Flash memory is much faster than hard disks, but too expensive for most enterprises to place onboard servers. Startup FlashSoft on Tuesday announced software that aims to solve this problem by caching data in flash memory onboard servers, a technique that it claims can dramatically boost the performance of storage networks at little additional cost. The company is also launching itself, announcing a $3 million funding round and plans for future expansion. “We give you […]
I think a lot of people confuse these two virtualization technologies and maybe you’re one of them. The distinction is not apparent from the names given to them but rather in the scale of the technologies behind them. Desktop virtualization means that you run a virtual machine on your desktop computer. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a data center technology that supplies hosted desktop images to remote users. There is, as you can see, a […]
I can’t help but take notice of the recent string of cloud failures we’ve been hearing about this year. Blogger went down for about 20 hours last month and Microsoft’s BPOS hosted bundle also reported a significant amount of downtime. Perhaps the most notable was when Amazon’s cloud was overloaded with Lady Gaga fans clamoring to get her album for 99 cents. All of this talk of cloud failure has once again called into question […]
The rush toward virtualisation of internal enterprise computing resources and cloud computing can have many advantages, such as server consolidation, but it’s largely outracing traditional security and identity management practices. That’s leaving huge gaps, a sense of chaos and questions about where security products and services should be applied in the world of multi-vendor virtual-machine (VM) hypervisors. “Virtualisation will radically change how you secure and manage your computing environment,” Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said this […]
Tis the season to fix your virtual environment and there’s no better way to start that process than with a “to do” list. And, you know you need one. So, here’s your list for those dog days of summer, when you want to heat things up even more. You won’t solve all ten of these items in a day or in a week. It’s an ongoing process but you need to get started now, so […]
Unified communications is entering its own hype cycle, like that of cloud computing, virtualization, and color TV before it, as vendors tout their “me-too” solutions in a familiar history repeating itself pattern. UC brings together such capabilities as voice, videoconferencing, instant messaging, email, document sharing, and more into one user interface so employees of one company, their partners, and even customers can collaborate with each other across the corporate campus or across oceans. A recently […]
Today’s Cloud Computing marketplace exhibits a surprising bifurcation. Public Cloud providers like Amazon.com are all the rage among small companies, startups, and individual developers. Enterprises, however, are largely investing in Private Clouds. Public Clouds are too risky, so the story goes, or perhaps enterprise decision makers are only willing to dip their toe in the Public Cloud water. We find this trend surprising, because in many ways the Public Cloud value proposition is stronger than […]
Offloading your software and data to a cloud computing service has never been easier. Apple last week became the latest tech company – after Google and Amazon – to offer cheap online storage, with its new iCloud service allowing users to access music, documents and other files from any Apple device. But cloud services could also be used to launch attacks, send spam and commit fraud. “Right now it’s just a few attacks, most aren’t […]
The advent of the Internet afforded a number of different companies options when it came to extending their offerings around the world. eCommerce presented a whole range of new opportunities and now, cloud computing is gaining in importance in this space. Entire networks are being moved to the cloud to enable streamlined operations, greater capability and lower costs. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is getting a whole new makeover in cloud computing and both companies and […]
Rather than working with applications installed on servers at various office and site locations, the new cloud computing model promises to allow oil and gas companies to centralize increasing numbers of applications within the cloud, drawing on them as required and even paying for them as they are used. This new model is set to reduce costs drastically and improve the flexibility of moving to new software models. Today, CIOs want to benefit from these […]
It’s hard to avoid reading about cloud, whether you are travelling through an airport, surfing web news services or watching the TV. Everyone in the IT industry has something to say on the topic. I guess the question is why now and what’s so different today from what the IT industry has been doing over the past years. There is simple and singular reason for this – the cloud represents a sweeping change not only […]
Back in 1995, the first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls were made between two PCs. At first, it was just a technological novelty but by 1998, VoIP had begun to establish itself as a means of providing low-cost long distance calls, carrying an estimated 1% of US phone traffic. Jump forward ten years to 2008 and VoIP has revolutionised the way that residential and business communications are delivered. According to Infonetics, around 30% of […]
One of the few sure things in the online world is Amazon.com. The site never seems to go down, despite the fact that it’s serving millions of customers every day. Yet even the mighty Amazon — or, more accurately, its cloud services unit, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud — collapsed in April for about 24 hours, taking with it customers like Reddit, foursquare, Hootsuite and hundreds of other websites, some of them run by small businesses. […]
The majority of large organisations are migrating internal virtual infrastructure to the cloud because they believe it will reduce costs, according to a recent survey. The survey finds that only 17 per cent of organisations achieved their utilisation and ROI goals with virtualisation and yet, they intend to use similar planning and management approaches for their move to the cloud. The survey interviewed 94 executives responsible for virtual and cloud infrastructure decisions at organisations with […]
Enterprise-level business and IT executives and decision-makers may now have a greater understanding of the benefits of private and hybrid cloud computing environments, but a new study has found that there is still a large gap between expectations and the reality of what cloud computing and virtualization offer. Symantec’s “2011 Virtualization and Journey to the Cloud Survey” surveyed 3,700 executives and decision-makers from 35 countries about their perspectives on the adoption and deployment of private […]
