WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, July 27, 2012

Experts don't often agree, especially in IT, but when it comes to cloud security it appears some finally do. Is cloud computing secure? It depends, is the answer. It is also the reason why the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), an organisation that counts BMW, Deutsche Bank, Disney and National Australia Bank as members, is still attempting to end ambiguity and define cloud security stardards for businesses. An assurance model proposed by the ODCA a year ago, is still under revision, after a proof-of-concept threw up more questions than it answered. "The biggest problem with the cloud is that you cannot get a consistent definition of what is secure," said Matt Lowth, National Australia Bank's principal security architect. "And if I can't get the same answer from three different vendors, how do I know what secure is?"

Photo: Hector Casanova

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Cloud computing journey starts with the data centre

In a special series, Fairfax Business Media Asia will be previewing speakers from the CIO Summit 2012. The debate on cloud computing should not be about private or public clouds but on the data centre, according to Raju Chellam, cloud practice head, Dell South Asia & Korea. And the key questions are about merging legacy systems with new infrastructure and "migrating apps without migraine," said Chellam. He shares with CIO Asia why the answers lie within the data centre.

Who Ultimately Pays for Cloud Computing? It Depends

When the department or user group of a company decides it wants to use a cloud-borne service, who ponies up with the money for the service? In the case of outside services from a providers such as Amazon Web Services or Salesforce.com, there may be discretionary funds within a line of business that are transferred via credit-card transaction. If there’s an internal service within a private cloud, well, the question of who pays gets cloudy as well. How much should the owner of a service carry the costs of design, maintenance, server provisioning and upgrades if other departments are tapping into said service?

Cloud Computing: Deploying Open-Source Cloud Systems

Open-source cloud frameworks have made a major splash in recent months with big players such as Rackspace/NASA, Hewlett-Packard, VMware and Citrix backing major open-source cloud initiatives like OpenStack and CloudStack. As these major vendors continue to build out their public cloud infrastructure to battle with the incumbent services leader, Amazon Web Services, there are some underlying questions about whether the same technologies are ready for the enterprise. After all, open-source cloud system deployments are only a few years old, without a lot of use cases in production at this time. Although a number of first-mover-type enterprises—such as telecoms, financial services providers, scientific laboratories and media companies—are already comfortable with the alternative open-source cloud systems, not many smaller and midrange companies know much about them

Cloud computing improves business

A growing number of Marlborough businesses are adapting to use cloud-based services says Blenheim IT consultant Lee Harper. Harper is the managing director of Blenheim IT consulting firm pcMedia, who for the past two years has been working on cloud computing projects for businesses around the country and gaining a reputation as industry leaders, he said. He has been invited to speak at the Lawlink conference held in Wellington in September, to give businesses in the legal sector ideas of how cloud computing can improve business and cut costs.

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.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, July 20, 2012

According to Gartner’s latest quarterly IT spending report, the worldwide market for public cloud services hit $91 billion in 2011 and is expected to increase by 19% to $109 billion in 2012. Ed Anderson, Gartner cloud forecaster further predicts cloud computing to grow by over 100% to be a $207 billion industry by 2016. In comparison the overall global IT market is forecast to grow at just 3%.

The enormity of the challenge this poses to legacy hardware and software vendors is yet to be known, all we know for sure is that these vendors are going to have to innovate fast to stay in the game.

In an earlier report, Gartner revealed that cloud computing would create 14 million worldwide jobs - fuelling the cloud phenomenon and sparking new interest from multinational enterprises. Anderson further predicts that the cloud will create new IT spending opportunities in the long term. Areas expected to grow with substance are: integration, customization, hybrid cloud and on-premise cloud installations.



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Cloud vendors use disclaimers to waive liability

The European Commission wants cloud computing firms to improve contracts they offer customers in a drive aimed at averting costly legal disputes, allaying privacy concerns and boosting an industry which can offer huge savings to users. Buying computer hardware can be a drain for new and small companies, and huge savings can be made adopting 'cloud' storage -- using networks to connect remotely to servers elsewhere, possibly in a different continent. But security and data privacy is a major concern, the EC said in a policy paper intended to encourage the technology.

Cloud computing is not IT's enemy

Once again, IT is going away or becoming less important or being relegated to nonstrategic support responsibilities or something. We've heard this tune for decades. It might really happen this time, though -- a consequence not of the cloud or BYOD or any of the usual suspects, but of so many companies being seriously sick. It's probably true that CIOs have to take IT to the next level or have it fall to a lower one. What is the next level? To recap from last week's Advice Line on the subject, next-gen IT collaborates, widely and deeply, with everyone else in the enterprise. That, in turn, can't happen without a company that (1) does something that matters, (2) has executives, managers, and employees who are committed to making it happen, and (3) has enough mutual trust throughout that whoever needs to collaborate right now can do so without any concerns about the political consequences.

Fastest-Growing Category of Cloud Computing: Business Intelligence and Analytics

Will the cloud push business intelligence and analytics to a whole new level? Since cloud-based services can support massive amounts of data and provide it in a consistent manner across enterprises, there’s reason to believe that even the most technology-averse organizations will have a way to compete on analytics, just as the big players do.

