What is cloud computing? The goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and ICT services without having to own and manage assets like servers yourself. Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted ICT services over the internet, and as such a consumer of these services needs nothing but a personal computer and internet access. They are usually described as being Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) […]
Cloud
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Cloud computing is an on-demand, integrated, configured, ready-to-use combination of compute, storage, network, platform and application software available as a standardized set of service offerings on a pay-as-you-use pricing model. Cloud computing is altering the IT service delivery by providing rapid service delivery – provisioning resources takes few minutes instead several weeks, on demand scaling – businesses can scale up or scale down resources based on needs instead of provisioning for peak demand, consolidation of […]
Cloud computing, defined as a subscription-based or pay-per-use service that in real time, and over the Internet, extends existing capabilities of Information Technology, remains at an early stage of conceptual development. Services do range from full scale applications such as accounting and storage to niche services such as spam filtering. Proponents of cloud computing contend that it erodes the requirements for major capital expenditures on IT infrastructure to customer applications. However, will cloud computing replace […]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded $4.9M to Galois, Inc., as research integrator for the PROCEED program (Programming Computation on Encrypted Data) whose goal is to make it feasible to execute programs on encrypted data without having to decrypt the data first. “If we are successful with PROCEED, it fundamentally changes the calculus for computations in untrusted environments… on computer systems of unknown provenance. The potential implications for the cybersecurity of cloud […]
In a troubled economy, cloud computing seems like a great cost saving alternative and it is. Whether in good times or bad, any pragmatic cost saving measure is a ‘good’ measure. Google, Microsoft, IBM and all other known and unknown cloud providers offer today’s CIO an array of major cost saving alternatives to the traditional data center and IT department. The temptation to put things on/in the cloud and sit back can be extremely compelling. […]
Software as a service (SaaS) is the oldest and most mature of all the cloud computing options and its adoption is continuing apace – in some areas of the business at least. According to analyst firm Gartner, the global SaaS sector grew by 14.1 per cent last year to $8.5bn. This higher than average growth rate in an otherwise difficult market meant penetration levels rose to a total of 10 per cent across all enterprise […]
An electronic, cloud-based approach to sharing radiology files with other medical institutions is expediting the care of UC San Diego Health System trauma patients. The method is currently being used to speed the diagnosis and treatment of patients sent to UC San Diego Medical Center-Hillcrest from remote area hospitals. “The efficiency and reliability of cloud computing is excellent,” said Dr. Jeanne Lee, trauma surgeon at UC San Diego Health System. “It is an advance in […]
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 […]
The expansion of cloud computing has led to significant growth in the virtualisation market, according to a report by IDC. In the latest Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualisation Tracker, IDC discovered that 19.4 per cent of all new servers shipped in the last quarter of 2010 were virtualised, up from 18.4 per cent for the same quarter a year ago. Some 398,617 virtualised servers were shipped in the final three months of 2010, with much of […]
In organizations’ mad rush to virtualize their IT infrastructure, some are running into unforeseen obstacles that cause them to put the brakes on virtualization deployments, sometimes indefinitely. This phenomenon, known as “virtualization stall,” has more to do with psychology than technology, but it could potentially erode confidence in virtualization and slow growth of cloud computing. According to solution providers, virtualization stall has several root causes: Some companies are unwilling or afraid to virtualize their tier […]