CIO — I
don't know how I missed this, but at the Gartner IT Symposium in October,
Darryl Plummer (Chief of Gartner Cloud Research) apparently stated that
enterprises should deploy applications in a public cloud provider as a default,
and only deploy them in a private cloud if the public alternative is not
appropriate.
I became aware of
Plummer's recommendation, which caused quite a stir in the blog world when he
first announced it, via Twitter earlier this week.
Naturally, much of the furor over Plummmer's pronouncement
was a reaction to the quick summary: Gartner prefers public cloud. Wow. That's
a big deal, right? Gartner is probably telling all of its clients that they
should trim their private cloud plans and instead focus on public cloud service
providers. And, in response, all of its clients are scrapping their private
cloud initiatives and planning a big move to public providers, right?
Actually, that's quite unlikely, for some very sensible
reasons.
First, people misunderstand
the nature of analyst firms. They assume that these firms are corporate in
nature and monolithic in their positions. In fact, a better way to look at
analyst firms is that they are much like professional firms (e.g., law firms,
consulting partnerships, etc.). Such firms are comprised of relatively
independent individuals, each with his or her own opinion.
For example, one can
present the same issue to two attorneys within the same law firm and get two
different recommendations about what to do (I speak here from personal
experience). Likewise two analysts from the same firm will hold different
opinions about the right approach to a specific technology issue.
Consequently, even if
one or more (or most) analysts at a firm hold one opinion, there are probably
others who hold a different opinion. At the very least, when presented with a
specific issue, analysts will likely proffer different recommendations, based
on their interpretation of the issue. Of course, it's important to keep in mind
that every situation is specific and different. If blanket advice were
sufficient, there would be no need for analyst firms. Let me be clear, I'm
discussing this phenomenon in general—not picking on Gartner specifically. As I
said last
week, I am not one to gainsay Gartner.
Second, as a complement to the fact that opinion at analyst
firms differs, clients tend to take their recommendations selectively.
Companies tend to have their goals and they seek support and affirmation for
them, searching until they find third-party advice that can be cited as
impartial evidence for pursuing the direction that they have already decided
upon. This is crudely referred to as "shopping for an opinion."
Continue Reading at CIO.com
Enterprises should consider public cloud services first and turn to private clouds only if the public cloud fails to meet their needs.
That was the advice delivered by analyst Daryl Plummer during Gartner's IT Symposium Tuesday. Plummer says that there are many potential benefits to deploying cloud services, including agility, reduced cost, reduced complexity, increased focus, increased innovation, and being able to leverage the knowledge and skills of people outside the company.
The trick for IT professionals is to perform a thorough analysis that identifies which benefits the company hopes to achieve by moving to the cloud. Of course, there are also reasons to not take the cloud route. Those include the inability to get the service-level agreements that you want, regulatory and compliance issues, concerns about disaster recovery and the realization that the cloud might not end up saving you money.
Plummer said an accurate cost analysis is particularly tricky, since you're weighing capital expenses versus recurring costs. He added that customers often underestimate their cloud usage costs, and most companies moving to the cloud will require the services of a cloud broker, which adds to the total tab.
While the cloud hype has reached a fever pitch, Plummer points out that there are a number of potential risks. Those include security, transparency, assurance, lock-in and integration issues. If you do decide to start moving applications to the cloud, start at the edges and work your way into the core, says Plummer. The most common apps to start with are email, social, test and development, productivity apps, and Web servers.
One other point to keep in mind is that individual business units have probably already moved to software as a service (SaaS), so Plummer recommends that IT execs make a concerted effort to get ahead of these rogue SaaS users.
If you break cloud revenues down by the three main categories, SaaS revenues come in first at $12 billion worldwide in 2011, followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at $4.2 billion and platform as a service (PaaS) at $1.4 billion. But Gartner predicts that over the next five years IaaS will grow by 48 percent, while PaaS will only grow 13 percent and SaaS will grow 16.3 percent.
Source: Infoworld
As per a report published on Moneycontrol.com website:
The domestic cloud computing industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 53% to be a Rs 2,434 crore market by 2014, a study conducted by CyberMedia Research India said.
"The public cloud computing market in India is estimated to touch Rs 2,434 crore in 2014 after growing at a CAGR of 53% between 2010-2014," a company statement said.
