Tag Archives: cloud computing

Mobile Showing Larger Impact than the Cloud

Posted on by gregl

Smartphones and tablets appear to be having more real-world impact on IT departments than even cloud computing, based on early returns on a survey TechRepublic.com is conducting.

“We realize that these two topics are actually related in some cases,” writes TechRepublic Editor-in-Chief Jason Hiner in a recent post. “Companies are often attracted to the cloud so that employees can access apps and/or data from anywhere and any device, including mobile devices. And, professionals who rely on smartphones or tablets to do their work want easy ways to connect to corporate systems, and the cloud can simplify the process. That said, we’d like to know which one is the tail and which one is the dog.”

Current results from the blog’s heavily IT readership put Mobile in the lead with 72% compared to 28% for cloud computing.

You can take the poll yourself by clicking here.

Pundit About-Faces on the Private Cloud

Posted on by gregl

Eric Knorr, who writes the “Modernizing IT” column for InfoWorld admits he’s been skeptical of the so-called “private cloud,” but now gallantly admits to rethinking the matter.

“I’ve ridiculed the private cloud in the past, for two reasons,” he writes. “First, because all kinds of existing technologies and approaches can be grandfathered into the definition. And second, because it smacks of the mythical ‘lights out’ data center, where you roll out a bunch of automation, lay off your admins, and live happily ever after with vastly reduced costs. Not even the goofiest know-nothing believes that one anymore.

“Yet, despite natural skepticism, the private cloud appears to be taking shape,” he admits.

Solid technologies underlie the private cloud concept — specifically, virtualization — and a private cloud’s identity-based security ensures people can access only the infrastructure and applications they need.

“Without question, the private cloud comes with a large dose of hogwash,” he still believes. “Nonetheless, the model of providing commodity services on top of pooled, well-managed virtual resources has legs, because it has the potential to take a big chunk of cost and menial labor out of the IT equation. The lights in the data center will never go out. The drive for greater efficiency, though, has had a dozen names in the history of IT, and the private cloud just happens to be the latest one.”

Great Western Malting Migrates its IT Infrastructure from Texas to EasyStreet

Posted on by Karen Karger

If you think your IT challenges are tough, try moving your entire infrastructure over 2,000 miles. In this new case study, Great Western Malting’s Regional IT Manager for North America, Mark Orchard, recounts how EasyStreet helped his company move from a private Cloud in Texas to a private Cloud in EasyStreet’s data center. “We started on a Friday night and ended on a Saturday night, says Mark. “We had a perfect cutover, lost no business data, and the system was available for use come Monday morning.”

Click here to read the case study.

Companies Far Prefer Private Clouds Over Public Ones

Posted on by gregl

Private clouds hold much more appeal for companies than their more public counterparts, according to findings in this year’s survey from the Uptime Institute, which provides certification, research and consulting to the data center industry. The 2011 survey focuses on the opinions of 525 data center executives representing the financial industry, colocation providers and governmental agencies in North America.

“Use of what is commonly referred to as the cloud, the public cloud (or Internet), within the next year is part of the tentative plans of only 5 percent of surveyed companies,” according to the survey. “In other words, although the public cloud is in some sense the ‘face’ of cloud computing, it is not a seriously considered option for the vast majority of companies. This may be due to a variety of factors, including the loss of control of IT resources, questions regarding data location and security, availability considerations and regulatory compliance.”

“A so-called private cloud solution, on the other hand, carries much more weight with companies,” the survey continues. “Of the survey respondents, 42 percent are planning or considering a private cloud deployment, and 27 percent are leaning toward a hybrid implementation that mixes public and private clouds. The private cloud alternative offers many of the benefits of the public cloud, but it leaves control of the IT resources (servers and other hardware) in the hands of the company.”

Scalability and flexibility were cited by 61 percent of respondents as the main appeals of cloud technology, while only 25 percent said cost savings.

Google Apps Now Deployed at One in Five Companies

Posted on by gregl

Talk about mixed messages … statistics show that medium and small companies are the leading adopters of Cloud computing because bigger companies are more reluctant. But when it comes to Google Apps, it’s the bigger companies who are deploying the Cloud-based software far more than start-ups and non-enterprise organizations.

Data compiled recently by White Stratus, a Cloud solution provider with offices in New York, London and Sydney, shows that nearly 20 percent of the more than 2,000 companies they surveyed — all with 240 or more employees — have deployed some form of Google Apps.

Google Apps were most popular with companies in the education sector, where 58 percent were using the programs. Real estate, professional and technical services, and media followed with 23 percent, while the finance and insurance industries saw just over a 19 percent adoption rate.

