Friday, May 18, 2012

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, May 18, 2012

Are we there yet? Think of cloud computing as a continuum that stretches all the way from one-off projects — that is, companies simply moving some IT assets to the cloud to gain cost savings — all the way up to a game-changer that strategically leverages online resources to open up new markets or ways of doing business. Consider these 5 essential questions to ask to assess how far along you are on the journey to becoming a strategic cloud business:
  1. How service oriented are we? 
  2. Are we capable of managing a variety of clouds? 
  3. Do we have an information strategy? 
  4. Do we have a cloud governance strategy? 
  5. How is policy management across our clouds addressed? 

Photo: NASA













Read more to find out the answers to these questions.

Cloud computing slugs it out with legacy

Adoption of cloud computing has reached a tipping point - but don’t expect legacy systems to disappear for at least two more decades according to Paul Daugherty, chief technology architect of Accenture. Speaking at the SuiteWorld conference in San Francisco Mr Daugherty said that Accenture, which is a systems integration partner with NetSuite, has now completed 1,700 cloud projects. “We initially saw interest in solving very specific issues. Now there are broader roadmaps for cloud,” he said.

A new dawn for cloud computing

The knock on Amazon Web Services and other IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers is that they're not reliable enough for enterprise-class workloads. And even with recent price drops, it's cheaper over the long haul to buy and run your own infrastructure. I'm not going to attempt any in-depth cost comparisons since so much depends on the workloads in question and granular provider pricing for various sevices. But I'm pretty convinced that reliability concerns about cloud computing are going the way of cloud security worries: If you know what you're doing, in most cases the public cloud is probably at parity or better with the risk posed by your own infrastructure (ultrahardened, mission-critical workloads excepted).

Cloud Computing Key to Fighting Data Loss

Disaster recovery is a major stumbling block for businesses, but cloud computing technology can help, a CA survey suggests. The amount of data created and held by companies is increasing exponentially, and keeping it safe continues to be a major cause for concern. At the same time, cloud computing, rather than remaining a theoretical concept, is now a reality for many organizations. Data loss continues to be a huge problem for companies across North America that are looking to cloud-based platforms for a solution, according to a survey commissioned by CA Technologies, “Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud.”

Cloud Computing and Mobile Processing Saves Small Business

Cloud computing, put broadly, is a term used to describe any service available on the internet. More specifically, cloud computing refers to a hosting environment that leverages pooled computing resources by way of virtualization. Cloud computing takes existing physical servers and creates virtualized servers to exist on top of them. The virtual servers leverage the computing power of the entire infrastructure without necessarily being dependent on any given hardware. This makes the servers more powerful and more reliable.

We hope these short sum-ups on Cloud Computing are helping you to take a knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming week.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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