"Cloud computing is witnessing widespread interest from the vendor-service provider-channel community on the one hand and business leaders and CIOs on the other," CyberMedia Research India Software and IT Services Research Lead Analyst Kamal Vohra said.
This is fuelled by the strong belief that cloud computing will allow a large number of SMB enterprises to adopt the same enterprise class software and technology solutions, it added.
As per the study, penetration in cloud computing is expected to grow by 6.8% in 2012 from 4% in 2010.
On the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry, the study said the market was expected to grow by 50% to touch Rs 465 crore by this year-end.
The Infrastructure-as-a-service Industry (IaaS) was also expected to pickup pace after 2012. The overall CAGR for the India IaaS market during 2010-2014 was expected to be at 49%, the statement added.
Reference:
Microsoft Updates Office 365
— Microsoft has released its first major update of its cloud-based Office 365, the online combination of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. It’s also expanding the service to 22 additional markets including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan.
Office Division president Kurt DelBene said in a statement that “Customers are adopting Office 365 eight times faster than our previous service, and the solution is on track to become one of our fastest-growing offers in Microsoft history. We are also seeing great traction with small businesses, with more than 90% of our early Office 365 customers coming from small businesses.”
Article URL:http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2086224
SAP has agreed to buy San Mateo's SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4
billion in cash in a bid to catch up with rival Oracle in the
cloud-computing market.
The move is the latest acquisition by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim
Hagemann Snabe, who took charge of SAP when CEO Léo Apotheker was forced
out in 2009.
McDermott and Snabe have pledged to make the largest maker of
business-management software better at meeting demand for new
technologies, such as cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile
applications.
The SuccessFactors deal shows SAP's previous go-it-alone approach to
the cloud was lacking, said Thomas Otter, a vice president at Gartner
Inc.
"My first reaction was: What took you so long?" Otter said. "This
means a fundamental shift in terms of their cloud strategy, which has
been rather slow to get off the ground. This is a tacit admission that
their cloud strategy was a failure."
Stock takes a hit
SAP shares dropped 1.6 percent to 44 euros in Frankfurt Monday, valuing the company at 54 billion euros.
"In addition to the high price paid, which we think investors will
see negatively, the other question will be whether the decision to
acquire reflects a sign of SAP's strength or its weakness," UBS analyst
Michael Briest said Monday. He cut his rating on SAP shares to "neutral"
from "buy."
SAP, Oracle and companies such as Apple, Salesforce.com, IBM,
Amazon.com, Dell and Microsoft are promoting cloud computing as a secure
way to outsource data centers and reduce the need for pricey servers
and other hardware.
SuccessFactors, which makes software used to manage employee
performance, has more than 3,500 customers and 15 million subscribers in
168 countries. The company is predicted to have $502 million in revenue
in 2013, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
SAP is paying 8 times SuccessFactors' forecast revenue for next year,
compared with a median of 3 times revenue companies paid for 32 North
American software targets over the past five years, Bloomberg data show.
'Crown jewel'
"You get what you pay for, and if you want the crown jewel in this
industry, you have got to pay for it," McDermott said. "We are very
comfortable with the relationship between the price and 2012 revenues.
It's very much in the medium range. We don't consolidate old, tired
companies that don't grow anymore."
SAP may take a break from large deals after the close of
SuccessFactors, while it concentrates on expanding in cloud computing,
mobile business software, data analysis and in-memory computing,
McDermott added.
"For now, I think we have the assets we need to win," he said.
McDermott and SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard first met on Sept. 27
at SuccessFactors' office in San Mateo. One asset SAP gains is Dalgaard
himself.
Dalgaard, 44, will have the job of overseeing SAP's broad
software-as-a-service efforts, including its Business ByDesign Web
programs for midsize companies. Peter Lorenz, an SAP executive vice
president in charge of the group of products, will report to him,
McDermott said.
"Lars will oversee the entire SAP cloud," McDermott said. "This is our catalyst."
Owning SuccessFactors, which helps companies decide which employees
to retain and how much to pay them, can help SAP sell "human capital
management" software to the highest echelons of its customers'
management, McDermott said.
SuccessFactors may also add programs for handling logistics and supply-chain operations, Dalgaard said.