Business analytics is the top technology priority for CIOs at midmarket companies and organizations through the next five years, according to the results of an IBM survey of 3,000 chief information officers around the globe. The survey also found a 50 percent increase in the number of midsize organizations that plan to invest in cloud computing, compared to a similar study IBM did in 2009, and a big jump in the number of companies investing […]
Microsoft on Tuesday trumpeted the release to manufacturing of Windows Thin PC (WinTPC), software that lets organizations repurpose their older PCs as thin clients. Microsoft plans to make WinTPC available for public download on July 1. The WinTPC RTM doesn’t include much in the way of new features, only minor tweaks such as a keyboard filter that prevents the use of common Windows key combinations like Ctrl +Alt + Delete as a security measure. WinTPC […]
Avanade, a business technology services provider, recently released the results of a global survey which clearly reveals the rapid growth in the use of public cloud services. Now that cloud services are becoming more mainstream, it is causing growing pains for many companies. One in five executives surveyed admitted that it is close to impossible to manage the disparate cloud services within their organization. Close to 60 percent surveyed said that they are concerned about […]
Apple Inc yesterday announced the coming of its cloud based platform, aptly dubbed iCloud. According to news reports, the web service will synchronise and coordinate shared content across all devices – a key element being its ability to stream music; in other words an all-new iTunes. Following its hotly anticipated autumn launch, iCloud has the potential to revolutionise how music is acquired and distributed, offering a service to rival that of Google, Amazon, and Spotify […]
Ever since 2009 when NIST published its first definition of cloud computing there has been a promise of community clouds, and now we finally have a second one in the financial services market, thanks to NYSE Technologies. The IT arm of NYSE Euronext announced beta of Capital Markets Community Platform, its cloud computing offering this week, and the effort, on the surface, is a good example for other vertical markets to follow. For years, financial […]
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a subculture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. As telephone networks have become computerised or based on VoIP, phreaking has become closely linked with computer hacking. But is VoIP hacking about to hurt businesses? Apr 11, Western Australia Police warned the state’s businesses to change passwords and cap international calls […]
Crummy cloud computing SLAs, assuming cloud computing is bad and you’ll lose all control in moving to the cloud, are among the mistakes companies should avoid making in cloud security, a security consultant said Wednesday at Cornerstones of Trust 2011. Eugene Schultz, chief technology officer at Emagined Security, a consulting firm based in San Carlos, Calif., ticked off a list of cloud mistakes at the one-day security conference held in Foster City, Calif. The annual […]
Capital Markets Community Platform aims to aggregate exchanges, broker dealers and buy-side participants. NYSE Euronext on Wednesday formally announced a cloud computing partnership with EMC Corp. and VMware Inc. intended to allow financial firms to rent computing power and access services through NYSE’s new data center. The new feature, dubbed Capital Markets Community Platform, aims to aggregate exchanges, broker dealers and buy-side participants through the fast-growing technology trend known as a cloud computing. This platform […]
Nearly one in 10 organizations in the U.S. estimated they store more than $10 million worth of data in the cloud. Semiconductor manufacturer AMD announced the results of a global research study on adoption, attitudes and approaches to cloud computing, surveying IT decision makers in public and private sector organizations across the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The findings revealed global and regional trends in cloud computing adoption and usage, highlighting the importance of both […]
Despite their concerns about cloud computing security, cloud computing users aren’t taking all the steps they can to secure cloud computing, according to a recent survey of 1,200 IT pros in the U.S. The survey by CDW LLC, a national IT solution provider based in Vernon Hills, Ill., polled IT pros from a variety of industries on their companies’ use of cloud computing and found that 28% are using cloud services today. Security continues to […]
Two recent events reminded us this spring that cloud computing infrastructures are vulnerable to the same genetic IT flaw that plagues traditional data center operations: everything fails, sooner or later. The failure modes of cloud vs. traditional data center architectures may differ in nature and frequency, but the threat is the same – outages, downtime, lost revenues and damaged customer trust. Ironically, these same recent events also highlight how cloud infrastructures, when managed correctly, actually […]
Nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of small businesses surveyed by Newtek Business Services said they have never heard of cloud computing, underlining a fundamental lack of knowledge about the technology. Based on a poll of approximately 1,800 respondents, the survey found only 26 percent of those who had heard of cloud computing could describe what it was. Seventy-one percent of respondents acknowledged they do not keep their critical business files and data backed up offsite—only 29 […]
Desktop virtualisation presents many technical choices but they could turn out to be the easy bit. Licensing the software is where it all gets difficult, especially when the software is Microsoft Windows. The problem is that Windows licensing is based on the assumption that you install software on hardware, but virtualisation abstracts the hardware away. “Microsoft does not sell a user licence for clients accessing or running Windows. Customers often want to license Windows based […]
Cloud computing will become the dominate architecture for IT, according to a Colt study. The survey of 500 CIOs across UK, France, Germany, Spain and Benelux highlights that, while few businesses in Europe have company-wide implementations of cloud computing to date (16%), many believe the cloud will be their most significant IT operating method by 2014 (60%). The biggest challenge adopting cloud computing is ease of transition (58%). Quality assurance (55%), cost justification (55%) and […]