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 […]
virtualisation
22 posts
Businesses will have to redesign their networks from the ground up if they hope to protect their data from next-generation hackers, according to McAfee president Michael DeCesare. DeCesare said business and high-tech companies will have to use a by-design strategy if they wish to remain ahead of the threats they face. He was speaking during a keynote at the McAfee Focus conference. “We have to figure out how to integrate security into [networks] from the […]
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 […]
The cloud seems to be a prickly, double edged sword at the moment. Well, that’s if Steve Wozniak’s predictions of doom are to be believed. His belief that the cloud will bring “a lot of horrible problems in the next five years” seems to be at odds with the view of enterprises whose rapid adoption of cloud computing is reflected in Gartner’s predictions of a 48% increase in cloud services this year alone. While this […]
In a bid to make virtualisation and cloud computing more palatable to enterprises which have a high concentration of mobile users, or are implementing a Bring your Own Device (BYOD) strategy, VMware has launched a fistful of new products and a public beta of a system that offers what it describes as “Dropbox for the enterprise”. The products available today and later this year bring to life the product roadmap that VMware outlined at its […]
Virtualisation is ideal for trying out a new operating system. Instead of installing the OS onto a live machine and potentially overwriting, or generally messing up a working OS, virtualisation leaves your current installation untouched. No worrying about a messed up MBR, freeing up space on your drives for a new partition or having to route around for drivers just to get back online. Virtualisation is a lot faster than it once was as well. […]
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 […]
Telefonica and Verizon will become the first operators to offer Android phones running VMware’s mobile hypervisor, the companies announced on Wednesday at the VMworld 2011 Europe conference in Copenhagen. VMware has previously said that Verizon would offer the service, without disclosing details about timing, but this is the first time Telefonica has said it plans to offer phones with the hypervisor. Users of phones with the VMware product will find two profiles on their devices: […]
It looks like the end for the PC. Unlike the Dinosaurs the PC will not just vanish from the face of the Earth – they will just stop being replaced and gradually die out to be spotted on the desks of die-hard antiquarians and IT folk who like to tinker with the insides of anything that can be opened. I can even date when this process began. It was the day, the 18th August to […]
Cloud Computing, which allows oganisations to share resources, software and applications, can bring radical change to public sector ICT services. Using the cloud will reduce costs and risks and bring scalability, and resilience. But many top managers believe the risks are too great. The author looks at the reality of Cloud Computing. It seems that board-level executives are not as keen as their IT professionals on the adoption of Cloud computing according to no less […]
The majority of large organisations are migrating internal virtual infrastructure to the cloud because they believe it will reduce costs, according to a recent survey. The survey finds that only 17 per cent of organisations achieved their utilisation and ROI goals with virtualisation and yet, they intend to use similar planning and management approaches for their move to the cloud. The survey interviewed 94 executives responsible for virtual and cloud infrastructure decisions at organisations with […]
The last 24 months have brought an explosion of new devices, Web applications and social-media platforms. Chief information officers (CIOs) are under pressure from other employees, including senior executives, to open corporate networks to consumer devices and allow access to more of the Web. This migration of consumer devices like smart phones and tablets into enterprise computing is making CIOs very nervous. The risks to data security are obvious and real, and the loss of […]
The global cloud computing market is expected to grow from $40.7 billion to $240 billion by 2020, a new report has predicted. According to a report released by market research firm Forrester Research, the market for cloud computing is set to grow by leaps and bounds as companies rush to move their networks onto cloud platforms. The Forrester report, titled Sizing the Cloud, takes into consideration three basic forms of cloud computing: Infrastructure as a […]
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 […]
There’s a reason few companies generate their own electricity. It makes a lot more sense to let a utility build the infrastructure and then share it across many customers. By using a common facility, we all benefit from greater reliability and flexibility at lower cost. The same reasoning applies to cloud computing. But can the suppliers deliver on the model? Here’s the current state of cloud supply: • The technology is pretty mature. Virtualisation has […]
IT decision makers from a range of public and private sector organisations ranked loss of control of data and where data is held as the top security concern. Despite economic pressure for business to cut costs and fervent assurances from cloud computing technology suppliers, security remains a top barrier to cloud adoption, research by the UK’s National Computing Centre (NCC) has revealed. Interest in cloud computing is high and many organisations say they are planning […]
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 […]
If you treat the cloud as a mere hardware weight-loss plan, you’ll soon find your datacentre piling back on the pounds. Cloud computing is not some voguish weight-loss programme. To get the most from it requires a transformation of the whole datacentre, not just individual applications, says Lori MacVittie. Consolidation and more efficient use of resources are behind many moves to the cloud. But for long-term success and control over costs, we need to view […]
IT professionals looking to place data in the Cloud should be aware of three major risks, including data leakage, the loss of visibility or control of the data, and unauthorised access to data, according to global services firm Ernst and Young. The firm’s senior manager, Pieter Danhieux, told attendees of IDC’s Cloud for Business Conference 2011 that while Cloud service providers are often talking about scalability, availability, cost reductions, efficiency and effectiveness, they had not […]
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 […]
If data is sitting in three jurisdictions, what laws apply to it? Dubai: Tighter budgets, less capital investment and fewer IT staff in the corporate world are expected to boost cloud computing storage demands past $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) per year in the Middle East in a third-party global storage market worth $68 billion annually. As the global number grows to $150 billion a year by 2014, some observers warn the amount of money saved […]
The industry reached a “virtual” tipping point in 2009 when, according to IDC, the number of newly installed virtual machines surpassed the number of newly installed physical servers. This inflection point is having a profound impact on how we manage, secure and provision IT resources. No doubt the network will look completely different in just a few years too, but here are five predictions for how virtualisation will change networking in 2011. 1. VLAN technology […]