"The talent management market will probably be worth about $3.5
billion this year," Otter said. "SAP has essentially spent what the
whole market will be worth this year in one swoop. It is a lot to pay
for a niche in their portfolio, but human resources technology is a hot
space."
The global market for cloud services may surge to $148.8 billion in 2014 from $68.3 billion in 2010, Gartner estimates.
01 Dec 2011
FRAMINGHAM, Mass.,
December 1, 2011 – One year ago,
International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that the
IT industry's next dominant platform, built on mobile computing, cloud
services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies, would begin
its transition into the mainstream. Today, spending on these technologies is
growing at about 18% per year and is expected to account for at least 80% of IT
spending growth between now and 2020. With future market revenues at stake, IDC
predicts that 2012 will be marked by some of the first high-stakes battles as
companies seek to position themselves for leadership in these critical and
fast-growing technology areas.
"The industry's shift to the 3rd Platform will
accelerate in 2012, forcing the industry's leaders to make bold investments and
fateful decisions," said Frank Gens, senior vice
president and chief analyst at IDC. "Companies like Microsoft, HP, SAP,
RIM, and others – including Apple – will face 'crossroads moments' in 2012. By
the end of the year, we should have a good idea which vendors will – and won't
– be among the industry's leaders at the end of the decade."
Overall, IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow
6.9% year over year to $1.8 trillion in 2012. As much as 20% of this total
spending will be driven by the technologies that are reshaping the IT industry
– smartphones, media tablets, mobile networks, social networking, and big data
analytics. Meanwhile, emerging markets (defined as all markets except North
America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) will drive more
than half of all IT spending growth worldwide in 2012, led by the BRIC
countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and a handful of other
fast-growing markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. The growing
importance of these markets is reflected in IDC's prediction that China will
surpass Japan as the world's second largest IT market sometime in the course of
the year.
2012 will also be the Year of Mobile Ascendency as mobile
devices (smartphones and media tablets) surpass PCs in both shipments and
spending and mobile apps, with 85 billion downloads, generate more revenue than
the mainframe market. The mobility market will see heated competition in 2012
as Microsoft joins the crucial battle for dominance in the mobile operating
system (OS) market and the Kindle Fire challenges the iPad in the media tablet
market. Similarly, a host of new mobile devices with "good enough"
capabilities (think "smartphone lite") will challenge the current
device leaders on price and functionality in key emerging markets like China,
India, Indonesia, and Brazil.
Competition will also characterize the world of cloud
services in 2012 as the strategic focus shifts from building infrastructure to
the creation of application platforms and ecosystems. Here the battle for
enterprise platform dominance is just getting underway with established players
like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle facing serious challenges from Amazon, Google,
Salesforce.com, and VMware. As evidence of this challenge, IDC expects Amazon
Web Services to exceed $1 billion in cloud services business in 2012 with
Google's Enterprise business to follow within 18 months. IDC also expects a merger
and acquisition (M&A) feeding frenzy as these companies seek to gain a
competitive edge. Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like
Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content. Other prime targets
for acquisition include Cloud Application/SaaS companies, like Workday,
NetSuite, and Taleo.
Social networking technologies – especially where they are
being accelerated by mobile technologies – will be recognized as a mandatory
component in every major enterprise IT vendors' strategy. As a result, IDC
expects a number of major IT vendors to make "statement" acquisitions
in social business while others continue to expand their community platforms.
Companies like LinkedIn, Spigit, BrightIdea, Attensity, and Lithium are logical
acquisition targets for Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Meanwhile, Facebook will
attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a broader role serving as the
business-to-consumer platform of choice.
Finally, Big Data will earn its place as the next "must
have" competency in 2012 as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7
zettabytes (ZB), up 48% from 2011. Over 90% of this information will be
unstructured (e.g., images, videos, MP3 files, and files based on social media
and Web-enabled workloads) – full of rich information, but challenging to
understand and analyze. As businesses seek to squeeze high-value insights from
this data, IDC expects to see offerings that more closely integrate data and
analytics technologies, such as in-memory databases and BI tools, move into the
mainstream. And, like the cloud services market, 2012 is likely to be a busy
year for Big Data-driven mergers and acquisitions as large IT vendors seek to
acquire additional functionality.
- In addition to key developments in mobile, cloud, social business, and big data, IDC predicts that 2012 will be a notable year in a number of other areas:
- Mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time
- 80% of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms
- 15% of new mobile apps will be based on HTML5 by year's end
- Vendors from emerging markets, such as Huawei and China Telecom, will make an aggressive push into developed markets, including the U.S.
