Filed in Cloud computing | Government | International Politics | Politics
I’m for protecting IP rights when it is done right. However, allowing everyone to be cast offline because one person is in violation of infringement is far too high a price to pay. Especially, when those seeking protection have ample means to stop offenders with current policy.
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Filed in Cloud computing | Management | Transparency
Mike Vizard, talks with Kent Christensen of Datalink about Cloud Sprawl and what companies can do about it. Christensen’s recommendation is to start with a private cloud.
One of the issues that many IT organizations are soon going to find themselves dealing with is “cloud sprawl.” Because it’s relatively easy to set up an account with any number of cloud computing service providers, IT organizations may soon find themselves managing application workloads across many different services.
At the same time, those organizations are just as likely to have an instance of private cloud computing under development, which may be running on premise or in a third-party data center. Continue Reading
Article source: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/vizard/gaining-control-over-cloud-sprawl/?cs=49139
Filed in Cloud computing | Transparency
Stating that IBM is now a services company, Warren Buffet has made his first investment in a computer manufacturer or what many may still call a technology company. Richard Waters of FT believe it is brand and a bet on the changing landscape of where computing power is located.
Warren Buffett has famously steered clear of the tech sector on the grounds that he is ill-equipped to assess the periodic disruptions that sweep through the industry. Yet with the $10.7bn bet he has just placed on IBM, he has stepped into the middle of the biggest disruption since the emergence of the PC.
The rise of cloud computing is exactly the sort of secular tech shift that has kept the Sage of Omaha on the sidelines in the past. That he has invested regardless is a testament to the fortress IBM has constructed around its business. It also represents a bet that the cloud disruption will be different, and that old names like IBM are in a position to manage this one to their advantage.
Article source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fd27b166-106b-11e1-8298-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=50df1d0c-9e54-11df-a5a4-00144feab49a.html
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
According to Bruce Hoard more and more x86 workloads are returning to the big box. And with good reason. In his Mainframe Clouds Roll In article, Hoard talks about the factors that make mainframes great hardware for the cloud. From their time-sharing beginnings, mainframes were built from the ground up to perform work for different groups and purposes.
Article source: http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2011/11/01/mainframe-clouds-roll-in.aspx
Filed in Cloud computing | Sustainability
(MENAFN – Jordan Times) More than 1,500 IT professionals and experts will convene in the capital next month to explore the latest innovations in cloud computing technology at the 2011 Microsoft Open Day. The two-day event, which starts November 1, provides an opportunity to showcase advanced innovations and IT business solutions and exchange views on these issues, Husni Khuffash, Microsoft Jordan country manager, told reporters yesterday. “At this year’s conference, the main focus is the private cloud, which gives companies the control to manage their IT across physical and virtual server environments,” he said. Several “unique and innovative” Jordanian projects in the field of IT will be displayed at the event, Khuffash elaborated. Explaining the importance of cloud computing, he said: “It can help cut costs. Adopting cloud computing enables companies, regardless of their size, to use the latest advanced technologies and solutions as the cloud is always up to date.” Umniah CEO Ihab Hinnawi agreed. “Cloud computing is the future. It is inevitable. Companies that do not use cloud computing will not be able to compete,” he said at the press conference. “Companies that are late in making the decision to use cloud computing will be lagging behind and that will affect their competitiveness,” Hinnawi added. Umniah’s cloud computing case study will be showcased at the open day.
Article source: http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093452848&src=RSS
Filed in Cloud computing
By Andrew Milroy, Computerworld
In earlier posts, I have written about how the term, private cloud, offers little value and is arguably a term that is used by legacy IT suppliers to exploit concerns about their customers migrating computing resources to the (public) cloud. Is the private cloud simply a data centre with lipstick? In other words, is it a virtualised data centre that has many of the characteristics of a (public) cloud?
Many people in the industry believe that arguing about public and private cloud definitions offers little value and fail to focus on the huge changes taking place in the way people implement, operate and use technology.
I disagree. Continue Reading
Article source: http://www.computerworld.com.sg/tech/cloud-computing/blog-cloud-computing--why-semantics-matter/
Filed in Cloud computing
ORLANDO — In Gartner’s list of the top 10 trends in IT infrastructure and operations are multiple threats and opportunities for data center operations.
Among the threats is the exodus of baby boomers and the emergence of a younger generation that’s been less loyal to corporate employers and are more likely to move to another job.
Designing a job structure that ensures IT skills and corporate knowledge can survive the workforce transition is but one important challenge for companies, according to David Cappuccio, a Gartner analyst.
