In my last post, I gave you an outline of what I see as the three biggest “killer apps” of cloud computing. There is, however, another facet to the cloud story that I think is very exciting right now: innovation on the core technical and operational models that form the basis of distributed computing. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) What I mean by that is this: cloud has made new ways of acquiring and consuming infrastructure, platforms, […]
Cloud Computing
Regular attendees of the Enterprise Connect conference (formerly VoiceCon) couldn’t help but notice that this year everyone was talking — and talking more seriously — about implementing session initiated protocol (SIP) trunking. Although other conference topics such as Unified Communications and mobility may have been more glamorous, SIP trunking was often in the background as an enabling technology that can make those things work, or work better. SIP is an Internet standard for establishing and […]
The desktop virtualization market was chugging along at a decent albeit unspectacular pace before Apple’s iPad arrived and helped crystallize the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept. Since then, the iPad has become the main onramp for companies looking to mobilize their work forces through the use of virtualization. Executives were the first to bring the iPad into the workplace, but before long all types of employees were clamoring for the ability to access corporate […]
Cloud computing adoption is being driven by the desire to innovate rather than save money. That was the message sent out during IBM’s Pulse 2011 event this week in Las Vegas as the man in charge of the cloud for Lockheed Martin and Big Blue’s cloud champion talked up the benefits on offer. Cloud computing marks a turning point in the “industrialisation” of the IT industry, according to Ric Telford, Tivoli’s vice president of autonomic […]
We’ve learned a lot about mobility since the early days of this decade when businesses and consumers alike got their first taste of 3G networks. The shift from 2G voice-centric networks to 3G data-driven networks has made it clear that the real “killer apps” are mobile applications – transforming mobile devices into extensions of ourselves and our day-to-day lives. Consumers and enterprise alike are starting to see the incredible potential for combining mobile applications with […]
Cloud computing is all the rage. In its simplest terms, it means outsourcing your company’s information technology (IT) needs, from data and storage to software. All the servers and applications sit elsewhere in the Internet “cloud,” but more literally in a data center or centers. A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP), “Cloud Computing and Sustainability”, compared the environmental footprint of running business software internally or with an outsourced provider (in this case, […]
Under the administration’s “Cloud First” policy, federal information technology managers have been directed to consider cloud solutions as their first option in expanding or upgrading their IT capabilities. Each agency has been required to identify three ‘must move’ services and create a project plan for migrating each of them to cloud solutions and retiring the associated legacy systems. Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level […]
The last 24 months have brought an explosion of new devices, web applications, and social media platforms. With every new product release or social network launch, CIOs are getting pressure from their employees, including senior executives, to open the corporate network to consumer devices and allow access to more of the Web. This migration of consumer devices like smartphones and tablets into enterprise computing is making CIOs very nervous. The risks to data security are […]
Want to know if your organization has the right characteristics and culture to successfully adopt cloud computing? I recently ran across a new cloud computing study that might provide the answer. “Our approach was to try to look into the future and determine what capabilities and kinds of organizations are necessary for a successful migration to the cloud,” co-author Arun Sundararajan told me. Sundararajan (associate professor of Information, Operations and Management Services at the NYU […]
CFOs have high hopes for cloud computing, even though they don’t appear to know much about it. Such are the findings from two recent surveys conducted by CFO. Asked about their current use of cloud-computing services, a majority of senior finance executives either have no plans to pursue it in the short term, or are doing so very tentatively. Nearly a third admit that they aren’t even sure what “cloud computing” really means. Yet, when […]