Posts Tagged ‘cloud’

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Moving apps to the cloud: Why, when and how

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

You’ve known this was coming. It started with that small voice in the back of your mind that said “maybe it’s time to start putting some apps in the cloud.” Now it’s an actual question from the CTO: “why aren’t we using the cloud yet?” So, it’s time.

But before you make your move, make sure you’ve really thought through all of the key considerations: What’s in it for your business? Which apps should you migrate first? How can you maximize the advantages and minimize the risks and costs? How will your development teams be affected? How can you make this easier on them? In short, how can you transform this initiative from a source of heartburn into a source of new business advantages? Here is some practical advice for moving apps to the cloud.

The move to the cloud is a business decision
Let’s start by being clear about the answers to two key questions: What exactly does it mean to migrate an app to the cloud, and why would a business want to do it?

Moving an application to the cloud simply means running the app “somewhere” on the internet other than on your own servers. And of course, there are multiple options. You could build your app using your own platform and deploy the entire app-platform bundle to a cloud infrastructure (Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS). You could create your app using a particular middleware platform and deploy it to a cloud service that supports the same platform (Platform as a Service, or PaaS). Or, if you found an existing cloud-based application that provides the functionality you needed, you could simply use it on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis (Software as a Service, or SaaS).

These options represent a spectrum of benefits and trade-offs. At the IaaS end, you have maximum flexibility, but developers have a lot of work to do. At the SaaS end, there is less flexibility, but developers have minimal work to do. Most businesses need and want something in the middle, which is why the PaaS model is rapidly gaining momentum.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/moving-apps-to-the-cloud-why-when-and-how/6344653?tag=content;search-results-river

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HP looks to ease cloud management with SIAM services

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

HP has released Service Integration and Management (SIAM), a management service which will help firms get a handle the growing number of enterprise cloud platforms.

The company is hoping that its SIAM platform will allow enterprises to manage and enforce policies for cloud-based applications and external services.

The system will also allow administrators to ensure compliance on data being stored on cloud platforms.

The platform will combine HP’s IT management tools and services with consulting and training programmes for IT staff and administrators. Additionally, the SIAM platform will offer integration with the company’s IT Performance Suite.

Michael Garrett, vice president of professional services for HP software, told V3 that in addition to helping provide visibility into cloud services, the SIAM platform would reduce the complexity firms face from relying on a greater variety of service providers.

"You have different services that require different levels of sourcing, compliance and security," he explained.

"They have a very complex layer which was not the same when you have one supplier."

Source: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2151783/hp-looks-wrangle-cloud-services-siam

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Agile Cloud – Building software factories

Monday, February 13th, 2012

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PaaS and DevOps – Best practices in Agile Cloud, where Cloud Computing intersects with Agile software development practice, and where a key focus for this is establishing “software factories”.

Although the Cloud debate so far has focused mainly on infrastructure-level efficiency benefits, the real power kick from the trend will come from how it changes the process of software development itself.

This is mainly headlined by the term ‘DevOps’ to reflect the merging of the previously two traditionally distinct domains of Development and Operations.

It makes sense when you compare it to real-world progress being implemented today in large corporations. Recently I interviewed leading Cloud experts in Canada, enterprise architects and project managers in big blue-chips who are deploying and operating significant Enterprise Cloud strategies, and there is a common theme with regards to the principle business transformation benefits:

  1. Leverage virtualization to maximize infrastructure efficiencies
  2. Standardize a PaaS Catalogue to streamline software process
  3. Harness the emerging Cloud ecosystem

Source: http://www.sys-con.com/node/2140442

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Cloud Computing Is Still A Leap Of Faith

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Still, frustration with vendor hype aside, all types of public cloud services–software, infrastructure, and platform as a service–are gaining followers. A third of companies use cloud services, and an additional 40% have plans for or are considering it. So we’ve got this figured out, right? Not so fast. Among cloud users, we’re seeing major gaps in how IT organizations are selecting, integrating, and monitoring the services their employees depend on. The bulk of cloud initiatives are reactive, in response to line-of-business requirements or demands. IT rarely has an overarching vision of how it all fits together.

