A recent survey by communications and enterprise IT service provider Tata Communications found that enterprise organizations with more than 500 employees saw tangible benefits to their cloud computing efforts. The survey results included 85 percent of the respondents saying that the cloud had lived up to the industry hype, while 23 percent said it had exceeded their expectations. According to the global survey, 83 percent of the enterprises felt they had experienced benefits they didn’t […]
deployment
21 posts
The use of public cloud platforms as a deployment option for applications is often talked about in black and white terms such as ‘do we deploy to the cloud or keep the application on-premise?’ This is misleading, as many businesses assess the suitability of public cloud only for the most appropriate use cases and often this will be for supplementary resources. The cloud journey will take them to a pragmatic balance between the use of […]
Just as virtualisation has transformed data centre operations, the emergence of cloud computing represents a significant shift in the way IT operates applications today. Up until now, IT ops teams have been driven by a server-centric operations model, where the application itself played a secondary role. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is an application-centric operations model. As applications get more distributed, virtualised and pushed into the cloud, application developers and architects are faced with […]
Organizations are widely migrating to the cloud to gain competitive advantages around speed, agility and flexibility according to Symantec Corp’s recent Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 Survey. In fact, more than 90 percent of all organizations are at least discussing cloud, up from 75 percent a year ago. Other key survey findings showed enterprises and SMBs are experiencing escalating costs tied to rogue cloud use, complex backup and recovery, and inefficient cloud storage. […]
Enterprises are beginning to change their buying behaviors based on the deployment speed, economics and customization that cloud-based technologies provide. Gartner cautions however that enterprises are far from abandoning their on-premise models and applications entirely for the cloud. Based on an analysis of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2012, the best results are being attained by enterprises that focus on a very specific strategy and look to cloud-based technologies to accelerate their performance. […]
As the role of cloud computing is growing significantly in its ability to deliver business applications, many IT decision makers are facing challenges with their existing network infrastructure to support the migration of their business applications to the cloud. An international study by Cisco revealed that without the proper cloud migration strategy, more than one third (38 percent) of IT decision makers would rather get a root canal, dig a ditch, or do their own […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Using the OSI network layer model as a basis, here’s how to derive a simplified three-layer model for SIP-based VoIP and corresponding threats and defenses. The resurgence of interest in VoIP to provide telephone services worldwide is often credited to the use of session initiation protocol (SIP) for signaling. Both residential and enterprise VoIP services are widely deployed. IP telephony may be used either to replace the primary telephone service or to provide additional telephone […]
If potential cost savings are driving your desktop virtualization decision, beware the ROI killer: Over-provisioning. Over-provisioning is a nice way of saying you’re throwing money away. That could happen in a variety of forms, such as buying infrastructure that it better suited for a much larger company, planning for growth that doesn’t happen, or not doing your homework on what other technology you’ll need to support virtualization. But fear of wasteful spending shouldn’t stop you […]
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 […]
As with any new exciting technology, companies commonly look towards creating a “strategy” around the movement in order to ensure their investments achieve the greatest ROI. In the 1990s, it was all about how companies needed a “Linux” strategy; the last decade has been dominated with companies needing a “virtualization” strategy; and the trend I’m seeing today is everyone talking about needing a “cloud computing” strategy. While this new saying is good news for large […]
A quarter of enterprise are using or planning to use tablet computers, according to a report from Forrester which surveyed over 2,000 executives across Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US. However, devices brought into the enterprise by staff are unlikely to be well catered for, as Forrester found that just two per cent support random or rogue devices, while 17 per cent are already trialling their own choice of model. This is likely […]
More and more companies are moving from traditional servers to virtual servers in the cloud, and many new service-based deployments are starting in the cloud. However, despite the overwhelming popularity of the cloud here, deployments in the cloud look a lot like deployments on traditional servers. Companies are not changing their systems architecture to take advantage of some of the unique aspects of being in the cloud. The key difference between remotely-hosted, virtualized, on-demand-by-API servers […]
Earlier this year, the Wikibon community held a Peer Incite to discuss the realities of Desktop Virtualization. What we found was that while desktop virtualization is seeing significant growth, it tends to be strongest in certain vertical niches and the ecosystem is highly fragmented. As Michael Keen of Lakeside Software says, one of the biggest challenges is mapping out a customer’s environment and finding the places where Here Be Dragons which can be the downfall […]
Top Tips For Decision-Making & Deployment If your small business is considering adopting cloud computing, you’re not alone. A recent survey of 1,000 small to midsized businesses by researchers at MarketBridge found that 44% of respondents had already deployed at least one cloud-based application. In addition, more than 70% of those surveyed planned to move at least one new application to the cloud within six months. Why are smaller companies so attracted to cloud computing? […]
Where does a 500-million-dollar, mid-sized company go to implement cloud computing? Where should they begin? How should a company phase its deployment in order to reduce risks? First, let’s focus on a global law firm. Most law firms have similar business applications, so a public cloud provider could address this niche for law firms around the globe. What should they outsource first? I’ll outline five deployment phases related to risk and information security. The five […]
Security takes precedence over financial return Companies are still wary about the security aspect of cloud computing and want more reassurance before investing in the technology. That’s according to new research from SunGard which found that only 15 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) would be happy to entrust their company’s data to cloud providers. To no great surprise, financial accounting systems were the applications that CFOs were most reluctant to see despatched to the […]
A lack of proper understanding appears to be dissuading many small businesses from investing in cloud computing, it has been reported. According to Clodagh Murphy, director at Eclipse, it is not so much cost issues which put off such enterprises – rather the apparent complexity of the technology. She said that cloud computing must be explained to business owners in plain English which they can fully understand. Ms Murphy added that when embracing the cloud, […]
Excellent article on the way forward in cloud computing from here. Probably the biggest inhibitor to adoption is the human factor. Cloud will displace skill sets within the IT organization and force a fusion of functions. We have seen this evolution happen with the adoption of virtualization, and IT organizations will continue to evolve with increased cloud adoption. Cloud computing will eventually just be considered a part of the IT department’s general plans for technological […]