- The number of intelligent, communicating devices on the network will outnumber "traditional computing" devices by almost 2 to 1 within next 24 months, changing the way we think – and interact – with each other and devices on the network
"Even though the IT industry will follow along the same
transformational path as it did in 2011, the events, the choices, and the
stakes will be very different in 2012," added Gens. "The urgency to
act – and to make the right decisions – will dramatically increase. By the end
of 2012, we should be able to see much more clearly which players have
successfully positioned themselves in the 'lead pack' of the marathon-like race
for industry leadership in the decade ahead."
IDC's predictions for 2012 are presented in full detail in the
report, IDC
Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020 (Doc #231720). In addition,
Frank Gens will lead a group discussion of this year's predictions in an IDC
Web conference scheduled for December 1 at 12:00 pm U.S. Eastern time. For more
information, or to register for this free event, please go to: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P24932.
International Data Corporation
(IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services,
and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer
technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the
investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and
business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and
local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110
countries. For more than 47 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help
our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG,
the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can
learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.
Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23177411
Article Summary:
Six Types of Cloud Computing — Everyone is talking about cloud computing today, but not everyone means the same thing when they do. While there is this general idea behind the cloud – that applications or other business functions exist somewhere away from the business itself – there are many iterations that companies look to in order to actually use the technology. Cloud computing offers a variety of ways for businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality without having to add infrastructure, personnel, and software.
It May seems
surprising but the scope of cloud computing is much greater for SME industries
as compared to large industries since small companies are much concerned
regarding their expenditure in IT services and management as compared to large
scale industries. No, it does not mean that large industries are not worried of
their IT resources, but small companies are very much limited to their budget
for IT spending as compare to large companies. In such a scenario, cloud computing
will serve as a boon for such industries, of course security will remain a
major concern.
According to a recent
survey undertaken by freelancing site PeoplePerHour.com among 1,300 SMEs in the
United Kingdom, it was found that as many as 74% do not use
‘Cloud’ computing. What gives greater cause for concern is that 43% of
the respondents did not even know what the term “Cloud computing” means. Still
majority of small companies still maintain their old age IT assets and
investing heavy money to keep a pace with the growing technology and
requirements. This unnecessary cost not only adversely affects their bottom
line, but also hamstrings small businesses as they attempt to keep pace with an
increasingly internet-based world.
The Future of SME Cloud Computing
Most industry experts
predict that the global market for cloud technology will increase from its
current $8 billion, to approximately $14 billion by 2014. The engine for this
growth as it relates to small businesses is expected to be something referred
to in cloud parlance as SaaS – Software as a Service. Solutions like Oracle,
SAP and deployment environment will become more affordable and manageable with
the usage of cloud computing. Best of all, cloud
computing services like SaaS are available to business owners and their
employees anywhere they can find an internet connection. Sales automation solutions
providers such as salesforce has added tremendous value in the managing the
sales across verticals. Services like DropBox provides realtime access of documents
and other items while on the move and even can be shared efficiently worldwide.
Major Benefits that cloud computing brings for SMEs
are:
·
Major saving in terms of Capital Expenditure. Only internet connection
and PC or laptop with general configuration is required
·
The size of the IT infrastructure can be reduced or increased instantly
as and when required. Quiet scalable...
·
Pay only for the services being used. Need not to maintain additional IT
infrastructure which is not required very often.
·
Services can be accessed from remote location with the use of computing
device and internet. No need to wait to reach office to update the data
·
Ease of implementation and management: Without the need for
implementation of hardware and various other components which can take several
hours. You can be running your business in almost as much time as it
takes to setup a Gmail account. Also managing the infrastructure will not be at
all a matter of concern. Skill resources will be taking care of all the issues
and management all the time thereby ensuring 99.99% uptime
·
World-class infrastructure: Without much investment in IT, companies
will be using the world class IT infrastructure with best response time as
compared to local IT infrastructure.
·
Green Computing: Protect the environment with energy efficient
environment. Cloud Computing setups uses less energy than traditional data
centres which is important to many in this day and age.