Don’t believe us? Then explain why only 28% of IT organizations assess the potential impact of a cloud service on their internal architectures prior to going live–that’s especially troubling given the upheaval our data centers are going through, as evidenced by the 71% of respondents to our IT Pro Ranking report on data center gear who are either in some stage of a network rearchitecture project or expect to be within 24 months. Or that 24% have no performance monitoring of cloud services.

It gets worse. Almost half of companies have opted to custom code each cloud application into internal back-end systems, with only 9% leveraging cloud integration providers. That’s an expensive strategy given the aforementioned rearchitecture and convergence projects, and it’s not money we need to spend: Integrators large and small have ready-made online integration tools, which can help you conserve bandwidth, as we’ll discuss. Combine this customization nightmare with the fact that 73% of cloud users already use multiple providers, and we foresee a future where performance and reliability are bound to suffer.

Read More:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/business/232600176

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The Cloud Software Companies You Need to Know About

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

The cloud computing industry can be a little daunting. Every week there’s a new start-up promising to be a Netflix for YouTube, or claiming to leverage the cloud for customer relationship algorithmic optimization. You know, marketing gibberish. What does it all mean? There may be a ton of companies in the cloud, but many may not survive, and a number of them are just full of hot air. Let’s take a look at a few of the most promising stocks in the sector, and try to figure out why they’ve gotten this far.

Cloudy bona fides
A company doesn’t merit being part of the cloud just because it’s got something running on the Internet. But software as a service is easy enough to define. Whenever you have to access your application through a central location, and pay ongoing license fees to the developer, that’s generally software as a service. Microsoft‘s Office suite is plain old software. Its Office 365, available through subscriptions, is software as a service. Got it? Cool. Let’s check out some other top cloud software companies, and try to figure out if they’re worth your money.

Read More:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/02/06/the-cloud-software-companies-you-need-to-know-abo.aspx

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Microsoft Pitches Private Cloud To IT With System Center 2012

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Microsoft’s System Center 2012 is available today as a Release Candidate, the last milestone before a final release. Along with Hyper-V and Windows Server, the upgraded System Center forms the key building blocks for Microsoft’s private cloud strategy, providing management tools for desktops, mobile devices, both physical and virtual servers, and a mix of resources across private data centers and public clouds such as Windows Azure.

While Release Candidates for some pieces of System Center 2012 were already out, as of today all eight components of the suite are free for anyone to download at this link, with final versions out in the first half of 2012. The exact release date has not been specified, but Microsoft Management & Security Division Vice President Brad Anderson tells Ars Microsoft is shooting for the early side of that time frame.

While the desktop management tools are Windows-only, Microsoft is providing cross-management tools for mobile devices, with security and configuration management covering iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. This, for example, lets IT specify how often smartphone users must change their passwords. In the data center, System Center supports both Linux and Windows servers, with Anderson telling Ars that nearly 20 percent of System Center customers use the software to manage at least some Linux servers.

System Center 2012 boosts the number of supported hypervisors. The current Virtual Machine Manager in System Center supports Hyper-V and VMware, despite VMware being Microsoft’s biggest rival in virtualization and management tools. System Center 2012 broadens the cross-platform hypervisor support by adding Citrix’s XenServer to the mix.

Read More:

http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/01/microsoft-pitches-private-cloud-to-it-with-system-center-2012/

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Can your IT outsourcing contract coexist with the cloud?

Friday, January 13th, 2012

If your enterprise is committed to a long-term managed services or information technology outsourcing (ITO) contract, you might be looking longingly at the agility and efficiencies of cloud-based delivery models. If you’re like many enterprises that rely on managed services, you might be less than thrilled with the quality, responsiveness and flexibility you’re getting. Cloud seems like a better path, but you’re contractually obligated, potentially for several more years.

