The Essential Cloud Considerations

 Thinking about jumping on the cloud? True, I’ve had no qualms in showing my skepticism towards the marketing of ‘cloud computing’ and it being the mere repackaging of solutions which have existed for years, but the fact is it still addresses a concept and reality that exists and one which holds numerous benefits. Indeed abandoning an existing on site IT infrastructure for a cloud provider that most often or not can’t offer the same level of security, control or performance is not an easy decision but one which CIOs and IT executives are seriously considering when weighing up the economic benefits. As with any change though, a move towards the cloud necessitates a sound and comprehensive assessment to avoid the trap of a short term benefit turning into a long term nightmare.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Best Practices of Successful Cloud Users

 Is your website available to end users 99.8% or more of the time? If not, then count yourself in the “laggard” category, according to standards set by The Aberdeen Group, in its 2008 report “The Performance of Web Applications: Customers are Won or Lost in One Second.” In that study, laggards had web application availability only 86.3% of the time. If 99.8% of the time seems a little unrealistic to you, consider the title of Aberdeen’s study – and that you can lose a customer in one second (to a competitor) if any part of their online experience goes sour.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Cloud Computing for Small Business

 Orchestra explains how we use Cloud Computing and how it can benefit many small businesses. Cloud computing allows us to lower our IT costs, keep out IT resources scalable, and provides greater security and stability than we can ourselves. Find out more about how cloud computing can benefit small business in this great article.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

White House CIO Vivek Kundra Touts Cloud Computing

 Within the $79 billion--which is actually a slight reduction from the 2010 budget--there is a $50 million allocation for cross-governmental experimentation, as nicely reported by Wyatt Kash in the far-more-responsible-than-BW publication Government Computer News. Kash further reported that the Bush administration requested $35 million for similar funding, but was granted only 10 percent of that amount.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Big Data Goes Mainstream

 A new third generation of tools for Big Data is now emerging that offer the scalability, parallelism, performance and data flexibility of tools like Hadoop, but, unlike Hadoop, can also continuously process realtime data streams. Moreover, these new tools are as easy to use as a spreadsheet.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

So It’s Gonna Drizzle on Rackspace

 Rackspace has picked up the Drizzle team that Oracle cast off when it acquired Sun. In case you don’t know, Drizzle is a cloud-directed, Linux-leaning, stripped-down, hitherto for unsupported, GPL 2 MySQL 6.0 fork that Rackspace is betting will infinitely scale, or at least scale better than MySQL. It looks like Rackspace means to go to production with the thing this year. Hopefully it will be stable. Drizzle runs the risk of not being as stable as MySQL, because the Drizzle team is taking things out and putting other stuff in. Of course it may be successful in trying to create a product that’s more stable than MySQL. But creating a stable DBMS engine is something that has always taken years and years.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

CA Buys Nimsoft

 CA is buying privately held Nimsoft Inc for $350 million in cash, another bet in the cloud. The deal should close by the end of the month and Nimsoft would remain a standalone business unit under current management reporting to Chris O’Malley, head of CA’s cloud products and solutions business line. CA will use money it has on hand but overseas to pay for the property. The deal follows its recent acquisitions of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore and its pending acquisition of 3Tera. All are basically cloud-directed and meant to bring the old mainframer into the 21st century. Nimsoft has previously identified CA along with IBM, HP, BMC, EMC and a bunch of smaller firms as competitors.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Kneber: Another Bot Attack

 Another hack attack hits the headlines http://tinyurl.com/yebvj8p Big deal. This stuff happens every day now right? Wrong. Not on this scale it doesn’t. The Kneber Bot has penetrated 75,000 systems, 2,500 companies across in 196 countries. This is not a straightforward Trojan - a simple smash and grab. This one’s a game changer. Systems compromised by this botnet provide the attackers with not only user credentials and confidential information, but remote access inside the compromised network.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Got a Question About Infrastructure?

 Interoperability between networks has fueled the growth of applications that has in turn spurred the growth of networks and internetworking. This cycle has led to increasing strain on networks, applications, and people who manage them. The 'virtualization' of networks, servers, storage, and applications as well as cloud computing not only quickens growth rates, but changes the nature of demand placed on infrastructure. Virtualization and cloud computing ultimately require new kinds of interoperability to reduce the burdens imposed by these technologies. This panel of cloud computing vendors and users will review the challenges of dynamic infrastructure design -- infrastructure capable of sustaining growth while relieving stress -- and will suggest the types of standards necessary to make those infrastructures a reality.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Microsoft & Total Computer to Present at Cloud Expo East

 Law enforcement is no different in its IT needs and constraints from many other enterprises – they run legacy hardware. Migrating to a new on-premise system and hardware can be cost-prohibitive. This compels decision-makers to look for advice and evidence on how to successfully evolve existing solutions via the cloud. In their session at the 5th International Cloud Expo, Al Perez, Chief Software Architect at Total Computer, and Gunther Lenz, ISV Architect Evangelist at Microsoft, will discuss how Total Computer migrated its existing law enforcement solution to Windows Azure, the effort needed, the obstacles faced. The upshot – lower upfront investment, pay as you go, a new business model, scalability and reliability as well as familiar tools.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization