanor, technology director, DANU Technologies, outlines why SMEs, specifically start-ups, can significantly reduce IT spend by accessing IT resources on demand via the cloud. Treanor was one of the speakers at last week’s cloud computing event hosted by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) (Ireland) at Trinity College Dublin, which aimed to inform people what the cloud has to offer start-ups and small enterprises, especially those in the non-IT space that may be […]
While the potential benefits of cloud computing, such as resource flexibility, are appealing to many IT executives, security and regulatory concerns are either limiting or preventing its use by Wall Street financial firms. That was the consensus of many attendees at the High Performance Computing in Financial Markets Conference held here Monday. Mats Andersson, CTO of Nasdaq’s OMX Exchange, said Nasdaq uses cloud computing systems, but only inside the company’s firewall and only to access […]
Google vice president and chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf today delivered the keynote address to open source enthusiasts at Linux.conf.au 2011 in Brisbane, saying that cloud computing is on the verge of becoming as big a concept as the internet itself. “I feel we are at the state in the cloud world now that we were in the internet world back in 1973,” Cerf said. The Google VP and evangelist also said, however, that a […]
Companies should think twice about pursuing trademarks around the term ‘cloud computing,’ as market saturation is making product differentiation increasingly difficult. Cloud computing stands to transform business and personal technology, but the phrase “cloud computing” raises legal issues for brand owners looking to exploit it as a trademark or brand name. As with any marketing revolution — we saw it with green or eco-friendly products, referred to as “green washing” — trademark issues are never […]
Thirty five percent of C-level respondents in a global survey have identified significant investments in legacy infrastructure as the reason they are not adopting cloud computing. The survey, the fourth Global Status Report on the Governance of Enterprise IT (GEIT) – 2011, conducted by the non-profit, IT Governance Institute (ITGI) polled 834 executives from 21 countries, divided almost evenly between business executives (CEOs, CFOs and COOs) and IT executives (CIOs and heads of IT). According […]
Today, we’d like to spotlight two great reports that may interest our audience. The first report, written by Abner Germanow and Jonathan Edwards at IDC is titled “Virtualizing UC: Reaping the Benefits and Understanding the Issues for Real-Time Communications.” The second report is called “Accelerating UC Deployment with a SIP/XML Architecture” written by Zeus Kerravala, distinguished research fellow at Yankee Group. The reports are sponsored by Avaya and are hosted on Webtorials. The first paper […]
With Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) intruding enterprise telecommunications systems, a number of technologies are being introduced to help enterprises manage the VoIP calls. The VoIP auto attendant is one such technology, which helps business offices manage inbound calls and route them to the correct person. A VoIP auto attendant, also known as a virtual receptionist, interacts with the caller to manage calls in a professional manner and enhance the efficiency of customer service. According […]
Small and midsized companies are making the leap into the cloud in droves, and it’s not just to cut costs. And the majority of those companies rely on solution providers to make their cloud plans a reality, creating major opportunities for solution providers. “It’s no surprise to anybody that the basic acceptance and intention to move to the cloud is very high in SMBs and midsized companies,” said Tim Furey, founder of MarketBridge, a provider […]
Bitzer Mobile this week introduced its Enterprise Virtualized Mobility (EVM) technology, which isolates corporate data from personal data on employee-owned mobile devices and enables secure remote access to enterprise data on these devices. The company is addressing the issue of employees bringing their own devices to work and wanting access to enterprise information; IT managers have had difficulty in determining how many to support and have to worry about security and provisioning, said Bitzer CEO […]
Cloud computing will be a hit with chief information officers (CIOs) this year as adoption will happen quicker than expected, an analyst firm has claimed. Just three per cent of CIOs currently have the majority of IT running in the cloud or on software-as-a-service technologies, but over the next four years CIOs expect this to rise to 43 per cent, a Gartner survey showed. “CIOs and IT have been boxed in between modest budget growth […]