Gartner’s Top 10 list of IT infrastructure and operations trends, presented today at the research firm’s annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo here, follows:
One : Virtualization continues to expand in the enterprise from servers to desktops. “You do not do desktop virtualization to save money, because you’re not going to,” Cappuccio said. “You are going to spend more money on your infrastructure,” in the form of larger servers, VM licenses, while also continuing to pay for desktop licenses. “But what you gain is total control of the environment.”
Two : Big data, patterns and analytics. Data will grow by 800% in five years, with 80% of it unstructured. Part of that is the trend called “the collective,” which includes data from groups and communities and social networks outside the business. “Mining the collective has become a very common thing to do, and it’s a great way to understand what your marketplace looks like,” said Cappuccio.
Article source: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/telecommunications/gartners-top-10-it-challenges-include-exiting-baby-boomers-big-data
Filed in Cloud computing
Google has lost its appeal to keep a potentially damaging email away from the jury in the company’s legal fight with Oracle over Java.
Judge William Alsup, who is hearing the case, on Thursday upheld an earlier ruling that the email should remain part of the court record. The email, written by a Google engineer, suggests that Google knew it needed a license to use Oracle’s Java technology in Android.
Oracle accuses Google of infringing its Java patents and copyrights in the Dalvik virtual machine software in Android. Oracle took control of Java when it bought Sun Microsystems last year.
“What we’ve actually been asked to do (by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome,” says the email, from Google engineer Tim Lindholm. “We’ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.”
Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/242272/judge_refuses_to_exclude_troublesome_google_email.html
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
As storage customers look for a way off the spinning disk merry-go-round, SSDs have become the hottest gadgets in the enterprise. But a team of computer scientists at Stanford University think they can do even better. The researchers have come up with a scalable, high performance storage approach dubbed RAMCloud — RAM because it stores all the data in DRAM, and cloud because it can aggregate the memory resources of a whole datacenter.
Article source: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2011-10-20/ramcloud:_when_disks_and_flash_memory_are_just_too_slow.html
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
When carriers and Internet companies go looking for business partners, sometimes they need look no further than the cabinets sitting beside them in the data center. This potential is seen in the Internet itself, which is made possible by physical linkages between networks. But it’s hard to form a business relationships in a neighborhood where the other residents may be anonymous to you.
Article source: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/10/24/equinix-marketplace-seeks-to-connect-customers/
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
NYSE Technologies has launched a cloud. And it looks nothing like this (Photo: karindalziel/Flickr)
“We created a hybrid,” says NYSE Technologies CEO Stanley Young. “It’s a cross between the public cloud and the private cloud.”
Article source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/vmware_cloud/
Filed in Cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing provides the IT infrastructure and environment to develop/host/run services and applications on demand, with pay-as-you-go pricing, as a resilient service. It also provides resources to store data. The services can in turn be scaled up and down to meet a customer’s variable operational needs, ensuring maximum cost efficiency.
There are three primary cloud service delivery models: Continue Reading
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/cloud-technology/cloud-computing-terms-jargon-buster?newsfeed=true
Filed in Cloud computing | Education | Technology
[Summary of tips] Singapore Polytechnic (SP) has introduced the Singapore Polytechnic Electrical and Electronic Engineering Cloud Computing Center (SPE3C3) that will deliver modern cloud computing education and training in an operational data center environment. SP has worked with Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc. and NetApp Inc. to offer ……
1 • 2 
Article source: http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800653350_499486_NT_ac439944.HTM?partnerref=nav_box
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
(Source: Datamonitor)
The Silk browser software resides both on Kindle Fire and on the server fleet that comprises the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). With each page request, Silk determines a division of labor between the mobile hardware and Amazon EC2 (i.e. which browser sub-components run where) that takes into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content. The result is a web browsing experience, and it’s available on Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new Kindle for movies, music, books, magazines, apps, games, and web browsing.
Article source: http://www.istockanalyst.com/finance/story/5448460/amazon-introduces-split-browser-architecture
Filed in Cloud computing | Government | Technology
Cities see loss of sales taxes as companies subscribe to cloud computing services and begin asking states to change tax rules.
Cloud computing is one of those disruptive shifts in technology that has Silicon Valley giddy with excitement. Just don’t expect to find local governments among those cheering this revolution.
Thanks to California’s hopelessly outdated sales tax rules, the move to delivering technology through the Web — the essence of cloud computing — is eroding the sales taxes that towns depend on to fund everything from police to parks. And as cloud computing extends its reach, it promises to further squeeze the budgets of towns that have already been pinching pennies for years.
