Improvements in hardware, software, and networking have combined with the secular trend toward outsourcing to usher in the era of cloud computing. The economies of scale offered by remote data centers managed by third parties allow enterprises to offload or outsource some or all of their computing and storage workloads. Cloud adoption is particularly cost-effective for smaller and midsize users that lack the capital, manpower, or expertise to build and maintain their own data centers. […]
PaaS
For a concept that seems so surreal, cloud computing is surprisingly ubiquitous. It is almost impossible to surf the internet without interacting with it in one form or another. Webmail services such as Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail are a well-known example of cloud computing at work, as are streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube. You’ve probably bumped into the concept at your workplace in the form of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google Apps. […]
Frost & Sullivan, an IT analysis and consulting firm, predicts that the platform as a service market will be the next area of keen competition for cloud innovators, as the infrastructure- and software-as-a-service spaces have been commoditized. The platform-as-a-service space will be the next battleground for cloud service providers, as the infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service markets face commoditization, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan. Frost & Sullivan’s new “Asia-Pacific Platform as a Service Market […]
Platform as a service (PaaS) is a core layer of the cloud computing architecture, and its evolution will affect the future of most users and vendors in enterprise software markets, according to Gartner. “With large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing,” said Yefim Natis, vice president and […]
When you talk to a bona fide Cloud supplier they talk in the straight-forward, clear and non-technical way about the business benefits of Cloud computing. However, in the same way that two hundred jumbo jets landing safely at Heathrow is not news but one jumbo jet crashing is news, Cloud makes the headlines when it fails and for those who over-complicate it. Cloud computing provides organisations with an alternative way of obtaining IT services and […]
How does security apply to Cloud Computing? In this article, we address this question by listing the five top security challenges for Cloud Computing, and examine some of the solutions to ensure secure Cloud Computing. Organizations and enterprises are increasingly considering Cloud Computing to save money and to increase efficiency. However, while the benefits of Cloud Computing are clear, most organizations continue to be concerned about the associated security implications. Due to the shared nature […]
As an observer of the information technology and Internet industries for several decades, I watch with great amusement as new buzzwords surface for old IT concepts. I was rewarded not too long ago, when the term “cloud computing” appeared on the scene. The technology concept behind cloud computing has been around for more than 50 years, and the legal issues are equally old. Those concerns remain unchanged, despite the new buzzwords. Dartmouth Time-Sharing – 1964 […]
Before spacecraft are blasted off into space, the astronauts that travel in them, mission-control personnel, and other key staff undergo specialised education and training, launch procedures are verified and rehearsed, and policies are drawn up so that everyone is clear about their roles. Organisations wanting to move into the cloud computing space need to employ similar rigour. Although cloud service technology is easily available and is a potential business game-changer, it is best for enterprises […]
Cloud computing and SaaS have gained considerable momentum over the last few years. Although companies are adopting cloud and SaaS technology, there is great confusion over the applications in which cloud can serve an organization. Organizations are left with endless questions about security, infrastructure options, scalability, administration and business agility. While application programming interfaces (APIs) have improved from many vendors, going cloud does not eliminate the need for integration and/or middleware. Some smart platform-as-a-service (PaaS) […]
While some concerns remain about data security and application uptime, there’s significant movement within the retail industry toward cloud-based solutions that can be delivered on an on-demand basis, and it’s easy to see why. Unlike many other technologies that retailers have had to adapt to meet their business needs, it’s as if cloud computing was designed specifically with the cost-conscious, data-deluged retail enterprise in mind. For retail CIOs seeking a quick ROI payback from any […]
Meeting the requirements for cloud data security entails applying existing security techniques and following sound security practices. To be effective, cloud data security depends on more than simply applying appropriate countermeasures. Taken collectively, countermeasures must comprise a resilient mosaic that protects data at rest as well as data in motion. While the use of encryption is a key component for cloud security, even the most robust encryption is pointless if the keys are exposed or […]
If you came here for the article with the title, “How Cloud Computing Helps a Business Grow”, unfortunately, it has been removed at the request of the publisher of the website from which it was obtained. Asking me to remove it was within their rights, but I believe it was a shortsighted decision based on old media ideas about the copyright “protection” of assets and the imagined potential loss of ad revenue. I am not […]
Want to know if your organization has the right characteristics and culture to successfully adopt cloud computing? I recently ran across a new cloud computing study that might provide the answer. “Our approach was to try to look into the future and determine what capabilities and kinds of organizations are necessary for a successful migration to the cloud,” co-author Arun Sundararajan told me. Sundararajan (associate professor of Information, Operations and Management Services at the NYU […]
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 […]
Cloud computing (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) has already proved its value to some businesses and specific applications. It provides a way to deploy and access massive amounts of IT resources, on demand, in real time. It drives better utilization of data center resources, reducing capital expenditures and operating expenses. Most important, it provides the scalability and agility to adapt to changing business needs. However, challenges remain with the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing deployment model. For enterprises that have […]
The three dominant cloud computing models — Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) — are changing fast, as cloud providers reach up and down the stack to offer as close to a one-stop shop as possible. To understand how these cloud computing models are evolving and converging, it helps to know the history, said Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director of ThinkStrategies Inc., a consultancy in Wellesley, […]
High-performance computing (HPC) is no longer exclusive to large companies and governments with substantial scientific budgets. Why? The economics of HPC cloud computing bring these capabilities within reach of nearly any business. However, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals must realise that the level of ROI varies based on application design, behaviour and use case. Cloud economics let companies pay for capacity when and only when it is utilised, without requiring any upfront investment – essentially […]
2010 was the year “cloud computing” became colloquialized to just “cloud,” and everyone realized “cloud,” “SAAS” and all the other xAAS’s (PAAS, IAAS, DAAS) were all different implementations of the same idea — a set of computing services available online that can expand or contract according to need. Not all the confusion has been cleared up, of course. But seeing specific services offered by Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix, VMware and a host of other companies […]
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: […]
One would think that for something with so much activity around it and so talked about that there would be a concrete definition of what cloud computing is. Instead, depending on who you ask, everyone seems to have their own definition of what cloud computing means. CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA ) vice-president and country manager for Canada, Jimmy Fulton, summed it up best by saying “there hasn’t been a more ambiguous term in the IT […]
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 […]
Most companies now talk of adding cloud capabilities to their product and service offerings, and a number of companies, such as Google, now claim to be cloud-based. Such trend leads to network operators, as well as test equipment vendors, to decide if cloud computing presents them with any opportunities particularly in the enterprise and consumer areas. What is cloud computing anyway? According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is an Internet-based computing, where shared resources, software and […]