High-tech companies are grappling with the need to transform traditional business models to more complex ones in order to provide new services based on cloud computing, a new study by Accenture suggests. Those business models, more specifically, pertain to the shipping of hardware products or packaged software. Many senior leaders also lack a clear understanding of how the complexity of the new business models will affect operations in nearly every area of their companies, reveals […]
Like many of us of a certain vintage, Warren Wander owned a Sinclair ZX81, the forerunner of the ZX Spectrum, the first commercially available home computer. It is a measure of how far ahead of the curve its progenitor Sir Clive Sinclair was that the device was little more than a basic games machine, and barely a home computer at all. In 1982, it was like putting a Lamborghini in the wild west. No roads, […]
As our world becomes more and more connected, the terms used to describe online services blur into abstraction. In this article, I’ll clarify the terms “cloud computing” versus “software as a service,” often referred to as SaaS. In some ways, it’s like describing two sides of the same coin. However, there are some clear distinctions, along with risks and rewards to keep in mind. The Internet is increasingly being referred to as the cloud. One […]
It’s no secret that many organizations have begun to look at public and private clouds as alternatives to traditional IT infrastructure. In January 2012, Enterprise Strategy Group published their 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey revealing that 28% of organizations surveyed were using cloud computing services as a way to control IT costs, up substantially from 13% in 2009. Cloud storage is one of the many ways that organizations are leveraging cloud services today. With public […]
Autodesk launched the company’s 2013 portfolio of design, engineering and entertainment software, including the latest design and creation suites. The suites provide expanded toolsets and new automated suites workflows for building, entertainment, engineering, construction, infrastructure, product, plant and factory design. The 2013 design suites connect the desktop to Autodesk 360, a cloud computing platform that enables customers to dramatically improve the way they work by providing the ability to store, edit and share their designs […]
Is desktop virtualization ready for prime time? The data illustrated in this infographic, based on data from the Citrix Global Security Index and Forrester Research, indicates that, indeed, desktop virtualization’s time may well have arrived.
A massive 93% of financial decision makers believe that cloud computing will be important to the success of their businesses over the next couple of years, according to research. Vanson Bourne questioned 100 senior executives within the finance departments at UK companies for the research, which was commissioned by Google. It also found that 68% of businesses surveyed had either already implemented cloud services or have plans to. A total of 66% makers believe the […]
Global sales of software as a service (SaaS) are rising steadily with increased adoption of SaaS and with total worldwide revenues expected to top $22 billion by 2015. According to the latest market report from analyst firm, Gartner, SaaS revenue is forecast to reach $14.5 billion this year, a 17.9 percent increase from 2011 revenue of $12.3 billion, with healthy growth through to 2015 when revenue is forecast to reach $22.1 billion. “After more than […]
CIOs are worried: cloud computing is being used as a way for businesses to dodge the IT department and get services delivered more quickly. But as well as giving the CIO sleepless nights, this attempt to side-step the IT department is causing additional cost and complexity along the way. I recently wrote about how cloud computing deployments are kicking off without the CIO’s knowledge, and only coming to light when sys admins put their expenses […]
Virtualisation is ideal for trying out a new operating system. Instead of installing the OS onto a live machine and potentially overwriting, or generally messing up a working OS, virtualisation leaves your current installation untouched. No worrying about a messed up MBR, freeing up space on your drives for a new partition or having to route around for drivers just to get back online. Virtualisation is a lot faster than it once was as well. […]
CIOs have tied their future career prospects very much to the mast of cloud computing, with recent research revealing that they believe cloud computing is shifting the focus of their role away from primarily technology onto vital business services, and increasing their chances of promotion to CEO. In a global survey of 615 CEOs, including Australian CIOs, 57 percent of the Australian respondents said that’s what they believed about the affects of cloud computing on […]
If you came here for the article with the title, “Is It Time to Move Plant Data Outside the Plant?”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. […]
Expertly meshed information technology and voice technology services are the perfect combination of near term problem solving and long term competitive opportunities for organizations today. Delivered across a redundant and highly performing mesh infrastructure, mesh services have proven to lower or completely eliminate technology ownership problems, while improving the customer experience and productivity gains. Industry leading technologies and technology talent are available in any fraction or combination to fit your exact operational and budgetary expectations. […]
meshIP, LLC is please to announce the launch of two new services! meshIP was formed five years ago and has specialized in company formation, business plan development, funding and growth strategies. We are adding to our capabilities to assist small and mid-sized firms in their growth by offering hosted computing and telecommunications services. These offerings allow our clients to get out of the IT business and focus on their business. Our meshDESK service offering allows […]
IBM has announced it is working on technology that enables a desktop environment to be streamed from cloud computing infrastructures to a PC endpoint, enabling workers to access their corporate desktop anywhere and on any system. Dubbed the Secure Enterprise Desktop, the technology is being demonstrated at the CeBIT show in Hanover this week. It is currently undergoing small-scale pilot tests, but IBM said it plans to make the service commercially available to customers later […]
The CIO as we understand the role is under threat from Cloud Computing and ICT professionals need to start getting smart about their function. That was the stark warning from Oracle, a company whose conversion to the Cloud has taken time to go public. While once dismissed by CEO Larry Ellison as “just water vapour”, Cloud is now firmly on the Oracle road map as a top priority. Hence the appearance of John Abel, chief […]