Companies in India will increase the adoption of cloud competing technology over the next five years. The total cloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach $4.5 billion by 2015. Of which private cloud adoption will dominate and account for $3.5 billion in revenues, growing at over 60 per cent, according to a study. The study, ‘private cloud landscape in India' was done by EMC Corporation, a provider of IT service and solutions, and Zinnov Management Consulting, a management consulting firm.
The study says that private cloud market will create one lakh jobs by 2015 against 10,000 now. Today, companies are under-skilled in addressing cloud computing implementations. It recommends companies to invest in competency building internally to take advantage of cloud computing technologies. The study estimates that the skilling and re-skilling market in India will grow fast as cloud computing becomes critical to IT strategies. Leading public and private educational institutions, along with IT enterprises are expected to play a key role in enhancing workforce skills to match the industry demand for cloud computing.
The growth in cloud computing market is attributed to the increased maturity of Indian enterprises towards cloud computing and the chief executive officer / chief information officer mandate for an enterprise-wide cloud strategy. It adds that with the overall environment of cloud adoption fast evolving in India, cloud computing will account for a significant share in the total IT spend of small, medium and large enterprises.
The total cloud spends as a percentage of total IT spend as such is expected to rise from 1.4 per cent in 2010 to 8.2 per cent in 2015.
The study notes that IT/ITeS, telecom, BFSI, manufacturing and government sectors will contribute nearly 78 per cent of the total cloud market, according to Pari Natarajan, Chief Executive Officer, Zinnov Management Consulting.
PRIVATE CLOUD
According to the study, there will be an increase in preference of private cloud over public cloud over the next five years. It also estimates that private cloud deployments can result in potential savings of up to 50 per cent on the IT investments on an average, when compared with a legacy IT model, with cost optimisation in areas such as telecom and networking, facilities and fabric, hardware, software, internal labour and external IT services.
Cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by creating new opportunities for IT vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings.
There is every chance that companies that are not adopting IT today and do not have major investments in data centres and server farms will directly move into the cloud model.
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi recently announced survey results indicating that India is leading in cloud storage and converged system adoption in Asia Pacific. The survey results also revealed that more than 50 percent of the large Asia Pacific enterprises that participated in the survey are not anticipating or planning for the advent of “Big Data.”
The survey results are published in an HDS-sponsored IDC white paper titled “The changing face of storage: A rethink of strategy that goes beyond the data”. The survey was conducted by IDC from August to September 2011 with 150 IT executives from large enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore. HDS commissioned the survey to better understand their storage management challenges, needs and strategies.
"There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of Big Data
- Kevin Eggleston, Senior Vice President and GM, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific
“HDS believes that data and information must be stored, governed and managed for insight and innovation in order to drive strategic and competitive value,” said Kevin Eggleston, senior vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific. “Embracing the latest technologies, like cloud services, not only enables enterprises to manage data growth but also to collect and connect data to create valuable information. Our three-tiered strategy of infrastructure cloud, content cloud and information cloud uses a dynamic infrastructure and enables fluid content to gain faster and more sophisticated insight and greater value from stored data.”
The Indian market is the most mature in terms of the adoption of cloud technologies and the highest usage levels of converged systems. 50 percent of respondents in India are using or planning to use cloud storage in the next 6 to 12 months. 30 percent of respondents in India are using converged systems and 35 percent are either evaluating or planning to use such systems.
The Indian market responses indicate that the move to more advanced datacenter architectures is well underway, and the growing pains are keenly felt. Data management issues due to explosive growth and new challenges uncovered through the virtualization of the server platform dominate concerns. However, fundamental issues such as managing email growth and backup also remained high.
Other key highlights include:
1. Having access to accurate data on a timely basis key to gain deeper business insight. About 70 percent of respondents in India stated that the demand of the business for deeper analysis outpaces the ability for their systems to ensure the data they had is relevant, timely and useful. Their data growth is outpacing their ability to effectively manage it.
2. Virtual server sprawl remains a key concern. 70 percent cited problems from virtual server sprawl, as they are unable to keep a close track of the virtual platform assets and their alignment to storage.
3. Justifying storage investments is a key challenge as budgets remain tight. 60 percent cited aligning IT costs to business budgets and growth as a main challenge to adopting their IT strategy amid current market conditions.
4. Insufficient backup window a key issue. Due to the nature of their business, 60 percent of Indian organizations do not have enough time to back up systems.