The growth in popularity of web-based applications like social networking sites and even cloud computing software like Google Docs has raised more and more questions concerning security requirements. Particularly when it comes to the use of virtual and cloud environments for sensitive data hosting, rather than use of local data centres – does data protection now demand a new approach? Data protection schemes should always pursue pre-emptive tactics. In fact, nowadays it’s an essential requirement […]
Adoption of cloud computing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) may be on the rise but many companies remain clueless about the technology. This was the finding of a new survey by PeoplePerHour.com PeoplePerHour.com. After talking to 1,300 SMEs across the UK, it discovered almost three quarters of the respondents (74 per cent) didn’t use cloud computing and 43 per cent of those didn’t even know what the term meant. Furthermore, more than a third […]
One of the latest spin offs of business VoIP technology is the Hosted PBX. This technology allows small and medium sized businesses to have a sophisticated telephone system without the investment in telephone equipment. In fact, the entire telephone system is operated and maintained by your voice-over-ip service provider. A hosted PBX lets employees work from their home, a hotel or on their cell phone while still being connected to the same office telephone system. […]
In the future, mobile phones will dominate, with businesses moving to a ‘bring your own device’ strategy and voice virtualization will take on more importance in business’ networks according to survey results taken by business communications and collaboration software and services provider Mitel Networks. The survey found 53 percent of respondents felt that, in the future, mobile phones would become the dominant communication device in the workplace. These same responders also stated that their organizations […]
Where does a 500-million-dollar, mid-sized company go to implement cloud computing? Where should they begin? How should a company phase its deployment in order to reduce risks? First, let’s focus on a global law firm. Most law firms have similar business applications, so a public cloud provider could address this niche for law firms around the globe. What should they outsource first? I’ll outline five deployment phases related to risk and information security. The five […]
Forty per cent of C-level executives have stated they are not planning to adopt cloud computing, according to a global report by the non-profit IT Governance Institute. Senior executives who do not plan to use cloud computing at all in the near future list security (47pc) and privacy concerns (50pc), followed closely by legacy infrastructure investments (35pc), as barriers to adoption. The 2011 study polled 834 executives from 21 countries, divided almost evenly between business […]
Cloud computing is high on the wish lists of many mid-sized companies, with roughly 2/3 of them adopting cloud computing technologies, a recent IBM (NYSE:IBM) study found. At the same time, IT budgets in the midmarket are increasing for the first time in years. IBM queried more than 2,000 midsized companies, ranging from 99 to 1,000 employees, in 20 countries to determine their IT spending patterns in its study “Inside the Midmarket: A 2011 Perspective.” […]
Growing calls for SLAs are increasing pressure on the entire cloud service supply chain Cloud computing, an industry dependent on the availability of high-speed internet connectivity, grew on the realisation that internet bandwidth could be used for more than just downloading large files. However, the cloud’s initial lustre is starting to wear off and businesses are starting to query why they should move to the cloud and what happens once that leap is taken. The […]
Cloud computing has quickly established its rightful place in modern IT organisations, helping enterprises become more agile while keeping close watch on costs. As a new mainstream appeal, the new delivery model has proven its stripes with applications like messaging, storage and CRM. Now, technology innovators are applying what they learned. Cloud service delivery has hit critical mass, with the majority of organisations already riding the wave. With that adoption, enterprises have become more comfortable […]
With security concerns still trotted out as a major inhibitor to the adoption of Cloud Computing, the European Union’s cyber security Agency ENISA has weighed in with a new report on Governmental Cloud Computing that might upset the anti-federalists. Addressing security concerns, the Agency unsurprisingly concludes that private and community Clouds appear to be the solutions that best fit the needs of public administrations if they need to achieve the highest level of data governance. […]
Despite the hype, the virtualization scenario in India is laced with implementation challenges and cost pitfalls. Mehak Chawla finds out the causes for reluctant adoption and what needs to be done for virtualization to live up to its image In a newsletter issued by an IT giant for its US customers last week, I stumbled upon the sentence “We think virtualization will be the hottest technology in 2011. It shall be adopted across verticals and […]