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18 posts

Broken blue ceramic plate, illustrating designing cloud architecture for failure

The Good News About Cloud Architecture: Everything Fails

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 […]

A smartphone with a blank white screen on a light grey background, illustrating stateless computing in the cloud

Stateless Computing to Become Core to Cloud Computing?

As companies glom onto cloud computing, stateless computing is likely to emerge as a core tenant within the cloud and one that can deliver cost savings, predicted the chief technology architect for Merrill Lynch. LinuxWorld But to get to the state of stateless computing, companies will need to change the way they view their hardware needs and how they store and access the information, said Jeffrey Birnbaum of Merrill Lynch, who served as a keynote […]

Person using black smartphone with gray and pink case, illustrating public cloud for mobile apps

Public Cloud Computing ‘Can Suit Growing Mobile Usage’

IT organisations are turning to public cloud computing services when they come to launch mobile applications designed for multiple devices. According to Mike Vizard, a columnist for IT Business Edge, there is a growing market for these apps, with the cloud being viewed by many as a good system for hosting them. “Because no one is actually sure how well or how popular a new mobile application is going to be, a lot of IT […]

River beside forest under bright sky, illustrating local cloud support in Alaska

Tech Hopes to Get Companies on ‘Cloud Computing’

Even a business operating in the clouds needs someone on the ground. In Alaska, Nate Gates is aiming to be what he called that “local throat to choke.” Gates founded Cloud 49 in July after four years as chief information officer for Chenga Corp., an Alaska Native village corporation, and his preliminary expectations have been exceeded as state companies explore and embrace cloud computing technology. “We thought it would be a slow road the first […]

Clear glass bottle with water, illustrating clarity about cloud migration

Be Clear about the Cloud

As the dominant IT paradigm continues to shift, companies need to manage critical components of the migration. Companies still face plenty of questions regarding cloud computing. Increasingly, however, the dominant question is not whether to do it, but how intensely. In fact, given the pace at which companies are offloading at least part of their IT infrastructure to public clouds (generally defined as third-party services that host computing workloads in multi-tenant data centers), those that […]

Clear glass ball on brown rock, illustrating cloud computing predictions for 2011

2011 Cloud Computing Predictions

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 cloud with lightning and rain coming out of it, illustrating Microsoft's cloud computing predictions

Microsoft Cloud Computing Predictions

Many companies may have e-mail, virus scanning or CRM running as a service over the internet, but most organizations are only just starting out when it comes to cloud computing, according to Microsoft. The software giant’s lists ways the nascent cloud market will change in the next few years. Cloud-centric hardware Servers, microprocessors and client devices will evolve as purpose-built systems to address the new paradigm of cloud computing. For example, diskless laptops that store […]