Cloud Computing

GigaOm – Cloud Storage Is Expensive? Are You Doing it Right?

In my day to day job, I talk to a lot of end users. And when it comes to the cloud, there are still many differences between Europe and the US. The European cloud market is much more fragmented than the American one for several reasons, including the slightly different regulations in each country. Cloud adoption is slower in Europe and many organizations still like to maintain data and infrastructure in their premises. The European approach is quite pragmatic, and many enterprises take somewhat advantage of the experiences made by similar organizations on the other side of the pond. One similarity is cloud storage or, better, cloud storage costs and reactions.

The fact that data is growing everywhere at an incredible pace is nothing new, and often faster than predicted in the past years. At first glance, an all-in cloud strategy looks very compelling, low $/GB, less CAPEX and more OPEX, increased agility and more, until of course your cloud bill starts growing out of control.

More of the GigaOm post from Enrico Signoretti

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04
Mar 19

Continuity Central – CTO? Why updating your backup strategy should be on your 2019 to-do list

Backup technology has evolved over the years, but the time has come to take a completely fresh approach, says Avi Raichel. In this article Avi explains: Why backup is a CTO concern; What CTOs need to do to update the backup strategies in place; How CTOs can help the business become IT resilient.

It’s no secret that backup is one of the most important things that a business can invest in, and it’s because of this that the evolution of backup has been such a grand one. The very first computer backups were made on to large reels of magnetic tape (punch cards), and have consistently evolved – from tape, to spinning disk, and then on to flash. However, what hasn’t changed with backup is the central idea of creating ‘golden copies’ of data, to be used ‘just in case’.

This idea is now, arguably, archaic. These traditional backups that only provide a snapshot in time are no longer compatible with the modern times. In this age, businesses, particularly digital ones, need to be ‘always-on’ – 24/7, 365 days a year. Because of this, the requirement for recovery point objectives (RPOs) of seconds, and recovery time objectives (RTOs) of minutes is essential.

More of the Continuity Central post from Avi Raichel

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25
Feb 19

Future of CIO – Running Indispensable IT: How to Scrutinize IT Effort via the Business Lens?

It has become more obvious that information is the real source of business innovation. IT will continue to be a critical department.

IT is one of the most invaluable assets of the business besides people, IT is also perhaps one of the most expensive investments in modern organizations today. Many IT organizations are at the cross-road, either keep providing commodity IT service as a business support center – becoming irrelevant, or contribute to the top line business growth by leveraging technology as a means to an end. How can contemporary CIOs put “Chief Investment Officer,” hat on, scrutinize IT effort from the business lens and make the IT organization indispensable?

IT investment in the business can often become the decisive factor to run a high-performance organization with a long-term perspective: IT investment is usually costly. Considering many companies across sectors making a huge investment in sophisticated information & technology tools are greatly wasted because the appropriate processes to leverage those tools are not implemented or adopted smoothly. More often than not, IT can lift or break the business in a shorter time spectrum.

More of the Future of CIO post from Pearl Zhu

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11
Jan 19

InfoWorld – The path to cloud security goes through integration

Making your cloud more secure is about talking to other security systems more than tossing technology at the problem.

The cloud security problem is not really a problem any more. Indeed, we have the best security technology in the public clouds these days, and in some cases it’s better than what’s in the on-premises systems that are no longer receiving the R&D spending love.

So, if security is so good in the cloud, why do so many in IT believe there an issue? The fact is that public cloud never works alone (although it seems that way if you listen to the public cloud providers). They need to interact with third-party systems, such as credit-checking services and data-validation services, as well as many systems running on traditional on-premises platforms.

More of the InfoWorld article from David Linthicum

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10
Jan 19

CIO.com – What’s driving IT budgets for 2019

Technology leaders weigh in on where IT spend will shift, with many companies focusing on infrastructure, security, and user experience.

he majority of IT leaders expect their 2019 IT budgets to increase or remain unchanged, driven largely by the need to upgrade aging infrastructure, accelerate a shift to the cloud or improve the employee experience of what IT offers.

More of the CIO.com article from Sharon Florentine

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09
Jan 19

TechTarget – Explore the new year’s emerging IT trends

Small data centers, intelligent IT management tools — digital diversity? Catch up on the 10 trends driving IT operations forward in 2019, and how they’ll shape your organization.

Nothing dies in enterprise IT, but the older technologies and approaches consistently make room for emerging IT trends. In 2019, prepare to support serverless computing and SaaS-based workloads right alongside the data center.

These technologies will systematically reshape the way organizations deploy and operate IT workloads. Trends such as global and diverse digital infrastructure, creative IT teams and more present opportunities and challenges for the business and IT staff. These 10 emerging IT trends, outlined by Gartner senior director analyst Ross Winser during the firm’s IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2018, are poised to change infrastructure and operations in 2019.

More of the TechTarget article from Stephen J. Bigelow

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07
Jan 19

Forbes.com – Seven Remarkable Takeaways From Massive Kubernetes Conference

The 8,000 attendees attending the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Kubernetes conference this week in Seattle demonstrated the exponential growth in interest in this complex, technical combination of open source technologies.

Kubernetes is container orchestration software – essentially, plumbing for running enterprise-class software in the cloud. Not the kind of nuts-and-bolts tech that you might think would generate such enthusiasm.

More of the Forbes article from Jason Bloomberg

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04
Jan 19

InformationWeek- Debunking Three Common Cloud Misconceptions

Combatting the misconceptions surrounding cloud computing requires continuous exploration of new opportunities emerging today because of ongoing cloud technology innovations.

Each organization’s digital transformation is different, based on internal operational goals, desired business outcomes and unique customer needs. Despite specific requirements of individual businesses, there’s an important common denominator in our digital era: the need for increased agility. The speed at which organizations need to perform and transform continues to accelerate – the ability to adjust course in real-time to best serve internal and external audiences is paramount, and best enabled with open cloud platforms.

More of the InformationWeek post from Jeff Canter

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02
Jan 19

ComputerWorld – How Microsoft Lost the Web

Microsoft’s announcement earlier this month that it was dumping its own browser technology for Google’s – turning Edge into a Chrome clone – was a stunning acknowledgement that the company had lost its decades-long battle for browser supremacy.

“We intend to adopt the Chromium open-source project … to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers,” Joe Belfiore, a corporate vice president in the Windows group, wrote in a Dec. 6 post to a company blog. But while Belfiore blew the open-source horn, he didn’t bother to recap how Microsoft reached this point when earlier in the century, it was the dominant browser maker, accounting for more than 90% of all usage after it laid waste to Netscape Navigator.

More of the ComputerWorld article from Gregg Keizer

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18
Dec 18

IT Business Edge – Hybrid Cloud Computing Emerges as Next Big IT Management Challenge

Going into 2019, it’s apparent that a major challenge facing IT leaders will be to bring the cost of cloud computing under control. While cloud computing in theory reduces the cost of IT, it turns out that the operational complexity of supporting multiple cloud computing platforms alongside existing on-premises IT environments has become quite expensive. IT leaders clearly need to bring some order to the cloud computing chaos.

A recent report from International Data Corp. (IDC) highlights the extent of the challenge. The survey finds that most customers (64 percent) are employing multiple clouds. But only 24 percent of IT organizations have a high degree of interoperability between their cloud environments, while another 40 percent say they have achieved low interoperability between their clouds. But only 7 percent say they have managed to build a true hybrid cloud through multiple IT environments that are managed via a single control plane. IT organizations that are trying to manage disparate IT environments in isolation from one another are going to incur higher operational costs.

More of the IT Business Edge article from Mike Vizard

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.