A growing number of small-business owners are expected to try cloud computing services next year, hoping to trim costs and stay up and running if disaster strikes. Cloud computing refers to any service that operates over an Internet connection, allowing immediate access from any computer or mobile device with Web access. Business owners can access software or store information—such as customer contacts, accounting data and presentations—and leave the technical maintenance to the cloud provider. As […]
Cloud Computing
607 posts
This article is based on the book “Creating the Infrastructure for Cloud Computing: An Essential Handbook for IT Professionals” The virtualization models for clients are, arguably, more diverse than those for servers. For servers there are essentially two, the earlier model of static consolidation and the more recent dynamic model where virtual machines lightly bound to physical hosts can be moved around with relative ease. With virtualized clients there are also two main models, depending […]
Cloud Adopters Embrace Cloud For Both Innovation and Legacy Optimization Once thought to be the answer to deployment options for just the SMB market, early cloud adopters proved otherwise. Stereotypes about industry, size of company, geographies, and roles no longer hold back adoption. Cloud adoption at all 4 layers of the cloud passed the tipping points in 2010 as a key business and technology strategy (see Figure 1). For 2011, we can expect users to: […]
A few weeks back, I was on a panel of media pundits asked to make predictions about what might happen in the technology business in 2011. One prominent member of our group, seeking to stake out a bold, contrarian position, asserted that 2011 would be the year that “cloud computing” would be revealed to be a big nothing, an over-hyped concept that in the end is more about marketing than actual technology. He’s so, so […]
International Business Machines Corp., the world’s biggest computer-services provider, is building a cloud-computing system for NATO in the first such deal for the international military alliance. The software and hardware will let NATO more quickly collect and analyze data, such as military intelligence in Afghanistan, said E.J. Herold, head of the project for IBM. NATO’s military command department in Norfolk, Virginia, will use the technology first, with the possibility it will expand to other divisions, […]
Once upon a time, a few decades ago, computers were extraordinarily expensive, room-filling machines – the kind decked out with whirring tape reels, flashing lights, and banks of switches. You didn’t pull up a chair up to use one; instead, using a process called timesharing, you accessed it via a remote terminal at the same time as a bunch of other folks. The PC revolution changed all that, but only for a while. Today, we’re […]
Today, service providers and enterprises interested in implementing clouds face the challenge of integrating complex software and hardware components from multiple vendors. The resulting system can end up being expensive to build and hard to operate, minimizing the original motives and benefits of moving to cloud computing. Cloud computing platforms are attractive because they let businesses quickly access hosted private and public resources on-demand without the complexities and time associated with the purchase, installation, configuration […]
Cloud Computing can help your business reduce costs as you don’t have to invest in hardware and other physical infrastructure, your data is stored on a secure location and you only pay for what you use – there are no licensing fees associated with cloud computing. Legal Issues associated with Cloud Computing That said, there are some important legal issues that must be taken care of before you sign-up with any of the cloud vendors […]
When we first heard about cloud computing, public clouds got most of the attention. But as IT managers looked at the security risks of having data outside the corporate firewall, they turned their attention to private clouds, which analysts and various surveys suggest will get more enterprise investment in the next few years. But private clouds have their share of challenges too. There are management issues and operational processes to figure out. And, of course, […]
There seems to be a steady stream of news stories extolling the benefits of cloud computing and the positive impact it can have on an organisation. However, just as many organisations are in the process of implementing effective internal data governance processes, and are now faced with the question of whether their businesses’ sensitive data can be effectively managed in the cloud. The data governance and compliance issues faced by organisations are the same whether […]