Friday, February 22, 2013

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, February 22, 2013


As public cloud computing gains greater adoption across enterprises, there’s an increased level of spending occurring on infrastructure-related services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS).  Enterprises are prioritizing how to get cloud platforms integrated with legacy systems to make use of the years of data they have accumulated.  From legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, integrating legacy systems of record to cloud-based platforms will accelerate through 2016.  I’ve seen this in conversations with resellers and enterprise customers, and this trend is also reflected in Gartner’s latest report on public cloud computing adoption.




Microsoft Azure's cloud outperformed Amazon Web Services in a series of rigorous tests conducted by Nasuni, a storage vendor that annually benchmarks CSPs (cloud service providers). Nasuni uses public cloud resources in its enterprise storage offering, so each year the company conducts a series of rigorous tests on the top CSPs' clouds in an effort to see which companies offer the best performing, most reliable infrastructure. Last year, Amazon Web Services' cloud came out on top, but this year Microsoft Azure outperformed AWS in performance and reliability measures. AWS is still better at handling extra-large storage volumes, while Nasuni found that the two OpenStack powered clouds it tested -- from HP and Rackspace -- were lacking, particularly at larger scales.

Cloud computing isn’t just potentially delivering savings and flexibility for existing organizations. It is also laying the groundwork for a new generation of business startups, a new survey finds. The study of 1,300 U.S. and U.K. executives, conducted by Rackspace Hosting with support from Manchester Business School in the U.K., finds cloud engagements are delivering positive impacts, from cost savings to more innovation. Interestingly, the survey also reveals that most of these executives see cloud as laying the groundwork for the next entrepreneurial boom. 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.

With cloud computing taking off at a very fast pace — some administrators are scrambling to jump into the technology. Unfortunately, many organizations are purchasing the right gear, deploying the right technologies, but still forgetting the policy creation process. The truth is that cloud computing is relatively new for many organizations. This means that companies looking to enter the cloud must be careful and avoid jumping in with both feet. Although every environment is unique, administrators must take the time to create a plan which will help them retain control over their cloud initiative.

The collective sigh heard around the world when they read this section may signal that this joke has run its course, but you must have forgotten already, this article is about what your parent’s think. In addition, the day your dad stops telling the same bad joke over and over again is the day he is no longer a father. So let me explain an inconvenient truth (see what I did there?) about this misconception. Sure the joke, “Al Gore invented the internet,” is a little old but your parents had seven years to work on this environmental Cloud twist to the joke to shock it back to life. Now our parents will confuse their joke with reality and we have to hear them complain about Al Gore for a few more years. Just let the man be!

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.

Friday, February 15, 2013

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, February 15, 2013

While software has been “eating the world” for years in the consumer world, now start-up software is infiltrating even the largest of enterprises at an ever increasing rate. Today’s enterprise-grade datacenter infrastructure makes it easier than ever for startups to rapidly build and deploy disruptive software. This is the basis for applications like Box.net, Marketo, and Nimble that quickly emerged as “must-have” software.

  1. Quickly Start-up
  2. Scale Simply and Easily
  3. Efficient Cost Structure
  4. More flexibility
  5. Do what you do best



You know a trend is picking up steam when the security standards bodies start issuing guidelines. So it's good news that the Payment Card Industry trade group, whose PCI Security Standards Council's standards dictate how most electronic payment transactions are handled, has come out with its guidelines for cloud security (PDF). In even better news, they're worth reading, with solid lessons for IT.

It has long been thought that the place to find the most accurate information about customers is in a company's enterprise resource planning system. But some within the IT industry say cloud computing applications -- and specifically Software as a Service-based sales applications like Salesforce.com -- may eventually become the place to find the most up-to-date customer data. A subtle shift in power may be underway.

Businesses considering switching to cloud-based computing can now access free guidance on how to secure their privacy in the cloud. The Privacy Commissioner released a checklist today of potential questions small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) can use when working out whether a change to cloud computing may suit them. Cloud computing is the name commonly given to computer resources such as data storage being delivered as a service via the internet. Commissioner Marie Shroff said many SMEs were flying blind with the range of options, providers and risks involved in cloud computing including ensuring that their client and staff information remains safe.

Rackspace Hosting (RAX) late Tuesday reported fourth-quarter sales below estimates, as cloud computing growth slowed, sending shares down in after-hours trading. Rackspace said Q4 revenue rose 24.5% to $352.9 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected sales of $355.4 million. Rackspace posted Q4 profit, minus items, of 21 cents a share, up 17% from a year earlier, in-line with estimates. Rackspace garnered 24.7% of Q4 sales from cloud computing products, up from 20.6% in the year-earlier period. Rackspace said cloud sales rose to $87.3 million in Q4, up 49% from the year-earlier quarter.


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.