Of those using Google Apps, 32.8 percent had fully deployed the apps to the entire company, while 47.8 percent were still in a pilot stage with only a segment of the company using the apps on a regular basis.

Colocation and Cloud Seen As Popular Expansion Options

Posted on by gregl

Company-owned data centers are having a tough time keeping up with digital demand, and a growing number of IT managers now consider colocation a solution. Nearly half of all data centers are facing necessary expansion of some sort within two years to meet growth pressures, according to recent surveys.

In a recent Uptime Institute survey, for example, 40 percent of respondents are considering building new data centers, 30 percent will lease colocation space, and 20 percent intend to move their workload to Cloud providers.

(For those interested in a bit of both, EasyStreet can help integrate your choice of services (Private Clouds, dedicated servers, colocation and connectivity) to form the flexible computing infrastructure you need.)

Digital Realty Trust, a data center provider, surveyed 300 large-company IT decision-makers and found 85 percent planning to expand their data centers in 2011. “Expansion includes everything from a physical expansion and leasing of collocation space to cloud computing services,” according to Computerworld. “It represents a four percent increase over the previous year’s survey results.

Afcom, an association of data center managers, found 29 percent of the 360 IT managers it surveyed now involved in data center expansion, while another 21 percent are planning to expand within two years.

Cloud Still a Mystery for Most Small Businesses

Posted on by gregl

While the term “cloud computing” virtually peppers today’s technology media, the concept itself is a mystery to most small businesses. A surprising 71 percent of respondents to a new Small Business Authority survey admitted they were ignorant of cloud computing.

There were 1,800 respondents to the May 2011 survey. To several other survey technology questions, respondents were equally negative. For example, asked if they could describe cloud computing, 74 percent said no. Asked if their critical data and software was backed-up offsite, 71 percent said no.

“Cloud computing will be the next important trend in the US economy for businesses large and small,” said Barry Sloane, president and CEO of The Small Business Authority, which has a portfolio of 10,000 small-business accounts. “About 25 percent of our business owners said they understood what cloud computing was.  However, when we drilled down deeper most, 78 percent thought that their data was secure. Yet 71 percent stated their data was not backed up offsite.”

“The cloud is approaching,” Sloane went on. “The security blanket of the server in the closet onsite and having an assistant backup important business data and confidential client information needs to be behind us all.”

Google Chairman Says Microsoft Has Had Its Day

Posted on by gregl

Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, apparently sees Microsoft as odd-man-out when he talks about today’s consumer revolution in technology. Speaking at the May 31 annual “D: All Things Digital” conference, he talked about Apple, Amazon, Facebook and, of course, Google as having built the platforms dominating the current shift in technology.

“We’ve never had four companies growing at the scale those are, in aggregate,” Schmidt noted. He said Microsoft and IBM were leaders in the previous technology era, when single companies and single platforms dominated the playing field.

Cloud computing is replacing complex enterprise systems, Schmidt said. “What you are seeing is the death of IT as we know it,” he added. “With this new technology you don’t need as much of it.”

The ‘Cloud’ Can Mean IT Security in U.S.

Posted on by gregl

Doomsayers can see the growth of cloud computing as a serious blow to IT growth in the U.S., with more of the action shifting – as it did in recent decades with manufacturing – to places like India and China.

Unlikely, says Mark Henricks, an IT industry commenter for places like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

“If nothing else, the truly fantastic — as in incredibly extreme — growth in data is likely to sustain U.S. IT opportunity and employment for the foreseeable future,” he predicts on bnet.com. “One estimate holds that the quantity of data generated worldwide has climbed from 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) in 2005 to 1,200 exabytes in 2010. That trend shows every sign of speeding up, too. So, domestic IT entrepreneurs, opportunity isn’t going to go away.”

Henricks says his reasoning is based upon a few key facts. One is the Internet’s finite capacity and connectivity, another is the wisdom of keeping both data and computing power close by. “Third, as people and organizations create escalating quantities of sensitive information in digital format, IT security becomes more important,” he says.

Click here to read Henricks’ entire article.

Cloud and Virtualization Put Stress on the Network

Posted on by gregl

With so much IT focus in the past two years on cloud computing and virtualization, it’s time to turn attention again to the network itself.

“In the last couple years it does seem a lot of other areas have surged ahead and networking has fallen behind,” Lenny Heymann, general manager of the big tech conference Interop, recently told Network World. “We need to look at how networks respond to some of these changes that have really swept through the market. Changes in the data center around cloud computing and virtualization have put pressure on networks.”

Virtualization technologies mean virtual machines can move around the data center at warp speed, but the ability to manage the network and servers “is lagging the speed at which the VMs can be moved from one machine to another,” Heymann says. “Management of the network has to be speedier, more efficient and automated to keep up.”