Source: http://gigaom.com/cloud/bils-it-outsourcing-contract-cloud/

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2012 Cloud Computing Award Winners Announced

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

The 2012 winners for the annual Cloud Awards Program have been announced today.

Cloud computing is a field of IT and computer systems where services are typically offered remotely as a service, as opposed to within the organization’s own firewall. Judged among almost 200 entries, the final winners represent "the best of the best in their fields."

The annual cloud computing awards program, open internationally across the US and EMEA regions, recognizes and celebrates industry leaders and pioneers in the field of cloud computing. Categories include B2B Customer Strategy, Best Cloud Infrastructure, Data Innovation of the Year, Developer of the Year, Most Promising Start-Up, Best Platform as a Service, Security Innovation, Best Software as a Service and Web Services Excellence.

Cloud Awards organizer Larry Johnson said: "Almost 200 organizations entered the program, which is among the first of its kind. We were swamped by entries, and the standard was remarkably high. Judging the submissions was a challenging task. But we’re happy to endorse all of the winners as among the best of the best in their respective fields.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/2012-cloud-computing-award-winners-announced-2012-01-10

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Cloud is complex—deal with it

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Cloud as a complex system

What’s interesting is that it turns out science has a whole body of work around complex systems. A complex system, according to Wikipedia, is “a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.”

That’s certainly true of the modern interconnected IT environment. Just look at automated trading systems and the famous “flash crash” for an example—systems designed for increasing market returns reacted to each other in a way that temporarily crashed that very market. Other examples abound, and I’m sure your own IT environment often behaves in ways that no single application or other element was designed to do explicitly.

What science teaches us about complex systems is that they are made up of many individual agents, each of which effect and are affected by agents around them. The feedback loops of events created by agents affecting each other both directly and indirectly, combined with the mechanisms that choose behaviors to in response to those events, combine to create the systemic behavior that is so unpredictable.

Cloud as an adaptive system

The thing is, however, a certain class of complex systems, complex adaptive systems, have the additional trait that they can change their behavior in response to the success or failure of previous behaviors when a given event occurs—or when a certain series of events occurs. This ability to “learn” and adapt to the surrounding system environment creates amazing outcomes, including many of the most rich, enduring and powerful systems in our universe

The developer as DNA

I want to leave you with one last thought, however. One of the things about complex adaptive systems is the learning or adapting traits of the agents in the system. In the world of evolution, the main agent of learning or change is DNA. In the world of IT, the agent of learning or change is the engineer or software developer.

If something goes wrong with an application, developers are on the hook to fix it, change it or kill it. If existing hardware fails to create new opportunities to innovate, engineers find new approaches to introduce into the ecosystem to shake things up.

Source: http://gigaom.com/cloud/cloud-is-complex-deal-with-it/

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Public vs. Private Cloud Debate Goes On

Friday, December 9th, 2011

While there are important differences between a public cloud and a private cloud computing environment, industry leaders say the pros and cons of each aren’t as significant as the fact that both options are available for businesses and enterprises. At the recent CloudBeat 2011 conference in Redwood City, Calif., executives of various companies delivering cloud technology and services said any combination of public, private or hybrid clouds may be the right solution for any company based on its needs.

During a panel discussion provocatively titled "The Private Cloud is Way Overrated," moderator Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, which sells an automated cloud management platform, made the point that public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services, are commodity-based, pay-as-you-go services for buying compute cycles from a third party. A private cloud is the same service, but operated within just one company.

"If you take that as the definition, are those two in competition, or do they complement each other or both? Because often it’s misconstrued as that the private cloud is the false cloud," Crandell said. That prompted a response from Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, which develops on-premise private clouds for its customers: "That’s like saying an espresso machine is a false Starbucks."

Source: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/232300112

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