5. Managing email is getting more difficult and expensive. 60 percent of respondents in India cited concerns over the rising costs in managing email growth.
“Data needs to be shared, compared, analyzed and visualized more holistically. Only then can data become information used for insight, trending, and leveraged proactively in anticipation of things to come,” said Eggleston. “There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of ‘Big Data’ to better align itself to human behavior for deeper, more relevant insight, driving innovation, advancing research, enabling better collaboration, and building more sustainable societies.”
Source: Information Week
Cloud computing is spreading like wildfire. The number of enterprises
moving their IT operations to the cloud is tremendously growing. Established
vendors like Salesforce, Amazon and Google, including other startup firms that
provide tools and services for cloud computing continues to increase and
clamors for attention.
In this emerging industry, here are the lists of 15 promising cloud
computing vendors based on cloud security and storage to apps and
infrastructure offerings that should be on your radar screen.
Zimory, a Berlin-based company, offers a technology suite for
enterprises to transition virtual data centers into cloud-based infrastructure.
The company aims to provide high-quality cloud solution while maximizing
efficiency as it taps into underused resources. Zimory’s open-technology can
scale up to thousands of machines and connect with multiple clouds. The
firms Carrier Grade Cloud Computing portfolio is billed to be a comprehensive
solution for deploying and managing secure and scalable public, private and
hybrid clouds.
Abiquo is one of the most promising upstarts in the cloud computing
arena. It boasts of a comprehensive hypervisor support portfolio including
leading vendors such as Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and Zend. The firm
offers a permission-based hierarchy that enables enterprises to forge public,
private or hybrid clouds spanning data centers on- and off-premises. It
provides a support system to remove vendor lock-in problem through a
drag-and-drag conversion for virtual machines from one hypervisor to another.
Standing Cloud provides enterprises with a simple proposition: “We do
the sys admin so you don’t have to. Sure, you could handle Web application
management. But why?” The firm provides management services on a variety of
big-league cloud operators.
Standing Cloud enables users to “deploy myriad open source software
solutions to IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), but goes a step farther in
letting you choose from multiple clouds,” according to Forrester analyst James
Staten.
Appirio engages itself with both the technological and consulting
challenges of enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Since 2006, the firm has
helped implement cloud deployments for 200 enterprise clients with some of the
leading vendors, including Google, Salesforce and Amazon. Earlier this month,
it has acquired VMG, a consulting firm specializing in learning programs
and cloud training.
Spanning Cloud Apps, a company
specializing in backup services for Google Apps on its LinkedIn page, was
founded to become the Norton Computing of the cloud computing era. The firm
offers its signature Spanning Backup product for a free trial and acceptable
annual subscription
.
.
Bluelock is considered as a leading VMware vCloud hosting provider that
offers both technology and services in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
space. The firm’s services are tied to VMware’s virtualization technology. It
delivers a tailored solution for establishing a virtual data center hosted on a
public or hybrid cloud.
Skytap, self-service cloud automation, announces the release of a new
technology that claims to establish a secure hybrid cloud that connects to an
on-site data center with its cloud in 10 minutes. The firm anticipates winning
with a dead-simple hybrid cloud deployment solution that provides the security
of the traditional data center with the scale of the cloud.
CloudOptix, backed up by MeghaWare product line, is a cloud
virtualization software player that offers businesses and users a way to create
a private cloud from different vendors. With the preconfigured MeghaWare
Cloud Appliance’s portfolio of storage, and applications, it promised low-cost
deployment in less than 15 minutes. To defang the problem of vendor lock-in,
its CloudTop application, allows customers to choose among devices, apps and
cloud providers.
RightScale, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor offers a fully
automated management platform for cloud computing deployments. It aims to lower
the entry barriers to cloud deployments with server templates through its
“cloud-ready” mechanism for connecting servers with the customer’s cloud environment.
Recently, RightScale and Zend Technologies announces their new offering
that pairs RightScale’s cloud management platform with Zend’s PHP architecture
and Zend Server. This technology deploys and manages Php applications in the
cloud.
CloudSwitch, known as an enterprise cloud gateway, provides software in
line with the policies and tools rooted in the data center with a cloud
environment. It offers security for businesses that requires maintenance of
in-house and cloud-based IT assets. Earlier this month, CloudSwitch conjoined
with Riverbed to boost performance and security in the cloud.