Article source: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/business/ci_18905836
Filed in Cloud computing | Economy | Technology
With all the words written about cloud computing this year, one wonders why Rob Livingstone wrote a book on the topic, with the title Navigating through the cloud.
Essentially, Livingstone says it’s because he could not buy a book that allows individuals and organisations alike to make an objective and well-informed assessment of the value of the cloud. The book is a plain English guide to surviving the risks, costs and governance pitfalls of cloud computing.
Article source: http://www.voiceanddata.com.au/articles/49195-Small-business-latches-onto-cloud-computing
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
Cloud computing technology will be the main driver of manufacturing IT
productivity in the coming decade, a new report from IDC Manufacturing Insights claims. And
manufacturers appear to be well on their way, adopting cloud computing technology slightly faster
than other industries: 23% are already running cloud technology and another 44% are implementing it or have firm plans.
Article source: http://searchmanufacturingerp.techtarget.com/news/2240082920/Study-shows-major-shift-to-cloud-computing-in-manufacturing
Filed in Cloud computing | Technology
(click image for larger view)
Amazon on Tuesday announced the release of cloud services aimed specifically at U.S. government users and contractors, joining a growing list of cloud service providers including Microsoft and Google that also have modified their cloud services to meet the unique needs of government.
According to Amazon, the new offering, Amazon Web Services GovCloud, will meet a host of strict regulatory requirements specific to government. It’s designed to meet moderate security control levels under the Federal Information Security Management Act and to meet FIPS 140-2, a federal cryptography standard.
In addition, Amazon says that GovCloud supports processing and storage of export-controlled, often defense-related, data and applications governed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), as it limits both logical and physical access to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The servers powering Amazon Web Services GovCloud will be physically located on the West Coast of the United States, giving customers further assurance that their data will stay in this country.
Clouds like Amazon’s GovCloud that meet government requirements will likely increase government adoption. “As we move workloads into the cloud, we look forward to leveraging ITAR-compliant clouds such as the new AWS GovCloud for our compliance-dependent projects so we can continue to look to the cloud first for even more missions,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory CTO Tomas Soderstrom said in a statement.
“Our government customers sometimes have an additional layer of regulatory requirements given that they at times deal with highly sensitive information, such as defense-related data,” Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said in a blog post. “GovCloud helps U.S. government agencies and contractors move more of their workloads to the cloud by implementing a number of government-specific regulatory requirements.”
While a number of AWS services will be available at launch in GovCloud, a few will not. Those available at launch include Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure-as-a-service, Simple Storage Service (S3) storage-as-a-service, Elastic Block Store, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Identity and Access Management, and CloudWatch monitoring service. Amazon is offering GovCloud through either a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme or on a year or multi-year term.
Amazon’s announcement dovetails with two government-wide strategies currently being pushed by the Obama administration’s tech team: the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, which aims to close 800 federal data centers by 2015; and the Cloud First policy, which requires that agencies analyze the possibility of using cloud computing as an alternative when justifying new IT investments.
Some government customers have been using Amazon Web Services even before the release of GovCloud. According to Amazon, more than 100 state, local, and federal agencies in the United States alone are using Amazon Web Services. Among those users are the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which powers the Recovery.gov stimulus-tracking website with AWS, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which uses AWS to process high-resolution imagery.
Over time, according to Amazon’s Vogels, the GovCloud concept will likely expand beyond the U.S. government and its contractors, as Vogels said Amazon is interested in determining whether similar offerings could meet other countries’ needs.
Join us for GovCloud 2011, a day-long event where IT professionals in federal, state, and local government will develop a deeper understanding of cloud options. Register now.
Article source: http://informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/231500093
Filed in Cloud computing
In the next 12 months, legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel will reap one of the biggest tech paydays in history.
The man famous for giving Facebook its first $US500,000 of seed funding retains a 3 per cent stake in the social media behemoth, which is currently valued at $US70 billion.
Right now, Thiel’s stake is worth about $US2.1 billion, but if the float goes as expected next year and Facebook hits the boards with a valuation of up to $US100 billion, the value of Thiel’s stake could rise to $US3 billion or higher.
But while Thiel remains a close confidant of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – and believes Facebook could be worth as much as $US150 billion – his tech interests spread well past Silicon Valley, even stretching Down Under.
No, not this Down Under. Thiel’s focus is the Down Under to the east of us: New Zealand.