Friday, February 8, 2013

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, February 08, 2013


Want your mind blown? The Motley Fool Rulebreakers released this report revealing the significance of what has now become referred to as “the cloud.” Give it a read.

What is the cloud?

To be clear, the definition of cloud computing is sometimes still debated among investing and technological professionals. In short, though, cloud computing is a new industry where services are offered and delivered via a network, primarily the internet. Most all firms providing cloud computing services utilize rental or pay as you models for charging users.

Following are 3 of some of the most utilized services:

Software (like accounting, information systems, or HR)
Storage (benefits of data storehouses without owning the necessary tools)
Infrastructure (benefits of hardware and structure without owning the assets)

Does the following image excite you?



Amazon.com had an outage for 49 minutes on Jan. 31, and it cost big -- more than $4 million in lost sales. I'm sure many in the cloud computing community where thinking, "Now you know how it feels." According to Network World's Brandon Butler, "Amazon officials have said that the biggest customer of the company's cloud division -- AWS (Amazon Web Services) -- is Amazon.com. AWS has experienced a variety of outages during the past three years, but usually the Amazon.com retail site is not impacted." For example, an EBS (Amazon Elastic Block Storage) outage in October 2012 affected such customers as Reddit. Moreover, an outage on Christmas Eve 2012 brought down Netflix, but not the video steaming service that Amazon.com provides. In the Jan. 31 case, Amazon.com appears to the affected party.

The crucial fact is that those who defend enterprise computing fail to grasp the fact that legacy IT infrastructure and operations don't address the requirements of new application types that I label the "three M's"—mobile, media and marketing. These apps are flocking to public cloud computing because they're not well served by traditional infrastructure and are much more aligned with what cloud computing brings to the table.

ElasticHosts has launched a new style of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to challenge Amazon, Rackspace and other major cloud service providers with its own brand of cloud services.
ElasticHosts announced Feb. 5 that it has nine data centers around the world, and it's possible all nine would fit into one of Google's or Microsoft's.

Thin clients have been around for as long as there have been computers tied together in networks. The concept is pretty simple; individual users do not need full access to a computer to do their work, so rather than placing a fully functional computer on each desk, a thin client machine provides just the functionality needed to accomplish the necessary tasks.

Thin client systems are useful in some business and institutional settings. They have the advantage of keeping the major computing functions, processing and storage, in a safe, central location. There is also potential savings in software licensing, the software is licensed to the central computer but can be accessed from any of the thin client remote terminals.

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.

Friday, February 1, 2013

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, February 01, 2013

Capacity management is the most underestimated problem of cloud computing, says Morgan Stanley executive director for IT strategy Evangelos Kotsovinos. Evangelos Kotsovinos is leading cloud computing strategy and execution at Morgan Stanley.

“One of the main reasons for using cloud computing services is to get efficiency and cost savings. And maximum IT efficiency on the cloud comes from good capacity planning and management,” Kotsovinos said at the Cloud Expo Europe 2013 event. But it is still the most overlooked and underestimated aspect of the cloud, he said.

Source: Computer Weekly

Read More

Roundup of Cloud Computing & Enterprise Software Market Estimates and Forecasts, 2013

When the CEO of a rust-belt manufacturer speaks of cloud computing as critical to his company’s business strategies for competing globally, it’s clear a fundamental shift is underway. Nearly every manufacturing company I’ve spoken with in the last ninety days has a mobility roadmap and is also challenged to integrate existing ERP, pricing and fulfillment systems into next-generation selling platforms.

Cloud computing for small businesses: it's time to follow the herd

The latest market forecasts for cloud computing are predicting 30% annual growth in the industry, as more and more people adopt the latest technology to store information in a virtual space. But cloud computing isn't just for data, you can also use it to run applications and software remotely, without being tied to one computer. For a small businesses, outsourcing IT to the cloud lowers the need for specialist skills and frees managers to concentrate on the core business. It may cost slightly more than in-house IT, but this is often outweighed, as it can sometimes enable a small company to take a "big company" approach to problems by increasing efficiency.

7 Great Unsolved Mysteries of Cloud Computing

There has been no shortage of assumptions made and confusion about cloud computing, along with boatloads of conventional wisdom. But the rise of cloud brings with it some so far unanswerable questions. Here are just seven of the great unsolved mysteries that are accompanying the great cloud computing migration of the 2010s.

Today's cloud contracts are driving away enterprise adoption

Cloud computing has a growing problem: Many providers haven't built contract negotiations into their customer on-boarding processes. Instead, they offer "take it or leave it" contracts that protect the provider from everything, transferring all responsibility, liability, and risk to the businesses using the cloud services. Small and medium-sized businesses have accepted such contracts because they can't afford the lawyers to second-guess them. But large businesses have lawyers, and they aren't about to enter into such one-sided contracts.

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.