The Business Case for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has generated significant hype in Africa. But with IT vendors pushing the technology case, few companies have taken the time to look at the value it can offer from a business perspective, says Frank Rizzo, partner in Advisory at KPMG.

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.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, July 13, 2012

As an event that happens only once every four years, in a different location every time, which needs a huge computing infrastructure and generates a huge peaks of data, the Olympic Games would seem to be a perfect fit for cloud computing. And in future it might be — just not yet.

While cloud computing will not be used as part of the IT infrastructure in London, the CIO of the London Games expects it will in the future.

Image credit: Charles McLellan/ZDNet

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DoD releases cloud computing strategy

The Defense Department will expand its use of cloud computing through a four-step plan, which includes incentivizing DoD components to use shared cloud services and training acquisition professionals to procure cloud technologies.

DoD’s Cloud Computing Strategy released Wednesday outlines a phased approach for adopting both commercial and government-provided cloud solutions. According to the strategy, DoD will:

- Foster adoption of department wide cloud services through an outreach campaign to increase the number of cloud consumers and providers.

- Optimize data center consolidation by eliminating duplicative software and providing information technology services, hosted in the data centers, in a standard way.

- Incorporate cloud hardware and software into select DoD data centers.

- Deliver cloud services via DoD components, vendors or other agencies.

Cloud computing moves from fad to foundation

Despite some setbacks, such as the recent Amazon Web Services outages, cloud computing is beginning to cross from the experimental phase to production systems that businesses can rely on. This has not been an overnight occurrence: Enterprises have been quietly getting smart about cloud computing technology and applying it where appropriate. Despite years of cloud hype by vendors, you rarely hear about enterprise successes. That's because when enterprises make cloud computing work, they view the application of the technology as a trade secret of sorts, so there are no press releases or white papers. Indeed, if you see one presentation around a successful cloud computing case study, you can bet you're not hearing about 100 more.

Govt. agencies need to have policy for cloud computing

As more firms in India embrace cloud computing, there is an increasing need to have a dedicated policy for defining the standards for procurement and usage of the technology, especially by government agencies, says a report by industry body CII. Cloud computing allows storage of data and access to software on a pay-per-use model, helping companies to cut costs as they do not have to invest in infrastructure.

The Economic Impact of Cloud Computing

As the presidential campaign gets into full swing in advance of the November election, there’s obviously a lot of focus on the employment outlook. While the accuracy of the numbers that the Department of Labor posts are dubious at best, there’s no doubt that the employment picture could be better. A lot of factors go into determining what the employment picture actually winds up being. But one factor that a lot of folks don’t seem to be appreciating is the role IT and cloud computing are about to play in reshaping in the economy.

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.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, July 06, 2012

Despite the hype, cloud computing is still a tiny proportion of overall IT spending, although it is likely to grow fast. According to analysts TechMarketView, the UK market for cloud computing reached £1.2bn in 2011, 38 percent higher than the previous year. The analysts expect cloud-computing revenues to grow by 35 percent each year to reach £3.9bn by 2015. That sounds like a lot of money, until you realise this means that cloud accounted for a mere two percent of the UK software and IT services market in 2011. Rapid growth will see cloud build to nine percent of the market in 2015, however.



Enterprise spending on cloud is still a tiny fraction of overall tech spending. But it will grow fast over the next few years, according to a new report. Read more

Cloud computing blasts off ... finally

The "cloud" is essentially computer servers sitting in data centres around the world, holding and processing all the data from these devices on demand. The term cloud computing refers to computer resources that can be turned on or off and scaled up or down, depending on demand. It is increasingly used by businesses to supplement or replace their on-site computing facilities.

Healthcare Cloud Computing (Clinical, EMR, SaaS, Private, Public, Hybrid) Market - Global Trends, Challenges, Opportunities & Forecasts (2012 - 2017)

Technologies in the healthcare IT industry are converging with time and are far outpacing the legacy systems used by hospitals and healthcare providers. Pronouncements by various countries such as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) laid down by the U.S. government are encouraging businesses in the healthcare industry to utilize certain applications of electronic records. Recently, cloud technology has started replacing these legacy systems and offers easier and faster access to this data as defined by the way it is stored i.e. public, private or hybrid.

Data protection chief issues cloud computing rules

THE DATA Protection Commissioner has issued new guidelines aimed at companies who wish to use cloud computing services. The use of cloud services – which are usually delivered by a third party on an on-demand basis – creates data protection issues if companies use cloud computing to manage or hold personal data for which they are responsible. Although the Data Protection Commissioner’s guidelines make clear that the cloud can be used to store or handle personal data within data protection law, some steps must be followed by companies wishing to do so.

Cloud Computing: Companies Worry about Unexpected Costs and Fees

A major benefit of using the cloud is the potential for big cost savings. On-demand services provide exceptional value for use cases that requires periodic use of computing resources. Estimating the costs of cloud computing can be tricky. Just because you’re using the cloud doesn’t mean that you’ll be saving money over other ways to do the same thing. Use cases, for example, that require cloud machines to be kept running 24×7 show less of a cost benefit and actually may be more expensive than using on-premise or other dedicated hosting options. It’s also important to be able to match the right cloud service to the task at hand. Estimating the type and number of servers needed to perform a service or run an application can be complex.

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.