Article source: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Peter-Thiel-Facebook-LinkedIn-PayPal-technology-Ne-pd20110722-JZ2A4?OpenDocument
Filed in Cloud computing
Amazon revolutionised the retail industry in the United States, and for several years has had a strong presence in Europe and Asia. Its market cap among retailers lags only behind Walmart. Jeff Bezos’ creation long ago moved beyond book sales and found success with the Kindle e-reader, meanwhile becoming the online shopping mall for thousands of retailers. More recently, it expanded into cloud computing services.
Despite its successes, the e-commerce giant has attracted criticism for a perceived lack of transparency of its carbon footprint. Amazon’s management prefers to avoid the debate, though its “Our Planet” portal points to a Scottish University study that suggests online shopping is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional shopping. The company also claims it has taken an aggressive approach to the reduction of packaging. Philips/Norelco, for example, changed its packaging based on Amazon’s customer feedback, and other companies have followed suit. Now at least 350 products from popular brands ship via Amazon in boxes made from recycled cardboard, without wire ties or clamshell packaging.
Despite these and other initiatives, Amazon does not disclose information on how it assesses or manages data related to climate change management. To that end, Calvert Investments, one of the largest sustainable and responsible investment firms in America, filed a shareholder proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year to address the issue. The proposal urges stockholders to vote yes on a resolution asking Amazon to disclose quantitative data related to its data centers, the Kindle, and business risks associated with climate change. In sum, Calvert Investments has asked Amazon to participate in the annual Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire, joining 4,700 companies that already do so. Amazon urged its shareholders to vote no on the proposal, and at its 7 June annual shareholders meeting announced that they had sided with Amazon’s management.
Expect the chorus against Amazon to grow louder. Greenpeace International claims that the company and its peer ICT companies will consume electricity at a 12% annual increase in the coming years because of its shift to cloud computing. Volatile energy prices and climate change could have a serious impact on the company’s bottom line. For now, however, Amazon has sniffed at climate change disclosure, saying that it does not believe that “preparing an ad hoc climate change report is an efficient use of time and resources.”
The company is content to leave sustainability issues up to its customers and suppliers, and its website points to consumer behavior as evidence that e-commerce makes “greener lives” easier. As far as logistics are concerned, any changes in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions are left up to couriers such as UPS. Amazon is keeping mum about who is responsible for its massive network of data centers, but assuming that a number of them are leased, any energy-efficiency or carbon-neutral initiatives would be the responsibility of those companies, not Amazon.
Amazon’s attitude towards carbon disclosure clearly stems from its business model. Most books the company ships are not technically part of its inventory; it does not manufacture the Kindle; unlike companies such as Walmart, it does not have its own trucking fleet; the millions of items for sale on Amazon are not on its balance sheet; and it leases, not owns, most of the space – 30 million square feet (2.8 million square meters) in total – necessary for its operations. Hence any concern over climate change is the prerogative of its suppliers and vendors.
Like any publicly owned company, however, Amazon’s loyalty is to its shareholders, even more so because of US corporate law. In a business culture where metrics mean everything, organisations such as Calvert Investments and CDP need to demonstrate how improved carbon disclosure and management can pay dividends for Amazon’s shareholder, not just demand it. Large companies such as Walmart sometimes make dramatic shifts towards sustainability on their own terms, and the same will be true of Amazon.
Leon Kaye is founder and editor of GreenGoPost.com
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Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/amazon-disclose-data-climate-carbon-footprint
Filed in Cloud computing
Amazon and SAP will collaborate to offer customers options and convenience when deploying and supporting SAP solutions in the cloud, said a press release. Continue Reading
Article source: http://www.ciol.com/Enterprise/Enterprise/News-Reports/SAP-Amazon-to-deliver-enterprise-soln-in-cloud/150112/0/
Filed in Cloud computing
Ernest de Leon was pleasantly surprised with the newly announced Cloud Foundry from VMware. Cloud Foundry is “a VMware-led project [that] is the world’s first open Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. Cloud Foundry provides a platform for building, deploying, and running cloud apps using Spring for Java developers, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby developers, Node.js and other JVM frameworks including Grails.”
de Leon found several compelling reasons to take a deep look at this offering.
Article source: http://www.sys-con.com/node/1795893
Filed in Cloud computing
Last week Facebook launched OpenCompute in collaboration with OpenStack with the goal of building energy efficient computing infrastructures at a low cost. Yesterday OpenStack announced the Cactus release which includes API extensions, improved features and support for enterprise technologies to enable larger scale cloud deployments. In a separate announcement, GigaSpaces in collaboration with Citrix released their PaaS/SaaS enablement platform to OpenStack.
