WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, December 28, 2012

Retailers and marketers often face the challenge of getting coupons, offers and promotions delivered at the perfect time and in the right context to their customers. The rapid advances in cyber foraging, contextual computing and cloud computing platforms are succeeding at revolutionizing this aspect of the retail shopping experience. Context-aware advertising platforms and strategies can also provide precise audience and segment-based messaging directly to customers while they are in the store or retail outlet.



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Netflix disruption highlights challenges of cloud computing

For some on Christmas Eve, “White Christmas” was a blackout on Netflix.

That’s because problems with Amazon’s cloud computing service, which provides storage and computing power for all kinds of websites and services, caused Netflix to go down for much of the day.

In updates on a website that reports on the status of its online services, Amazon traced the trouble to Elastic Load Balancing, a part of its service that helps spread heavy traffic among multiple servers to prevent overload. The company gave few details about the problems in its data centre in Northern Virginia beyond this and did not offer an official statement or explanation.

The EU's Cloud Computing Initiative

The European Commission, in its communication titled "Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe," recently announced a new strategy for cloud computing in the EU. According to the statement released by the EC, the strategy is designed to accelerate and increase the use of cloud computing across EU businesses and the public sector, and would result in the creation of 2.5 million new jobs and add an estimated 160 billion euros to the EU gross domestic product by 2020. The proposal aims to bring cloud computing services in line with the existing EU requirements for consumer privacy and personal data security under the EU's Data Protection Directive and to encourage the adoption of the proposed revisions to those requirements, in order to address individuals' concerns about the security of their personal data online - especially in the cloud.

Head in the clouds? Not quite

In times of economic uncertainty and global financial turmoil, technology can again come to the forefront to play its part in making businesses and services to become more reliable and importantly more cost-effective and efficient in the daily routine of business processes. In today’s competitive world those who lag behind are destined to be left behind especially in regard to adopting and adapting to the changes in technology and its multi-layered benefits to the effectiveness and performance of the business world. Taking this into account, the organisation of this conference was both very apt and necessary to help and aid Malaysia to be at the cutting edge of this cloud computing technology.

How Cloud Computing will Take Shape 2013

There is no question about it; cloud computing is going to grow even larger than it already it is in 2013. Traditionalist accounting firms will find it increasingly difficult to ignore organization's prevailing use of cloud storage internally and with their clients. According to a recent study by the AICPA, 11 percent of CPA firms already operate completely in the cloud. Another one-third of the 624 respondents reported using cloud software, such as bill management, accounting and payroll applications, in some areas of their practice. While the biggest concern surrounding cloud use is security, professionals around the world are benefiting from remote access to work data and information, forgetting about software updates, among other benefits.

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 year. Wish you a Happy New Year 2013

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, December 21, 2012

IT professionals are still being deterred by the perceived risks of cloud computing with loss of control one of their biggest worries, a global study of 4,500 IT professionals reveals. The Risk Reward Barometer study by ISACA, a non-profit association of 100,000 IT professionals in 180 countries, found that organisations remain sceptical when it comes to cloud services—especially public cloud computing. The overarching trend is that businesses see numerous benefits for adopting cloud services; however, the perceived risk cause them concern. “What is apparent from this study is the perception of control,” Marc Vael, international vice president of ISACA explained.



Read more why IT professionals fear loss of control when it comes to cloud computing

Cloud computing: Only 5% techies are jobs ready

While cloud computing is widely recognised as the next big opportunity to watch out for, it has already made significant inroads in the industry. However, the IT workforce may not keep pace with the developments. The industry ready workforce for new domains like cloud and mobility may be as less as 5.7% of the current IT workforce , said senior corporate vice president, Rajiv Sodhi, HCL Technologies,. An internal HCL report on IT careers said that the traditional "IT industry career is in decline, threatening the careers of 10 million employees" . The global IT workforce is estimated to be around 20 million out of which around 3 million are in India.

Cloud computing: A bird’s eye view

Companies set to profit from the growth of cloud computing. While the idea of access to software and services delivered via an online network has been around since the 1960s, it wasn’t until the launch of Salesforce.com in the late ninties that tech companies began to provide useful products via the cloud. More recently, we have seen tremendous growth in cloud computing offerings – which allow people and organizations to store digital data offsite – from Internet giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. This has created a market for large-scale storage services to handle the vast amount of documents, social media posts and shared photos that are uploaded to the cloud millions of times per day.

IT Executives Not Worried About Finding Cloud Computing Expertise

Cloud computing may introduce new processes and technology challenges, but organizations appear to be ready to handle them, a new survey suggests. An overwhelming majority of IT executives, in fact, say they’re having no problems finding the skills they need to move forward with cloud engagements. But will this confidence be sustainable as organizations move deeper into cloud?

Cloud Computing: Best And Worst News Of 2012

With KPMG predicting a doubling of cloud services revenue over the next two years, it's a good time to point out where cloud computing has gained strength over the past year in capabilities and services. At the same time, we should look at the cloud's weaknesses, as a cautionary tale for those IT teams whom KPMG says are about to migrate production applications to the cloud.

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, December 07, 2012

Cloud computing is big business. Companies and individual users rent bandwidth from large cloud services to perform all manner of tasks, from hosting small websites to churning through large, computing-intensive tasks like modelling new drug compounds. But what if you could gain access to all that computing power for free?

It turns out that you can, using a loopholes in a new type of browser which taps the cloud to boost web page load speeds. Amazon's Silk browser as well as Opera Mini and another browser called Puffin all use this trick to help render web pages on mobile devices, which can lack the computational punch to handle complex web scripts or graphics-heavy pages, for instance.


(Image: Absodels/Getty)

Read how Browser hacks enable free cloud computing

10 ways cloud computing will change in 2013

Enterprise use of cloud services continues to grow - albeit from a small base - and in 2013 analyst house Forrester says many companies will begin deployment of private clouds. As spending on cloud services and platforms picks up, the way businesses use such services will also evolve. Forrester has put together 10 ways its analysts expect attitudes surrounding cloud to change next year. Business will get real about cloud costs. Organisations will start paying more attention to cloud costs in 2013, Forrester claims.

The unpleasant truths about database-as-a-service

The recent announcement of Amazon.com's Redshift -- and other cloud-delivered databases, for that matter -- makes it clear we're moving to a future where some or even most of our data will exist in public clouds. Although the cost savings are compelling, believe this migration will happen much more slowly than cloud providers predict. Indeed, for the Global 2000, cloud-based data stores will initially be a very hard sell, though the poorer small businesses won't have any other choice, economically speaking.

Storage: the crack cocaine of cloud computing

Storage price slashing continues as Microsoft meets cuts Google and Amazon traded last week. There’s method in this madness — lots of businesses have yet to test the cloud, and cheap storage is a way to attract those newbies. And once they’re hooked, watch out!

Gartner: Growth in cloud computing to shape 2013 security trends

"Increased adoption of cloud-based computing is expected to impact the way security is consumed as well as how key government agencies will prioritize security of public cloud infrastructure," was the take from Gartner analysts Ruggero Contu, Lawrence Pingree, and Eric Ahlm in their predictions forecast.

Gartner predicts by 2015, 10% of overall IT security enterprise capabilities will be delivered in the cloud, with the focus today clearly on messaging, Web security and remote vulnerability assessment. However, there's also the expectation there will be more on the way, such as data-loss prevention, encryption, authentication available too as technologies aimed to support cloud computing mature.

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.