1. Business and financial skills The intersection of business and technology is always an overarching concern, but it is especially so when it comes to cloud-based computing. 2. Technical skills With the cloud, organizations can streamline their IT resources, offloading much of day-to-day systems and application management. But that doesn’t mean IT abdicates all responsibility. There’s a need for language skills to build applications that can run quickly on the Internet. 3. Enterprise architecture and […]
technology
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In his latest book, titled “Architecting the Cloud: Design Decisions for Cloud Computing Service Models,” Mike Kavis, a seasoned chief technology officer and IT architect, shows how cloud proponents can map out their cloud plans. Mike identifies the six key questions that are essential to cloud architectural planning: 1) Identify the problem statement (why): “The single most important question to answer,” Kavis observes. While cloud is a no-brainer for startups, more established enterprises need […]
The many benefits of cloud computing include helping enterprises become more efficient, agile, innovative and flexible, but achieving those benefits depends on a number of factors, including the involvement of the board of directors. ISACA, a nonprofit, independent association of more than 100,000 governance, risk, security and assurance professionals worldwide, has issued new guidance outlining key questions for boards of directors to ask to ensure their enterprise’s cloud initiative is in line with business objectives […]
SMBs that embrace Cloud computing and business websites are much more likely to enjoy rising revenue than others, according to accounting software provider, MYOB. The company’s March 2013 MYOB Business Monitor study, which was conducted by research firm Colmar Brunton and surveyed more than 1000 SMBs, found that the businesses that adopted Cloud technologies were twice as likely to see an earnings uplift in the past year. However, only 16 per cent indicated to use […]
The biggest challenges facing companies moving to cloud lie in the implementation of cloud technology. A survey by KPMG of 650 senior executives in 16 countries found that over a third said they had found costs related to implementation were higher than expected, while 31 percent indicated that the process of integrating existing IT architecture with new cloud services was creating challenges.
Today, it is no longer a question of when IT will align with business leaders, but how. That is the conclusion of a new report from Forrester Research, which describes the policies and procedures for implementing cloud computing in the corporate environment. These are required, according to Forrester, because the traditional model of IT management under the rigid control of the IT department has now become restrictive and outdated. Business managers want the power to […]
The CIO as we understand the role is under threat from Cloud Computing and ICT professionals need to start getting smart about their function. That was the stark warning from Oracle, a company whose conversion to the Cloud has taken time to go public. While once dismissed by CEO Larry Ellison as “just water vapour”, Cloud is now firmly on the Oracle road map as a top priority. Hence the appearance of John Abel, chief […]
The Business Software Alliance, which represents US companies such as Microsoft, ranked 24 countries that account for 80 per cent of the global ICT market based on seven policy categories that measure the countries’ preparedness to support the growth of cloud computing. Brazil finished last in the survey, earning only 35.1 points out of a possible 100 because of its policies in areas such free trade, security, data privacy and cybercrime. India – which has […]
Small businesses have the power to revive the nation’s economy; they just need the opportunity, technology and the right government policies to help them succeed, according to a report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation (CPPI) and the Digital Dialogue Forum (DDF). The report also notes small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and they are responsible for two-thirds of the 40 million jobs created in the country over the past 30 […]
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) […]
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 […]
The American dream is in peril from the confluence of sky rocketing deficits, high unemployment, and the ticking time bomb of an aging baby boomer generation, with its coincident increase in the burden of entitlements as a percentage of GDP. For the first time, the next generation of Americans, our grandchildren, risk having a lower standard of living than we enjoyed. It is not a problem that can be remedied with tax increases and budget […]
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 […]
For years we’ve heard cloud computing vendors pushing the message that cloud computing will reduce IT expenditure. It’s not a surprising tactic, as vendors often aim their pitches at the area most important to organizations: expenditure. But, as Knowledge Center analyst Ben Kepes discusses here, by focusing only on the cost side of the equation, we miss so much of what cloud computing can truly offer. I recently wrote a paper looking at the economics […]
Cloud computing has been making headlines and generating buzz for the past several years. Companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all placed big bets on public clouds, while traditional enterprise companies such as IBM, HP and EMC are pushing private clouds. The future may involve more than one cloud model, even for some of the largest and most staid corporations, but being able to juggle the advantages of each while minimizing risks such […]
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 […]
Cisco announced today the final installment of the Cisco® Connected World Report, an international study about the behavioral trends of workers in accessing information anywhere, with any device, and the ability of information technology (IT) professionals to address their needs. The latest results focus on data center, virtualization, and cloud computing trends, and evolving IT roles, in the context of increasingly mobile and distributed workforces. The study found that global IT professionals are creating new […]
A short summary of the benefits of the cloud for organizations from here. A key point is to pick a professional and fully redundant supplier. meshIP has redundant systems, data centers and fully backs up your data each day. ‘Cloud computing’ sounds like a complicated idea, but if you use Flickr to store your photos, or Hotmail to keep in touch with friends and family, or stream music over Spotify, then you are, in effect, […]
The New York Times has an interesting article about hybrid clouds: If you’re tackling your company’s computing needs, you’re going to have to get your head in the clouds. But which ones? You’ve likely heard of cloud computing – shared computing resources available over the “cloud,” or the Internet. But it turns out there’s more than one way to cloud. When most people talk about the cloud, they mean a public cloud — big server […]
Today Forbes had a great article on hosted voice: One of the virtues of Voice over Internet Protocol is that your business can have a sophisticated phone system without installing a phone system. With a VoIP system hosted on the Internet, all you need are the phones. One situation where this particularly makes sense is if you run a relatively small (or lean) business with lots of locations. Rather than have each office install its […]
According to a story in The Washington Post, the General Services Administration’s decision last week to move its e-mail program to a Web-based system modeled on Google’s popular Gmail program is part of a major government drive to increase federal use of cloud computing. The GSA is the first federal agency to make the Internet switch, and its decision follows the Office of Management and Budget’s declaration last month that the government is now operating […]
Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in cloud computing/SaaS, collaboration, business strategy and user-centric design recently issued a paper discussing the ten core benefits of cloud computing. This is one the best summaries that I have seen explaining why you should consider web-based software and cloud computing for your business. It nicely encapsulates the significant benefits small and mid-sized business can realize by adopting this approach to IT and telecom services. 1. Cost savings – cloud […]