The cloud computing industry rolls along at a staggering pace. So much so that one of the biggest issues currently affecting adoptees is the speed at which it expands. It may sound like a badly made ’90s sci-fi flick, but ‘Cloud Sprawl’ is causing many a headache for IT directors across the globe. And while the term may have been first coined over two years ago, it appears it’s only now that we’re coming to […]
Cloud Computing
607 posts
Autodesk is planning to take the bulk of its software onto cloud services in the next three years, beginning with AutoCAD WS. “The collaborative aspects of cloud working are going to revolutionize the design field,” Andrew Anagnost, vice president of suites, web services and subscription at Autodesk, told The Register. He explained that a properly configured platform could host design data and ensure that individual users would get the most relevant information, such as building […]
Small businesses and start-ups will push the use of cloud computing into the IT mainstream as security concerns continue to hinder take up among larger firms. Steve O’Donnell, a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ cloud technology division, explained that the needs of small companies are perfectly met by cloud technologies. “Start-ups need to be agile. They’re concerned about costs and speed of execution but not about risks, so they adopt cloud […]
Before spacecraft are blasted off into space, the astronauts that travel in them, mission-control personnel, and other key staff undergo specialised education and training, launch procedures are verified and rehearsed, and policies are drawn up so that everyone is clear about their roles. Organisations wanting to move into the cloud computing space need to employ similar rigour. Although cloud service technology is easily available and is a potential business game-changer, it is best for enterprises […]
Cloud computing and SaaS have gained considerable momentum over the last few years. Although companies are adopting cloud and SaaS technology, there is great confusion over the applications in which cloud can serve an organization. Organizations are left with endless questions about security, infrastructure options, scalability, administration and business agility. While application programming interfaces (APIs) have improved from many vendors, going cloud does not eliminate the need for integration and/or middleware. Some smart platform-as-a-service (PaaS) […]
Those IT organizations that move to cloud computing are moving to SOA (service-oriented architecture), whether they understand it or not. Hear me out: Private and public clouds often rely on APIs for their functionality, which are typically Web services that can be combined and recombined into solutions. The result: SOA, at its essence. The problem is that many of those who define and implement cloud computing don’t have a good grasp of SOA. Although they […]
Under pressure to move to cloud computing by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), yet harboring intractable concerns about protecting sensitive data, many federal agency managers are opting for private clouds, which they consider more secure than public cloud environments. At the U.S. Census Bureau, for example, officials are concentrating about 90% of their cloud efforts on establishing an internal private cloud, which is hosted at the bureau’s data computing center in Bowie, Md., […]
Cost reduction, security, manageability and simplifying the migration to Windows 7 are driving organizations to adopt an aggressive deployment approach when it comes to desktop and application virtualization, say the results of a study conducted by Forrester Consulting. Over half of the 546 organizations surveyed ranked desktop and application virtualization as a critical or major initiative over the next 12 to 18 months. Furthermore, deployment levels are predicted to grow from 27% to 46%, taking […]
Cloud computing is a remarkable phenomenon, with analysts at IDC predicting public cloud computing services to be a $73 billion market by 2015. However, many CIOs are still puzzled by the term and may not yet be familiar with how appropriate ‘The Cloud’ is for certain business IT functions. Concerns over security, too, remain an issue for some. The wide availability of computing power, storage capacity and software over the internet, through ‘The Cloud’, presents […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – the organisation that creates technology standards for the federal government – has this week released a new Cloud Computing roadmap and reference architecture to provide guidance for public sector ICT procurers and implementors. The NIST says: “This solution will create a level playing field for industry to discuss and compare their cloud offerings with the US Government (USG). The resulting reference architecture and taxonomy for cloud […]