Software as a Service is one of—if not the most—popular cloud delivery models for small- and medium-sized businesses. According to Gartner—Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing (2011), SaaS is entering the mainstream market in the next two to five years. The SaaS model levels the playing field between growing businesses and larger competitors, by equipping SMBs with application functionality that only large enterprises previously enjoyed. Moreover, this increase in functionality no longer requires huge investments in […]
The Business Software Alliance, which represents US companies such as Microsoft, ranked 24 countries that account for 80 per cent of the global ICT market based on seven policy categories that measure the countries’ preparedness to support the growth of cloud computing. Brazil finished last in the survey, earning only 35.1 points out of a possible 100 because of its policies in areas such free trade, security, data privacy and cybercrime. India – which has […]
Openness in software and architectures is a big win for users. This truth is so widely recognized that a lot of vendors seem to favor using “open” as a sort of mantra even though they’re often not, well, open except in glancing and incidental ways. This is nowhere truer than with cloud computing. Having an open architecture and approach when building a cloud matters deeply. Only an open cloud allows customers to manage diverse infrastructures […]
The network is the weakest link in cloud computing as, without network access, staff are unable to connect to databases, e-mail or other applications. While the cloud can store company data and deliver applications without the overheads of dedicated in-house servers and other hardware, the third party hosting the data or applications is not usually responsible for the network links from the customer to its facilities. Companies must plan how they connect their corporate networks […]
The demand for desktop virtualization is being driven, at least in part, by the explosive growth in mobile work styles. That’s a key takeaway from a new global market study commissioned by virtual solutions provider Citrix, whose virtualization, networking and cloud solutions are delivered to more than 100 million corporate desktops daily. The survey found that 55 percent of responding companies will deploy new desktop virtualization for the first time by 2013. Of those surveyed, […]
Small businesses have the power to revive the nation’s economy; they just need the opportunity, technology and the right government policies to help them succeed, according to a report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation (CPPI) and the Digital Dialogue Forum (DDF). The report also notes small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and they are responsible for two-thirds of the 40 million jobs created in the country over the past 30 […]
Having attained some basic oversight and policy control over personal devices in the enterprise, corporate IT administrators in 2012 face the appification of enterprise services. Opening up platforms such as iOS and Android to outside developers brings an increased risk of malware. Mobile virtualization enables one physical device to run two parallel virtual phones, supporting enterprise and personal use without compromising enterprise security or personal privacy. These next-generation mobile devices will have quad-core Cortex-A15 processors […]
It seems that every networking event this year, every tech magazine issue, and every vendor worth its salt is talking about “the cloud.” The cloud, in one of its many forms – public, private, or mixed – has become ubiquitous! I’ll confess: I started off my cloud gazing with little interest and several doubts, but I’ve learned a lot over the past year about the potential benefits of obtaining software, platform, and infrastructure as cloud […]
Platform as a service (PaaS) is a core layer of the cloud computing architecture, and its evolution will affect the future of most users and vendors in enterprise software markets, according to Gartner. “With large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing,” said Yefim Natis, vice president and […]
The farthest-reaching changes in the IT industry often occur when a single new development simultaneously responds to the needs of both consumers and business users. Perhaps the best-known example of this kind of wave was the original PC: office workers used PCs during the day for their business tasks and then used the machine when they got home to play games (and often vice versa). The Web was also adopted in equal measure by consumers […]
US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said cloud computing will play a major role as the nation’s spy agencies work to integrate computer and information systems to share more data securely. Cloud computing has “huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration,” Clapper told an audience last week at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington. Cloud computing lets users run programmes and store data over the internet. Along […]
As the second law of thermodynamics tells us, all things trend toward chaos and this is no less true with a virtual environment. Sprawl can have a real security impact, and it takes discipline and planning to control sprawl — discipline and planning that won’t occur without someone from the security team actively monitoring the problem and formulating strategies for how to address the issue. Virtualization has been one of the most rapidly and widely […]
Companies are looking for cloud solutions that satisfy the requirements of the IT manager in terms of reliability, security and rapid access to data, while still receiving everything they need such as service, flexibility and user-friendliness. By consolidating resources into secure, redundant and hardened data centres, providers of cloud solutions can offer a considerably higher degree of reliability and increased network security than before. Yet many companies are still sceptical about these claims and doubt […]
In testing cloud computing services and observing the growth of cloud activities, we’ve noticed that there are distinct phases that organisations go through in adopting cloud. First, application developers fall in love with cloud-based disposable infrastructure and/or ready-built app development platforms that circumvent long purchasing cycles and capital asset growth limitations. Then other attractions, like commodity rentable infrastructure, or expansive platforms, become attractive. Sometimes applications are either extended to the cloud as private growth areas, […]