Small business (SME) are increasingly acknowledging the power of working in the cloud. At a time of ongoing economic uncertainty, cloud computing technology has the great benefit of being low-cost; easy to implement and use; flexible and scalable. Today, many of these businesses are actively developing their own cloud applications and tailoring them to their precise needs. Indeed, cloud-based application development is particularly well suited to the SME community for which time and resources are […]
cloud computing
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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 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 […]
UT Dallas researchers have released software tools intended to help make cloud computing the standard way much computing is done. Cloud computing is a model for providing on-demand Internet-based access to a shared pool of computing resources, including networks, storage and applications. It’s meant to make it as simple to obtain an array of electronic data resources as it is to get electricity itself. “In order to use electricity, we do not maintain electricity generators […]
The last blocks of IPv4 addresses were distributed in a widely viewed ceremony of sorts. While the distribution of these blocks to regional registries does not mean that there are no more IPv4 addresses available, it does point to a time when all addresses will be depleted. What does the prospect of the depletion of IPv4 addresses mean for organisations? Not much for those who already have blocks of addresses reserved for their use. But […]
Cloud computing,” the hot new engine of the global IT industry, is revving up the Dallas technology community. Market research firm Gartner anticipates that globally, cloud services will generate $148.7 billion in revenue by 2014, with U.S. companies grabbing a 50 percent share of that success. That’s more than double the $68.3 billion that’s projected for 2010. Enterprises hungry for flexible computing options and lower upfront information-technology costs are expected to flock to three growing […]
Selecting a cloud computing provider is becoming increasingly complex. As cloud environments mature, many cloud providers attempt to differentiate themselves by focusing on specific aspects of their offerings, such as technology stacks or service-level agreements (SLAs). In short, not all cloud providers are created equal. At the same time, enterprises are beginning to rely on cloud providers for hosting mission-critical applications, which raises the stakes for selecting the right cloud service. So how do organizations […]
With Congress in the mood to cut spending, the federal budget proposed by President Barack Obama relies heavily on cloud computing and data center consolidation to keep IT costs under control. The Obama administration’s 2012 federal budget proposal sets aside $79.5 billion for IT spending for fiscal 2012, which begins Oct. 1. This proposal would increase IT spending by 1.9% compared to fiscal 2010. The current fiscal year’s IT spending remains a work in progress […]
The year 2010 will probably be remembered at the year that cloud computing “shaped” itself into a tangible concept, at least amongst those of us who care. 2011, on the other hand, will likely be the year in which IT figures out how to actually use cloud concepts. Of course there are success stories dating back two or more years, but what is happening so far in 2011 is a growing body of businesses, data, […]