On Cloud Computing

Zenith is thrilled to partner with CompTIA to present an education-based program that will elevate IT service providers ability to gain entry into the Cloud and/or improve their Cloud computing business. The focus of the program is on educating attendees on setting business goals, developing effective marketing programs, enhancing the sales pitch and overall operations. In addition, attendees will be able to increase their knowledge by networking and sharing strategies with their peers.

Last year I read a whitepaper, titled The Economics of The Cloud,’stating that an old paradigm which replaced a new paradigm led to large scale changes in the car industry. According to article, when cars emerged in the early 20th century, they were initially called horseless carriages.’The first cars were the same as the carriages pulled by horses. And that was, in fact, what people called them: horseless-carriages, as seen in the photo to the left.

Since the prevailing paradigm referred to the horse and carriage together widely held for centuries in a society, there was difficulty in understanding such revolutionarily science coming with the new paradigm. Therefore, the engineers, in fact, could not imagine designing such a car more safe and comfortable than the existing models because of the dominant paradigm.

Gardner: Returning to the upcoming Capgemini white paper, it adds a sense of urgency at the end on how to get started. It suggests that you appoint a leader, but a leader first for the inside-out element of Cloud and transformation and then a second leader, a separate leader perhaps, for that outside-in or reflecting the business transformation and the opportunity for whats going on in the external business and markets. It also suggests a strategic road map that involves both business and technology, and then it suggests getting a pilot going.

Grgoire Tiers has successfully defended his master thesis about the impacts of Cloud computing on companies. The main question is whether Cloud computing can be considered as a ‘disruptive technology’. To explore this question, a grounded-theory approach has been adopted.

Yes, I believe that the information in that article is wrong, and I have that belief for the reason I wrote here. To summarize that post, if you are a smaller business with limited or no technology staff, you take a huge capex and opex hit buying some kind of enterprise software tool ‘ or you spend a monthly Opex expense and rent it online from the likes of Salesforce.com or Netsuite that can grow with you as you need it. Read more on On Cloud Computing

Each consumer has different needs, and finding the right kind of webhost can be a daunting task. You can get your very own space on the Internet through webhosting or co-location. There are several companies which offer web hosting services.

First off, most companies offer dedicated traditional hosting. With this type of web hosting, you rent an entire server exclusively for your own use. Cloud hosting is another type of web hosting which is slowly getting popularity nowadays. Cloud hosting involves an inter link of several server. The consumer is only charged for the amount of processing power he or she uses. This is why there’s an ongoing debate on which of the two types of web hosting is more cost efficient. Customers have to pay for the entire server in traditional hosting. Regardless of how much of the resources is used, you have to pay a fixed amount.

FG Cloud was formed following a request by leading CTOs to investigate the standardization landscape in the Cloud computing market and pursue standards to lead to further commoditization and interoperability of Clouds. The end goal is a Cloud computing ecosystem where interoperability facilitates secure information exchange across platforms. With its work now complete, FG Cloud, in operation since May 2010, has mapped this landscape, established official liaisons with other standards developers and, as one of its deliverables, produced a technical report providing the first comprehensive view of the end-to-end architecture of a Cloud computing system.

Reducing the cost of infrastructure and flexibility were the top two reasons for investing in cloud (67% and 54% of respondents respectively). Both drivers reflect the current economic climate and the fact that most IT departments are currently focused on meeting short-term goals. So theres scope to convince organisations of the long-term benefits that cloud can bring to a company.

Almost 40% of small and medium-size companies rated business continuity and disaster recovery (BC&DR) as a top-three driver, compared with just 15% of large companies reflecting the fact that its harder for smaller organisations to provide that capability in house.

According to a recent article in Nextgov, Pentagon leaders note in an increasingly online environment where defense computers are tied to the Cloud, the ability to have that environment locked down at a central location is of the utmost importance in securing the military’s information assets. Some of the departments cyber experts, the article notes, are expected to push for more layered controls of security for its hardware and software, such as requesting that data be encrypted in the Cloud. A Cloud vision among military leaders is of a common network infrastructure capable of spotting and blocking threats remotely for all technical assets.