In the same spirit as open source software, OpenCompute shares the data center and server specifications and drawings that Facebook developed in a year. These specifications are the basis of Facebook’s Prineville, Oregon data center that is 38% more efficient while costing 24% less in comparison with their other facilities. Here are some energy efficiency features of the Oregon data center:
- Facebook’s energy consumption per unit of computing power has declined by 38%.
- The new data center has a PUE of 1.07, well below the EPA-defined state-of-the-art industry average of 1.5. This means 93% of the energy from the grid makes it into every Open Compute server.
- We’ve removed centralized chillers, eliminated traditional inline UPS systems and removed a 480V to 208V transformation.
- Ethernet-powered LED lighting and passive cooling infrastructure reduce energy spent on running the facility.
While Jonathan Heiliger, VP of technical operations at Facebook said:
The ultimate goal of the Open Compute Project, however, is to spark a collaborative dialogue. We’re already talking with our peers about how we can work together on Open Compute Project technology. We want to recruit others to be part of this collaboration — and we invite you to join us in this mission to collectively develop the most efficient computing infrastructure possible.
Marco Arment, founder of Instapaper interpreted it as an attempt to attract engineering talent. At the launch, OpenStack announced its collaboration with Facebook to ensure that their stack can run on top of OpenCompute’s reference architectures.
OpenStack is making progress with their third major release: Cactus, 10 weeks after the Bexar release. Since Bexar, 4700 commits and 40 new features were added by developers at Canonical, Citrix, FathomDB, Grid Dynamics, NTT Group and Rackspace across three projects: OpenStack Compute(Nova), OpenStack Impage Registry and Delivery(Glance) and OpenStack Object Storage(Swift). Here is a set of features from a press release on talkincloud:
Taken directly from the official press release, here’s the new features that Cactus brings to each, starting with OpenStack Compute:
- Support for all major virtualization technologies, including Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, LXC, QEMU, UML, VMware vSphere, Xen and Citrix XenServer;
- Live Migration support for KVM, which enables users to move running virtual machines from one physical host to another;
- Enhanced network management features, including IPv6 support for flat networking, advanced network configuration and QoS management with XenServer;
- New OpenStack API 1.1 with support for extensions, which allow developers to innovate more quickly by adding extensions to their local OpenStack installations ahead of the code being accepted by the OpenStack community as a whole;
- Multi-cluster region support, which allows administrators to manage servers in clusters, and create fault zones and availability zones; and
- Support for enterprise storage solutions, including Solaris iSCSI and HP SAN.
New features in OpenStack Object Storage include:
- An enhanced authentication system;
- The ability to collect and serve data that enables integration of service provider billing solutions or internal chargebacks; and
- Static web serving for faster and easier access to content.
And the OpenStack Image Service gets a command line interface and image verification.
While OpenStack is focusing their efforts on the Infrastructure layer, GigaSpaces wants to:
extend the openness and flexibility of OpenStack to the application platform layer, enabling enterprise customers to choose a cost-effective cloud solution that will not only allow them to automatically scale to meet the demands of employees and customers, but also evolve with their business needs and ensure that they are not locked in to a long-term solution.
The solution, which is an integration between Citrix’s Open Cloud Solution(Citrix® NetScaler®, Citrix® XenServer®) and GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform(XAP), will provide the following benefits:
Openness: An enterprise-grade hybrid cloud stack solution that includes OpenStack-based IaaS and PaaS and is open to a wide variety of applications, including those based on Spring, Java, .Net, and other non-Java platforms.
Flexibility: Develop applications with a choice of application stacks (Tomcat, MySQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, Ruby, etc.) and handle provisioning, elasticity, multi-tenancy, continuous high availability, and monitoring of those services in a consistent way across the stack.
Integration: By leveraging the Citrix OpenCloud solution GigaSpaces will provide tighter integration between the platform and the infrastructure layers to up-level services offered through OpenStack clouds.
Scalability: Enterprisescan use GigaSpaces as the enterprise PaaS layer specifically geared for big-data analytics, e-commerce, and financial applications.
SaaS-Enablement: Ability for SaaS ISVs to SaaS-enable applications while delivering the same solution off- and on-premises.
The ability to switch to any cloud provider is achieved through an integration with the JClouds project that provides a common abstraction platform as depicted in the logical architectural diagram shared by Nati Shalom:
Nati in his blog post also talks about the enhanced platform driven monitoring features in this offering that handles failures and scaling automatically and provides a holistic view of the application and infrastructure to the Ops team.
Article source: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/04/opencompute-and-openstack