Kaavo considers itself to be “the first and only company to deliver a
solution with a top-down application-focused approach to IT resource management
across public, private and hybrid clouds.” The firm believes that its
application-centric approach is necessary for effective cloud management.
Its core product, IMOD, an application management assures speeding up of server
systems online, configuring middleware, and other steps to hasten the
transition to a cloud-based environment.
Prolexic Technologies is a provider of cloud-based security technology
that mitigates DDoS attacks. The firm caters to SMN, enterprise and government
clients. It features proprietary mitigation and control software that helps detect
and fend off DDoS attacks through pairing with a global network of “scrubbing
centers.”
At the end of March, the firm received $13.9 million fund from Kennet
Partners, an organization that is rumored to be helping a major electronics
manufacturer guard against a DDoS attack.
Nimbula, founded by a management team that helped develop Amazon EC2
coins itself as a “cloud operating system company.” Recently, the firm released
its flagship product, Nimbula Director 1.0 that provides management for both
cloud-based resources and on-premises data centers. This Director 1.0 is also
available for free download for smaller deployments up to 40 cores, and an
optional-fee based annual support for larger systems.
Nasuni, through its partnership with cloud-computing providers offers a
“cloud gateway” that searches for the best aspect of the cloud and on-premises
storage. This year, its Nasuni Filer product features a “snapshot retention,”
that allows IT managers to set storage and retention policies on the cloud.
With this feature, managers can determine the point then a snapshot can be
deleted irrevocably
NephoScale is one of the more recent entrants in the IaaS market. The
firm’s public cloud infrastructure platform offers pay-by-the-hour servers,
object-based storage, and dedicated, on-demand servers. Its signature
innovation, the CloudScript, enables users to control all elements of their
cloud deployment using a single, one-to-many API call.
Recently, the firm offers a free, one-year trial of a 256 MB cloud
server and as much as 1 GB of storage through its Cloud Computing and Storage
Starter Package. According to NephoScale President Bruce Templeton, this
offering will allow start-up companies to familiarize themselves with their
services without spending too much.
Reference: http://cloudtimes.org/
Google Music users located in the United States can employ the Android Market to purchase songs and albums, and can also upload existing Apple iTunes playlists to their accounts. And Google is placing a strong emphasis on its music sharing features.
Google Music joins a number of big players already in the online music arena, including iTunes and Spotify. Another competitor: Amazon Cloud Player, which debuted this spring and with features similar to Google's offering.
Here's a quick look at how the two stack up in terms of price, accessibility, sharing and quality.
Google vs. Amazon: Price Comparison
Google Music lets Google account holders upload as many as 20,000 songs from their personal music collections (such as iTunes), and—for now—users can host an unlimited library of music purchased from the Android Marketplace.
Purchasing music from the Android Marketplace requires a Google Wallet account—Google Wallet is the company's online payment service—and individual songs cost between 99 cents and $1.29. Google Wallet is a virtual way to store your payment cards, offers and more on your phone and online.
The Amazon Cloud Drive, and associated Cloud Player, launched last spring, and the service gives Amazon account holders 5 GB of free storage, which can hold up to 1,000 songs. The Amazon Cloud Drive can also store photos and videos.
Storage upgrades start at $20 per year for an extra 15 GB—which also qualifies users for unlimited Cloud Drive song storage—and is capped at $1,000 a year for 1,000 GB of storage. Purchasing individual songs from Amazon.com generally costs between 99 cents and $1.29, which is also inline with Apple's iTunes music store.
Google vs. Amazon: Music Accessibility and System Requirements
The Google Music player can be accessed via your computer's Web browser or a mobile application on your Android device. Compatible browsers include Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 7 and above, Firefox and Safari. JavaScript must be enabled and your browser must be running the latest version of Adobe Flash. The Google Music Manager requires Mac OS 10.5 and above, Windows XP and above or Linux.
Google Music users can also access their libraries on Android devices via the Google Music application, though the app requires Android 2.2 or above with OpenGL2.0. And Apple devices running iOS 4.0 or higher can access the Google Music player by visiting music.google.com in a Web browser.
Amazon Cloud Player is a browser-based application that supports Mac and PC computers and iPad devices. It is not optimized to run on somemobile phones or tablets, including iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Windows Mobile devices.